The Green papers (continued)

The tone was different, almost fawning. He was newly relaxed, comfortable with Christine’s presence, now almost a cloak he could wear. There was surely manipulation and opportunism in the air, an air of confidence that cannot have grown without being nourished. My new assessment had coalesced during the interview and only grew as the day passed, without changing its shape or significance. It rained again. So, frustratingly, the mikes would pick up nothing except an incessant drumming of water on roof. I became newly and acutely aware that I had not witnessed their interaction during the previous storms.

It had rained the previous evening, which is why my account cut short, and remained incomplete. I could, one supposes, have speculated, read meaning into every laugh, smile, toss of the head, flick of the hair, change of pose... But it would, of course, have been a worthless exercise in futile invention. The only currency in our lives is the accurate. Reality can only be claimed in full afterwards, when mere accuracy is necessarily re-examined and knowledge is added to the interpretive mix, but without detail the bigger picture simply does not form, takes no shape. There is no overview without the close-ups.

I watched, I assume I did watch, throughout. Christine had said they should discuss the second programme. After all, another debacle like the first attempt had to be avoided at all costs, since it might put the whole project in jeopardy. Frankly, neither Christine nor I, nor anyone else involved understood why Cartwright had accepted the commission, but Christine, somehow, had convinced him it was in his interest that the programmes be made, and even broadcast. I still believed he had an agenda, some overarching goal that could only be achieved via this exposure, but I had remained unsure as to what that might have been. As the rain pelted the house, as the noise drowned all sound and lightning broke all images, the unknown communication I could recognise, but not understand, began to fill in the pictures.

Achievement of legitimacy has been suggested as Cartwright’s motive, but his overall position on that score would surely not be affected by an airing on television. Humanity? Who was the man behind the headlines? Was he to become no longer an ogre, no longer an ideological enemy, a financial terrorist? But did anyone ever doubt who he was, where he came from or what he did? Was there ever any point in merely confirming any of this? Motives? Certainly we wanted to know what these were, and that remained the reason behind our initial contact to suggest these interviews. And then, we surmised, surely he would let something slip, would reveal a chink that we could prise open to reveal his true aims and also who else might share them. But what were his own motives? What were his goals? And had he thus far offered anything to provide us with the slightest clue as to what these were? Was there anything to suggest that our fears were anything more than merely our own fears?

Or perhaps there might be another interpretation. Perhaps, just perhaps, we had all suddenly and unwittingly become part of his plan, unwittingly and incompetently co-opted into assisting a process we were actually trying to arrest. Suppose, just suppose, that he himself felt he had reached a point of completion. Let’s imagine a bigger plan, one that saw achievement of great wealth and notoriety as a first stage in a grander, more ambitious project. What might follow?

Now there can only be one answer to that question, and that must be a new phase, one in which the potential for power that wealth generates is consolidated into something real and lasting, something tangible, something unassailable. But power in our world, our global, information-rich village, is linked to profile. There is no power in anonymity, except when the hidden hand is the one that creates and controls the profile of others who become its front. Otherwise, it’s the public profile, its extent, its penetration, rarely its quality, that counts.

Mere celebrity is not enough, and exclusivity is nothing, unless it follows mass conquest. A palace on a hill, adorned for posterity’s sake with the finest devotional bling that artists of the day could offer was once such a goal. It would be gloated upon by a despot, whose main ambition was to be closer to his god by separating himself further from those he exploited and killed to create his wealth. But today such figures are no longer tolerated. In effect power works the same way, now as then, but today it operates by cajoling those masses it must still exploit, and not by threatening them. Wealth and celebrity, and thereby power, must now be created with common assent: it can no longer merely dominate, though domination remains its ultimate goal and its capital.

Thus in his current garb, Cartwright had reached, in pre-modern terms, the limit of his forces’ capability. In older, imperial terms, he needed more troops, more ammunition and crucially more territory to bolster his supply capability, if his project were to move to the next level, from fiefdom to empire. And those can only be secured via the opening of a new front. But of course in the world as we know it, battlegrounds are for media space and time, not for lands or serfs. Now, conquering the airwaves delivers the property. If you can influence what people think, you control them, and their territories. Did Cartwright share such an analysis? Had he decided it was now time to pull the rank his recently-achieved status might command? And were we, in our desire to pin him down, to understand his motives and identify the power we firmly believed drove him, were we now by default offering him that very precious commodity that even his new wealth could not buy, a new empire of exposure?

Speculation was pointless, but like much that is pointless, inevitable. For me, watching through the rain became more than a pastime. The process may have relied more on imagination and invention than observation, but I am now convinced that it was fruitful, that the results are the meaning that might offer shape to the fact.

The rain did not apologise for its presence. It started like a shower turned immediately to full. It didn’t spit and spot, and then grow gradually stronger; no, it just began. There was no accumulation of sound, no summation of steadily increased intensity; no, this was a drumming, a constant that began and did not cease. I lost vision occasionally, momentarily or, on one occasion, for several minutes after what I must assume was a severe lightning flash. My pictures flickered at best, but also broke up into disconnected squares, pixellated like bad satellite television, but enough endured to connect the bones of a conversation I could not hear, no matter how I tried to filter and focus.

Cartwright had warned Christine early on that neither of them would sleep if there was rain. What I, and no-one else involved understood, it now seemed, was that the noise would render our sound systems quite useless. Their automated level sensing exists to allow us to hear whispers from afar above a general, but not dominant ambience, but when there is a bass drum skin vibrating less than a metre above, they cannot register anything apart from the noise. Even rainfall, if punctuated by any variation or silence, will allow the software to recreate from the fragments a full and uninterrupted signal. But when everything is drowned by a simple, constant background noise of drowning intensity, only the rumble survives.

Christine was comfortable, of that there was not the slightest doubt. She was still without her prosthesis, still burdened by a never-previously perceived need to hop whenever she moved, a burden that could only be lessened by the support of a wall, a door frame or a balustrade. But it was an assistance she was happy to accept and learn to rely on. As time passed, it became clear how Cartwright’s house worked well for the two of them. The encircling balcony, with its balustrade at convenient height, meant that progress around, rather than through the house was relatively easy. It was built so that there was a permanent crutch that moved alongside the progress. So it seemed that Christine was happy that a new public acceptance of her physical status should replace the continued and determined denial which, for years, had been her norm. With her false leg, the twenty metres of Cartwright’s front and side balconies en route to the toilet at the back would have taken her no longer than an able-bodied person to travel, but there, last night, one-legged and at the hop, she needed almost five minutes of stumbling and leaning, all the time being drenched by rivers of run-off from the uneven ends of the palm-leaf roof, but she did it. When she returned, she fell into her now habitual chair with an air of achievement like an aura. The exertion was significant and, on falling back into her preferred chair, there followed a good minute of panting, hyper-ventilation when her chest rose and fell like bellows inside her blouse. Christine, never at the front of the queue when it comes to physical exertion, looked both surprised and elated by herself, radiantly - though for me also silently - proud and effusive about her achievement. I had long grown accustomed to her fastidiousness of appearance, her neatness and completeness of presentation, so I admit I found this drenched, bedraggled, distinctly stringy and imperfect aging woman hard to recognise as my wife.

Cartwright laughed, almost uncontrollably, as Christine sat. He reached across and patted her condescendingly on the shoulder and then stood and unexpectedly went to stand directly under the nearest torrential leak through the roof edge, a fall that splashed inside the balcony rail. He was soon completely drenched. He held his arms out wide as the water cascaded down his body, as if indicating a newly-shared innocence. I needed no sound to understand what he said. “Look, no hands,” was the clear message and probably also his very words as, no doubt, he peed his pants to demonstrate to Christine that her exertions may not have been necessary. He laughed as he stepped away from the torrent and spoke again as he smoothed the surplus water from his hair and arms.

Again, I needed no sound to assist in order to know he had offered her a drink. I could even lip-read “Gin and tonic” as Christine’s amazement and anticipation only deepened. Her face said it all. There had been a bottle of gin in the provisions he had brought that morning. Neither I nor Christine had seen it, because it had been inside the bucket he had slipped over his arm.

He made his own, much quicker way to the back balcony and returned, at the hop, of course, carrying two drinks, a large gin and tonic with ice and halved miniature limes afloat for Chris and an unopened small plastic bottle of water for himself, which he had tucked under the same arm that carried the glass. He knew the house so well, of course, that he was able to deliver these undiluted, despite the numerous rivulets falling from the leaking roof. It was only later that I realised he had possibly put himself at some risk, buying gin for Christine, since he was, of course, a Muslim. There is no doubt that the nearby island has plenty for sale. Indeed, given its tax-free status, it is known throughout the region as a source of cheap booze. Expatriates are drawn there in a regular stream to stock up and tank up whenever there’s a day off or a holiday. But Cartwright was no longer just any other foreign employee on a government contract over the water. He was a convert, a well-known member by marriage of a prominent and powerful family, a high profile and easily recognisable public figure with local status to lose.

Whether Christine might have registered any of this I have no idea. I suspect not, since, when it appears, the proximity of a gin and tonic usually obscures, as far as she is concerned, all else, so large does its promise loom in her desires. I could not hear her joy, and increasingly I could not see it either, since the downpour was now so strong that rivulets of water were beginning to cascade like glittering icicles from roof to floor, forming a shimmering slotted screen across the image. But I did notice that it was not until after her third gin that Christine began to relax in the manner that, over the decades, I have come to recognise as characteristic. I could not hear the shouting, nor see the descent into coarseness, but I knew it would be there.

Her casual dress was unfamiliar. She had on her smart blouse, the white one she had worn on that first morning when she fell into Cartwright’s boat. That morning, its tailored, made-to-measure fit accentuated Christine’s slim figure, exaggerated her litheness of body above the white trousers with bottoms so narrow they could easily be labelled ‘drain pipe’. The broad black belt that was designed to punctuate the outfit proved to be a mere encumbrance. The strappy shoes had been a mistake also, in retrospect, too open to keep out the dust, but also too fitted to slide out the sand. Here, on Cartwright’s balcony and in the thundering rain, the same blouse was open at the neck and loose at the waist, but now it was not worn over the formal smart trousers she habitually chose to hide the mechanics of that leg, because she was not even wearing it. That night, though sodden and darkened, she wore a pair of light shorts that were usually only reserved for pottering around the house, their legs long enough to droop below the stump on the left, just below the knee on the right. With rolled up sleeves, and a white lacy bra poking like scaffolding through the drenched fabric, she had the air of the overworked housewife on wash-day that she had never been. Her hair was untidy, tousled in wet strands and now curiously darker, its adopted mousy, salt and pepper grey starting to reappear as the blonde colouring began to leech out. If she had made up that morning - I don’t remember and now can’t be bothered to check - then what she had added was already elsewhere, removed by a combination of rain and repeated wiping with the hand to rid her face of the accumulating droplets of rain or sweat, depending on the weather at the time.

It had already been six days since her last drink which, for Christine, despite the travel, the overseas assignments, the deadlines, was probably a record she had not broken for more than three decades. Though it was arguably demanded by our possibly over-planned approach, it was also probable that her growing irritability and bad temper in that failed second encounter might have stemmed from her depressed blood-alcohol level. I suspected it at the time, but chose not to refer to its likelihood. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, I can ignore it no longer.

I watched as the gin level went down and the animation level rose, apparently to compensate. The rain got only harder and, while the performance of the roof did not deteriorate, its faults became simply institutionalised. All three cameras that covered the front balcony blurred, as did all other external angles, as a general stream of water began to wash over them. There was the slightest shape and colour remaining, but by then perhaps the electronics were making that up. At one point, I was convinced I could see the two of them dancing, but it was probably just an effect of the pixellation. I took the opportunity to sleep. In this controlled darkness where I am forced to live, I had lost all concept of time, despite that permanent little clock display, bottom right on my screen.

I have no idea how long their party continued, but I do know how many hours they slept. They slept apart, as we would have of course expected. I can confirm that, because the internal cameras continued working, thus offering me the opportunity of review. Christine retired to her cushioned couch at around three in the morning, their time. Cartwright stayed out on the balcony where, presumably, he slept, wet through.

By morning, the cameras were up and running again, once they had thoroughly dried out in the low sun. Cartwright had already gone out in his boat. As the images settled, he was immediately and clearly visible two hundred metres from the house re-baiting his lines and emptying his pots. He was back on the kitchen balcony at the back of the house by seven thirty, with more crabs and fish, which he prepared immediately, the whole process of gutting the fish and containing the crabs taking only a minute or two. Then, with the crabs in steam, a further three minutes fried the fish. He had put the rice cooker on before he left so, at eight he was able to wake Christine with an abrupt, “Rice and fish sambal for breakfast, so get your skate on!” He smiled as he spoke. So did she. There was a relaxed air.

They ate quickly and both voraciously, which was a surprise, since Christine, the morning after a night before, was apt to pick at a piece of dry toast and little else. But then, in this case, we were counting glasses, not bottles. Nothing had ever for her replaced the morning cigarettes which had been de rigueur until the decision, now more than twelve years ago, to stop. But this morning, she ate the rice, fish and obviously fierce sambal, commented on its eye-opening spiciness, and even sucked all the flesh directly off the bones of the fried fish. Then, while Cartwright cleared things away, she set up her chairs and cameras on the side balcony, which would continue to offer shade for a further couple of hours.

She was ready to start before he was, giving her time to shower, change, and make herself look like she might appear on television. Cartwright had been in his office for almost the full hour that had elapsed. He did not work, but merely seemed to doodle on a few scraps of fresh paper. Christine had worked fast to be ready, and in the end she still had time to pause and look at the morning as she flicked through her notes before Cartwright appeared and announced he was ready to start. As before, he had offered no accommodation to the presence of the cameras. He did not even bother to put on a shirt until Christine suggested he cover up.

“It is very beautiful this morning...” said Christine.

“It’s not unusual,” he replied. “The rain has cleared the air. The mountain was visible earlier on.” He offered a nod to the north. Christine looked, but of course by then it had hidden itself in its usual shroud of cloud. But I was able to see it on the review, of course, and Cartwright was right, its massive bulk had been surprisingly dominant, despite its distance from their island. Even at ten o’clock, however, the clarity of the view remained remarkable. It seemed that the coastline had advanced on their island to reveal a detail it had kept hidden until now.

There was no further pause, not even preamble. There seemed to be no need. The two of them took their seats and, without a word more, began the take. Christine had her trademark clipboard on her knee. She had dressed formally again and the leg, of course, was both in place and in trousers, and also as usual out of shot, her right crossed over and interlocked to hide it. And you already know that the interview went well. The practised professional was again at work, not that any of us had ever doubted her continued dedication.

Effectively, their exertions wrote off the rest of the day. After a quick check through her recorded material, Christine set to work on streaming it back to the office for editing. She had taken the trouble to do a few more continuity shots, since she had obviously recognised how different the light had been that morning and that the previous material would thus provide only sudden contrast rather than smooth link. She had done shots of herself, of Cartwright, of the two of them together, of the house and balcony and of the general view of the sea and horizon. Cartwright assisted with the close-ups, but the process, though perfunctory, still took time. Then she had to stand by and watch as the streaming progressed, a process that took over three hours. It surely would have run through uninterrupted, but Christine insisted, as has become her habit, on supervising the transfer throughout, even though there was nothing to do after the initial connection had been confirmed.

This always reminds me, if I am to offer interpretive comment on this, of the time she not only lost all her work, but also her laptop as well, when her kit was stolen from a hotel room in South Asia. She lost everything, all the footage for a documentary, her laptop, camera, money, cards and passport. She was away only twenty minutes. We had decided to make use of the five star establishment’s heated pool, but it was an absence long enough for someone to profit and clean us out. Since then, she has never allowed chance even near, until her professional duties are complete.

When she was satisfied that everything had been successfully uploaded, she slept, and slept heavily, without the slightest stir, despite the obvious intense heat of the day, a day unlike the one before, since the air hardly moved. Cartwright retired to work and did a long, uninterrupted stint, thus having no further contact with Christine until after she awoke at seven, well after dark. His approach was quite different this time. He seemed to have discovered new energy, and instead of reviewing old material, which is all he had done thus far, he sat at his desk, cleared enough space to lay down a pad, and began to write, covering a couple of sheets quite quickly.

Unfortunately, this time the angle was impossible. On previous occasions, when he was merely reading and annotating, he leaned back in his chair, after he had pulled slightly back from the desk. And because of his tendency to sit leaning slightly to his right, a purely mechanical habit determined by the support available, he tended to hold papers for reading in his right hand, while his right forearm and elbow took the weight. The angle at which he habitually held his papers, therefore, meant that my fixed camera could see them full face, thereby allowing zoom to reveal detail. But seen obliquely, flat on the desk with his body leaning half across them, all I could get, even with enhancement, was quite useless. Previous material had been legible gibberish, whereas this remained merely illegible.

I could see that his working style had changed, however, and this itself presented a new opportunity. After an hour or two of fairly constant writing, during which time he had covered just two sheets of paper, but each divided into two neat columns, he stalled for about three minutes, then crossed out several lines, rewrote them and then crossed them out again. He was about to get up from the chair after another lengthy pause and then let himself fall back, before creaking the lashed bamboo beneath him with a long body stretch. I could be mistaken. I have watched the sequence many times and believe my interpretation to be correct, but I remain somewhat less than sure, because, obviously, it carries with it some unexpected and unlikely consequences.

His stretch was momentary, too short to be merely relief from being stationary for so long, but clearly intended to provide that relief. He seemed to pull out of the movement early, as if he had momentarily forgotten himself and then suddenly become conscious again of what he was doing. He leaned forward, placed hands on the chair arms and brought his leg straight to stand. But as he transferred his weight, his released hand flipped the top paper over, thus hiding it from my camera’s point of view. I became convinced he knew his office was bugged, and that the surveillance was visual. I have here placed my own opinion on the record, something I do only reluctantly, for obvious reasons. Others can watch the sequence and reach their own conclusions.

He stood to retrieve a file from the shelf to his left, inaccessible from a seated position. It was a simple pocket folder, a file he had not touched before. He opened it and laid it on his desk, just proud of his own papers. It lodged at an angle, its upper edge propped on a garish plastic desk tidy that stored a few pens and pencil stubs, at an angle that made the papers he exposed visible to me. It may seem incongruous and contradictory for me to claim in one breath that he was consciously hiding material, and then record his decision to place an open folder directly in the camera’s view. It all makes perfect sense, of course, if he wanted us to see only what was in the folder.

