“They’re mad,” Osnard whispers.
“No, they’re not. They’re right. It’s not our bailiwick. It’s the Back Yard.”
Osnard’s comprehension falters, then leaps to life. The Back Yard! How many times in his training course had he not heard it mentioned? The Back Yard! El Dorado of every British espiocrat! Power and influence in the American back yard! The special relationship revived! The longed-for return to the Golden Age when tweed-jacketed sons of Yale and Oxford sat side by side in the same panelled rooms, pooling their imperialist fantasies! Luxmore has again forgotten Osnard’s presence, and is speaking into his own soul:
“The Americans have done it again. Oh yes. A stunning demonstration of their political immaturity. Of their craven retreat from international responsibility. Of the pervasive power of misplaced liberal sensitivities in foreign affairs. We’d the same problem with the Falklands imbroglio, I may tell you confidentially. Oh yes.” A peculiar rictal grimace came over him as he clasped his hands behind his back and rose on the balls of his little feet. “Not only have the Americans signed a totally misbegotten treaty with the Panamanians—given away the shop, thank you very much Mr. Jimmy Carter!—they’re also proposing to honour it. In consequence, they are proposing to leave themselves and, what is worse, their allies with a vacuum. It will be our job to fill it. To persuade them to fill it. To show them the error of their ways. To resume our rightful place at the top table. It’s the oldest tale of them all, Andrew. We’re the last of the Romans. We have the knowledge, but they have the power.” A cunning glance towards Osnard now, but one that took in the corners of the room as well, lest a barbarian had crept in unobserved. “Our task—your task—will be to provide the grounds, young Mr. Osnard, the arguments, the evidence needful to bring our American allies to their senses. Do you follow me?”
“Not entirely, sir.”
“That is because as of now you lack the grand vision. But you will acquire it. Believe me, you will acquire it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“To a grand vision, Andrew, there belong certain components. Well-grounded intelligence from the field is but one of them. Your born intelligencer is the man who knows what he is looking for before he finds it. Remember that, young Mr. Osnard.”
“I will, sir.”
“He intuits. He selects. He tastes. He says ‘yes’—or ‘no’—but he is not omnivorous. He is even—by his selection—fastidious. Do I make myself clear?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“Good. Because when the time is ripe, all—no, not all, but a corner—will be revealed to you.”
“I can’t wait.”
“You must. Patience is also a virtue of the born intelligencer. You must have the patience of the Red Indian. His sixth sense also. You must learn to see beyond the far horizon.”
To show him how, Luxmore once again directs his gaze upriver towards the stodgy fortresses of Whitehall and frowns. But his frown turns out to be directed at America.
“Dangerous diffidence is what I call it, young Mr. Osnard. The world’s one superpower restrained by puritan principle, God help us. Have they not heard of Suez? There are a few ghosts there that must be rising from their graves! There is no greater criminal in politics, young Mr. Osnard, than he who shrinks from using honourable power. America must wield her sword or perish and drag us down with her. Are we to look on while our priceless Western inheritance is handed to heathens on a plate? The lifeblood of our trade, our mercantile power, ebbing through our fingers while the Jap economy zeroes out of the sun at us and the Tigers of Southeast Asia tear us limb from limb? Is that who we are? Is that the spirit of the modern generation, young Mr. Osnard? Maybe it is. Maybe we are wasting our time. Enlighten me, please. I do not jest, Andrew.”
“It’s not my spirit, I know that, sir,” Osnard says devoutly.
“Good boy. Nor mine, nor mine.” Luxmore pauses, measures Osnard with his eyes, wondering how much more it is safe to tell him.
“Andrew.”
“Sir.”
“We are not alone, thank God.”
“Good, sir.”
“You say good. How much do you know?”
“Only what you’re telling me. And what I’ve felt for a long time.”
“They told you nothing of this on your training course?” Nothing of what? Osnard wonders.
“Nothing, sir.”
“A certain highly secret body known as the Planning & Application Committee was never mentioned?”
