The next morning.
The WOMAN and the MAN stand in the room with ANDREW.
ANDREW I’ve been thinking about the phone.
WOMAN You know we’re both here right?
ANDREW Yes, but that’s not what bothers me.
WOMAN Okay.
MAN What about the phone?
ANDREW That there’s nothing in it.
WOMAN He was going on about this last night –
ANDREW It doesn’t make sense.
WOMAN There is something in it, you said there’s a speaker and we told you it was the Russians.
ANDREW Yes.
WOMAN But more importantly, look! Me and George, the other one, we’re both here together, are you not going to comment on that, since before we were apparently unaware of each other’s existence?
ANDREW Okay. What? You met in the bar downstairs.
WOMAN No. We knew about each other, all along. We just wanted to test you. Good cop bad cop.
ANDREW Who’s who?
WOMAN Isn’t it obvious?
ANDREW …
WOMAN/MAN I’m bad cop.
WOMAN Wait –
MAN Oh… I thought… sorry.
(To ANDREW.) Slight… error.
ANDREW It doesn’t matter.
MAN (To WOMAN.) I honestly thought you said –
WOMAN Andrew this is so much not how I expected this would go. You don’t even seem to be paying attention. Look, we can tell you all this now that you’ve agreed to join us, we can reveal that actually both him and me were working for the same side.
ANDREW I had some of the whiskey and it wasn’t really whiskey. It was sort of like whiskey but it was cheap.
WOMAN Russia doesn’t really do whiskey.
MAN You should taste the vodka. Jesus Andrew if you were worrying about spending your life in Russia, about spending the rest of your days in a completely foreign country complete with actual Russians (and in parenthesis I would be worried about that) then the vodka is definitely some compensation.
ANDREW I tried the vodka.
MAN And?
ANDREW It was fine.
MAN Fine. Well maybe you don’t know enough about vodka. The vodka is really fucking good –
ANDREW What’s going to happen this morning?
MAN Possibly nothing, possibly a lot, calls have been made to see about that asylum that we’re after, we’ve already got our best contacts speaking to the Russian authorities – they know they need to resolve this and really they want to take you in – I mean that’s good news – they’re just looking for a way they can take you without it seeming too petulant. We’re going to help them with that.
WOMAN And when we do find a way forward when we can get you out of this limbo and get you some kind of passport, we’ll do a press conference but we think for the time being it’s actually best if you keep your head down.
ANDREW Right.
MAN Until we’re all on a more stable footing.
ANDREW Will I get to speak to him? You said –
MAN Andrew he’s stuck in an embassy, in not an entirely different situation to you actually, communication is a constant challenge, especially secure communication – I assume you have some idea why – but yeah we can try to get him on the phone for you. If you’d like?
ANDREW When?
MAN Now.
Or later.
Probably later.
ANDREW Can I see your hand?
WOMAN What?
ANDREW Can I see your hand, from last night? How it’s healing.
The WOMAN looks at the MAN.
WOMAN (To MAN.) Actually shall we try to get him on the phone now?
MAN Now?!
WOMAN Yes.
ANDREW Your hand.
MAN We can’t get him now. You know that. He’s probably asleep.
WOMAN (With an implication…) Well shall we try anyway?
MAN What?
Sorry. Am I… Am I missing something?
ANDREW Just show me.
Pause. The WOMAN rolls her eyes.
WOMAN Well you know what Andrew, it’s actually healed extremely well.
ANDREW What’s happened to it?
WOMAN Nothing. Look. Good as new.
ANDREW But… I saw you…
WOMAN Yeah. About that.
She takes a fake-skin glove out of her bag.
MAN Oh. Sorry. I get what you…
WOMAN Old trick. Just in case. The skin wasn’t real. Neither was the blood.
ANDREW But… our trust. It doesn’t mean anything, the fact that was real, that it would last, that was the whole point –
WOMAN But we’ve made the calls now. We’ve told people.
ANDREW You just happened to have a spare glove waiting?
A sort of special prop just for the occasion.
WOMAN If you remember, it was me that suggested it.
Oldest trick in the book. Well not oldest, but you know, old.
Still got the hat?
Pause.
ANDREW I knocked on the wall. It doesn’t sound like a wall.
WOMAN Where are you going with this? Are you going a bit mad Andrew, should we be calling a psychiatrist or something?
ANDREW Do it. Yourself.
Knock on the wall.
MAN No I’m not going to knock on the –
The WOMAN knocks on the wall.
WOMAN Oh yeah.
He’s right. It doesn’t sound like a wall.
She does it again.
It’s kind of more hollow, and more soft, at the same time.
Long pause.
ANDREW tests the floor. Listens to it.
MAN Should we…?
WOMAN Maybe.
Beat.
MAN Sorry can I just ask while we’ve got a moment, am I good or bad cop then?
WOMAN Bad.
MAN Right. Okay then. Bad… okay…
WOMAN Andrew there is a reason the wall is how you described.
ANDREW I thought so.
I’m not in a hotel, am I?
Beat.
MAN No.
ANDREW None of this is a real hotel.
WOMAN No.
ANDREW Didn’t think so.
ANDREW picks up the chair and throws it at the wall.
It disappears through a previously unseen gap. Which has been there the whole time. An optical illusion.
The MAN lights a cigarette.
MAN He’s not stupid.
WOMAN Well we know that. We do know that but I thought he might last a little bit longer.
ANDREW You don’t work for him.
Do you?
Either of you.
Pause.
WOMAN No.
ANDREW Who do you work for?
