The Night Manager by John le Carré
She had evidently finished, for like an actress pleased with her performance, she turned full face to Marjoram as if to ask, How was I? But Marjoram affected a benevolent disdain for her fighting words.
“Well, I do think there’s a lot of substance in what Barbara says,” he remarked, with that decent, straightforward smile he had. “Obviously, we wouldn’t stand in the way of a revision of responsibilities between the services. But then the decision is hardly up to us.”
Goodhew’s face was set in stone. His hands lay lifelessly before him, refusing to participate.
“No,” he agreed. “It is not up to you at all. It’s up to the joint Steering Committee and no one else.”
“Of which your master here is chairman and you, Rex, are secretary, founder and principal benefactor,” Marjoram reminded him with another collegial smile. “And, if I may say so, moral arbiter.”
But Goodhew would not be mollified, not even by someone as patently conciliatory as Neal Marjoram. “A revision of responsibilities, as you call it, is in no circumstances within the gift of rival agencies, Neal,” he said sternly. “Even assuming that Enforcement were prepared voluntarily to quit the field, which I gravely doubt, the agencies are not empowered to carve up their responsibilities among themselves without reference to Steering. No side deals. That’s one of the things Steering stands for. Ask its chairman”—with a pointed nod at his master.
For a moment nobody asked anybody anything, until Goodhew’s master emitted a kind of slurrying grunt which contrived to indicate doubt, irritation and a touch of indigestion at the same time.
“Well, obviously, Rex,” he said, striking that nasal whinny peculiar to the Conservative front benches, “if the Cousins are going to take over the Limpet case on their side of the pond, willy-nilly we here on this side are going to have to rake a cool position about whether to follow suit. Aren’t we? I say if, because these are informal discussions. Nothing’s come through on the normal net so far. Has it?”
“If it has, it hasn’t reached me,” Goodhew said icily.
“The pace these bloody committees work at, we wouldn’t get an answer this side of Christmas, anyway. I mean, come on, Rex, we’ve got a quorum. You, me, Neal here? Thought we might swing it on our own.”
“It’s your call, Rex,” Marjoram said amiably. “You’re the lawgiver. If you can’t turn it round, who can? It was you who drafted the like-to-like deal: enforcers play with enforcers, spies with spies, no cross-fertilization. The Lex Goodhew we called it, quite right too. You sold it to Washington, won the ear of Cabinet, gunned it through. ‘Covert Agencies in the New Era’: wasn’t that the title of your paper? We’re only bowing to the inevitable, Rex. You heard Barbara. In a choice between a graceful shimmy and a head-on collision, I go for the shimmy every time. Don’t want to see you hoisted on your own petard, or anything.”
Goodhew was by now usefully angry. But he was too downy a bird to let his temper get the better of him. He spoke in a reasoned voice, down the table into Neal Marjoram’s honest face. He said that the joint Steering Committee’s recommendations to its chairman—another nod at his master—were made in full session, not by an ad hoc quorum. He said it was the Steering Committee’s recorded view that the River House was overextended and should shed more of its responsibilities rather than attempt to win back old ones, and that hitherto the minister as chairman had concurred—“unless you’ve changed your mind over lunch, of course,” he suggested to his master, who scowled through his cigar smoke.
He said that speaking for himself, he would prefer to expand Enforcement so that it could meet its challenges effectively; and he ended by saying that since they were off the record, he personally regarded the activities of the Procurement Studies Group as inappropriate to the new era and derogatory to parliamentary authority, and that at the next meeting of the Steering Committee he intended to move formally for an examination of its activities.
Then he put his hands together in a churchy way as if to say, I have spoken, and waited for the explosion.
None came.
Goodhew’s master fished a bit of toothpick from his lower lip while he studied the front of Hazel Bundy’s dress. “Ri-ight. Okay,” he drawled, avoiding everybody’s eye. “Interesting. Thanks. Point taken.”
“Food for thought, indeed,” Galt agreed brightly. And smiled at Hazel Bundy, who didn’t smile back.
