Time of the Octopus: Based on the True Story of Whistleblower Edward Snowden

01:21 A.M._

“Tell me, Mr. Kold,” the Lawyer stirred his coffee and took a sip. “It is believed that the action of Private Banning, who passed a huge amount of secret information for publication to Cassandzhi, had a big influence on you. Is that true?

Kold thought. The Lawyer noticed that he didn’t have an unequivocal answer to this question. Silence went on for quite a long time. Finally Kold began to talk:

“You know, I’ll say it’s both: yes and no. The thing is, in the United States itself, there’s no clear position towards Banning’s actions. You see, from the point of view of the law, he is a criminal, a traitor, and because of his actions and the information which he helped make public, people have died. And society doesn’t see a hero in him. As for my point of view, I pay tribute to him, of course, as a man who managed to force himself to cross the fatal line. I’ll say more about Banning, but it’s not a simple subject, so I need to think about it first. I just don’t want to talk about it now. I’ll tell you now about the ‘honey trap’ in Zurich – which had much more influence over my decision than Banning’s actions.”

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“The Baseball player told me about a trip to Europe. I was sitting in the cafeteria on the sixth floor, drinking coffee and looking out the window, thinking about all sorts of things – like fishing, for example. My father and I had been planning for a while on going to the coast and staying in a camping lodge to fish, grill what we caught, drink wine and just chat. To be honest, last time we had something like this was when I was still at school.

Of course, I doubted that my father, despite his promises, would indeed be able to leave all his stuff and take a week-long holiday. And I too had issues with spare time – at that time we were testing yet another version of our latest cryptographic program and I often had to stay at work as late as two o’clock in the morning.

Anyway, I was drinking my coffee and looking at clouds floating by in the faded late summer sky. It was lunch time, the cafeteria was booming with a melee of voices, people were walking around my table, the waiters were scurrying past with trays, and it all smelt of fried bread, sausages, vanilla, coffee and boiled milk.

The Baseball player appeared suddenly, just like he always did – just materialised from thin air. He was all positive in his impeccable suit and his sportyhaircut and classic American smile.

He began the conversation without any preparatory etiquette about how I’m doing or my health. He just came flat out with it:

‘Tell me, Joshua, have you ever been to Europe?’

I shook my head. No, I’d never been to the Old World. I’d been to Asia a few times. As a schoolboy, I went on an exchange trip to Sendai in Japan, and then we went with the whole family to Thailand on holiday. I’ve also been to South America – to Brazil and Peru. And you know about Africa. Though Australia was also beyond the world I happened to see, but, to be frank, I didn’t want to go there. What is Australia? Deserts, kangaroos, eucalyptus and koalas. And to sit for nine hours in the plane for that – no, thanks.

Old Lady Europe is completely different! You don’t need to be a genius to understand that our whole modern civilization was born there and any person who carries a passport in a pocket of his trousers wants to return to the basics, to perform a kind of pilgrimage and go to London or Paris.

All the same, I must admit that we Americans do treat Europe with some scepticism. In essence we are a part of it but we Americans broke free from the geographic and social-historical shackles that poor Europeans are forced to still live by – you can put it this way – in crowded living conditions, constantly wary of the rock of Russia hanging over their heads.

Still, of course, I was fascinated to visit Europe, and the Baseball player guessed at once that he could pull me in on a hook, like a marlin. But he needed a hundred per cent result; people like him never rely on chance, so he asked me another question:

‘And what do you, my boy, think about gnomes?’

I can’t stand it when people call me ‘my boy’ and other words like this, but this time I ignored it because the word ‘gnomes’ awoke many more emotions. I even asked Mr. Jenkins, whether I had heard him correctly. He said, yes, and smiled.

What did I know about gnomes? First of all, the books by Professor JRR Tolkien and the films made from them by Peter Jackson, of course. I had watched a couple – they are quite tolerable gum for the brain, pure escapism. They probably have hoardes of fans who run around in homemade tin armour, fake beards and duralumin swords.

But gnomes themselves, or rather the word, was invented, I think, by Paracelsus, who got it from the Latin gnomus, which means ‘knowledge’. The alchemist thought that each natural element in this world has its own spirits-protectors, and he called them gnomes.

In reality of course, gnomes are bearded dwarfs, the owners of countless treasures. Different nations call them differently: ‘dvergi’, ‘ cvergi ‘, ‘dwarves’, ‘nibelungs’, ‘krasnolyudki’, ‘svartalvy’, ‘kobolds’, ‘leprechauns’ and many other names.

By their character, gnomes are mean and miserable, but they are also workaholics, and in their free time they like nothing better than to drink beer, eat, sing, and rampage with their fellow gnomes.

