John Carré - A Delicate Truth

‘Have you been sniffing around my club ? That’s bloody disgraceful! Of course it was only one beer glass! D’you think I wanted to tell the night porter I’d got a man in my room? Who did you talk to anyway? The secretary? Christ Almighty!’

He was appealing to Lionel, but Lionel was back to patting his hair, and Frances had more to say:

‘We are also reliably informed that it would be impossible for any individual, master of stealth though he may be, to infiltrate himself into your club’s premises, either through the service entrance at the rear, or through the front door, which is kept under surveillance at all times, both by the porter and by CCTV. Added to which, all club personnel are police vetted and security-aware.’

Kit was fumbling, choking, fighting for lucidity, for moderation, for sweet reason:

‘Look here, both of you. Don’t grill me . Grill Crispin. Grill Elliot. Go back to the Americans. Find that fake doctor woman who told me Jeb had gone mad when he was already dead.’ Stumble. Breathe. Swallow. ‘And find Quinn, wherever he is. Get him to tell you what really happened down there on the rocks behind the houses.’

He thought he’d finished, but discovered he hadn’t:

‘And hold yourselves a proper public inquiry. Trace that poor bloody woman and her child and get some compensation for her relatives! And when you’ve done that, find out who killed Jeb the day before he was going to sign up to my document and put in his own word.’ And somewhat erratically: ‘And don’t for God’s sake believe anything that charlatan Crispin tells you. Man’s a liar to his boots.’

Lionel had finished patting his hair:

‘Yes, well, Kit, I don’t want to make a big matter of this but, if push ever came to shove, you’d be in a pretty unhealthy position, frankly. A public inquiry of the sort you’re hankering after – which could result from, well, from your document – is light years away from the sort of hearing that Frances and I envisage. Anything deemed in the smallest way to go against national security – secret operations successful or otherwise, extraordinary rendition whether merely planned or actually achieved, robust interrogation methods, ours or more particularly the Americans’ – goes straight into the Official Secrets box, I’m afraid, and the witnesses with it’ – raising his eyes respectfully to Frances, which is the cue for her to square her shoulders and place her hands flat on the open folder before her as if she is about to levitate.

‘It is my duty to advise you, Sir Christopher,’ she announces, ‘that you are in a most serious position. Yes, acknowledged, you took part in a certain very secret operation. Its authors are scattered. The documentation, other than your own, is patchy. In the few files that are available to this Office, no names of participants are mentioned – save one. Yours. Which does rather mean that in any criminal investigation that resulted from this document, your name would predominate as senior British representative on the ground, and you would have to answer accordingly. Lionel?’ – turning hospitably to him.

‘Yes, well, that’s the bad news, Kit, I’m afraid. And the good news is, frankly, pretty hard to come by. We have a new set of rules since your day for cases where sensitive issues are involved. Some already in place; others, we trust, imminent. And, very unfortunately, Wildlife does tick a lot of those boxes. Which would mean, I’m afraid, that any inquiry would have to take place behind closed doors. Should it find against you – and should you elect to bring a suit – which would naturally be your good right – then the resultant hearing would be conducted by a hand-picked and very carefully briefed group of approved lawyers, some of whom would obviously do their best to speak for you and others not so for you. And you – the claimant , as he or she is rather whimsically called – would I’m afraid be banished from the court while the government presented its case to the judge without the inconvenience of a direct challenge by you or your representatives. And under the rules currently being discussed, the very fact that a hearing is being conducted might of itself be kept secret. As of course, in that case, would the judgement.’

After a rueful smile to harbinger a further spot of bad news, and a pat for his hair, he resumed:

‘And then, as Frances so rightly says, if there were ever a criminal case against you, any prosecution would take place in total secrecy until a sentence was handed down. Which is to say, I’m afraid, Kit’ – allowing himself another sympathetic smile, though whether for the law or its victim was unclear – ‘ draconian though it may sound, Suzanna wouldn’t necessarily know you were on trial, assuming for the moment that you were . Or at least not until you’d been found guilty – assuming, once more, that you had been. There would be a jury of sorts – but of course its members would have to be very heavily vetted by the security services prior to selection, which obviously does rather stack the odds against one. And you , for your part, would be allowed to see the evidence against you – at least, let us say, in broad brush – but I’m afraid not share it with your nearest and dearest. Oh and whistle-blowing per se would absolutely not be a defence, whistle-blowing being – and may it forever remain so in my personal view – by definition a risk business. I’m deliberately not pulling my punches here, Kit. I think Frances and I both feel we owe you that. Don’t we, Frances?’

‘He’s dead,’ Kit whispered incoherently. And then again, fearing he might not have spoken aloud: ‘Jeb’s dead .’

‘Most unhappily, yes, he is,’ Frances agreed, for the first time accepting a point of Kit’s argument. ‘Though not perhaps in the circumstances you seek to imply. A sick soldier killed himself with his own weapon. Regrettably, that is a practice that is on the increase. The police have no grounds for suspicion, and who are we to dispute their judgement? Meanwhile, your document will be kept on record in the hope that it will never have to be used against you. I trust you share that hope.’

Reaching the foot of the great staircase, Kit appears to forget which way to turn, but fortunately Lancaster is on hand to guide him to the front gates.

‘What did you say your name was, my dear fellow?’ Kit asks him as they shake hands.

‘Lancaster, sir.’

‘You’ve been very kind,’ says Kit.

The news that Kit Probyn had been positively sighted in the smoking room of his club in Pall Mall – transmitted yet again by text over Emily’s black burner, thanks to a tip-off from her mother – had reached Toby just as he was settling down at the long table in the third-floor conference room to discuss the desirability of engaging in talks with a Libyan rebel group. What excuses he had pleaded for leaping from his seat and stalking out of the room now escaped him. He remembered pulling the silver burner from his pocket in full view of everyone – he had no alternative – and reading the text and saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m terribly sorry,’ then probably something about somebody dying, given that the news of Jeb’s death still occupied his mind.

He remembered pelting down the stairs past a Chinese delegation coming up, then running and walking the thousand-odd yards from the Office to Pall Mall, all the while talking feverishly to Emily, who had summarily abandoned her evening surgery and got herself on to a tube headed for St James’s Park. The club secretary, she had reported before she descended, had at least honoured his promise to inform Suzanna the moment Kit appeared, if not with the good grace that might have been expected of him: