A Delicate Truth

by John le Carré

  ‘There’s a creep around called Crispin,’ Matti murmurs under the clamour. ‘Ever heard of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t either, so I’ll thank you to remember that. Crispin. Dodgy bastard. Avoid.’

  ‘Any reason given?’

  ‘Not specific. Our lot used him for a couple of jobs, then dropped him like a hot brick. Supposed to have led your man by the nose while he was Defence. All I know. Could be crap. Now get off my back.’

  And with this Matti resumes his brooding contemplation of the pretty girls.

  *

  And as is often the way of life, from the moment Matti lets the name Crispin out of the box, it seems unable to let Toby go.

  At a Cabinet Office wine and cheese party, two mandarins talk head to head: ‘Whatever happened to that shit Crispin, by the by?’ ‘Saw him hanging around the Lords the other day, don’t know how he has the gall.’ But on Toby’s approach the topic of their conversation turns abruptly to cricket.

  At the close of an interministerial conference on intelligence with frenemy liaisons, as the current buzzword has it, the name acquires its own initial: well, let’s just hope you people don’t do another J. Crispin on us, snaps a Home Office director at her hated opposite number in Defence.

  But is it really just a J? Or is it Jay like Jay Gatsby?

  After half a night’s googling while Isabel sulks in the bedroom, Toby is none the wiser.

  He will try Laura.

  *

  Laura is a Treasury boffin, fifty years old, sometime Fellow of All Souls, boisterous, brilliant, vast and overflowing with good cheer. When she descended unannounced on the British Embassy in Berlin as leader of a surprise audit team, Giles Oakley had commanded Toby to ‘take her out to dinner and charm the knickers off her’. This he had duly done, if not literally; and to such effect that their occasional dinners had continued without Oakley’s guidance ever since.

  By good fortune, it’s Toby’s turn. He selects Laura’s favourite restaurant off the King’s Road. As usual, she has dressed with panache for the event, in a huge, flowing kaftan hung with beads and bangles and a cameo brooch the size of a saucer. Laura loves fish. Toby orders a sea bass baked in salt to share and an expensive Meursault to go with it. In her excitement Laura seizes his hands across the table and shakes them like a child dancing to music.

  ‘Marvellous, Toby, darling,’ she blurts, ‘and high time too,’ in a voice that rolls like cannon fire across the restaurant; and then blushes at her own loudness and drops her voice to a genteel murmur.

  ‘So how was Cairo? Did the natives storm the embassy and demand your head on a pike? I’d have been utterly terrified. Tell all.’

  And after Cairo, she must hear about Isabel, because as ever she insists on her rights as Toby’s agony aunt:

  ‘Very sweet, very beautiful, and a ninny,’ she rules when she has heard him out. ‘Only a ninny marries a painter. As for you, you never could tell the difference between brains and beauty, and I suppose that still applies. I’m sure the two of you are perfectly suited,’ she concludes, with another hoot of laughter.

  ‘And the secret pulse of our great nation, Laura?’ Toby enquires lightly in return, since Laura has no known love life of her own that may be spoken of. ‘How are things in the oh-so-hallowed halls of the Treasury these days?’

  Laura’s generous face lapses into despair, and her voice with it:

  ‘Grim, darling, just appalling. We’re clever and nice, but we’re understaffed and underpaid and we want the best for our country, which is old-fashioned of us. New Labour loves Big Greed, and Big Greed has armies of amoral lawyers and accountants on the make and pays them the earth to make rings round us. We can’t compete; they’re too big to fail and too big to fight. Now I’ve depressed you. Good. I’m depressed too,’ she says, taking a merry pull at her Meursault.

  The fish arrives. Reverent quiet while the waiter takes it off the bone and divides it.

  ‘Darling, what a thrill,’ breathes Laura.

  They tuck in. If Toby is to chance his arm, this is his moment.

  ‘Laura.’

  ‘Darling.’

  ‘Who precisely is J. Crispin when he’s at home? And J standing for what? There was some scandal at Defence while Quinn was there. Crispin was mixed up in it. I hear his name all over town, I’m being kept out of the loop and it frightens me. Somebody even described him as Quinn’s Svengali.’