He spent the next half hour leafing back and forth through the folder, occasionally leaving particular pages visible long enough for me to create a still. These pages were not consecutive, and apparently carefully chosen. While they remained open, he seemed to copy material from them into the body of his new work, but still leaning slightly across his desk and thereby obscuring what was immediately before him on its surface. When he transferred material from the folder to his papers, he seemed to copy, but what he wrote appeared to be just a word or two, no more. He was certainly not copying the lengthy formulae I could see, but not bring into focus.

I sent my stills of the file pages to our specialists for analysis. Here is the verbatim text of their reply.

From: Operations

Subject: ONEONONE4-1.MPG, ONEONONE4-2.MPG, ONEONONE4-3.MPG, ONEONONE4-4.MPG

Message: The images contain recognisable and readable content. Three of the pages each contain several representations of the Black-Scholes equation. This is a partial differential equation used to model financial markets, used to identify an investment strategy based on a mix of ownership of and options on a particular security. The equations visible were a combination of the original model, the Merton modified version, and another that seemed to suggest an Ingersoll modification, but this was inconclusive, since the image was incomplete. A sketched graph could have been an option smile, and others might have represented sections through implied volatility surfaces, some of them sticky. This interpretation is our best guess, best fit, given the context, since there are neither labels nor associated notes on the graphs to indicate any particular meaning. Butterflies had been considered, but the overall impression was that these were in a standard delta hedge, though there was also a hint of vanilla, especially on page three.

In other words, apparently, it was pretty standard stuff. I was disappointed, since this had been the first time I had been able to recover material that looked vaguely useful and, in the event, it turned out to be as useful as a photocopy from an undergraduate textbook. The disappointment did eventually turn to a measure of elation, however, when I later reviewed the whole sequence. It was three days later when things began to fall into place and unlike the specialists, or anyone else for that matter, Christine proved to be the only person involved with sufficient overview to make sense of things.

Cartwright worked on for a while before carefully filing his newly-written sheets alongside, though not attached to the others he had mulled over on previous occasions. I still did not see a clear image of what they contained, but I had no reason to believe they were any different from others previously filed in the same folder, those that the specialists had consistently labelled ‘gibberish’.

Since the start of One-On-One, this had been the first time he had used material from this folder. I took careful note of its position and colour, and immediately placed a formal request we contact Christine to ask her to investigate, possibly to photograph its contents the next time Cartwright left her alone in the house. I had no control, of course, over when the message might be sent, or even whether it would be sent at all, given our general paranoia about Cartwright’s ability or otherwise to access different forms of communication. We had ruled out the use of direct emails and phone calls, believing that he had access to communication logs and even message content in what was effectively real time. He would have the message, or so we believed, at the same time as Chris received it. But I was beginning to change my mind, since my error in sending that message directly to Chris seemed to prompt no activity on Cartwright’s own communications channels. There were no new related messages either by email or by telephone, suggesting that I had ‘got away’ with my unencrypted direct message. My own logic argued that this could happen again, and so we should send an immediate personal message to Christine about the file, which could contain the material our mission was seeking. I was overruled. Nothing unusual about that... In any case, I had already copied in Christine’s contact on my request for the specialist report, so the response to that was also in the queue awaiting approval.

While Christine still slept through the late afternoon, Cartwright pottered around in his boat, again tending his baited lines and pots, which produced more seafood for the evening meal, which was again to be rice and fish. This time, however, he would vary the menu by also offering some sliced squash, which he fried with onions before adding a few prawns from the catch and then a cup of tamarind water prepared from pulp. This sauced the rice and so this time there was no sambal.

I mention the sauce, since it may be significant. Cartwright had not bought tamarind pulp at the market, but he had accepted a delivery. He had made no request by any electronic means: of that we can be sure. Following our weeks of observations, there was nothing to suggest regular visits to the island by traders. But yet, that day, a large slow boat approached. It was the same, water taxi design of Cartwright’s own, but significantly larger, and laden with goods, arranged in what looked like random heaps, everything packed into various plain plastic bags. Even from the angle provided by the outward-facing camera on the balcony, I could see a large, stacked load of black bags that clearly contained rectangular flat packs, no doubt part of the illicit trade in alcohol from the island. This was bulk beer en route to become euphemistic special tea in a place that dare not refer to it by name. But there were other piles of goods on this passing boat, whose wider draught reduced its tendency to roll, when compared with Cartwright’s roller-coaster craft.

But where was this boat going? Given its cargo, we can be sure where it came from. And why was it passing by Cartwright’s island? With no evidence of regular visits, perhaps it was an arrangement that Cartwright had made in town the day before. Perhaps it was merely an opportunistic trader, but would such a person sail off towards an island off his route when it was well known to have just one customer? Would Cartwright greet the man, indicating previous contact?

As the boat approached I was able to zoom in on the scene and record several images of the man at the tiller. These I have forwarded for matching. He was an older man, a small, wiry, wizened, dark-skinned and wrinkled Malay, a Haji because he wore a small, through dirty white cap. He was surely so small he was unable to see over the prow as he sat at the rear, leaning on the outboard’s tiller. The boat was severely under-powered, its considerable size, tare and load being driven by kit rated at just eighty horsepower, less than Cartwright used on his boat unladen. Thus, when he cut the engine to idle as he approached Cartwright’s silent craft, his vessel settled into the water and slowed quickly. A swift and skilled flick of the tiller presented its motion side on to the tranquil swell, a manoeuvre that effectively brought it to a near immediate, if rocking halt.

Cartwright greeted the man. I enhanced the gain on all the microphones, but the boats were too far away and the ambience too loud for them to pick up anything discernible. They seemed to converse for a few minutes before either stirred from their seated positions. There was some gesticulation, but there was clearly no disagreement. Then, after a couple of minutes, the little old man began to make his way forward, treading carefully over and between the piles of bags. He reached the point on the gunwale that was closest to Cartwright’s drift and reached across to hand over one of the bulging plastic bags. The contents were clearly not very heavy, a kilo or two at most, easily tossed with accuracy across the metre or two that separated the two craft. And then, after what were clearly polite goodbyes, the larger boat went plodding on its way, its course a frustratingly ambiguous line that led directly towards the mangrove-clad islands that filled the joint river estuaries. A move to the left and he was probably just an illicit booze trader. A deviation to the right, and he may have been a personal contact of Cartwright’s, possibly a messenger from his wife’s family. But his changes of course would be behind the islands, and out of my view.

Whatever the case, the plastic bag contained another bottle of gin, a large handful of fresh tamarind pods and, crucially, a couple of letters in sealed envelopes. These he opened and read while still adrift in his boat, well out of range of my cameras. The papers, whatever they contained, stayed in his pocked until they were later stowed unbound in another office folder. Our mission has involved the most sophisticated electronic surveillance and communications systems, a cover of the production of television programmes for potential international broadcast, the placing of an operator at risk after intercontinental travel and a procession of meetings, plus worldwide governmental and private sector cooperation on data transfer logging, reporting and trawling. It’s ironic, therefore, that all this might have been undermined when an old man in a boat passed over a single piece of paper in a tossed plastic bag, attached by elastic band to a bottle of illegal gin.

Christine was still sleepy at seven, but then full of energy by eight after eating and gulping at a couple of drinks. They chatted, but sparingly, appearing to prefer reflection on their shared past above this wave-lapping present. Apart from their voices and the water, the only other noises came from insects, which were few, even countable there, surrounded by salt water.

“The programme was fine, I think.”

“A bit anodyne...”

“They often are... and you wouldn’t have cooperated if it was anything else...”

They had already finished their food, but the plates, complete with seafood debris and spoons, were still on the balcony floor by their now institutionalised chairs. An occasional fly, attracted more by the people than the food remnants, gave intermittent interruption, demanding occasional waves of the hand to seek momentary relief.

“Why did you become a Muslim, Tom?”

There was a long pause. “We’ve already been through that.”

“But I still don’t understand why...”

“Chris...” There was no hesitation this time, but a new condescension flavoured the tone. “It was fifteen years ago. I was in my mid-forties and a twenty-three-tear-old stunner lays it on a plate. She had a body straight out of heaven and it took me directly there with an invitation to stay. I might have lost a leg, but nothing else. There are some things in life...”

“But the consequences...”

“Status, wealth - even before all of this...” He made the slightest of gestures with his left arm. By way of ironic comment, Christine waved her arm in an exaggeratedly wide arc to indicate the opulence of a rickety bamboo shack, loosely attached to a rock in the middle of the ocean.

Cartwright was humoured. “Chris, I married Noraya for one reason and one reason alone. Sex. Pure and simple. It hardly makes me a special case... And, let’s be clear about this, the sex was wonderful, and remains so, though I have no documentary records to illustrate my position on this. Noraya was, and remains, quite stunningly beautiful, and still has the kind of body that most men can only dream about. There, I declare my hand.”

“But you don’t live together...”

“Who says? Of course we live together. I don’t know where your idea comes from. Was it a position delivered in your briefing?”

Christine neither reacted nor answered.

“We do live together. But like many marriages that have lasted as long as ours, especially in this part of the world, we have our own houses and increasingly our own lives. The sex, if you are at all interested, is still as good as ever. She’s not even forty...” Cartwright’s silence was full of satisfaction and not a little pride. “I reckon I did rather well for myself,” he concluded, at mumble.

“She’s better than I was, then?”

Cartwright laughed and then turned to look to his right. “I was not trying to compare, Christine. What we did was a long time ago and basically was only playing around.”

“You certainly took it seriously.”

“Sex is always serious, as is almost all play. Serious pleasure. And what we did as teenagers was wonderful, in its own way. It was all so new to us. We were discovering life, even grasping at it, because we were afraid it was rejecting us. It was certainly as close to heaven as I had been at the age of eighteen.”

Christine seemed to be letting the words flow like a breeze around her. I knew, however, that in her own way she was pursuing a tactic we had discussed, and thus that every nuance of every word was registering. It perhaps was already proving to be a rather naïve position, but we had collectively concluded in one briefing that Cartwright had been tricked into his conversion and that its convenience had begun to wear thin. It was possible that we might offer him a new identity if there was any chance he was looking for a way out and if, of course, he might be willing to work for us. What we needed, however, was to identify a chink in the armour through which we might introduce the idea.

“You said before that it might have kept both of us alive...”

“In that case, our private heaven kept us both out of the public one, didn’t it?”

Christine laughed. “I doubt I would have got near that place, even then.”

Cartwright leaned across and tapped her forearm gently with his right hand. “Chris, at seventeen, you were as pure as driven snow. You had hardly a volt of lust in your body.”

“Well, thank you for the assessment... So all the electricity came from you, did it, by any chance? I was merely the receptacle, the bloody eponymous female, for what the experience of Cartwright, the potent male, did to fill it...”

“No, not at all...” It’s amazing how long it takes us to realise we have stuck our foot in a bucket.

“But that’s what you just said!”

“All I imply is that I doubt you’d had your hand in anyone’s trousers before mine... maybe even your own...” He was laughing.

Christine did smile before she took another long-lasting sip of her drink. She was making this one last. “You’re probably half correct. I had not got that close to a boy... I’d been fairly close much earlier, at fourteen, or maybe earlier. It didn’t come to anything, but I did get to within touching distance, though I’m sure I didn’t stay within range.” There was a smile.

“I had the distinct impression that you had kept all forms of sex at a distance, even your own personal pleasure. After all, you were middle class...”

Christine laughed out loud, long and hard. “Brilliant! You never miss an opportunity, do you?” Cartwright smiled and nodded. “The reality was that for two years before then I’d been in pain, sick as a dog, or both at the same time. I didn’t have much time for anything else.”

“But I had the distinct impression that you liked to keep bodily things at arm’s length, so to speak...”

“So if you were the one with all the experience, how come I had to show you what to do? You didn’t seem to know one end of a woman from the other!”

“Like you, I had been preoccupied with pain during my formative years. Do you remember things that clearly?”

“Of course. Don’t you? You were the first person with whom I shared an orgasm, Tom. How could I forget?”

“I have to admit that I do remember every detail, Chris. Life passes by, but sex sticks.”

“I’ve had some that wasn’t particularly memorable...”

“You were so beautiful, Chris, so tall and slender... How your body used to twist and turn...”

“And you just seemed to grow, blow up like a balloon, before you went off.”

They both laughed.

“You never had any children...” Cartwright’s comment was incongruous, but the short silence that preceded it was effectively a new start.

“I couldn’t, Tom. You’ll remember that they did their best when we had treatment, putting those heavy blankets with lead in them over our hips. But in my case I must have had some exposure. I had some tests a few years later when we were trying for a baby and nothing happened. I was sterile.”

“Saved your life but took your ovaries. I’m sorry.”

“But, Tom, I was alive. It’s been no big deal. A family would have been nice, but then I wouldn’t have lived this life, the life I have had, which has been a spectacular ride. And there wouldn’t have been the professional fulfilment.”

“I thought the same way for a couple of decades, but I hadn’t tried to have children, of course.”

“But you weren’t sterile. When you tried you had them.” She thought for a moment. “They are your children, aren’t they?”

“Christine... Of course they are mine and clearly I wasn’t sterile. But in my case for twenty-four years or so the opportunity never really arose.”

“But other things did...”

“Quite regularly, in fact, but the participants weren’t interested in anything other than the whereabouts and contents of my wallet.”

Christine was silent for some time, two minutes or more. She was clearly convinced he had more to say. Her patience was lasting well, but she decided to prompt. “You were never tempted to marry, to settle down?”

“Monopedal mathematicians weren’t too high on the sexual preference lists.”

There was another long silence.

“Until you pulled a stunner, an air hostess, twenty-odd years your junior.”

Cartwright laughed.

“But then it’s gratifying to know that now her soul is saved, no matter what happens in the future.”

“Indeed, she has knocked one over for the faith.”

“But you were a willing victim... and you are not complaining...” There was a hinted question embedded in Christine’s statement.

“Chris, there are Malay women and there are Malay women.” Cartwright nodded directly away from the house, across the water. “It’s an affluent place and people eat with their wallets, which are often full. But there are some Malay women who never put on weight... They seem to stay slender, retain their gentility, whose bodies - especially the skin - don’t seem to age...”

“Stop it, Tom. She’s not even forty yet. What do you expect? And it’s not done to talk like that these days...”

“Rather like you, Chris. I’m serious. You have hardly changed.” He sounded impatient with himself. “Sorry... I know you’re not Malay...”

“I’m not an object of desire either...”

“That is a matter of opinion.” There was a long silence. Christine looked distinctly embarrassed and was uncharacteristically speechless. She found his compliment hard to absorb, and it lay on the skin of her understanding for some time. He continued. “What I was trying to say...”

“Tom... just be quiet. Let’s leave it at that.”

“All I was trying to say... Just delete the rest... What I was trying to say was merely that some women age quickly, whereas others, like you, seem to mature, but actually change very little...”

“And men are above all this?”

“Absolutely not... The same things apply to all people... Some change a lot, others don’t... And you haven’t changed.”

Christine gave a loud laugh. “If only you knew... If only...”

She finished her drink and then started to get up so she could seek another.

“I’ll get it,” said Cartwright, taking the glass with almost a snatch.

“No you won’t,” said Christine, as she began to rise from the chair by turning in the seat so she could place both palms on the arm-rests, a manoeuvre that required her almost to reach directly behind her back with her left arm. “I am going to get it,” she said with stressed determination as she pushed herself upright and, with an exaggerated loop of the arm, playfully snatched back her glass.

“There’s always more where that came from, if needed,” said Cartwright as she began to clatter her shuffling way at snail-footed hop by the balustrade. It was some minutes before anything else was said.

“Where’s the ice?” came a full-voiced shout from the back of the house. The sound seemed to echo, and thus to appear twice, arriving once through the interior of the house whose doors and windows were, of course, all open, and a second time on the bounce off the rock at the back. The sound’s imprecision seemed to blend into the constant waves, and carry a sense of being spoken into a wind.

“There isn’t any,” Cartwright shouted back. “I forgot to put any in. I hardly ever use it. You’ll have to drink it warm. I’m sure it won’t be the first time... The tonic should be cold.”

She was back in her seat a few minutes later. “I just don’t know what things are coming to... The service in this place...” She sat down in one fall, whilst expertly maintaining the stability of her drink by holding it level on a loose arm.

“Evidence of practice, I see,” said Cartwright. “You have done that before...”

She took two long sips, closer to gulps if the volume taken were considered, before setting the glass down on the low table on her right. “So you can get your booze quite easily?”

Christine was genuinely surprised when he laughed loud and hard. “Here?” His voice was booming. “In this place?” He gesticulated to his left with a broad swing of the arm. “There is no shortage in that town.” He turned to face her, his expression changed. “But of course I don’t myself. I bought this for you.”

She thought for a moment before asking the obvious question. “But how did you know I liked an occasional g’n’t?”

“I guessed,” he said without hesitation.

Christine wanted to probe. “But I would have thought... Sorry if this is naïve...that you in particular would have to be careful. You are something of a public figure, even a local celebrity. I’m sure you must have enemies... If someone were to photograph you buying the stuff, couldn’t it damage you, if someone were really out to get you?”

“Of course,” he replied without hesitation. “But if someone wanted to smear me, there are far simpler ways to do it. You forget that money is no object. A few extra ringgit here or there and some Chinese shopkeeper or other is quite happy to deliver. And have you ever heard of mobile phones? I don’t actually visit the shop. I just call ahead and ask for a couple of plastic bags to appear at the main harbour wall. This place specialises in plain plastic bags.”

“But mobile phone calls can be traced.”

“Can they now, Christine?” He turned to face her. “And you would know everything that needs to be known on that score, wouldn’t you? Something of an expert, maybe. It’s your... let’s say... stock in trade, isn’t it?”

She looked abruptly across to her left. “Whatever do you mean?”

He now spoke slowly. Surely these were rehearsed lines. “You were recruited while you were at university, weren’t you?”

“Recruited?”

“Quit the games for once, Christine.” And Cartwright suddenly sprang to his feet - sorry, foot - and, in what seemed like a single movement, mounted the balcony and launched himself into the water. It was almost as if he had thrown a rubber bone to Christine with an instruction to gnaw, while he busied himself elsewhere. Barely three minutes later, he was back at her side, dripping into his chair.

“You needed a pee.”

“There’s no denying the obvious.” He turned again to face her to add emphasis to what followed. “Is there, Chris?”

She did not respond. Her drink was almost finished. “I think there’s enough for one more,” she said, as she began the developing ritual that would allow her to stand. But Cartwright caught her arm, forced her back, his grip still light, but now determined.

