A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [155]
‘Of course,’ says Lithiby, empathetically. ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell us about what happened?’
His trickery has the effect of putting me once again on my guard.
‘I’ve told you, John, I prefer to stand. All that happened was this. I had a meeting with David at Abnex this afternoon. He told me that our people had seen Fortner skip the country and that Andromeda had pulled out of Baku. That was it. I feared the worst, though David didn’t seem too upset. Looking back on it now, that was disingenuous.’ I glance down at Caccia. ‘You must have known that I was blown, but you wanted me to be the one who found out why. You wanted me to be the fall guy.’
‘There’s no truth in that whatsoever,’ Caccia says, maintaining his cool. ‘There is only one person responsible for this cock-up, and that is you.’
‘But you weren’t to know that, were you? At that stage you had no idea why these things were happening.’
‘What happened when you got home?’
Lithiby has interrupted, trying to prevent things from escalating into a slanging match. I am still surprised by how quickly I have allowed the civility of the meeting to break apart.
‘I made the phone call. You heard it all for yourselves. Surely I don’t need to go over all that?’
Elworthy coughs, an old man’s way of saying that he wants to be heard.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ he says. ‘But we need to know about this girl. Kate Allardyce. We’ve had a problem with her before, haven’t we?’
Elworthy looks across at Lithiby and I instinctively follow his lead. He nods just once.
‘A problem with Kate?’ I reply. ‘What do you mean? Who are you anyway? Nobody has even told me how you fit into things.’
Elworthy ignores this.
‘In your first meeting with the Friends,’ he says flatly, ‘you led the interviewer to believe that you were still involved with her.’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘There’s a pattern of deceit, Alec, don’t you see?’ Elworthy is now to my left, no more than a foot away, with Lithiby closing in on the right. It is like a pincer movement as Lithiby says:
‘You’ve tried to pull the wool over our eyes about her before. We’d like to know what role she has in this. How does Kate Allardyce fit in?’
What is this assumption they have made about Kate? Where is it coming from? Have they got to her, too? I cannot think how to reply.
‘Alec?’ Caccia says, trying to prompt me into saying something.
‘She doesn’t have any role in this,’ I tell them. ‘This is a blind alley. That was the first time I’d seen her in over two years.’
‘When?’ Elworthy asks very quickly. He is convinced that there is more to this.
‘Last week. When I went to her house. When I told her about what happened to Harry in Baku. About JUSTIFY. About all of this.’
‘And she knew nothing of it before?’
‘No. Of course not.’
They appear to have had doubts about her for some time. Trained to see trickery in even the most blameless situations.
‘So how is it that the Americans discovered what was going on?’
This comes from Caccia, and I hand him a look of derision.
‘Are you not getting this, David? Can you guys stop asking all these fucking obvious questions? You know how the Americans found out. They had her fucking house tapped.’
‘But why?’ says Elworthy, and the malice returns now to his voice. He doesn’t like the fact that I have been disrespectful to Caccia.
‘Because I lied to Fortner about her. Told him we were still seeing one another. This is all on your tape. You heard the fucking conversation with Katharine. They put a bug in Kate’s house.’
‘Just because of that?’
They think I’m lying.
‘What other reason would they need?’ I ask, exasperated by this.
‘The fact that you were still sleeping together hardly justifies a wire-tap.’
‘On the contrary,’ I reply. ‘If tonight has proved anything, it’s that Fortner was entirely justified in making that decision. After all, that’s what caught us out.’
‘That’s what caught you out,’ says Elworthy, emphasizing my guilt with contemptuous precision.
I look at him, itching to retaliate, knowing that what he has said is entirely justified. Now he begins