  Laura studies him with her very bright eyes, looks away, then takes a second look, as if she isn’t comfortable with what she’s seen there.

  ‘Is this why you asked me to dinner, Toby?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘Wholly,’ she corrects him, drawing a breath that is nearly a sigh. ‘And I think you could have had the decency to tell me that was your fell purpose.’

  A pause while they both collect themselves. Laura resumes:

  ‘You’re out of the loop for the very good reason that you’re not supposed to be in it. Fergus Quinn has been given a fresh start. You’re part of it.’

  ‘I’m also his keeper,’ he replies defiantly, recovering his courage.

  Another deep breath, a hard look, before the eyes turn downward and stay there.

  ‘I’ll tell you bits,’ she decides finally. ‘Not all, but more than I should.’

  She sits upright and, like a child in disgrace, talks to her plate.

  Quinn walked into a quagmire, she says. Defence was in a state of corporate rot long before he came on the scene. Perhaps Toby knows that already? Toby does. Half its officials didn’t know whether they were working for the Queen or the arms industry, and didn’t give a hoot as long as their bread was buttered. Perhaps Toby knows that, too? Toby does. He has heard it from Matti, but doesn’t let on. She’s not making excuses for Fergus. She’s saying Crispin was there ahead of him and saw him coming.

  Reluctantly, she once more helps herself to Toby’s hand, and this time taps it sternly on the table to the rhythm of her words as she scolds him:

  ‘And I’ll tell you what you did, you evil man’ – as if Toby himself is Crispin now – ‘you set up your own spy shop. Right there inside the ministry. While everyone round you was flogging arms, you were peddling raw intelligence: straight from the shelf, direct to buyer, no stops between. Unspun, untested, unpasteurized and above all untouched by bureaucratic hands. Which was music to Fergie’s ears. Does he still play music in his office?’

  ‘Mostly Bach.’

  ‘And you’re Jay like the bird,’ she adds, in a flurried answer to his earlier question.

  ‘And Quinn actually bought from him? Or his company did?’

  Laura takes another pull of her Meursault, shakes her head.

  Toby tries again:

  ‘Was the stuff any good?’

  ‘It was expensive, so it had to be good, didn’t it?’

  ‘What’s he like, Laura?’ Toby insists.

  ‘Your minister?’

  ‘No! Jay Crispin, of course.’

  Laura takes a deep breath. Her tone becomes terminal, and even angry:

  ‘Just listen to me, dear, will you? The scandal at Defence is dead, and Jay Crispin is henceforth and forever banished from all ministerial and government premises on pain of death. A strong formal letter has been sent to him to that effect. He will never grace the corridors of Whitehall or Westminster again.’ Another breath. ‘The inspiring minister whom you have the honour to serve, on the other hand, bruiser though he may be, has embarked on the next stage of his distinguished career, I trust with your help. Now will you please get me my coat?’

  After a week of flailing himself with remorse, Toby remains dogged by the same question: If the scandal at Defence is dead and Crispin will never walk the corridors of Whitehall or Westminster again, then what’s the bloody man doing lobbying the House of Lords?

  *

  Six weeks roll by. On the surface things continue uneventfully. Toby drafts speeches and Quinn delivers them w
ith conviction, even when there’s nothing to be convinced of. Toby stands at Quinn’s shoulder at receptions and murmurs the names of foreign dignitaries into his ear as they approach. Quinn greets them as long-lost friends.

  But Quinn’s continued secretiveness drives not only Toby but the entire ministerial staff to the edge of desperation. He will stalk out of a Whitehall meeting – at the Home Office, the Cabinet Office or Laura’s Treasury – ignore his official Rover, hail a cab and disappear without explanation till next day. He will cancel a diplomatic engagement and not inform the diary secretary, his special advisors or even his Private Secretary. The pencilled entries in the diary he keeps on his desk are so cryptic that Toby can decipher them only with Quinn’s grudging assistance. One day the diary disappears altogether.

