A Delicate Truth (12 page)

And only last weekend, when Quinn is about
to be driven to his country house in his official car, he does not require Toby to pack
his briefcase for him with essential papers for his attention. He will do it himself,
thank you, Toby, and behind locked doors. And no doubt, when Quinn arrives the other
end, he will embrace the rich Canadian alcoholic wife whom his Party’s spin
doctors have ruled unfit for public presentation, pat his dog and his daughter, and once
more lock himself away, and read them.

It therefore comes like an act of divine
providence when Giles Oakley, now revealed as the closet author of a round-robin letter
to the Foreign Secretary about the insanity of invading Iraq, calls Toby on his
BlackBerry with an invitation to dine that same evening:

‘Schloss Oakley, 7.45. Wear what you
like and stick around afterwards for a Calvados. Is that a yes?’

It is a yes, Giles. It is a yes, even if it
means cancelling another pair of theatre tickets.

Senior British diplomats who have been
restored to their motherland have a way of turning their houses into overseas hirings.
Giles and Hermione are no exception. Schloss Oakley, as Giles has determinedly
christened it, is a sprawling twenties villa on the outer fringes of Highgate, but it
could as well be their residence in Grunewald. Outside, the same imposing gates and
immaculate gravel sweep, weed free; inside, the same scratched Chippendale-style
furniture, close carpeting and contract Portuguese caterers.

Toby’s fellow dinner guests include a
counsellor at the German Embassy and his wife, a visiting Swedish ambassador to Ukraine,
and a French woman pianist called Fifi and her lover Jacques. Fifi, who is fixated on
alpacas, holds the table in thrall. Alpacas are the most considerate beasts on earth.
They even produce their young with exquisite tact. She advises Hermione to get herself a
pair. Hermione says she would only be jealous of them.

Dinner over, Hermione commands Toby to the
kitchen, ostensibly to give a hand with coffee. She is fey, willowy and Irish and speaks
in hushed, revelatory gasps while her brown eyes spark to their rhythm.

‘This Isabel you’re
shagging’ – poking a forefinger inside his shirt front and tickling his chest
hairs with the tip of her lacquered fingernail.

‘What about her?’

‘Is she married like that Dutch
floozie you had in Berlin?’

‘Isabel and her husband split up
months ago.’

‘Is she blonde like the other
one?’

‘As it happens, yes, she is
blonde.’

‘I’m blonde. Was your mother
blonde at all?’

‘For God’s sake,
Hermione.’

‘You know you only go with the married
ones because you can give them back when you’ve finished with them, don’t
you?’

He knows nothing. Is she telling him he can
borrow her too, and give her back to Oakley when he’s finished with her? God
forbid.

Or was she – a thought that only came to him
now as he sipped his coffee at his pavement table in Soho and pursued his sightless
contemplation of the passers-by – was she softening him up in advance of her
husband’s grilling?

‘Nice chat with Hermione?’ Giles
asks sociably from his armchair, pouring Toby a generous shot of very old Calvados.

The last guests have taken their leave.
Hermione has gone to bed. For a moment they are back in Berlin, with Toby about to vent
his callow personal opinions and Oakley about to shoot them down in flames.

‘Super, as always, thanks,
Giles.’

‘Did she invite you to Mourne in the
summer?’

Mourne, her castle in Ireland, where she is
reputed to take her lovers.

‘I don’t think she did,
actually.’

‘Snap it up, is my advice. Unspoilt
views, decent house, nice bit of water. Shooting, if you’re into it, which
I’m not.’

‘Sounds great.’

‘How’s love?’ – the
eternal question, every time they meet.

‘Love’s fine, thanks.’

‘Still Isabel?’

‘Just.’

It is Oakley’s pleasure to switch
topics without warning and expect Toby to catch up. He does so now.

‘So, dear man, where in God’s
name is your nice new master? We seek him here, we seek him there. We tried to get him
to come and talk to us the other day. The swine stood us up.’

By
us
, Toby assumes the Joint
Intelligence Committee, of which Oakley is some sort of ex-officio member. How this
should be is not something Toby asks. Does the man who ran up a seditious joint letter
to the Foreign Secretary urging him not to go after Saddam, thereafter earn himself a
seat at the Office’s most secret councils? – or is he treated, as other rumours
have it, as some kind of licensed contrarian, now cautiously admitted, now shut out?
Toby has ceased to marvel at the paradoxes of Oakley’s life, perhaps because he
has ceased to marvel at his own.

