The Night Manager

by John le Carré

  “Tony, you’re out of court. Are you pissed again?. . . Who is? Well, put him on. Why not?. . . All right, talk, if you want. I’ll listen. Nothing to do with me, but I don’t mind listening. . . . Don’t give me sob stories, Tony, not my kind of music. . . .” But soon these surly interjections grew shorter, and the spaces between them longer, until Roper was listening in total silence, and his body lay alert and dead still.

  “Just a minute, Tony,” he ordered suddenly. “Hold it.” He turned to her, not bothering to put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Run a bath,” he told her. “Go into the bathroom, close the door, run the taps. Now.”

  So she went into the bathroom and turned on the taps and lifted the rubberized extension, but of course he heard the water running and bawled at her to get off the line. So after that she turned the taps to a trickle and pressed her ear to the keyhole, until the door exploded in her face and sent her flying across the Dutch-tiled floor, part of their recent decoration scheme. Then she heard Roper call, “Go on Tony. Little local difficulty.”

  After that she listened to him listening, but that was all she heard. She got into the bath and remembered how once it was his pleasure to get in the other end and shove a foot between her legs while he read the Financial Times and in return she would tease him with her toes and try and give him an erection. And sometimes he would haul her back to bed for another round, soaking the sheets with the bathwater.

  But this time he just stood in the doorway.

  In his robe. Staring at her. Wondering what the hell to do about her. About Jonathan. About himself.

  His face was set in that stony stay-away-from-me frown that he wore very rarely, and never in front of Daniel: the one that made and broke whatever was necessary for his preservation.

  “You better get dressed,” he said. “Corkoran will be here in two minutes.”

  “What for?”

  “Just dress.”

  Then he went back to the phone, started to dial a number and changed his mind. He laid the receiver back on its cradle with such immense control that she knew he wanted to smash it into fragments, and the whole boat with it. He put his hands on his hips and stared at her while she dressed, as if he didn’t like what she was putting on.

  “Better wear sensible shoes,” he said.

  And that was when her heart stopped, because on board nobody ever wore anything but deck shoes or bare feet, except in the evenings, when dress shoes could be worn by the women, though they were not allowed stiletto heels.

  So she dressed and pulled on a pair of sensible rubber-soled suede lace-ups she had bought at Bergdorf’s during one of their trips to New York, and when Corkoran knocked on the door, Roper took him into the drawing room and spoke to him alone for as much as ten minutes, while Jed sat on the bed thinking of the chink she had still not found, that magic formula for Jonathan’s salvation and her own. But it wouldn’t come to her.

  She had fantasized about blowing up the boat with the arsenal stored in the forward hold—a kind of African Queen job with everyone aboard, including Jonathan and herself; about poisoning the guards, or staging a dramatic denunciation of Roper’s crimes before the assembled dinner guests, culminating in a search for the hidden prisoner; or simply holding Roper to ransom with a carving knife. Several other solutions that work so well in movies had occurred to her, but the truth was, the staff and crew were watching her all the time, several of the guests had remarked that she was in a nervous state, there were rumors she was pregnant, and there was not a single passenger on the boat who would believe her, do anything, or—even if she did convince them she was right—give a damn.

  Roper and Corkoran came out of the drawing room and Roper threw on some clothes, not before stripping naked in front of them, a thing that had never bothered him, in fact he rather liked it, and for a bad moment she feared that he was going to leave her alone with Corkoran for some reason, and she couldn’t think of a good one. To her relief Corkoran moved with him to the door.

  “Stay in here and wait,” Roper said as they left. As an afterthought he turned the lock on her, a thing he had not done before.

  First she sat on the bed, then lay on it, feeling like a prisoner of war and not knowing whether the right side or the wrong side is going to storm the camp. But somebody was storming it, she was certain. Even locked inside the stateroom, she could catch the tension of the murmured instructions to the staff, the quickening of light feet in the corridor. She felt the pulse of engines, and the boat leaned a little. Roper has selected a new course. She looked out of the porthole and saw the horizon turning. She stood up, saw to her surprise that she was wearing blue jeans instead of one of the million-dollar numbers Roper insisted on for cruises, and she remembered the magic of a last day of term, when you could get out of your hated gray convent uniform and put on something really daring, like a cotton frock, for the glorious moment when your parents’ car came hobbling over Mother Angela’s speed bumps to take you away.

