Charles Cumming - A spy by nature

That person will be Saul.

To Caccia, I write a brief letter of resignation from Abnex. This is pointless, given that tonight he effectively fired me, but a vague and petty stubbornness in me will not allow him the pleasure of formally handing me my notice.

And to the Chase Manhattan Bank at 1603 E. Wadsworth Avenue, Philadelphia, I fax instructions to transfer funds from escrow to a dormant account in Paris set up by my father more than fifteen years ago and left to me in his will.

Only my mother knows about that. A family secret.

I stay awake until dawn as the BBC reruns pictures of Blair standing outside his constituency office, acknowledging the extent of Labour’s victory. In his moment of triumph, after a carefully stage-managed campaign in which he has been presented as a mature and thoughtful politician undaunted by the prospect of high office, the new prime minister appears suddenly adolescent, almost on the verge of tears. Suddenly the prize for which he has worked so tirelessly, the culmination of his consuming ambition, stands before him. And as he comes to terms with the weight of the responsibility that has been placed on his shoulders by millions of people, right there in front of the cameras it is possible to see Blair experience a dawning realization: there is a price to be paid for success. He actually looks panicked by what he has achieved.

This is something that I have come to realize far too late. That we allow ambition, the hunger for recognition, to blind us to wider consequences. We are encouraged to pursue goals, to make the best of ourselves, to search for meaning. But what does a person do when those dreams come true? What is the next step?

Eight twenty P.M. Ten minutes until we are scheduled to leave. On the far side of the neat gravel path a man is standing, back straight, head level, eyes closed. He wears purple shorts and a plain white T-shirt bearing the inscription MOON in narrow black letters. A canvas bag lies at his shoeless feet. Slowly, he moves his legs apart. Then the man lifts his arms in a wide arc above his shoulders, palms up toward the sky, until his body forms a composed, tranquil cross.

Fifteen feet to his left, two women, both in jeans, stand up from their bench and drop two empty Diet Coke cans into a wire-mesh bin. They move away.

The man’s mouth opens, emitting a just-audible noise, a sustained meditative yawp out into the trees. For a moment, the stillness of it erases all the white noise of London. Then a creak of the metal gate at the entrance to Queen’s Club Gardens, and Saul appears, shouldering an overnight bag.

The first thing he says is, “She can’t come. Says she’s going to drive down first thing in the morning. You all right? You look knackered.”

I ignore this.

“Can we just head off?”

I am anxious to leave, keen to be out of London. Whatever self-confidence I had is gradually draining away to a constant fear that what happened to Cohen will happen to me.

“In a minute. I told her to come over so I can give her instructions about how to get there.”

I look back at the man. From the canvas bag he extracts a sandwich and begins eating it in a pool of fading sunlight. Behind him, an elderly couple are playing tennis on a hard court, the slow thock of balls like a clock.

There is no one else in the gardens. No one who could be watching me.

“Seen much of Fort and Katharine?” Saul asks, and the question catches me off guard.

“A little. Their contract at Andromeda hasn’t been renewed. They’re thinking of moving back to the States. In fact, I think it’s definite. They may be gone by the end of the month.”

I am so tired of lying to him.

“That’s a pity,” he says, gazing at the sky. “It’d be good to see them before they go.” There’s a check-shaped cloud above his head like the Nike logo.

“I’ll try to fix something up.”

Saul bends over now to tie his shoelaces, and I say what I have to say while I don’t have to look into his eyes.

“I may have to go away, too.”

“Really?” he says into the ground.

“Yeah. Abnex has a posting overseas. Something came up. In Turkmenistan. It would just be for a year or so. I think it would be a great opportunity.”

He stands up.

“When did this happen?”

“Just last week.”

“You’re not going straightaway?”

First thing this morning I booked a cross-Channel ticket to Cherbourg, leaving late on Monday afternoon.

“No. Most probably not.”

“Good,” he says, relaxing immediately. Then he looks across at the gate.

“Here she comes now.”

Saul’s new girlfriend is tall and slim and attractive-they always are-with dark hair cut short to the nape of the neck. A little like Kate’s new bob.

“Hi,” he shouts out enthusiastically, though she is still some distance away. The girl gives a stiff wristy wave and then looks beyond us, apparently at the tennis court. When she arrives, she says nothing at first, just glances at me, and then wraps Saul in a hug and a kiss. I am briefly envious. She has a slim, supple waist and a lightness about her.

“And you must be Alec,” she says, breaking away from him to shake my hand. “I’m Mia. Pleased to meet you.”

She is American.

“You’re from the States?” I ask.

She looks irritated.

“Canada. From Vancouver.”

Just seeing them together casts my mind back to when Kate and I met for the first time. We were seventeen, what now seems an absurdly young age to be about to embark upon the relationship we had. Barely old enough to express ourselves. It was at a party in the school holidays. I remember a lot of weak beer and girls in miniskirts. Kate came right up to me, just seemed to know it was the right thing to do. We were standing over a bale of straw, surrounded by people dancing to Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and within minutes were hidden in some dark quarter of a vast garden, kissing. Everything was new back then; all we did was react to things.

For some reason, we started climbing a tree, Kate first, me right behind her, just the rustle and scrape of the two of us against the branches and among the leaves. She lost her footing. Flecks of sooty bark puffed into my eyes. I lifted my hand to catch her in case she was about to fall.

“You okay?” I asked, calling up at her.

Even then, within moments of our meeting, I wanted Kate to feel safe. It happened immediately.

“Yes,” she said, and there was a certain stubbornness in her voice that I noticed, and liked, right away. “I’m okay.”

And she kept on climbing.

Saul is talking Mia through the route to Cornwall. When they’re done, I shake her hand, she wishes me well, and he walks her back to the street.

“See you at the weekend,” she calls back to me.

“Yeah. Looking forward to it.”

And five minutes later, we are on our way.

Saul is driving his wideboy Capri, a dark blue V-reg with seventy thousand miles on the clock and a bonnet the size of a Ping-Pong table. Gradually we shunt our way through the preweekend traffic, which has clogged up the M3 from Sunbury right out to Basingstoke. The Capri feels low and heavy against the road. When I lean back in the passenger seat, the darkening sky entirely fills the windshield.

After an hour, the traffic starts to free up and we move at a steady seventy-five. I put on a tape-Radiohead’s The Bends -and watch the flat suburban heartlands flick by.

“You want to get something to eat?” Saul asks, overtaking a caravan. “I was going to stop at the next place we see.”

“Sure.”

It is the first time I have felt like eating in twenty-four hours.

“There’s a McDonald’s at Fleet services,” he says, winding down his window and letting a half-smoked cigarette firework on to the road. “You feel like McDonald’s?”