‘I understand my minister had to go to
Washington at short notice,’ he replies guardedly.

Guarded because, whatever Foreign Office
ethic says, he is still, somehow, the minister’s Private Secretary.

‘But he didn’t take you with
him?’

‘No, Giles. He didn’t. Not this
time.’

‘He carted you around Europe with him.
Why not Washington?’

‘That was then. Before he started
making his own arrangements without consulting me. He went to Washington
alone.’

‘You
know
he was
alone?’

‘No, but I surmise it.’

‘You surmise it why? He went without
you. That’s all you know. To Washington proper, or the Suburb?’

For ‘Suburb’ read Langley,
Virginia, home of the Central Intelligence Agency. Again Toby has to confess he
doesn’t know.

‘Did he treat himself to British
Airways First Class in the best traditions of Scottish frugality? Or slum it in Club,
poor chap?’

Starting to yield despite himself, Toby
takes a breath:

‘I assume he travelled by private jet.
It’s how he went there before.’

‘Before being
when
exactly?’

‘Last month. Out on the sixteenth,
back on the eighteenth. On a Gulfstream. Out of Northolt.’

‘
Whose
Gulfstream?’

‘It’s a guess.’

‘But an informed one.’

‘All I know for a fact is he was
driven to Northolt by private limo. He doesn’t trust the Office car pool. He
thinks the cars are bugged, probably by you, and that the chauffeurs listen
in.’

‘The limo being the property of
–?’

‘A Mrs Spencer Hardy.’

‘Of Texas.’

‘I believe so.’

‘Better known as the mountainously
wealthy Miss Maisie, born-again benefactress of America’s Republican far right,
friend of the Tea Party, scourge of Islam, homosexuals, abortion and, I believe,
contraception. Currently residing in Lowndes Square, London SW. One entire side of
it.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Oh yes. One of her many residences
worldwide. And this is the lady, you tell me, who supplied the limousine to take your
nice new master to Northolt airport. I have the right lady?’

‘You do, Giles, you do.’

‘And in your estimation it was
therefore the same lady’s Gulfstream that conveyed him to Washington?’

‘It’s a guess, but
yes.’

‘You are also aware, no doubt, that
Miss Maisie is the protectress of one Jay Crispin, rising star in the ever-growing
firmament of private defence contractors?’

‘Broadly.’

‘Jay Crispin and Miss Maisie recently
paid a social call on Fergus Quinn in his Private Office. Were you present for those
festivities?’

‘Some of them.’

‘With what effect?’

‘I seem to have blotted my
copybook.’

‘With Quinn?’

‘With all of them. There was talk of
asking me aboard. It didn’t happen.’

‘Consider yourself fortunate. Did
Crispin accompany Quinn to Washington in Miss Maisie’s Gulfstream, do you
suppose?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Did the lady herself go?’

‘Giles, I just don’t
know
.
It’s all guesswork.’

‘Miss Maisie sends her bodyguards to
Messrs Huntsman on Savile Row to have them decently dressed. You didn’t know that
either?’

‘Actually, no, I
didn’t.’

‘Then drink some of that Calvados and
tell me what you
do
know for a change.’

Rescued from the isolation of half-knowledge
and suspicions that until now he has been unable to share with a living soul, Toby flops
back in his armchair and basks in the luxury of confession. He describes, with growing
indignation, his sightings in Prague and Brussels, and recounts Horst’s probings
in the garden of Café Einstein, until Oakley cuts him short:

‘Does the name Bradley Hester sound
familiar?’

‘I’ll say it does!’

‘Why the humour?’

‘He’s the Private Office house
pet. The girls adore him. Brad the Music Man, they call him.’

‘We’re speaking of the same
Bradley Hester, I take it: assistant cultural attaché at the US Embassy?’

‘Absolutely. Brad and Quinn are fellow
music nuts. They’ve got a project going – transatlantic orchestral exchanges
between consenting universities. They go to concerts together.’

‘Quinn’s diary says
so?’

