A Delicate Truth

by John le Carré

  ‘You seem to have forgotten that Jeb was army,’ Kit broke in hotly. ‘British army. He also had a bit of a thing about bounty-hunters, as he happened to inform me during our time together. Tolerated them, but that was as much as he could manage. He was proud of being the Queen’s soldier, and that was enough for him. Made the very point, I’m afraid. Sorry about that’ – getting hotter still.

  Crispin was gently nodding to himself, like a man whose worst fears have been confirmed.

  ‘Oh dear. Oh Jeb. Oh boy. He actually said that, did he? God-a-mercy!’ He collected himself. ‘The Queen’s soldier doesn’t hold with mercenaries, but wants a mega-slice of the bounty-hunters’ cake? I love it. Well done, Jeb. Hypocrisy hits new depths. And when he doesn’t get what he wants, he turns round and shits all over Ethical’s doorstep. What a two-faced little’ – but for reasons of delicacy he preferred to leave the sentence unfinished.

  And again Kit refused to be deterred:

  ‘Now look here, all that’s beside the point. I haven’t got my answer, have I? Nor has Suzanna.’

  ‘To what, exactly, old boy?’ Crispin asked, still struggling to overcome whatever demons were assailing him.

  ‘The answer I came for, damn it. Yes or no? Forget rewards, bounty, all that stuff. Total red herring. My question is, one: was the operation bloodless or was it not? Was anybody killed? And if so, who were they? Never mind about innocent or guilty: were they killed? And two’ – no longer quite the master of his arithmetic, but persisting nonetheless – ‘was a woman killed? And was her child killed? Or any child, for that matter? Suzanna has a right to know. So’ve I. And we both need to know what to tell our daughter, because Emily was there too. At the Fayre. Heard him. Heard things that she shouldn’t have done. From Jeb. Not her fault that she heard them but she did. I’m not sure how much, but enough.’ And as a mitigating afterthought, because his parting words to Emily at the railway station still shamed him: ‘Earwigging, probably. I don’t blame her. She’s a doctor. She’s observant. She needs to know things. Part of her job.’

  Crispin appeared surprised, even a little hurt, to discover that such questions should still be out there on the table. But he elected to answer them anyway:

  ‘Let’s just take a look at your case first, Kit, shall we?’ he suggested kindly. ‘D’you honestly think the dear old FO would have given you that posting – that honour – if there’d been blood all over the Rock? Not to mention Punter singing his heart out to his interrogators at an undisclosed location?’

  ‘Could have done,’ Kit said obstinately, ignoring the outsider’s hated use of FO. ‘To keep me quiet. Get me out of the firing line. Stop me from blabbing. The Foreign Office has done worse things in its time. Suzanna thinks they could, anyway. So do I.’

  ‘Then watch my lips.’

  From under furrowed brows, Kit was doing just that.

  ‘Kit. There was zero – repeat: zero – loss of life. Want me to say it again? Not one drop of blood, not anyone’s. No dead babies, no dead mothers. Convinced now? Or do I have to ask the concierge to bring a Bible?’

  *

  The walk from the Connaught to Pall Mall on that balmy spring evening was for Kit less a pleasure than a sad celebration. Jeb, poor fellow, was obviously very damaged goods indeed. Kit’s heart went out to him: a former comrade, a brave ex-soldier who had given in to feelings of avarice and injustice. Well, he’d known a better man than that, a man to respect, a man to follow. Should their paths happen to cross again – which God forbid, but should they – he would not withhold the hand of friendship. As to their chance meeting at Bailey’s Fayre, he had no time for Crispin’s base suspicions. It was sheer coincidence, and that was that. The greatest actor on earth couldn’t have faked that ravaged face as it stared up at him from the tailgate of the van. Jeb might be psychotic, he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or any of the other big words we throw around so easily these days. But to Kit he would remain the Jeb who had led him to the high point of his career, and nothing was ever going to take that away, period.

  And it was with this determinedly honed formulation in his head that he stepped into a side street and called Suzanna, a thing he had been dying to do, but also in some indefinable way dreading, ever since he had left the Connaught.

