A Spy by Nature (2001) Page 15

  Upon his release in 1953, Blake returned to England a hero: he had suffered terribly in captivity and was seen to have survived the worst that communism could throw at him. There is television footage of Blake at Heathrow airport, modest before the world’s press, a bearded man hiding a terrible secret. For the next eight years, working as an agent of the KGB, he betrayed every secret that passed across his desk, including Anglo-American co-operation on the construction of the Berlin Tunnel. His treachery is considered to have been more damaging even than Philby’s.

  Blake was caught more by a process of elimination than by distinguished detective work, and summoned to Broadway Buildings. SIS needed to extract a confession from him: without it, the traitor would walk free. After three days of fruitless interrogation in which Blake denied any involvement with the Soviets, the SIS officer in charge of the case played what he knew was his final card.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We know you’re working for the Russians and we understand why. You were a prisoner of the Communists, they tortured you. They blackmailed you into betraying SIS. You had no choice.’

  This was too much for George.

  ‘No!’ he shouted, rising from his chair. ‘Nobody tortured me! Nobody blackmailed me! I acted out of a belief in communism.’

  There was no financial incentive, he told them, no pressure to approach the KGB.

  ‘It was quite mechanical,’ he said. ‘It was as if I had ceased to exist.’

  The platforms and escalators of Green Park underground station are thick with trapped summer heat. The humidity follows me as I clunk through the ticket barriers and take a flight of stairs up to street level. Here, passing traffic creates little cooling winds, and the tightly packed crowds gradually thin out as I move downhill towards the In and Out Club.

  I am casually dressed, in the American style: camel-coloured chinos, a blue button-down shirt, old suede loafers. Some thought has gone into this, some notion of what Katharine would like me to be. I want to give an impression of straightforwardness. I want to remind her of home.

  But it’s Fortner I see first, about fifty metres further down the street. He is dressed in an old, baggy linen suit, wearing a white shirt, blue deckshoes and no tie. At first I am disappointed to see him: there was a possibility that he might have been in Washington and I had hoped that Katharine would be waiting for me alone. But it was inevitable that Fortner would make it: there’s simply too much at stake for him to stay away.

  Katharine is beside him, more tanned than I remember, making gentle bobbing turns on her toes and heels with her hands gently clasped behind her back. She is wearing a plain white T-shirt with loose charcoal trousers and light canvas shoes. The pair of them look as if they have just stepped off a ketch in St Lucia. They see me now and Katharine waves enthusiastically, starting to walk in my direction. Fortner lumbers just behind her, his creased pale suit stirring in the breeze.

  ‘Sorry. Am I late?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘We only just got here ourselves.’

  She kisses me. Moisturizer.

  ‘Good to see ya, Milius,’ says Fortner, giving me a butch, pumping handshake and a wry old smile. But he looks tired underneath the joviality, far-off and jet-lagged. Perhaps he came here direct from Heathrow.

  ‘I like your suit,’ I tell him, though I don’t.

  ‘Had it for years. Made in Hong Kong by a guy named Fat.’

  ‘Did you come from work?’ Katharine asks.

  ‘Yeah. It doesn’t take long to get here by Tube.’

  ‘You came on the subway?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  We start walking towards the Ritz.

  ‘So it was great that you could make it tonight.’

  ‘I was glad you rang.’

  ‘Saul not with you?’

  ‘He couldn’t come in the end. Sends his apologies. Had to go off at the last minute to shoot an advert.’

  I never asked Saul to come along. I don’t know where he is, or what he’s up to.

  ‘That’s too bad. Maybe next time.’

  Katharine moves some loose hairs out of her face.

  ‘I forget, honey,’ she says. ‘What’s this neighbourhood called? How do you pronounce it?’

  ‘Piccally Diccally,’ Fortner replies, giving me a discreet wink.

  ‘Come on. No it’s not. It’s Piccali… Oh, I can never pronounce it. What is it Alec?’

  ‘Piccadilly.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Do you know why it’s called that?’ I ask, tempering my voice so as not to sound like too much of a smart arse.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘A “dilly” in old-fashioned English was a prostitute. A hooker.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And so you came here to literally “pick a dilly”.’