“You were recruited before you left college, I am told. And that’s how you managed to land all these plum ‘journalistic’ assignments over the years, the ones that have made what you call your professional name. It’s true isn’t it? And you’re still on the payroll.”

“Can I get a drink?” She gave an assertive tug of the arm against his grip. He removed his hand.

She got up, pushing herself upright off the chair arms, but this time pushed too hard and almost overbalanced. The balustrade behind her was at hand, however, and a mere placement of a palm steadied the pose.

But he had already sprung to his feet, perfectly balanced, and in position to assist, his reactions automatic, his assistance precise, as if the whole sequence had been rehearsed. Thus he embraced her, he seemingly fixed on his stilt, without a semblance of passion or affection, only stability. It was a sensation I knew Chris had longed for. Through its implied support, the contact clearly took her back those four decades to relive the mutual reassurance of their shared teens.

“I can manage,” she said, just before she pecked a tiny kiss, perfunctory, but offered with more than mere recognition of proximity, onto his breastbone. “Do you want anything?”

“I just had a mouthful of sea, thanks,” he said as he flopped back towards his chair.

There was a clatter this time as Christine made her way along the balcony edge, her right hand sliding along its rail. She moved more quickly this time, stumbling, but not faltering. It was a matter of style. Just a couple of minutes later, she was back in her seat, newly refilled, her left hand having provided the sliding support on her return trip.

“The deal, as far as I understand it, Chris, is that you are not exactly on the payroll, but you take on freelance assignments. You have, though, signed the Official Secrets Act, so you can’t discuss it. I, therefore, will have to discuss it for you.”

“Anything you like,” he said. He was acting Christine’s response to his own question, leaning abruptly to his right, well into Christine’s space, catching her off guard and making her jump. He had half-turned his back towards her to mimic her position, and raised his voice to an exaggerated caricature of a feminine squeak. And thus he continued, now back to his own pose.

“As I said, you’re freelance. You get the assignments. The television and the other media assignments are your day job, and they provide the cover for you to talk to contacts, gather intelligence, drop letters and briefs, and generally poke your nose wherever you can stick it.”

“That’s quite accurate, except it pays a lot better than the day job, at least by the hour,” he squeaked in reply to himself, again leaning right across her.

“And when you have done your bit, you go home, broadcast the goodies, pick up the awards, receive praise, even adulation for your journalistic integrity, your balance, your innovatory investigatory work, and then you bank your salary, not to mention the sponsorship for the freelance assignment on the side, and all the time you are a state security operative doing the dirty work for the intelligence services.”

“Again true,” he squawked at his oblique angle, “except that the last phrase in an oxymoron.”

“Tom!” Christine pushed him away, back to his side of the chair arm. This time, his thrust to his right had been too decisive, and he had encroached on her space. “What are you trying to prove?”

Cartwright now turned to look at her. His expression was one of smiling disbelief. “Aren’t words of one syllable simple enough, Chris?”

I needed no second guess. I have seen that expression on my wife’s face often enough, though not as often as I would have liked in recent years. It can only be described as predatory: there is no other word. There exists an object of her desire. Her focus becomes complete and the object complies. The couch where Christine had slept was barely two metres behind them, a mere stumbled, interlocked dance across the intervening bamboo for the two of them. They collapsed onto the thin mattress that covered the hard surface and raised a giant creaking groan from a structure unused to such use. All they had been wearing between them amounted to two pairs of light shorts and Christine’s loose blouse and, amidst the dance, they cast these off on the hoof, so they hit the ground running, so to speak. I watched them become reunited, but in a way they had previously never known, two sixty-year-old kids returned to their blissfully-shared but now forgotten teens. I thus found a moment to reflect, to reconsider and recollect. They were done in just a few instants, and then lay together in silence for a quarter of an hour before they began again, this second encounter slower, more overtly affectionate, and satisfying, well beyond the call of mere duty.

And so for some time there was little to report, for afterwards they slept together and, it needs to be said, without recourse to extra covers on that wide sofa, just inside the house’s permanently open door. I wonder why I refer to it now, because it had never once been closed, or even moved, since Christine had arrived. Now, still tied back by a string from handle to wall bamboo, it provided the almost symbolic backdrop, visible over the back of that couch where they lay. My angle was perfect, if viewing the open door was my goal, but the internal camera Christine had placed that first morning, an angle I had hardly used thus far, was mounted on the room’s back wall, looking straight at that door, but across the back of the couch. In that house, from my perspective, the only, and I stress the only private, invisible place was the mattress on which Christine had slept, where she now lay with Cartwright, her target, her object, and now her subject. Clearly, they slept, the detail of their encounter lost to me.

The change of tack had worked. That much was clear. But it remained only a partial success. I referred to it earlier, but only in passing. It had come about earlier than I personally had expected, but possibly later than had been the general assumption. A tough, direct approach was always going to be our opening tactic, certainly as far as the first interview. It was that first programme where the general consensus had predicted we might expect a breakdown, certainly on the first take. We had predicted anger, which I suppose we got, but we did not expect the control that went with it. After all, Cartwright had no media experience, as far as we knew, since he had shunned all approaches, of whatever type, since his rise to prominence.

The tactic, our general consensus agreed, was to attack for as long as possible. Eliciting a reaction from him, an impassioned outburst of any kind, was essential. But then, as soon as it became clear that this approach would deliver nothing more, we had always planned a softening, a gentler, co-opting tenor that might draw him along. The intention then was to inter-cut the material from the failed first take or with subsequent attempts that broke down with a more cooperative later version to create the personality we wanted to impart on Cartwright’s identity.

Now, personally, I had never subscribed to the above. I had raised my objections during the planning sessions, but had been consistently overruled. I had thought that we were underestimating Cartwright’s commitment to the project. After refusing all forms of media contact for over two years, despite having received offers from veritable queues of journalists, film-makers and television producers alike, he had finally accepted a commission. He had not done that lightly, nor was he likely to allow a breakdown, and certainly not a quick one. He undeniably had something personal, however opaque, invested in the project and would want to see it come to fruition. Thus I argued, suggesting that, if a breakdown were to come about, it would be towards the end, when he might begin to realise that he was not, and would not have any form of control over the eventual message the material would convey.

In the event, we were all wrong. The breakdown came in the second programme, not the first, so Christine’s change of approach from confrontation to accommodation could only have been a decision on the hoof, which may go some way towards explaining why it quickly became a significantly greater shift of tone than any of us had anticipated. I was aware of what might happen, and of course I had many years of experience of working with Chris, but this time the change in approach seemed too abrupt, too obviously pre-meditated. I hesitate to use the word ‘mistake’, since I have had repeated demonstrations over the years of my wife’s good judgment, in contrast with my own marked tendency to over-cautiousness. But this time, having initially applauded Christine’s professionalism and her ability to think on her feet, or foot, should I say, I had actually begun to question her grasp of the current plot. When the change of tactic materialised in the second interview, I acknowledged that she had used the tactic well, if at a time none of us had expected. What I had not anticipated, obviously, was that her application of the change of tack might go as far as sleeping with him, though it would not, of course, be the first time events had thus deteriorated.

My own attitude to such things, incidentally, is somewhat relaxed. Now that, given my background, might come as something of a surprise. Military backgrounds are often caricatured as straight-laced, unemotional, correct, rarely passionate. And on the surface, the Greens senior did fit such a bill. Stan, my father, or really Stanley, as he was always known in public, was a career officer, British Army, Oxford, Sandhurst et cetera. He upheld any rule, questioned none. Mother was a Weston, another military family of note, Boer War, First World War, India for a while, admin, even procurement, I believe. My parents were made for one another and were married by thirty-nine, just in time to be separated by a wartime posting, a lengthy series of assignments that took my father across the globe and back again, predominantly on active service, single status. Mummy was always the patient one, always in control, the manageress of a beautiful house, pretty much an estate in rural Hampshire. But there were no children.

When Stanley Green finally took up his post behind a desk in Aldershot, he needed a year or two to settle back into the inactivity demanded. War had scarred him mentally, not physically, since he came through the conflict bodily unscathed. Stanley and Helen had certainly never given up on the idea of starting a family, at least that’s what they always told me many years later. The opportunity had never really arisen until I came along in forty-seven, an upper-class military son, a winter child, a lad with a life determined, mapped out by a tradition no-one dare even consider breaking.

So for me it was prep school, public school, Sandhurst as an eighteen-year-old, and then, almost on second thoughts, Oxford for the degree that would help my career in the army. But by the time I was ready to contribute my own labour, it was data that needed management, rather than men. Eventually, it felt almost as if the desk in the establishment I cannot name had been ordered and set in place at my birth. Even the cushion seemed to have my name on it. And now I’ve done forty years in the service - long enough if you ask me! - and these days I have the sense that things have been round the roundabout many times. The Cold War may have been a big news headline, but in reality little has changed over the decades. Empires always compete.

But it has been the partnership with Christine that has really made both of our careers. We met at Oxford, of course, and became immediate friends. I was older than her, because I had taken time out to do my cadet training before the modern languages degree at Oxford. I did my officer training in parallel, and then returned to college to study my specialism, which is when I met Christine. Effectively I was an old hand, while she was vulnerable, insecure, lacking confidence and, if truth be told, completely phased out by the experience. She was still struggling to cope with her limb and, from the start, was guaranteed one of the prime residential spots available in her college. She had resisted all suggestion that she take a year off from her studies, so that she might develop some confidence with her health and physical stability, so the college did everything in its power to assist her, and help it most certainly did. Her rooms were so convenient, of course, that sooner rather than later they became something of a focus for a group of friends who enjoyed one another’s company and quite a lot more. It suited everyone. Chris could stay at home, so to speak, and not have to struggle with mobility; we could socialise in comfort and, more important still, we could be private - not necessarily legal, but at least private.

And it was there, in that very suite of rooms, with its easy chairs, sofas, stone fireplace and carpets - not real student fare at all! - where we partied, hard, on that wet November night, just a few weeks into Christine’s first term. It was from that night that we became inseparable, Christine and I, a double act born of deception, perhaps, but immediately and in perpetuity effective.

My father had died some years before. He had only just retired and, having dedicated himself for decades to his work, the sudden change seemed simply to kill him. He had never gardened, never taken up golf. He had no interest in sports, save for a passing interest in cricket or rugger, and didn’t read. He had never really been one to socialise. He brought papers home every weekend and on midweek evenings he ate, smoked a pipe, drank a brandy, watched a little television and then slept. His dedication and solidity, dependability and, as it turned out, vulnerability were trademark. It was only at his funeral that I met Harvey, the man my mother had been seeing on a regular basis, presumably for sex, and with the knowledge of my father, I later learned, since well before I was born, perhaps since my father’s absence in the war years. For my parents, life was a front, a purely public face by which you were recognised as respectable, establishment figures, as likely to demand the forelock touched as a country squire of old. Behind the mask, they suffered. Their solution to threat was to keep everything at arm’s length, including me, it seemed.

Father had died in sixty-seven, to be precise, his funeral being a small, uncomplicated event in our parish church. He had specifically requested there be little fuss, something my mother also wanted to avoid at all costs. But still Harvey was invited to the funeral. They had even planned that he stay over, which frankly appalled me, so I went back to Sandhurst school in a huff, privately resolving that deception would never play a part in my life. How we all fail to realise our cherished ideals!

It was, after all, only a couple of years after my father’s death that I met Christine at Oxford. Somehow, my loss was still close to the surface and I suppose it still showed through. Christine was full of sympathy, so full it felt like she was the one who was supporting me.

We had met in the first week of term at one of those university-wide do’s, designed to break the ice that hasn’t yet had time to set. I had taken to illicit drinking at school, had matured the habit at Sandhurst, and was practised enough by then to have got completely drunk that night, probably on something as obnoxious as brandy and Coke. The soft drink, I had assumed, hid the habit, though the effect was the same.

I do remember talking to Christine at length. Specifically, I do remember pouring out my heart about my mother and her infidelity, since I had just had an appalling bust up with her over the phone. And it all poured out onto Christine, who was full of concern and sympathy. We soon became almost inseparable, and she was adopted by my circle of friends. I cannot remember which of us first introduced the idea, but quickly it became de rigueur for our little group to meet regularly, and then round off an evening’s celebrations with a little something to enhance the experience. We were children of our age, even if I was a little older than the others, and should have known better.

We were already in breach of the rules, of that let’s be clear. Neither Christine, nor any of the other women in that august, gender-specific establishment was supposed to have a gentleman even in their room without specific permission and an entry in the visitor’s book, an entry that had also to be cancelled on departure by the porter’s counter-signature. That particular night, Christine had multiple guests, all unannounced and unrecorded. They had all stayed beyond the eleven o’clock witching hour, when the gates were officially locked and the porters went into night prowler mode. But it is amazing how the specifics of local agreements have, through time, been able to supersede such general principles, especially when small, though regular incentives can be offered as persuasion.

I will spare the old codger the indignity of identification, but of course he could be easily traced, since we know which college Christine attended, a well-known establishment for ladies, and I have already been quite specific with dates, so it would be a trivial matter to put a face to the nameless. That unsuspecting gaffer who was on duty, if nothing else, could be done at least for not declaring cash payments, being the tenner I stuffed in his hand that Saturday night towards the end of November, nineteen-seventy. There would be few candidates that fit this bill.

We had already been out for a jar or two around town and then, well before college gate closing time, we had gone back to Christine’s digs to round off the evening in more communal style. I greased the doorman’s palm with said tenner, a note that would oil the mechanism and ensure smooth running of what we all hoped would follow. By ten o’clock we were all well oiled ourselves and, though we would have been less than aware of it, the rooms would already have reeked a bit of you know what. By kick out time at eleven, it was also quite apparent that one of our number - there were just the four of us that night - had perhaps partaken of something chemical in addition to the organic matter the rest of us had burned. Said person, who shall remain nameless, since a political career might be in jeopardy, was out for the count and certainly going nowhere public. Luckily, she was female - many she’s are, I am told! - and could, I say could, just have stayed over with Christine and slept it off without too much risk, while I, and the other chap involved, might just have slipped out over the fence, after hours. The problem was not lack of strategy, but lack of coordination. After an evening of beer, wine, an odd g’n’t, and brandy for me, followed by organic matter and chemical input, logistical coordination was in rather short supply.

Christine and I were in the living room, having a good laugh, but the other two were rather heavily engaged in a rather noisy bout of activity in the adjoining bedroom. I had no idea where the lady’s chemicals had taken her, but I knew where she was coming from. As the big hand sped towards the vertical and lock-in hour approached, the two of them seemed so engrossed in their studies that it seemed simply callous to interrupt. I jest, because we had no idea what time it was. We were smashed. Christine, who was not used to boozing, and certainly not used to the other things we had tried, and who, in any case, was still in a relatively weakened physical state, was out for the count by the time there was a knock on the door, somewhere near midnight, if I recall.

Well, let’s put it this way, I rather saved the day. My friend the porter chap came to tell me there was a commotion outside. There had been an intruder, a bloke trying to climb over the fence. He had been apprehended, but had indicated, somewhere in what my porter chappie described as ‘the man’s rantings’, that he was looking for a particular room, which happened to be Christine’s. There were people around, the police had been called, and there was plenty of noise and much confusion. Once the intruder had been dealt with, he expected the police would want to have a word with Christine to see if she could shed any light on the matter.

It was a pretty pickle, for us in the rooms, Christine and her three after hours guests, two of whom were male, while the third was out of her brain on acid, emitting the sound effects of continuing casual sex, loud enough to wake up half the staircase. In short, we would all have been sent down, despite the previous decade’s claim to new enlightenment. We were breaking the law, let alone petty little local rules. We had used and were still in possession of banned and illegal substances. If the police came in, we were on our way out, probably into a cell for that particular night, but definitely out of Oxford, and perhaps out of our careers as well. Certainly I would have been finished, and with disgrace for my family name to boot.

I, of course, had the most to lose, since my career was already under way. My studies were being sponsored by my employer, who had already invested a small fortune in my training. I had been ear-marked, so I was told, partly as a result of my background and partly because of my modern language skills, for a particular area of activity, for which I was deemed suitable. The rest is history. But that night, as the porter stood at the foot of the stairs before me, I could see all of this, both my past and my future, dissolving before my eyes, as I slipped twenty-five quid extra into the porter’s mitt and delivered a few quickly thought, but well chosen words. I suggested he inform the police that Miss Gardiner had gone away for the weekend and also doctor his records to indicate she had signed out earlier in the day. I knew that he and his colleagues regularly arranged cover in this way for several of the old hands in the college. I suggested he note down that Christine had gone to visit a certain family called Green in Hampshire and supplied my mother’s name and address so it could be entered in his ledger. I told him how confident I was that he could make a good fist of forging a signature.

Immediately he left, I made a swift call to mummy from the pay phone in the corridor, ensuring that any query reaching her on the whereabouts of either myself or Christine could be answered with a recognition of the fact that we were down for the weekend. A little story about the two of us having gone off for a touch of overnight nookie in a New Forest pub would provide the cover for not being able to contact us, and surely all would stay quiet. I could imagine the tone... “You know what these young people are nowadays...” My mother’s lips would create something credible while she held the phone in her habitual pose, a good six inches from her ear and mouth, a distance that could allow the punctuation of a flick of the head or a knowing laugh to be added. Our backs would thus be covered.

You will appreciate that, next morning, Christine and the others were somewhat appreciative of my efforts on their behalf. Had I not told them how we had skirted disaster, however, I doubt any of them would have been any the wiser, so deliriously incapacitated were they at the time. They all did, however, and especially Christine, who went as white as a sheet at the prospect, register how close to disciplinary action, even expulsion, they had been.

And for Chris and I, it did the trick, certainly a trick. It cemented our relationship which, until then had been one of developing friendship. After that night we became the joined phrase, girlfriend and boyfriend, a conjunction that has lasted until today, despite its occasional estrangements. From that night she trusted me implicitly and, gratified that I had lent more than just a helping hand, I concluded that assisting Christine long-term in her battle with her disability might prove rewarding for both of us. Two years down the track, as Cartwright had indicated, I was able to assist her further by identifying an employment opportunity, which she accepted, along with my proposal of marriage.

Incongruous it may seem, but during the hours when I watched my unchanging screen, hours during which my wife slept like a babe in Cartwright’s arms (presumably, because I couldn’t see!), I succumbed to this enduring nostalgia. I include it here, since Cartwright had referred to Christine’s ‘recruitment’ while still at college. In addition, he knew my name, since early on he had referred to Christine as Mrs Green, though there was probably no significance attached, since her married name is no secret, no matter how rarely it is published.