  ‘Things are really good, Suki’ – picking his words carefully because, as Emily had unkindly pointed out, Suzanna was if anything more security conscious than he was. ‘We’re dealing with a very sick chap who’s tragically lost his way in life and can’t tell truth from fiction, okay?’ He tried again. ‘Nobody – repeat: nobody – got hurt in the accident. Suki? Are you there?’

  Oh Christ, she’s crying. She’s not. Suki never cries.

  ‘Suki, darling, there was no accident. None plural. It’s all right. No child left behind. Or mother. Our friend from the Fayre is deluded. He’s a poor, brave chap, he’s got mental problems, he’s got money problems, and he’s all muddled up in his head. I’ve had it straight from the top man.’

  ‘Kit?’

  ‘What is it, darling? Tell me. Please. Suzanna?’

  ‘I’m all right, Kit. I was just a bit tired and low. I’m better now.’

  Still not weeping? Suki? Not on your life. Not old Suki. Never. He had been intending to call Emily next, but on reflection: best give it a rest till tomorrow.

  *

  In his club, it was the watering hour. Old buddies greeted him, bought him a jar, he bought one back. Kidneys and bacon at the long table, coffee and port in the library to make a proper night of it. The lift out of service, but he negotiated the four flights with ease and groped his way down the long corridor to his bedroom without knocking over any bloody fire extinguishers. But he had to run his hand up and down the wall to find the light switch that kept eluding him, and while he was groping he noticed there was a lot of fresh air in the room. Had the previous occupant, in flagrant contradiction of club rules, been smoking and left the window open to conceal the evidence? If so, Kit was minded to write a stiff letter to the secretary.

  And when eventually he did find the switch, and put on the light, there on a Rexine-covered armchair beneath the open window, wearing a smart dark-blue blazer with a triangle of white handkerchief in the top pocket, sat Jeb.

  4

  The brown A4 envelope landed face upwards on the doormat of Toby Bell’s flat in Islington at twenty past three on a Saturday morning, shortly after his return from a rewarding but stressful tour at the British Embassy in Beirut. Immediately on security alert, he grabbed a hand torch from his bedside and tiptoed warily along the corridor to the sound of softly retreating footsteps down the stairs and the closing of the front door.

  The envelope was of the thick, oily variety, and unfranked. The words PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL were written in large inked capitals in the top-left corner. The address T. Bell, Esquire, Flat 2, was done in a cursive, English-looking hand he didn’t recognize. The back flap was double sealed with sticky tape, the torn-off ends of which were folded round to the front. No sender’s name was offered, and if the antiquated Esquire, spelt out in full, was intended to reassure him, it had the opposite effect. The contents of the envelope appeared to be flat – so technically a letter, not a package. But Toby knew from his training that devices don’t have to be bulky to blow your hands off.

  There was no great mystery about how a letter could be delivered to his first-floor flat at such an hour. At weekends the front door to the house was often left unlocked all night. Steeling himself, he picked up the envelope and, holding it at arm’s length, took it to the kitchen. After examining it under the overhead light, he cut into the side of it with a kitchen knife and discovered a second envelope addressed in the same hand: ATTENTION OF T. BELL, ESQ. ONLY.

  This interior envelope too was sealed with sticky tape. Inside it were two tightly written sheets of headed blue notepaper, undated.

  As from:

  The Manor,

  St Pirran,

&nb
sp; Bodmin,

  Cornwall

  My dear Bell,

  Forgive this cloak-and-dagger missive, and the furtive manner of its delivery. My researches inform me that three years ago you were Private Secretary to a certain junior minister. If I tell you that we have a mutual acquaintance by the name of Paul, you will guess the nature of my concern and appreciate why I am not at liberty to expand in writing.

  The situation in which I find myself is so acute that I have no option but to appeal to your natural human instincts and solicit your complete discretion. I am asking you for a personal meeting at your earliest possible convenience, here in the obscurity of North Cornwall rather than in London, on any day of your choosing. No prior warning, whether by email, telephone or the public post, is necessary, or advisable.

  Our house is presently under renovation, but we have ample room to accommodate you. I am delivering this at the start of the weekend in the hope that it may expedite your visit.

  Yours sincerely,

  Christopher (Kit) Probyn.

  PS Sketch map and How to Reach Us attached. C.P.