  But it’s on their trips abroad that Quinn’s secretiveness assumes in Toby’s eyes a darker hue. Spurning the hospitality offered by local British ambassadors, Quinn the People’s Choice prefers to take up residence in grand hotels. When the Foreign Office Accounts Department demurs, Quinn replies that he will pay his own way, which surprises Toby since, like many affluent people, Quinn is notoriously tight.

  Or is some secret benefactor perhaps paying Quinn’s way for him? Why else would he keep a separate credit card for settling his hotel bills and shield it with his body if Toby chances to come too close?

  Meanwhile, Team Quinn is acquiring a household ghost.

  *

  Brussels.

  Returning to their grand hotel at six o’clock in the evening after a long day’s haggling with NATO officialdom, Quinn complains of a nauseous headache, cancels his dinner engagement at the British Embassy and retires to his suite. At ten, after heavy soul-searching, Toby decides he must call up to the suite and enquire after his master’s welfare. He gets voicemail. A DO NOT DISTURB notice hangs on the ministerial door. After further cogitation he descends to the lobby and shares his concerns with the concierge. Have there been any signs of life from the suite? Has the minister ordered room service, sent down for aspirin or – since Quinn is a notorious hypochondriac – for a doctor?

  The concierge is bewildered:

  ‘But Monsieur le Ministre left the hotel in his limousine two hours ago,’ he exclaims, in haughty Belgian French.

  Now Toby is bewildered. Quinn’s limousine? He hasn’t got one. The only limousine on offer is the ambassador’s Rolls, which Toby has cancelled on Quinn’s behalf.

  Or did Quinn keep his embassy dinner engagement after all? The concierge presumes to correct him. The limousine was not a Rolls-Royce, monsieur. It was a Citroën sedan and the chauffeur was known personally to the concierge.

  Then kindly describe to me exactly what took place – pressing twenty euros into the concierge’s waiting hand.

  ‘Most willingly, monsieur. The black Citroën pulled up at the front door at the same time as Monsieur le Ministre emerged from the centre lift. One suspects Monsieur le Ministre was advised by telephone of his car’s imminent arrival. The two gentlemen greeted each other here in the lobby, got into the car and rode away.’

  ‘You mean a gentleman got out of the car to collect him?’

  ‘From the back of the black Citroën sedan. He was a passenger, clearly, not a servant.’

  ‘Can you describe the gentleman?’

  The concierge baulks.

  ‘Well, was he white?’ Toby demands impatiently.

  ‘Completely, monsieur.’

  ‘How old?’

  The concierge would guess that the gentleman’s age was similar to the minister’s.

  ‘Have you seen him before? Is he a regular here?’

  ‘Never, monsieur. I assumed a diplomat, perhaps a colleague.’

  ‘Large, small, what did he look like?’

  The concierge again hesitates.

  ‘Like yourself but a little older, and the hair shorter, monsieur.’

  ‘And they spoke what language? Did you hear them talking?’

  ‘English, monsieur. Natural English.’

  ‘Have you any idea where they went? Did you gather where they were going?’

  The concierge summons the chasseur, a cheeky black Congolese boy in a red uniform with a pillbox hat. The chasseur knows exactly where they went:

  ‘To La Pomme du Paradis restaurant close to the palace. Three stars. Grande gastronomie!’

  So much for Quinn’s nauseous headache, thinks Toby.

  ‘How can you be so sure of that?’ he demands of the chasseur, who is bobbing about in his anxiety to be of help.

  ‘It was the instruction he gave to the driver, monsieur! I heard all!’

  ‘Who gave the instruction? To do what?’

  ‘The gentleman who collected your minister! He sat down beside the driver and said: “Now one goes to La Pomme du Paradis” just as I was closing the door. His exact words, monsieur!’

  Toby turns to the concierge:

  ‘You said the gentleman who collected my minister rode in the back. Now we hear he sat in the front when they drove off. Couldn’t the gentleman who collected him have been security?’

  But it is the little Congolese chasseur who holds the floor, and he is not about to relinquish it:

  ‘It was necessary, monsieur! Three persons in the back with an elegant lady: that would not be polite!’

