The Tailor of Panama

by John le Carré

  “It’s bits, bits, bits,” Osnard was complaining, still on his high horse. “And what do they add up to? Flannel. Jam tomorrow. Wait and see. We’re lacking the grand vision, Harry. The big one that’s always just around the corner. London want it now. They can’t wait anymore. Nor can we. Are you reading me?”

  “Loud and clear, Andy. Loud and clear.”

  “Well, good,” said Osnard in a grudging, half-conciliatory tone intended to restore their good relationship.

  And from Abraxas, Osnard passed to a topic even closer to Pendel’s heart, namely his wife, Louisa.

  “Delgado’s on his way up in the world, see that?” Osnard kicked off breezily. “Pres made him up to lord high whoosit of the Canal Steering Committee, I see. Can’t rise much higher than that without his toupee burning.”

  “I read about it,” Pendel said.

  “Where?”

  “In the papers. Where else?”

  “The newspapers?”

  It was Osnard’s turn to act the smiler, Pendel’s to hold back.

  “Wasn’t Louisa who told you about it, then?”

  “Not till it was public. She wouldn’t.”

  Stay away from my friend, Pendel’s eyes were saying. Stay away from my wife.

  “Why ever not?” Osnard asked.

  “She’s discreet. It’s her sense of duty. I’ve told you already.”

  “She know you’re meeting me tonight?”

  “Of course she doesn’t. What am I? Daft?”

  “She knows something’s going on, though, doesn’t she? Noticed your change o’ lifestyle, all that? Not blind.”

  “I’m branching out. That’s all she knows or needs to.”

  “Lot o’ ways o’ branching out, though, aren’t there? Not all of ’em good news. Not for wives.”

  “She’s not bothered.”

  “Wasn’t the impression she gave me, Harry. Out there on Anytime Island. Struck me as being a mite exercised in her mind. Wasn’t making heavy weather of it. Not her way. Just wanted me to tell her whether it was normal at your age.”

  “What was?”

  “Needing everybody’s company. Twenty-four hours a day. Except hers. Scampering around town.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Said I’d wait till I was forty and let her know. Great woman, Harry.”

  “Yes. She is. So stay off her.”

  “Just occurred to me she might be happier if you were able to put her mind at ease.”

  “Her mind’s all right where it is.”

  “Just wish we could step a bit closer to the well, that’s all.”

  “What well?”

  “The well. The source. Fountain of all knowledge. Delgado. She’s a fan o’ Mickie’s. Admires him. Told me. Adores Delgado. Loathes the idea of a back-door sellout o’ the Canal. Looks like a dead cert to me. Seen from here.”

  Pendel’s eyes were prison eyes again, sullen and locked in. But Osnard failed to notice Pendel’s retreat into his own interior, preferring to muse aloud about Louisa in an inferential kind of way.

  “One o’ the absolute naturals of all time, if you ask me.”

  “Who?”

  “ ‘Target the Canal,’ ” Osnard mused. “ ‘Everything rides on the Canal.’ Only thing London seems able to think about. Who’s going to get it. What they’ll do with it. Whole o’ Whitehall wetting its striped pants to find out who Delgado talks to in the woodshed.” He closed his eyes reflectively. “Marvellous girl. One o’ the world’s best. Steady as a rock, grip like a limpet, loyal unto the grave. Fabulous material.”

  “What for?”

  Osnard let the Scotch slip down. “Bit o’ help from you, sold to her in the right way, proper use o’ language, no problem,” he went on ruminatively. “No direct action involved. Not asking her to plant a bomb in the Palace o’ Herons, shack up with the students, go to sea with the fisher lads. All she has to do is listen and watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  “Don’t have to mention your chum Andy. Didn’t have to mention him to Abraxas or the others. Don’t with her. Stress the marital tie, best thing. The old honour and obey. Louisa hands her stuff to you. You hand it to me. I bung it back at London. Doddle.”

  “She loves the Canal, Andy. She’s not about to betray it. That’s not who she is.”

  “She won’t be betraying it, you ass! Saving it, Christ’s sake! She thinks the sun shines out o’ Delgado’s arse, right?”

  “She’s American, Andy. She respects Delgado, but she loves America as well.”

