The Night Manager

by John le Carré

  A pair of stone gateposts loomed before him, but no notice saying Lanyon Rose. Burt stopped the car, took up the telephone, dialed Geoffrey Darker’s direct line at the River House and heard Rooke’s voice say “Hullo.”

  “Just checking,” said Burr, and dialed the number of Darker’s house in Chelsea. He heard Rooke again, grunted and rang off.

  He dialed Darker’s number in the country, with the same result. The intervention warrant was in operation.

  Burr drove through the gates and entered a formal park run wild. Deer stared stupidly at him over the broken railing. The drive was thick with weeds. A grimy sign read JOYSTON BRADSHAW ASSOCIATES, BIRMINGHAM, with the BIRMINGHAM crossed out. Below it somebody had daubed the misspelled word Enquieries and an arrow. Burr passed a small lake. On the far side of it, the outlines of a great house appeared against the restless sky. Broken greenhouses and neglected stables clustered behind it in the dark. Some of the stables had once been offices. External iron staircases and gangways led to rows of padlocked doors. Of the main house only the porch and two ground-floor windows were lit. He switched off the engine and took Goodhew’s black briefcase from the passenger seat. He slammed the car shut and mounted the steps. An iron fist protruded from the stonework. He pulled it, then pushed it, but it didn’t move. He grasped the door knocker and hammered on the door. The echoes were drowned in a tumult of howling dogs and a man’s gravel voice lifted roughly against them:

  “Whisper, shut up! Get down, damn you! All right, Veronica, I’ll take it. That you, Burr?”

  “Yes.”

  “You alone?”

  “Yes.”

  The clatter of a chain being slipped from its runner. The turning of a heavy lock.

  “Stay where you are. Let ’em smell you,” the voice ordered.

  The door opened; two great mastiffs snuffled at Burr’s shoes, dribbled on his trouser legs and licked his hands. He stepped into a vast dark hallway reeking of damp and wood ash. Pale rectangles marked the places where pictures had once hung. A single light bulb burned in the chandelier. By its glow, Burr recognized the dissolute features of Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw. He wore a frayed smoking jacket and a town shirt with no collar.

  The woman, Veronica, stood apart from him in an arched doorway, gray-haired and indeterminately aged. A wife? A nanny? A mistress? A mother? Burt had no idea. Beside her stood a small girl. She was about nine and wore a navy blue dressing gown with gold embroidery on the collar. Her bedroom slippers had gold rabbits on the toes. With her long fair hair brushed down her back, she looked like a child of the French aristocracy on her way to the scaffold.

  “Hullo,” Burt said to her. “I’m Leonard.”

  “Off to bed, Ginny,” Bradshaw said. “Veronica, take her to bed. Got some important business to discuss, darling, mustn’t be disturbed. About money, you see. Come on. Give us a kiss.”

  Was Veronica darling, or was the child? Ginny and her father kissed while Veronica from her archway watched. Burr followed Bradshaw down a long ill-lit corridor to a drawing room. He had forgotten the slowness of big houses. The journey to the drawing room took as long as crossing a street. Two armchairs stood before a wood fire. Stains of damp ran down the walls. Water from the ceiling plopped into Victorian pudding bowls on the floorboards. The mastiffs arranged themselves cautiously before the fire. Like Burr, they kept their eyes on Bradshaw.

  “Scotch?” Bradshaw asked.

  “Geoffrey Darker’s under arrest,” Burr said.

  Bradshaw took the blow like an old boxer. He rode it, he barely winced. He held still, his puffy eyes half-closed as he calculated the damage. He glanced at Burr as if expecting him to come again, and when Burr didn’t he shuffled forward a half step and threw a series of rolling, untidy counterpunches.

  “Bollocks. Utter codswallop. Crap. Who arrested Darker? You? You couldn’t arrest a drunken tart. Geoffrey? You wouldn’t dare! I know you. I know the law too. You’re a flunkey. You’re not even police. You couldn’t arrest Geoffrey any more than a”—he was lost for a metaphor—“fly,” he ended feebly. He tried to laugh. “Stupid bloody trick,” he said, turning his back while he addressed a tray of drink “Christ.” And shook his head to confirm this while he poured himself Scotch from a superb decanter that he must have forgotten to sell.

