John Carré - A Delicate Truth

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,

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.