Jeremy had selected the time and place, and now, across from the restaurant, at the settled hour, his view telescoped toward Lawrence, formerly of 12 Intelligence Company. Lawrence was seated at a circular table with embroidered flowers falling down its sides, a heavy tumbler to his right, and a menu beneath his forearm, and even at a distance, Jeremy could see that in the twelve years since they’d last seen each other, Lawrence had become a composed man. He ordered a pint, wore a smart tan suit, and he didn’t lean over the table. The one remaining tic was a triple-blink every so often.
He had been the one person left Jeremy could think to call.
Casual gait—an aspiration for his entrance.
When Lawrence stood for Jeremy, they shook hands. Firm grip, dry. Left hands grabbing shoulders. It was all very brisk, and they exclaimed over lengths, over how long it had been. “My girlfriend speaks very highly of the firm,” Jeremy said. “She’s with Orbet.”
“A good account,” Lawrence said, unrolling cutlery from a cloth napkin.
They sat across from each other with their menus opened in angles. Jeremy had already decided what he would order but moved his eyes down the lunch selections anyway, did not glance up a few beats before saying, “So you’re properly private now.”
“There is money there. Executives want to know if such and such Russian oligarch is only a local gangster or ambitiously criminal before the handshake. And you?”
“I’m weighing my options.”
A man came to their table to take their orders. Lunch salads. Clean. Light. And of course, in preparation, Jeremy had already eaten.
“You were always good with computers,” he said when the waiter left. “We didn’t realize the applications then.”
“You mean you didn’t,” Lawrence pipped. “I always knew. I was saying, what are these researchers up to?”
“You were prescient.”
“No,” Lawrence said. “I was paying attention to what was happening right then in the present.”
“And you’re married now?”
“Lydia,” Lawrence said. “She’s a nurse, so she says she doesn’t need children. Every adult is a child in the hospital.”
“Does that suit you?” Jeremy asked.
“I have clients. Every adult is a child in business.”
For a while, they spoke of the Olympic construction through the city, and they spoke of Lydia, of Alexandra, places to holiday. Their salads came, and Lawrence requested another beer. There was a song leaking through the restaurant.
“Was surprised to hear from you,” Lawrence said. “Most people come to Tyle before a hire, not after.”
Jeremy shifted his weight in his seat, moved his arms to resettle the shoulders of his jacket. “I was curious.”
“But you’re not in craft anymore.”
“I’m not in craft. I have a life worth keeping as it is.”
“And this has nothing to do,” Lawrence ventured.
Jeremy furrowed his brow. He shook his head. Control the flow of knowledge. Quarantine. Distribute. He had missed the signs at Strategic. Now there was cordoning off signs of his own.
“Because some of us,” Lawrence said.
“Not me,” Jeremy said.
For a while in the barracks of Lisburn, just beyond Belfast, he had been pleased to notice something choral was happening to him. When it had begun he didn’t know. One day it was simply that he noticed himself thinking, and all of what he thought had once been directives delivered to him, thoughts that meant he could sense himself spin backward, reporting from the future his adherence to command. Telling his commanding officer, One Rock. Telling Wilmington. Actions tailored to the telling. Objective: live up to the correct story. He couldn’t distinguish instructions from his own watery mind, and he had thought it made him stronger. His feet planted and the advice became him, sank deep into his guts like it had always been a part of his makeup, so that when he looked in the mirror, he did not see the occasional stammerer, pink-faced and apologetic, but a man who handled, a man who was not afraid.
He had been wrong to not be afraid.
And so now, he looked at his plate as it was set down, the long fingers of rocket snarled around each other, green and dressed in lemon. The tuna was clumped on top of slim stalks of asparagus, and there were hard-boiled eggs split open, the yolk audacious and staring. He cleared his throat. “You know, once One Rock told me something.”
“There’s a classy man. Never coughed on a cigar. Never coughed period. And of course, always in his whiskey just one rock, at the barracks pub.”
“Clockwork.”
“He was decent, and he was dignified. I never knew anything about him.”
“No one did,” Jeremy said.
Lawrence’s eyelids flapped, quick as insect wings. “So One Rock,” he said.
“It was early in my tour,” Jeremy began. “I didn’t know what he wanted to tell me. If I was in trouble, if I was to be promoted. I went in, and I’ll never forget it. He told me, ‘Sometimes what we see, the psychologists call it countertransference. The analyst projects wishes, hopes, desires on the patient. Handlers and informants, analysts and patients. Seeking love, seeking truth, maybe, but often, most often, what we see is a desire for closure. Neat plots.’”
Lawrence worried a mole at the edge of his chin with one finger, head tilted. This feature was one Jeremy had never before noticed.
“He asked how I knew what I got was everything from my informant, how I knew I’d seen the edge of disclosure and not an appeasing fraction of the picture. I’d the sense that to know was different than to be able to evidence, but I said I’d wager my life.” He paused. “One Rock told me I was wagering abundantly more than mine.”
“Go on,” Lawrence said.
“I thought he was after proof my informant’s pledge was in good faith,” Jeremy continued. “But he thought the Irish were different, more Mediterranean in temperament, that their women were dictators and that they looked like but weren’t us. So he told me, ‘Operation Banner is a contest of exhaustion. Northern Ireland unfolds and unfolds. Who retires upstairs first, Allsworth? That is the only question.’”
“Sounds like him.”
“Because he said it,” Jeremy said, more sharply than he’d intended.
“I believe you.”
“I promised him that my informant wanted to succeed, and he saw right through me. He said, ‘So do you, Allsworth.’”
“So you’re saying.”
“There’s no permanent success to intel. I’m happy without it. I do not have the stamina for getting mixed up in another plot spinning through perpetuity.”
There were damp orbs growing in his armpits. He kept his elbows tight to him. Back erect. He sliced a length of asparagus. He could hear someone drop a glass. Apologies.
“Thomas came up clean,” Lawrence said after a moment, sliding a file across the table. “You’ll see for yourself in the report.”
Jeremy secured a pink brick of tuna on the prongs of a fork. He had learned to wipe himself out of his face. The face can be taught to no longer answer, bland as a boiled potato. The trick is clamp onto language. Don’t let it penetrate the dermis. He did not touch the folder. He knew Lawrence was waiting for him to react, but even now, all these years out of HUMINT, it seemed foolish to show relief.
“You’re certain.”
Lawrence signaled for the dessert menu. “I’m certain,” he said, “that I wasn’t able to find anything.”