A Delicate Truth

by John le Carré

  In the shop section on the other side of the brass handrail, customers armed with plastic tongs were loading up their paper boxes with patisserie, sidling along the counter and paying their dues at the cash desk. But none qualified as Shorty Pike, six foot four – but Jeb come in from under him, buckled his knees for him, then broke his nose for him on the way down.

  Eleven o’clock turned to ten past. He’s got cold feet, Toby decided. They reckon he’s a health risk, and he’s sitting in a van with his head blown off with the wrong hand.

  A bald, heavy-set man with a pockmarked olive complexion and small round eyes was peering covetously through the window: first at the cakes and pastries, now at Toby, now at the cakes again. No blink-rate, weightlifter’s shoulders. Snappy dark suit, no tie. Now he’s walked away. Was he scouting? Or was he thinking he would treat himself to a cream bun, then changed his mind for his figure’s sake? Then Toby realized that Shorty was sitting beside him. And that Shorty must have been hovering all the time in the toilet at the back of the café, which was something Toby hadn’t thought of and should have done, but clearly Shorty had.

  He seemed taller than his six foot four, probably because he was sitting upright, with both very large hands on the table in the half-curled position. He had oily black hair, close cropped at the back and sides, and high film-star cheekbones with a built-in grin. His dark complexion was so shiny it looked as though it had been scrubbed with a soapy nail-brush after shaving. There was a small dent at the centre of his nose, so perhaps Jeb had left his mark. He was wearing a sharply ironed blue denim shirt with buttoned-up regulation patch pockets, one for his cigarettes, the other for a protruding comb.

  ‘You’re Pete then, right?’ he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘And you’re Shorty. What can I get you, Shorty? Coffee? Tea?’

  Shorty raised his eyebrows and looked slowly round the café. Toby wondered whether he was always this theatrical, or whether being tall and narcissistic made you behave like this.

  And wondering this, he caught another glimpse, or thought he did, of the same bald, heavy-set man who had debated with himself about buying a cream bun, hurrying past the shop window with an air of conspicuous unconcern.

  ‘Tell you what, Pete,’ said Shorty.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not all that comfortable being here, frankly, if it’s all the same to you. I’d like it a bit more private, like. Far from the maddening crowd, as they say.’

  ‘Wherever you like, Shorty. It’s your call.’

  ‘And you’re not being clever, are you? Like, you haven’t got a photographer tucked round the corner, or similar?’

  ‘I’m clean as a whistle and all alone, Shorty. Just lead the way’ – watching how the beads of sweat were forming on Shorty’s brow, and how his hand shook as it plucked at the pocket of his denim shirt for a cigarette before returning to the table without one. Withdrawal symptoms? Or just a heavy night on the tiles?

  ‘Only I’ve got my new wagon round the corner, see, an Audi. I parked it early, for in case. So I mean, what we could do, we could go somewhere like the recreation park, or somewhere, and have a talk there, where we’re not noticeable, me being somewhat conspicuous. A full and frank exchange, as they say. For your paper. The Argus, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That a big paper, is it, or what – just local – or is it, like, more national, your paper?’

  ‘Local, but we’re online too,’ Toby replied. ‘So it all adds up to quite a decent number.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? You don’t mind then?’ – huge sniff.

  ‘Mind what?’

  ‘Us not sitting here?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Toby went to the counter to pay for his cappuccino, which took a moment, and Shorty stood behind him like the next person in line, with the sweat running freely from his face.

  But when Toby had done his paying, Shorty walked ahead of him to the entrance, playing the minder, his long arms lifted from his sides to make way.

  And when Toby stepped on to the pavement, there was Shorty, waiting, all ready to steer him through the teeming shoppers: but not before Toby, glancing to his left, had again spotted the bald, heavy-set man with a weakness for pastries and cakes, this time standing on the pavement with his back to him, speaking to two other men who seemed equally determined to avoid his eye.

  And if there was a moment when Toby contemplated making a dash for it, it was now, because all his training told him: don’t dither, you’ve seen the classic set-up, trust your instincts and go now, because an hour from now or less you’ll be chained to a radiator with your shoes off.