  Burr was still standing. He had set the briefcase beside him on the floor. “They haven’t got to Palfrey yet, but he’s pinned out on the board,” he said with absolute composure. “Darker and Marjoram have been taken into custody pending charges. Most likely there’ll be an announcement tomorrow morning, could be afternoon if we can keep the press off. In one hour’s time exactly, unless I give instructions to the contrary, uniformed police officers are going to come to this house in big, very shiny, very noisy cars and, in the full view of your daughter, and whoever else you’ve got, take you down to Newbury police station in handcuffs and detain you. You’ll be dealt with separately. We’re throwing in fraud for extra spice. Double accounting, deliberate and systematic evasion of Customs and Excise regulations, not to mention collusion with corrupt government officials and a few other charges we propose to think up while you languish in a prison cell, preparing your soul for a seven-year stint after remission and trying to shift the blame to Dicky Roper, Corkoran, Sandy Langbourne, Darker, Palfrey and whoever else you can shop to us. But we don’t need that kind of collaboration, you see. We’ve got Roper in the bag too. There’s not a port in the Western Hemisphere but there’s a big burly man waiting on the dockside with extradition papers at the ready, and the only real question is, do the Americans snatch the Pasha while she’s at sea, or do they let everyone have a nice holiday because it’s likely to be their last for a very long time indeed?” He smiled. Vindictively. Sportingly. “The forces of light have won the day for once, Sir Anthony, I’m afraid. That’s me and Rex Goodhew and some rather clever Americans, if you were wondering. Langley led Brother Darker up the garden path. What they call a sting operation, I believe. You don’t know Goodhew, I suppose. Well, you’ll get to know him in the witness box, I’ve no doubt. A natural actor, Rex turned out to be. Could have made a fortune on the stage.”

  Burr was watching Bradshaw dial. First he had watched him fumble in a huge marquetry desk, flinging aside bills and letters while he rummaged. Then he had watched him holding an exhausted Filofax to the pale light of a standard lamp while he licked his thumb and turned the pages until he came to D.

  Then he watched him stiffen and inflate with angry self-importance as he barked into the telephone.

  “I want Mr. Darker, please. Mr. Geoffrey Darker. Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw would like to speak to him on an urgent matter. So be rather snappy, will you?”

  Burr watched the self-importance drain out of him and his lips begin to separate.

  “Who’s that? Inspector what? Well, what’s wrong? Give me Darker. It’s urgent. “What?”

  And then, as Burr heard Rooke’s confident slightly regionalized accents on the other end of the line, he saw the scene in his mind’s eye: Rooke in his office, standing at the telephone, which was what he liked to do, his left arm straight at his side and chin tucked right in—the parade-ground position for talking on the telephone.

  And little Harry Palfrey, whey-faced and dreadfully cooperative, waiting for his turn.

  Bradshaw rang off, making a confident show of it. “Burglary on the premises,” he announced. “Police in possession. Normal procedure. Mr. Darker is working late at his office. He has been contacted. Everything totally normal. Told me.”

  Burr smiled. “That’s what they always say, Sir Anthony. You don’t think they’re going to tell you to pack up and bolt, do you?”

  Bradshaw stared at him. “Bollocks,” he muttered, returning to the lamp and his phone book. “Bullshit, whole thing. Some stupid game.”

  This time he dialed Darker’s office, and yet again Burr saw the scene in his mind: Palfrey picking up the telephone for his finest hour as Rooke’s loyal agent;
Rooke standing over him while he listened on the extension, Rooke’s big hand helpfully on Palfrey’s arm and his clear, uncomplicated gaze encouraging Palfrey in his lines.

  “I want Darker, Harry,” Bradshaw was saying. “I need to talk to him right away. Absolutely vital. Where is he? . . . Well, what do you mean, you don’t know? . . . Fuck’s sake, Harry, what’s the matter with you? There’s been a burglary at his house, the police are there, they’ve been on to him, spoken to him, where is he? . . . Don’t give me that operational shit. I’m operational. This is operational. Find him!”

  For Burr a long silence. Bradshaw has the earpiece flat against his ear. He has turned pale and frightened. Palfrey is saying his great lines. Whispering them, the way Burr and Rooke rehearsed him. From the heart, because for Palfrey they are true.