‘When last seen. Used to,’ Toby
replies, still smiling at the recollection of tubby, pink-faced Brad Hester with his
signature shabby music case chatting away to the girls in his queeny East Coast drawl
while he waits to be admitted to the presence.

But Oakley doesn’t warm to this benign
image:

‘And the purpose of these frequent
visits to the Private Office is to discuss musical exchanges, you say.’

‘They’re written in stone.
Brad’s the one date of the week that Quinn never breaks.’

‘Do you handle the paperwork that
results from their discussions?’

‘Good Lord, no. Brad takes care of all
that. He has people. As far as Quinn’s concerned, their project is extramural, not
to be done in office hours. To his credit, he’s quite particular about it,’
Toby ends, slowing down as he meets Oakley’s frigid stare.

‘And you accept that preposterous
notion?’

‘I do my best. For want of any
other,’ Toby says, and grants himself a cautious sip of Calvados while Oakley
contemplates the back of his left hand, turning his wedding ring, testing it against the
knuckle for looseness.

‘You mean you really don’t smell
a rat when Mr Bradley Hester, Assistant Cultural Attaché, marches in with his music
case or whatever he brings? Or you refuse to?’

‘I smell rats all the time,’
Toby retorts sulkily. ‘What’s the difference?’

Oakley lets this go. ‘Well, Toby, I
hate to disillusion you, if that’s what I’m doing. Mr Cultural Attaché
Hester is not quite the amiable clown you appear determined to take him for. He’s
a discredited freelance intelligence pedlar of the far-right persuasion, born again, not
to his advantage, and grafted on to the Agency’s station in London at the behest
of a caucus of wealthy American conservative evangelicals convinced that the Central
Intelligence Agency is overrun with red-toothed Islamic sympathizers and liberal
faggots, a view your nice new master is disposed to share. He is notionally employed by
the United States government, but in practice by a fly-by-night company of defence
contractors trading under the name of Ethical Outcomes Incorporated, of Texas and
elsewhere. The sole shareholder and chief executive officer of this company is Maisie
Spencer Hardy. She,
however, has devolved her duties to one Jay
Crispin, with whom she is having a ball. Jay Crispin, besides being an accomplished
gigolo, is the intimate of your distinguished minister, who appears determined to outdo
the militarist zeal that informs his late great leader, Brother Blair, though not, it
seems, his luckless successor. Should Ethical Outcomes Incorporated ever find itself
supplementing the feeble efforts of our national intelligence agencies by mounting a
privately funded stealth operation, your friend the Music Man will be tasked with
supplying the offshore logistics.’

And while Toby is digesting this, Oakley, as
so often, changes direction:

‘There’s an
Elliot
somewhere in the mix,’ he muses. ‘Is Elliot a name to you? Elliot?
Carelessly dropped? Overheard at the keyhole?’

‘I don’t listen at
keyholes.’

‘Of course you do. Albanian-Greek
renegade, used to call himself Eglesias, ex-South African Special Forces, killed some
chap in a bar in Jo’burg and came to Europe for his health?
That
sort of
Elliot? Sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘
Stormont-Taylor?
’
Oakley persists, in the same dreamy tone.

‘Of course!’ Toby cries in
relief. ‘Everyone knows Stormont-Taylor. So do you. He’s the international
lawyer’ – effortlessly evoking the strikingly handsome Roy Stormont-Taylor,
Queen’s Counsel and television idol, with his flowing white mane and too-tight
jeans, who three times in the last few months – or is it four? – has, like Bradley
Hester, been warmly received by Quinn before being spirited behind the mahogany
door.

‘And what, so far as you are aware, is
Stormont-Taylor’s business with your nice new master?’

‘Quinn doesn’t trust government
lawyers, so he consults Stormont-Taylor for an independent opinion.’

‘And on what particular matter, do you
happen to know, does Quinn consult the bold and beautiful Stormont-Taylor, who happens
also to be an intimate of Jay Crispin?’

A fraught silence while Toby asks himself
just who is being held to account here – Quinn or himself.

‘How the fuck should
I
know?’ he demands irritably – to which Oakley offers only a sympathetic ‘How
indeed?’

The silence returns.

‘
So
, Giles,’ Toby
announces finally, ever the first to break on such occasions.