That’s pretty much what I told the Baseball player, and then asked; has our agency decided to take over a fantasy race? He, as usual, didn’t answer my question but said:

‘The German Swiss from the Zurich canton have an ancient legend about how two shepherd brothers found their way into an underground kingdom of gnomes. They saw there untold riches – even the poorest miners were wearing boots with golden buckles and ate from silver bowls. The brothers were astonished by the fact that the columns and beams of the houses were made out of gold, the signposts on the walls of the grottoes were decorated with precious stones and the handrails of bridges and balconies were made out of silver. The brothers bent double and wrapped themselves in their cloaks and pretended to be gnomes to find out where the mines that the gnomes got their precious metals and gems, were. But every time they reached an underground lake, beyond which the entrances to the mines were located, an unknown force would turn them back. So then the brothers decided to use a trick. They gave the gnomes a barrel of beer and, of course, the gnomes really liked a drink. So they began to ask for more and the brothers offered them a deal – they would fill the barrel with beer in return for the same barrel filled with gold. That’s how two poor shepherds soon became rich and left their sheep to build themselves houses on the banks of the Limmat River. And Zurich, one of the world’s largest banking centers, is now located there. But people say that gnomes, eager for beer, still live in the depths of the surrounding mountains and in the city itself – and the descendants of the legendary brothers, in accordance with the ancient agreement, still swap beer for gold.’

‘It’s a good legend,’ I said. ‘Europeans are generally quite good at making up fairy tales and myths.’

‘That’s true,’ the Baseball player laughed, but then he became serious: ‘The embassy in Zurich needs a man from our department. The work is the usual – check the technical condition of the equipment, and standard maintenance of the software according to the project. And the local boys need some help; they’ve got problems with the local network. And, Joshua, you are the best candidate…

“I’m in!’ I finished my coffee and put the cup down with a slam. ‘Switzerland – is it somewhere north?’

‘Sweden is in the north,’ the Baseball player got up. ‘You have one day to brush up on your geography and other subjects. Tickets, passport and visa you can get in the transport office, and you get your briefing from Heidi after four o’clock. Good luck!’

…In the plane I was reading all I’d downloaded the day before about Europe in general, about Switzerland and specifically Zurich, but for some reason I couldn’t find the legend about the shepherd brothers.

But among the serious files, stuffed with historic data, statistics and geographic maps, I came across a funny text about what Americans associate with various European countries:

I smiled, and for my smile I got an unfriendly look from my neighbor on the seat next to me – an unshaven man with bushy eyebrows, clearly European. Then I thought, well, that’s pretty much how things are: we, Americans, indeed form some vague ideas about European nations and treat them accordingly.

The French for us are cold and calculating grumblers. The Swedish are crazy, rather infantile, sexually obsessed eternal teens. The Germans – aggressive pedantic workaholics. Spanish – lazy psychos who love dancing. Italians – sentimental artists-killers. Irish – goofy brawlers and drunks. English – arrogant snobs, convinced they know better than anyone else what to do and how to do it, but constantly missing the mark. Turks – modest traders, who count every single cent. Although stop, Turks – I think they are not a part of Europe?

I didn’t manage to put the Swiss in this scheme because I realized that French, Germans, Austrians and Italians live there and there are five official languages.

I liked Zurich. It was exactly how I imagined that good old Europe, with medieval stone houses a few storeys high under pointed tiled roofs, towers with high spires, and gothic cathedrals overlooking the light waters of the river Limmat and Lake Zürich. Yes, and above all of this urban cosiness tower, the white peaks of the Alps. Basically, it’s a country of gnomes, no less.

But I’ve also read that in the Middle Ages Swiss gnomes with long pikes defeated the armour-clad knights of almost all European countries and then became mercenaries protecting French kings and the Pope and were generally known as desperate thugs, but that was a long time ago. Having fought long enough, the Swiss decided to become pacifists, and even during the Second World War their little country managed to stay neutral, which provided an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Germany and European countries occupied by Hitler to escape.

The technical center in the Zurich consulate turned out to be much smaller than the South African one, but the consulate itself, on the contrary, was almost vibrating from the hidden activity which always accompanies the guys from Langley.

In the past they were called ‘knights of cloak and dagger’, but today this definition has become outdated. I would’ve called the modern spies ‘adepts of the mobile phone’. Or ‘warriors of the tablet’. But to blend all these features into one, then in the Zurich consulate they are ‘paladins of the smartphone’.

With these gadgets they collected information published on open source internet. Based on this, they drew some conclusions, then called people who were in any way connected to this information to arrange a meeting.

Of course, it was a secret to me what they were doing during those meetings, but judging by the troubled faces of the consulate staff working under cover, things were not going that well for them.

In my opinion, just one analyst from our department sitting on the information streams would easily outdo all these ‘paladins’.

The nerves of espionage were almost ringing in Zurich and sometimes I even thought I could hear it ringing!