  ‘No way!’

  Katharine sounds genuinely amazed by this.

  ‘That’s pretty interestin’,’ Fortner adds, though there is nothing in his reaction to suggest that he thinks it is. ‘Too bad Saul couldn’t come. Hope you won’t be bored.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m happy it being just the three of us.’

  ‘You gotta girlfriend, Milius?’

  I don’t mind it too much that Fortner has decided to call me that. It suggests a kind of intimacy, a preparedness for risk.

  ‘Not at the moment. Too busy. I used to have one but we broke up.’

  This is quietly registered by both of them, another fact about me. We continue along the street, the silence lengthening.

  ‘So where are we heading?’ I ask, trying to break it, trying to stop any sense that we might have nothing to say to one another. I must keep talking to them. I must earn their trust.

  ‘Yes,’ says Fortner, loudly clapping his hands. It is as if I have woken him up from a nap. ‘Good question. Kathy and I have been going to this place for years. We thought we’d show it to you. It’s a small Italian restaurant that’s been owned by the same Florentine family for decades. Maitre d’ goes by the name of Tucci.’

  ‘Sounds great.’

  Katharine’s attention has been distracted. There are hampers, golf bags and elegant skirts on display in the windows of Fortnum & Mason and she has stopped to look at them. I am watching her when Fortner puts his hand on my shoulder and says:

  ‘I like this part of town.’ He’s decided to play the avuncular card right away. ‘It’s so… anachronistic, so Merchant Ivory, you know? Round here an English gentleman can still get his toast done on one side, have an ivory handle attached to his favourite shooting stick, get a barber to file his nails down and rub his neck with eau de Cologne. You got your bespoke shirts, your customized suits. Look at all this stuff.’

  ‘You like that, honey?’ Katharine asks, pointing at a smart two-piece ladies’ outfit in a window.

  ‘Not a whole lot,’ Fortner replies, his mood abruptly fractious. ‘Why, you wanna get it?’

  ‘No. Just askin’.’

  ‘Well I’m hungry,’ he says. ‘Let’s go eat.’

  The restaurant has an outside staircase flaked with dried moss leading down to a basement. Fortner, walking ahead of us, clumps down the steps and through the heavy entrance door. He doesn’t bother holding it open for Katharine: he just wants to get inside and start eating. Katharine and I are left on the threshold and I hold the door open for her, letting her glide past me with a whisper of thanks which is almost conspiratorial.

  The restaurant is only half-full. There’s a small clearing immediately inside the entrance where we are met by a paunchy, hair-oiled Italian in late middle-age. Fortner already has his arm wrapped around his white-shirted belly with a big, fulfilled smile all over his face.

  ‘Here they come now,’ he is saying as we come through the door, his voice hearty and full of good cheer. ‘Tucci, let me introduce you to a young friend of ours, Mr Alec Milius. Very smart guy in the oil business.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ says Tucci, shaking my hand, but he hasn’t even looked at me
. His eyes have been fixed on Katharine since we walked in.

  ‘And your beautiful wife, Mrs Grice,’ he says. ‘How are you, my dear?’

  Katharine bends to meet Tucci’s puckered kiss, offering him a smooth, pale cheek. She doesn’t bother explaining that Grice isn’t her surname.

  ‘You look as beautiful as ever, madam.’

  ‘Oh you’re incorrigible, Tucci. So charming.’

  The slimy old bastard leads us downstairs into a dark basement where we are shown to a small table covered in a red cloth and faded cutlery. The decor is very seventies, but it isn’t consciously retro. Cheap wood carvings line the walls and there are candles in old wicker flasks on shelves. Hardened wax clings to their sides like jewellery.

  Fortner shuffles on to a sofa attached to the wall and Tucci pins the table up against his legs. I take the chair to Fortner’s right and Katharine sits down opposite me. Three of us in a booth. Rather than have one of his dumb-looking Sicilian studs do it, Tucci then goes back upstairs and brings down three menus and a wine list, thereby giving himself as much time as possible with Katharine. All of his pre-meal small talk is addressed towards her. That’s a lovely dress, Mrs Grice. Have you been on holiday? You look so well. By contrast, Former and I are treated with something approaching contempt. Eventually, Fortner loses his cool and tells Tucci to bring us some drinks.

