This moment of my first official deception. My first step into the field. But it didn’t feel exciting or even manly – if anything, in my memory it assumes a meanness, a contraction of some part of who I thought I was. A small boy stealing apples from a neighbour’s orchard? Cheating in an examination? I’d never done either of those things so perhaps that renders the comparisons meaningless. But whatever it was, as I quickly located the required documents I tried to exonerate myself by invoking that age-old get-out clause – what I did was for the greater good. I know now of course that the greater good is the most nebulous and malleable of concepts, and one that often allows us to proceed in the face of more precise, if often unwelcome truths. But I made the required copies, alarmed at the noise it unavoidably produced, and got out of the office where even the white orchids seemed to smoulder with accusation, then locked the door behind me. But I had only taken a few steps when I realised that the papers I now held didn’t include the random collection I had carried in, and I flustered momentarily with the key, my hands suddenly clumsy. And the few seconds that it took to retrieve the papers reverberated with anticipation of discovery. Then, as I locked the door again while wondering about security that could be breached with a single key, I heard movement behind me. When I turned, Corrine was standing there but, as I struggled to think of what to say that might explain what I was doing, she simply lowered her eyes and headed back along the corridor.

Afterwards, as I sat at my desk, I thought my guilt must have been written large on my face and I glanced at her repeatedly, but throughout the office work carried on as normally and so I tried to concentrate on the translation in front of me. I watched a green lizard scurry across the ceiling above a window and dislodge a little flake of paint that fell slowly to earth like a solitary snowflake. Then, inexplicably, I experienced a fleeting feeling of giddiness and imagined transforming the document’s leaden, plodding contents into something more fantastical – the Vietcong riding down the highway on elephants, the jungle sprouting hydra-headed monsters with diamonds for eyes – and wondered if anyone would actually take any notice before, with all the other things I had written, it was shredded and burnt in the incinerators that sprouted on rooftops everywhere our flag flew.

Later that evening, when I handed the requested documents to Donovan, I was disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm. But what had I expected – some effusive display of gratitude or a fatherly pat on the back? When I looked at him as he scanned their pages, he seemed shorn of his normal self and in his quiet introspection I thought that for the first time I glimpsed someone who existed under the surface of his usual buoyancy. And I wondered if the tough little Irish persona he exuded was just another form of disguise, a subterfuge intended to confuse any close surveillance of his person. It took him a long time to speak and when he did it was to tell me that I had done well, but it was obvious that what I had given him hadn’t offered him the content he was looking for. Despite his subdued mood and my earlier speculation about his tough image being a pretence, I thought again of him swimming and remembered how, even in a yielding, giving element such as water, he had fought it as if seeking to impose his will incessantly. I pondered whether that constant expenditure of energy had now rendered him weary or even uncertain about what the coming days might bring. He slouched in his seat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.