A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [128]
The journey takes less than ten minutes. Sinclair pays, makes a big deal of leaving a generous tip, and taps the roof of the cab as it pulls away. We walk up a ramp at the side of the hotel entrance and move haltingly through stiff revolving doors.
The decor is international marble, light and gleaming. A reception desk widens out ahead of us, manned by a slim, moustachioed man and a brunette with galaxies of dandruff stuck to the shoulders of her corporate blazer. I scan the lobby for surveillance. Two tourists - undoubtedly Americans - are sitting on a sofa behind us. There are four Japanese, all men, loitering near a window, a cleaning woman stooped and dusting, a Royal Mail delivery man with a clipboard making his way across the marble floor, and two young girls giggling near the entrance to a buffet-style restaurant. We have not been followed inside.
Sinclair and I walk to a bank of lifts. There is one already waiting, its doors slid open, and we ride it, just the two of us, to the tenth floor. There is a large mirror inside the elevator car which makes the narrow space feel less claustrophobic. Sinclair brings a mobile phone out of his hip pocket like a revolver and twists it lovingly in his hand. He turns to me.
‘We have people on either side of 1011. It’s on the top floor, directly above a conference suite, so there’s no listening threat from above or below.’
When the lift arrives we make our way to the room along a cream-walled corridor, the floor a marie-rose carpet flecked with ticks of blue. Sinclair walks a pace ahead of me, brisk and purposeful. My mind is simply not prepared for the rigours of a debriefing. Passing ioio I can hear voices, relaxed cockney laughter. There are men inside setting up recording equipment, ready to take down everything I say.
Room 1011 is standard-issue. A hard-mattressed double bed with a smooth cream cover lying taut across it. A dressing-table with a strip-lit mirror, a free-standing lamp next to velvet curtains shut heavy against the daylight. There’s a smell of cleaning fluids, a sense of the recently hoovered, as if the memories of all former guests have been quickly and efficiently erased.
John Lithiby is sitting in a narrow, high-backed chair in front of the closed curtains. There is a briefcase at his feet but he has left no trace of himself elsewhere in the room. Sinclair shows me in, nods deferentially at Lithiby, and leaves. I hear the door to 1010 open and close as he enters next door.
‘Alec.’
‘Hello, John.’
He appears to be in a stark, blunt mood. I stand in the narrow space between bed and wall, getting my bearings. I back up and scope the bathroom. Neat soaps in packets, a shower above the bath partly obscured by a blue plastic curtain. Everything so clean.
‘Why don’t you come in and sit down?’ he says. ‘We can start whenever you’re ready.’
Nothing about Lithiby ever changes. His shirt is blue with stiff white collars, the greying hair barbered in an exacting straight line which stretches from the back of his semi-bald cranium to the upper perimeters of his forehead. The bespectacled, bony face looks drawn out by intense concentration. It is hard to imagine such a man having a private life. I perch on the bed, at the corner furthest from his chair.
‘Now, what is the precise nature of the problem?’ he says, interlocking long fingers in his lap. ‘Why have you come in?’
‘Last night I dropped off the North Basin report that David prepared.’
‘We were there. We saw you go in.’
‘Did your people spot Harry Cohen?’
‘Who?’
I have never mentioned Cohen’s name in any of my reports to Lithiby. That fact alone will make the next hour extremely awkward.
‘Harry Cohen. He works on my team at Abnex.