  ‘Right away, Mr Fortner. Right away. I have a nice bottle of Chianti you try. And some Pellegrino, perhaps?’

  ‘Whatever. That’d be great.’

  Fortner takes off his jacket to eat, tossing it in a crumpled heap on to the sofa beside him. Then he undoes the top three buttons of his shirt and inserts a napkin, mafia-style, below the nape of his neck. His chest hair is clearly visible, tight black curls like cigarette burns.

  In the early part of the meal we do not talk about any aspect of the oil business. I am not tapped for information, for tips and gossip, nor do Katharine and Fortner discuss ongoing projects at Andromeda. I have ordered veal but it is tough and bland, a stubborn slice of calf with no flavour. The Americans are both having the same thing - plump breasts of chicken in what appears to be a mushroom cream sauce - but it looks a lot better then mine. We share out french beans and potato croquettes and get through the first bottle of red wine within half an hour.

  We get along fine, better even than I had expected: everything is easy and enjoyable. The generation gap between us, as was proven by the trip to the NFT, is no hindrance at all. And although Fortner’s age is in some ways accentuated by the vigour of his younger bride, he has that certain playfulness about him which largely offsets this.

  Still, I cannot work out why Katharine would ever have chosen to marry him. Fortner is handsome, yes, with a certain gruff charm and a full head of hair. But close up, sitting near her in the dim light of the restaurant, the virility dissipates: he suffers by comparison, looking blotchy and liquor-sick, just another man on the wrong side of fifty. With a few drinks inside him, Fortner has a nice, sly sarcastic manner which he can get away with on account of his age - in a younger man, it would look like arrogance - yet there is a quality of solipsism about him which overshadows any occasional glints of mischief. As I felt when I first met him, Fortner looks to have experienced a great deal, yet he appears to have learned very little from those experiences. There is even an element of stupidity in him: he can at times appear almost a fool.

  Yet his attitude towards Katharine is not one of deference and admiration. He is often short with her, critical and dismissive. At one point, just as I am finishing off my veal, she embarks on a story about her college days at Amherst. But before she has really begun, Fortner is interrupting her, telling her not to bore Alec with stories from her youth. Then he simply takes the conversation off on a separate tangent with which he is more at ease. This is done consciously, as a premeditated recrimination, but Katharine barely seems to mind. It is as if she has accepted the subjugatory role of pupil, like a student who has moved in with her tutor and finds herself living in his shadow. This is not how things should be: Katharine is smarter, quicker-witted and more subtle, both in her views and manner, than Fortner. He is gauche by comparison.

  Just once or twice there is a slight register of impatience on her face when Fortner goes too far, though I sense that this may be largely for my benefit, another tactic she employs in flirtation. Nevertheless, it is all the more pointed for being concealed from him, and by the time the pudding menus arrive I am convinced that she is starved of simple affections and would cherish a little attention.

  Tucci recommends the tiramisu and flatters Katharine by telling her that she is the last person on earth who should worry about putting on weight. But she will not be persuaded, ordering fruit instead. Fortner asks if the restaurant still serves ice cream, and Tucci gives him a slightly withering look before saying yes. Fortner then orders a large bowl of mint choc chip. I ask for the tiramisu and Tucci disappears upstairs with our order.

  This is when they finally ask me a question about Abnex.

  ‘How long have you been there?’ Katharine enquires, rearranging her napkin so that it forms a neat square on her lap.

  ‘About nine months.’

  ‘You like it?’

  She has asked me this before. At the party.

  ‘Yes. I find the work interesting. I’m underpaid and the hours are anti-social, but I have prospects.’

  ‘Boy, you really know how to sell it,’ Fortner mutters.

  ‘You’ve just got me on a bad day. I had an argument with my boss earlier. He comes down hard when things don’t go his way.’

  ‘What did you do wrong?’ Katharine asks.