But Neal Marjoram could not have appeared more benign. A spiritual peace had settled over his fine features, reflecting the moral worthiness that was so clearly the man.
“Got a moment, Rex?” he said quietly as they left.
And Goodhew, God help him, was pleased to think that after a bit of healthy give-and-take, Marjoram was bothering to stay behind and make sure there were no hard feelings on either side.
Goodhew generously offered Marjoram his office, but Marjoram was too considerate for that. Rex, you need air to cool you down; let’s take a stroll.
It was a sunny autumn afternoon. The leaves on the plane trees shone pink and gold, tourists dawdled contentedly on the Whitehall pavements, and Marjoram bestowed a paternal smile on them. And yes, Hester was right, the Friday rush hour traffic was pretty heavy. But Goodhew’s hearing was not affected by it.
“Old Barbara gets a bit wound up,” said Marjoram.
“One wonders who by,” said Goodhew.
“We told her it wouldn’t cut much ice with you, but she would have a go.”
“Nonsense. You egged her on.”
“Well, what were we supposed to do? Come to you cap in hand and say, Rex, give us Limpet? It’s only one case, for goodness’ sake.” They had reached the Thames Embankment, which seemed to be where they were heading. “It’s bend or snap, Rex. You’re too holy by half. Just because like-to-like is your baby. A crime’s a crime, a spy’s a spy and never the twain shall meet. Too black-and-white is your trouble.”
“No, Neal. I don’t think so. Not black-and-white enough, I fear. If I ever write my autobiography, I shall call it Half Measures. We should all be stronger. Not more flexible.”
The tone on both sides was still entirely comradely: two professionals, sorting out their differences beside the Thames.
“Picked your moment, I’ll grant you,” Marjoram said approvingly. “All that new era talk earned you a lot of Brownie points around the halls. Goodhew the open society’s friend. Goodhew the devolver. Makes you sick. Still, it’s a nice bit of turf you carved out for yourself, one must admit. Quite right not to give it up without a fight. So what’s it worth to you?”
They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, staring at the Thames. Goodhew had his hands on the parapet, and rather absurdly he had put on his cycling gloves, because he had recently been suffering the effects of poor circulation of the blood. Not understanding the thrust of Marjoram’s question, he turned to him for enlightenment. But all he saw was the saintly profile shining its benediction upon a passing pleasure boat. Then Marjoram turned too, and they were face-to-face and not twelve inches between them, and if the noise of traffic was troublesome, Goodhew by now had no awareness of it at all.
“Message from Darker,” Marjoram said through his smile. “Rex Goodhew is in over his head. Spheres of interest he can’t know about, doesn’t need to, matters of high policy, top people involved, the usual crap. Kentish Town, isn’t it, where you live? Squalid little terraced house with net curtains?’
“Why?”
“You’ve just acquired a distant uncle living in Switzerland. He always admired your integrity. The day the Limpet case is ours, your uncle suffers an untimely death, leaves you three quarters of a million of your own. Pounds, not francs. Tax-free. It’s an inheritance. You know what the boys say in Colombia? ‘You have the choice. Either we make you rich or we make you dead.’ Darker says the same.”
“I’m sorry. I’m a little dense today,” Goodhew said. “Are you threatening to kill me as well as bribe me?”
“Kill your career, for a start. We can reach
Your premise is absurd, Goodhew had told Burr six months earlier, over one of their little dinners. It is destructive, it is insidious and I refuse to countenance it, and I forbid you ever to speak of it to me again. This is England, not the Balkans and not Sicily. You can have your agency, Leonard, but you are to renounce for all time your Gothic fantasies about the Procurement Studies Group being run as a multimillion-pound racket for the benefit of Geoffrey Darker and a caucus of bent bankers, brokers and middlemen and corrupt intelligence officers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Because that way lies madness, he had warned Burr.
That way lies this.
For a week after talking to his wife, Goodhew kept his secret locked up in his head. A man who does not trust himself trusts nobody. Burr telephoned from Miami with the news of Limpet’s resurrection, and Goodhew as best he could shared his euphoria. Rooke took over the reins at Burr’s offices in Victoria Street, Goodhew bought him lunch at the Athenaeum, but did not confide in him.
