A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [102]
Cohen is absolutely beside me, shoulder to shoulder. Not looking at me, but down at the printer. I breathe in hard and cannot disguise the sound of it, a startled gasp of air as my face flushes red. His breath smells of menthol.
Cohen has picked up the three sheets from the printer tray and started reading them.
‘What do you want these for?’
If you ever get caught, they told me, don’t answer the question. Deflect and deny until you know that you can get clear.
Think. Think.
‘You gave me a shock,’ I tell him, mustering a half-laugh, in the hope that this will explain my blushing. ‘I thought you’d gone home.’
‘I was on the sixth floor,’ Cohen says coolly. ‘Library.’
I didn’t hear the lift. He must have used the staircase. I look down at his shoes, silent suede loafers.
‘What do you want this for?’
‘The commercial price sets?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘The price sets.’ He holds up the first page and flaps it in my face.
‘I needed a copy at home.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not? So I can get on top of my work. So I can see the long-term picture.’
Don’t go on too long. The bad liar always embellishes.
Cohen nods and mutters ‘Oh.’
I look back at the printer, trying to avoid his eyes.
‘So what happened to shopping in the West End? Got to get myself some new clothes, you said.’
‘I had some letters to finish by Monday. Forgot.’
‘And this, of course,’ he says archly, passing me the sheets of paper.
Cohen knows that something is not right here.
The fourth and final page has emerged into the printer tray without my realizing it. I bend over to scoop it out and tap the pages into a neat pile, stapling them in the top left-hand corner. Cohen walks back to his desk and takes a pen out of a drawer.
‘I’m going now,’ he says.
‘Me too. I’m all done.’
‘Better switch off your computer, then,’ he says, housing the pen in his jacket pocket.
‘Yes.’
I move around to my desk and sleep the system. It folds into a slow screen saver, coloured shapes in space disappearing into a vast black hole. He is already halfway to the exit when he says:
‘Couldn’t you have written your letters at home?’
‘What?’
Pretending not to have heard him buys me the time to think of a reason.
‘I said couldn’t you have done the letters at home?’
‘No. I had all my notes here.’
‘I see. Bye then.’
‘See you, Harry.’
He turns the corner and disappears, taking the stairs all the way to the ground floor. I continue to sit at my desk, wanting to clutch my head in my hands and sink to the floor. After all the planning and the preparation it seems extraordinary to me that something should have gone wrong so quickly.
I put the documents into my briefcase, place the letters beside the franking machine, shut off the lights in the office and take the lift to the foyer. The blur of aftermath makes it impossible to think at all clearly. I leave the Abnex building without speaking to George and disappear out on to Broadgate. It’s five-thirty.
Some things become clear as I walk around.
I may have over-reacted. What did Cohen really see? He saw Milius, the new boy, doing some printing. No more, no less. He saw letters on my desk, cold cups of coffee, the outward signs of an afternoon’s work. Nothing untoward about that. Nothing to make him suspect sharp practice.
What do I know about Cohen? That he is guileful and malevolent. That he is the sort of person to sneak up on a colleague in a deserted office on a weekend afternoon and get a kick out of giving him a fright. Cohen feels simultaneously threatened by what I am capable of and contemptuous of what I represent. He’s just another Nik, snuffing out his insecurity by making others feel uneasy.
But he will be watching me that much more closely from now on. It was my first mistake, the only thing to have gone wrong so far.
Why didn’t I see him coming?
23
The Case
Just after six, still feeling restless and shaken, I take a slow, half-empty Tube to West Kensington. I have rationalized what happened and yet it continues to play on my nerves. There should have been a clean through-line of action in the last six hours,