I remain a government employee, a civil servant, nothing more nor less. My military background, as far as I am aware, is nowhere publicly linked to my current post, which, of course, remains that of a communications officer specialising in Central Asian languages. Christine did come under my wing, so to speak, when we were both at college but, on replaying the sequence of my memories, I am currently of the opinion that Cartwright’s choice of words was no more than a lucky stab in the dark, a mere colloquialism with no more status than a throw away remark. He had no specific knowledge, for if he had, and he really did want to make a point of his intelligence, he would have mentioned my name in the same breath. Left open and unattributed, his assertion was probably just a general, uninformed skit.

***

I confess that I slept. I had lost track of time again. As I continued to watch the unchanging scene, my screen had remained dark, with even night enhancement revealing only the random dots of boat lights passing across the distance within the confines of the door frame. There was no other light, except a glinting moonlight that rippled occasionally across the sea between creeping rain clouds.

I awoke after their dawn to find an unchanged scene. I found myself stupidly standing up to see if I could somehow peer over the settee-back to check if the two of them still lay there asleep, locked in their embrace. Save for the noises of the day, the house was silent, but there was a wind, and even a little rain in the air, rain that fell this morning, unusually, as drizzle. Thus the microphones had adjusted their levels to amplify all noises. And so the lapping of the waves below, the occasional swish of a hanging bag on the balcony wall, the merest click and tick of bamboo poles straining against one another and their twine lashing, all these were surreally grand, emphasised beyond their significance, and thus commanding my attention.

As time passed without further stir, it began to dawn on me that I might have missed them. It was just possible, though unlikely, that they had stirred, got up and left the house without the sound gain from the microphones stirring me while I slept, or later registering while I reviewed the material on fast forward. By nine o’clock their time, I had concluded that this was precisely the case, however unlikely. They were out on the boat. I felt stupid. I should have checked earlier. My front balcony camera appeared to have the two mooring ropes in place, tied to either end of the balustrade. Sometimes, I knew by now, the boat might drift a little, in which case it might settle under the house and thus be invisible from my points of view. I had assumed this was the case this morning. Later, some time later, I looked again and noticed - quite by chance, since I had not consciously inspected them - that both ropes were hanging vertically and were not tensed at an angle that a moored and drifting boat would have stretched.

So someone was out in the boat - either that or it had drifted loose in the wind. I re-ran the material that each camera had recorded through the night while I slept, but this time ignored the screen and watched the sound level. And, sure enough, well before dawn, while it was still completely dark under a passing cloud, Cartwright had stood up from the couch, had retrieved Christine’s prosthesis from where it had hung on its nail for the better part of a day and presented it to her. They had actually made quite a lot of noise as they climbed down into the boat, Christine especially, for this, after all, was the first time she had actually gone down Cartwright’s house-pole ladder since she had arrived, having spent all of her time inside the house, thus far.

Everything was dark and they lit no light. Under the cloudy sky there seemed to be only profound dark, their images and movement being revealed in full only when viewed in the infra-red. Surprisingly, neither of them had spoken. Cartwright had led her by the hand, and had meticulously guided her feet onto the ladder rungs from below. That neither of them had uttered a word suggested cooperation, something almost akin to a whispered conspiracy. Its only purpose could have been to exclude me from what they were attempting. It is conceivable that Christine’s silence was a result of threats from Cartwright, thus raising the possibility that coercion had been used. Whatever the case, the need for silence had been requested and acknowledged by sign language I had not seen since, even on the highest gain the sound system could offer, not even a whisper had registered prior to their departure.

Cartwright took the boat away on an oar, a long paddle at the back that he swished from side to side, so it too made no noise above the waves. Their progress was slow, but within seconds I could see nothing, since by then the cloudy sky had neither moon nor star, and neither could I hear, since the nearby wind and waves, though gentle, were dominant and drowning. There was, however, an occasional glint off the prow, whenever the slightest gap in the cloud passed above, so with care I could trace flashes of their ponderous progress. Eventually, and in a far distance, a motor started, but not at a roar, only a gentle chug until distance had itself been amplified. Their departure had taken the better part of an hour, but the associated noise had lasted barely a minute, and their movements had not registered at all, except in a spectrum the human eye itself would not see. And that was why earlier I had missed them.

What galled me most of all was that Christine had not thought to put on her glasses before leaving, the glasses she had worn that first morning on the hotel jetty. At least then she could have taken me with them. As things stood, they were not only out of my view, but they were also out of my protection, a state for which I could not accept continuing responsibility. I thus sent an immediate emergency message to the office. No doubt you have retained its text. No doubt, also, you placed in train the emergency procedures it triggered.

Now I may have over-reacted. I could have waited but, after decades of these occasional assignments in collaboration with my wife, I had never before known her to go out of range without a reason, and a reason always shared with me, encoded or explicit, before the event. Before we were able to have online contact in real time, Christine would telephone or email with details of her intention. She would provide an itinerary, sketched out as accurately as circumstances allowed, and contact numbers at destination or en route wherever possible. Of course, in the pre-mobile phone era, there were always some occasions when she might not be contactable for a few hours or even more, but never, even then, had she ever simply gone out of my range without warning. This was something special, something quite unique.

I felt I had to act. I feared for her safety. I did not trust the man. From the start I felt he had asserted control, that he had fed us with precisely what he had planned, offered us no leads, presented nothing we did not already know and all of this, I felt, was so carefully executed that it must have formed part of a broader strategy, a bigger game, if you like, probably one as much imposed on him as devised by him.

From the very start I had consistently expressed the view that Cartwright was a mere front, a public face - a not so public face! - and an innocuous one at that, for a consortium of oligarchs bent on securing ownership and control of assets without the need for explicit declaration of their identity. And everything that had happened since Christine’s arrival had, for me, only confirmed this view. Cartwright had told us nothing new because he had nothing to tell. The bogus research that had given rise to the bogus mathematics he had deliberately presented to the camera was, put simply, bogus. It was already six days since Christine had arrived and he had yet to switch on his personal computer, despite his claim that he only went to his island to work. And yet our communications team was telling us that trading in his name on multiple international markets was continuing without interruption, with the number of deals completed each day hardly changing. He had, of course, claimed that his systems were fully automated and could therefore operate without any human intervention, let alone his own, but an alternative analysis might suggest that Cartwright’s trading was done by his associates, and that this was why it could continue despite his being otherwise engaged.

My decision to raise the alarm was taken quickly: this I am quite willing to acknowledge. But the decision was justified, as things developed, since Cartwright and Christine did not reappear that day, nor that night. By the time the sun went down, I was convinced we would never see Christine again. She had left without her luggage, her laptop, notepad or mobile phone. I recognise that she had worn her prosthesis, and had taken time before she left to put it on, meaning that she could also easily have picked up her phone or a change of clothes, neither of which she did. But this recognition offered no reassurance and I grew steadily more convinced with the passing of each hour that her departure and the terms imposed upon it were dictated by Cartwright, and that she had followed his instructions to the letter under duress and out of fear. Her wearing the prosthesis was, on reflection, essential. In order to leave the house, she had to climb down the house-pole ladder, a task she could simply not have attempted using only her arms and one leg. This, along with the assumed secrecy and complete lack of words shared between them, convinced me that she had been threatened, albeit quietly, and thus forced to comply. There was simply no other explanation.

I did not sleep that night, since I had already instigated an emergency. But as dawn began to glimmer across my screens above the distant horizon and there remained no hint of return, I became convinced that my analysis would prove correct. The sun rose, and then the sky clouded over. A wind got up and then there was rain. All the microphones could register was the incessant drumming of constant drops and the only views available were obscured by those unbroken rivulets of falling water as they drained off the roof. Several times during the day, these coalesced into a near-sheet that completely distorted or obscured my view. I could see the interior of Cartwright’s shack, but it remained empty. As emergency procedure demanded, I filed a status request every two hours to record no change.

It rained all day and continued after dark until nine o’clock local time. The wind was still gusting, and the sea probably remained uncomfortable, if not necessarily dangerous, as it had been earlier, for a craft the size of Cartwright’s water taxi. I could see little through the night, but the sky cleared and a moon rose, so reflections on the sea told me that it was still almost as rough as it had been throughout the storm. I had no idea, of course, of Cartwright’s intentions, so I could not even speculate if the weather had played a part in their non-return.

***

There have been scares in the past, for sure, but they have never reached the status of ‘emergency’. Presumably, you can familiarise yourselves with any details after checking the special actions section of Christine’s file, so here I will only make scant reference to a couple of incidents, to indicate just how different the current events had been, thus prompting my action.

There was the time in the Middle East, when Christine was investigating the role of private armies. She feared she may have been abducted, when in fact she was merely being chauffeured at gunpoint. She could have immediately instigated her own emergency code, since she had her phone in her bag, and it predated the era when possession of a mobile phone was simply assumed, so her chauffeur had not checked for its presence. She could easily have fiddled in her bag and pressed out her code, but she did not, and neither did I. The situation was clearly developing and, though we had not anticipated a greeting from six men carrying an automatic weapon each, it was not so out of character of the area to warrant anything other than careful monitoring.

On another occasion, well before we had real-time surveillance capability and, in this case, even mobile phone coverage because of the location, she had actually been convinced she was about to be shot. She was travelling with an army patrol, a trip she had negotiated locally with the commander, so no authorities or higher command even knew she was there. The point of the report was to catalogue the activities of that particular individual, the commander himself, since he had been identified by others as something of a maverick. The commander, with his detachment of soldiers, none of whom wore uniform or insignia, by the way, despite being a unit of the regular army, set off in their truck to patrol an area that had seen extra-judicial killings, as they tend to be described. Well, they were ambushed by guerrillas. These extra-judicial killings were attributed to this particular military group by certain local opinion, and the men with the machine guns were out for vengeance.

Christine explained later how she expected a hail of fire to start, there and then. She was already covering her face with her arms, an action as futile as it was unavoidable, when nothing happened. The men around her seemed not to react. She described how they neither surrendered nor capitulated, panicked or resisted. What they did, surprisingly, was negotiate. It took a couple of hours. Some money changed hands, also. Christine got no clear view of what happened on that score, unlike her take on the eventual bullet through the head of the commander, which she was requested to witness, but not film. His men had decided that he was expendable and had handed him over to secure passage for the rest of the party. The shot was delivered from close range and blew the man’s head off. She was asked to photograph the result and publish it, as evidence of yet another extra-judicial killing. The T-shirt and shorts that had formed his non-uniform were clearly visible, but the bandana he had tied across his forehead was not. The soldiers, of course, blamed the guerrillas, and so Christine could never have argued a different story, since it would have been one voice against many.

On another occasion, we lost contact with Chris for a full week as she trekked through mountains with freedom fighters in Central Asia, but beforehand she had warned us that this might happen. When it did, however, the absence proved prolonged, two days longer than the outside estimate she had placed on the trip. But when I took advice on the proposed route, even though it was only a roughest of guesses as to where they might have headed, the report indicated that it would take considerably longer than Chris had estimated. Thus I did not panic and did not request any special monitoring. And she turned up, of course, late, but intact.

None of these incidents, nor any other situation that had arisen during any of her assignments, had ever prompted my intervention, and certainly none had even suggested an emergency call. But on this occasion, six days into the One-On-One assignment to Cartwright’s island, I felt I had to act. There was no indication whatsoever of her whereabouts. Other crises had her leaving an area of general and operational surveillance to enter somewhere with only restricted or even zero cover. One-On-One was almost an inverse, in that all the coverage we had was on Cartwright’s island, a place with physical and communication limits, boundaries that separated it from the rest of the planet where normal surveillance pertained. This was the contradiction. Anything that Christine might take with her, anything she might use anywhere, except on that tiny island, would fix her position and tell us what she was doing. But anything that might assist us she had left behind, and it is simply not possible she did that deliberately.

As far as we were concerned, the assignment was to arrive at Cartwright’s island, do the interviews and get out. He had offered a number of locations, but we had been unanimous in our opinion that the island would offer the best backdrop, since it would further enable us to emphasise the line we wanted, which was to stress Cartwright’s isolation and thus willingness to act either alone, or with scant regard for what he knew others were doing in his name. There always was to be wriggle-room, of course, because we had no idea whether he would cooperate or obstruct. And the longer it took, the more we expected Christine to exercise discretion on all aspects of her brief. She was on the spot and it was her job to secure what we wanted to achieve. The final say, thus, was always with her.

But on this occasion, Christine had full coverage, complete protection. She had full audio and visual, plus permanent internet contact if needed. She was on-line when mobile, courtesy of the micro-systems in her sunglasses and she carried a very smart phone the size of a biscuit. For her to have gone missing at all, she must have made a deliberate decision to do so, which was behaviour so out of character I had to reject it as a possibility. The only other possible explanation involved coercion by Cartwright, probably involving a direct physical threat. This also meant that Cartwright must have been fully aware from the start of all the systems we had in place, which indicates either the extent of the power of those behind him, or possibly of collusion from within our own services. My only option, clearly, was to signal an emergency. If nothing else, it would force several agencies to report, and then, I suggest, we ought to be able, by noticing activity or more especially inactivity, to identify the location and identity of Cartwright’s support.

And then the hours passed. They became a day and another night, and then another day. And what was even more galling was that my emergency flag was flying throughout, but thus far it had apparently not been noticed. Christine had crossed no border, certainly no border with an immigration check. She had booked no transport ticket, nor paid for anything that cost more than the ten dollars in cash that she had left after paying for her taxi to the hotel on day one. She had made no phone calls, nor had she accessed the internet, for if she had she would surely have immediately visited a trusted site to post an innocuous but coded message to reassure us. Her email accounts remained unaccessed. In our world, it is really quite difficult for an individual, going about normal daily business, to achieve anonymity. To be realised, invisibility has to be pursued actively and, as far as we were concerned, Christine Gardiner had simply disappeared, and had stayed that way for over two days.

But Cartwright had done the same. None of his cars had been on the road, of that we were certain. I placed a specific note alongside my emergency request to trigger searches on plate recognition for traffic cameras worldwide. We knew he owned vehicles in six countries, but none of them moved. In the event, since no border crossing or travel data was generated, the only ones he might have used would have been those he kept over on the mainland. But nothing moved, including those resources most easily available to him. And, as in Christine’s case, nothing whatsoever linked to his identity registered: there were no financial transactions, no communications and no travel.

***

I have spent another day staring at the unchanging scene. An empty house is still empty. The weather has changed again, and we are back to the heavy, bulbous white clouds floating like foam on sky-water. The scene, and along with it my mood, hardly changes. I continue to fear the worst and have communicated my belief that One-On-One is probably finished, a failure, aborted, undermined. My only concern, of course, is where Chris might be, and what might have happened to her. I cannot imagine that Cartwright would harm her, because he has nothing to gain and everything to lose. And it remains essential I stay on task, because what I want can only be found by understanding and then predicting Cartwright’s moves.

I continue to scan the horizon, at least that part of it that crosses over to the mainland, but nothing significant passes by. There are the usual water taxis bouncing over the swell, and an occasional rusted fishing boat, hung about with nets, cranes, ropes and jibs on its way to wherever a living might be made. The aircraft-like ferries speed their crossings to and fro, their timetables already etched in my expectations. By now, I can even identify the likely route from the company livery. They are all, no doubt, full of travellers, all of whom have checked out of their origin port legally. They will have booked their tickets, and so will appear on the trip’s manifest, and they will have paid using plastic, and thus created transaction records on financial systems. In several ways, therefore, they will all have been scanned by the procedures my emergency request has instigated, and none of them is Christine. I know that already, for if any of them had been, the details would already have appeared on the screen to my right, which records any status change on targeted data. There remains nothing, nothing to report, merely people going about their lives which, it seems, is the very stuff of our business, the stuff of our files.

It is inevitable, I suppose, that in this half-awareness of total concentration, my mind should drift again to that night in an Oxford college, a night that had been all but erased from my memory until brought disturbingly back to the fore by the injection of Cartwright’s comments. Christine can only remember it vaguely, which is hardly surprising, since she was smashed out of her mind at the time, though happy, before she slept. I recall that just a few weeks earlier, when we had first met at the freshers’ party (we used to use such words in those days!), I had nodded towards the glass she had just drained of its brown stuff and offered to refill it with what I presumed was Bacardi and Coke. It was a drink we thought was cool at the time, obviously well before it became a staple of the disco. I remember being taken aback, quite literally stopped in my tracks, when she called after me with, “Pepsi, just Pepsi.” She didn’t even drink.

It was a couple of weeks later that I had first suggested she add a little something else to her usual tipple. As far as I saw things, the sooner she fell in with general practice, the sooner she could put behind her all the fears her amputation had brought, fears that were still so close to the surface that they were obvious from the moment we met. If only she could begin to behave like it had never happened - at least mentally - then surely she would overcome it. I had not expected her to take to the new regime with quite the gusto she displayed, however.

On that Saturday in November, the knock on the door, and the panicking porter who had made it, could have done much damage to all of us. Yes, we were being irresponsible. Yes, we had been stupid. Yes, we were in breach of college rules. Yes, we had broken the law. If the book that would be thrown at us might open at any page, it seemed, the answer to the question, “Can we do them?” would have been “Yes.” But that evening, all I know was that after a couple in a local pub, we had come back to Christine’s rooms and had stayed there. What we had been doing inside, behind closed doors and literally shuttered windows was our business and ours alone. Whatever fracas outside in the street had brought the police to the compound’s perimeter had absolutely nothing to do with us. It might have happened in the street just in front of Christine’s rooms, but there was a garden in between, and her windows were a good twenty yards from the railings. Whatever was happening out there, an attempted break-in, a drunk trying to fight, it was quite immaterial as far as we were concerned, even though the man might have indicated, or so the porter claimed, that he was heading for Christine’s rooms. The problem was on the street, and I was determined it was to stay there. And in any case, as I have already indicated, Christine and I were not around that weekend, having gone off on our first trip away together to somewhere unspecified in the New Forest, under the cover of a visit to my mother in the ancestral home. At least that’s what I asked her to tell whoever rang, and her words were merely confirmed by the entry in the porter’s ledger.

My quick thinking did change our lives. It protected our status at Oxford, and thus allowed us to continue as before. We stayed clean. And that was four decades ago, four decades that the ensuing unbreakable partnership between Anthony Green, PhD and Christine Gardiner, MA had survived. But now that partnership, both professional and personal, was probably broken and certainly in crisis.

