A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [142]
‘Oh, please,’ she says, lifting her face up suddenly. ‘Don’t even attempt to make that comparison. I’m not fucking with people’s heads. I’m not living a twenty-four-hour lie. When I come home at night I’m Kate Allardyce, not Lady Macbeth.’
‘I dunno, there were some nights we were together…’
‘Alec, please. No jokes.’
I try a smile. Nothing from her. I had not expected a reaction like this. I did not prepare myself in any way for being criticized by her.
‘I’m simply making the point that it’s an act. I had to become someone that I was not. I was paid to put up a pretence. Every time I go to their apartment, I have a particular strategy in mind, something I have to say or do to facilitate the operation.’
‘Every time you go? Present tense? You’re still doing this? But I thought…’
The telephone rings out loud and hard on the counter nearest the sink. Both Kate and I start in our seats, eyes briefly meeting, but she is up quickly, answering it.
‘Hello.’
When the person on the other end of the line speaks, she turns away from me so that I cannot see her face. It is a man. I can hear the low bass of his voice coming through the receiver.
‘Hi. Listen, can I call you back?’ she says, suddenly nervous and unsettled. ‘I’m just in the middle of something. No, I’m fine. I’ll ring you in an hour or so. Where will you be?’
He tells her. I look at Kate, standing there lithe and cool, and it’s hard to believe that we fucked one another what must have been a thousand times.
‘Fine. Lots of love,’ she tells him.
That’s what she used to say to me.
She hangs up.
‘You should have taken the call.’
‘Forget it,’ she says, scratching the back of her neck.
Why didn’t she tell him I was here?
‘Who was that?’
She hesitates, ignores the question.
‘I’m still trying to get my head round all this. You said when you got here that someone’s been hurt. Who? One of the Americans? Is that it? Who is this person you work with who’s in trouble? You say he’s on your team. Which team?’
‘Somebody at Abnex. He cottoned on to what I was doing.’ After a brief pause, I add: ‘At least, I thought he did.’
I light another cigarette, though the stale tar funk of the last one, lying crumpled in the ashtray, still hangs over the table, a rank odour which Kate detests.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Harry Cohen. He’s been at Abnex three years longer than I have.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘And how did he find out?’
‘He was jealous of me for some reason. Or wary, one or the other. We didn’t ever see eye to eye. And he seemed to track me. He always seemed to be on my back.’
‘Maybe you rubbed him up the wrong way,’ she says, as if looking to start an argument.
‘Maybe,’ I reply, unwilling to pursue this.
‘Maybe,’ she says again, archly.
It is almost as if she is mocking me. I stop and look at her with a half-scowl which has the effect of making her turn away.
‘Sorry,’ she says, flatly. ‘I didn’t mean to…’
‘It’s all right,’ I tell her.
‘Go on,’ she says.
So I keep going, trying to explain Cohen as much to myself as to Kate.
‘A couple of weeks ago he followed me home from a drop. I’d left some information for Fortner and Katharine with a lawyer on Cheyne Walk. Harry says he was having dinner on a houseboat down there and just happened to see what was going on. He just knitted things together, like he was looking for a way to bring me down. And when I got back that night he confronted me. Threatened that if I didn’t explain to senior people at Abnex what was going on, he’d do it for me.’
Kate again moves hair out of her face, tucking it quickly behind her ear.
‘I had no choice but to report all this to my controller. I told him what Harry had done and he said he would take care of it.’ I pause, looking over at Kate, whose face has hardened further into censure. She knows what I’m about to tell her. There’s a grim logic to it.
‘After we talked, Cohen flew out to Azerbaijan, one of the old Soviet Republ -‘
‘I know what it is.’
This is short and abrasive, spat out of