  But his desire to see things through must have outweighed these reservations because he was already letting Shorty shepherd him round the corner and into a one-way street, where a shiny blue Audi was indeed parked on the left side, with a black Mercedes saloon parked directly behind it.

  And once again his trainers would have argued that this was another classic set-up: one kidnap car and one chase car. And when Shorty pressed his remote from a yard away, and opened the back door of the Audi for him instead of the passenger door, while at the same moment his grasp on Toby’s arm tightened and the heavy-set man and his two chums came round the corner, any residual doubts in Toby’s mind must have died on the spot.

  All the same, his self-respect obliged him to protest, if only lightly:

  ‘You want me in the back, Shorty?’

  ‘I’ve got another half-hour on the meter, haven’t I? Pity to waste it. Might as well sit here and talk. Why not?’

  Toby still hesitated, as well he might, for surely the normal thing to do, for any two men who want to talk privately in a car, far from what Shorty insisted on calling the maddening crowd, was to sit in the front.

  But he got in anyway, and Shorty climbed in beside him, at which moment the bald, heavy-set man slid into the driving seat from the street side and locked all four doors, while in the offside wing mirror his two male friends settled themselves comfortably into the Mercedes.

  The bald man hasn’t switched on the engine, but neither has he turned his head to look at Toby, preferring to study him in the driving mirror in darting flicks of his little round eyes, while Shorty stares ostentatiously out of the window at the passers-by.

  *

  The bald man has put his hands on the steering wheel, but with the engine not running and the car not moving, this seems odd. They’re powerful hands, very clean and fitted with encrusted rings. Like Shorty, the bald man gives an impression of regimental hygiene. His lips in the driving mirror are very pink, and he has to moisten them with his tongue before speaking, which suggests to Toby that, like Shorty, he’s nervous.

  ‘Sir, I believe I have the singular honour of welcoming Mr Toby Bell of Her Majesty’s Foreign Office. Is that correct, sir?’ he enquires in a pedantic South African accent.

  ‘I believe you do,’ Toby agrees.

  ‘Sir, my name is Elliot, I am a colleague of Shorty here.’ He is reciting: ‘Sir – or Toby if I may make so bold – I am instructed to present the compliments of Mr Jay Crispin, whom it is our privilege to serve. He wishes us to apologize in advance for any discomfort you will have sustained thus far, and he assures you of his goodwill. He advises you to relax, and he looks forward to a constructive and amicable dialogue immediately upon arrival at our destination. Do you wish to speak personally to Mr Crispin at this moment in time?’

  ‘No, thank you, Elliot. I think I’m fine as I am,’ Toby replies, equally courteously.

  Albanian-Greek renegade, used to call himself Eglesias, ex-South African Special Forces, killed some chap in a bar in Jo’burg and came to Europe for his health? That sort of Elliot? Oakley is asking, as they sip their after-dinner Calvados.

  ‘Passenger on board,’ Elliot reports into his mouthpiece, and raises a thumb in his side mirror for the benefit of the black Mercedes behind them.

  ‘Sad about poor Jeb
, then,’ Toby remarks conversationally to Shorty, whose interest in the passers-by only intensifies.

  But Elliot is instantly forthcoming:

  ‘Mr Bell, sir, every man has his destiny, every man has his allotted time span, I say. What is written in the stars is written. No man can beat the rap. Are you comfortable there in the back seat, sir? We drivers sometimes have it too easy, in my opinion.’

  ‘Very comfortable indeed,’ says Toby. ‘How about you, Shorty?’

  *

  They were heading south, and Toby had refrained from further conversation, which was probably wise of him because the only questions he could think of came out of a bad dream, like: ‘Did you personally have a hand in Jeb’s murder, Shorty?’ Or: ‘Tell us, Elliot, what did you actually do with the bodies of that woman and her child?’ They had descended Fitzjohn’s Avenue and were approaching the exclusive marches of St John’s Wood. Was this by chance ‘the wood’ that Fergus Quinn had referred to in his obsequious conversation with Crispin on the stolen tape recording?

  ‘… all right, yes, fourish … the wood suits me a lot better … more private.’