***

“It looked like a compost heap and smelled like shit.”

They were back, emergency cancelled, hell to pay, no doubt...

They had been away for more than four days when, late that afternoon, Cartwright’s water taxi took the swell as it progressed slowly and unwaveringly towards his rocky home. It was arriving from the island port, where they had probably stopped off to buy more supplies. Three hours earlier I thought I had seen the characteristic stripes of his boat passing across my vision from right to left, indicating they had come from the joined estuaries of the two great rivers whose confluence was hidden from my view, behind several mangrove-knitted islands, between which boats sped through the avenues of nipa fronds. I had no idea where they might have been and wondered if anyone else, apart from themselves, did.

“It’s the biggest flower on the planet. It’s unique.” He was checking the boat’s securing ropes on the balcony when he stopped and thought. “Okay, let’s correct that before you quote me. It’s the world’s biggest single bloom.”

“It’s like being taken to see someone’s domestic waste.” Christine seemed less than impressed, but clearly they were both in a good mood.

“And it only flowers once a blue moon.”

“Can I quote you on that one?”

Cartwright smiled with mock-impatience.

“In that case, I won’t be hanging around for the next blue moon.”

There was a short pause. They had not stopped talking since their arrival, the above representing mere paraphrase of their platitudes. This time Christine had clambered up the ladder from the boat, and she had done it with surprising confidence, once Cartwright’s support from below had been assured. It appeared that she had ceased to fear such tasks and was willing to take whatever time it took to achieve the end she desired. She had arrived wearing her false leg, which in one respect made things more difficult, since it presented merely a weight to be lifted. But wearing it, she was able to plant it, with its joints fixed, on a ladder rung and then almost lean against its support for the instant it took to lift and bend her right leg onto the next rung. Though Cartwright steadied her tread, I could see her behaviour adapting to accommodate activities that were gradually transforming into the commonplace. Cartwright took the precaution of giving her a rope as well, but, had she slipped, it would probably have broken her back, since she tied it around her waist. They had arrived with another treasure trove of black and blue plastic bags, which Cartwright began to unload as soon as Christine was safely on the balcony. They chatted at a near shout as he attached a rope to each bag and asked her to pull it up. He did test the weight of each one before asking her to lift and she had pulled up three before she pointed out that she was doing all the work. He laughed. Then, job completed, he rejoined her on the veranda, where they sat for a few minutes to drink water.

“Will you want to eat again?”

“Tonight? No. That was enough to keep me going for a week. The steamed fish was superb.”

“Steamed grouper with ginger... always a favourite.”

“It smelled a good deal better than your flower...”

Cartwright laughed again and there followed a long pause, while between them they drank the better part of a two litre bottle of water that had arrived in one of the bags. It was mineral water, and shop-purchased, since I had heard Cartwright break a seal. This was clearly a concession to Christine’s tastes. After draining his glass and setting it down on the table between the chairs where they sat, he stretched out and gave a giant yawn. Christine giggled and leaned across to slap him playfully on the arm. Only she knows why she did it. “There is quite a boundary in sensory perception...”

Silence followed. Christine was still holding her glass, but not drinking, merely cradling it to her midriff in private comfort. “Now I wish I had said that,” she said, disinterestedly.

Cartwright continued in his over-stated, overtly relaxed pose. He had closed his eyes. His upper half was in the veranda’s shade, while his stretched out leg caught the afternoon sun. “Jasmine,” he mumbled, sounding half asleep, the incongruity obviously deliberate.

Christine turned a little to her left. “Was she another of your old flames?”

“I meant the flower, you idiot.”

“How was I to know? And I’m not an idiot. Arsehole.”

Cartwright laughed. “I was talking about sensory perception.”

“And Jasmine didn’t set your senses alight?”

Cartwright sat up a little and shook his head. “Communication is always most acute when its absence is obvious.”

“Now there’s a line.”

“I meant the flower, jasmine. It smells.”

“The world has noted this.”

“Hardly, it seems, if you are a representative of that world.”

“I think I have noticed the smell of jasmine.”

“Describe it.”

Christine really did have to think for a moment. “It’s perfumed, sweet.”

“To describe a smell as perfumed is an obvious tautology.”

“Sorry... an obvious sin...”

“Perfumed just means it has a smell. The question really asks you to relate what you think it smells like. What does the smell of jasmine remind you of? Imagine you are one of those pretentious wine connoisseurs who sniffs a glass and then never says it smells of grapes.”

“I told you, it smells sweet.”

“Like sugar?”

“If you like.”

“But sugar is a non-volatile solute. It doesn’t have a smell.”

“It smells sweet.”

“Christine, it doesn’t smell!” He half turned towards her and a pause added emphasis. “Is that all you can say on behalf of jasmine?” He paused and became suddenly animated, sitting up in his chair a little and taking hold of Christine’s left arm across the gap above the table that separated them. He pulled a little, and their two stumps formed a natural pivot which, without legs in between to stabilise them, caused them both to overbalance. Their shoulders met in a gentle collision and, on perfect cue, Cartwright’s arm lifted over her head to stretch around her back and take hold under her right arm, just touching the breast. “Imagine,” he continued, more quickly, “that the two of us are on holiday - somewhere exotic, Majorca, for instance - and we are out walking at sunset.” She had already wriggled almost free of his arm. “It’s pleasantly warm and we have just had steamed grouper for dinner.”

“As we have done.”

He nodded. “And we are strolling home. We have just left the beach behind us and we are strolling towards our tourist apartment to do what holiday makers do. We pass beneath the curling stalks of flowering jasmine. We breathe in...” He took a theatrically-deep breath that whistled in his nose. “And there is the smell. Describe it.”

“Sweet. Perfumed.”

Cartwright let go of her and slumped down in his chair. “You’ve got the imagination of a tailor’s dummy.”

“And a similar number of limbs.”

They both laughed.

“Has it ever occurred to you that the smell of jasmine is quite remarkably like the smell of sewers? Sweet, yes, but also decaying, reminiscent of overripe fruit.”

“Can’t say I’ve noticed...” Christine paused for a moment. I can always tell when my wife is thinking. “Tom, there are perfumes, expensive eaus de cologne, even brand names for every cosmetic under the sun that contain the word ‘jasmine’. Are you telling me that they are happy to be associated with the whiff of sewers?”

“The trouble is, Chris, that you have no imagination.”

“Tom, if names are de rigueur..:”

“Haji Salleh, if you don’t mind.”

“Fuck off! I’m not going through that charade again! Tom! Tom! Tom! Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom! Tom-tom! I don’t need an imagination to smell sewers. And I guarantee that the jasmine-flavoured eau de cologne on my dressing table in London SW7 - oh how I long for it! - does not smell one little bit of toilets.”

Cartwright laughed. “Thank you, Miss Gardiner, for your thoughtful contribution.”

Christine turned to her left and slapped him hard, leaning across with her right arm so she could flat-palm him on the crown of his head.

“I’m serious,” he said, moving sharply to his left and laughing. There is little that is more embarrassing to witness than a pair of third-agers behaving like teenagers. “It’s by design. There is a sweetness in the odour, but it is still reminiscent of sewers, of decay.” He was back to his normal seated position now. Christine turned to refill the water glass she had just upset. “It’s all about attraction. The plant needs insects, because they are going to visit the flowers and pollinate them. The jasmines - especially the night flowering types - specialise in the same types of insects that are attracted to decaying things, hence the smell, which is reminiscent of sewers.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

He turned to look at her and gave her a perfunctory tap on the arm with his right hand. “That’s what everyone says when they don’t believe a word of what’s being said.”

“Probably. And keep your hands to yourself. You don’t know where they might have been.”

“I’m serious. It’s the same with the flower up in the forest. It smells of decay to attract the insects it wants.”

“How can you say, ‘It wants?’ The plant hasn’t sat around trying out the whole tropical rain forest range of perfumes and then consciously opted for the bottle branded, ‘Sewers and Shit’.”

“But that’s the whole point.” Christine looked perplexed. “That’s what we call evolution. Once upon a time there were probably loads of different plants with myriads of different smells. This particular approach, however, is marked out from the others by proving to be relatively successful, indicated by the survival of the species. It’s called evolution.”

“I’d hardly call a few specimens embedded deep in an inaccessible forest as being particularly successful.”

“In biological terms, it may be rather specialised, but it has its niche.”

“And where we went is not supposed to be its niche. Is that correct?”

“Correct. We went over there.” He pointed to some indeterminate place directly off the balcony. We went up that river[5], changed boats, of course, took the left fork after the rapids and then parked about a kilometre up the tributary. You will then remember that we walked.”

“How could I forget?”

“You do make a meal of things...”

“Tom... Tom, I have only one leg, precisely one leg!”

“It has been known...”

“Shut up! I have one leg. I have never been one for forest trekking, and you drag me halfway up a mountain, where there isn’t even a proper path. Then you tell me not to pull myself up using the plants because they are poisonous...”

“Not all of them.”

“But not having a PhD in botany means that they are all potential threats! I don’t know which one I can grab and which one I can’t!”

“It’s best to avoid the thorns.”

“Oh, screw you!” She turned again to slap him, but he ducked away to his left. “There’s no wonder it took a day and a half to get up there. Seriously, Tom, how long would it normally take you?”

“A few hours.”

“When we set off I thought we might be away for half a day. I didn’t even take a change of clothes...”

“But you enjoyed yourself?”

Christine scowled, but also smiled. She clearly had.

“As I was saying... we went up a river and then to the top of a hill, where we found our flower...”

Christine interrupted. “...having stayed overnight to look at a pile of compost that smells of shit. And we got bitten to death in the process. There’s tourism for you.”

“But it only flowers at night. You have to be there overnight to see it at all. And timing is everything, because each time the flower only lasts a few days.”

“Big deal. Pile of shit if you ask me.”

“Christine...”

She laughed. Her manner had been consistently and aggressively playful throughout. Every comment was delivered tongue in cheek, but with latent joy. There was no other way to describe her manner, except perhaps near-ecstatic. I do remember seeing her in such a mood, but it was certainly many years ago. I was already starting to regret sending my second email.

“Seriously, Tom, it was a wonderful trip. The destination could have been pleasanter, but it scored on originality. But I really didn’t expect to be away for four days...”

“You were a little slow in the forest.”

“I wasn’t slow. I was often stationary, trying to think how I might take the next step, just one. And I was often baffled.”

“But you got there.”

“I did. I did indeed. I got there.” They were both silent for a moment. It was a reflective silence, like the respect that Russians share before a departure. “Precisely where I got, I cannot be sure.”

“Well, look over there.” He raised his arm to point directly off the balcony towards the forested horizon. “Over there, up to the north is where we see the big mountain every morning and evening.” Christine squinted as she strained to see over the balcony rail. “Now move a little south, five degrees or so. We were on that line, on which is also, eventually, the national park that runs south from the mountain, a place famous for its groups of tourists trekking up hill and down dale in search of a blooming flower of the type you and I have just seen.”

She stayed quite silent.

“Don’t you see what I have been hinting at?”

“See what? I was hoping we might get a chance to dissect this most recent experience you have inflicted on me. It didn’t take me until the fourth day of the escapade to begin asking why the hell we had set off in the first place. I was drenched before we had reached the coastline. I was covered in mud from head to toe at least a dozen times. I fell so many times I stopped counting. I was bitten to pieces, came close to drowning several times, almost lost my remaining limbs, encountered a number of snakes, had my blood sucked by leeches, got stuck up to my knee in a swamp, quicksand, no doubt, and to cap it all lost at least two night’s sleep. And all to see a compost heap that smelled of shit. And I didn’t even take a change of clothes.”

“You don’t need a change of clothes when the ones you are wearing can be washed - and get washed! - at least ten times a day. And you have already learned that when you walk in this part of the world, the concept of dry clothing is just that, a concept, one that never occurs in reality.”

“But why? I’ve tried to ask you just about every hour of every day since we left. I can understand why we might have called in at your home over there so I could meet your wife and family. Now that did help me assemble a picture of Tom Cartwright, the man, the family man, that had been lacking thus far. But why on earth did we then set off up that river?”

“Look, Chris. You have come here to examine just why I can be so lucky, extraordinarily so, in my market trades. I have told you repeatedly that it’s not luck, but also that, in the normal way we express such things, it’s not planning either.”

“Flowers, smells, sewers, financial markets, uncountable wealth... I begin to see the connections...” Her tone was facetious. Cartwright scoffed. She continued. “I am beginning to think that we must be participants in some bizarre, reality-television, random association exercise.”

Cartwright sat bolt upright and then leaned forward. His tone became theatrical and his My Fair Lady voice sounded practiced, but only partially convincing. “My God, I think she’s got it!”

Christine stopped him again as he laughed, her outstretched arm grabbed his right wrist. “Got what, you idiot? It feels like you are trying to torture me!”

“You used the God word, Chris,” he said, half turning towards her in his seat, a momentary overbalancing on the stump of his right leg causing his voice to reach a passing falsetto. “The God word unlocks everything. You said it: ‘random’, unless I was mistaken.”

Christine looked merely confused. The words, ‘then it is all a matter of luck’ were waiting to be spoken, but remained unsaid.

“How do you think I was able to take you to a place where no textbook says you can find something as noticeable as the world’s biggest flower, a rarity even where it’s supposed to be common? Do you think I plucked the place and time out of a map and a calendar at random, and then had you trek up a mountain for three days on the off chance that we might see something? Think about it, Chris, the flower we saw probably isn’t there tonight because it’s already died back. I was that specific.”

She thought for a moment. “Local knowledge?”

“Okay, I accept that plays a part and a big part. But in this case its role is largely functional. There are lots of people with local knowledge hereabouts, but only I knew there would be flowering plants in that location.” He paused again to point at the distant horizon, roughly towards the north-east. “The best-known area for the plants is over there. That’s where the tourists trek through national park in search of their prey. Now if you go there and look around, you will notice other species, sub-species, terrain types, topology et cetera et cetera... The pollinators, the ones that our plant likes, also like these other characteristics of the place. That’s why they live there. And where the pollinators prevail, so does our plant, and thus it flowers. Now I have spent a few decades tramping these forests and rivers, but I am a mathematician, not a botanist or a biologist. I have looked around with a mathematician’s eye, and an eye with a keen interest in the relationship between the random and the particular, event and non-event, circumstance and contradiction.”

“It started like logic and finished like theology. Could you translate, please?”

He laughed and leaned across to pat her arm again. “I don’t want to patronise you, dear.” He was now speaking to her as if he had known her all his life. “I took you up there to see the flower to prove to you that I knew it would be there, this week, in that place. It’s what I have been working on for some time, what I have been doing back there since you arrived.” A gesture of the thumb over his left shoulder indicated his office inside. I presumed he was now referring to the papers of scribble our specialists had consistently described as gibberish.

“Wait... wait...” Christine was clearly not following this. She was not alone. “How could you be sure? You told me that the plant is not even catalogued as living in that area.”

“Precisely. Just because someone has not seen something, there is no reason to assume it doesn’t exist, especially with our plant, which for most of its existence is invisible, because it’s a parasite that lives inside its host. It only shows itself when it flowers, and that’s only for a day or two.”

“So it can be there all the time, but most people miss it.?”

“Precisely.”

“So you are telling me that you knew the plant lived there in a place where no-one else has recorded it?”

He nodded. “Precisely.”

“...and you also knew it was about to flower... and you took us to the exact place to record the fact...”

He nodded and then spoke quietly, as he looked directly across the wide channel before them. “Nails have been firmly knocked on the head. Well done.”

Christine smiled at him alongside a shake of the head. It was a gesture that expressed both acceptance and familiarity, blended with affection and profound disbelief. “Are you clairvoyant or something? The something being dilettante, perhaps?” she asked, her choice of terms obviously calculated to provoke.

“As I have told you, Chris, it’s a question of trading off the two concepts of randomness and expectation. I have scrambled through these forests over the decades. And in recent times I have become engrossed in the possibility that my ideas might be applied to biological systems, as well as to the easier-to-predict world of finance.”

Christine was listening with intent interest, but offered only the merest nod in response.

“I have been sharing data and techniques with researchers in biology and then chose a problem I thought might be solvable, a problem where such a solution would be both definitive and demonstrable.”

“...such as identifying a place where the flower is thought not to exist, but yet it does.”

He stopped, pausing abruptly as if replaying her words. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “not at all. End of stick, wrong one, you have got. The whole point is that it has to be there. It’s not a case of ‘thought to exist’: it’s more like no-one has bothered to look.” He paused. She was rapt. “Everything, habitat, associated species, nutrient, climate, chemistry, rainfall, temperature, et cetera, everything, if you like, most things, most important things, if you are realistic, are there, and so what I am looking for is also likely to be there. People have been looking for oil and gas in such a manner, at least partially, for generations. I didn’t find the flower at random. Neither did I know it would be there. But it was more than merely worth a try. Now translate that approach to financial matters, apply a little Black-Scholes equation on the side, but as a mere tool, and Robert becomes avuncular.”

Christine had framed the question some time before. It still troubled her. “But Tom, that’s all the other pundits do, surely... And they are nowhere near as successful as you have been... And one smelly flower doesn’t make a sewage farm...”

“Again, like everyone else, Chris, you miss the point. What I do might look like what others do, at least superficially, sometimes, and from some perspectives.” He got up from his chair and began to hop purposefully towards the back of the house. He was a man in a hurry.

“And while you’re there, get me a drink, will you? The usual.” Christine was making a good show of trying to enjoy herself. My heart leapt a little as she turned to her right to retrieve the laptop she had obviously not used for some days. She had stored it in the sealed plastic bag that our logisitics people had wisely demanded should travel with it. This was clearly to be the crunch time.

By the time Cartwright returned, somehow carrying a tray laden with heavy items, Christine’s machine was halfway through its start-up process. He had not even spilled her drink, as he had hopped his way in his little shuffles across the bamboo floor all the way from the back of the house. He set the glass down on the table between their chairs.

“Look,” he said, standing before her and placing the tray and the rest of its contents on his own chair. “Now most people are absolutely useless at this. Let’s see if you can do it.”

Christine took a long, slow and satisfied sip of her drink, and let out an audible, slightly ecstatic sigh, as Cartwright began to perform before her. He reached down to the tray to select a lemon, which he held up, calyx first, for her perusal.

“What can you see?”

“A lemon.”

He dropped his hands to his sides in desperation. A glance skyward was surely an appeal for help. “I know it’s a fucking lemon...”

