John le Carre - Our kind of traitor

*

Matlock's big head has fallen forward. Finally he speaks, but still without raising his head:

'It's all right for you, isn't it, Hector, sniping from the sidelines. And your friend Luke here. What about the Service's standing where it counts? You're not Service any more. You're Hector. What about the outsourcing of our Intelligence requirements to friendly companies, banks by no means excluded? We're not a crusade, Hector. We're not hired to rock the boat. We're here to help steer it. We're a Service.'

Meeting little in the way of sympathy in Hector's gaunt stare, Matlock selects a more personal note:

'I've always been a status quo man myself, Hector, never been ashamed of it either. Be grateful if this great country of ours gets through another night without mishap, is me. That doesn't do for you, does it? It's like the old Soviet joke we used to tell each other back in the Cold War: there'll be no war, but in the struggle for peace, not a stone will be left standing. An absolutist is what you are, Hector, I've decided. It's that son of yours who gave you so much pain. He's turned your head. Adrian.'

Luke held his breath. This was holy ground. Never once, in all the intimate hours he and Hector had passed together – over Ollie's soups, and malts in the kitchen after hours, huddled together watching Yvonne's stolen film footage or listening yet again to Dima's diatribe – had Luke risked so much as a glancing reference to Hector's errant son. Only by chance had he learned from Ollie that Hector was not to be troubled on a Wednesday or a Saturday afternoon, except in dire emergency, because those were his visiting times at Adrian's open prison in East Anglia.

But Hector appeared not to have heard Matlock's offending words or, if he had, not to heed them. And as to Matlock, he was so fired up with indignation that he was quite likely unaware that he had spoken them at all.

'Plus another thing, Hector!' he barks. 'What's wrong, when you come down to it, with turning black money to white, at the end of the day? All right, there's an alternative economy out there. A very big one. We all know that. We're not born yesterday. More black than white, some countries' economies are, we know that too. Look at Turkey. Look at Colombia, Luke's parish. All right, look at Russia too. So where would you rather see that money? Black and out there? Or white, and sitting in London in the hands of civilized men, available for legitimate purposes and the public good?'

'Then maybe you should take up laundering yourself, Billy,' says Hector quietly. 'For the public good.'

Now it's Matlock's turn not to have heard. Abruptly he changes tack, a trick he has long perfected:

'And who's this Professor we're hearing about anyway?' he demands, talking straight into Hector's face. 'Or not hearing about? Is he your source for all this? Why am I being fed snippets all the time, no hard data? Why haven't you cleared him with us – or her? I don't remember anything about a professor crossing my desk.'

'Want to run him, Billy?'

Matlock gives Hector a long, silent stare.

'Be my guest, Billy,' Hector urges. 'Take him over, whoever he or she is. Take over the whole case, Aubrey Longrigg and all. Hand it to the organized crime people, if you prefer. Call in the Met, the security services and the guards armoured while you're about it. The Chief may not thank you, but others will.'

Matlock is never defeated. Nevertheless, his truculent question has the unmistakable ring of concession:

'All right. Let's do some plain talking for a change. What d'you want? How long for, and how much? Let's have your full bag. Then let's empty it out a bit.'

'I want this, Billy. I want to meet Dima face to face when he comes to Paris in three weeks' time. I want to get trade samples out of him exactly as we would from any high-priced defector: names from his list, account numbers, and a sight of his map – sorry, link chart. I want written approval – yours – to take him to first base on the understanding that if he can provide what he says he can provide, we buy him on the nail, at full market price, and don't piss around while he tries to flog himself to the French, the Germans, the Swiss – or, God help us, the Americans, who will need one quick look at his material to confirm their current dismal view of this Service, this government and this country.' A bony forefinger shoots into the air and stays there as the fervent light once more rises to his wide grey eyes. 'And I want to go barefoot. You follow me? That means no tipping off the Paris Station that I'm there, and no operational, financial or logistical support from you or the Service at any level until I ask for it. Got it? Ditto with Berne. I want the case kept watertight and the indoctrination list closed and locked. No more signatories, no whispering in the corridor to best chums. I'll handle the case on my own, in my own way, using Luke here and whatever other resources I choose. All right, go on, now have your fit.'

So Hector did hear, thought Luke with satisfaction: Billy Boy hit you with Adrian, and you've made him pay the price.

Matlock's outrage was mingled with frank disbelief. 'Without the Chief's word even? Without fourth-floor approval, at all? Hector Meredith flying solo all over again? Taking information from unsymbolized sources on your own initiative for your own ends? You're not in the real world, Hector. You never were. Don't look at what your man's offering. Look at what he's asking! Resettlement for his whole tribe, new identities, passports, safe houses, amnesties, guarantees, I don't know what he isn't asking! You'd have to have the entire Empowerment Committee behind you, in writing, before you'd get me signing up to that. I don't trust you. Never did. Nothing's enough for you. Never was.'

'The entire Empowerment Committee?' Hector inquired.

'As constituted under Treasury rules. The full Committee of Empowerment, in plenary session, no subcommittees.'

'So a clutch of government lawyers, an all-star cast of Foreign Office mandarins, Cabinet Office, the Treasury, not to mention our own fourth floor. You think you can contain that, do you, Billy? In this context? How about the Parliamentary Oversight lot? They're worth a laugh. Both houses of Parliament, cross-Party, Aubrey Longrigg to the fore, and de Salis's fully paid-up choir of parliamentary mercenaries, all singing from the same hymn-sheet?'

'The size and constitution of the Empowerment Committee is flexible and adjustable, Hector, as you very well know. Not all elements have to be present at all times.'

'And this is what you propose before I've even spoken to Dima? You want a scandal before the scandal's broken? Is that what you're pushing for? Go wide, blow the source before you've let him show you what he's got to sell, and sod the consequences? Is that seriously what you're suggesting? You'll let the shit hit the fan before it's even turning, all to save your back? And you talk about the good of the Service.'

Luke had to hand it to Matlock. Even now, he did not relax his aggression.

'So it's the interests of the Service we're protecting at last! Well, well. I'm glad to hear it, late as it may be. What are you suggesting?'

'Hold off your committee meeting until after Paris.'

'And in the meantime?'

'Against your better judgement and all you hold dear, such as your own arse, you give me a temporary operational licence, thereby entrusting the whole affair to the hands of a maverick officer who can be disowned the moment the operation goes belly up: me. Hector Meredith has his virtues, but he's an identified loose cannon and he's exceeded his brief. Media please copy.'

'And if the operation doesn't go belly up?'

'You assemble the smallest version of the Empowerment Committee that you can get away with.'