A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [95]
‘So how you doin’?’ he says to me when we get there. ‘Everything feel OK?’
He removes the goggles and his eyes are bloodshot and sore.
‘Fine,’ I reply, with no inflection. ‘Better than I thought it would.’
‘No nerves? Second thoughts?’
‘None.’
‘Good. We couldn’t explain on the phone, but Kathy and I felt we should meet here today to give you the opportunity to ask any questions you may have.’
A child’s high-pitched shriek bounces off the water, piercing the space around us. I turn and see a mother coming out of the ladies’ changing-room, holding a wriggling toddler by the hand.
‘There is one thing,’ I say, trying to keep things light and easy.
‘What’s that?’ Katharine asks.
‘How did you know I’d do it?’
Fortner’s face retracts very slightly. This is not the question he was expecting.
‘Do what?’ he asks.
‘How did you know I would agree?’
‘Agree to help us?’
‘Yes.’
Fortner considers his answer for some time. Katharine, who is holding on to the ceramic edge of the pool, watches his face for clues. Finally she makes to speak, but Fortner interrupts her.
‘I felt - we both felt - that you fitted a certain personality type. You’re a very sensitive person, Alec. You enjoy your solitude. You expressed to us on a number of occasions a certain understandable dissatisfaction with your job…’
‘And I’m short of money.’
This prompts a smile in both of them as Fortner says:
‘Yes. That’s true. Things like that are not irrelevant.’
The old man passes us again, slow weightless kicks towards the deep end.
‘So there is such a thing as a psychological profile?’ I ask. ‘There’s a certain type of person who is more willing to commit an act of betrayal than another?’
‘I don’t put all that much faith in them myself,’ Katharine says. ‘I tend to go on instinct. And we always had a great feeling about you, Alec. Like you would want to do the right thing.’
‘Yes,’ I reply quietly.
A fit-looking man in his mid-thirties wearing navy blue trunks and dark goggles dives neatly into the pool and starts doing fast lengths. The blue water, which is covering me up to my shoulders, is suddenly warmer than the surrounding air. The child and its mother are in the shallow end. She is teaching him how to swim.
‘You have anything else you wanna ask?’ Fortner says.
I must stress to them my ignorance of the intelligence world, ask something naive about espionage.
‘Yes. You said something about your organization sharing a lot of codes and stuff with MI5 and MI6. How much intelligence do we share with the Americans?’
‘It’s a good question,’ Katharine says, holding on to the side with outstretched arms and beginning to kick very gently underwater. ‘And, like Fort said, it’s relevant to your situation. Usually we share a great deal. The Agency sits in on weekly meetings of the Joint Intelligence Committee, for example. And some time ago the British government paid our National Security Agency about eight hundred million dollars to share satellite signals intelligence. But there’s a problem right now with MI5. They feel that sensitive information about terrorist activities in Northern Ireland is finding its way back to the IRA via the Clinton White House. They’re blaming Kennedy Smith, our ambassador in Dublin. Think she’s soft on republicanism on account of her Irish roots. It’s all bullshit of course, but the Security Service are understandably upset. So they’re being a little more economical with what they hand over.’
This is certainly true: I recall Lithiby talking about it in one of our first meetings. It was just the latest in a long line of disputes with the Americans: he was also incensed that they had eavesdropped on British troops during the war in Bosnia. At the time I recall thinking that Lithiby’s antagonism towards the CIA may have justified the entire Abnex/Andromeda