The Night Manager (58 page)

"But when we invite Pure Intelligence," Goodhew resumes, with too much ironic emphasis, "to explain to us just why the Limpet case needs to be taken out of Enforcement's hands"--he looks angrily round him and sees his master affecting boredom, staring at the white brick wall--"we are asked to share in a mystery. It is called Flagship, an operation so secret, and so wide-flung, apparently, that it permits of almost any act of vandalism in the civil service calendar. It is called geopolitics. It is called..." He seems to wish he could escape the rhythms of his rhetoric, but he is launched and unable to pull back. How dare Darker stare at him like this? That smirking Marjoram! Those crooks! "It is called normalisation. It is called chain reactions too intricate to describe. Interests that cannot be divulged." He hears his voice shaking but cannot stop it. He remembers urging Burr not to go this very path. But he can't help himself. "We are told of some larger picture that we cannot see because we are too lowly. In other words, Pure Intelligence must swallow up Limpet and be damned!"

There is water in Goodhew's ears, and water in front of his eyes, and he has to wait a moment before his breathing settles down.

"Okay, Rex," says his master. "Nice to hear you in form. Now let's talk turkey. Geoffrey, you sent me a minute. You say this whole Limpet thing as perceived by Enforcement is a load of baloney. Why?"

Goodhew unwisely leaps in: "Why did I not see a copy of this minute?"

"Flagship," Marjoram replies in the dead silence. "You're not Flagship cleared, Rex."

Darker offers a more detailed explanation, not to ease Goodhew's pain but to increase it: " 'Flagship' is the code name for the American end of this, Rex. They gave us a very tight need-to-know as a condition of cutting us in. Sorry about that."

Darker has the floor. Marjoram hands him a file. Darker opens it and licks a prim finger and turns a page. Darker has timing too. He knows when eyes are on him. He could have been a bad evangelist. He has the gloss, the stance, the curiously Prominent rump. "Mind if I ask you a few questions, Rex?"

"I believe it is a maxim of your service that only the answers are dangerous, Geoffrey," Goodhew counters. But levity is not his ally. He sounds ill-tempered and silly.

"Did the same source who told Burr about the dope tell him about the arms shipment to Buenaventura?"

"Yes."

"Did the same source get this whole thing going in the first place? Ironbrand--drugs for arms--a deal's being cooked up?"

"That source is dead."

"Really?" Darker sounds interested rather than concerned. "So that all came from Apostoll, did it? The dope lawyer who was playing all ends against the middle so that he could buy himself out of prison?"

"I am not prepared to discuss sources by name in this manner!"

"Oh, I think it's all right when they're dead. Or bogus. Or both."

Another stage pause while Darker considers Marjoram's file.

The two men have a peculiar affinity with each other.

"Is Burr's source the one that's been putting out all the hair-raising stuff about the alleged involvement of certain British finance houses in this whole deal, then?" Darker enquires.

"A single source provided that information and has provided much else besides. I do not think it appropriate that we should discuss Burr's sources any further," says Goodhew.

"Sources or single source?"

"I refuse to be drawn."

"Is the single source live?"

"No comment. Live, yes. That's all I'm saying."

"He or she?"

"Pass. Minister, I must object."

"So you're saying that one live source--he or she--fingered the deal to Burr, fingered the dope to Burr, fingered the weapons to Burr, the ships, the money laundering and the participation of British finance. Yes?"

"You are missing the point--I suspect deliberately--that a great number of technical sources have supplied collateral at almost every turn, and all of it has substantiated the intelligence provided by Burr's live source. Unfortunately, much of the technical product has recently been denied to us. I intend to raise that matter formally in a moment."

"Us meaning Enforcement?"

"In this case, yes."

"Always a problem, you see, when one's handing hot material to these little agencies you're so fond of, to know whether they're secure."

"I would have thought their smallness made them more secure than much larger agencies with questionable connections!"

Marjoram takes over, but it could easily have been Darker speaking still, for Darker's eyes remain fixed on Goodhew's, and Marjoram's voice, though silkier, has the same accusatory tone.