Then one evening Palfrey called by with some garbled tale about Darker taking soundings with British arms suppliers about the availability of certain high-tech equipment for use in a “South American type of climate,” end user to be advised.
“British equipment, Harry? That’s not Roper. He’s buying foreign.”
Palfrey writhed and sucked his cigarette and needed more Scotch. “Well, it could be the Roper, actually, Rex. I mean, if he was covering his backside. I mean, if they’re British toys—well, no limit to our tolerance, if you know what I mean. Two blind eyes and head in the sand. If they’re Brit. Naturally. Flog ’em to Jack the Ripper, if they’re Brit.” He sniggered.
It was a fine evening, and Palfrey needed movement. So they walked as far as the entrance to Highgate Cemetery and found a quiet bench.
“Marjoram tried to buy me,” said Goodhew, straight out ahead of him. “Three quarters of a million pounds.”
“Oh, well, he would,” said Palfrey, quite unsurprised. “That’s what they do abroad. That’s what they do at home.”
“There was a stick as well as a carrot.”
“Oh, yes, well, there usually is,” said Palfrey, delving for a fresh cigarette.
“Who are they, Harry?”
Palfrey wrinkled his nose, blinked a few times and seemed mysteriously embarrassed.
“Just a few clever chaps. Good connections. You know.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Good case officers. Cold heads left over from the Cold War.
Scared of being out of a job. You know, Rex.”
It occurred to Goodhew that Palfrey was describing his own predicament and didn’t like doing so.
“Duplicity trained, naturally,” Palfrey continued, volunteering his opinion, as usual, in a series of torn-off shopworn sentences. “Market economy chaps. Peaked in the eighties. Grab it while you can, everybody does it, never sure where the next war’s coming from. All dressed up, nowhere to go . . . you know. Still got power, of course. Nobody’s taken that away from them. Just a question of where to put it.”
Goodhew said nothing, and Palfrey obligingly continued. “
Not bad chaps, Rex. Mustn’t be too critical. Just a bit marooned. No more Thatcher. No more Russian bear to fight, no more Reds under the bed at home. One day they’ve got the world all carved up for them, two legs good, four bad. Next day they get up in the morning, they’re sort of—well, you know . . .” He finished his premise with a shrug. “Well, nobody likes a vacuum, do they? Not even you like a vacuum. Well, do you? Be honest. You hate it.”
“By vacuum you mean peace?” Goodhew suggested, not wishing in the least to sound censorious.
“Boredom, really. Smallness. Never did anyone any good, did it?” Another giggle, another long drink from the cigarette.
“Couple of years ago, they were top-notch Cold Warriors. Best seats in the club, all that. Hard to stop running, once you’ve been wound up like that. You keep going. Natural.”
“So what are they now?”
Palfrey rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, as if to correct an itch. “Just a fly on the wall, really, me.”
“I know that. What are they?”
Palfrey spoke vaguely, perhaps in order to detach himself from his own judgments. “Atlantic men. Never trusted Europe. Europe’s a Babel dominated by Krauts. America’s still the only place for them. Washington’s still their Rome, even if Caesar’s a bit of a frost.” He made an embarrassed writhe. “Global salvationists. Playing the world’s game. World-order boys, having their shot at history and making a few bob on the side, why not? Everybody else does.” Another writhe. “They’ve gone a bit rotten, that’s all. Can’t blame them. Whitehall doesn’t know how to get rid of them. Everyone thinks they must be useful to someone else. No one’s got the whole picture, so no one knows there isn’t one.” More rubbing of the nose. “Long as they please the Cousins, don’t overspend, and don’t fight each other in public, they can do what they like.”
“How please the Cousins?” Goodhew insisted, holding his head in his hands as if he had an awful headache. “Spell it out for me, do you mind?”
Palfrey spoke as to a fractious child—indulgently but with an edge of impatience: “The Cousins have laws, old boy. Watchdogs breathing down their necks. They hold kangaroo courts, put honest spies in jug, senior officials on trial. The Brits don’t have any of that balls. There’s Joint Steering, I suppose. But frankly most of you are a bit decent.”