The octopus was moving its tentacles, groping about in the darkness of the Swiss night in search of victims, but I was ok. Everything being done here and in other corners of the world, was done first of all for the benefit of my country and its citizens, and so ‘he saw that it was good’.

But I probably shouldn’t slander these guys. Outside work they were quite friendly, even though wearily arrogant as if it was 1982 and they had only just returned from the Soviet Union from some top-secret assignment, where they had to escape the clutches of the terrible and insidious KGB.

A couple of times during the fortnight I spent in Zurich, we went for beers in an authentic German beer house called the Elephant, which overlooked Lake Zürich. From their conversation, I realised that the main problem for the local residency was recruiting people in some way connected to the Swiss banking communities.

Zurich is one of the banking capitals of the world. Major offices for almost all the large banks, of which there are more than a hundred, are located there, and it looks like half of the town’s population works in them. Zurich, at least during the day, is a town of business suits and strict hairstyles. Of course, it’s a little bit boring, but at least everything’s calm. Yes, there is a kind of nightlife – I saw a few night clubs with quite unusual names: Abart Music Club, Alte Börse or Basilica. But not a lot.

Two days before my departure I visited one of these clubs, perhaps the most unusual one. It was in response to a request from one of my Zurich colleagues, Stephen Mallers, an economic adviser to the council.

I guess he was the one I got closest to – we used to chat, sit in the Elephant, bantered about other paladins. And so Steve asked me to go to a night club called Adagio to have some beers, relax and keep an eye on a certain German, Herr Hagen, he’d be talking to.

We had been sitting in my hotel room and I was tinkering with his tablet – there were some issues with the wi-fi module – when Steve began to talk about a favour.

‘Josh, help me out. You’ve seen James Bond movies, haven’t you? How about you make yourself a super agent!’ he began to laugh but his eyes remained serious. ‘Actually we don’t have enough people. The task in itself is nothing, a trifle, you won’t need any special training for it. You just need to go to a club, stay there, listen to the music – some good groups perform there – and at the same time look who he’s talking to, what he orders, how he acts. And then just tell me everything – and that’s it.’

“And that’s it?’

“Of course. Did you think you had to film him on a camera installed in a button, or prick him on a bridge with a poisonous umbrella? Ha-ha, Josh, our work is not like a movie!’

‘But I hope he’s a world terrorist. An emissary of Al-Qaeda, no less?’

‘Of course,’ Steve reassured me. ‘He’s a major banking exec – a top dog at Deutsche Bank.’

‘And does he finance international terrorism?’

‘Something of the kind, yes. Well, you agree? I’ll give you seven hundred euros – you can spend it all in Adagio.

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Excellent,’ Steve rejoiced. ‘I knew I could rely on you. So one wolf won’t gnaw off a tail of another wolf, we are doing the same job!’

To be honest, I wanted to refuse – I just couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere. But after his phrase about the same job I felt I just couldn’t refuse.

By the evening, it was raining in Zurich – heavy clouds the color of hardened steel drifted over the snow-white peaks and crawled down onto the town’s roofs, like slugs creeping down grape leaves. The clouds brought with them the cold breath of ice, fog and darkness. The light of the street lamps blurred into orange splashes, and passers-by pulled their heads into their shoulders and raised their collars, and the raindrops streamed down the windows of my taxi. My mood was rapidly getting worse. I was tired after a day of work and the prospect of going to bed at who knows what time was looming ahead.

And I was also very nervous. After all, it’s not very often I have to be a secret agent and conduct surveillance on someone. Of course, I’m slightly exaggerating – there was not supposed to be any real surveillance, but still I felt severely uncomfortable.

Adagio, contrary to my expectations, turned out to be a decent place, finished in the style of a medieval castle with solid furniture, a ceiling painted in the Baroque style, a huge fireplace with a pile of logs, a bar with forged hooks and a quite intelligent clientele.

I chose a high stool by the bar to one side. Steve had said it was the best place to watch the entrance. I sat half-turned and ordered a double martini with vodka and ice.

I’m not the biggest admirer of this drink and have a generally negative attitude towards alcohol.

First of all, I don’t like being drunk, when you don’t belong to yourself anymore. It’s like the feelings drugs awake, but that’s acid in the brain experiencing the influence of a complex chemical compound, when in the case of alcohol you’re controlled by the waste product of billions of yeast fungi. To be controlled by fungus is quite humiliating, to say the least.

Secondly, I simply didn’t like the taste of alcohol drinks. Vodka, rum, tequila, cognac –just a burning, nauseating poison. After champagne, I get a headache almost straight away, probably because of the carbon dioxide. Beer is bitter, while dry wines are too sour for my taste. I guess the only alcohol drink I can consume and, of course, in small portions only, is martini with a little vodka. ‘Shaken, but not stirred’, yes…

I watched people entering the club. A motley crowd was gathering, from bank clerks in black suits to some complete etoiles in retro outfits. People were talking, laughing, drinking, and some guests were moving freely across the space. No one paid me any attention and I gradually relaxed.