"Nevertheless, there have been times when there has been no collateral," Marjoram suggests, with a tremendously sympathetic smile round the table. "Times when the source has, as you might say, spoken alone. Has given you things that were in effect not checkable. 'Here you are,' as it were. 'Take it or leave it.' And Burr has taken it. And so have you. Yes?"

"Since you deny us so much of the recent collateral, we have learned to make do without it. Minister, is it not in the nature of any source who produces original material that his product will not be provable in every particular?"

"Bit academic, all this, actually," the minister complains. "Can we get on to the gritty, Geoffrey? If I'm shoving this upstairs, I'll have to collar the Cabinet Secretary before Question Time."

Marjoram smiles in assent but does not change his tactic by a whit. "Quite a source, I must say, Rex. And quite a lot of mischief if he's leading you by the nose. Or she is; sorry. Not sure I'd like to take a flier on him if I was advising the PM, all the same. Not without knowing a bit more about him or her.

Boundless faith in one's agent's all very fine in the field. Burr had a bit too much of it sometimes, back in the days when he worked for the River House. We had to keep him on a tight rein."

"The little I know of the source convinces me entirely," Goodhew retorts, digging himself deeper into the mire. "The source is loyal and has made immense personal sacrifices for the sake of his or her country. I urge that the source be listened to and believed, and his intelligence acted upon today."

Darker takes back the controls. He looks first at Goodhew's face, then at his hands where they rest on the table. And Goodhew in his increasingly fraught state has the disgusting notion that Darker is thinking it would be amusing to pull out his fingernails.

"Well, that's impartial enough for anyone," Darker says with a glance at the minister to make sure he has heard the witness condemning himself out of his own mouth. "Haven't heard such a resounding declaration of blind love since..."

He turns to Marjoram. "What's the man's name again--the escaped criminal? He's got so many names now I can't remember which is the right one."

"Pine," says Marjoram. "Jonathan Pine. Don't think he's got a middle name. There's been an international warrant out for him for months."

Darker again. "You're not telling me Burr's been listening to this man Pine, are you, Rex? You can't be. No one falls for him. Might as well believe the wino on your street corner when he tells you he's short of the fare home."

For the first time, both Marjoram and Darker are smiling together, a little incredulously, at the thought that somebody as bright as dear old Rex Goodhew could have made such a monumental blunder.

Goodhew has the sensation of being alone in a great empty hall, awaiting some kind of prolonged public execution. From far away he hears Darker trying to be helpful to him by explaining that it is pretty standard, in a case where action is to be contemplated at the highest level, for intelligence services to come clean about their sources.

"I mean, look at it their way, Rex. Wouldn't you want to know whether Burr has bought the crown jewels or a fabricator's load of old bones? Not as if Goodhew was exactly flush with sources, is it? Probably paid the bloke his whole annual budget in one shot." He turns to the minister. "Among his other skills, this man Pine forges passports. He came to us about eighteen months ago with some story about a shipment of high-tech weaponry for the Iraqis. We checked it out, didn't like it and showed him the door. We thought he might be a bit loco, to be frank. A few months ago he cropped up as some kind of factotum to Dicky Roper's household out in Nassau. Part-time tutor to their difficult son. Tried to peddle anti-Roper stories round the intelligence bazaars in his spare time."

He glances at the open file in order to make sure he is being as fair as possible.

"Got quite a record. Murder, multiple theft, dope-running and illegal possession of various passports. I hope to God he's not going to get into the witness box and say he did it all for British Intelligence."

Marjoram's index finger helpfully points out an entry lower down the page. Darker spots it and gives a nod to show that he is grateful to be reminded.

"Yes, that's an odd little story about him too. While Pine was in Cairo, it seems he ran up against a man called Freddie Hamid, one of the Hamid brothers of evil fame. Pine worked in his hotel. Probably pushed his dope for him as well. Our man Ogilvey out there tells us there are quite strong pointers to suggest that Pine killed Hamid's mistress. Beat her to death, apparently. Took her to Luxor for a weekend, then killed her in a jealous rage." Darker shrugged and closed the file. "We are talking of somebody who is seriously unstable, Minister. I don't think the PM should be asked to authorise drastic action based on Pine's fabrications. I don't think you should either."

