Rupert Thomson - Soft

‘You wanted to see me, sir.’

Connor took a seat. Using both his hands, he adjusted the position of Jimmy’s proposal on the table, the way you might straighten a painting on a wall. Then he looked at Jimmy and shook his head.

‘You took one hell of a risk giving me this.’

Now they were alone together, one on one, it felt as if the rumours about Connor must all be true. The tanned skin that covered his bald head was corrugated, tough, and his nails had the stubborn quality of horses’ hooves. The muscles in his jaw flexed and rippled, as if he was chewing a stick of gum, yet Jimmy had the feeling Connor’s mouth was empty. It was a tic — a clue: Connor was somebody who could chew more than he bit off.

‘Let me ask you something.’ Connor leaned over the table, his jacket tightening across the shoulders. ‘Do you believe in right and wrong?’

Trick question? Jimmy couldn’t tell. Then he thought: The man’s American .

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘And what, in your opinion, is the difference?’

The blinds behind Connor’s head were playing games with Jimmy’s eyes. Jumping forwards, jumping back.

‘It’s hard to put into words —’

‘Exactly,’ Connor said.

Though Jimmy hadn’t even begun to answer the question, it seemed as if he had somehow boarded Connor’s train of thought.

‘There’s a grey area, isn’t there,’ Connor went on. ‘This document,’ and he touched it with his fingers, fingers that could well have killed, ‘it’s interesting. It’s very interesting.’

Jimmy waited.

‘Seems to me that it occupies a grey area, though.’

‘That depends,’ Jimmy said.

‘On what?’

‘On the execution.’

Connor’s gaze hadn’t wavered. Had he turned this same look on the North Koreans, the Vietcong?

‘Yes,’ Connor said at last. ‘I think so too.’

And suddenly the atmosphere changed. Connor leaned back in his black leather chair, hands folded on his solar plexus. He seemed relaxed and genial, almost sleepy, as if he’d just eaten a fine lunch.

‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘How did you get the idea?’

Jimmy said he wasn’t sure he could identify the source. There had been no sudden flash of inspiration — rather, the idea seemed to have developed gradually, in its own time, not allowing itself to be discovered exactly, but revealing itself, the way a Polaroid does; the man with the Maltesers, the secretary on the tube, the packet of sweets from Indonesia — they had all been stages in its growth. Then, about a week ago, his friend Marco had come to dinner, Marco with his shaved head shining in the candle-light … Marco happened to mention that, when he was a student, he had answered an ad in the paper that had been placed by a pharmaceutical company. They paid you a hundred pounds a week to participate in a drug trial. To Marco, this had sounded like a pretty good deal. In fact, he’d done it three times. That night, after Marco left, Jimmy had thought: Yes. Why not advertise? You could offer people cash, the going rate, and then, without them knowing, you could fill their heads with product images. Then out they’d go, quite happily, into the world …

At the edge of his field of vision he saw Connor nodding.

The word ‘subliminal’ was often misused, Jimmy explained. What people meant when they said ‘subliminal’ was actually ‘sub-rational’. But this idea of his, this really was subliminal: the subjects would be genuinely unaware of how they were being manipulated. You’d create a core of two thousand people whose brand loyalty would be unthinking, unquestioning — unconditional. During the course of their daily lives, they’d tell everyone they knew about your product — but in an entirely natural way. Just like the secretary on the tube.

‘You see, that’s the real beauty of it,’ he went on eagerly. ‘There are people doing it already. Only they do it of their own free will, of course; they choose what product they’re going to talk about. All we’d be doing is guiding them a little. Prompting them. So it would be Kwench! they’d talk about. And though you’d be creating word of mouth, no one would think it strange. Our people wouldn’t look any different to anybody else. Wouldn’t behave any different. The whole enterprise would be invisible. Disguised. Because it’s based on human nature …’

‘Yes, I see that,’ Connor said slowly. ‘My problem is, how do you plant the images?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jimmy frowned. ‘It has to be done in the same way that drug companies do it. Afterwards, the subjects have no idea what drugs they’ve taken, no notion of what the side-effects, or long-term effects, might be. They’re paid their hundred pounds, and that’s the end of it. It’s possible they might even be required to sign some kind of contract, waiving the right to sue.’ Once again, he noticed Connor nodding. This time he allowed himself a smile; he had known that last point would appeal to an American. ‘Having said all that, I’m not sure how you plant the images.’ His smile dimmed. ‘In the end, it’s only a concept. An idea.’

He waited for a reaction, but none came. The air in the office seemed charged, glassy. For a moment, he found it hard to breathe.

‘Leave it with me,’ Connor said at last.

‘You think it’s got potential?’

‘I’ll keep you informed.’ Connor rose to his feet, showed Jimmy to the door. ‘And, by the way, James, I’m treating this document as confidential. You should probably keep the contents to yourself.’

Outside the office, Jimmy pushed his hands into his pockets and walked towards the lift, head lowered, a wide grin on his face.

James .

For three weeks Jimmy waited for Connor to respond to his proposal. During the regular Wednesday meetings of the project team he would study the American’s face for some clue as to his intentions. He learned nothing. Nobody referred to Jimmy’s suggestion that the advertising agency should be fired — nobody except Tony Ruddle, that is, whose disdain was visible in the twist of his thick, chapped lips.

Then, one afternoon in late November, Jimmy’s phone rang and when he picked it up, he heard Connor’s voice on the other end.

‘We’re going ahead with Project Secretary,’ Connor said. ‘I thought you’d like to know.’

‘Project Secretary?’ It took Jimmy a few moments to understand the full implication of what Connor was saying, that his proposal had been given the status of a project, and that it already had a name.

At five-thirty that afternoon Connor spoke to him in private in his office. ‘The Wednesday meetings will continue as before,’ he said, ‘only now, within the project team, there will be another, smaller team, a cell, if you like, which nobody will know about. It will have three members. You, me — and Lambert.’

‘Lambert?’ Jimmy said.

‘Lambert is our external supplier.’

Jimmy didn’t follow.

‘It’s the same as any other promotion,’ Connor explained. ‘We’re going to need someone on the outside to set the programme up and run it for us, someone with the right level of expertise …’

So Ruddle would not be involved. Jimmy’s heart began to dance.

‘Are we going to advertise?’ he asked.

‘I think we have to,’ Connor said, ‘if only as a front.’ He paced up and down, his shoulders rounded, his hands pushed into the pockets of his trousers. ‘If we don’t advertise at all, we’ll arouse suspicion. And besides, without advertising, I’m not sure we can guarantee distribution …’

‘I had a thought,’ Jimmy said.

Connor waited, the grey blinds vibrating behind him, like the gills of some enormous, primeval fish.