  “Not betraying America either, Christ’s sake! Holding Uncle Sam’s nose to the grindstone. Keeping his troops in situ. Keeping the military bases. What more can she ask? She’ll be helping Delgado by saving the Canal from the crooks, helping America by telling us how the Pans are screwing up and there’s all the more reason for U.S. troops to stay put. You speak? Didn’t catch you.”

  Pendel had indeed spoken, but his voice was so choked that it was barely audible. So, like Osnard, he drew himself upright, then tried again.

  “I think I must have asked you how much you thought Louisa was worth on the open market, Andy.”

  Osnard welcomed this practical question. He had intended to raise it himself further down the line.

  “Same as you, Harry. Even-steven,” he said heartily. “Same basic, same bonuses. Absolute point o’ principle with me. Gals are just as good as us. Better. Told London only yesterday. It’s equal pay or there’s no deal. We can double your money. One foot in the Silent Opposition, t’other in the Canal. Cheers.”

  The film on the television had changed. Two cowgirls were undressing a cowboy in the middle of a canyon while tethered horses averted their gaze.

  Pendel was speaking in his sleep, slowly and mechanically, to himself rather than to Osnard.

  “She’d never do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s got principles.”

  “We’ll buy ’em.”

  “They’re not for sale. She’s like her mother. The harder she’s pushed, the more she stands still.”

  “Why push her? Why not have her jump of her own free will?”

  “Very funny.”

  Osnard became declamatory. He flung up an arm and clasped the other to his breast. “ ‘I’m a hero, Louisa! You can be another! March at my side! Join the crusade! Save the Canal! Save Delgado! Blow the whistle on corruption!’ Want me to have a crack at her for you?”

  “No. And you wouldn’t be wise to try.”

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t like the English, frankly. She puts up with me because I’m a highbred. But where the English upper classes are concerned, she inclines to her father’s opinion that they’re a bunch of highly duplicitous bastards with no scruples of any sort or kind without exception.”

  “Thought she took quite a shine to me.”

  “Plus she wouldn’t grass on her boss. Ever.”

  “Not for a nice piece o’ change? I wonder?”

  But from Pendel, still the mechanical voice: “Money doesn’t speak to her, thank you. She thinks we’ve got enough as it is, plus there’s quite a large part of her thinks it’s evil and ought to be abolished.”

  “So we’ll pay her salary to her beloved hubby. Cash. No need to chalk it against the loan. You do the finances, she does the altruism. She need never know.”

  But Pendel did not respond to this happy portrait of the spying couple. His face was stony, staring at the wall, ready for a long stretch.

  On the screen, the cowboy lay supine on a horse blanket. The cowgirls, who had retained their hats and boots, stood one at either end of him, as if wondering which way to wrap him up. But Osnard was too busy delving in his briefcase to notice, and Pendel was still frowning at the wall.

  “Christ—nearly forgot,” Osnard exclaimed.

  And he brought out a wad of dollars, then another, until all seven thousand lay on the bed amid the fly spray and carbons and the cigarette lighter
.

  “Bonuses. Sorry about the delay. Clowns in Banking Section.”

  With difficulty, Pendel transferred his gaze to the bed. “I’m not due bonuses. No one is.”

  “Yes, you are. Sabina on preparedness among the older students. Alpha for Delgado’s private business dealings with the Japs. Marco on the President’s late-night meetings. Bingo.”

  Pendel shook his head in puzzlement.

  “Three stars for Sabina, three stars for Alpha, one for Marco, seven grand in all,” Osnard insisted. “Count it.”

  “There’s no need for that.”

  Osnard pushed a receipt at him and a ballpoint pen. “Ten grand. Seven down and three for your widows and orphans fund as usual.”

  From somewhere deep inside himself, Pendel signed. But he left the money on the bed, to look at not to touch, while Osnard with the blindness of greed renewed his campaign for the recruitment of Louisa, and Pendel returned to the shadows of his private thoughts.

  “Likes seafood, doesn’t she?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Isn’t there some restaurant you take her to for treats?”

  “La Casa del Marisco. Prawns mornay and the halibut. She never varies.”

  “Tables good and wide apart, are they? Plenty o’ privacy?”