Goodhew raised his head, then put it back in his hands. “Go on, Harry.”
“Forget where I was, actually.”
“How Darker pleases the Cousins when they’re having trouble with their watchdogs.”
Palfrey was entering the reluctant stage.
“Well. Obvious, really. Some Big Beef in Washington, D.C., ups and tells the Cousins, ‘You can’t arm the Wozza-Wozzas. That’s a law.’ Okay?”
“So far, yes.”
“‘Right-ho,’ say the Cousins. ‘Received and understood. We will not arm the Wozza-Wozzas.’ An hour later they’re on the blower to Brother Darker. ‘Geoffrey, old sport, do us a favor, will you? The Wozza-Wozzas need a few toys.’ The Wozza-Wozzas are embargoed, of course, but whoever cared a tart’s kiss about that, provided there’s a few bucks in it for the Exchequer? Darker gets on the blower to one of his trusties—Joyston Bradshaw, Spikey Lorimer or whoever’s the flavor of the month: ‘Great news, Tony. Green light for the Wozza-Wozzas. You’ll have to go in the back door, but we’ll make sure it isn’t locked.’ There there’s the P.S.”
“The P.S.?”
Charmed by Goodhew’s innocence, Palfrey gave a luminous smile. “The postscript, old boy. The sweetener. ‘And while you’re about it, Tony, old sport, the going rate for introductions is five percent of the action, payable to the Procurement Studies Widows and Orphans Fund at the Bank of Crooks and Cousins Incorporated, Liechtenstein.’ It’s a cakewalk, long as you’re not accountable. Have you ever heard of a member of the British intelligence services caught with his hand in the till? A British minister being brought up before the beak for dodging his own regulations? You must be joking! They’re fireproof.”
“Why does Pure Intelligence want Limpet?”
Palfrey tried to smile, but it didn’t work. So he drew on his cigarette and scratched the top of his head instead.
“Why do they want Limpet, Harry?”
Palfrey’s slippy eyes scanned the darkening woods in search of rescue or surveillance.
&
He was already getting up when Goodhew shouted at him. “Harry!”
Palfrey’s mouth was pulled crooked in alarm, revealing his ugly teeth. “Rex, for Christ’s sake, you don’t know how to run people. I’m a coward. You mustn’t push me or I’ll just dry up, or invent something. Go home. Get some sleep. You’re too good, Rex. It’ll be the death of you.” He glanced nervously round him and seemed momentarily to relent. “Buy British, darling. That’s the clue. Don’t you understand anything bad?”
Rooke sat at Burr’s desk in Victoria Street. Burr sat in the operations room in Miami. Both were clutching secure telephones.
“Yes, Rob,” said Burr cheerfully. “Confirmed and reconfirmed. Do it.”
“Just let’s have that absolutely clear, can we?” said Rooke, with the special tone that soldiers have when they are clarifying orders from civilians. “Just run it by me one more time, do you mind?”
“Put his name out, Rob. Splash it. All of his names. Everywhere. Pine, alias Linden, alias Beauregard, alias Lamont, last seen in Canada on the whatever. Murder, multiple theft, dope running, obtaining and toting a false passport, illegal entry into Canada, illegal exit if there is such a thing, and anything else they can think of to make it interesting.”
“So the grand slam?” said Rooke, refusing to be wooed by Burr’s joviality.
“Yes, Rob, the grand slam. That’s what everywhere means, isn’t it? An international warrant for Mr. Thomas Lamont, criminal. Do you want me to send it to you in triplicate?”
Rooke replaced the receiver, lifted it and dialed a number at Scotland Yard. His hand felt strangely stiff as he touched the numbers—the way it used to feel in the days when he played with unexploded bombs.
And when he’s crossed the bridge, we’ll burn it, Burr had said.
16
“Old love,” Corkoran proposed, lighting his first foul cigarette of the day and balancing a porcelain inkstand by way of an ashtray on his lap. “What say we pick the fly shit out of the pepper?”