  A lady, thinks Toby, in despair. Don’t tell me we’ve got that problem too.

  ‘And what kind of lady are we talking about?’ he asks, all jocular, but heart in mouth.

  ‘She was petite and very charming, monsieur, a person of distinction.’

  ‘And of what age, would you say?’

  The chasseur cracks a fearless smile:

  ‘It depends which parts of the lady we are talking about, monsieur,’ he replies, and darts off before the concierge’s wrath can strike him down.

  But next morning, when Toby knocks at the door of the ministerial suite under the pretext of presenting Quinn with a sheaf of flattering British press stories that he has printed off the Internet, it is not the shadow of a young lady or an old one that he glimpses seated at the breakfast table behind the frosted-glass partition to the salon as his minister brusquely opens the door to him, grabs the papers and slams the door in his face. It is the shadow of a man: a trim, straight-backed man of average height in a crisp dark suit and tie.

  Like yourself but a little older, and the hair shorter, monsieur.

  *

  Prague.

  To the surprise of his staff, Minister Quinn is only too happy to accept the hospitality of the British Embassy in Prague. The ambassadress, a recent Foreign Office conscript from the City of London, is an old buddy of Quinn’s from Harvard days. While Fergus was post-gradding in good governance, Stephanie was notching up a Master’s in Business Studies. The conference, which takes place in the fabled castle that is Prague’s pride, is spread over two days of cocktails, lunches and dinners. Its subject is how to improve intelligence liaison between NATO members formerly under the Soviet maw. By the Friday evening the delegates have departed, but Quinn will stay another night with his old friend and, in Stephanie’s words, enjoy ‘a small private dinner all for my old schoolmate Fergus’, meaning that Toby’s presence will not be required.

  Toby passes the morning drafting his report on the conference, and the afternoon walking in the Prague hills. In the evening, captivated as ever by the glories of the city, he strolls beside the Vltava, wanders the cobbled streets, enjoys a solitary meal. On returning to the embassy, he chooses for his pleasure the long way past the castle and notices that the lights in the first-floor conference room are still burning.

  From the street his view is constricted, and the lower half of each window is frosted. Nonetheless by climbing the hill a few paces and standing on tiptoe, he is able to discern the outline of a male speaker silently holding forth from a lectern on the raised platform. He is of average height. The bearing is erect and the jaw action perfunctory; the demeanour – he cannot say quite why – unmist
akably British, perhaps because the hand gestures, while brisk and economic, are in some way inhibited. By the same token Toby has no doubt that English is the language being spoken.

  Has Toby made the connection? Not yet. Not quite. His eye is too busy with the audience. It is about twelve strong and comfortably settled in an informal half-circle round the speaker. Only the heads are visible, but Toby has no difficulty in recognizing six of them. Four belong to the deputy chiefs of the Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Czech military intelligence services, every one of whom, only six hours earlier, professed his undying friendship to Toby before notionally boarding his plane or staff car for the journey home.

  The two remaining heads, which are close together and set apart from the rest, are those of Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Czech Republic and her old Harvard chum, Fergus Quinn. Behind them on a trestle table lie the remnants of a lavish buffet that presumably replaced the small dinner all for Fergus.

  For five minutes or longer – he will never know – Toby remains on the hillside, ignoring the passing night traffic, staring upward at the lighted windows of the castle, his concentration now fixed on the silhouetted figure at the lectern: on the trim, straight body, the crisp dark suit and the taut, emphatic gestures with which he spells out his rousing message.

  But what is the mysterious evangelist’s message?

  And why does it have to be spelt out here, rather than in the embassy?

  And why does it meet with such conspicuous approval from Her Majesty’s minister and Her Majesty’s ambassador?

  And who above all is the minister’s secret sharer, now in Brussels, now in Prague?

  *

  Berlin.

  Having delivered a vacuous speech, written by Toby on demand under the title ‘The Third Way: Social Justice and Its European Future’, Quinn dines privately at the Adlon Hotel with unnamed guests. Toby, his day’s work done, sits chatting in the garden of Café Einstein with his old friends Horst and Monika and their four-year-old daughter, Ella.