Alec Milius Spy Series Books 1 and 2: A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game. Charles Cumming
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are they all on a hiding to nothing?’
‘Let’s hope not,’ says Cohen, giving Peppiatt a chummy smile. It’s sickening how much he wants to impress him.
‘You know what I think you should write about?’ I say to him.
‘What’s that?’ he replies briskly.
‘Leadership. The absence of decent men.’
‘In what respect?’
‘In respect of the increasing gap between rich and poor. If there aren’t the right kind of politicians operating down there, men who care more about the future of their country than they do about their own comfort and prestige, nothing will happen. Look what happened to Venezuela, Ecuador, Nigeria.’
‘And what happened to them?’ Peppiatt asks, his brow furrowing. I’ve found another gap in his knowledge.
‘Their economies were crippled by oil booms in the 1970s. Agriculture, manufacturing, and investments were all unbalanced by the vast amounts of money being generated by oil revenues in a single sector of the economy. Other industries couldn’t keep up. There was no one in power who foresaw that. The governments in the Caspian are going to have to watch out. Otherwise, for every oil tycoon fucking a call girl in the back of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, there’ll be a hundred Armenian farmers struggling to make enough money to buy a loaf of bread. And that’s how wars start.’
‘I think that’s a bit melodramatic, Alec,’ Cohen says, again smiling at Peppiatt, again trying to put a positive spin on things. ‘There’s not going to be a war in the Caspian. There’s going to be an oil boom for sure, but no one is going to get killed in the process.’
‘Can I quote you on that?’ Peppiatt asks.
Cohen’s eyes withdraw into calculation. That is what he wants most of all. His name in the papers, a little mention in the financial press.
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Of course you can quote me. But let me tell you a little bit about what our company is doing down there.’
Saul catches my eye. I can’t tell whether he’s bored.
‘Fine,’ says Peppiatt.
Cohen takes a step back.
‘Tell you what,’ he says, suddenly looking at me. ‘Why don’t you tell him, Alec? You could explain things just as effectively as me.’
‘All right,’ I reply, slightly off balance. ‘But it’s quite straightforward. Abnex is currently conducting two-dimensional seismic surveys in several of Kazakhstan’s one hundred and fifty unexplored offshore blocks. It’s one of our biggest projects. Some of this is being done in conjunction with our so-called competitors as a joint venture, and some of it is being done independently without any external assistance. I can have details faxed to you tomorrow morning, if you like. What we want to do is start drilling exploration wells in two to three years’ time if evidence of oil is found. We have sole exploration rights to six fields, thanks to the well-workover agreements negotiated by Clive Hargreaves, and we’re very hopeful of finding something down there.’
‘I see.’ This may be too technical for Peppiatt. ‘That’s a long and expensive business, I take it?’
‘Sure. Particularly when you don’t know what you’re going to find at the end of the rainbow.’
‘That’s just it, isn’t it?’ says Peppiatt, with something approaching glee. ‘The truth is you boys don’t know what you’ve got down there. Nobody does.’
And Saul says, ‘Print that.’
TWELVE
My Fellow Americans
This is when I see her for the first time, standing just a few yards away through a narrow break in the crowd. A sudden glimpse of the future.
She is wearing a backless cotton dress. For now, all that is visible is the delicate heave of her pale shoulder blades and the faultless valley of skin that lies between them. It is not yet possible to see her face. Her husband, twenty years older, is standing opposite her, bored as a museum guard. His back is stooped and his thick greying hair has been blown about by the wind that is whipping around the garden. You can tell right away that he is an American. It’s in the confident breadth of his face, the particular blue of his shirt. He seems somehow larger than the people around him.
There is an older man standing with them, thinned out by age, his cheeks like little sacks. This is Doug Bishop, former CEO of Andromeda, moved upstairs in 1994 but with one hand still on the tiller. The fourth member of the group is a monstrous suburban matron wearing pearls and Laura Ashley, her hair piled up in a beehive like an astronaut’s wife. The pitch and yaw of her voice whinnies across the garden. These words are actually coming out of her mouth:
‘And this is why I told my friend Lauren that feng shui is an absolute scandal. And Douglas agrees with me. Don’t you, Doug?’
‘Yes, dear,’ says Bishop, in a voice of great fatigue.
‘And yet not only ordinary members of the public but actual corporations are prepared to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to these Oriental tricksters just so’s they can rearrange the alignment of their plant pots.’
Listening to this, Katharine takes a sip of her drink and smiles weakly. Then she turns and her face is more clearly visible. Male heads in the immediate vicinity spring to catch a glimpse of her, alert as dogs.
‘When were you thinking of writing the piece?’ Cohen is asking Peppiatt. ‘In the near future or is this an ongoing project?’
‘The latter, most definitely,’ Peppiatt replies, accepting a champagne refill from a passing waiter. ‘I want to talk to the tobacco industry, to car manufacturers, to all of these huge corporations who are making big moves into Central Asia.’
The Hobbit comes up behind me.
‘Can I have a word, Alec?’
I nod at the others and say, ‘Excuse me a moment. Back in a second.’
‘Sure,’ says Cohen.
When both of us are a few paces away, moving towards a corner of the garden, the Hobbit turns and says, ‘That’s them. That’s Katharine and Fortner.’
‘I know,’ I tell him, smiling, and he grins sheepishly, realizing that he has stated the obvious. He wouldn’t have wanted to let on how nervous he is.
‘We should do it now,’ he says. ‘While Bishop is with them. I know him and I can introduce you.’
‘Good. Yes.’ I feel a slight lift in my stomach. ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah,’ the Hobbit says wearily. ‘The whole fucking office fancies her.’
And in that instant, Katharine seems to sense that we are talking about her. She turns her head and looks directly at me through the crowd, smiling in a single movement. It is as if the shape of her glance, the timing of it, has been minutely planned. My face freezes, and I cannot summon a smile. I merely stare back and then almost immediately look away. The Hobbit acts smartly, quick on his feet. He has smiled back at her, a colleague’s acknowledgment, using the eye contact to legitimize our approach.
‘Here we go,’ he says, moving towards her. ‘Bring Saul.’
So, as we pass Cohen and Peppiatt, I extract him from their conversation.
‘Come with me, will you, mate?’ I say to him. ‘You remember Matt, don’t you?’ They met at my flat a few months ago, to ease this evening’s events. ‘He wants to introduce us to some people he works with.’
‘Sure,’ Saul replies, acknowledging the Hobbit with a nod. ‘You don’t mind, do you, guys?’
‘No,’ they say in unison.
And