  “It’s where we go for anniversaries and birthdays.”

  “Special table?”

  “Corner by the window.”

  Osnard acted the fond husband, eyebrows raised, head fetchingly on the tilt. “ ‘Something I got to tell you, darling. Thought it was time you knew. Public duty. Reporting the truth to people who can do something about it.’ Play?”

  “It might. On Brighton Pier.”

  “ ‘So that your dear father can rest in his grave. Your mother too. For your ideals. Mickie’s ideals. Mine as well, even if I’ve had to hide ’em under a bushel for security reasons.’ ”

  “What do I tell her about the children?”

  “It’s for their future.”

  “Fine future they’ve got, with both of us sitting in the nick. Seen the arms stuck out of the windows, have you? I counted them once. You do that if you’ve been inside. Twenty-four to one window, not including the washing, and it’s one window to a cell.”

  Osnard sighed as if this was going to hurt him more than Pendel.

  “You’re forcing me to play hardball, Harry.”

  “I’m not forcing you. Nobody’s forcing you.”

  “I don’t want to do this to you, Harry.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Tried to break it to you gently, Harry. Didn’t work out, so I’m giving you the bottom line.”

  “There isn’t one, not with you.”

  “Both your names are on the deeds. You and Louisa. You’re both in the same hole. You want the deeds back—shop and farm— London will want a solid contribution from the pair o’ you. If they don’t get it, love will turn sour and they’ll switch off the money supply and put you under the hammer. Shop, farm, golf clubs, four-track, kids, the whole catastrophe.”

  Pendel’s head took a while to lift, as if the judge’s custodial sentence had taken a bit of time to sink in.

  “That’s blackmail, isn’t it, Andy?”

  “Market forces, ol’ boy.”

  Pendel rose slowly and stood motionless, feet together and head down, staring at the banknotes on the bed before tidying them into their envelope and putting the envelope in his bag, with the carbons and the fly spray.

  “I’ll need some days.” He was speaking to the floor. “I’ve got to talk to her, haven’t I?”

  “Remedy’s in your hands, Harry.”

  Pendel shuffled towards the door, head down.

  “So long, Harry. Next time, next place, okay? Go well now. Good luck.”

  Pendel stopped, paused, and turned, his face revealing nothing beyond a passive acceptance of his punishment.

  “You too, Andy. And thank you for the bonus and the whisky and for sharing your suggestions with me regarding both Mickie and my wife.”

  “My pleasure, Harry.”

  “And don’t forget to come and try your tweed jacket now. It’s what I call tough but tasty. Time we made a new man of you.”

  Locked an hour later in the cage at the furthest end of the strong room, Osnard spoke into the overlarge mouthpiece of the secret telephone and imagined his words being digitally recomposed in Luxmore’s furry ear. In London Luxmore was at his desk early in order to receive Osnard’s call.

  “Gave him the carrot, then waved the stick at him, sir,” he reported in the Boy Hero voice he kept for his master. “Rather vigorously, I’m afraid. But he’s still dithering. She will, she won’t, she may. He’s not saying.”

  “Damn him!”

  “That’s what I felt.”

  “So he’s holding out for yet more money, eh?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Never blame a shit for acting in character, Andrew.”

  “Says he needs time to talk her round.”

  “The clever monkey. Time to talk us round, more likely. What will buy her, Andrew? Give it me straight. My God, we’ll keep him on a tight rein after this!”

  “He hasn’t mentioned a figure, sir.”

  “I’ll bet he hasn’t. He’s a negotiator. He’s got us by the short-and-curlies and knows it. What’s your guesstimate? You know the fellow. What’s your worst case?”

  Osnard permitted a silence that denoted careful reflection.

  “He’s hard,” he said cautiously.

  “I know he’s hard! They’re all hard! You know he’s hard! The Top Floor knows he’s hard. Geoff knows he’s hard. Certain private investor friends of mine know he’s hard. He’s been hard from day one. He’ll get harder as we come up to the post. My God, if I knew of a better hole, I’d go to it! There was a fellow in the Falklands contest took us for a fortune and never delivered a damn thing.”

  “It’s got to be on results.”

  “Go on.”