  “Tony, get off the line, for Christ’s sake!” Palfrey urges, doing his furtive voice and scrubbing his nose with the knuckles of his spare hand. “The balloon’s gone up. Geoffrey and Neal are for the high jump. Burr and company are throwing the book at us. Chaps running in the corridors. Don’t call again. Don’t call anyone. Police in the lobby.”

  Then, best of all, Palfrey rings off—or Rooke does it for him—leaving Bradshaw frozen at his post, and the dead phone at his ear, and his mouth open in the interests of better hearing.

  “I brought the papers, if you want to see them,” Burr said comfortably as Bradshaw turned to stare at him. “I’m not supposed to, but they do give me a certain pleasure, I’ll admit. When I said seven years, I was being pessimistic. It’s my Yorkshire blood not wanting to exaggerate, I suppose. I think you’ll get more like ten.”

  His voice had gathered volume but not pace. He was unpacking the briefcase while he spoke, ponderously, like an insinuating magician, one rumpled file at a time. Sometimes he opened a file and paused to study a particular letter before he put it down. Sometimes he smiled and shook his head as if to say, Would you believe it?

  “Funny how a case like this can turn itself round on a six-pence, just in an afternoon,” he mused while he toiled. “We flog away, me and my lads and lasses, and nobody wants to know. Up against a brick wall, every time. We’ve had a cast-iron case against Darker for, oh”—he allowed himself another pause for smiling—“as long as I can remember, anyway. As for Sir Anthony, well, you were in our sights while I was a beardless lad at grammar school, I should think. You see, I really hate you. There’s lots of people I want to put behind bars and never shall, it’s true. But you’re in a category of your own, you are; always have been. Well, you know that, really, don’t you?” Another file caught his eye, and he allowed himself a moment to flip through it. “Then all of a sudden the phone goes—lunchtime as usual, but by a mercy I’m on a diet—and it’s somebody I’ve hardly heard of from the Director of Public Prosecutions’ office. ‘Hey, Leonard, why don’t you slip down to Scotland Yard, get yourself a couple of hungry police officers and go and pull that fellow Geoffrey Darker in? It’s about time we cleaned up Whitehall, Leonard, got rid of all these bent officials and their shady contacts on the outside—men like Joyston Bradshaw, for instance—and made an example to the outside world. The Americans are doing it, so why can’t we? Time we proved we’re serious about not arming future enemies—all that junk.’” He pulled out another file, marked TOP SECRET, GUARD, EYES ONLY, and gave it an affectionate pat on the flank. “Darker’s under what we’re calling voluntary house arrest at the moment. Confession time, really, except we don’t call it that. We always like to stretch habeas corpus when we’re dealing with members of the trade. You have to bend the law from time to time, otherwise you don’t get anywhere.”

  No two bluffs are the same, but one component is necessary to all of them, and that is the complicity between the deceiver and the deceived, the mystical interlocking of opposing needs. For the man on the wrong side of the law, it may be the unconscious need to get back on the right side. For the lone criminal, a secret longing to rejoin the pack, any pack, if only he can be a member. And in the worn-out playboy and scoundrel who was Bradshaw—or so at least the attic weaver prayed as he watched his adversary read, turn, forward, turn back, take another file and read again—it was the habitual search for exclusive treatment at any price, for the ultimate deal, for revenge against those who lived more successfully than he did, that made him the willing victim of Burr’s deception.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Bradshaw muttered at last, handing back the files as if they made him sick. “No need to go over the top. Got to be a middle ground. Must be. Reasonable man, always have been.”

  Burr was less forthcoming. “Oh, I don’t think I would call it middle ground at all, Sir Anthony,” he said, with a resurgence of his former anger as he took back the files and stuffed them into the briefcase. “I’d call it a fixture postponed until the next time round. What you do is, you telephone the Iron Pasha for me, have a quiet word with our mutual friend.”

  “What sort of word?”

  “This sort. Tell him the shit’s hit the fan. Tell him what I’ve told you, what you’ve seen, what you’ve done, what you’ve heard.” He glanced out of the uncurtained window. “Can you see the road from here?”

  “No.”

  “Pity, because they’re out there by now. I thought we might see a little blue light winking at us across the lake. Not even from upstairs?”

