Alec Milius Spy Series Books 1 and 2: A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game

I don’t mind it too much that Fortner has decided to call me that. It suggests a kind of intimacy.

‘Not at the moment. Too busy. I used to have one but we broke up.’

This is quietly registered by both of them, another fact about me. We continue along the street, the silence lengthening.

‘So where are we heading?’ I ask, trying to break it, trying to stop any sense that we might have nothing to say to one another. I must keep talking to them. I must earn their trust.

‘Good question,’ says Fortner, loudly clapping his hands. It is as if I have woken him up from a nap. ‘Kathy and I have been going to this place for years. We thought we’d show it to you. It’s a small Italian restaurant that’s been owned by the same Florentine family for decades. Maître d’ goes by the name of Tucci.’

‘Sounds great.’

Katharine’s attention has been distracted. There are hampers, golf bags, and elegant skirts on display in the windows of Fortnum & Mason and she has stopped to look at them. I am watching her when Fortner puts his hand on my shoulder and says, ‘I like this part of town.’ He’s decided to play the avuncular card right away. ‘It’s so…anachronistic, so Merchant Ivory, you know? Round here, an English gentleman can still get his toast done on one side, have an ivory handle attached to his favourite shooting stick, get a barber to file his nails down and rub his neck with cologne. You got your bespoke shirts, your customized suits. Look at all this stuff.’

‘You like that, honey?’ Katharine asks, pointing at a smart two-piece ladies’ outfit in a window.

‘Not a whole lot,’ Fortner replies, his mood abruptly fractious. ‘Why, you wanna get it?’

‘No. Just askin’.’

‘Well, I’m hungry,’ he says. ‘Let’s go eat.’

The restaurant has an outside staircase flaked with dried moss leading down to a basement. Fortner, walking ahead of us, clumps down the steps and through the heavy entrance door. He doesn’t bother holding it open for Katharine. He just wants to get inside and start eating. Katharine and I are left on the threshold and I hold the door open for her, letting her glide past me with a whisper of thanks that is almost conspiratorial.

The restaurant is only half full. There’s a small clearing immediately inside the entrance, where we are met by a paunchy, hair-oiled Italian in late middle-age. Fortner already has his arm wrapped around him, with a big, fulfilled smile all over his face.

‘Here they come now,’ he is saying as we come through the door, his voice hearty and full of good cheer. ‘Tucci, let me introduce you to a young friend of ours, Mr Alec Milius. Very smart guy in the oil business.’

‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ says Tucci, shaking my hand, but he hasn’t even looked at me. His eyes have been fixed on Katharine since she walked in.

‘And your beautiful wife, Mrs. Grice,’ he says. ‘How are you, my dear?’

Katharine bends to meet Tucci’s puckered kiss, offering him a smooth, pale cheek. She doesn’t bother explaining that Grice isn’t her surname.

‘You look as beautiful as ever, madam.’

‘Oh, you’re incorrigible, Tucci. So charming.’

The slimy old bastard leads us downstairs into a dark basement where we are shown to a small table covered in a faded red cloth and cutlery. The decor is very seventies, but it isn’t consciously retro. Cheap wood carvings line the walls and there are candles in old wicker flasks on shelves. Hardened wax clings to their sides like jewellery.

Fortner shuffles onto a sofa attached to the wall and Tucci pins the table up against his legs. I take the chair to Fortner’s right and Katharine sits opposite me. Three of us in a booth. Rather than have one of his dumb-looking Sicilian studs do it, Tucci then goes back upstairs and brings down three menus and a wine list, thereby giving himself as much time as possible with Katharine. All of his premeal small talk is addressed to her. That’s a lovely dress, Mrs. Grice. Have you been on holiday? You look so well. By contrast, Fortner and I are treated with something approaching contempt. Eventually, Fortner loses his cool and tells Tucci to bring us some drinks.

‘Right away, Mr Fortner. Right away. I have a nice bottle of Chianti you try. And some Pellegrino, perhaps?’

‘Whatever. That’d be great.’

Fortner takes off his jacket to eat, tossing it in a crumpled heap onto the sofa beside him. Then he undoes the top three buttons of his shirt and inserts a napkin, mafia-style, below his neck. His chest hair is clearly visible, tight black curls like cigarette burns.

In the early part of the meal we do not talk about any aspect of the oil business. I am not tapped for information, for tips and gossip, nor do Katharine and Fortner discuss ongoing projects at Andromeda. I have ordered veal, but it is tough and bland. Both Americans are having the same thing–plump breasts of chicken in what appears to be a mushroom cream sauce; it looks a lot better than mine. We share out French beans and potato croquettes and get through the first bottle of red wine within half an hour.