Herr Hagen came in after about half an hour. By that time, there were quite a lot of people in the club, because some Austrian group I’d never heard of called Camo & Krooked was performing. They played in the fashionable drum’n’base style and it was strange to hear African-Australian rhythms in the medieval interior. Camo & Krooked and their energetic frontman were obviously popular with locals – the crowd was jumping as soon as they started.

Herr Hagen was tall and dark-haired, no older than thirty. He came alone but very soon two beauties in flowery dresses were draped at his table and even from my seat it was easy to see how carnivorous Herr Hagen’s look was becoming as he gazed into revealing décolletés.

Judging by the number of beer glasses and plates with sausages and fried potatoes, my ward clearly didn’t have any inclination for temperance. If someone asked me my opinion about him, I would’ve said that he is a typical representative of the target group which swallows the contents of entertainment internet portals where there are articles about new cars, photographs of beauties in negligees, and anecdotes and forums with private chat rooms for virtual sex.

People grazing portals like that usually sit in an office for five days a week and because their job is so boring, they use every spare second to entertain themselves. If the internet was taken from them, they would spend more time in cafés, rest rooms, smoking rooms – in a word, anywhere they could socialise with their own kind without leaving work for long.

The golden time for fellows like this is the weekend. It begins on Friday after lunch and ends on Sunday evening. On Monday morning our hero, clean-shaven and clean-shirted, will arrive at his office with only dark shadows under his eyes and the light tremor of his fingers to betray his tempestuous weekend.

The interests of the layer of people to which Herr Hagen belonged can be usually placed in the following triangle: new women – new cars – new movies. But at least they are a credit humus, a feeding ground for numerous finance companies. All of their belongings are brought on credit – house, car, furniture, household appliances, even clothes and shoes. It’s the greatest invention of our economic system – which, I believe, is the future – to create a class of people-conductors, people-pipes. They get money in their account from their employer, then straight away, without taking any cash out, transfer it as payment for their credits. Sometimes the employer and creditor is the same organization. In this way, the natural circulation of money continues and these ‘Herr Hagens’ are an important part of this circulation.

In the States, by the way, there’s plenty of people like this, and I wouldn’t say they are exactly condemned by society. Quite the opposite. To become one of these white collars is as prestigious, and it’s tough to get into this caste from a farm in the Midwest or from the ethnic districts of a megalopolis. The social life is social because it doesn’t stop on all the floors of a building.

Sometimes I get a kind of fascist idea that if people like this didn’t exist, nobody would notice it – apart from the banks and, of course, their relatives.

Why this creature was of any interest to the NSA, I’m afraid, even Buddha may not know. And why would I care – I just complied with Steve’s request.

In the meantime, Herr Hagen was getting wild. He was either laughing his nuts off, throwing his head back and displaying his whitened teeth, or squeezing the girls, who, by the way, didn’t object at all. Or he would suddenly jump up, inviting the girls to dance. By that time there was a totally unrestrained atmosphere in the club with everyone shaking and grinding, By the small stage where the musicians were performing, bras and tops of excited fans were already flying through the air.

After an hour, there was no sign of Herr Hagen slowing down. After beer, he moved on to tequila, and he sprinkled salt onto the palm of one of the two laughing glamourpusses, and after drinking sucked a slice of lemon from the breast of the other one.

I began to count how much he had drunk but I lost count after the tenth.

The evening was rolling down its habitually orchestrated rails. The musicians had left and a DJ of unclear gender and nationality took their place.

Distracted by the DJ, I only noticed Herr Hagen walking towards me when he was two steps away. My heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach and my palms became suddenly sweaty. The music moved to the distance and rang in my ears as it always does when I get really scared.

He’s seen through me! He’s done it so easily because I am green and probably staring at him too openly. And all my conclusions about a typical representative of office plankton are in reality worthless. He is a spy – a professional, probably – and a murderer, trained in Al-Qaeda camps. Damn, he even looks like an Arab! He will now approach me, discreetly stab me with a poisoned stiletto and carry on as if nothing has happened.

I was in uncontrolled fear. I was paralysed and only my teeth were knocking the resounding beat. Herr Hagen came right up to me. I had a faint hope he wanted something from the bar, even though I saw that he walked past the barman shaking a drink.

The moment of truth came.

‘Hello, mate!’ Herr Hagen said in English with an awful accent. ‘How are you doing?’

I could only manage a nod – meaning, ‘I’m good’.

‘Where are you from?’

All I could manage to squeeze out was an unclear head movement and a muffled:

‘From… from there.’

