“Strelski is a maverick,” Goodhew confided to Burr with undisguised pleasure as they stood on the pavement under umbrellas. “You’re two of a kind. No wonder the legal people have misgivings.”
“Me, I’ve got misgivings about legal people.”
Goodhew glanced up and down the rain-swept street. He was in sparkling mood. The previous day, his daughter had won a scholarship to South Hampstead, and his son, Julian, had been accepted by Clare College, Cambridge. “My master is having a severe case of the croup, Leonard. He has been talking to people again. Worse than scandal, he now fears he will look like a bully. He is offended by the notion that he is instigating a wide-flung plot mounted by two powerful governments against a lone British trader locked in battle against the recession. His sense of fair play tells him you are being disproportionate.”
“Bully,” Burr echoed softly, remembering Roper’s eleven volumes of file, the tons of sophisticated weaponry lavished upon unsophisticated people. “Who’s the bully? Jesus.”
“Leave Jesus out of it, thank you. I need a counterblast for Monday at first light. Brief enough to go on a postcard, no adjectives. And tell your nice man Strelski I adored his aria. Ah. We’re saved. A bus.”
Whitehall is a jungle, but like other jungles, it has a few watering holes where creatures who at any other hour of the day would rip each other to pieces may assemble at sunset and drink their fill in precarious companionship. Such a place was the Fiddler’s Club, situated in an upper room on the Thames Embankment and named after a pub called the Fiddler’s Elbow, which used to stand next door.
“I think Rex is in the pay of a foreign power, don’t you, Geoffrey?” said the solicitor from the Cabinet Office to Darker, while together they drew themselves a pint from the keg in the corner and signed a chit. “Don’t you? I think he’s taking Frog gold to undermine the effectiveness of British government. Cheers.”
Darker was a small man, as men of power often are, with hollowing cheeks and sunken, steady eyes. He dressed in sharp blue suits and lots of cuff, and this evening he wore brown suede shoes as well, which gave a hint of Ascot to his gallows smile.
“Oh, Roger, however did you guess?” Goodhew replied with willed cheerfulness, determined to take the sally in good part. “I’ve been on the take for years, haven’t I, Harry?”—passing the question down the line to Harry Palfrey. “How else could I afford my shiny new bicycle?”
Darker continued smiling. And since he had no sense of humor, his smile was a little sinister, even mad. Eight men and Goodhew sat at the long refectory table: a Foreign Office mandarin, a baron from Treasury, the Cabinet Office solicitor, two squat-suited earthlings from the Tory middle benches and three espiocrats, of whom Darker was the grandest and poor Harry Palfrey the most derelict. The room was fuggy and smoke-stained. Nothing commended it other than its handiness to Whitehall, to the House of Commons and to Darker’s concrete kingdom across the river.
“Rex is dividing and ruling, if you ask me, Roger,” said a Tory earthling who spent so much of his time sitting on secret committees that he was often mistaken for a civil servant. “Power mania got up as constitutional cant. He’s deliberately eroding the citadel from within, aren’t you, Rex? Admit it.”
“Sheer balderdash, thank you,” Goodhew replied lightly. “My master is merely concerned to drag the intelligence services into the new era and help them to set down their old burdens. You should be grateful to him.”
“I don’t think Rex has got a master,” the mandarin from the Foreign Office objected, to laughter. “Has anyone ever seen the wretched fellow? I think Rex makes him up.”
“Why are we so squeamish about drugs, anyway?” a Treasury man complained, his thin fingertips propped together like a bamboo bridge. “Service industry. Willing buyer, willing seller. Vast profits to the Third World, some of it’s going to the right places, must be. We accept tobacco, booze, pollution, pox. Why are we such prudes about drugs? I wouldn’t mind an order for a couple of billion quids’ worth of arms, even if there was a bit of cocaine on the bank notes, I’ll tell you that for nothing!”
A drenched voice cut through their merriment. It came from Harry Palfrey, a River House lawyer now on permanent loan to Darker’s Procurement Studies Group. “Burr’s real,” he warned huskily, with no particular prompting from anybody. He was drinking a large Scotch, not his first. “Burr does what he says.”
“Oh my God,” cried the Foreign Office in horror. “Then we’re all for the high jump! Right, Geoffrey? Right?”
