John Carré: A Delicate Truth

‘Of course. Absolutely. Just making the point.’ And wishing he hadn’t, but how the hell d’you throw logic out of the window?

Elliot moistens his lips, frowns, and in carefully fractured English replies as follows:

‘It is a fact , Paul, that nobody in Gibraltar will give a five-dollar fuck who you are for as long as you flash your British passport at them and keep your head below the horizon at all times. However: it’s your balls that will be in the direct line of fire, should we strike worst-case scenario, which it is my bounden duty to consider. Let us take the hypothetical case of the operation aborting in a manner not foreseen by its expert planners of whom I pride myself as being one. Was there an inside man? they may ask. And who is this scholarly wanker Anderson who skulked in his hotel room reading books all day and all night? – they will start to wonder. Where is this Anderson to be found, in a colony no bigger than a fucking golf course? If that situation were to arise, I suspect you’d be grateful indeed not to have been the person you are in reality. Happy now, Paul?’

Happy as a sandboy, Elliot. Couldn’t be happier. Totally out of my element, whole thing like a dream, but with you all the way. But then, noticing that Elliot looks a bit put out, and fearing that the detailed briefing he is about to receive will kick off on a bad note, he goes for a bit of bonding:

‘So where does a highly qualified chap like you fit into the scheme of things, if I may ask without being intrusive, Elliot?’

Elliot’s voice acquires the sanctimoniousness of the pulpit:

‘I sincerely thank you for that question, Paul. I am a man of arms; it is my life. I have fought wars large and small, mostly on the continent of Africa. During these exploits I was fortunate enough to encounter a man whose sources of intelligence are legendary, not to say uncanny. His worldwide contacts speak to him as to no other in the safe knowledge that he will use their information in the furtherance of democratic principles and liberty. Operation Wildlife , the details of which I shall now unveil to you, is his personal brainchild.’

And it is Elliot’s proud statement that elicits the obvious, if sycophantic, question:

‘And may one ask, Elliot, whether this great man has a name?’

‘Paul, you are now and for evermore family. I will therefore tell you without restraint that the founder and driving force of Ethical Outcomes is a gentleman whose name, in strictest confidence, is Mr Jay Crispin.’

Return to Harrow by black cab.

Elliot says, From now on, keep all receipts . Pay off cabbie, keep receipt.

Google Jay Crispin.

Jay is nineteen and lives in Paignton, Devon. She is a waitress.

J. Crispin, Veneer Makers, began life in Shoreditch in 1900.

Jay Crispin auditions for models, actors, musicians and dancers.

But of Jay Crispin, the driving force of Ethical Outcomes and mastermind of Operation Wildlife , not a glimpse.

Stuck once more at the overlarge window of his hotel prison, the man who must call himself Paul emitted a weary string of mindless obscenities, more in the modern way than his own. Fuck – then double fuck . Then more fucks , loosed off in a bored patter of gunfire aimed at the cellphone on the bed and ending with an appeal – Ring, you little bugger, ring – only to discover that somewhere inside or outside his head the same cellphone, no longer mute, was chirruping back at him with its infuriating diddly-ah, diddly-ah, diddly-ah dee-dah-doh.

He remained at the window, frozen in disbelief. It’s next-door’s fat Greek with a beard, singing in the shower. It’s those horny lovers upstairs: he’s grunting, she’s howling, I’m hallucinating.

Then all he wanted in the world was to go to sleep and wake up when it was over. But by then he was at the bed, clutching the encrypted cellphone to his ear but, out of some aberrant sense of security, not speaking.

‘Paul? Are you there, Paul? It’s me. Kirsty , remember?’

Kirsty the part-time minder he’d never set eyes on. Her voice the only thing he knew about her: pert, imperious, and the rest of her imagined. Sometimes he wondered whether he detected a smothered Australian accent – a pair to Elliot’s South African. And sometimes he wondered what kind of body the voice might have, and at others whether it had a body at all.

Already he could catch its sharpened tone, its air of portent:

‘You still okay up there, Paul?’

‘Very much so, Kirsty. You, too, I trust?’

‘Ready for some night-birding, owls a speciality?’

It was part of Paul Anderson’s fatuous cover that his hobby was ornithology.

‘Then here’s the update. It’s all systems go. Tonight. The Rosemaria left harbour bound for Gib five hours ago. Aladdin has booked his on-board guests into the Chinese on the Queensway Marina for a big lash-up tonight. He’s going to settle his guests in, then slide off on his own. His tryst with Punter confirmed for 2330. How’s about I pick you up from your hotel at 2100 hours cold? That’s 9 p.m. on the dot. Yes?’

‘When do I join up with Jeb?’

‘As soon as maybe, Paul,’ she retorted, with the extra edge in her voice for whenever the name Jeb was mentioned between them. ‘It’s all arranged. Your friend Jeb will be waiting. You dress for the birds. You do not check out. Agreed?’

It had been agreed all of two days ago.

‘You bring your passport and your wallet. You pack up your possessions nicely, but you leave them in your room. You hand your room key in at the desk like you’re going to be back late. Want to stand on the hotel steps so’s you don’t have to hang around the lobby and get stared at by the tour groups?’

‘Fine. I’ll do that. Good idea.’

They’d agreed that, too.

‘Look out for a blue Toyota four-by-four, shiny, new. Red sign on the passenger-side windscreen saying CONFERENCE.’

For the third time since he had arrived, she insisted they compare watches, which he considered a needless excursion in these days of quartz, until he realized he’d been doing the same thing with the bedside clock. One hour and fifty-two minutes to go.

She had rung off. He was back in solitary. Is it really me? Yes, it is. It’s me the safe pair of hands, and they’re sweating.

He peered round him with a prisoner’s perplexity, taking stock of the cell that had become his home: the books he had brought with him and hadn’t been able to read a line of. Simon Schama on the French Revolution. Montefiore’s biography of Jerusalem: by now, in better circumstances, he’d have devoured them both. The handbook of Mediterranean birds they’d forced on him. His eye drifted to his arch-enemy: The Chair That Smelt Of Piss. He’d sat half of last night in it after the bed had ejected him. Sit in it one more time? Treat himself to another watch of The Dam Busters ? Or might Laurence Olivier’s Henry V do a better job of persuading the God of Battles to steel his soldier’s heart? Or how about another spot of Vatican-censored soft porn to get the old juices flowing?

Yanking open the rickety wardrobe, he fished out Paul Anderson’s green wheelie-bag plastered with travel labels and set to work packing into it the junk that made up an itinerant birdwatching statistician’s fictional identity. Then he sat on the bed watching the encrypted phone recharge, because he had an unappeasable fear it would run out on him at the crucial moment.

In the lift a middle-aged couple in green blazers asked him if he came from Liverpool. Alas, he didn’t. Then was he one of the group? Afraid not: what group would that be? But by then his posh voice and eccentric outdoor gear were enough for them and they left him to himself.