“Roddy.” She pointed to the computer in front of him. “We all appreciate that you can make one of those things sit up and beg. And that the last thing you want to be doing is the kind of data-processing a trainee could do after twenty minutes’ instruction. And we definitely all know there’s a whole suite of rooms at GCHQ keeping an eye on Five’s online wanderings, in case anyone’s anywhere naughty. With me so far?”
Unable to prevent himself, he nodded.
“So bearing all that in mind, I asked myself what I’d do if I had your skills and was, let’s say, prone to wandering around the dark side of the web. And I decided that what I’d do is, I’d write a program that would convince anyone watching that I was doing precisely what I was supposed to be doing, which would leave me free to do whatever I wanted all day long.”
Ho felt liquid drizzling over his fingers, and looked down to find that he’d crushed the not-quite empty can of Red Bull in his fist.
“And at the same time, I imagined I was the kind of, ah, compulsive personality type who it wouldn’t occur to to build a little slack into the system. Something that would look convincingly like a human being was sitting at the keyboard, and not—forgive me, Roddy—a robot. Which is what I meant by not getting what makes people tick.” And now Catherine leaned back, and clasped her hands on her lap. “So. Was I wrong about any of that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“No, I mean actually wrong. Not just that you wish I wasn’t right.”
After a while, Ho said, “You dropped a fibre optic through the ceiling, didn’t you?”
“Roddy, I wouldn’t know one end of a fibre optic from the other.”
In the face of such colossal ignorance, Roderick Ho had nothing to say.
Standing, Catherine collected her coffee cup. “Well,” she concluded. “I’m glad we’ve had this little chat.”
“Are you going to tell Lamb?”
Or the Dogs, he thought. Who would definitely have something to say about a shop-floor spook playing games on the Service network.
“Of course not,” she said. “Lamb doesn’t have to know everything, remember?”
He nodded, dumbly.
“Though I will expect you to be a little more flexible in helping out with research in future. Not just mine, either.”
“But Lamb—”
“Mmm?”
“… Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought.” Catherine paused at the door. “Oh, and one more thing? You even think about using your online tricks to make my life difficult, and I’ll feed your beating heart to a hungry dog. Understood?”
“… Okay.”
“Have a good afternoon, Roddy.”
And she went.
Leaving Roderick Ho feeling pissed off, betrayed—and kind of awed.
One dark night the previous winter, Jackson Lamb had arranged a meeting with Diana Taverner by the canal up near the Angel; a meeting she’d agreed to because Lamb had her balls in his pocket. Lady Di aspired to the Park’s First Desk, currently occupied by Ingrid Tearney, and the methods she’d resorted to to promote her interests had produced a situation that had threatened to become untidy. Lamb’s involvement hadn’t made things any tidier; but in the world of spooks—as in those of politics, commerce and sport—the fact that everything had been bollocksed up beyond belief hadn’t resulted in anything changing: the desks at Regent’s Park remained arranged the way they had been, and Lady Di’s resentment at being barred from the top job hadn’t noticeably diminished. And Lamb still had dirt on her which could get her crucified twice over: once by the media, with ink and pixels, and a second time by Ingrid Tearney, with wood and nails.
This being so, Lady Di hadn’t offered much resistance when Lamb suggested a quiet natter, “at the usual place.” She was late, but this assertion of her dominance didn’t bother Lamb in the slightest, because he was even later. Approaching from the Angel end, he could see her on the bench, looking down the canal. A couple of houseboats were moored on the other side; one with a bicycle rack on its roof; the other shuttered, its door chained up. She was probably wondering if he’d rigged video surveillance from one or the other, because that’s what he’d have been thinking if he were her. But he was pretty certain she hadn’t rigged up anything herself, partly because he doubted she’d want their conversation on the record, but mostly because the window of time she’d had to arrange it, Lamb had been sitting on that same bench, and he’d have noticed.
Like any Joe, he had his favourite spots. Like any Joe, he mostly avoided them; made his visits irregular, aborting them if there were too many people around, or too few. But like any Joe he needed a space in which he could think, which meant somewhere no one expected him to be. This stretch of canal fit the bill. It was overlooked by the backs of tall houses, and there were usually cyclists around, or joggers; at lunchtimes, shop and office workers wandered down and ate sandwiches. Sometimes narrowboats toiled past, heading into the long tunnel under Islington, where no towpath followed. It was so obviously a place where a spook might sit and think spook thoughts that nobody who knew the first thing about spooks would imagine any spook stupid enough to use it.
So Lamb had called Lady Di from there, and issued his invitation and then he’d sat as the afternoon faded, looking like an office worker who’d just been made redundant, possibly for hygiene reasons. He’d chain-smoked seven cigarettes thinking through Shirley Dander’s report of her trip into the Cotswolds, and as he’d lit the eighth a shudder wracked him top to toe, and he coughed like the Russian had coughed. He had to throw the still king-size fag into the canal while he concentrated on holding his body together, and by the time the fit left him, he felt he’d run a mile. Clammy sweat wrapped him, and his eyes were blurry. Somebody really ought to do something about this, he thought, before leaving the bench, so Lady Di could arrive there first.
And now she ignored his approach, barely acknowledging him as he sat. Her hair was longer than last time he’d seen her, and curled more, though that might have been art. She wore a dark raincoat which matched her tights, and when she spoke at last she said: “If this bench marks my coat, I’m sending you the cleaning bill.”
“You can get coats cleaned?”
“Coats cleaned, teeth fixed, hair washed. I appreciate this is news to you.”
“I’ve been busy lately. It’s possible I’ve let myself go.”
“A bit.” She turned to face him. “What did you want with Nikolai Katinsky?”
“I’m not the only one’s been busy, then.”
“When you go harassing former customers, they have a habit of pulling the communication cord. And I can do without the complication right now.”
“On account of your domestic difficulties.”
“On account of mind your own fucking business. What did you want with him?”
“What did he tell you?”
Diana Taverner said, “Some story about his debriefing. That you wanted him to go over what he’d told the Dentists.”
Lamb grunted.
“What were you really after?”
Lamb said, “I wanted him to go over what he’d told the Dentists.”
“You couldn’t just watch the video?”
“Never the same, is it?” His coughing fit had entered that comfortable mental zone where it might have happened to somebody else, so he lit another cigarette. As an afterthought, he waved the packet vaguely in Taverner’s direction, but she shook her head. “And there was always the chance he’d remember it differently.”