  But nobody except herself had told her she was leaving. It was her own idea, and all she could do was will it into reality.

  She decided to put together an escape kit. If she needed sensible shoes, then she must need sensible other things too. So she grabbed her shoulder bag from the top shelf of her wardrobe and put in her sponge bag and toothbrush and some spare underclothes. She pulled open the drawers of the desk and to her amazement found her passport—Corkoran must have given it to him. When she came to her jewelry, she determined to be high-minded. Roper had always loved to give her jewels, and there had been a possessors’ code about which jewel and which occasion should be remembered: the rose diamond necklace for their first night together in Paris; the emerald bracelet for her birthday in Monaco; the rubies from Christmas in Vienna. Forget them, she told herself with a shudder: leave the memories in the drawer. Then she thought: To hell, it’s only money, and grabbed three or four pieces as currency for their future life together. But no sooner had she put them in her shoulder bag than she fished them out and dumped them on Roper’s dressing table. I’ll never be your jewelry girl again.

  She had no problem, however, helping herself to a couple of Roper’s handmade shirts, and silk underpants in case Jonathan was out of stock. And a pair of Gucci espadrilles that Roper was rather fond of, which looked as though they might be Jonathan’s size.

  Her courage spent, she flopped back onto the bed again. It’s a trick. I’m not going anywhere. They’ve killed him.

  Jonathan had always known that when the end came—whatever end they had decided on—they would come to him as a pair. His educated guess was that the pair would be Frisky and Tabby, because torturers, like anybody else, have their own protocols: this is my job, that is your job and the big jobs go to the biggest people. Gus had always been an adjunct. They had made a pair when they dragged him to the lavatory, they had made a pair when they sponged him down, which they seemed to do for their own fastidious reasons, not for his: they had never got over the time in Colón when he had threatened to soil himself, and when they were angry with him, they never failed to tell him what a filthy little bastard he was.

  So when Frisky and Tabby threw open the door and switched on the blue overhead storm light, and Frisky the left-hander made for Jonathan’s right side, leaving his left arm free for emergencies, and Tabby knelt to the left of Jonathan’s head—fussing with his keys as usual, never having the right one ready in advance—everything was exactly the way the close observer had predicted, except that he had not expected them to be quite so frank about the purpose of their visit.

  “We’re all very, very fed up with you, I’m afraid, Tommy. The Chief particularly,” said Tabby. “Which is why you’re going on a journey. Sorry about this, Tommy. You had your chance, but you would be stubborn.”

  Which said, Tabby dealt Jonathan a half-hearted side-kick in the stomach, in case he was thinking of being a bother.

  But Jonathan was long past the bothersome stage, as they could see. In fact there was a
n awkward moment when Frisky and Tabby seemed to wonder whether the bother was over for good, because when they saw him slumped forward with his head slewed sideways and his mouth open, Frisky dropped to his knees and yanked up Jonathan’s eyelid with his thumb and peered into his eye.

  “Tommy? Come on. Can’t have you missing your own funeral, can we?”

  Then they did a wonderful thing. They let him lie there. They unchained him and they ungagged him, and while Frisky sponged his face down and put a fresh plaster across his mouth but no bung, Tabby pulled off what was left of his shirt and got him into a fresh one, arm by arm.

  But if Jonathan was playing floppy as a rag doll, already his secret store of energy was emptying itself into every part of his body. His muscles, bruised and half-paralyzed by cramp, were screaming out to him for the relief of action. His smashed hands and crumpled legs were glowing, his blurred vision was clearing even while Frisky mopped his eyes.

  He waited. He remembered the advantage of that extra moment of delay.

  Lull them, he thought, as they hauled him to his feet.