“No, sir.”
“Chaired by one Geoff Cavendish, a man remarkable for his far-reaching mind, skilled in the arts of influence and peaceful persuasion?”
“No, sir.”
“A man who knows his American as no other?”
“No, sir.”
“No talk of a new realism sweeping through the secret corridors? Of broadening the base of covert policymaking? Rallying good men and women from all walks of life to the secret flag?”
“No.”
“Of ensuring that those who have made this nation great shall have a hand in the saving of her, whether they be ministers of the Crown, captains of industry, press barons, bankers, shipowners, or men and women of the world?”
“No.”
“That together we shall plan and, having planned, apply our plans? That henceforth, through the careful importation of experienced outside minds, scruple shall be set aside in those cases where action may arrest the rot? Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Then I must hold my tongue, young Mr. Osnard. And so must you. Henceforth it shall not be enough for this Service to know the size and strength of the rope that will hang us. With God’s help we too shall wield the sword with which to cut it. Forget what I just said.”
“I will, sir.”
Church evidently over, Luxmore returns with renewed righteousness to the topic he has temporarily abandoned.
“Does it faintly concern our gallant Foreign Office or the high-minded liberals of Capitol Hill that the Panamanians are not fit to run a coffee stall, let alone the world’s greatest gateway to trade? That they are corrupt and pleasure-seeking, venal to the point of immobility?” He swings round, as if to refute an objection from the back of the hall. “Who will they sell themselves to, Andrew? Who will buy them? For what? And with what effect upon our vital interests? Catastrophic is not a word I use carelessly, Andrew.”
“Why not call it criminal?” Osnard suggests helpfully.
Luxmore shakes his head. The man is not yet born who can correct Scottie Luxmore’s adjectives with impunity. Osnard’s self-appointed mentor and guide has one more card to play, and Osnard must watch him do it, since little that Luxmore ever does is real unless it is observed by others. Picking up a green telephone which links him with other immortals on Whitehall’s Mount Olympus, he contrives a facial expression that is at once playful and significant.
“Tug!” he cries delightedly—and for a moment Osnard mistakes the word for an instruction rather than the nickname it turns out to be. “Tell me, Tug, am I correct in my belief that the Planners & Appliers are having themselves a little get-together next Thursday at a certain person’s house? . . . I am. Well, well. My spies are not always so accurate, hem hem. Tug, will you do me the honour of lunching you that day, the better to prepare you for the ordeal, ha ha? And if friend Geoff were able to join us, may I take it you would not be averse? My shout, now, Tug, I insist. Listen, where would be congenial to us? I am wondering. Somewhere a wee bit apart from the mainstream, I was thinking. Let us avoid the more obvious watering holes. I have in mind a small Italian restaurant just off the Embankment there—do you have a pencil handy, Tug?”
And meanwhile he pivots on one heel, rises on his toes, and lifts his knees in slow mark time in order to avoid falling over the telephone cable at his feet.
“Panama?” cried Personnel jovially. “As a first posting? You? Stuck out there on your own at your tender age? All those gorgeous Panamanian girls to
tempt you? Dope, sin, spies, crooks? Scottie must be off his head!”
And having had his fun, Personnel did what Osnard knew all along he was going to do. He posted him to Panama. Osnard’s inexperience was no obstacle. His precocity in the black arts was well attested by his trainers. He was bilingual and in operational terms unsullied.
“Have to find yourself a head joe,” Personnel lamented as an afterthought. “Apparently we’ve no one on the books down there. We seem to have left the place to the Americans. More fool us. You report direct to Luxmore, you understand? Keep the analysts out of this until otherwise instructed.”
Find us a banker, young Mr. Osnard—suck of the Scottish front teeth inside the beard—one who knows the world! These modern bankers put themselves about, not like the old sort at all. I remember we had a couple in Buenos Aires during the Falklands fracas.
