The Old Enemy by Henry Porter (reading a book txt) 📗

back the history of her legend – and some deadly-dull screeds about big tech, poverty and media ownership. Photographs of her were few, except those in which she was wearing round dark glasses or her face was partially hidden by her long brown hair, which, at work, she wore in a knot, or rather haphazardly clipped. Her wardrobe was unvarying – light brown, calf-length suede coat, or a navy-blue blouson with the GreenState bird logo hot-pressed above her left breast. She favoured well-cut trousers, never jeans, and ankle boots, which pushed her height an inch over six feet, or black trainers, which he came to recognise were a sign that she’d leave the office at some point during the day.

He had no contact with her at GreenState – his was a lowly volunteer’s job replying to questions on the campaign website with a set of standard responses that were designed to elicit money – but he was in a position to observe her most of the day, and he was pretty certain that she had not yet noticed him. She was self-contained and never involved herself with office politics. Her colleagues were wary of her because of her sharp tongue and she was no respecter of status or the conventional NGO politesse where everyone’s opinion is indulged, however empty or lacking in evidence. He heard her murmur to GreenState’s director of campaigns, a man named Desmond who Samson heartily disliked, ‘We’re doing good work, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to call you out when you’re talking crap.’

Her behaviour was tolerated because she was good at what she did. She had fluent French and German and often appeared in the morning having completed, overnight, the work that would take others a couple of days. She wrote video scripts, advertising briefs and focused on GreenState’s messaging, for which reason she often took meetings outside the office with agencies providing their services free. No one asked where she was going, or why. Not even the ridiculous busybody Desmond.

Samson resigned himself to a fruitless wait and let his gaze travel the breadth of the five-street intersection. The regulars on the street were beginning to be familiar to him – addicts, with sleeping bags round their necks, scrambling for deals beneath the rail bridge, north of the Edgar Building; an abandoned young man handing out religious leaflets on the traffic island; two glacially moving homeless men; and the team of Roma beggars who looked as though they might all be related. The Junction was a twenty-minute walk from the vast wealth of the City of London, but a different universe. No one made much money here: the buildings were tired, rubbish was piled everywhere, and people struggled. But for all that, it had a palpable life force that Samson admired. It reminded him of the Middle East – his native Lebanon.

The thin drizzle outside turned into rain, but it was lunch hour and the streets weren’t any less busy. His phone went. It was one of Macy’s assistants, asking him for a meeting, or conference call, at 7 p.m. Samson opted for the meeting. He wanted to be in the room for the call with the States.

‘What’s going on, Imogen?’

She ignored him. ‘Seven p.m. prompt, Paul, so if you have any concern about not being here, I’ll send you the dial-in.’

Samson glanced at his watch – it was 1.30 p.m. – and he assured her he’d make it. ‘And you can tell Macy that we’ll need to review the current job,’ he added.

As he hung up, a big, freakish fellow wearing a black leather kilt, panel leggings and a filthy American sports blouson, appeared outside the café and looked through the window, trying to see past his reflection. His face was broad – vaguely Slavic. Samson noted a missing upper-left tooth and a pierced nose. The man turned away and, with a kind of jig, began thrusting a crumpled cup at passers-by, who had absolutely no problem ignoring him.

‘The state of that!’ said a woman behind the counter. ‘He was someone’s sweet little baby once. Imagine!’

Samson wasn’t interested. Something had made him straighten in his chair.

No conscious process in him asked: am I watching a surveillance operation here? But the conviction that he was arrived fully formed in his mind. Two men, across the street, one with his hand in an empty knapsack, kept glancing at the Edgar Building then looking away. An Asian couple on his side of the street pretended to talk but were surely communicating with others – both wore microphone earbuds. A fourth and maybe a fifth were separately threading their way through the stalled traffic towards the gates of Mo’s Tyre and Body Shop, which lay between the Edgar Building and a rail bridge to the north. The whole thing could be accidental, but the choreography looked right, and the operation seemed to be focused on the Edgar Building. He paid up without removing his eyes from the street then walked to the door. Still inside the café, he craned to see north and south of the Junction, wondered if either of the illegally parked vans was part of the surveillance team and whether the operation had been mounted by the police, MI5, or was a joint endeavour. There were at least eight watchers around the Junction and he even considered the beggar capering a few paces away might be part of the team.

The thought that he didn’t want Zoe walking into this situation arrived a few moments before a cab pulled up awkwardly at the mouth of Cooper’s Court, by which time he had taken out two phones, copied the number for Zoe that he had acquired at campaign headquarters from his personal phone into the field of a new text message on a burner phone and written, ‘Do NOT enter the Edgar. Leave the area now!’ As he looked up, the cab came to a halt and he saw someone paying. A flash of the suede coat inside the cab – it was Zoe. He sent the