John Carré - A Delicate Truth

Change sheets.

Clear bathroom of Isabel’s detritus.

Wash up last night’s supper dishes.

Pour rest of red Burgundy down sink.

Repeat after me: countdown’s already begun … here we are with the bloody clock ticking … see you on the night, as they say, Paul .

Which night? Last night? Tomorrow night?

And still no message.

Make omelette. Leave half.

Switch on Newsnight , encounter one of God’s little ironies. Roy Stormont-Taylor, Queen’s Counsel, the silkiest silk in the business, in striped shirt and white open-necked collar, is pontificating on the essential differences between law and justice.

Take aspirin. Lie on bed.

And at some point, unknown to himself, he must have dozed off, because the shriek of a text message on his BlackBerry woke him like a fire alarm:

Urge you forget lady permanently.

No signature.

Text back, furiously and impulsively: No way. Too bloody important. Vital we discuss soonest. Bell.

All life has ceased.

After the headlong sprint, the sudden, endless, fruitless wait.

To sit all day long at his kneehole desk in the ministerial anteroom.

To work methodically through his emails, take phone calls, make them, barely recognizing his own voice. Giles, where in God’s name are you?

At night, when he should be celebrating bachelorhood regained, to lie awake longing for Isabel’s chatter and the solace of their carnality. To listen to the sounds of carefree passers-by in the street below his window and pray to be one of them; to envy the shadows in the curtained windows opposite.

And once – is it night one or two? – to be woken from a half-sleep to the absurdly melodious strains of a male choir declaring itself – as if for Toby’s ears alone – ‘ impatient for the coming fight as we wait the morning’s light ’. Convinced he is going mad, he scrambles to the window and sees below him a ring of ghostly men in green, bearing lanterns. And he remembers belatedly that it’s St Patrick’s Day and they are singing ‘A Soldier’s Song’ and Islington has a thriving Irish population: which in turn sends his mind skimming back to Hermione.

Try calling her again? No way.

As to Quinn, the minister has providentially embarked on one of his unexplained absences, this time an extended one. Providentially? – or ominously? Only once does he offer any sign of life: a mid-afternoon phone call to Toby’s cellphone. His voice has a metallic echo, as if it is speaking from a bare cell. Its tone verges on the hysterical:

‘Is that you?’

‘It is indeed, Minister. Bell. What can I do for you?’

‘Just tell me who’s been trying to get hold of me, that’s all. Serious people, not riff-raff.’

‘Well, to be frank, Minister, nobody very much. The lines have been strangely quiet’ – which is no less than the truth.

‘What do you mean, “strangely”? Strangely how? What’s strange? There’s nothing strange going on, hear me?’

‘I wasn’t suggesting there was, Minister. Just that the silence is – unusual?’

‘Well, keep it that way.’

As to Giles Oakley, unwavering object of Toby’s despair, he is being equally elusive. First, according to Victoria, his assistant, he is still in Doha. Then he is in conference all day and possibly all night as well, and may on no account be disturbed. And when Toby asks whether the conference is in London or Doha, she replies tartly that she is not authorized to supply details.

‘Well, did you tell him it was urgent, Victoria?’

‘Of course I bloody did.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘That urgency is not synonymous with importance,’ she replies haughtily, no doubt quoting her master word for word.

It is another twenty-four hours before she calls him on the internal line, this time all sweetness and light:

‘Giles is at Defence right now. He’d love to talk to you but it’s likely to drag on a bit. Could you possibly meet him at the foot of the Ministry’s steps at half seven, take a stroll along the Embankment and enjoy the sun?’

Toby could.

‘And you heard all this how?’ Oakley enquired conversationally.

They were strolling along the Embankment. Chattering girls in skirts flounced past them arm in arm. The evening traffic was a stampede. But Toby was hearing nothing but his own too-strident voice and Oakley’s relaxed interjections. He had tried to look him in the eye and failed. The famous Oakley pebble jaw was set tight.

‘Let’s just say I picked it up in bits,’ Toby said impatiently. ‘What does it matter? A file Quinn left lying about. Things I overheard him whispering on the phone. You instructed me to tell you if I heard anything, Giles. Now I’m telling you!’

‘I instructed you when , exactly, dear man?’

‘At your own house. Schloss Oakley. After a dinner discussing alpacas. Remember? You asked me to stick around for a Calvados. I did. Giles, what the fuck is this?’

‘Odd. I have no memory of any such conversation. If it took place, which I dispute, then it was surely private, alcohol-induced and not in any circumstance for quotation.’

‘Giles!’

But this was Oakley’s official voice, speaking for the record; and Oakley’s official face, not a muscle moving.

‘The further suggestion that your minister, who I understand to have spent a relaxing and well-deserved weekend in his recently acquired Cotswold mansion in the company of close friends, was engaged in promoting a hare-brained covert operation on the shores of a sovereign British colony – wait! – is both slanderous and disloyal. I suggest you abandon it.’

‘Giles. I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Giles! ’

Grabbing Oakley’s arm, he drew him into a recess in the railing. Oakley looked down icily at Toby’s hand; and then, with his own, gently removed it.

‘You are mistaken, Toby. Were such an operation to have occurred, do you not imagine that our intelligence services, ever alert to the danger of private armies going off the reservation, would have advised me? They did not so advise me, therefore it has manifestly not occurred.’

‘You mean the spies don’t know ? Or are deliberately looking the other way?’ – thoughts of Matti’s phone call – ‘What are you telling me, Giles?’

Oakley had found a spot for his forearms and was straining forward as if to relish the bustling river scene. But his voice remained as lifeless as if he were reading from a position paper:

‘I am telling you, with all the emphasis at my command, that there’s nothing for you to know. There was nothing to know, and there will never be anything to know, outside the fantasies of your heat-oppressed brain. Keep it for your novel, and get on with your career.’

‘ Giles ,’ Toby pleaded, as if in a dream. But Oakley’s features, cost him what it might, remained rigidly, almost passionately, in denial.

‘Giles what ?’ he demanded irritably.

‘This isn’t my heat-oppressed brain talking to you. Listen: Jeb. Paul. Elliot. Brad. Ethical Outcomes. The Rock. Paul’s in our very own Foreign Office. He’s a member in good standing. Our colleague. He’s got a sick wife. He’s a low flyer . Check the leave-of-absence roster and you’ve got him nailed. Jeb’s Welsh . His team comes from our own Special Forces. They’ve been struck off the regimental roll in order to be deniable. The Brits push from the land, Crispin and his mercenaries pull from the sea with a little help from Brad Hester, graciously financed by Miss Maisie and legalled by Roy Stormont-Taylor.’