  “No.”

  “Tell him we’ve rumbled you all ways up, you’ve been quite careless and we’ve traced your phony end users back to source and we’re following the careers of the Lombardy and the Horatio Enriques with interest. Unless. Tell him the Americans are warming up a cell for him at Marion. They want to bring their own charges. Unless. Tell him his high friends at court aren’t friends anymore.” He handed Bradshaw the telephone. “Tell him you’re scared to death. Weep if you still can. Tell him you can’t take prison. Let him hate you for your weakness. Tell him I nearly strangled Palfrey with my bare hands, but that was because I thought he was Roper for a moment.”

  Bradshaw licked his lips, waiting. Burr crossed the room and placed himself in the darkness of a far window.

  “Unless what?” Bradshaw asked nervously.

  “Then tell him this,” Burr resumed, speaking with great reluctance. “I’ll drop all charges against you and against him. This time round. His ships get a free run. Darker, Marjoram, Palfrey—they’re going where they belong. But not him and not you and not the cargoes.” His voice rose. “And tell him I’ll follow him and his terrible generation to the ends of the earth before I give up on him. Tell him I’m going to breathe clean air before I die.” He lost himself for a moment, and recovered. “He’s got a man called Pine on his boat. You may have heard of him. Corkoran telephoned you from Nassau about him. The River rats dug up his past for you. If Roper lets Pine go within one hour from you putting down the phone”—again he faltered—“I’ll bury the case. He has my word.”

  Bradshaw was staring at him with a mixture of astonishment and relief. “Jesus Christ, Burr. Pine must be some catch!” A happy thought struck him. “I say, old boy—you’re not on a piece of the action yourself, by any chance, are you?” he asked. Then he caught Burr’s eye and the hope faded.

  “You’ll tell him I’ll want the girl too,” Burr said, almost as an afterthought.

  “What girl?”

  “Mind your bloody business. It’s Pine and it’s the girl. Alive and unharmed.”

  Hating himself, Burr began reading out the satcom number of the Iron Pasha.

  It was late the same night. Palfrey walked, not noticing the rain. Rooke had put him into a cab, but Palfrey had paid it off. He was somewhere near Baker Street and London had become an Arab town. In the neon-lit windows of small hotels, dark-eyed men stood about in desultory groups fidgeting their beads and gesticulating to each other while the children played with their new train sets and veiled women spoke among themselves. Between the hotels stood the private hospitals, and at the steps of one of these Palfrey paused in the lig
hted entrance, perhaps wondering whether to admit himself and then, deciding not, walked on.

  He wore no coat or hat, he carried no umbrella. A cab slowed as it went past him, but the distraction in Palfrey’s face could not be appealed to. He was like a man who had mislaid something essential to his purposes: his car perhaps—which street had he left it in?—his wife, his woman—where had they arranged to meet? Once, he patted the pockets of his sodden jacket, for keys or cigarettes or money. Once, he went into a pub that was about to close, put a five-pound note on the bar and drank a double Scotch without water and left, forgetting his change and muttering the word “Apostoll” out loud—though the only witness to testify to this afterwards was a theological student, who thought he was declaring himself an apostate. The street had him again, and he pursued his quest, looking at everything yet somehow rejecting it—no, you’re not the place, not here, not here. An old whore with dyed blond hair called at him good-humoredly from a doorway, but he shook his head—not you either. Another pub had him, just as the barman was calling for last orders.

  “Fellow called Pine,” Palfrey told a man to whom he raised his glass in a distracted toast. “Very much in love.” The man silently drank with him because he thought Palfrey looked a bit cut up. Somebody must have pinched his girl, he thought. A little runt like him, no wonder.

  Palfrey chose the island, a triangle of raised pavement with a railing round it that seemed to be uncertain whether its job was to fence people in or fence them out. But the island was still not what he had been looking for, apparently, perhaps more some kind of vantage point or a familiar landmark.

  And he didn’t enter the protection of the railing. He did what kids do in the playground, said another witness: he put his heels on the outside curb and hooked his arms behind him over the railing, so that for a thoughtful while he seemed to be attached to the outside of a moving roundabout that wasn’t moving, while he watched the empty late-night double-decker buses racing past him in their hurry to get home.