  In quick order, he glimpsed an army barracks guarded by British sentries with automatic rifles, then an anonymous brick house guarded by United States marines. A sign said CUL-DE-SAC. Green-roofed villas at five million and rising. High brick walls. Magnolia trees in full bloom. Fallen cherry blossom lying like confetti across the road. Two green gates, already opening. And in the offside wing mirror, the black Mercedes nosing close enough to touch.

  *

  He had not expected so much whiteness. They have negotiated a gravel circle edged in white-painted stones. They are pulling up before a low white house surrounded by ornamental lawns. The white Palladian-style porch is too grand for the house. Video cameras peer at them from the branches of the trees. Fake orangeries of blackened glass stretch to either side. A man in an anorak and tie is holding the car door open. Shorty and Elliot get out, but Toby out of cussedness has decided to wait till he’s fetched. Now at his own choice he gets out of the car, and as casually stretches.

  ‘Welcome to Castle Keep, sir,’ says the man in the anorak and tie, which Toby is inclined to take as some kind of joke until he spots a brass shield mounted beside the front door portraying a castle like a chess piece surmounted by a pair of crossed swords.

  He climbs the steps. Two apologetic men pat him down, take possession of his ballpoint pens, reporter’s notebook and wristwatch, then pass him through an electronic archway and say, ‘We’ll have it all waiting for you after you’ve seen the Chief, sir.’ Toby decides to enter an altered state. He is nobody’s prisoner, he is a free man walking down a shiny corridor paved with Spanish tiles and hung with Georgia O’Keeffe flower prints. Doors lead from either side of it. Some are open. Cheery voices issue from them. True, Elliot is strolling beside him, but he has his hands stored piously behind his back as if he’s on his way to church. Shorty has disappeared. A pretty secretary in long black skirt and white blouse flits across the corridor. She gives Elliot a casual ‘Hi’, but her smile is for Toby, and, free man that he is determined to be, he smiles back. In a white office with a sloped ceiling of white glass, a demure, grey-haired lady in her fifties sits behind a desk.

  ‘Ah, Mr Bell. Well done you. Mr Crispin is expecting you. Thank you, Elliot, I think the Chief is looking forward to a one-to-one with Mr Bell.’

  And Toby, he decides, is looking forward to a one-to-one with the Chief. But alas, on entering Crispin’s grand office, he feels only a sense of anticlimax, reminiscent of the anticlimactic feelings he experienced that evening three years ago, when the shadowy ogre who had haunted him in Brussels and Prague marched into Quinn’s Private Office with Miss Maisie hanging from his arm and revealed himself as the same blankly handsome, forty-something television version of the officer-class business executive who was this minute rising from his chair with an orchestrated display of pleasurable surprise, naughty-boy chagrin and mannish good fellowship.

  ‘Toby! Well, what a way to meet. Pretty damned odd, I must say, posing as a provincial hack writing up poor Jeb’s obituary. Still, I suppose you couldn’t tell Shorty you were Foreign Office. You’d have frightened the pants off him.’

  ‘I was hoping Shorty would tell me about Operation Wildlife.’

  ‘Yes, well, so I gather. Shorty’s a bit cut up about Jeb, understandably. Not quite himself, ’twixt thee and me. Not that he’d have talked much to you. Not in his interests. Not in anyone’s. Coffee? Decaf? Mint tea? Something stronger? Not every day I hijack one of Her Majesty’s best. How far have you got?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Your investigations. I thought that’s what we were talking about. You’ve seen Probyn, seen the widow. The widow gave you Shorty. You’ve met Elliot. How many cards does that leave you with? Just trying to look over your shoulder,’ he explained pleasantly. ‘Probyn? Spent force. Didn’t see a sausage. All the rest is pure hearsay. A court would chuck it out. The widow? Bereaved, paranoid, hysterical: discount. What else have you got?’

  ‘You lied to Probyn.’

  ‘So would you have done. It was expedient. Or hasn’t the dear old FO heard of lies of expediency? Your problem is, you’re going to be out of a job pretty soon, with worse to come. I thought I might be able to help out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, just for openers, how about a bit of protection and a job?’

  ‘With Ethical Outcomes?’

