I work undercover for M15 as a business development analyst in a seven-man team specializing in emerging markets, specifically the Caspian Sea. On my first day, just four or five hours in, the personnel manager asked me to sign this agreement:
CODE OF CONDUCT
To be complied with at all times by employees and associates of Abnex Oil.
The Company expects all of its business to be conducted in a spirit of honesty, free from fraudulence and deception. Employees–and those acting on behalf of Abnex Oil–shall use their best endeavours to promote and develop the business of the Company and its standing both in the UK and abroad.
All business relationships–with government representatives, clients, and suppliers–must be conducted ethically and within the bounds of the law. On no account should inducements or other extracontractual payments be made or accepted by employees or associates of Abnex Oil. Gifts of any nature must be registered with the Company at the first opportunity.
Employees and associates are forbidden to publish or otherwise disclose to any unauthorized person trading details of Abnex Oil or its clients, including–but not limited to–confidential or secret information relating to the business, finances, computer programs, data, client listings, inventions, know-how, or any other matter whatsoever connected with the business of Abnex Oil, whether such information may be in the form of records, files, correspondence, drawings, notes, computer media of any description, or in any other form including copies of or excerpts from the same.
Any breach of the above regulations will be construed by the Company as circumstances amounting to gross misconduct, which may result in summary dismissal and legal prosecution.
August 1995
All the guys on my team are university graduates in their mid-to-late twenties who came here within six months of leaving university. With one exception, they are earning upward of thirty-five thousand pounds a year. The exception, owing to the circumstances in which I took the job, is myself. I am over halfway through the trial period imposed by the senior management. If, at the end of it, I am considered to have performed well, my salary will be bumped up from its present level–which is below twelve thousand after tax–to something nearer thirty, and I will be offered a long-term contract, health coverage, and a company car. If Alan Murray, my immediate boss, feels that I have not contributed effectively to the team, I’m out the door.
This probationary period, which ends on 1 December, was a condition of my accepting the job imposed by Murray. Hawkes and Caccia knew that they had brought me in over the heads of several more highly qualified candidates–one of whom had been shadowing the team, unpaid, for more than three months–and they were happy to oblige. From my point of view it’s a small price to pay. Like most employers nowadays, Abnex knows that they can get away with asking young people to work excessively long hours, six or seven days a week, without any form of contractual security or equivalent remuneration. At any one time there might be fifteen or twenty graduates in the building doing unpaid work experience, all of them holding out for a position that in all likelihood does not exist.
So, no complaints. Things have swung around for me since last year and I have Hawkes to thank for that. The downside is that I now work harder, and for longer hours, than I have ever worked in my life. I am up every morning at six, sometimes quarter past, and take a cramped tube to Liverpool Street just after seven. There’s no time for a slow, contemplative breakfast, those gradual awakenings of my early twenties. The team is expected to be at our desks by eight o’clock. There is a small, aggressively managed coffee bar near the Abnex building where I sometimes buy an espresso and a sandwich at around 9 A.M. But often there is so much work to do that there isn’t time to leave the office.
The pressure comes mainly from the senior management, beginning with Murray and working its way steadily up to Caccia. They make constant demands on the team for reliable and accurate information about geological surveys, environmental research, pipeline and refining deals, currency fluctuations, and–perhaps most important of all–any anticipated political developments in the region that may have long-or short-term consequences for Abnex. A change of government personnel, for example, can dramatically affect existing and apparently legally binding exploration agreements signed with the previous incumbent. Corruption is at an epidemic level in the Caspian region, and the danger of being outmanoeuvred, either by a competitor or by venal officials, is constant.
A typical day will be taken up speaking on the telephone to clients, administrators, and other officials in London, Moscow, Kiev, and Baku, often in Russian or, worse, with someone who has too much belief in his ability to speak English. In that respect, little has changed since CEBDO. In every other way, my life has taken on a dimension of intellectual effort that was entirely absent when I was working for Nik. I look back on my first six months at Abnex as a blur of learning: files, textbooks, seminars, and exams on every conceivable aspect of the oil business, coupled with extensive MI5/SIS weekend and night classes, usually overseen by Hawkes.
In late September, he and I flew out to the Caspian with Murray and Raymond Mackenzie, a senior employee at the firm. In under eight days we took in Almaty, Tashkent, Ashgabat, Baku, and Tbilisi. It was the first time that Hawkes or I had visited the region. We were introduced to Abnex employees, to representatives from Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP, and to high-ranking government officials in each of the major states. Most of these had had ties with the former Soviet administration; three, Hawkes knew for certain, were former KGB.
It is not that I have minded the intensity of the work or the long hours. In fact, I draw a certain amount of satisfaction from possessing what is now a high level of expertise in a specialist field. But my social life has been obliterated. I have not visited Mum since Christmas, and I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to savour a decent meal, or to do something as mundane as going to the cinema. My friendship with Saul is now something that has to be timetabled and squeezed in, like sex in a bad marriage. Tonight–he is coming to an oil industry party at the In and Out Club on Piccadilly–will be only the third time that I have had the opportunity to see him since New Year’s. He resents this, I think. In days gone by, it was Saul who called the shots. He had the glamorous job and the jet-set lifestyle. At the last minute, he might be called off to a shoot in France or Spain, and any arrangements we might have made to go to a movie or meet for a drink would have to be cancelled.
Now the tables have turned. Freelancing has not been as easy as Saul anticipated. The work hasn’t been coming in, and he is struggling to finish a screenplay that he had hoped to have financed by the end of last year. It may even be that he is jealous of my new position. There has been something distrustful in his attitude toward me since I joined Abnex, almost as if he blames me for getting my life in order.
It’s a Thursday evening in mid-May, just past five o’clock. People are starting to leave the office, drifting in slow pairs toward the lifts. Some are heading for the pub, where they will drink a pint or two before the party; others, like me, are going straight home to change. If everything goes according to plan, tonight should mark a significant development in my relationship with Andromeda, and I want to feel absolutely prepared.
Back at the flat, I put on a fresh scrape of deodorant and a new shirt. At around seven o’clock I order a taxi to take me to Piccadilly. This early part of the evening is not as awkward as I had anticipated. I am clearheaded and looking forward finally to making progress with the Americans.
There are flames leaping from tall Roman candles in a crescent forecourt visible from the cab as it shunts down a bottlenecked Hyde Park towards the In and Out Club. I pay the driver, check my reflection in the window of a parked car, and then make my way inside.
An immaculate silver-haired geriatric,