  PPS Obtained your address from a former colleague under a pretext. C.P.

  As Toby read this, a kind of magisterial calm descended over him, of fulfilment, and of vindication. For three years he had waited for just such a sign, and now here it was, lying before him on the kitchen table. Even in the worst times in Beirut – amid bomb scares, kidnap fears, curfews, assassinations and clandestine meetings with unpredictable militia chiefs – he had never once ceased to wrestle with the mystery of the Operation That Never Was, and Giles Oakley’s inexplicable U-turn. The decision of Fergus Quinn, MP, white hope of the powers-that-be in Downing Street, announced just days after Toby was whisked off to Beirut, to step down from politics and accept the post of Defence Procurement Consultant to one of the Emirates, had provided fodder for the weekend gossip writers, but produced nothing of substance.

  Still in his dressing gown, Toby hurried to his desktop. Christopher (Kit) Probyn, born 1950, educated Marlborough College and Caius, Cambridge, second-class honours in Mathematics and Biology, rated one tight paragraph in Who’s Who. Married to Suzanna née Cardew, one daughter. Served in Paris, Bucharest, Ankara, Vienna, then various home-based appointments before becoming High Commissioner to a pattern of Caribbean islands.

  Knighted en poste by the Queen, retired one year ago.

  With this harmless entry, the floodgates of recognition were flung wide open.

  Yes, Sir Christopher, we do indeed have a mutual acquaintance by the name of Paul!

  And yes, Kit, I really do guess the nature of your concern and appreciate why you are not at liberty to expand in writing!

  And I’m not at all surprised that no email, telephone or public post is necessary or advisable. Because Paul is Kit, and Kit is Paul! And between you, you make one low flyer and one red telephone, and you are appealing to my natural human instincts. Well, Kit – well, Paul – you will not appeal in vain.

  *

  As a single man in London, Toby had made a point of never owning a car. It took him ten infuriating minutes to extract a railway timetable from the Web, and another ten to arrange a self-drive from Bodmin Parkway station. By midday he was sitting in the buffet section watching the rolling fields of the West Country stutter past so slowly that he despaired of arriving at his destination before nightfall. By late afternoon nevertheless, he was driving an overlarge saloon with a slipping clutch and bad steering through narrow lanes so overhung with foliage that they resembled tunnels pierced with strands of sunlight. Soon he was picking up the promised landmarks: a ford, a hairpin bend, a solitary phone box, a cul-de-sac sign, and finally a milestone saying ST PIRRAN CH’TOWN 2 MILES.

  He descended a steep hill and passed between fields of corn and rape bordered by granite hedges. A cluster of farm cottages rose up at him, then a sprawl of modern bungalows, then a stubby granite church and a village street; and at the end of the street on its own small rise, the Manor, an ugly nineteenth-century yeoman’s farmhouse with a pillared porch and a pair of outsized iron gates and two pompous gateposts mounted with stone lions.

  Toby did not slow down on this first pass. He was Beirut Man, accustomed to collecting all available information in advance of an encounter. Selecting an unmetalled track that offered a traverse of the hillside, he was soon able to look down on a jumble of pitched slate roofs with ladders laid across them, a row of dilapidated greenhouses and a stables with a clock tower and no clock. And in the stable yard, a cement mixer and a heap of sand. The house is presently under renovation, but we have ample room to accommodate you.

  His reconnaissance complete, he drove back to the village high street and, by way of a short, pitted drive, drew up at the Manor porch. Finding no bell but a brass knocker, he gave it a resounding whack and heard a dog barking and sounds of ferocious hammering from the depths of the house. The door flew open and a small, intrepid-looking woman in her sixties sternly examined him with her sharp blue eyes. From her side, a mud-caked yellow Labrador did the same.

  ‘My name’s Toby Bell. I wondered if I might have a word with Sir Christopher,’ he said, upon which her gaunt face at once relaxed into a warm, rather beautiful smile.

