A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [24]
‘Good morning.’
Eye contact to us, not to the examiners. Nice touch. He stares me right down without a flinch and then turns to face Elaine. She remains unmoved.
‘I’m Sam Ogilvy. I work for Rothmans Tobacco in Saudi Arabia.’
This information knocks me sideways. Ogilvy can’t be much older than I am and yet he’s already working for a major multinational corporation in the Middle East. He must be earning thirty or forty grand a year, with a full expense account and company car. I’m on less than fifteen thousand and live in Shepherd’s Bush.
‘I graduated from Cambridge in 1992 with a First in Economics and History.’
Bastard.
‘Thank you, Mr Ogilvy,’ says Rouse, planting a full stop on his pad as he looks up at Elaine and smiles for the first time. He doesn’t need to say anything to her. He merely nods and she begins.
‘Good morning. I’m Elaine Hayes. I’m already employed by the Foreign Office, working out of London. I’m thirty-two and I can’t remember when I graduated from university it was such a long time ago.’
Both Pyman and Rouse laugh at this and we follow their cue, mustering strained chuckles. The room briefly sounds like a theatre where only half of the audience have properly understood a joke. It intrigues me that Elaine is already employed by the Foreign Office. Surely if she were looking to join SIS, they would promote her internally without the bother of going through Sisby.
‘We’d like to proceed now with the group exercise,’ Pyman says, interrupting this thought. ‘The discussion is unchaired. That is to say you are free to make a contribution whenever you choose to do so. It is scheduled to conclude after thirty minutes, at which time you must all have agreed upon a course of action. If you find yourselves in agreement before the thirty minutes are up, we shall call a stop then. I must emphasize the importance of making your views known. There is no point in holding back. We cannot assess your minds if you will not show them to us. So do participate. There’s a stopwatch here. Miss Hayes, if you’d like to start it up and set it on the desk where everyone can see it.’
Elaine is closest to Rouse, who takes the stopwatch from Pyman and hands it to her with his right arm outstretched. She takes it from him briskly and sets it down on the table, positioning the face in such a way that we can all see it. Then, with her thumb, she pushes the bulbous steel knob at the top of the stopwatch, starting us off.
It has a tick like chattering teeth.
‘Can I just say to begin with that I think it’s very important that we maintain a tight alliance with the French, though the problem is of their making. Initially, at least.’
Ann, God bless her, has had the balls to kick things off, although her opening statement has a forced self-confidence about it which betrays an underlying insecurity. Like a pacesetter in a middle-distance track event, she’ll lead for a while but soon tire and fall away.
‘Do you agree?’ she says, to no one in particular, and her question has a terrible artificiality about it. Ann’s words hang there unanswered for a short time until the Hobbit chips in with a remark that is entirely unrelated to what she has said.
‘We have to consider how economically important fish exports are to the Americans,’ he says, touching his right cheekbone with a chubby index finger. ‘Do they amount to much?’
‘I agree.’
I said that, and immediately regret it, because everyone turns in my direction and expects some sort of follow-up. And yet it doesn’t come. What happens now, for a period of perhaps five or six seconds, is appalling. I become quite incapable of functioning within the group, of thinking clearly in this unfamiliar room with its strange, artificial rules. This happened with Lucas and it is happening again. My mind is just terrible blank white noise. I see only faces, looking at me. Ogilvy, Elaine, Ann, Matt. Enjoying, I suspect, the spectacle of my silence. Think. Think. What did he say? I agree with what? What did