“Then why did you ask me?”

He muttered under his breath.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.” He was fighting off an impatience that was largely theatrical. “Chris, please place your mind in conceptual mode. Please exclude the literal from this exercise. I’m a mathematician. I deal in shapes, ideas, relationships...” He held up the lemon again, calyx first. “What shape do you see?”

“It’s a circle...more or less,” said Chris, her conclusion almost triumphal.

Cartwright gave gentle applause. He placed the lemon on the balustrade, its long axis along the rail. He then took up the gin bottle, which was of a variety rarely seen in shops at home, an upmarket brand named after birds. It was a plain, clear-glass bottle that he held before her, but with its bottom pointing towards her. “And this shape?”

“A circle.”

He stood the bottle upright on the balustrade next to the lemon.

“Be careful with that,” she said, self-interest getting the better of her continued participation.

Cartwright then took up a soft-drink can from his tray. Again he presented this end-on towards Christine.

“Circle,” she said, without prompt.

“You’re getting the hang of it.”

Next was a coconut.

“Circle.”

And then there was a rambutan.

“I suppose it’s a circle ... but a hairy one.”

Impatiently, he peeled the fruit, throwing the hairy red skin into the sea. He then held up the soft white pulp before Christine’s now rapt gaze.

“Now it’s a circle,” she said with a primary school teacher’s patronising nod.

He placed the fruit on the balcony rail, alongside the other items.

“Now tell me where you see a circle.”

Christine pointed towards the soft white ball of rambutan flesh. “It’s not exact, but it is the answer you want me to give.”

“Brilliant!” he said. “You see, even you can do it. You can read my mind!”

“If only... if only... You were just the same on the bowling green when you were eighteen. You couldn’t just bowl the ball and accept where it finished. You would dash after it, bring it back, try again, get worked up, repeat the process, get angry, do it all over again... And then the groundsman would come and play hell with you for trampling his grass.”

Cartwright stood next to his admixture of objects, almost proud. Christine was clearly mystified.

“Can I eat the rambutan?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said and passed it to her. It went whole into her mouth. The stone appeared in her palm a few seconds later.

“Now that’s perfumed,” she said, “and not a hint of sewage.”

“And now there are no circles,” he said, gesturing toward the assemblage.

“Now I’ll eat the coconut.”

“Christine, listen. This is serious. A moment ago these were all circles, weren’t they? How is it that there are now no circles in view?”

“Because I am not looking at the parts that are circles?”

“Correct!”

Christine offered the sort of look that a mother reserves for her three-year-old’s artwork. Cartwright laughed and began to replace the items onto his tray which, when loaded, he placed on the floor next to his chair.

“So?”

“The two dimensions I presented to you prompted you to admit you saw a circle each time. In the real world, as real as we may perceive it unaided, a third dimension complicated each object so that their commonality of circularity became obscured. Thus you no longer recognised their similarity, but it was still there and your memory confirmed it, despite the fact that you could no longer see it.” His short pause performed the function of starting a new paragraph. “I deal with something called event theory. Much modern work in the area uses significantly more than three dimensions. I am talking dimensions,” he said, half-turning towards her, finger raised in emphasis, “and not variables.”

“The confusion never crossed my mind...” she said.

“In modelling the appearance or not of that flower, there are literally thousands of possible variables that could be taken into account. About fifty are crucial, in my estimation, and some of them are dependent...”

“I’m losing you...”

“They vary together, not independently, so they can be combined. But the effects of all these variables can only be understood - properly understood - if they are modelled in multiple dimensions, in the same way that cosmologists model the universe as a whole. Then, when we reduce our view, in other words restrict the dimensions we consider, then patterns emerge. And the patterns, though complex, repeat. Of course, they are far more complex than the circles to which these objects reduced, but they are clear and recognisable, if you know what you are looking for and where to find them. Knowing that they repeat and working back to the conditions upon which they do repeat, future behaviour becomes statistically predictable.”

Christine was trying to absorb his words. “Dimensions...”

Cartwright motioned towards his tray of objects. “These were interpreted in three dimensions, four if we include time, because it has played its part in how you saw them. I currently work in seventeen dimensions, a few more than cosmologists currently use to model the universe.”

“And the circles? The patterns?”

“Our circles were revealed in two dimensions, which was a reduction from the original three, or four if we include time, since when you see the bottle determines what you see, just as much as its attitude or position. You saw circles when we reduced the objects to a two-dimensional view. So you see a circle on the end only, a bottle shape from the side and very little by the time it’s empty.”

Christine turned to hit him, again. They were behaving like a pair of children. Christine’s laptop was now fully loaded.

“You never asked me for a password to connect to the internet.”

“I don’t need one. I have a roving facility.”

“It must be a damned good facility to rove out to this place.”

“You were saying... the patterns..:”

“You saw circles in two dimensions, reduced from the four. My patterns happen in every reduction below seventeen, apart from one, of course, because you cannot reduce that.”

Christine tapped away at her keyboard and then stopped abruptly. She turned to look at him as her screen loaded her email client. “You mean to tell me that when your systems operate, they deal with hundreds of variables...”

“...some of them are dependent, but yes...okay, hundreds...”

“They deal with hundreds of variables in seventeen dimensions and then you analyse the lot to search for patterns in two, three, four ... up to sixteen dimensions?”

Cartwright nodded. “I underestimated you,” he said.

“That’s ridiculous.”

He paused. “What? My underestimation of you or my system?”

“Both. But your systems sound quite incredible, meaning not credible.”

“I know. That’s why they have to be distributed across tens of thousands of computers, each of which carries out a few basic calculations. One dedicated machine could never manage it, especially since the system also requires, on occasions, that results are obtained as near as damn it simultaneously, meaning that they have to be generated faster than any possible computer could generate them, no matter how fast it is.”

“And then your patterns appear and that tells you what to trade.”

“You are very bright, Christine.” He looked down at her laptop. “Or you may have been well briefed... There is a message from your husband, if Tony Green is his name. It’s on top of the list.”

“Noting wrong with your eyesight, then,” said Christine, doing a professional job of hiding her surprise.

Fortunately, Christine then angled the laptop away from Cartwright’s gaze. He raised his hands in mock innocence and turned away.

“I wouldn’t want to intrude on domestic affairs.”

“Why did you not tell us you were going, you stupid idiot? You’ll be the death of both of us if we blow this one. I have put you onto emergency notification. Wherever you are, please contact me. Now. Tony,” is what she read from the screen when she opened my message

“Bastard,” is what she said.

***

I had not slept for four days. I had anticipated their return at the passing of every minute of every one of those days. When it came, it took me by surprise. I had dozed off and awoken only as they were in the process of unloading themselves and their goodies from the boat. But I missed nothing, since there was always an opportunity to replay what had gone before.

Regretfully, I had sent that email in a fit of panic a full two days before. Just like the last one, I had rued what I did from the moment I hit the ‘Send’ button. I was confused, clearly confused. If Christine had logged on to her email account, from anywhere, then my emergency tracking, which was already in place, would have picked it up. She couldn’t read the message without logging in, so what I did was entirely redundant. But it made me feel better, and I still needed to send it. I had to send it. I could feel her drifting away from our task.

She replied immediately, naturally. With Cartwright standing there in front of her, probably able to see the movement of her fingers on the keyboard, his vision no doubt of the same superhuman quality as his physique, it would have been suspicious if she had not immediately responded. Her reply, needless to say, was succinct, running to just two entirely predictable words. And, I’m afraid, I became depressed. I knew I had ballsed up. The mess was of my own making and once again the word ‘incompetence’ attached itself, limpet-like, to me. I had to sleep. I knew they would carry on talking, but I had to sleep. But I didn’t sleep, of course. It all went round and round and it all made such perfect sense it had to be wrong. And by the time I was back on station they were asleep. I reviewed what they had exchanged in the meantime before they disappeared, together, behind the high and obscuring back of the couch.

“Problem?” Cartwright had asked immediately.

“No, nothing,” said Christine without pause as she typed her brief reply and mouse-clicked on ‘Send’. She then logged off and began to stow the laptop in its sealed bag.

“If you want more time, then I’ll go round the back and cook, or have a swim,” he said, without hesitation.

“No.” Her reply was ambiguous. Her mind was adrift while several silent seconds passed. She turned to him. “I want to know more about your current work. First, though, a question... Does this current focus on other things mean that your interest in predicting markets is over?”

He shrugged. “There is little more to do. You know how the theory has performed. It works. And it will continue to work, until everyone else discovers the technique. At that point, our world will be different, but the competitive advantage will be gone. I have moved on to bigger things.”

“So when we see you at work, you are concentrating only on your current interests which lie in the natural world.”

“Indeed. Who is ‘we’?”

She ignored the question. Her mistake was inexcusable. “So how did you know there would be a flower up there?”

He cleared his throat in the manner he habitually used, no doubt, before beginning one of his lectures. “In very simple terms, we have three groups of functions. One is environmental and includes everything climatic, such as temperature profiles of the area, rainfall, humidity, et cetera. And then there’s a topographical group, including measures of altitude, gradient, drainage, attitude...”

“And there’s far too much of that around, if you ask me...”

“All this means is the way the land is facing... especially relative to the sun’s travel.”

“Then why don’t you just say that?”

“I did.” He turned to face her. She was staring straight ahead, cradling her gin and tonic to her midriff, as if for comfort. “Another group of factors relate to similar concepts concerning what we currently know of the plant’s biology. When, where, how long, what frequency... What we know on the appearance of the flowers and what we know of the plant’s parasitic life in its host. Are you following me?”

“Of course. It all seems so obvious up to now.”

“Because it is obvious. It’s just that no-one has ever bothered to do it. Perhaps no-one has ever had the resources or time, or more likely the commercial motive... The life cycle of this particular plant is reasonably well documented, because it has been quite seriously studied. Most species have not and we know very little about them. We know lots of qualities, but my systems will only work with quantified data, and the more accurate the better.”

Christine was surprised. “I would have thought that scientists would have an enormous amount of research data about almost everything.”

Cartwright stiffened theatrically in his chair. “I am not a scientist, Chris. I’m a mathematician. And as far as things natural and biological, we know hardly anything. That something happens is not knowledge until we can also answer such things as how much, how often and the like. We have an enormous amount of research and thus data about most things that can be used in warfare, or for killing people. We have very little on most other things, because no-one has ever wanted to fund the work. You can’t shoot flowers at other people, so they don’t get the study grants.” He paused for a drink of water.

“So what’s special about this plant?”

“Every plant ... and every animal for that matter ... is special.” A hand reached across the table between them to brush a forearm.

“Why does that sound like sentimental claptrap? You ought to be in a film.”

“I probably am,” he said, and withdrew the arm.

She did not respond to the offer of diversion. “The flower ... its life cycle?”

“Well, the first thing of note is that it’s a parasite. Most of the time you don’t even know it’s there, because its only existence is as a set of spores and filaments inside the stems of its unwilling host. It starts as a miniscule nodule, we think, and then it invades the whole plant.”

“And you can’t see it?”

“Exactly. Sometimes it doesn’t even seem to cause its host plant any problem, Sometimes it does.”

“It just lives inside and grows...”

“Precisely. Then at an instant that I now seem to be able to predict with a modicum of confidence, it throws out an external nodule that grows to look like an old football. It then bursts open to form the flower.”

“That smells like shit.”

“As you put it. And it’s a metre across. Its job is to attract insects, those that might be attracted to detritus...”

“I know a few people like that.”

“...and they visit the flower...”

“And then?”

“Well, the flowers are sexed.”

“I knew there’d be a complication.”

“Hardly unique, though, is it?”

Christine laughed. “If only...”

“The flowers are male or female in the species we saw. In a couple of varieties..:”

“There are varieties of that thing?” Christine sounded genuinely surprised. She was actually listening. “Do your results apply in general, then, or only to the one type?”

“Only to the one we saw. Each new species, or even variant within a species, presents a new problem. The whole analysis would have to be repeated for the technique to be applied to a different type.”

“But that’s insane...”

Cartwright paused. “That’s life, Chris. And that’s science. Everything is different until it is proven to be the same. Someone, somewhere, does the work, and if it is done properly it adds to the sum of what we all know. It only helps if the work and its products are shared. Then its findings can become assumptions upon which we build other work, other knowledge. In the process, we continually test what we already think we know and modify it if it doesn’t quite fit what we find. Welcome to knowledge. It’s pragmatic, valueless and democratic.”

“We stand on the shoulders of giants.”

“And thus ourselves become taller.”

Christine turned again to look at him. “So you are a progress man? You believe in the concept of progress?”

Cartwright looked genuinely perturbed, taken aback. He thought before answering. “It’s self-evident. If you think it isn’t, I suggest you go and interview smallpox.”

Christine’s response was measured. “But you also said it was valueless. So where does your espousal of Islam fit in?”

“I also said it was pragmatic.”

There was a long silence. He was not going to offer any more. Christine therefore back-tracked. “Male and female?”

He paused to replay memory. “As I said, there can be male and female elements on some flowers, but in our species they are distinctly either one or the other. Whatever the case, the insects have to pollinate, to transfer male bits to female bits.”

“And it’s easier if they are together on a single flower.”

“Considerably. A male flower may not bloom at the same time as the female. They may not be in the same location ... at least that’s what we thought.”

“But now your event theory, as you call it, can predict when it happens.”

“Not as such. That would be taking things off the scale. What it can do is identify a whole series of conditions, other events, circumstances, call them whatever you want, but factors is the precise term, that can come together in many different combinations. And when these happen, male and female flowers are more likely to bloom at nearly the same time and procreation follows.”

“But it’s still random.”

“Yes and no. It appears to be a random process, but that’s only because it’s being observed from a limited viewpoint. It’s not random when the mechanisms that underpin the process, though do not themselves explain it, are considered.” He stood and made his little hop towards the balcony, whose rail he grasped with his left hand. He took up his objects, still balanced there, and again presented them one by one to Christine. “Circle... Circle... Circle... Circles. Now imagine there’s a little test that these objects have to pass. Let’s imagine they have to go through a hole in the floor. Let’s imagine circular holes, square ones, irregularly shaped ones. But there’s a condition for the object to pass the test. It must just fit the hole, scrape through, if you like. It’s very hard to explain... Now imagine that each hole can get bigger or smaller as required, but it still retains its shape.”

“Then all of these things, if presented in the right attitude, will pass through a circular hole.”

“Correct. But if they fall through a big square hole, without registering their presence, touching the sides, if you like, then they won’t count.”

“What you are saying is they have to match the shape.”

“Precisely. You are getting quite good at this. The ones that fit the holes are the ones that survive.”

“And the ones that fit the most holes survive the best.”

“That’s pretty much it, Chris. Brilliant.”

“...and the trick is to catalogue all the holes you can find and then hunt around for what you think might fit through them.”

“You have been very well briefed,” he said. It was a throwaway comment, delivered as he vaulted the balcony rail so he could pause on the outside ledge before launching himself into the sea, where he swam for a full fifteen minutes.

Christine’s drink ran out and she made her own way along the balcony rail to the back to seek a refill. By the time she had negotiated the twenty metres or so of veranda with its two right angled turns each way, he was back, dripping, in his chair.

“You needed a pee,” she said as she placed her drink on the table by her still unoccupied chair. He laughed as he wrung out the end of his shorts that hung loose below the stump of his right leg.

“We have to talk about the third programme.”

“Classical music.”

Christine smiled. “Now that dates you.”

“And that will be the end of your assignment?”

“Pretty much.”

His silence was full of regret, unexpressed. “I was starting to enjoy the company.”

Christine turned to look at him. Had she been wearing glasses, her gaze would have been cast above the frames. “But what about your work? You said you come here to work, and since I came you have done hardly anything - certainly none at all in the last few days.”

He shrugged. “The work is at a stage where more of it happens here.” He tapped his forehead. “There is very little that has to be written down.”

“It had come to my notice that you don’t carry a notebook. You don’t seem to be actively involved with it. It’s not something that is with you all the time, and I find that surprising.”

“Quite the contrary, Chris.” His immediate reply was either sincere or practiced, or both. “The concepts are now so familiar they are firmly embedded in here.” There was another tap of the forehead. “I don’t write things out in full any more. I don’t need to. The ideas themselves were all worked out years ago. Since then they have combined and recombined as I have extended the dimensionality and now form a series of almost standard results, if you like, that are so thoroughly embedded in the way I think that I can recall complete pieces of work almost as single ideas.”

“Mathematics...”

“It’s nothing strange, Chris. If you think of calculus, it’s implicit in the use of dy by dx that what’s going on is the limit of the increment of one variable compared with the increment in the other variable.”

“If you say so.”

“But nowadays no-one would bother to write down the derivation of a differential function before they used it.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t...”

“Well my work is just the same. Event theory, as I have come to call it, has matured to such an extent that now I can use it just by pushing around these big ideas that I have developed over the years.”

Christine was clearly trying to decide if this was worth pursuing. She knew, of course, that even if she did not follow what Cartwright said, then one of our specialists might. “So what do these things look like? How do you work with them?”

“It’s quite literally as I said. I take these big ideas and assemble them into different orders, the order being determined by the nature of the problem being considered. It’s a bit like baking a cake. To write it down chemically, you would need all the chemical formulae of sugar, flour, egg albumen and yolk, plus the fats. It would look hopelessly complicated to the average person, but that’s what the laboratory chemist would need to recreate or model a cake from chemical bits and pieces. Write down the recipe as this much flour, this much egg, this much sugar and fat, and it becomes easy to visualise the process.”

“Mathematics?”

“When you see mathematics written down, it is like a cake recipe written for an analytical chemist. It is detailed down to the chemical definitions of the ingredients. When I write down my work, that process has been done so many times in my previous work that I can put a load of it together and call it an egg, or call it sugar. To extend the work, I then just bake a cake by saying two eggs, a cup of flour, a piece of fat et cetera. And it’s this list of ingredients, plus notes on how to combine them that I write down when I work. Nothing else.”

“Show me.”

I don’t really know why I had ever doubted Christine’s professionalism. And now, I don’t know why I needed to write that last sentence, except to underline my own tendency to panic and fear the worst. Perhaps I was not born a pessimist: I merely had second thoughts about the timing. I know very well why I doubted Christine’s professionalism. Looking back, I had clear reasons to do so. It’s not every assignment that requires the operative to open her legs to admit the adversary. Is it possible to open a leg? No, sex with a protagonist is not usually on the agenda, but Christine was obviously still very much on task. Perhaps I ought to put her actions down to tactical decision on the ground, rather than personal decisions on the couch? The opportunity had arisen to have Cartwright explain his work while they were both in shot and she had leapt at it.