  Lull them, he thought again, as he slung an arm round each of their shoulders for support and let his weight hang on them as they dragged him down the corridor.

  Lull them, he thought, as Frisky went crookedly ahead of him up the spiral staircase and Tabby propped him up from below.

  Oh, God, he thought, as he saw stars stretched across black sky, and a great red moon floating on the water. Oh, God, give me this last moment.

  They stood on the deck, the three of them, like a family group, and Jonathan could hear Roper’s thirties music echoing through the early darkness from the taverna at the stern, and the jolly sound of chatter as the evening revelries began. The forward end of the boat was unlit, and Jonathan wondered whether they intended to shoot him: one shot at the height of the music, who would hear?

  The boat had changed course. A stretch of shore lay only a couple of miles off. There was a road. He could see the row of streetlights below the stars, more like mainland than island. Or perhaps a row of islands, who could tell? Sophie, let’s do this together. Time to say a fond goodbye to the worst man in the world.

  His guards had come to a halt, waiting for something. Slumped between them, an arm still clutched round each of their shoulders, Jonathan waited too, pleased to notice that his mouth had started bleeding again inside the plaster, which would have the double effect of loosening it and making him look even more smashed up than he was.

  Then he saw Roper. He’d probably been there all the time, and Jonathan hadn’t spotted him in his white dinner jacket against the white of the bridge. Corkoran was there too, but Sandy Langbourne hadn’t made it. Probably screwing one of the maids.

  And between Corkoran and Roper he could see Jed, or if he couldn’t, God had put her there. But yes, he could see Jed, and she could see him, she saw nothing except him, but Roper must have told her to keep quiet. She was wearing plain jeans and no jewelry, which pleased him unnaturally: he really hated the way Roper hung his money on her. She was looking at him and he was returning her look, but what with his face in the mess it was, she couldn’t know that. Probably, with all the extra moaning and sagging he was doing, she wasn’t feeling very romantic.

  Jonathan slumped still lower in the arms of his guards, and they obligingly stooped and grasped him more firmly round the waist.

  “I think he’s going,” Frisky murmured.

  “Where to?” Tabby said.

  And that was the cue for Jonathan to drive their two heads together with more force than he had ever commanded in his life. The power began in his leap as he seemed to rise in flight from the hole where they had chained him. It swarmed through his shoulders as he flung wide his arms, then closed them in one huge and terrible handclap, then a second: temple against temple, face against face, ear against ear, skull against skull. It ran through his body as he thrust the two men away from him, then hurled them onto the deck and with the side of his right foot kicked each head in turn, one scything blow for each, then a second to the throat. Then he stepped forward, stripping the plaster from his face as he advanced on Roper, who was giving him orders, the way he had at Meister’s.

  “Pine. Shouldn’t have done that. Don’t come any nearer. Corks, show him your gun. Putting you ashore. Both o’ you. Done your job and failed. Total waste of time, whole stupid game.”

  Jonathan had found a length of ship’s railing and was clutching it with both hands. But he was only resting. He wasn’t weakening. He was giving his secret reinforcements time to group.

  “Stuff’s all delivered, Pine. Tossed ’em a boat or two, couple of arrests—what the hell? You don’t think I do this kind of thing alone, do you?” Then he repeated what he had told Jed. “This isn’t crime. This is politics. No good being high-and-mighty. Way of the world.”

  Jonathan had started toward him again, though his steps were wide and faltering. Corkoran cocked his gun.

  “You can go home, Pine. No, you can’t. London’s pulled the rug from under. There’s a warrant out for you in England too. Shoot him, Corks. Do it now. Head shot.”

  “Jonathan, stop!”

  Was it Jed or Sophie calling him? Plain walking was no longer easy for him. He wished he could get back to the handrail, but he had reached the center of the deck. He was wading. The deck was swaying. His knees were failing. Yet the will in him would not let go. He was determined to grapple with the unreachable, put blood on Roper’s beautiful white dinner jacket, smash his dolphin smile, make him scream I kill, I do wrong, there is good and bad and I am bad!