But Geoffrey Darker just listened with his eyes and smiled his mirthless smile.
Yet of all those present at the Fiddler’s Club that night, only the leftover lawyer Harry Palfrey had any notion of the scope of Rex Goodhew’s crusade. Palfrey was a degenerate. In every British organization there is always one man who makes an art form of going to the devil, and in this one respect Harry Palfrey was the River House’s prize exhibit. Whatever he had done well in the first half of his life, Palfrey had systematically undone in the second—whether it was his law practice, his marriage or the preservation of his pride, of which the last shameful tatters lingered in his apologetic grin. Why Darker kept him on, why anybody did, was no mystery at all: Palfrey was the failure who made everyone look successful by comparison. Nothing was too humble for him, nothing too demeaning. If there was scandal, Palfrey was ever willing to be slaughtered. If murder was to be done, Palfrey was on hand with a bucket and cloth to mop up the blood and find you three eyewitnesses to say you were never there. And Palfrey, with the wisdom of the corrupt, knew Rex Goodhew’s story as if it were his own—which in a sense it was, since he had long ago made the same perceptions as Goodhew, even if he had never had the courage to draw the same conclusions.
The story was that after twenty-five years before the Whitehall mast, something inside Goodhew had discreetly snapped. Perhaps it was the ending of the Cold War that had caused it. Goodhew had the modesty not to know.
The story was that one Monday morning Goodhew woke as usual and decided with no premeditation that for far too long, in the misused name of freedom, he had been sacrificing scruple and principle to the great god expediency, and that the excuse for doing so was dead.
And that he was suffering from all the bad habits of the Cold War without their justification. He must mend his ways or perish in his soul. Because the threat outside the gates had gone. Decamped. Vanished.
But where to begin? A perilous bicycle ride supplied him with his answer. On the same rainy February morning, the eighteenth—Rex Goodhew never forgot a date—he was cycling from his home in Kentish Town to Whitehall as usual, weaving between the choked columns of commuter cars, when he experienced a silent epiphany. He would crop the secret octopus. He would give away its powers to separate, smaller agencies and make each of them separately accountable. He would deconstruct, decentralize, humanize. And he would begin with the most corrupting influence of all: the unholy marriage between Pure Intelligence, Westminster and the covert weapons trade, presided over by Geoffrey Darker of the River House.
How did Harry Palfrey know all this? Goodhew had told him. Goodhew, out of his Christian decency, had invited Palfrey to Kentish Town at summer weekends to drink Pimm’s in the garden and play silly cricket with the kids, well aware that, in his shabby grinning way, Palfrey was near the dangerous edge. And after dinner, Goodhew had left Palfrey at the table with his wife so that he could pour out his soul to her, because there is nothing that dissolute men like better than confessing themselves to virtuous women.
And it was in the afterglow of one such luxurious unbaring that Harry Palfrey, with pathetic alacrity, volunteered to become Goodhew’s informant on the backstairs machinations of certain wayward barons at the River House.
5
Zurich huddled low beside the lake, shivering under a freezing gray cloud.
“My name’s Leonard,” Burr announced, hauling himself out of Quayle’s office chair like someone about to intervene in a b
rawl. “I do crooks. Smoke? Here. Poison yourself.”
He made the offer sound so much like a jovial conspiracy that Jonathan obeyed at once and—though he smoked rarely and always regretted it afterwards—took a cigarette. Burr drew a lighter from his pocket, cocked it and fired it at Jonathan’s face.
“I expect you think we let you down, don’t you?” he said, going for the point of most resistance. “You and Ogilvey had quite a how-d’you-do before you left Cairo, if I’m correct.”
I thought you let her down, Jonathan almost replied. But his guard was up, so he gave his hotelier’s smile and said, “Oh, nothing terminal, I’m sure.”
Burr had thought carefully about this moment and decided on attack as his best defense. Never mind he harbored the worst suspicions of Ogilvey’s part in the affair: this was no moment to suggest he was speaking for a divided house.