Cartwright got up with a giant sigh and hopped his way inside the house. It was only then that I realised that not only had they not locked any of the doors or windows before they left those days ago, but also that the doors and windows could not even be closed, let alone secured. Cartwright, it appeared, was not at all security conscious. He reappeared within the minute carrying one of the files from his office, a file into which I had already watched him entering his adjudged gibberish.

“Here,” he said, presenting the file to Christine before flopping back into his seat. He then leaned across and opened up the flap of the pocket folder which she now held. The sheets were loose, unbound. “Try this one.” He took hold of the top sheet and pulled it free of the folder.

Christine looked at the page. She held it for twenty seconds or so at the perfect angle for my camera, which was above them, slightly to their right. The page was thus angled away from Cartwright. I recognised it as one of the sheets I had already forwarded for analysis. There were only five or six sheets of paper left in the folder.

“Could you please tell me which way up I should hold it?”

Cartwright laughed. “It’s the right way up. Can’t you read it?”

It was a sheet of A4 paper, punched with two standard filing holes. It was squared, not lined, but nowhere did it contain any attempt at graphical work. In his small, obsessively neat hand, every other line was part-filled with symbols, the spaces between them apparently regular. Few of the lines extended to the width of the page. These were the very symbols our specialists had been unable to recognise or interpret.

“I have not the faintest idea what any of this means,” said Christine, handing back the sheet. She probably thought she had done her work, since she, of course, had no idea that I had already seen it. And Cartwright refused to accept it, pushing the arm that held it back towards her.

“I’ve already given you a clue. I referred to it quite consciously quite soon after you arrived,” he said. “And you will remember that before we left here the other day to go and visit my wife and kids, I advised you to take careful note of the street signs...”

“Presumably so I could take note of where they lived?”

“You knew that already, Chris, unless I am completely mistaken. My advice was more subtle than that.”

Christine again fiddled with the paper. She turned the sheet this way and that as she mused on its illegibility. “Maybe some of these symbols are Arabic?”

“Certainly not,” he said. “But you are close. They are Jawi, the script that’s used over there alongside Roman letters on every street sign.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the horizon.

“But it looks different...”

He laughed.

“And this...” Christine pointed to a group of symbols near the left margin.

“Ah,” he said in a tone that offered congratulation. “They are different.”

“Cut the crap, Tom. What is this?”

“As I said, these are various letters in Jawi script and these,” he said, pointing at the part of the sheet her finger still indicated, “are Cham, mostly numerals.” He let out a little groan as he strained in his chair to get a better look at the sheet to confirm.

“Why?”

“I ran out of symbols. And they’re all upside down.”

“Why, perchance?” It wasn’t impatience that quickened her delivery.

“Well, Leonardo da Vinci wrote everything backwards...”

“But he was left-handed and probably found it easier to pull the pen rather than push it.”

“Possibly, but maybe he was also interested in keeping his results to himself until they were complete, hence the need to make it hard to read for the casual observer. And it’s hard to copy. The Jawi is supposed to go from right to left, and I am left-handed. And I’ve only got one leg, so I wrote it upside down. Given Leonardo’s mirror writing, I thought it was a little joke.”

Christine let the hand holding the paper fall to her lap as she turned to look to her left. “Ho, bloody ho.”

“And so when I ran out of symbols, I started to use Cham as well, but followed the same regime and wrote them upside down as well:”

“Why?”

He did not speak.

“No reason, except to keep everything to yourself.”

He thought for a while before answering. His gaze was firmly set on an infinity beyond the forested horizon. “No. Even if it was all the right way round, no one else could understand what it means.”

“That’s precisely my point, Tom.”

The two of them sat in silence for several minutes. There was a gentle breeze across their veranda rattling the rope-ends that hung loose off the moorings. The sea was calm, however, with only a gentle swell rocking the boats that passed by in their distance. Christine took occasional sips of her drink, remaining overtly in control of her obvious desire to finish it and refill the glass.

“So what does it all mean?” It was Christine who broke their peace.

Cartwright seemed reluctant to begin. I have watched the sequence several times and I am convinced his silence represents merely a difficulty of not knowing where to start. He seemed to have no worries whatsoever that he might reveal something even useful, let alone fundamental. It was Christine who again tried to prompt.

“I expected to see at least some symbols I could recognise.” She took up the paper again and scanned its contents. She did the same with the other sheets in the folder before replacing them. “I can’t even see any plus signs, minus signs, multiplies or divides. Or even numbers...”

“Oh, there are loads of those, but they’re written in Cham.” He was quick to respond. “And as for arithmetical operators, Chris, I might point out that what you are looking at is mathematics, not accountancy.” He turned to his right and leaned towards her. She turned a little also, their faces virtually at near-point. “I modelled my notation on Algol.” He paused. “Now that dates me, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does...”

He laughed. “You have not the faintest idea of what I am talking about!”

“Of course I haven’t.”

I recalled his statements, delivered in the first interview, about Chris not having the skills to carry out this assignment. I remained unsure, however, as to just how much he knew about her motives and brief.

“Algol was an early computer programming language, but in fact it pre-dated computing. It stands for Algorithmic Language and it’s used to create a structure within which sequential and logical procedures can be notated. Basically, each paragraph of symbols on a sheet,” he said, tapping the folder that lay on the table between them, “is a set of instructions, do this, followed by that. Here and there are words such as ‘if’, ‘then’, ‘else’, ‘do’, ‘repeat’, ‘until’ and lots of others that effectively form the keywords of the language.”

“I didn’t recognise anything.”

“...because they are in Jawi and Cham, sometimes upside down and backwards. Rest assured, I can read them.” He seemed unsure as to whether he should continue. Christine did not prompt. “Each paragraph on the paper is like a sentence of text. And you will see,” he said, reaching across to extract the top sheet from the folder, “that some sections are quite long, while others are less than a line.” He passed the sheet to Christine and pointed to precisely six lines on the sheet that finished short of the margin. “These are the paragraph ends, and then,” he continued as he rummaged through the other sheets before selecting one in particular, “here you have something that looks quite different. This line is centred and I have written the characters larger.”

“Enlightening...”

“This is a conclusion. In other words, if all of the above procedures are followed, in sequence, and according to the rules they represent, then this indicates the conclusion we might expect.”

“And it’s all upside down...”

“And backwards as well, here and there. But it’s not all that way. There is method in my insanity.” He rummaged again through the sheets and selected another, which he passed to her. His hands were brushing very close to her breasts, but she did not flinch in any way. “If you were to look at some of my earlier material, it’s written the right way up. Here’s some material I quote directly from work I did a decade ago. I have included it here as a check on the current procedure, which is upside down.”

“How interesting...”

“Because this material is actually all conceived in the inverse of the original.”

“Inverse what?”

“Universe.”

Christine turned to look at him. Their faces were beyond the near-point. It would almost have been easier to kiss than speak. She delivered a long, determined stare, full of simultaneous affection and disbelief, while his eyes alternately examined her expression and the symbols on the paper she still held. “I have not the faintest idea of what is going on...”

He leaned back and laughed. “You did ask. Look here,” he said, leaning quickly across and placing his arm around Christine’s shoulders. I had to remind myself that these two individuals were both sixty years old. “Look here,” he said, as he pointed to a line on the sheet she held, and then to another on a sheet that lay on the table between them. “Can you see they are the same symbols? Except that the more recently written ones, on that sheet, are all upside down?”

“Why? Because it looks pretty cool and makes you feel like Leonardo da Vinci?”

“No, Chris, it’s because this one is the inverse of that one. It’s like shorthand. If I were to write this material out in full, it would be the length of a book.”

“Inverse..:”

“Opposite,” he said impatiently. He thumbed the older sheet. “If this one means with legs, then this one,” he continued, now pointing at the newer version, “means without legs. Legless, like you get after a few gins.”

She laughed and hit him. “I have one leg, stupid, so I am not in either class.”

“And that condition,” he continued without pause, “is the part inverse of the original ‘with legs plural’, if Brouwer’s rejection of the excluded middle is allowed. Then I would write it on its side. It becomes a matter of intuition.”

“No doubt pointing left for you and right for me.”

“No, Chris, this really is quite serious. The attitude of the character would indicate merely a set of assumptions that must travel with the concept and relate to how it was formed.”

“I don’t get it.”

“And you’ll get it even less when I conclude by saying that the inverse procedures exist largely in an imaginary universe, whereas the right way up ones are in a real universe.”

“A real universe...”

“There can be more than one.”

“And on its side...”

“It bridges the real and imaginary.”

She was silent.

“...but only according to the conditions specified in the assumptions that travel with it.”

“I’m so glad you clarified that...” She was trying to get any handle she could on what his world might look like. “And each symbol ... what do they mean? You say they go together like sentences?”

“Basically, over the years I have done a mountain of work. Some of it was useless. Some of it, however, has proved fundamental to the things I do now.” He paused and thought. “Imagine I had written a paper years ago that examines a particular idea and contains a conclusion about a particular point. Each symbol I write represents one such finding from my previous work that has to be applied to the material under considerations. It’s like a list of ingredients, except, like the cake I described earlier, these list eggs, flour, et cetera and not the chemical constituents that make them up. Placed like this, the symbols represent sets of procedures that must be applied to data, with each symbol representing something from my previous work. And it’s all in here.” He tapped his forehead.

“And sometimes it’s an opposite of the finding...”

“More or less.”

“Makes sense.”

He burst out laughing. So did she. “You’ll be giving courses in it by this time next week.” His reference to the future brought proceedings to a complete, but temporary halt. There was an immediate sense of regret.

“So even with this in my head, and all your sheets of current work, there is still no way I or anyone else could make head or tail of the material unless we had access to your previous - and unpublished - work”

“Correct.” His confidence was palpable.

“So if, let’s say, for the sake of argument, I took out my spy’s micro-camera and photographed all the papers in your office, and sold them to interested parties, no-one would be any the wiser about how your systems work.”

He nodded.

Christine looked at him directly in the eye. He returned her gaze.

“Why?”

He took up the folder from the table, held it up and then let it fall. It hit the bamboo floor with a blank slap. “Why?”

“Gravity.”

“Precisely. Because it’s there.”

“But you should share the results... How can anyone benefit...?”

“Benefit? Now there’s a word... I am trying to ensure there will be a benefit. If I were to put my material in the public sphere, it would be used by those who are already powerful, those with the resources to exploit it, to bolster and enhance their existing power. It would become a force for greater division and inequality. And I want to avoid that.”

“You avoid it by becoming all-powerful, at least economically, yourself. Is that it?”

He was silent for a while. “That’s another story, Chris.” He was silent again. “And that’s the story that interests you, isn’t it?”

The sun was beginning to sink. I, and possibly Christine as well, was only just beginning to realise, after several days, that Cartwright was primarily a diurnal being. He simply did not seem to operate, at least as a communicator, after sunset. “It will be dark soon,” he said gesturing towards the papers he was reassembling in the folder he had retrieved from the floor. “I want to do a couple of hours on this before I sleep. Will you want to eat anything?”

“Maybe later.”

“There’s some bread and things at the back. There is no cooked rice tonight, of course.”

“No matter.”

He stood and began to shuffle and hop along the veranda. He was heading to the kitchen at the back before going to his room, but then suddenly he stopped. Christine was watching him. His bare brown back turned slightly, as if to anticipate a next hop he did not make. Straightening instead, he turned to face her. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.”

“You would make a good logician.”

She laughed. She seemed utterly relaxed, uncharacteristically so.

He continued. “Were you really not in, that night I called round?”

Christine was still smiling. She had no idea what he was talking about. The silence that followed was full of unasked questions, any of which could have gone either way.

“Called round where? When?”

“You have no idea,” he mumbled. “So you were out.” He turned again to continue on his way and was about to turn the corner when Chris too rose from her chair and set off after him. Still unpractised in travelling over these uneven floors, she needed to seek permanent and resolute support from both the balcony rail with her right hand and the wall with her left, her arms outstretched, as if being crucified.

“Tom, wait! I want to know.” She had advanced halfway towards him, her progress faster than her confidence would allow. She had to pause or she would have fallen. “Please... What, where, when?”

His first thought, clearly, was to go back towards her and offer a helping hand. But he didn’t move. His silence was one of confusion, not malice. He could not distrust her, but neither could he believe her, no matter what she might answer. “This is silly...”

“Tom, what’s troubling you? When on earth did you ‘call round’, as you put it?”

His resolve returned. “To be precise, Chris, I am referring specifically to the evening of Saturday 14 November 1970. It was a sad, wet, autumn evening, not particularly cold, but chilly by half eleven at night.”

She advanced a couple more steps towards him. “Do you seriously expect me to remember what I was doing on a particular evening over forty years ago?”

“I can remember what I was doing. It has rather stuck in the memory.”

“Well, good for you!” They were standing at the corner of the house. The sunlight was creating contrasts of vermillion and black, the wall’s bamboo poles casting shadows as stripes. Their patch was in rapidly darkening shade. The sea appeared to be calmer than either of them. Cartwright offered no more and Christine grew suddenly impatient. “Is this another code, another shorthand symbol whose meaning I have to imagine?”

He shook his head.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You weren’t there.” He was about to turn. The kitchen stove and sink beckoned, just a half a dozen determined hops away.

“Where, for God’s sake?” She was genuinely angry. Her tone stopped him dead. She dare not move. Her leg was shaking, but from fatigue, not anger.

“In Oxford, Chris, outside your college.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you are talking about...”

“Chris, I came to visit you. I’d not seen you for six weeks. I’d been going crazy. I was trying to do some college work that morning. I can remember poring over that week’s notes on functions, but I was getting nowhere. I was unhappy, yes, but more importantly I was insecure, even frightened. I had not been away from home before. I had not been separated from some form of support for two or three years. At college I was suddenly alone for the first time, and I couldn’t cope. I’d convinced myself I could feel that pain again, the pain of the tumour again, gnawing away at the knee that wasn’t even there. I remember looking at my neck in the bathroom mirror. I was looking for the swellings in the lymph glands I had convinced myself I could feel. I had expected to wake up that morning with a rattle of fluid in my lungs, a rattle that would quickly turn to the growl that would kill me.”

“So what happened? Why can you remember the day, even the date, so precisely?” She asked her questions, but also prevented any answer by holding up her hand. “I felt very much the same until three or four years had passed. I expected to wake up dead each morning, if you see what I mean...” She paused. She wanted to laugh, but did not. “I also expected it to come back and kill me. But for me, every day became a new challenge, and still is.”

He seemed to relax, just a little. “Well on Saturday 14 November 1970, I left my room feeling rather sorry for myself. I went to the university library to try and concentrate, to try to do some studying. I’d got a cold. My nose was running. I’d got a cough. I had swollen glands.”

“You should have gone to the doctor.”

“I’d done that on the Friday. Frankly, I was terrified. I can remember sitting in the waiting room, thumbing a calculus text, doing my utmost to stay calm and just getting more nervous. All I could hear were the words I anticipated the doctor saying: ‘I think you may have a touch of pleurisy, lad. I’m going to recommend you go in to hospital for a couple of days until it’s cleared up’. And that would have been a death sentence. I tried to send my mind elsewhere.”

“And what did the doctor say?”

“He said, ‘You’ve got a cold. Take honey and lemon with a Beecham’s in it.’”

“And what about your mind? Where did it wander to?”

“It went to Oxford, to be precise. It was all I could think of. I had to see you. We had gone through the illness together. We needed one another... Or should I say, I needed you. A doctor couldn’t cure me, but you could. You could ‘kiss it better’, if you like. At least that’s what was going through my mind. I didn’t want sex. I just wanted to be with you. I hadn’t seen you for two months. And it was your birthday.”

“It was indeed. And still is. Every year.”

“So I left the library, still carrying my notes and books in a duffel bag. Both of us were still wearing those temporary prostheses, the ones with the frames, the sprung knee and the rubber bobble on the bottom. And you’ll remember, I’d become quite proficient with it. I could make good time. I actually walked to Piccadilly Station, and took a train to Oxford. I blew most of my cash for the following week on the ticket.”

“Even with our student discount...” Christine was laughing. But she wasn’t laughing at him, or even with him. Some people do this when they are truly fearful.

“I had to change at Birmingham. I knew it would be a bit tight. I struggled a bit with the stairs. I actually slipped a couple of times. There was no shortage of helping hands, of course. They did help, but they all wanted to do that little bit more, all of which slowed me down. And then I realised I’d got to the wrong platform. New Street, of course, had rebuilding work going on and the signs were all over the place. It was that day I resolved to learn how to hop on one leg, because it was obviously going to be quicker than lugging that piece of scrap metal around. You’ll remember it was actually harder coming down stairs than going up. The thing wouldn’t bend if you used it as a pivot, but if you put it down first, you overbalanced as it pulled you with it.” He paused, either expecting Christine to anticipate what might follow, or inspecting whether she really was being straight with him. Her expression remained simply, naively blank. “Well, I missed the train, and the next one was delayed, which is why I arrived in Oxford so late, around nine.”

“And the station is on the edge of town. You had no money left. You had to walk.”

“And I got lost. How was I to know your college was not in the centre of town?”

“There were maps in 1970, I believe.”

“Well whatever I did in those days was impetuous, even stupid... I got to your college around eleven.”

“And you couldn’t get in.”

“Indeed. I had a real stand-up, nose-to-nose argument with the old codger in the office at the main gate. Initially he took pity on me - one leg and all that - but then he got stroppy, saying it was more than his job was worth to let me in after closing time. He offered to pay for a taxi to get rid of me, but I didn’t want to leave without seeing you. Then he pushed me out of the office. I was ballistic. I remember shouting. I called him every name under the sun. He was livid. He chased me down the street with a rounders bat.”

“A rounders bat...? You can be that specific?”

“It was a women’s college. He actually tried to hit me with it.”

“I had no idea you came to Oxford...”

“So you were in?” She didn’t respond. “I was back out in the street at half eleven on a wet Saturday night, with no money in my pocket and nowhere to go.”

“You couldn’t get any money...?”

“Christine, it was 1970 and I was a student. We didn’t have credit cards. There were no cash points and people with eighty quid in their bank account didn’t get cheque guarantee cards. I hadn’t left home with the intention of going to Oxford. I had enough cash to travel and no more. I just had to see you.”

“So what did you do?”