‘Are you already drunk, er?’ Herr Hagen began to laugh. ‘Dweeb! C’mon, let’s have tequila, it’ll sober you up. Although you’ll have a headache in the morning it doesn’t matter. Would you like to come to my table?’

I was silently blinking, not able to force out a single word. Streams of cold sweat were running down my back. The first time in my life that had ever happened.

He put his hand into his jacket. My legs went rigid as if I had just stepped in ice-cold water. Now he’ll get his stiletto out…

Instead of a stiletto Herr Hagen pulled out a five-euro note, waved it in the air and shouted over the DJ.

‘Hey, barman! Two tequilas for me and my friend!’

I drank the tequila as if it was water, without noticing its flavor or smell.

‘What about lemon and salt!?’ Herr Hagen raised his arms sorrowfully. ‘What are you doing, friend… Hey, man, looks like you already had enough. You better go home otherwise you may cork off here – then there’ll be no end of trouble. Do you hear me?’

I nodded, struggling to realize that he hadn’t cracked me but just approached me because I was the only guy in the club alone. I needed to play along and pretend that I was indeed very drunk.

‘Maybe I should call you a taxi?’ he was hanging over me like a pruned tree. ‘Where do you live, mate?’

I somehow managed to explain that I’m a visitor and that a friend is waiting for me in the car outside. I paid for the martini, got off the stool and trudged towards the exit. The last thing I heard was Herr Hagen telling his laughing girlfriends loudly:

‘American. They just can’t drink.’

After leaving the club, I turned a corner, straightened up, stopped and called Steve.

‘That’s it, I had to leave.’

‘Why?’ my friend was surprised.

‘He began to talk to me, got me a drink and then decided that I am too drunk and began to offer help.’

‘But you are sober!’ Steve surprised.

‘It just happened…’

‘Did he approach you himself?’

“Yes.’

“Do you know why?’

I had to confess:

‘Probably because I was sitting there alone…’

He grunted.

‘I see. So, what can you tell me about our friend?’

‘He’s a typical white collar not burdened by excessive intelligence,’ I was getting my own back on Herr Hagan for the fright he gave me. ‘He picked up two whores and pumped them up so much that in the end they were only capable of laughing. He likes to drink and eat but keeps well. After beer, he drinks tequila and claims it can sober you up. People say that’s a sign of an early stage of alcoholism…’

‘Josh, mate, let us come up with the conclusions,’ Steve interrupted me. ‘Thanks for your work. I owe you.’

…I probably would’ve forgotten about the event if there hadn’t been a follow-up. It so happened that I got delayed in Zurich. I can’t tell you all the details, but I’ll just say that it had something to do with my job, with part of it which I have no intention of divulging under any circumstances.

These were lonely, miserable days. It rained non-stop. The wind bent the bushes right over on the waterfront, rattled the signs and tore shreds of clouds, which looked black, across the grey sky. The Paladins had for various reasons all suddenly left. Some had gone to Geneva. Some had even left Switzerland. So there was nobody left in the consulate except for security and a couple of diplomats.

The dreariest time was in the evenings when streams of vehicles crawled through the gloomy wet streets. Zurich residents were hurrying to their homes, to their families and pets, and here I was dawdling, stepping over puddles, back to the dull hotel where crap coffee and a cold bed were waiting for me.

One evening, I think it was Thursday, I felt so lousy I decided to go out for a warming drink, like mulled wine.

The Elephant was closed by then, and the only other place I knew was Adagio. So I decided to risk another visit to the medieval palace. Hey, even if I come across Herr Hagen again, it won’t effect anything – after all, I’m not doing anything reprehensible.

Everything inside was the same. The barman with a shaker and the fireplace. Only the band performing on the stage was different and there were fewer people than that Friday night.

Obeying some inexplicable impulse, I sat on the same stool by the bar. The barman brewed some mulled wine for me and offered me a glass of Kirsch, the local cherry vodka, but when I refused he left me and attended to other clients.

I was drinking mulled wine, thinking I’ll soon be back in America, when I suddenly saw Steve. He was sitting half-turned towards me at the table in the corner by the fireplace – and opposite him grinning with his white teeth and with a cup of beer in his hand was… Herr Hagen! The third person at the table was a small blonde with a large sensual mouth.

I guessed straight away that there’s something odd about this. An angel on my left shoulder said to me: ‘Joshua, my boy, finish your mulled wine, pay and go home to your uncomfortable cold, but peaceful bed’.

But at once a demon appeared on my right shoulder, who began to laugh mischievously: ‘Finally something interesting happened! You’d be a complete fool to leave at this crucial moment and go to sleep like an old man.’

Do I need to say which one I listened to? Although in this case I am completely unoriginal in this sense, for some reason people always listen to the one who speaks into the right ear.