Assisted by a central computer whose existence has been roundly denied by both Westminster and Whitehall, Osnard calls up the file of every British banker in Panama but finds only a handful and nobody who on closer enquiry can be counted on to know the world.
Find us one of your state-of-the-art tycoons then, young Mr. Osnard— wrinkle of the sagacious Scottish eyes—someone with a finger in all the pies!
Osnard calls up the particulars of every British businessman in Panama, and though some are young, none has a finger in all the pies, much as he might like to have.
Then find us a scribbler, young Mr. Osnard. Scribblers can ask questions without attracting interest, go anywhere, take risks! There must be a decent one somewhere. Seek him out. Bring him to me, if you please forthwith!
Osnard calls up the particulars of every British journalist known to take the odd swing through Panama and speak Spanish. A well-dined, mustachioed man in a bow tie is held to be approachable. His name is Hector Pride and he writes for an unheard-of English-language monthly called The Latino, published out of Costa Rica. His father is a wine shipper from Toledo.
Just the fellow we need, young Mr. Osnard!—ferociously bestriding his carpet—Sign him. Buy him. Money is no obstacle. If the skinflints of Treasury lock up their coffers, the countinghouses of Threadneedle Street shall open theirs. I have that assurance from on high. It is a strange country, you may say, young Mr. Osnard, that obliges its industrialists to pay for their intelligence, but such is the harsh nature of our cost-conscious world. . . .
Using an alias, Osnard puts on the guise of a Foreign Office research officer and invites Hector Pride to lunch at Simpson’s and spends twice what Luxmore has allowed for the occasion. Pride, like many of his profession, speaks and eats and drinks a great deal, but does not care to listen. Osnard waits until the pudding to pop the question, then until the Gorgonzola, by which time Pride’s patience has evidently run out, for to Osnard’s dismay he abandons his monologue on the effect of Inca culture on contemporary Peruvian thought and explodes in ribald laughter.
“Why don’t you make a pass at me?” he booms, to the alarm of diners either side. “What’s wrong with me? Got the girl in the bloody taxi, haven’t you? So put your hand up her skirt!”
Pride, it transpires, is employed by a hated sister service of British Intelligence, which also owns his newspaper.
“There’s this man Pendel I talked to you about,” Osnard reminds Luxmore, taking advantage of his gloom. “The one with the wife in the Canal Commission. I can’t help thinking they’re ideal.”
He has been thinking it for days and nights, and thinking no one else. Chance favours only the prepared mind. He has drawn Pendel’s criminal record, pored over Pendel’s criminal photographs, full face and side view, studied his statements to the police, though most were patently fabricated by his audience, read psychiatrists’ and almoners’ reports, records of his behaviour in prison, dug out whatever he could on Louisa and the tiny, inward world of the Zonian. Like an occult diviner, he has opened himself to Pendel’s psychic intimations and vibrations, studied him as intently as would a medium his map of the impenetrable jungle where the plane is believed to have disappeared: I am coming to find you, I know what you are, wait for me, chance favours only the prepared mind.
Luxmore reflects. Only a week ago he has ruled this same Pendel unworthy of the high mission he has in mind:
As my head joe, Andrew? As yours? In a red-hot post? A tailor? We’d be the laughingstock of the Top Floor!
And when Osnard again presses him, this time after lunch, when Luxmore’s mood tends to be more generous:
I am a stranger to prejudice, young Mr. Osnard, and I respect your judgment. But those East End fellows end up stabbing you in the back. It’s in their blood. Good heavens, we are not yet reduced to recruiting jailbirds!
But that is a week ago, and the Panamanian clock is ticking louder.
“You know, I think we may be onto a winner here,” Luxmore declares as he sucks his teeth and leafs through Pendel’s compendious file a second time. “It was prudent of us to test the ground elsewhere first, oh yes. The Top Floor will surely give us marks for that”—the boy Pendel’s implausible confession to the police flits by him, owning up to everything, incriminating no one—“the man’s first-class material once you look under the surface; just the type we need for a small criminal nation”—suck—“we’d a fellow not unlike him working in the docks in Buenos Aires during the Falklands difficulty.” His eye settles for a moment on Osnard, but there is no suggestion in his glance that he considers his subordinate similarly qualified for criminal society. “You’ll have to ride him, Andrew. They’ve a hard mouth, these East End haberdashers, are you up to that?”