  ‘That’s just it. I didn’t.’

  ‘OK then,’ she says patiently. ‘What does he think you did wrong?’

  I get all the components of the story straight in my mind, then kick off.

  ‘He told me to set up a meeting with an associate of his who I think is unreliable. Name of Warner. This guy is an old friend of Alan’s, so he feels a residual loyalty towards him. In other words, he’s prepared to overlook the fact that Warner’s a loser. Alan knows I think this, and it’s almost like he enjoys giving me as much contact with him as possible.’

  Fortner’s head drops slightly, his eyes moving slowly across the table.

  ‘Anyway, Warner didn’t return any of my calls for a week and I must have been ringing him five times a day. I needed some figures. Eventually I gave up and just got them from someone else. Alan went spastic, said I’d gone over his head and questioned his authority. And I’m at Abnex on a trial basis, so it doesn’t bode well.’

  ‘A trial basis?’ says Fortner, looking up immediately. He hadn’t stopped listening to me. ‘You mean you’re not a full-time employee?’

  ‘I’m halfway through a trial period. I have to attain a consistently high standard of work or they’ll kick me out.’

  ‘Jesus,’ says Katharine, swallowing a mouthful of Chianti. ‘That’s a lot of pressure to work under.’

  ‘Yeah,’ adds Fortner. ‘You’re a human being, not a high-performance saloon.’

  I laugh at this, making a snorting noise which is loud enough to cause someone on a neighbouring table to look up and stare at me. I bring my napkin up to my face and dab away an imaginary speck. Keep going.

  ‘The trouble is that they don’t give me any indication of how well I’m doing. There’s very little in the way of compliments or praise.’

  ‘I think people need that, the encouragement,’ Katharine says.

  ‘That’s right,’ says Former, his voice going deep and meaningful. ‘So is that usual for young guys like yourself to get hired by a company and then, you know, just see how it pans out?’

  ‘I guess so. I have friends in a similar kind of position. And there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it. It’s work, you know?’

  The pair of them nod sympathetically and, sensing that this is the best opportunity, I decide to tell them now about my interviews
with SIS last year. It is a great risk, but Hawkes and I have decided that to tell the Americans about SIS may actually draw me further into their confidence. To conceal the information might arouse suspicion.

  ‘It’s funny,’ I say, taking a sip of wine. ‘I nearly became a spy.’

  Katharine looks up first, vaguely startled.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘It’s true,’ I say, very relaxed and cool. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you, Official Secrets Act and all that, but I got approached by MI6 a few months before I got the job at Abnex.’

  Not missing a beat Katharine says:

  ‘What is MI6? Like your version of the CIA?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jesus. That’s so… so James Bond. So… are you… I mean, are…?’

  ‘Of course he’s not, honey. He’s not gonna be sitting here telling us all about it if he’s in MI6.’

  ‘I’m not a spy, Katharine. I didn’t pass the exams.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why? Why are you sorry?’

  ‘Well, weren’t you disappointed?’

  ‘Not at all. If they didn’t think I was good enough for the job, then fuck ‘em.’

  ‘That’s a great attitude,’ Fortner exclaims. ‘A great attitude.’

  ‘How else am I supposed to react? I went through three months of vetting and interviewing and IQ tests and examinations and at the end of it all, after they’d more or less told me I was certain to get in, they turned around and shut me out. With a phone call. Not a letter or a meeting. A phone call. No explanation, no reason why.’

  My sense of disappointment should be clear to them.

  ‘You must have been devastated.’

  But I don’t want to overplay the anger.

  ‘At the time, I was. Now I’m not so sure. I had a pretty idealistic view of the Foreign Office, but from what I can gather it’s not like that at all. I had images of exotic travel, of dead drops and seven-course dinners in the Russian Embassy. But nowadays it’s all pen-pushing and equal opportunities. Right across the board, the Civil Service is being filled up with bureaucrats and suits, people who have no problem toeing the party line. Anybody with a wild streak, anyone with a flash of the unpredictable, is ruled out. There are no rough edges any more. The oil business has more room for adventure, don’t you think?’