So I decided to stay, ordered coffee and relocated to the far end of the bar under a fake shield with the emblem of some ancient knightly family. From there I could watch the trio while remaining unnoticed. Steve kept telling Herr Hagen and the girl some stories, accompanying his words with soft gestures that made it look like he was conducting an invisible orchestra. The girl was laughing like hell and bent so far forward her breasts could be easily be seen through the neck of her dress. Herr Hagen also was laughing and downing beer. Then he rang someone. Steve ordered a bottle of kirsch, and by the time the German had finished his telephone conversation there was already a full glass in front of him.

It looked to me as if Herr Hagen tried to refuse but Steve was insistent and the blonde also joined in the persuasion. They had one drink, then another and another…

Herr Hagen suddenly looked heavy. His lower lip dropped, his eyes glazed and his moves became large and coarse.

He tried to dance with the girl but kept bumping into other people and tripped over the legs of the bar stools. He began to attract attention. Two club security guards started watching Hagen as he staggered over the dance floor.

Steve, to his credit, came to help out his friend and for some reason I had no doubt of the fact that they were friends, although there was still an unanswered question – why had Steve asked me to watch the banker?

After sitting Herr Hagen at the table with aid of the blonde, Steve gestured for a waiter, kept explaining something for a long time. Finally, the waiter brought them a tray with two glasses of tequila and the bill in a crystal dish. Traditionally, visitors would be putting tips into such dishes if they liked the service, but now it was more of a tribute to tradition, because for a long time in Europe tips were included in the final bill.

After paying and knocking back that last drink, Steve helped Herr Hagen get up and they headed for the door accompanied by the girl, while the German kept trying to bow to every passer-by. In order not to lose sight, I also paid and hurried to the exit. Mulled wine and coffee were warming me up from the inside and my curiosity led me there, where in theory I really shouldn’t be. However, I decided at once: if Steve notices me I’ll simply pretend I ended up there by chance.

I pushed the heavy door open and I breathed in the damp Zurich air, filled with a mix of petrol, female perfume, rancid oil from the nearest fast food and the distant Alpine snow. Steve, the blond, and Herr Hagen were looming ahead like three characters from the Irish song ‘What will you do with the drunken sailor?’

I followed them with my hands in my pockets and smiled to the darkness, imagining how Steve’s face will look when he finds out that he, the ‘paladin’ and super agent, was tracked by an ordinary IT worker without any special qualification or operative training.

After walking along the narrow pavement next to the pale wall of an old house, they stopped under a streetlight and Herr Hagen tried to light a cigarette. I hadn’t seen him with a cigarette until now and I think people in Europe smoke much less – anti-tobacco propaganda and high cigarette prices seem to be working. So the fact that Herr Hagen was trying to smoke highlighted how drunk he was.

But he failed to light his cigarette and flung it carelessly on the wet asphalt. A short German curse reached me. The blonde burst out laughing, waving her handbag. She had a stunning figure and slim legs, but her voice and manners betrayed her lack of class.

All that time, I was getting closer to them. It was late, so there were hardly any other people on the street – just these three and an elderly couple, returning from a late promenade.

As I came up to Steve, the girl and Herr Hagen, they were walking a few steps towards a big white Opel. Then something unimaginable happened.

‘You’re drunk!’ Steve said, addressing his drinking companion. ‘So I’ll drive.’

‘N-no!’ Herr Hagen banged his fist on the roof of the car. ‘Thi-is is my car! I will dr… drive it… myself!’

‘Teddy-bear!’ the blonde laughed. ‘The teddy-bear will drive us!’

‘No-n!’ Steve objected. ‘You had too much to drink, mate. We’ll crash into a lamppost and…’

‘Your American politeness insults my German pride!’ Herr Hagen said with sudden assurance and, pushing Steve aside, climbed in behind the steering wheel.

Steve snorted, spread his arms, and walked around the car to sit in the front passenger seat while the blonde giggled in the back. I was standing five steps away by a downpipe from which water was gushing, and I had the impression it was all just a hoax.

Will they really drive in a state like this? Will Steve really allow the banker to…?

I rushed to the car intending to stop them, but the Opel had pulled off sharply, swerved, raced past the married couple who huddled against the wall in horror. Its headlights swept the dark windows of a neighboring building as it shot onto the big road leading to the center of town.

I sighed as I realized that the performance was over and I was left only to hope that everything would end well for its main characters.

Walking slowly along the pavement, I soon forgot Steve and Herr Hagen. I was thinking about the next day, more humming servers and cold coffee and about whether I’ll manage to finish my work or have to stay here longer…

But a surprise was waiting for me around the corner!

Across the road under the orange street lights a blue and white car of the Swiss road police slewed at an angle with its lights flashing. Herr Hagen’s Opel had its nose right up against the police car’s wing. Two policemen were talking intensely to Steve while the Opel’s owner, watched by another policeman, was standing on one leg with his arms spread, desperately trying to balance – presumably trying to prove he was sober. The blonde, waving her handbag, was walking in the distance smoking nervously.

