James stops, and waits.
“What bond?”
He fixes his blue eyes on me. “We do things.”
We’re interrupted again, by the burgers and fries and salads. And again the girl serving takes care to place James’ plates carefully in front of him, and dumps mine down. Again he smiles his thanks with a flash of his white teeth, and I have to admit he is pretty handsome, in a very obvious kind of way. The waitress goes away, and James reaches for the salt, but it’s nearly empty. He has to shake hard to get any out. He offers it to me when he’s finished.
“What sort of things?” I ask, not taking the salt.
James munches through a few fries before answering. “Nothing illegal. Or at least, nothing very illegal, and certainly nothing where anyone can get hurt.” He looks up suddenly, and smiles again, his face open, and sort of glowing with a sort of excitement. “Look I’ll start at the beginning. That’s why I wanted to buy you lunch. To explain this to you. You deserve to know.”
I just wait.
“Lily and I first started dating when we were thirteen. She was my first proper girlfriend. My only proper girlfriend.” He glances at the waitress, but just for a second. “Look I know this sounds crass, but we knew each other because our parents went to the same country club.” He shakes his head at me. “Her family has a load more money than mine, more than almost anyone there. But I don’t wanna deny my own privilege.” He stops. “Come on, you gonna eat that or what?”
We both stop, and he takes a bite from his burger. I’ve lost my appetite, so I eat some lettuce. When he’s finished chewing he goes on.
“I’d liked her for ages, I mean – look at her. When we finally got together, I couldn’t believe my luck. Even more so when she finally let me sleep with her.” There’s a pause, when neither of us says anything.
“And she told me about her family, about what they do, and what it’s like growing up that way. And I went out on the family yacht, and got invited to barbecues, went skiing with them, all that stuff…” He waves a hand, casually. “I was even allowed to stay over at her parents place – have you seen it yet?”
He whistles, but I shake my head. “Man, it’s a proper mansion. Makes her place here seem like nothing.” He takes another bite, and chews it carefully.
“Jennifer was her best friend growing up. Oscar was mine. It seemed sort of fate that they should get together, and then the four of us became very close. Almost, unnaturally close.” He stops and puts his head on one side. “You know what Oscar’s dad does for a living?”
I don’t, so I shrug.
“Good. He prefers it that way.” He waits a beat. “He’s an arms dealer.”
There’s another silence, but this one is more because I’m shocked.
“He sells weapons, in the Middle East, Africa. Wherever a highly dubious government or would-be government can raise the money to buy them.” He sees my eyes go wide. “No, not like that. He works for an arms manufacturer. This is all legal. Legal, and highly profitable.” He pauses, and has another go with the salt.
“But yeah – I understand that look. Then you have pharmaceuticals – that’s my folks. And Jen. Her old man’s a defense attorney.” He shakes his head again. “No, nothing too exciting, but he represents rich folk who haven’t paid their taxes. He takes a huge chunk of their money but stops them going to jail.”
James takes a break for another swig of beer. Then he goes on.
“So. Arms. Chemicals, big pharma and law. All of us, the product of some pretty fucked up industries, and yet the four of us, we seem to have anything we want. Life is good. Only it isn’t, is it? Not really. Not if you don’t want to be a hypocrite.
“We used to go on and on about it. On ski vacations, yacht regattas. Around the pool in Lily’s folk’s place. And then one day, the opportunity came to do something about it.” He grins.
“What?”
“You pick things up, OK? Growing up like we did. People talk, say things they shouldn’t, thinking we’re just kids, spoiled kids who aren’t gonna bite the hand that feeds them. Oscar found out about a deal someone was doing, selling weapons to a country that was on the banned list. And we worked out we could stop it, just by leaking it. An anonymous email to a journalist, another to the regulator. They wouldn’t even get punished that much, they’d just – it just killed the deal. So we did it.
“That was the first. I guess we got a taste for it. We became these – I don’t know – secret crusaders. It tied us together, it made us stronger – I’m talking about Lily and me, Oscar and Jennifer – the four of us, it made us invincible. We were different from everyone else. We didn’t need anyone else.”
I’m completely silent. Listening, not really knowing what to think about all this. And now James is quiet too.
“What are you thinking, Billy?”
“I don’t know.”
He laughs. Sort of. “I guess this is hard to take in.” He half-smiles for a few seconds, then it fades and he’s left looking seriously at me.
“It didn’t happen at once. We didn’t decide to become – whatever we are. It was a gradual thing. You see Oscar was always into computers. Ever since I met him. He’s doing a computer science major now. And he’s – I don’t know, you know that Facebook was started here? At Harvard?”
I nod. Everyone knows that.
“Well he’s like one of those guys. He could invent the next Bitcoin or YouTube – probably will one of these days. But right now he’s into hacking. Big time. He breaks into the
