John Carré: A Delicate Truth

‘So this is Paul, lads. Our man from the ministry,’ said Jeb beneath the rattle of the wind.

One by one, each man turned, drew off a leather glove, shook his hand too hard and introduced himself.

‘Don. Welcome to the Ritz, Paul.’

‘Andy.’

‘Shorty. Hullo, Paul. Make the climb all right, then?’

Shorty because he’s a foot taller than the rest of them: why else? Jeb handing him a mug of tea. Sweet with condensed milk. A lateral arrow-slit was fringed by foliage. The computer pipes were fixed below it, allowing a clear view down the hillside to the coastline and out to sea. To his left the same pitch-black hills of Spain, bigger now, and closer. Jeb lining him up to look at the left-hand screen. A rolling sequence of shots from hidden cameras: the marina, the Chinese restaurant, the fairy-lit Rosemaria . Switch to a shaky hand-held shot inside the Chinese restaurant. The camera at floor level. From the end of a long table in the window bay, an imperious fifty-year-old fat man in a nautical blazer and perfect hair gesticulates to his fellow diners. On his right, a sulky brunette half his age. Bare shoulders, showy breasts, diamond collar and a downturned mouth.

‘ Aladdin ’s a twitchy bugger, Paul,’ Shorty was confiding. ‘First he has a run-in with the head waiter in English because there isn’t any lobster. Now his lady friend’s getting it in Arabic, and him a Pole. I’m surprised he doesn’t give her a thick ear, the way she’s carrying on. It’s like at home, right, Jeb?’

‘Come over here a minute, Paul, please.’

With Jeb’s hand on his shoulder to guide him, he made a wide step to the middle screen. Alternating aerial and ground shots. Were they courtesy of the Predator drone that was by no means beyond Mr Crispin’s operational budget? Or of the helicopter that he could hear idling overhead? A terrace of white houses, faced with weatherboarding, perched on the cliff’s edge. Stone staircases to the beach dividing them. The staircases leading down to a skimpy crescent of sand. A rock beach enclosed by jagged cliff. Orange street lamps. A metalled slip road leading from the terrace to the main coast road. No lights in the windows of the houses. No curtains.

And through the arrow-slit, the same terrace in plain sight.

‘It’s a tear-down, see, Paul,’ Jeb was explaining in his ear. ‘A Kuwaiti company’s going to put up a casino complex and a mosque. That’s why the houses are empty. Aladdin , he’s a director of the Kuwaiti company. Well now, according to what he’s been telling his guests, he’s got a confidential meeting with the developer tonight. Very lucrative, it will be. Shaving off the profits for themselves, according to his lady friend. You wouldn’t think a man like Aladdin would be so leaky, like, but he is.’

‘Showing off,’ Shorty explained. ‘Typical fucking Pole.’

‘Is Punter already inside the house then?’ he asked.

‘Let’s say, if he is, we haven’t spotted him, Paul, put it that way,’ Jeb replied in the same steady, deliberately conversational tone. ‘Not from the outside, and there’s no coverage inside. There hasn’t been the opportunity, so we’re told. Well, you can’t bug twenty houses all in one go, I don’t suppose, can you, not even with today’s equipment? Maybe he’s lying up in one house and sneaking into another for his meeting. We don’t know, do we, not yet? It’s wait and see and don’t go down there till you know who you’re taking on, ’specially if you’re looking for an al-Qaeda kingpin.’

Memories of Elliot’s clotted description of the same elusive figure come sweeping back to him:

I would basically describe Punter as your jihadist Pimpernel par excellence, Paul, not to say your will-o’-the-wisp. He eschews all means of electronic communication, including cellphones and harmless-seeming emails. It’s word of mouth only for Punter , and one courier at a time, never the same one twice .

‘He could come at us from anywhere, Paul,’ Shorty was explaining, perhaps to wind him up. ‘Over the mountains there. Up the Spanish coast by small boat. Or he could walk on the water if he felt like it. Right, Jeb?’

Cursory nod from Jeb. Jeb and Shorty, the tallest and the shortest men in the team: an attraction of opposites.

‘ Or smuggle himself across from Morocco under the noses of the coastguards, right, Jeb? Or put on an Armani suit, and fly in Club on a Swiss passport. Or charter a private Lear, which is what I’d do, frankly. Having first ordered my special menu in advance from the highly attractive hostess in a mini-skirt. Money to burn, Punter ’s got, according to our amazing top-of-the-range source, right, Jeb?’

From the seaward side, the pitch-dark terrace was forbidding against the night sky, the beach a blackened no-man’s-land of craggy boulders and seething surf.

‘How many men in the boat team?’ he asked. ‘Elliot didn’t seem sure.’

‘We got him down to eight,’ Shorty replied, over Jeb’s shoulder. ‘Nine when they head back to the mother ship with Punter . They hope,’ he added drily.

The conspirators will be unarmed, Paul , Elliot was saying. Such is the degree of trust between a pair of total bastards. No guns, no bodyguards. We tiptoe in, we grab our man, we tiptoe out, we were never there. Jeb’s boys push from the land, Ethical pulls from the sea .

Side by side with Jeb once more, he peered through the arrow-slit at the lighted freighters, then at the middle screen. One freighter lay apart from her companions. A Panamanian flag flapped from her stern. On her deck, shadows flitted among the derricks. An inflatable dinghy dangled over the water, two men aboard. He was still watching them when his encrypted cellphone began cooing its stupid melody. Jeb grabbed it from him, dowsed the sound, handed it back.

‘That you, Paul?’

‘Paul speaking.’

‘This is Nine. All right? Nine. Tell me you hear me.’

And I shall be Nine, the minister is solemnly intoning, like a Biblical prophecy. I shall not be Alpha, which is reserved for our target building. I shall not be Bravo, which is reserved for our location. I shall be Nine, which is the designated code for your commander, and I shall be communicating with you by specially encrypted cellphone ingeniously linked to your operational team by way of an augmented PRR net, which for your further information stands for Personal Role Radio .

‘I hear you loud and clear, Nine, thank you.’

‘And you’re in position? Yes? Keep your answers short from now on.’

‘I am indeed. Your eyes and ears.’

‘All right. Tell me precisely what you can see from where you are.’

‘We’re looking straight down the slope to the houses. Couldn’t be better.’

‘Who’s there?’

‘Jeb, his three men and myself.’

Pause. Muffled male voice off.

The minister again:

‘Has anyone any idea why Aladdin hasn’t left the Chinese yet?’

‘They started eating late. He’s expected to leave any minute. That’s all we’ve heard.’

‘And no Punter in sight? You’re absolutely sure of that? Yes?’

‘Not in sight as yet. I’m sure. Yes.’

‘The slightest visual indication, however remote – the smallest clue – possibility of a sighting –’

Pause. Is the augmented PRR breaking up, or is Quinn?

‘– I expect you to advise me immediately . Understood? We see everything you see, but not so clearly. You have eyes-on . Yes?’ – already sick of the delay – ‘Plain sight, for fuck’s sake!’