Local time – 9:00pm, Saturday 16th June, 2011.
Prague, Czechoslovakia.
‘They’ve just started playing,’ Alex called to Henry, who was sitting at the desk in his hotel room, downloading the photos from his camera memory stick onto his laptop. Alex had needed no convincing to pack up her bag and leave her hotel for good. Henry offered for her to stay with him, and said he would sleep on the sofa. They had hurried back to Henry’s hotel, and now Alex sat on the bed, testing the auto-answer function on Vlady’s mobile phone. He had obviously successfully hidden the cello case close to his quartet, as when the phone call automatically connected, they heard clinking dinner plates and muffled conversation, just audible behind the sound of the string players tuning their instruments. Henry was disappointed that the voices in the background could not be made out, but Alex assured him that without the noise of the instruments, they would definitely hear something.
Alex put her iPhone on loud speaker and turned the volume up. She had never before considered using such a technique to get a story and cringed at the thought of Murdoch’s phone hackers. But this was justified. She would let the phone call go as long as she could, to make sure they were ready to listen when the music stopped.
‘How are the photos looking?’ she asked. Henry peered closely at them.
‘There’s more than enough for the video. I’m just making sure that we’ve got unique images for the setting, so people can’t claim it’s all made up. If we say this base is at Paldiski, we have to be able to prove it is.’
‘The lighthouse is pretty unique isn’t it? And the layout of the town. There’s no way to prove it’s not real, because it is.’
‘The Bilderbergers will try.’
Henry clicked though a few more photos and the scene Alex had asked him to photograph appeared. It was clearer than what she had seen through binoculars. She could see the man driving the truck up the hill towards the dilapidated buildings. Something in the back of his utility tray caught her eye.
‘Can you blow that image up a bit? I want to see what’s in the back of the truck.’
Henry zoomed in on the tray. The image was grainy at this size. It looked like there were some bags stacked on top of each other, possibly bags of flour.
‘Would you crop that image and email it to me? I’d like to have a closer look at it.’ Henry looked at her for a moment, caught between refusing and being as cooperative as he just claimed to be when criticising her.
‘Even if the email falls into the wrong hands, you can’t tell what that is. It’s just a tiny section of the photograph? It’s no danger... ’
‘Ok.’ He agreed. ‘But just for you to look at. You can’t send it anywhere else.’
‘Of course not,’ Alex lied. She wasn’t proud of how easily she did it. But being a professional journalist often meant using a few white lies. Her phone was now broadcasting a rather tinny Mozart divertimento, heavy on the cello, and no background noise could be heard at all. She turned on her iPad and scribbled her Gmail address on her business card.
‘Email it to that address please. I’ve can use this to blow it up a bit, make it clearer’.
Henry saved the image and sent it through to her, then stood up to answer his mobile phone. He was close enough to her that she could tell it was a call from Phil. She could hear his grumpy voice asking Henry what they were doing. Henry took the call in the bathroom. Alex quickly opened her email and forwarded Henry’s message to Gerome.
She wrote: ‘Hi Gerome. Sorry I haven’t called back, been busy working on my story. No time to talk now, can you get Sue to blow this photo up – see if she can make out the image on the bag of flour. Speak soon. Who was looking for me? Alex.’
As soon as the email showed up in her sent items, she guiltily deleted it. Snooping was part of her job, and if Henry was an ex-spy it was very likely he was good at it too.
The quartet in the castle started another piece. She wondered what Phil and Henry were talking about. What was more important than listening to her phone, considering the price he paid to get the bug into the conference? She knew she shouldn’t, but her journalistic curiosity took over again. She tiptoed across the room to the bathroom door and put her ear against it. What she heard made her jump backwards.
‘I don’t know what’s on the iPad, but it’s obviously important. Bernie wouldn’t have mentioned it on his deathbed if it wasn’t.’ Fuck. Just when she thought all of Henry’s layers were finally laid bare, here was another lie. The way he said Bernie, it was a familiar word to him and Phil. How do they know Bernie? Before she had time to think about what Henry was up to, he came out of the bathroom. She stood in the middle of the room like a stunned cat with a paw in the fish bowl.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, looking at her suspiciously.
‘Yeah, I was going to say you should probably come over and record my phone. We don’t want to miss anything when the music stops.’
‘That’s why I told Phil I had to go.’
‘Oh, OK, cool. What’s Phil up to?’
‘Nothing. He’s back at his hotel. We’re going to make the video tonight. They’re all coming here.’
‘Great. Let’s hope we hear something that gives it the final piece you say it needs.’ Alex sat back on the bed and stared intently at the phone. Henry sat next to her and held his iPhone next to hers. He had the Voice Memo app open, ready to press record. Alex felt sick helping Henry now, but it was too late to stop. Why hadn’t he told her he knew Bernie? And more worryingly, did Bernie know him?
After a few more minutes of music, the quartet finally rounded out the last bars of the movement and stopped. One of the musicians could be heard saying: ‘There’s going to be another speech now and then we’re back on.’ Alex’s eyes went wide. Speech. Henry pressed the red button on his app. Neither of them spoke, in case they missed hearing something. Seconds ticked by and the sound of muffled conversation died down. Henry had been right that they were going to have trouble hearing anything being said at the tables. But then a voice boomed through the microphone; the person speaking from the stage could easily be heard.