WOMAN Well that’s a really difficult question because the thing is that these days –
She presses a button and one wall switches off.
– these different groups whether they’re government agencies or companies or terrorist organisations well they’re all rather connected aren’t they?
She takes one corner of one of the walls and peels it away.
Bearing in mind the way that governments need companies and companies need influence and influence comes through paying people of the kind that you might in an ideal world not want to be paying, and even if you can draw lines between all these different groups those lines don’t hold do they?
She presses another button and the ceiling lifts up.
And the ideologies behind them are so indistinct and ever-changing, in fact I would go as far as to say that the only constant we can refer to is power.
She starts folding up some of the various hotel props and furniture. Some of them she deflates.
I would say I work for power, and I want that power for my own self-preservation and to get the things I want. Oh. Well that’s a much clearer answer than I was expecting to give. There you go Andrew.
ANDREW I thought you might be Russian?
WOMAN Do I sound Russian?
ANDREW It wouldn’t make any difference if you did.
MAN I’m not Russian either.
ANDREW I want to speak to the ambassador.
MAN The ambassador has washed his hands of you Andrew we discussed that right at the very beginning – with the exception of a few journalists who have zero clout, you have no one. Everyone is backing away from you as fast as they can – well anyone who can help you. They’re pleased, some of them, that you did what you did, but that is done and now you’re old news.
ANDREW In that case.
WOMAN What did you want?
ANDREW What?
WOMAN What did you hope for, when you pressed the button and all that information trickled or flooded out of the Pentagon what did you hope would be the result?
ANDREW That people would know the truth.
WOMAN What truth? What people? The truth that they were being spied on. They don’t care. They like it. It makes them feel safer. If it keeps the war out there and not in their homes they don’t mind. They wilfully would rather not think about it. You mean people like you. Thinkers. Theorists. Warriors for the good and proper. There aren’t very many of you.
ANDREW Courage is contagious.
The WOMAN smiles, patronisingly.
WOMAN Aw.
Not really.
Not when there’s free wifi and Netflix.
We’re left in a large empty space.
ANDREW There are people who want progress. Like you said –
WOMAN But the documents you leaked all the files I mean fine it revealed that the government was lying on a massive scale to the people and it made us think that possibly everyone is lying all the time. But that’s not the revelation is it? That’s not the unexpected thing.
The unexpected aspect in all of this, and Facebook are surprised, the government is surprised, in fact everyone in power is surprised, is how much of this the people are prepared to take. All the information of where you go and who you are and what you do and who you love and what you eat and what you look like what you think what your body does or doesn’t do, your experiences and photos and history and dreams are all given away in an instant as long as the product is supposedly free. Well no one saw that coming. The shoppers will take off their clothes and shred every last piece of their dignity if it means they can get something free. Who knew?
And in that context you releasing these files, is it any wonder the response is going to be a big shrug?
You think you’re revealing how you can’t trust anyone? We know. But we do it anyway. Why? It’s easier.
MAN Suddenly you don’t own your music, you have to hire it. Has anyone complained?
WOMAN That’s actually the thing that bothers him most. Spotify. He’s really shallow. You can’t trust anyone Andrew that’s absolutely right. And you can’t trust anything. Any system of ownership or rights is totally contingent on forces that nobody understands, not really, so the whole world is just… tilting at the moment. Just rocking on the edge… And what you did?
ANDREW I tipped it over.
WOMAN No. You merely pointed at it.
Pause.
We’ve been having fun and games with you.
ANDREW Why?
MAN So you’re just like everyone else.
ANDREW What do you –
WOMAN To get you to the point where you don’t know which way’s up.
The whole room suddenly tilts ninety degrees.
ANDREW’s gravity stays on his floor.
The MAN and the WOMAN walk round so their floor is the old wall.
ANDREW How are you doing this?
WOMAN You want to know the mechanics?
MAN He actually does.
WOMAN It’s all about perception. You want more detail?
I can tell you exactly if you like but it’s really not the point.
ANDREW sits down.
Long pause.
ANDREW Can I leave?
WOMAN Andrew, I’m not sure you get this. Your passport has been revoked. You have no papers whatsoever.
Until you join something, sign up to something, it’s not a question of can you leave, it’s a question of that you don’t exist.
Pause.
MAN Do you want us to try and get you a Russian passport?
ANDREW The Russians are more corrupt than us, if I was to become a Russian citizen that would be –
MAN But you’ll be able to stay here, under our protection.
ANDREW Under your control.
MAN Yes.
ANDREW But I don’t know who you are.
WOMAN Anonymity is a luxury granted to those in power.
You don’t know who anybody truly important is. And they will keep it like that.
MAN Look do you want a passport or not? We’ve got a deal?
Long pause.
ANDREW Okay. A Russian passport. Fine.
MAN Alright. Good. No thanks is there? No gratitude. You should come down from there by the way. The floor’s over here.
He goes.
Another long pause.
Everything’s spinning.
WOMAN You must feel better.
Now you’ve joined something.
Pause.
You know you were talking about war?
I’ve seen war.
And if I had to describe what it was like?
If I had to say what it actually feels like. Leaving aside the pain and the blood and the kind of aesthetic of it – I mean if I tried to describe what it does to your mind and your experience…
She gets a safety pin out. Undoes it.
It’s like this.
It feels exactly like what you’re feeling now.
Utterly wild.
She holds the needle out, then presses it against herself and this time…
…she pops, like a balloon.
ANDREW is left on stage alone.
Staring.
For slightly longer than we expect.
Then blackout.
End.