“We’re not paid to be spectators, Jonathan. Dicky Roper was flogging some very high-tech toys to the Thief of Baghdad, including a kilo of weapons-grade uranium, which had fallen off the back of a Russian lorry. Freddie Hamid was laying on a fleet of relief trucks to smuggle the stuff through Jordan. What were we supposed to do? File and forget?” Burr was gratified to see Jonathan’s face set in the kind of rebellious obedience that reminded him of himself. “There’s a dozen ways the story could have leaked without anybody pointing the finger at your Sophie. If she’d not shot her mouth off at Freddie she’d be sitting pretty to this day.”
“She wasn’t my Sophie,” Jonathan put in too fast.
Burr affected not to hear. “Question is, how do we nail our chum? I’ve got a couple of ideas on that subject if you’re interested.” He gave a warm smile. “That’s right. You’ve spotted it, I can see. I’m common Yorkshire. And our chum Mr. Richard Onslow Roper, he’s quality. Well, that’s his tough luck!”
Jonathan laughed dutifully, and Burr was grateful to find himself on dry land the other side of Sophie’s murder. “Come on, Jonathan, I’ll buy you lunch. You won’t mind us, Reggie? Only we’re strapped for time, see. You’ve been a good scout. I’ll pass the word.”
In his haste, Burr failed to notice his cigarette burning in Quayle’s ashtray. Jonathan stubbed it out, sorry to be saying goodbye. Quayle was a bluff, twitchy soul, with a habit of beating his mouth with a handkerchief that he whipped, Services-style, from his sleeve; or of suddenly offering you biscuits from a tax-free tartan tin. In the weeks of waiting, Jonathan had come to rely on their quaint, inarticulate sessions. And so, he realized as he left, had Reggie Quayle.
“Thanks, Reggie,” he said. “Thanks for everything.”
“My dear chap! Pleasure all mine! Travel well, sir. Keep your arse to the sunset!”
“Thanks. You too.”
“Got transport okay? Wheels? Whistle you up a barouche? All fixed? Jolly good. Wrap up warm, now. See you in Philippi.”
“You always thank people for doing their job, do you?” Burr asked as they stepped onto the pavement. “I suppose you learn to, in your trade.”
“Oh, I think I like to be polite,” Jonathan replied. “If that’s what you mean.”
As always for an operational encounter, Burr’s field manners had been meticulous. He had chosen his restaurant in advance; he had inspected it the night before: an out-of-town lakeside trattoria, unlikely to attract the Meister set. He had chosen his corner table and for ten cautious Yorkshire francs to the headwaiter reserved it in one of his work names, Benton. But he was taking no chances.
“If we bump into someone you know and I don’t, Jonathan, which as you are no doubt aware is Sod’s Law in this game, don’t explain me. If you’re driven to it, I’m your old barrack-mate from Shorncliffe and switch to the weather,” he said, thus incidentally demonstrating that he had done his homework on Jonathan’s early life. Doing any climbing these days?”
“A bit.”
“Where?”
“Bernese Oberland mainly.”
“Anything spectacular?”
“Quite a decent Wetterhorn during the cold spell if you like ice. Why? Do you climb?”
If Burr recognized the mischief in Jonathan’s question, he chose to ignore it. “Me? I’m the fellow who takes the lift to the second floor. How about your sailing?” Burr glanced at the window, where the gray lake smoldered like a bog.
“It’s all pretty much kiddie stuff round here,” said Jonathan. “Thun’s not bad. Cold, though.”
“And painting? Watercolors, wasn’t it? Still dabble, do you?”
“Not often.”
“But now and then. What’s your tennis like?”
“Middling.”
“I’m serious.”
“Well, good club standard, I suppose.”
“I thought you won some competition in Cairo.”
Jonathan gave a modest blush. “Oh, that was just some exiles’ knock-about.”
“Let’s do the hard work first, shall we?” Burr suggested. He meant: let’s choose our food so that we can talk in peace. “You’re a bit of a cook yourself, aren’t you?” he inquired as they hid their faces in the overlarge menus. “A man of parts. I admire that. There’s not a lot of Renaissance blokes about these days. Too many specialists.”
Jonathan turned the page from meat to fish to dessert, thinking not of food but of Sophie. He was standing before Mark Ogilvey in his grand ministerial house in Cairo’s green suburbs, surrounded by fake eighteenth-century furniture assembled by the Ministry of Works, and Roberts prints assembled by Ogilvey’s wife. He was wearing his dinner jacket, and in his mind it was still coated with Sophie’s blood. He was shouting, but when he heard his voice it sounded like a sonar echo. He was cursing Ogilvey to hell and back, and sweat was running down the undersides of his wrists. Ogilvey was wearing his dressing gown, a mousy brown thing with a drum major’s frayed gold frogging on the sleeves. Mrs. Ogilvey was making tea so that she could listen.