  “A bigger retainer will only encourage him to rest on his oars.”

  “I agree. Totally. He’d laugh at us. That’s what they do. Shylock us and laugh.”

  “Bigger bonuses, on the other hand, wake him up. We’ve seen it before and we saw it tonight.”

  “We did, did we?”

  “You want to see him shovelling the stuff into his briefcase.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “On the other hand, he has given us Alpha and Beta and the students, he has put the Bear on a semi-conscious footing, he has recruited Abraxas to a point, and he has recruited Marco.”

  “And we’ve paid him every inch of the way. Handsomely. And what have we had for it to date? Promises. Chicken feed. ‘Stand by for the Big One.’ It makes me sick, Andrew. Sick.”

  “I put that point to him fairly energetically, if I may say so, sir.”

  Luxmore’s voice softened immediately. “I’m sure you did, Andrew. If I implied otherwise, I am truly sorry. Go on. Please.”

  “My personal conviction—” Osnard resumed, with enormous diffidence—

  “That’s the only one that counts, Andrew!”

  “—is that we work towards incentives only. If he delivers, we pay. The same goes, according to him, if he delivers his wife.”

  “Holy Mother, Andrew! He said that to you? He sold his wife to you?”

  “Not yet, but she’s on the market.”

  “Not in twenty years of this Service, Andrew. Not in all its history has a man sold his wife to us for gold.”

  Osnard had a special gear for talking money, a lower, more fluid engine tone.

  “I’m suggesting we put him on a regular bonus for every subsource he recruits, to include his wife. The bonus to be calculated as a proportion of the subsource’s salary. A flat rate. If she earns a bonus, he earns a piece of it.”

  “Additional?”

  “Absolutely. There’s also the unsolved question of what Sabina should pay her stude
nts.”

  “Don’t spoil them, Andrew! What about Abraxas?”

  “If and when the Abraxas organisation delivers the conspiracy, the same commission is payable to Pendel, calculated as 25 percent of what we pay Abraxas and his group by way of bonus.”

  Now Luxmore made the silence.

  “Did I hear if and when? What am I hearing there exactly, Andrew?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I just can’t help wondering whether Abraxas isn’t stringing us along. Or Pendel is. Forgive me. It’s late.”

  “Andrew.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Listen to me, Andrew. That’s an order. There is a conspiracy. Don’t lose heart merely because you’re tired. Of course there is a conspiracy. You believe it, I believe it. One of the greatest opinion makers in the world believes it. Personally. Profoundly. The best brains in Fleet Street believe it, or they very soon will. A conspiracy is out there, it is being cobbled together by an evil inner circle of the Panamanian élite, it centres on the Canal and we shall find it! Andrew?” Alarm, suddenly. “Andrew!”

  “Sir?”

  “Scottie, if you don’t mind. We’ve done with ‘sir.’ Are you at peace in your heart, Andrew? Are you under strain? Are you comfortable? My goodness me, I feel an ogre, never enquiring after your personal well-being amid all this. I am not without influence in the upper corridors these days, nor yet across the river. It saddens me when a diligent and loyal young man asks nothing for himself in these materialist times.”

  Osnard gave the kind of embarrassed laugh that loyal and diligent young men give when they are embarrassed.

  “I could do with some sleep if you’ve got any to spare.”

  “Get some, Andrew. Now. As long as you like. That’s an order. We need you.”

  “Will do, sir. Good night.”

  “Good morning, Andrew. I mean it now. And when you wake up, you’ll hear that conspiracy loud and clear again, resounding like a hunting horn in your ears, and you’ll spring from your bed and ride out in search of it, I know you will. I’ve been there. I’ve heard it too. We went to war for it.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  But the diligent young spymaster’s day was far from over. File while your memory is hot, the trainers had dinned into him ad nauseam. Returning to the strong room he unlocked a bizarre metal casket to which he alone possessed the combination and extracted from it a red handbound volume similar in weight and portent to a ship’s log and encompassed by a kind of iron chastity belt the two ends of which met in a second lock which Osnard also opened. Returning to his office he set the book on his desk beside his reading light, next to the bottle of Scotch and his notes and tape recorder from the shabby briefcase.