Though Gareth had little aptitude for the reality of the job, his boss had developed a nagging affection for him.

The bland and undynamic manner of speaking, the way he would idle at the side of every corridor, the inefficient way of performing perfunctory tasks, and a lack of physical command all marked Gareth Charles Wynn out in the crop of people who began at the same time as him.

And yet, as Marker would say to the other departmental managers, what seems remarkable in here allows him to blend in out there. It was fortunate that there was a person in seniority that took Gareth's lack of clubbability as a form of integrity. Gareth performed tasks obligingly, but without alacrity. He did not boast and did not self-efface. He did not quip, nor did he rise to those who joked against him, though his physical shape visibly altered to brace against any glancing blow.

Immediately after Gareth finished another solo lunch, Marker circled the long way around the large open-plan office in order to pass by the desk of his increasingly distanced charge. "We have something for you." The slowness of Gareth's head turn and the reluctance of his eyes to meet those of the boss indicated hauteur. Undeterred, the senior man half-instructed and half-encouraged him to stop by his desk in thirty minutes. A doleful nod. A consonant aimed at the floor.

Senior figures had grown weary of asking Gareth to step all the way over the threshold, so Marker began the conversation as he loomed on the wrong side of the doorframe. "The telecoms people pulled something that might interest you. Some rare talk between two phone boxes in North Wales. That's your part of the world, isn't it Wynn?" He knew that it was, but needed one final sentence in order to unglue Gareth's back foot from the carpet and step fully into the office.

Touching his left elbow with his right middle finger. "Yes, sir." Gareth knew what this conversation was. Nobody was ever beckoned to the offices at the far end for quiet chat to see how things were. This was serious. The unit was opening the door to real work outside of the office, even if both knew this was not as serious as the work delegated to others: North Wales was hardly Finsbury Park or Girlington. Gareth sidled in nervously as Marker continued in a polished manner. "Clever thing really. Many years ago GCHQ taught robots to scan conversations for keywords and log the calls. In all the main languages after English, Urdu and the like." Gareth shot Marker a comprehending look, though one lacking in enthusiasm. "Well, they got around to adding in the minor languages and, well, here we have something in Welsh. You speak Welsh, Wynn?"

Marker knew that he did but was desperate to spark the fuse. Gareth paused briefly, his eyes flickering to signal an internal gear change. "Fy mamiaith yw hi", as he followed up with an English translation: it is my mother tongue.

"We don't have full recordings, let alone transcripts. But we do have three calls between the same two locations, one in Bagillt and another in Holywell, and the same keywords: "bom", which I don't have to tell you what that means. Male voices according to the frequency analysis."

Gareth attempted inscrutability and detachment but transmitted only peevishness. "Bagillt and Holywell are next to each other. If there was a serious conversation to be kept from people you could catch the number 11 bus."

"And no doubt there are irate farmers in all kinds of dudgeon screaming blue murder nightly, Wynn, but this is a pattern. And our job is to follow this up. Your job, in fact."

The junior man was plainly unconvinced. "Three calls. Feels thin." It was and both men knew it. Gareth continued to pursue his desired course of inaction. "You want to send the unit in and not the local law?"

"This could be bigger. Much bigger," said Marker, almost convincingly. "If it isn't we hand it over to the police. Or let it go."

A leaden silence followed. A departmental head in the unit typically enjoys countering resistance from those working under him. Operatives, Marker reasoned, are supposed to be mentally agile and in possession of a superlative gift for seeing methodological issues and obstacles in the road ahead. It would be much worse if they noddingly acquiesced with everything, even though some of them did so.

However, managers and handlers must retain an edge of sharpness and command by knowing exactly which coersive tactic to deploy based on urgency, the operative's skillset, and their psychological profile. For some, flattery worked. For a great many, a raised voice. Occasionally, but usually not after a heavy lunch or a meeting, an actual battle of wits. The latter three, though superficially different, all derived from an enjoyment of the sport of the job and a basic level of respect and security in the operative's competence that never superceded the demands of his own position.

Here Marker was on uncertain ground. Bedside manner had little power when the patient was comatose. Gareth did not flatter and he did not buck. Verbal games did not interest him, either. A creeping avucularity struck Marker whenever alone with Gareth, ever sensitive to the fish out of water, willing it to skitter and squirm back to water before a heron passes by. Marker would attempt something he had deployed on underlings three times in just under a decade: honesty.

"It's been 18 months and you're chained to the computer. You've done some good work but in this department", half-swallowing 'some', "but you have to breathe fresh air once in a while. You're on your way out at this rate." Marker held the point of a letter opener on his left index finger and rotated the handle between the thumb and middle digit of the right hand in order to suppress the alien emotions that had risen within since he decided to be nice to someone at work.

Gareth's expression betrayed little. He was filling in the blanks. Thoughts arrived haphazardly: that his boss liked him only as a wretch but didn't want him to escape this conceptualisation and ultimately succeed; that the local police are probably close to whatever this is; that reams of text have been decrypted more incriminating than three phonecalls, only to find nothing but animated teenage talk; that he did not know how to succeed or win this game in the long term; that someone higher than the boss wants me out. He also knew that there was little profit in continuing to gainsay, and that he'd done enough to satisfy their requirement for just the right amount of rebellion. He scanned through his recent thoughts and selected the only useful one outstanding, expressing the idea that within tight-knit places such as these, certain police of long-standing service were likely to be too close to this to realise or do anything.

"Quite." Marker didn't think it unusual that Gareth hadn't responded directly to what he had said and chose not to address it. "So, you see how this might have to work."

--

Gareth walked home to his shared flat in Denmark Hill past the brick frontages tightly lining Camberwell New Road, feeling as though it would be the last time he would see them. It was only two miles in cool weather and summer birds were reappearing atop bus shelters and lampposts.

When Marker delivered the checkmate implied in his strident, yet evasive, 'quite', the functional part of the conversation was over. Marker and Gareth remained in the office engaged in what any passing person might take for conversation. In reality, Gareth was providing potted answers whilst internally watching a branching tree before him containing the multiple paths the conversation did not take. He would emerge briefly from his reverie to be present, the only new skill which he had developed in his time at the unit, before replaying multiple possibilities: of entering the room differently, or sitting down with more aggression, or playing the first card in order to unsettle his unwitting foe. Only much later he would realise this was not a tree forking outwards to infinite possibilities but a river delta approaching one destination.

Someone had urinated in the lift in his building so Gareth walked to the fourth floor. Inside he could hear his flatmate Gian conducting a work conversation online.

He knew that certain thoughts, once formed, began inexorable journeys to their realisation. No force would be big enough to prevent this, no act of ordinary willpower nor decisive intervention. These thoughts, he rationalised, were manifestations of desires and compulsions toward his own defeat and humiliation. He must go home in order to fail or resist and stay to the same end.

As it would be for the coming days and weeks, the actual and officially verifiable conversation from the early afternoon was replayed not as a sequence of utterances, but as a chess game that he had no chance of winning. There was a processional quality to the taking of turns, a cold and dishonest ritual that made him clench inwardly.

Gareth made a cup of tea and began his evening ritual of exchanging SIM cards between phones and receptacles.