To be honest, if I can avoid meeting the police I always do. Of course, European police are not the same as ours. Here they quite often carry out the role of government clerks who give out fines.

I have to admit we have higher levels of crime and the potential threat is higher. After all, in a country where people in every other house has guns, the policemen have to be tough. And what else do you want with the Second Amendment to the Constitution – you have to pay for it. That’s why if there’s an altercation on a road and a policeman suddenly tells you: ‘Be quiet, put your hands up and put them on the bonnet!’, everybody obeys. If they continue to wrangle, the office can consider it defiance and get a gun out. In the USA, for your information, if a policeman gets a gun out, then he will definitely fire it – so better not tempt fate.

Why am I talking about this now? Well, because Steve himself would not have behaved like that with policemen who effectively caught Herr Hagen at the crime scene. Back in America both of them would’ve been taken to a police station – and that’s it. But the local policemen here are liberal guys, and for some reason they were trying to prove to Steve that his mate is guilty.

As I was standing there watching, another two police cars arrived. Now Herr Hagen and the blonde were sitting in one of the cars and a policewoman, a pretty plump woman with brown hair, sat in the Opel. Steve was free to go and at once, suspiciously quickly, stopped a taxi and left. Then the policemen left too. I was left on the street by myself again.

I didn’t manage to leave Zurich the next day, nor the day after. The program was playing up, time was running out and I even had to work at night to get results.

I saw Herr Hagen again when I arrived at the consulate to get in touch with the agency. A door into one of the offices was opened and I noticed the banker sitting in there in an armchair by the table. I couldn’t see who was sitting opposite him and the voice was unfamiliar.

Herr Hagen looked depressed and confused. I lingered by the door listening to the conversation.

‘You’re not in a very good position, Herr Hagen,’ the invisible interlocutor was telling the German. ‘Drink-driving is a serious offence.’

‘My friend wanted to help me, ‘Herr Hagen mumbled. ‘Steve, he tried… tried to take my place and drive the car. Oh, my damn stubbornness! I already paid the fine and a fee for the medical examination and a fee for the tests… it came out at almost five thousand francs! And now I’ve received a subpoena and this is threatening my career – according to internal policies of the bank, someone up for prosecution doesn’t have a right to occupy certain positions… High positions, do you understand? Steve said back then, when the policemen have arrived, he said that there’s an opportunity…’

‘There is indeed an opportunity,’ the voice of the man sitting at the table sounded very convincing. He was now talking slowly, pausing between the words. ‘The court will hear your case tomorrow. But unfortunately, Steve has left and won’t be able to help you personally…’

‘Oh!’ Herr Hagen exclaimed sorrowfully.

‘But he’s asked me to make all possible efforts to get you out of this unpleasant situation. The only thing, Herr Hagen – we’ll need a favour from you.’

‘A favour? Anything you want!’ the German exclaimed.

‘Great!’ the voice sounded satisfied. ‘So, sign this paper. Here and here.’

‘What is it?’ Some papers rustled.

‘It’s a commitment, Herr Hagen, just a commitment. A document confirming our agreement.’

‘It says here that I… that I’ll have to pass…’

‘…information that, let’s put it this way, has importance for our service,’ the voice finished for him. ‘But note from now on every month you will receive the sum shown below on a secret account. And any prosecution in regards to your drink-driving will be stopped.’

‘This is… This is recruitment!’ Herr Hagen suddenly shouted.

‘Why so harsh,’ the voice scolded him gently. ‘It’s just an offer of cooperation, which, I’d like to note, comes to you not from enemies, but friends! Aren’t our countries the closest allies and partners? Are you not fighting side by side against international terrorism and crime?’

‘Yes, but you’re trying to force me to commit crimes! No, I refuse. I don’t give a damn about the driving license or reputation. Goodbye!’

‘Sit down!’ the voice immediately filled with steel and clanked like a shutter. ‘Your management may be upset to lose someone like you but in the end they’ll get used to it. But your wife – she has a heart condition if I’m not mistaken? – and may not survive a view of one quite interesting video. Would you like to have a look?’

‘I… I…’ Herr Hagen suddenly bleated.

A hissing came from the office, characteristic of a recording where the microphone cuts out unwanted noises. Then a familiar woman’s voice said loudly:

‘But, teddy-bear, I don’t want it like this… You go on your back! And I will be an Amazon, darling! Let’s ride!’

After that the sound of the bed and the long moans of a woman, receiving pleasure, could be heard. Then the record stopped.

‘Give me the disc!’ Herr Hagen shouted with a breaking voice.

