sprig of heather threaded through the radiator. I move out of the cover provided by the bush.
Driver and passenger get out just as I am walking past. They catch me looking at them in a split, nervous instant, and I recognize their faces. I’ve seen them buying newspapers in the neighborhood, watched them walking to the tube. They live in the next street-Hetley Road-a young couple with a kid. They look startled, wary with mugging nerves, and we do not greet one another.
I walk on, relieved, reaching into my trousers for keys, now just a few paces short of the front door. There is loose change in my pocket, tiny balls of laundry fluff, and an old pack of gum. I look up, tugging the cold keys in my fingers, pulling them free.
He comes directly at me, moving quickly with a flat, focused walk. He’s wearing a heavy brown corduroy jacket, gloves, and a black scarf.
Cohen.
He stops, feet scuffing on the pavement as he comes to a halt.
“Hello, Alec.”
Cohen’s new company car is a Volkswagen. He was taking delivery of it last week.
“Harry. What are you doing here? Been out to dinner?”
“Where have you been?”
“I’ve been out.”
“Where?”
He is breathing quickly. Vapor clouds out into the narrow space between us.
“Are you pissed?” I ask him.
“No,” he says with a quiet authority that cancels out any trace of affability. He has been rushed to get here but has quickly regained his composure. “I’ve just come from Cheyne Walk.”
I try to work through the consequences of this. He must know something. He must be onto me. Think.
“Where have you been, Alec?”
“I’ve been on Cheyne Walk as well. But something tells me you already knew that. What’s all this about? What are you doing here?”
“Who were you with tonight?”
“Is that your business?”
“Why don’t I tell you who you were with?”
“Why not?”
He inches forward on the pavement.
“You were with your contacts from Andromeda. The Lanchesters.”
I am briefly relieved. He has made a baseless assumption.
“What is it with you and those two, Harry?” I ask, letting out a little sputtering laugh.
“Are you saying you weren’t with them, or not?”
The manner in which he asks this worries me. It is as if he already knows the answer to his question. Perhaps Cohen saw Katharine and Fortner going into Atwater’s building before I arrived. There would be no logic in that, but it is possible. They may have been there throughout the meeting. I feel suddenly rushed and get lost in the double negative of Cohen’s question. Taking a chance without thinking things through, I tell him, “No.”
And immediately I sense from his reaction that he has trapped me.
“No? You’re saying no?” The tone is one of grim sarcasm. “Then why did I see them enter the building you’ve just come back from half an hour before you got there?”
Why would the Americans have kept that from me? Momentarily this question outweighs the grave fact of Cohen’s accusations. I try to stay on the offensive.
“What the fuck were you doing wasting your time following those two around?”
“I wasn’t following them,” he says unconvincingly. “I was having dinner on a houseboat and I saw them going into the building as I was leaving.”
“And you decided to spy on them?”
“An appropriate word, wouldn’t you say?”
I take out a cigarette and light it as a means of shutting out the implication.
“Am I not allowed to see the employees of other oil firms after a nine o’clock curfew? Is that it? Is that a clause in my Abnex contract?”
“That’s not the issue.”
“Well then, I don’t know what is the issue. You’re wasting your time. I’m very tired. I want to go inside and get some sleep. Maybe we can have a word about your problem in the morning.”
This is weak, a thin attempt at escape. And, of course, it does nothing to deflect him.
“You made a telephone call this afternoon,” he says.
“I made a lot of phone calls today. That’s part of what we do, Harry.”
“Ostensibly to a dry-cleaner.”
I try to disguise my reaction to this, but some of the shock must seep through.
“That’s correct,” I reply, not bothering to deny or deflect. Better to find out how much Cohen knows, to listen to the evidence he has compiled.
“You went to the toilet afterwards.”
“Yes.”
“After you got up from your desk, I pressed the Redial button on your telephone.”
It is as if something collapses inside me.
“Why did you do that?”
I do not expect him to answer. Cohen knows he has the upper hand. He came here with enough evidence to flush me out and is interested only in confession. He has acted with a greater swiftness than I would ever have anticipated.
“A woman answered,” he says, moving a few inches closer to me so that his face is suddenly bathed in the grim orange glow of a streetlight. He is almost whispering now, as if out of courtesy for my sleeping neighbors. “Do you want to know what she said?”
“You had no right to do that, Harry,” I tell him, but my anger makes no impression on him.
“She said: ‘Mr. Milius? Alec, is that you?’ Now, does it strike you as odd that she should say that?”
“This is ridiculous.”
“You must be very friendly with your dry-cleaner to be on first-name terms with her.”
“I’ve spent a lot of money there. We know each other by name. It’s not that uncommon, Harry. Did you come here just to tell me this?”
In my stupidity, I think that this remark may be enough to deter his questioning, but it is not. What comes next is the worst of it.
“Does the word justify mean anything to you?”
His eyes scour mine and I look away down the street, my body suddenly limp with fear. I inhale deeply on the cigarette and try to think of a response. But any reply will be futile. This is over.
“Excuse me?”
“ Justify?” says Cohen, as if the effort of repeating it has annoyed him. “Does that word mean anything to you?”
“No. Why?”
“The woman on the phone. She had an Irish accent. She used that word as if it were some sort of code. Is that what it is, Alec? Just tell me and let’s get this out of the way.”
I do not know if he sees my face in the darkness with its flush of humiliation. Perhaps the fall of a shadow saves me, a simple lack of color in the night. I can say only this: “Go home, Harry. I don’t know if you’re drunk or paranoid or whatever, but just go home. The word justify means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing at all.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m very tired. You’re getting a big kick out of playing private detective and I’m very tired.”
“Just tell me. I’ll understand, I promise,” he says. Then, after a calculated pause: “How much are you being paid?”
“You want to be careful what you say.”
“How much are they paying you, Alec?”