  ‘But of course you’re Toby Bell! D’you know, for a moment I really thought you were too young for the part? I’m so sorry. That’s the problem with being a hundred years old. He’s here, darling! It’s Toby Bell. Where is the man? Kitchen probably. He’s arguing with an old bread oven. Kit, stop banging for once and come, darling! I bought him a pair of those plastic earmuff things but he won’t wear them. Sheer male obstinacy. Sheba, say hullo to Toby. You don’t mind being Toby, do you? I’m Suzanna. Nicely, Sheba! Oh dear, she needs a wash.’

  The hammering stopped. The mud-caked Labrador nuzzled Toby’s thigh. Following Suzanna’s gaze, he peered down an ill-lit flagstone corridor.

  ‘That really him, darling? Sure you’ve got the right chap? Can’t be too careful, you know. Might be the new plumber.’

  An inward leap of recognition: after three years of waiting, Toby was hearing the voice of the true Paul.

  ‘Of course he’s the right chap, darling!’ Suzanna was calling back. ‘And he’s absolutely dying for a shower and a stiff drink after his journey, aren’t you, Toby?’

  ‘Good trip, Toby? Found your way and everything? Directions didn’t lead you astray?’

  ‘Absolutely fine! Your directions were impressively accurate,’ Toby called, equally heartily, down the empty passage.

  ‘Give me thirty seconds to wash my hands and get these boots off and I’ll be with you.’

  Torrent of tap water, honk, gurgle of pipes. The true Paul’s measured footsteps approaching over flagstones. And finally the man himself, first in silhouette, then in worker’s overalls and ancient gym-shoes, drying his hands on a tea cloth before grasping Toby’s in a double grip.

  ‘Bloody good of you to come,’ he said fervently. ‘Can’t tell you what it means to us. We’ve been absolutely worried sick, haven’t we, darling?’

  But before Suzanna could confirm this, a tall, slender woman in her late twenties with dark hair and wide Italian eyes had appeared as if from nowhere and was standing at Kit’s side. And since she seemed more interested in taking a look at Toby than greeting him, his first assumption was that she was some kind of house servant, perhaps an au pair.

  ‘Hi. I’m Emily. Daughter of the house,’ she said curtly, reaching past her father to give his hand a perfunctory shake, but with no accompanying smile.

  ‘Brought your toothbrush?’ Kit was asking. ‘Good man! In the car? You fetch your things, I’ll show you up to your room. And darling, you’ll rustle up some boys’ supper for us, will you? The fellow must be starving after his travels. One of Mrs Marlow’s pies will do him a power.’

  *

  The main staircase was work in progress, so they were using the old servants’ staircase. The paint on the wall should be dry, but best not tou
ch it, Kit said. The women had disappeared. From a scullery, sounds of Sheba getting her wash.

  ‘Em’s a medic,’ Kit volunteered as they climbed, his voice echoing up and down the stairwell. ‘Qualified at Bart’s. Top of her year, bless her. Tends the poor and needy of the East End, lucky devils. Dicky floorboard here, so watch your step.’

  They had reached a landing with a row of doors. Kit threw open the middle one. Dormer windows gave on to a walled garden. A single bed was neatly turned down. On a writing table lay foolscap paper and ballpoint pens.

  ‘Scotch in the library as soon as you’ve powdered your nose,’ Kit announced from the doorway. ‘Stroll before supper if you’re up for it. Easier to talk when the girls aren’t around,’ he added awkwardly. ‘And watch out for the shower: it’s a bit of a hot number.’

  Entering the bathroom and about to undress, Toby was startled to hear a blare of angry voices coming through the door. He stepped back into the bedroom to see Emily in tracksuit and sneakers, balancing a remote control in her hand, standing over the television, running through the channels.

  ‘I thought I’d better check that it worked,’ she explained over her shoulder, making no effort to lower the sound. ‘We’re in a foreign posting here. Nobody’s allowed to hear what anyone is saying to anyone else. Plus walls have ears and we haven’t got any carpets.’

  The television still blaring, she came a stride closer.

  ‘Are you here instead of Jeb?’ she demanded, straight into his face.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jeb. J–E–B.’

  ‘No. No, I’m not.’

  ‘Do you know Jeb?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Well, Dad does. It’s his big secret. Except Jeb calls him Paul. He was supposed to be here last Wednesday. He didn’t show. You’re in his bed, actually,’ she added, still regarding him with her brown gaze.