Everyone looks at Goodhew, but most look away again in order not to embarrass him. Marjoram particularly seems to feel for him. The minister is talking, but Goodhew is tired. Perhaps that's what evil does to you, he thinks: it tires you.

"Rex, you have to fight your corner on this one," the minister is complaining. "Has Burr done a deal with this man or not? I hope he hasn't had anything to do with his crimes? What have you promised him? Rex, I insist you remain. There have been far too many cases recently of British Intelligence employing criminals on terms. Don't you dare bring him back to this country, that's all. Did Burr tell him who he was working for? Probably gave him my phone number while he was about it. Rex, come back." The door seems an awfully long way off. "Geoffrey says he's been some kind of special soldier. Ireland. About all we need. The Irish will be really grateful. For Christ's sake, Rex, we've hardly started on the agenda. Major decisions to take. Rex, this is very untidy. Not your scene at all. I'm nobody's man, Rex. Goodbye."

The air in the outside stairwell is blessedly cool. Goodhew leans against the wall. Probably he is smiling.

"I expect you'll be looking forward to your weekend, sir. won't you?" the janitor says respectfully.

Touched by the man's good face, Goodhew hunts for a kindly answer.

Burr was working. His body clock was stuck in mid-Atlantic, his soul was with Jonathan in whatever hell he was enduring. But his intellect, his will and his inventiveness were concentrated upon the work before him.

"Your man blew it," Merridew commented, when Burr called him to hear how the Steering Committee meeting had gone. "Geoffrey walked all over him in hobnail boots."

"That's because Geoffrey Darker tells bloody lies," Burr explained carefully, in case Merridew needed educating. Then he went back to work.

He was in River House mode.

He was a spy again, unprincipled and uncontrite. The truth was what he could get away with.

He sent his secretary on a Whitehall forage, and at two o'clock she returned, calm but slightly breathless, bearing the stationery samples he had instructed her to scrounge.

"Let's go," he said, and she fetched her shorthand pad. Mostly, the letters he dictated were addressed to himself. A few were addressed to Goodhew, a couple to Goodhew's master.

His styles were various: Dear Burr, My dear Leonard, To the Director of Enforcement, Dear Minister. In the more elevated correspondence, he wrote "Dear So-and-so" by hand at the top, and scribbled whatever kiss-off occurred to him at the bottom. Yours, Ever, Yours aye, My best to you. His handwriting also varied, in both its slope and its characteristics. So did the inks and writing instruments he awarded to the various correspondents.

"How many typewriters have we got?" he asked his secretary.

"Five."

"Use one for each correspondent, one for us," he ordered. "Keep it consistent."

She had already made a note to do so.

Alone again, he telephoned Harry Palfrey at the River House. His tone was cryptic.

"But I must have a reason," Palfrey protested.

"You can have it when you show up," Burr retorted. Then he rang Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw in Newbury.

"Fuck should I take orders from you, Christ's sake?" Bradshaw demanded haughtily, in a quaint echo of Roperspeak. "No executive powers, lot of wankers on the touch line."

"Just be there," Burr advised.

Hester Goodhew telephoned him from Kentish Town to say that her husband would be staying home for a few days: winter was never his best time, she said. After her, Goodhew himself came on the line, sounding like a hostage who has been rehearsed in his lines. "You've still got your budget till the end Of the year, Leonard. Nobody can take that away from you." Then, rather horribly, his voice cracked. "That poor boy. What will they do to him? I think of him all the time."

So did Burr, but he had work to do.

The interviewing room at the Ministry of Defence is white and sparse and prison lit and prison scrubbed. It is a brick-lined box with a blacked-out window and an electric radiator that stinks of burned dust whenever it is switched on. The absence of graffiti is alarming. Waiting, you wonder whether the last messages are painted out after the occupant is executed. Burr arrived late by design. When he entered, Palfrey attempted to look at him disdainfully over the top of his trembling newspaper, and smirked.

"Well, I did come" he said truculently. And stood. And made a show of folding up his paper.

Burr closed and carefully locked the door behind him, set down his briefcase, hung his coat on the hook and slapped Palfrey very hard across the side of the face. But dispassionately, reluctantly almost. As he might have hit an epileptic to ward off a fit, or his own child to calm him in a crisis.