A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [125]
‘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: vapour clouds out into the narrow space between us.
‘Are you pissed?’ I ask him.
‘No,’ he says with a quiet authority which 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 on to 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’ve been 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 him, 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 own 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?’ His 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 inference.
‘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. 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 did?’
‘That’s right.’
‘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 this. Cohen knows he has the upper hand: he came here with enough evidence to flush me out and he 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 street light. He is almost whispering now, as if out of courtesy for my sleeping neighbours. ‘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