“I decided to break in. I knew your room number, because you’d sent me that postcard when you arrived, along with one of those pre-printed change of address stickers that W H Smith used to sell in packets.”

“What do you mean by ‘break in’?”

“I went down the street a bit, thirty yards or so, in the dark patch between two street lamps, and climbed over the fence.”

“With a false leg?”

“With a false leg. And I slipped.”

“And?”

He paused again, still assessing just how much he was telling her against how much he was merely confirming what she already knew. “I slipped when climbing the fence, Chris. You have no recollection?”

It was precisely at that moment that some association began to click in her memory. I could see it happening. Christine’s expression changed from one of confident knowledge filled with interest to one of question mingled with growing, emptied-stomach horror. “Was it you? On the fence...”

“I slipped. Nothing to write home about, but I impaled myself on the fence.”

She was mumbling. “Railings with big spikes on top...”

“That’s the one. I shinned up all right, but getting over the top with only one leg to offer purchase was a bit tough. I slipped and the spike went right through my leg.”

“The false one...”

“The false one...”

“We were both still wearing the temporary ones, weren’t we? ...the ones with the open frames and the rubber foot on the end...”

“That’s the one. The rubber foot on the end that used to catch on kerbs, or get stuck in cracks in the pavement...”

“Yes, I remember many times thinking I’d left the thing behind as I tried to take the next step. I used to fall over all the time because I couldn’t swing it over an obstruction.”

“And it would leg you up.”

“...as we used to say...”

“Well it also used to catch on fences as you tried to climb over. The spike went right through the shin part of the leg, missing the frame completely. It went in one side of my trousers and out the other, so I was completely impaled. I also fell as the foot caught on the way over, so I was dangling down the street side of the fence, suspended by the cross member of the leg which jammed up against the spike. I finished upside down, with my back to the fence. I couldn’t swivel round because the tapes that secured the leg went round my waist and prevented my body from twisting. I could lift myself up the fence a little by pulling through my arms, but of course I couldn’t lift the leg in any way, even when I had all my weight supported via my hands holding on to the uprights. Neither could I use a hand to unhitch the trousers, because I needed both hands to support my weight, and when hanging, I couldn’t reach. I was trying to undo the securing tapes from my waist when the old codger from the gate house came running along the pavement screaming his head off.”

“In other words, you were trying to take your trousers off while hanging upside down.” Christine was trying her best not to laugh.

“I remember screaming for help. No doubt he thought I was writhing in agony because I had a piece of fence through my leg.”

“He could have got you down, surely.”

“Perhaps, he could, but let’s say that he didn’t wait around to assess the situation. He clearly assumed there was injury, pain, blood, gore and probably work involved, so he issued an expletive and immediately shot off back where he came from. I can remember shouting your name repeatedly as he turned and sped away. I assumed he would contact you inside and then I might be supplied with a step ladder, which is the only thing I needed to get myself off the fence.”

“You shouted my name...”

“Of course I did. I assumed you were inside. Your postcard had told me precisely where your rooms were.”

Christine was confused. “You knew?”

“Of course. Don’t you remember? We used to do it all the time in those days... People used to buy postcards of the concrete blocks they stayed in on holiday, so that they could work out the exact location of their room and thus place a biro cross on the picture? And on the back it would say, ‘Having a nice time. Weather sunny. Food strange. Our room is the one under the cross. Wish you were here.’ But your postcard from college - the one you sent me during your first week in residence, it was a holiday postcard like that. The picture was the front view of the college, and you had put a big cross on the window just to the right of the entrance and the message said, ‘This is my room’. They had put you there so you didn’t have to negotiate stairs. This was Oxford, of course, and there were no lifts...”

“Cynic.”

“And on the back of the card you’d stuck the W H Smith change of address label. There might even have been a little kiss under your name.”

“I bet.”

“So I had gone to the fence in front of that particular window and tried to climb over. When I got stuck, I reckoned that if I called your name loud enough you would hear and come out to save me.”

“So what happened?”

Cartwright shrugged and laughed. “The old codger went back to his office and called an ambulance and the police. They were there in less than ten minutes.”

“He thought you were bleeding to death.”

“He never bothered to check. I saw him go inside the building when he left his office. I thought he was going to get you, but he came out alone. And then the fuzz arrived. The ambulance came along just seconds later, making a hell of a din for a while. I presumed you must have heard the sirens. They were still running for a minute or so after the ambulance pulled up.”

“You can remember all these details...?”

Cartwright turned to face her. “This proved to be one of the most momentous days of my life. It quite literally changed everything.”

Christine did not break the silence that followed. There was no need for prompt. He surely would finish the story.

“The police were busy talking to the gatekeeper, but the ambulance men came straight to me. It didn’t take them long, of course, to realise I was stuck, rather than injured. It gave them quite a shock, perhaps a bigger shock than if I’d had blood gushing like a fountain.”

“And you were still shouting your head off?”

“The words, if I recall, were ‘Christine, Christine Gardiner and help’, repeated in different combinations.”

“And they got you down.”

“They did, but it wasn’t a simple task. The easiest thing to do was cut the trousers, of course, but they still needed a step ladder to get up there. And an ambulance carries a whole load of useful things, such as defibrillators, oxygen cylinders, even tool kits of sorts.”

“But not step ladders.”

“Spot on. They had to get the old bloke from the gate house to get one from his store room. It was then, talking to the policeman, that he told them about me.”

Christine looked mildly confused.

“I could hear. I’d stopped shouting by then, because I assumed that if you had been in you would have already heard. He was just a few yards away, walking alongside the policeman who was struggling to carry the steps. ‘He’s been making a nuisance of himself’, he said. ‘Been trying to get in after hours to harass one of the students’.”

“And of course the police knew it was a women’s college.”

“Can’t have been the first time, can it?”

She shrugged. “I doubt it. You men...”

“I take full responsibility for the foibles of the entirety of my gender.” He turned a little to ensure the remark had registered. He then continued without emotion. It was history. “They got me down. I’d lost the right leg of my trousers. They’d cut the fabric without realising that the false leg was secured by tapes round my waist, so after the first attempt I was half naked, but still hanging from the fence.”

“Half-naked, but the only thing exposed was a metal frame.”

He nodded.

“Were you hurt in any way?”

“Chris, I was devastated. You weren’t there!”

“I meant physically.”

“No, not a scratch. Just starting to go dizzy through hanging upside down for twenty minutes. That’s all.”

“So what next?”

“They realised they had to undo the tapes, but they cut them to release me and then they got the leg off the fence. So the result was that I was on the pavement, dizzy, no trousers, with the world spinning round, and beside me was a false leg I couldn’t wear again. And anyway it was all bent...”

“You suffered a broken leg.”

They both laughed for quite a long time.

“The problem started when I tried to stand.”

“Problem?”

“I can remember trying to stand, saying that I had to see you. I fell over a couple of times.”

“They assumed you were pissed.”

“Correct. I tried to break free of their clutches, which were only intended to help me, but I was in no mood to appreciate such help at the time. I was obsessed with the idea of seeing you.”

“But they weren’t listening to you...”

“Spot on. The old codger wanted me off the premises. The ambulance men wanted me in the ambulance. And the police? They just wanted me off. But I wasn’t helping matters. One of the policemen pushed me against the fence to restrain me. I hit my head against the railings. I was already dizzy. Now I had another reason to stay so. He meant me no harm, but I couldn’t stand up. I overbalanced. And then he called me ‘Laddie’.”

Christine’s initial confusion was quickly humour. “He called you ‘Laddie’. Injury upon insult!”

“‘Mind your step, laddie’, he said. He had me pinned against the fence. It was ironic, because I couldn’t take a step to mind!”

“And then?”

“I clocked him.”

“You did what?”

“I thumped him. Right, left, right, aimed at the face, but I couldn’t balance, so only the first one hit the target.”

“And one was enough.”

“It certainly was.”

“And then?”

“They beat me up. Not badly, but enough to make sure I wasn’t going to lash out again. And then I spent the night in a cell.”

“You are joking.”

“Why should I joke? Why would I joke, Chris? It’s mere history now.” He paused for a few seconds. Christine did not try to speak. “And I got done for assault. Police record. A fine. Small in money terms, but a lot more than I could afford. My mother paid it. But the police record proved devastating for my prospects of employment, as I came to realise a few years later, certainly any employment in the public sector. Even in the 1970s, the agencies already had full searching capability on computerised police records, so that was that, as far as I was concerned.”

“And so you became an expat.”

“I got a few part-time jobs, cover-teacher, and the like and some supply work, all through an agency. But it was clear that a full time job was not going to come my way. Most of the time I didn’t even manage an interview. I put it down to the criminal record, but looking back, I’m not so sure. It could easily have been the fact that I was disabled and I would have needed special consideration in timetabling, and perhaps some other things as well. I gave up trying and applied to do a master’s degree. I did a little part-time work in the university and then came here on a contract.”

“And you never tried to contact me again?”

He shrugged. “Seems so.”

“Why?”

“I wish I could say. It was as if you had a spell over me. You were the very key to my survival, at least that’s what I thought when I set off to see you that Saturday in November. By the time I’d got out of the police cell, gone to court and been found guilty, perhaps I realised I had better stand on my own two feet.”

She laughed.

“Foot.”

She laughed again.

“And of course you never contacted me. I took the hint,” he said, blankly, staring straight ahead. A prolonged silence followed.

“Were you there, Chris? Were you in your rooms? They told me you had gone away for the weekend.”

Christine did not answer. She thought long and hard. There was no emotion. She too looked ahead over the apparently unchanging sea that in reality was in constant, unpredictable, turbulent motion. “I was away,” she said.

***

But she wasn’t away. She was inside with me and the two other adolescent prurients, who were hard at it on the bed while she crashed out, comatose on the sofa. And somehow, for I had never told her, she had come to learn both that there had been a commotion outside her window and that it had something to do with her. She did ask, but I didn’t tell, and I had also specifically asked the porter to play the whole thing down, if he was asked. After all, I couldn’t tell her it had been Cartwright who had caused all the problems that night, because at the time I didn’t even know he existed. All I knew was that there was a bloke going ballistic in the garden, a bloke who was shouting his head off while hanging upside down, having impaled his leg on the fence-spikes. All I saw was that police and ambulance were both in attendance, that the idiot had come to grief on the fence and that he had responded to assistance by assaulting a policeman, an act for which he was bundled into the car and detained.

The next morning, when I inspected the area of lawn inside the fence, I was relieved to find no traces of blood or injury, just a few scraps of the bloke’s trousers plus some off-cuts of thick cream, bandage-like fabric, which I picked up and disposed of. I felt relieved, because this proved my belief there had been no injury, and thus the matter might end. Certainly the ambulance, which had arrived with sirens blaring, left without its alarm running, at moderate speed, and with no emergency on board, since I could see through the curtains that the man had got into the police car. I thus resolved not to trouble Christine with details of the incident. How was I to know that a one-legged Yorkshireman was stalking my girlfriend?

It was not until months later - and it may well have been years - that I first learned from Chris that she had not been alone in her three-year battle against bone cancer. Even then I never knew the other person’s name, because she never told me. The revelation came as a passing remark in conversation with fellow students. I remember a reference in conversation to how unlucky she had been to contract the disease, and her reply was that lightning had struck twice in the same place, because there had been two of them. And that’s all I ever knew about the other person, at least until the discussion stage of this One-On-One assignment. Even then, I had to put one and one together to make more than two to realise that her co-victim, Cartwright, had been the bloke on the fence all those years ago. I realised this during the early planning stages, but by then it was far too late to change our plans. I should have spoken up, but I didn’t. I had knowledge that could materially affect the assignment.

I could claim that I don’t know why I kept quiet, but that would also be false. This was a big one. It would do Christine’s rather flagging career a world of good, would generate substantial operational bonuses for us and, after all, there was probably no-one else who could do the job. It came as a package, and could only be undertaken by Christine, because she had shared Cartwright’s illness and had been part of his history. The incident on the fence was forty years ago and I was convinced that Christine still did not know about it. But, I should have flagged the issue... mea culpa.

Then, on that first morning, when Chris got into Cartwright’s boat and snagged her trousers on that hook, my only expectation was that he would immediately stop, help her up and, as any near stranger would, check she was all right. But he didn’t. He laughed - and then she laughed - and then they both laughed. Clearly, the irony got the better of them. The last time they had been that close, he had a spike through his trousers, his false leg impaled on a fence. Forty years later, on their next encounter, Chris got a spike through her trousers, her false leg impaled on a boat hook. She knew. That’s why she laughed. So Christine had not been altogether honest in her reply that night as they sat again on Cartwright’s veranda at sunset, and neither had she been honest in declaring the knowledge she might bring to the assignment. She was as culpable as I was. We had both lied. I had lied to her, and she to me. And she had just lied to Cartwright who, no doubt, was lying about everything.

***

Their conversation continued, but I did not. I had to sleep. Their sun was sinking and so was mine. I had tried throughout the assignment to live by their time, using artificial light only during daylight hours and a bare minimum desk-spot during their darkness, but my body simply could not do it. During the days of their absence, I had hardly slept at all, and now the confusion had caught up with me. Something inside me demanded instinctive sleep.

When I awoke, they were themselves asleep. Christine, presumably, since I could not see her, was on the high-backed couch. Cartwright was definitely in his office, slumped at his desk, where he had clearly been trying to work. I had now learned, of course, that these apparent scribblings might just be shorthand for something assumed and understood, rather than the gibberish my specialists claimed. This knowledge, however, changed nothing and helped no-one, since we still had no access to any of the material to which he claimed the symbols might refer. I took the trouble, once more, to zoom in on a still of the paper I could see exposed in an open file, and forwarded it for specialist feedback. I indicated in my message that presumably the symbols might be shorthand for whole procedures, but I knew what the response would be. It came back less than an hour after I sent the message. “Gibberish again, old bean. As for shorthand suggestion, cannot comment without seeing this ‘other material’.” Further attempted analysis of Cartwright’s scribblings would clearly be pointless without first accessing his store of previous work. And, of course, we had no idea where that might be.

When I reviewed the three hours or so that passed before they retired for the night - separately, I was gratified to record - I found a good deal of exchange of pleasantries about drinks and snacks. Christine’s definitive declaration that she had not been in that night, her definitive lie, perhaps, had effectively brought the discussion to a close. Cartwright seemed to take the hint that Chris wanted to discuss nothing more of substance that evening. He proposed he make them a snack and had gone to the back balcony to prepare it. Christine, meanwhile, retrieved her laptop, which she had returned to its protective cover, and began another revision of her notes for their third interview. Cartwright was back in twenty minutes with sandwiches and coffee.

“I forgot to check my fishing lines and crab pots,” he said.

She looked rather quizzically at him. “You can’t do them now. It’s dark”

“It has to be done,” he said, as he placed the tray he had carefully carried with one hand onto the low table between their chairs. “I have enough light from here to see what I am doing. Excuse me for a moment. It’s sweaty work making coffee. This will be a relief.”

It was clear he was going into the water again, which he did carefully, without a jump or a dive, this time climbing down his pole ladder.

“That’s rather unspectacular for Tom Cartwright,” said Christine as he disappeared from view.

“It beats diving into the boat,” he mumbled amidst a splash.

Just three minutes later, he was back in his chair, dripping, and sipping his coffee.

“Lines and pots? You needed a pee.”

“Again. I am over sixty,” he said.

Christine smiled. She wanted to get back to business. “Why that stinking flower? Why not something else?”

He turned to face her. “Why did I concentrate on it? Well, it’s there. Second, it’s already been studied quite a lot and there’s a good deal of reliable data relating to it. Thirdly, my hunch was that it does tend to exist in identifiable locations and known habitats, both of which are accessible from here. Lastly, it’s quite rare, so a correct prediction of its location is pretty strong evidence that the technique works.”

“I have been thinking of ridiculous parallels.”

“How ridiculous can a parallel be?”

“The plant grows like a cancer in its host. It grows unnoticed and then makes a tumour, which is the flower. This gives rise to male and female manifestations. It’s rare, but your work suggests that when conditions are right, then both the male and female will develop nearby...”

“All reasonable observations thus far.”

Christine turned to face him, pivoting on the stump of her left leg. “It’s like us,” she said. “A cancer, tumours, unlikely, but with male and female occurrences nearby and at the same time...”

Cartwright smiled. “I thought you’d never notice. It’s only taken you a day and a half to work that out.” He leaned across and patted her patronisingly on the shoulder.

“So it’s been in your mind as well?”

“All along.”

“And you never thought to make the connection explicit?”

“I prefer the heuristic to the didactic, Chris.”

She grew impatient with him. “Don’t be facetious, Tom. Just be straight with me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of being anything else, Chris. How about you?”

She did not even pause. “Seriously, you can predict where and when a disease might occur using your systems... Is that true?”

“No, not at all.”

“But you can do it with flowers.”

“I can do it with one type of rare flower, in one type of habitat, where there is already a wealth of research data.”

“So you knew there were plants in that specific place before we left?”

“Not exactly. I predicted there would be plants somewhere in that area.”

“And if there were plants, then other conditions and analysis also predicted there would be flowers?”

“That’s about it. It’s like saying, ‘I can’t tell where there will be an outbreak of bone cancer, but once I know there is one, and I know its characteristics, I can predict how it is likely to develop.’”

Christine was clearly dumbfounded. She tried to speak several times, but could not find a word.

“But the research is still incomplete. I cannot make that claim yet.” His words were in the form of an apology. He seemed aware of her thoughts. “I have run trials on biological systems that ought to be predictable, given what I know about my systems and the data they require, and I have had limited, partial success.”

“Like finding the location of the giant flower...”

“Exactly. I did get lucky with that one. But I have also looked at animals, specifically turtles, considering when they mate, where and when they lay their eggs, the probability of a hatchling’s survival... It’s all far too complex at the moment, but I feel I am making good progress. Until I can get a better match for a species where there is already copious data and previous research, I cannot begin to extend the ideas to other, less well documented areas.”

“So what about your financial markets?”

He smiled. “Market indices are calculated from prices of a relatively small number of securities that change fairly slowly. Data on their historical price movements is available and copious. General economic data is hardly reliable, but it is available and it has been collected with some regularity for fifty years.”

“But anyone can have access to that material.”

“But only I have the mathematics to manipulate it. Everything else is only partial or particularistic. The analogy is straightforward, Chris,” he said, leaning across and touching her arm. “They know what happens when you put a match under a test tube of water. I have the laws of thermodynamics.”

5 Place names have been redacted from the original.