“Watch your language, do you mind, old boy?” said Ogilvey, pointing at the chandelier to remind him of the risk of microphones.
“Damn my language! You’ve killed her, do you hear me? You’re supposed to protect your sources, not have them beaten to death!”
Ogilvey sought refuge in the only safe answer known to his profession. Grasping a crystal decanter from a silver-plate tray, he removed the stopper with a practiced flick.
“Old boy. Have a drop of this. You’re barking up the wrong tree, I’m afraid. Nothing to do with us. Or you. What makes you think you were her only confidant? She probably told her fifteen best friends. You know the old saying: Two people can keep a secret provided one of ’em’s dead? This is Cairo. A secret’s what everyone knows except you.”
Mrs. Ogilvey chose the same moment to enter with her pot of tea. “He may just think he’s better with this, darling,” she said in a voice pregnant with discretion. “Brandy does odd things to one, when one’s het up.”
“Actions have consequences, old boy,” Ogilvey said, handing him a glass. “First lesson in life.”
A crippled man was limping between the tables of the restaurant on his way to the lavatory. He had two walking sticks and was assisted by a young woman. His rhythm discomforted the diners, and nobody was able to go on eating until he was safely out of sight.
“So that night our chum arrived was pretty much all you saw of him, then,” Burr suggested, shifting the topic of conversation to Roper’s stay at Meister’s.
“Apart from good morning and good evening, yes. Quayle said don’t press my luck, so I didn’t.”
“But you did have one more casual conversation with him before he left.”
“Roper asked me if I skied. I said yes. He said where. I said Mürren. He asked me how the snow was this year. I said good. He said, ‘Pity we haven’t got time to pop up there for a few days; my lady’s dying to have a shot at it.’ End of conversation.”
“She was there too, then—his girl—Jemima? Jed?”
Jonathan affects to search his memory while he secretly cel
ebrates her unfurrowed gaze on him. Are you frightfully good at it, Mr. Pine?
“I think he called her Jeds. Plural.”
“He’s got names for everyone. It’s his way of buying them.”
It must he absolutely gorgeous, she says, with a smile that would melt the Eiger.
“She’s quite a looker, they say,” said Burr.
“If you like the type.”
“I like all types. What type’s she?”
Jonathan acted world-weary. “Oh, I don’t know. Good spread of O-levels . . . floppy black hats . . . the millionaire urchin look . . .Who is she, anyway?”
Burr seemed not to know, or not to care. “Some upper-class geisha, convent school, rides to hounds. Anyway, you got along with him. He won’t forget you.”
“He doesn’t forget anyone. He had all the waiters’ names off pat.”
“It isn’t everyone he asks for their opinion on Italian sculpture, though, is it? I found that rather encouraging.” Encouraging to whom or why, Burr did not explain, and Jonathan was not disposed to ask. “He still bought it, though. The man or woman wasn’t born yet who could head off the Roper from buying something he fancies.” He consoled himself with a large mouthful of veal. “And thanks,” he continued. “Thanks for all the hard work. There’s some choice observation in those reports of yours to Quayle I’ve not seen bettered anywhere. Your left-handed gunman, timepiece on the right wrist, changes his knife and fork over when he tucks into his food—I mean, that’s classic, that is.”
“Francis Inglis,” Jonathan recited “Physical-training instructor from Perth, Australia.”
“His name’s not Inglis, and he doesn’t come from Perth. He’s a British ex-mercenary, is Frisky, and there’s a price on his nasty little head. It was him taught Idi Amin’s lads how to extract voluntary confessions with the aid of an electric cattle prod. Our chum likes them English, and he likes them with a dirty past. He doesn’t fancy people he doesn’t own,” he added as he carefully sliced his roll down the middle and spread butter on it. “Here, then,” he went on, jabbing his knife in Jonathan’s direction. “How come you got the names of his visitors, with you only working nights?”
The Night Manager Page 8
