John Carré - A Delicate Truth

The minister again, imperious:

‘And you’re Paul , right? That’s understood. Some sort of conference academic. Elliot’s got it all worked out.’

‘Minister, a large part of me has been Paul Anderson since our last conversation, and it shall remain Paul Anderson until my task is complete.’

‘Elliot tell you why you’re here today?’

‘I’m to shake the hand of the leader of our small British token force, and I’m to be your red telephone.’

‘That your own, is it?’ – Quinn, after a beat.

‘My own what, Minister?’

‘Your own expression , for Heaven’s sake. Red telephone? Out of your own head. You made it up? Yes or no?’

‘If it’s not too frivolous.’

‘It’s bang on the button, as it happens. I might even use it.’

‘I should be flattered.’

Disconnect resumes.

‘These Special Forces types are inclined to get a bit uppity.’ Quinn, a statement for the world. ‘Want everything cut, dried and legalled before they’ll get out of bed in the morning. Same problem all across the country, if you want my view. Wife still doing all right, is she?’

‘In the circumstances, splendidly, thank you, Minister. And never a word of complaint, I may say.’

‘Yeah, well, women. What they’re good at, isn’t it? They know how to deal with that stuff.’

‘Indeed they do, Minister. Indeed they do.’

Which is the cue for the arrival of party the second: another single pair of footsteps. They are lightweight, heel to toe and purposeful. On the point of casting them as Crispin’s, Toby finds himself quickly corrected:

‘Jeb, sir,’ they announce, coming to a smart halt.

Is this the drama queen who has fucked up Quinn’s weekend? Whether he is or not, with Jeb’s arrival a different Fergus Quinn takes the stage. Gone the sulky lethargy and in place of it enter the raunchy, straight-from-the-shoulder Glaswegian Man of the People that his electorate falls for every time.

‘ Jeb! Good man. Really, really great. Very proud indeed . Let me say first that we’re fully appreciative of your concerns, right? And we’re here to solve them any which way we can. I’ll do the easy bit first. Jeb, this is Paul, okay? Paul, meet Jeb. You see each other. You see me . I see you both. Jeb, you’re standing in the Minister’s Private Office, my office. I am a minister of the Crown. Paul, you’re an established senior foreign servant of long experience. Do me a favour and confirm that for Jeb here.’

‘Confirmed to the hilt, Minister. And honoured to meet you, Jeb’ – to a rustle of shaking hands.

‘Jeb, you will have seen me on television, going the rounds of my constituency, performing at Question Time in the House of Commons and all that.’

Wait your turn, Quinn. Jeb’s a man who thinks before he answers.

‘Well now, I have visited your website, as a matter of fact. Very impressive, too.’

Is this a Welsh voice? It assuredly is: the Welsh lilt with all its cadences in place.

‘And I in turn have read enough of your record, Jeb, to tell you straight off that I admire and respect you, and your men, plus I’m totally confident you’ll all do a really, really fine job. Now then: the countdown’s already begun, and very understandably and rightly , you and your men wish to be one hundred per cent assured of the British chain of command and control. You have last-minute worries you need to get off your chest: absolutely understood. So do I.’ Joke. ‘Now. Let me address a couple of niggles that have reached me and see where we stand, right?’

Quinn is pacing, his voice darting in and out of the steam-age microphones hidden in the wooden panelling of his office as he swishes past them:

‘Paul here will be your man on the spot. That’s for starters. Plus it’s what you’ve been asking for, right? It is not proper or desirable that I, as a Foreign Office minister, give direct military orders to a man in the field, but you, at your own request, will have your own official-unofficial Foreign Office advisor, Paul here, at your elbow, to assist and advise. When Paul conveys a command to you, it will be a command that comes from the top. It will be a command that bears the imprimatur – signature, that is – of certain people over there .’

Is he pointing at Downing Street as he says this? The slur of a body movement suggests he is.

‘I’ll put it this way, Jeb. This little red fellow sitting here connects me directly with those certain people. Got it? Well, Paul here will be our red telephone.’

Not for the first time in Toby’s experience, Fergus Quinn has brazenly stolen a man’s line without attribution. Is he waiting for applause and not getting it? Or is it something in Jeb’s expression that sets him going? Either way, his patience snaps:

‘For Christ’s sake , Jeb. Look at you! You’ve got your guarantees. You’ve got Paul here. You’ve got your green light, and here we are with the bloody clock ticking. What are we actually talking about?’

But Jeb’s voice displays no such disquiet under fire:

‘Only I tried to have a word with Mr Crispin about it, see,’ he explains, in his comforting Welsh rhythm. ‘But he didn’t seem to want to listen. Too busy. Said I should sort it out with Elliot, him being the designated operational commander.’

‘What the hell’s wrong with Elliot? They tell me he’s absolutely top of the range. First rate.’

‘Well, nothing really. Except Ethical’s sort of a new brand to us, like. Plus we’re operating on the basis of Ethical’s intelligence. So naturally we thought we’d better come to you, well, for reassurance, like. Only it’s no bother for Crispin’s boys, is it? Them being American and exceptional, which is why they were chosen, I suppose. Big money on the table if the operation is successful, plus the international courts can’t lay a finger on them. But my boys are British, aren’t they? So am I. We’re soldiers, not mercenaries. And we don’t fancy sitting in prison in The Hague for an indeterminate period of time accused of participating in an act of extraordinary rendition, do we? Plus we’ve been struck off regimental books for reasons of deniability. The regiment can wash its hands of us any time it wants if the operation comes unstuck. Common criminals, we’d be, not soldiers at all, according to our way of thinking.’

Here Toby, who until now had kept his eyes closed the better to visualize the scene, wound back the tape and played the same passage again, then, leaping to his feet, grabbed a kitchen notebook with Isabel’s scrawls all over it, tore off the top few pages and scribbled down such abbreviations as extr/rendition , US exceptnls and no int./justice .

‘All done, Jeb?’ Quinn is asking, in a tone of saintly tolerance. ‘No more where that came from?’

‘Well, we do have a couple of supplementaries, like, since you ask, Minister. Compensation in the worst contingency is one. Medevac for if we’re wounded is another. We can’t stay lying there, can we? We’d be embarrassing either way, dead or wounded. What happens to our wives and dependants, like? That’s another one, now we’re not regiment any more till we’re reinstated. I said I’d ask, even if it was a bit on the academic side,’ he ends, on a note that to Toby’s ear is too concessive by half.

‘Not academic at all, Jeb,’ Quinn protests expansively. ‘Quite the reverse, if I may say so! Let me make this very clear’ – the Glaswegian Man of the People’s accent taking convenient wing as Quinn enters his hectoring salesman’s mode – ‘the legal headache you describe has been thought through at the very highest level and totally discounted. Thrown out of court. Literally.’