The other evening, contemplating his future, he’d pictured himself with a hand on the doorknob, ready to step into whatever the next room held.
So okay. Here he was.
River had his keys in his pocket, so used the front door for a change. Unlocked it and twisted the knob.
Stepped into his future.
Damien Cantor watched the footage from Oxford Circus sitting at his breakfast island: a marble-topped counter which weighed slightly less than a terraced house. Coffee in front of him, he was jiggling his foot to a mental beat, one matching the scenes on his laptop. The film hadn’t been broadcast yet – they’d been trailing snippets since five – but would go out with the 8 a.m. bulletin: catch the news cycle where it hurt. Parts were rough, but that was fine – would show the viewer it was raw, and really happened. He particularly liked the bit where the bin went through the window. The crew had grabbed a blurry outline of the man responsible, the red sweater beneath the yellow vest, without catching his face. It was good to have Tommo Doyle back on the payroll.
Good to have Peter Judd owing him a favour, too. He’d made like they were scratching each other’s backs – Cantor catches the story; Judd’s man Flint catches some headlines – but they both knew where the truth lay. Judd was looking to be a kingmaker, and the last time there’d been one of those without a TV channel providing back-up, everyone involved had been wearing frock-coats. So Judd owed him. It was the way of the world.
He got up, stretched, poured another cup, then spent a moment gazing at the city: its skyline a tourist magnet, its weather a systems glitch. But Jesus, the money pouring through it, day after day. Even on the domestic level. This apartment, forty floors up – the perfect bachelor pad, though he never let his wife hear him call it that – the maintenance charge alone would cripple a prince. But it was worth it for this view, which wasn’t just what you could see, it was knowing how few shared it. Sure, there was a viewing platform, but that was just to show people what they didn’t have. There was a sense in which this encouraged them to dream huge dreams, but there was another much bigger sense in which it told them to fuck off. Cantor approved of a system which had allowed him to get rich, but he also believed in pulling the ladder up afterwards. If everyone succeeded, nobody did. Anything else was basically communism.
His phone rang, intruding on philosophy.
It was lobby security, the morning guy – Clyde or Claude or something – and was he expecting a visitor? Claude or Clyde looked like a prop forward for Western Samoa, and hadn’t sat an IQ test to get the job, but seriously: it was seven o’fucking clock in the morning. He’d have to be having a Viagra-induced emergency to be expecting a visitor.
‘Did they give a name?’
‘Sir, he says he’s from …’
Muffled dialogue took place.
‘Sir, he says he’s from a Diana Taverner?’
Okay, thought Cantor. That’ll add flavour to an already spicy morning. ‘Thank you, Clyde. Send him up.’
‘It’s Clifton, sir.’
‘Yeah. Send him up. The flat, not the studio.’
The lifts were fast, but not that fast. Cantor had time to finish his coffee before his visitor arrived.
There’s a sense in which any leader in a field feels closer to her opposite number than to her immediate colleagues. There’s another, more important sense in which she wants to mince that opposite number into bite-sized chunks and strew them in the path of hungry beasts, but still: talking to Vassily Rasnokov, Diana Taverner couldn’t help but feel that there was a level on which they understood each other better than anyone else. Rather like her relationship with Jackson Lamb might be, if she and Lamb were on opposing sides. So, rather like her relationship with Jackson Lamb. Though she and Lamb had yet to reach the point where they were counting each other’s dead.
‘You’ve put a team across our borders, Vassily.’
‘A “team”?’
‘Again.’
‘We allow freedom of movement to our citizens, Diana. Surely you remember what that was like? And there are many beautiful things to see in your country. All those church spires. Who could blame anyone for wanting to spend their leisure time visiting your fabled attractions?’
‘Please. They’ve not been admiring our architecture, they’ve been painting our walls.’
‘I’m not familiar with the expression.’
Like hell he wasn’t.
Diana was on the roof. The phone wasn’t a burner, exactly, but it was one she only used for calling Rasnokov – current First Desk at the GRU – and she never did that in her office. Around her, below her, the city was making those incoherent early morning noises, sometimes ascribed to traffic and the raising of metal shutters, which meant it hadn’t yet decided what day-face to wear; the happy, sunny, get-things-done one, or the grubby, sullen, no-eye-contact glower.
She knew how it felt.