  Roper was counting, the way Corkoran had liked to count. Either he was counting awfully slowly or Jonathan’s sense of time was failing. He heard one and he heard two, but he didn’t hear three, and he wondered whether this was another way of dying: they shoot you, but you go on with your life exactly as before; it’s just that no one knows you’re there. Then he heard Jed’s voice, and it had the authoritarian ring that had always particularly annoyed him:

  “Jonathan, for Christ’s sake, look!”

  Roper’s voice came back, like a faraway radio station picked up by chance. “Yes, look,” he agreed. “Look here, Pine. Look what I’ve got. I’m doing a Daniel on her, Pine. But this time it isn’t a game.”

  He managed to look, though things were getting hazy for him. And he saw that Roper, like a good commanding officer, had taken one step forward of his adjutant and was standing pretty much at attention in his smart white jacket, except that with one hand he was holding Jed by her chestnut hair and with the other he was holding Corkoran’s pistol to her temple—typical of old Corky to sport an honest-to-God army-issue nine-millimeter Browning. Then Jonathan lay down, or fell down, and this time he heard Sophie and Jed in chorus, yelling at him to stay awake.

  They had found a blanket for him, and when Jed and Corkoran had lifted him to his feet, Jed wrapped it round his shoulders in that nursy way she had demonstrated at Crystal. With Jed and Corkoran holding him, and Roper still in command of the gun in case of a second resurgence, they hauled him to the ship’s side, passing what was left of Frisky and Tabby on their way.

  Corkoran made Jed go first, then between them they helped Jonathan down the steps, while Gus in the launch was offering his hand. But Jonathan refused it and nearly fell into the water in consequence, which struck Jed as typical of his stubbornness, just when everyone was trying to help him. Corkoran was saying something interfering about the island being Venezuelan, but Jed told him to shut up, and he did. Gus was trying to give her instructions about the outboard, but she knew quite as well as he did about outboards and told him so. Jonathan, shrouded like a monk in his blanket, was crouching in the middle of the boat, trimming it out of instinct. His eyes, hardly visible inside their swellings, were raised to the Pasha, which towered over them like a skyscraper.

  Jed looked up at the boat and saw Roper in his white jacket, peering down into the water for something he had lost. For a moment he
looked exactly as she had seen him that first day in Paris: a clean-cut, amusing English gentleman, perfect for his generation. He vanished, and she fancied she heard the music from the afterdeck lift a little across the water as he went back to the dance.

  31

  It was the Hosken brothers who saw it first. They were out pulling their lobster pots off Lanyon Head. Pete saw it and Pete didn’t say a damn word. At sea Pete never did. Didn’t say much on land either, come to think of it. They were having a lucky day with the lobsters. Four beauties they’d caught, ten pounds’ weight the lot, my robins.

  So Pete and his brother Redfers drove to Newlyn in their old post office van, and got cash for them, because they only ever dealt in cash. And on the drive back to Porthgwarra, Pete turned to Redfers and said, “See that light in Lanyon cottage this morning then?”

  And it turned out that Redfers had seen it too, but not made anything of it. He had supposed it was some hippy in there, or New Ager or whatever they call them, one of those buggers from the bus camp over to Saint Just.

  “Maybe some yuppie from up-country’s gone and bought the place,” Redfers suggested, as an afterthought, while they drove. “Been empty long enough. Near on a year. Nobody down here’s going to find that bloody chunk of money.”

  Pete wouldn’t have that at all. The suggestion offended something deep in him. “How can you buy a house if you can’t find the bugger who owns it?” he asked his brother sharply. “That’s Jack Linden’s house. Nobody can’t buy that house, except they find Jack Linden first.”

  “Perhaps it’s Jack who’s back in it, then,” Redfers said, which was what Pete had been thinking too, but hadn’t said. So Pete scoffed, and told Redfers he was daft.

  For several days after that, neither brother found anything further to say on the subject, not to each other and not to anybody else. With a spell of sweet weather and the mackerel rising, and bream if you knew where to look for them, why should they bother about some light in Jack Linden’s upstairs bedroom window?