“Oh, you mean the watch? The Rolex?” I hold it up and give it a slow shake. “How did you know about that?”
“Katharine was seen buying a Rolex in Bond Street by one of our people. I noticed today that you are wearing a Rolex. I merely put two and two together.”
“They gave it to me as a gesture of goodwill. Of thanks. For the North Basin data.”
“Did they?” he says, opening the door with a dry smile. “Well done, Alec. That’s a good sign. Well done.”
Sinclair, I see, is already waiting outside in the corridor. He nods complacently at me as we come out. He’s heard everything.
“I’ll be in touch,” I tell Lithiby.
“Yes,” he says, already turning to go back inside. It is as if the vivid glare of indoor light in the passage has startled him.
“Chris,” he says, just as an acknowledgment of Sinclair, nothing more.
The single syllable trails off as the door closes, and there is silence now, not a sound from anywhere. Just Sinclair and I standing alone together in the corridor.
Eventually he says, “All set?”
30
And what now?
It appears that I am expected to go about my business as normal, to conduct my everyday life with the same blank regard for routine that I have shown for the past eighteen months. I receive no instruction from Lithiby, no hint or tip about Cohen. I can measure his disappointment in the silence that follows our meeting.
Six days go by. I wait by the phone, sleep only with the help of pills, drink from twilight till 2:00 A.M. Self- discipline erodes. At work I am somnambulant, incapable of clear and sustained thought. Tanya inquires if I am ill- You look tired, she says, you look sick, Alec -and I leave every afternoon at four, eager for the simple shelter of home.
What has happened is that I have grown bored of secrecy. I have developed a compelling urge to confess. I want now to be rid of all half-truths and deceptions, of all the necessary lies of my life. I have been doing this for so long now that I cannot recall when the deceiving began, when it became necessary, in the name of a higher cause, to be something other than the person I once was.
Did I let this happen willingly, or was I lured into a trap set by Hawkes? I have never been able properly to answer that question. Late 1995 and ’96 is a blur of heartbreak and bruised ego. SIS rejected me-but in the next instant, just a day later, I was presented by Hawkes with a plan. At the time it seemed a lifeline thrown by kinder fates, a glimpse at last of something promising. And I grasped at it with no thought to consequence, no concept of its dependence on total secrecy, and with nothing but a young man’s blind greed for acclaim.
That, of course, is how the intelligence services operate. They appeal to your innocence, to your secret and grandiose dreams. Any large corporation is the same: get them when they’re young, prelapsarian, before they’ve had a chance to get too disappointed with what life throws at them. Get them when the prospect of being faced with a choice does not constrain but rather liberate; when the thought of the clandestine life is thrilling, not abhorrent.
I no longer recognize the person who made those choices, and yet he was surely a better person than I am now. The one whom Kate knew. If I could only get back to that.
On the weekend of April 4 I set myself to do some clear thinking, but it’s vague and contradictory. For a while I convince myself that there was a part of me that was waiting for Cohen, a desire actually to get caught. Something about his persistence was comforting. It offered me a way out. Just below the constant fright of imminent capture, I am experiencing a curious sense of relief, an intimation of rebirth, a feeling of beginning again in the past. To be free of Lithiby, of Caccia and Hawkes, to start afresh, seems possible now.
But to believe this is fatuous. If Cohen bleats, SIS and Five will deny all knowledge of me and I will be left to fend for myself, as a traitor against the state. If the truth comes out-that the Americans have been victims of an elaborate hoax-it will be denied at official levels in the interests of the special relationship. What was Hawkes’s line? We’ve been hanging on to the shirttails of every U.S. administration since Roosevelt. That isn’t about to change just so that Alec Milius can sleep soundly in his bed at night. I will then be a marked man, the target of an expansive American grudge. Either way, my options are hopelessly limited.
Why did I not see all this coming? Why did I not recognize immediately the grim paradox of the trade? That we are all of us foolishly reliant on the goodwill of corrupt men for our safety and peace of mind. Their loyalty can- and will-vanish in an instant, because everyone must be ultimately deniable. That’s what breaks the chain. You came here lonely, and you will leave alone.
Saturday night. There’s nothing on TV but talking heads and Noel’s House Party in “A New York Special.” Edmonds has taken the show to a television studio in Manhattan where William Shatner and David Hasselhoff have been invited as his special guests. Next to these tanned, protein-rich megastars, Noel looks like a very small man awed by America. I switch the program off, and the room lapses into silence, the thin electric whine of the TV fading, just on the edge of sound.
There is a buzz on the doorbell, a sharp sudden punch, which kicks me out of the reliable calm of home. What if it’s a journalist, a scoop-hungry hack with a TV camera bolted to his shoulder? I have lived this last week in persistent dread of the journalist on the phone, of the item on the six o’clock news. More wild hallucinations. Who is at the door?
It’s just a pizza delivery boy, clear skinned and accentless, called to the wrong address. I show him where he wants to go-111B, next door-and he thanks me with a grunt. Going back upstairs, passing all the flyers and pamphlets littering the hall, I allow myself a little knowing smile. Perhaps, at the end of the day, all this is merely appealing to my sense of dramatic effect. Perhaps everything will be fine. Perhaps the Americans will use the data, oblivious of its defects, Cohen will be taken to one side and told to act in the best interests of Queen and Country, and JUSTIFY will prosper. And maybe I should stick to the plan that has existed all along: to leave Abnex in three or four years and accept Lithiby’s offer of employment with Five. In the final analysis-Cohen’s intrusions apart-I am good at my job. I have a talent for it.
I had thought about a confession to Saul. It came from a deep-seated desire to be unburdened of the facts, a simple need, in the wake of Lithiby, to explain to someone exactly what has been going on. No evasions, no half- truths. The total picture. I would sit him down, apologize for being such a lousy friend, and explain that I used his flat for a dead drop. But what could I expect in return? Forgiveness and understanding? Why burden him with something so beyond his experience? There is nothing Saul could usefully do for me but bob his head sympathetically and pour me another drink.
31
At work on Tuesday afternoon, three days before Cohen is due back from Baku, I get a call from Katharine. I am unprepared for the conversation and struggle to summon up the necessary zip. My mind is so slack that I speak only briefly in abrupt phrases that trail off, going nowhere. Katharine, who is evidently cheery and content, picks up on this and after a couple of minutes asks, “You okay?”