“I think so, sir. If you give me the odd tip here and there.”
“A villain is all to the good in this game, provided he’s our villain”—immigration papers of the father Pendel never knew— “and the wife indubitably an asset”—suck—“one foot in the Canal Commission already, my God. Daughter of an American engineer too, Andrew; I see a steadying hand here. Christian too. Our East End gentleman has done well for himself. No religious barriers to progress, we notice, eh-hem. Self-interest always firmly to the fore, as usual”—suck—“Andrew, I begin to see shapes here forming before us in the sky. You’ll have to look at his accounts three times, I’ll tell you that for nothing. He’ll graft, he’ll have the nose, the cunning, but can you handle him? Who’s going to run who? That’ll be the problem”—a glimpse of Pendel’s birth certificate, bearing the name of the mother who ran away— “these fellows certainly know how to get into a man’s drawing room too, no doubt of that, oh yes. And get their pound of flesh. We’ll be throwing you in at the deep end, I fear. Can you handle it?”
“I believe I can, actually.”
“Yes, Andrew. So do I. A real hard customer, but ours, that’s the point. A natural assimilator, prison trained, knows the dark side of the street”—suck—“and the dirty underbelly of the human mind. There’s jeopardy here, which I like. So will the Top Floor.” Luxmore slapped the file shut and started pacing again, this time in widths. “If we can’t appeal to his patriotism, we can put the frighteners on him and appeal to his greed. Let me tell you about head joes, Andy.”
“Please do, sir.”
The sir, though by tradition reserved for the Chief of Service, is Osnard’s contribution to Luxmore’s self-powered flight.
“You can take a bad head joe, young Mr. Osnard. And you can stand him before the opposition’s safe with the combination ringing in his stupid ears, and he’ll come back to you empty-handed. I know. I’ve been there. We’d one during the Falklands conflagration. But a good one, you can dump him blindfolded in the desert and he’ll sniff out his target in a week. Why? He’s got the larceny”— suck—“I’ve seen it many times. Remember that, Andy. If a man hath not larceny, he is nothing.”
“I really will,” says Osnard.
Another gear. Sits sharply to his desk. Reaches for telephone. Stays his hand. “Call up Registry,” he orders Osnard. “Have them pick us a random code name out of th
e hat. A code name shows intent. Draft me a submission, not above one page in length. They’re busy men up there.” Takes up telephone finally. Taps number. “Meanwhile I shall make a couple of private telephone calls to one or two influential members of the public who are sworn to secrecy and shall remain forever nameless”—suck— “those amateurs from Treasury will put their spoke in anything. Think Canal, Andrew. Everything rides on the Canal.” Stops in tracks, replaces receiver on cradle. Eyes turn to smoked-glass window where filtered black clouds menace the Mother of Parliaments. Beat. “I shall tell them that, Andrew,” he breathes. “Everything rides on the Canal. It shall be our slogan when we are dealing with people from all walks of life.”
But Osnard’s thoughts remain on earthly things. “We’re going to have to work out quite a tricky pay structure for him, aren’t we, sir?”
“Why’s that? Nonsense. Rules are made to be broken. Didn’t they teach you that? Of course they didn’t. Those trainers are all has-beens. I see you have a point to press. Out with it.”
“Well, sir.”
“Yes, Andrew.”
“I’d like to get a reading on his financial situation as of now. In Panama. If he’s making a pot of money—”
“Yes?”
“Well, we’ll have to offer him a pot, won’t we? A fellow netting quarter of a million bucks a year and we offer him another twenty-five thousand, we’re unlikely to be tempting him. If you follow me.”
The Tailor of Panama Page 21