  ‘Oh Christ, those dinosaurs,’ said Crispin, with a laugh to suggest he’d forgotten all about Ethical Outcomes until Toby happened to remind him of them. ‘Nothing to do with this shop, thank God. We got out early. Ethical put the chairs on the tables and went all offshore. Whoever owns the stock owns the liability. Absolutely no connection visible or otherwise with Castle Keep.’

  ‘And no Miss Maisie?’

  ‘Long gone, bless her. Showering Bibles on the heathens of Somalia when last heard of.’

  ‘And your friend Quinn?’

  ‘Yeah, well, alas for poor Fergus. Still, I’m told his party’s busting to have him back, now it’s been slung out of power, past ministerial experience being worth its weight in gold, and so on. Provided he forswears New Labour and all its works, of course, which he’s only too happy to do. Wanted to sign up with us, between you and me. On his knees, practically. But I’m afraid, unlike you, he didn’t cut the mustard.’ A nostalgic smile for old times. ‘There’s always the defining moment when you start out in this game: do we risk the operation and go in, or do we chicken? You’ve got paid men standing by, trained up and rarin’ to go. You’ve got half a million dollars’ worth of intelligence, your finance in place, crock of gold from the backers if you bring it off, and just enough of a green light from the powers that be to cover your backside, but no more. Okay, there were rumbles about our intelligence sources. When aren’t there?’

  ‘And that was Wildlife?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘And the collateral damage?’

  ‘Heartbreaking. Always is. The absolute worst thing about our business. Every time I go to bed, I think about it. But what’s the alternative? Give me a Predator drone and a couple of Hell-fire missiles and I’ll show you what real collateral damage looks like. Want to take a stroll in the garden? Day like this, seems a pity to waste the sunshine.’

  The room they were standing in was part office, part conservatory. Crispin stepped outside. Toby had no choice but to follow him. The garden was walled and long and laid out in the oriental style, with pebble paths and water trickling down a slate conduit into a pond. A bronze Chinese woman in a Hakka hat was catching fish for her basket.

  ‘Ever heard of a little outfit called Rosethorne Protection Services?’ Crispin asked over his shoulder. ‘Worth about three billion US at last count?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, bone up on them, I should, because they own us – for the time being. At our present rate of growth, we’ll be buying
ourselves out in a couple of years. Four, max. Know how many warm bodies we employ worldwide?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Full time, six hundred. Offices in Zurich, Bucharest, Paris. Everything from personal protection to home security to counter-insurgency to who’s spying on your firm to who’s screwing your wife. Any notion of the sort of people we keep on our payroll?’

  ‘No. Tell me.’

  He swung round and, evoking memories of Fergus Quinn, began counting off his fingers in Toby’s face.

  ‘Five heads of foreign intelligence services. Four still serving. Five ex-directors of British intelligence, all with contracts in place with the Old Firm. More police chiefs and their deputies than you can shake a stick at. Throw in any odd Whitehall flunky who wants to make a buck on the side, plus a couple of dozen peers and MPs, and it’s a pretty strong hand.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ said Toby politely, noticing how some kind of emotion had entered Crispin’s voice, even if it was more the triumphalism of a child than of a grown man.

  ‘And in case you have any remaining doubts that your beautiful Foreign Office career is finished, be so kind as to follow me,’ he continued affably. ‘Mind?’

  *

  They are standing in a windowless room like a recording studio with cushioned hessian walls and flat screens. Crispin is playing an extract from Toby’s stolen recording to him at high volume, the bit where Quinn is putting the pressure on Jeb:

  ‘… so what I’m saying, Jeb, is, here we are, with the countdown to D-Day already ringing in our ears, you as the Queen’s soldier, me as the Queen’s minister …’

  ‘Enough, or more?’ Crispin enquires and, receiving no answer, switches it off anyway, and sits himself down in a very modern rocking chair by the console while Toby remembers Tina: Tina, the temporary Portuguese cleaning woman who stood in for Lula while she went on holiday at short notice; Tina who was so tall and conscientious that she polished my grandparents’ wedding photograph. If I’d been stationed abroad, it would never have occurred to me that she wasn’t working for the secret police.