In response, an unexpectedly sincere – although at the same time mocking – laughter sounded. The man, talking to the banker, laughed heartily, but not for long. I heard the sound of a falling chair, quick steps, then some noise – and the sharp voice of the paladin:

‘Sit down! You forget, I am a diplomat, and to attack me…’

Herr Hagen, breathing heavily, croaked:

‘You bastard…’

‘These are just emotions.’

‘God will punish you…’

Laughter sounded again in the agent’s voice.

‘Until now he was mostly punishing others!’

‘That’s because the devil helps you!’

‘Herr Hagen, let’s put demagogy aside. Here’s the paper. You need to sign all three pages. You can refuse. You can walk out of this building; You can even kill yourself. It will all be the same as you refusing to cooperate with us, because when all of this…’ a pause followed, during which the paladin probably pointed at the screen, ‘will come into, so to speak, the public domain, your life will loose its meaning. Your wife, if she survives your infidelity, will divorce you, your children will forget about their father and I won’t even mention your career – no one will take you to the banking system even as a member of security team.’

Silence descended – and I suddenly heard cries.

I knew very well what a ‘honey trap’ was. One of the oldest methods of recruiting agents. A charming girl – people say you need to establish a man’s preferences to ensure a hundred per cent hit! – or a young man would be sent to the man, whatever he prefers. Then after the fun in bed, a banal rough blackmail comes along: you either work for us, or everyone, beginning with your wife and ending with your boss, will find out about your adultery.

‘Honey traps’ were frequently used in the past by the special forces. I read the files about the history of intelligence service where this method of recruitment was maybe the most popular. The girls doing the dirtiest part of the job were called quite romantically ‘swallows’. The first ‘swallow’ was the biblical Delilah, a treacherous Philistine who seduced and dragged into bed the Jewish strongman Samson. And in the breaks between fun, she discovered Samson’s incredible power lay in his long curly hair. Everyone knows what happened afterwards. One thing excuses Delilah – that she went into coitus with Samson not for money but for patriotic reasons, like those French whores, who were going to infect the whole German army with syphilis when the Kaiser’s troops came to Paris.

Maybe Homer’s Helen of Troy wasn’t a victim of Paris either but a swallow like Delilah. After all, it was she who convinced the Trojans to draw the infamous horse into the city.

Later ‘swallows’ were generally ordinary representatives of the oldest profession. I saw photos of the legendary Mata Hari on the net. She was a fat brunette with short legs, a rotund figure and a bloated face. But she was working for a fee for three intelligence services at the same time – and in the end paid for it, as she was shot.

Representatives of totalitarian countries, where the state controls all areas of a citizen’s life, often became victims of honey traps. Swallows were apparently used to recruit the Russian military intelligence GRU Filatov, who was working in the consulate in Algeria, the Russian spy Ogorodnikov in Columbia and even UN Deputy Secretary General Shevchenko. As far as I’m aware, in the latter case the ‘swallow’ was sent by the FBI, which is not surprising – these guys have no moral principles and sometimes I think they are prepared to do anything to achieve a result.

And now Steve… I suddenly felt as disgusted as if I had stepped on a toad with bare feet. Herr Hagen was lured into a honey trap like a bull into mating. Bulls are given a special aphrodisiac, a so-called bovine exciter, which gets them going. With Herr Hagen, it was plain alcohol that was the aphrodisiac.

The trap into which the German fell was the stepped one – first the rigged accident then the honey trap. If the victim managed to get out of the first one, just as Herr Hagen tried to, then the second one would be triggered.

The sappers and demo men call it a ‘second fuse’. It’s hidden in the depth of the infernal machine and waits its time. When disarming a mine, the specialist snips the necessary wires, takes off the tension from the contacts, inserts the circuit breakers in their place and then when he is finally convinced his job is done and the mine is defused, suddenly there’s a big boom and the sapper disappears in a cloud of hot plasma.

Herr Hagen had no chances. The octopus needed him – and the octopus got him.

‘Al-alright…’ he pronounced barely audibly, sobbing and sniffing like a child. ‘I will sign it all. But I…’

‘Well done!’ the paladin said contentedly. ‘You chose the right side, and got the winning ticket. A big and successful future awaits you, Herr Hagen. Congratulations!’

‘Leave it… Stop!’ the German exclaimed with pain in his voice. ‘You… You…’

‘Emotions,’ the agent reminded. ‘These are just emotions, dear partner. Alright, I understand. You’re tired… go, get some rest, have a drink, relax. When your services are needed, someone will contact you. Most likely, it’ll be an offer to meet under an innocent pretext, so remember to check your emails. And remember the code phrase: ‘Rumpelstiltskin can spin straw into gold’. And now go!

I shied away from the door on tiptoe, trying to make as little noise as possible, walked away, hiding around the corner of the corridor. Luckily, there were no surveillance cameras in the internal areas of the consulate, to save any information leaks, and nobody saw me.

A little more than a day later I left Zurich.”