We get along fine, better even than I had expected. Everything is easy and enjoyable. The generation gap between us, as was proved by the trip to the NFT, is no hindrance at all. Although Fortner’s age is in some ways accentuated by the vigour of his younger bride, he has that certain playfulness about him that largely offsets his age.

Still, I cannot work out why Katharine would ever have chosen to marry him. Fortner is handsome, yes, with a certain gruff charm and a full head of hair, but close up, sitting near her in the dim light of the restaurant, the virility dissipates: he suffers by comparison, looking blotchy and liquor-sick, just another man on the wrong side of fifty. With a few drinks inside him, Fortner has a nice, sly sarcastic manner that he can get away with on account of his age–in a younger man, it would look like arrogance–yet there is a quality of solipsism about him that overshadows any occasional glints of mischief. As I felt when I first met him, though Fortner looks to have experienced a great deal, he appears to have learned very little from those experiences. There is even an element of stupidity in him. He can at times appear almost a fool.

Yet his attitude towards Katharine is not one of deference and admiration. He is often short with her, critical and dismissive. At one point, just as I am finishing off my veal, she embarks on a story about her college days at Amherst. Before she has really begun, Fortner is interrupting her, telling her not to bore Alec with stories from her youth. Then he simply takes the conversation off on a separate tangent with which he is more at ease. This is done consciously, as a premeditated recrimination, but Katharine barely seems to mind. It is as if she has accepted the subjugatory role of pupil, like a student who has moved in with her tutor and finds herself living in his shadow. This is not how things should be. Katharine is smarter, quicker-witted, and more subtle, in her views and manner, than Fortner. He is gauche by comparison.

Just once or twice her face registers impatience when Fortner goes too far, though I sense that this may be largely for my benefit, another tactic she employs in flirtation. Nevertheless, it is all the more pointed for being concealed from him. By the time the pudding menus arrive I am convinced that she is starved of simple affections and would cherish a little attention.

Tucci recommends the tiramisu and flatters Katharine by telling her that she is the last person on earth who should worry about putting on weight. She will not be persuaded and orders fruit instead. Fortner asks if the restaurant still serves ice cream, and Tucci gives him a slightly withering look before saying yes. Fortner then orders a large bowl of mint choc chip. I ask for the tiramisu, and Tucci disappears upstairs with our order.

This is when they finally ask me a question about Abnex.

‘How long have you been there?’ Katharine inquires, rearranging her napkin so that it forms a neat square on her lap.

‘About nine months.’

‘You like it?’

She has asked me this before. At the party.

‘Yes. I find the work interesting. I’m underpaid and the hours are antisocial, but I have prospects.’

‘Boy, you really know how to sell it,’ Fortner mutters.

‘You’ve just got me on a bad day. I had an argument with my boss earlier. He comes down hard when things don’t go his way.’

‘What did you do wrong?’ Katharine asks.

‘That’s just it. I didn’t.’

‘Okay then,’ she says patiently. ‘What does he think you did wrong?’

I get all the components of the story straight in my mind, then kick off.

‘He told me to set up a meeting with an associate of his, who I think is unreliable. Name of Warner. This guy is an old friend of Alan’s, so he feels a residual loyalty towards him. In other words, he’s prepared to overlook the fact that Warner’s a loser. Alan knows I think this, and it’s almost as if he enjoys giving me as much contact with him as possible.’

Fortner’s head drops slightly, his eyes moving slowly across the table.

‘Anyway, Warner didn’t return any of my calls for a week. I must have been ringing him five times a day. I needed some figures. Eventually I gave up and just got them from someone else. Alan went spastic, said I’d gone over his head and questioned his authority. And I’m at Abnex on a trial basis, so it doesn’t bode well.’

‘A trial basis?’ says Fortner, looking up immediately. He hadn’t stopped listening to me. ‘You mean you’re not a full-time employee?’

‘I’m halfway through a trial period. I have to attain a consistently high standard of work or they’ll kick me out.’

‘Jesus,’ says Katharine, swallowing a mouthful of Chianti. ‘That’s a lot of pressure to work under.’

‘Yeah,’ adds Fortner. ‘You’re a human being, not a Cadillac.’

I laugh at this, making a snorting noise loud enough to cause someone at a neighbouring table to look up and stare at me. I bring my napkin to my face and dab away an imaginary speck. Keep going.