The Tailor of Panama (41 page)

“The
what
?”

“Gold bars, Nigel. It seems they're what one gives to Silent Oppositions these days in preference to dollars or pounds or Swiss francs. I must say one can see the sense of it. Can
you
imagine running a Silent Opposition on pounds sterling? They'd devalue before one had mounted one's first abortive putsch. And Silent Oppositions don't come cheap, I'm told,” he added in the same throwaway tone. “A few million is nothing these days, not if you're counting on buying a future government at the same time.
Students, well, one can rein them in a bit, but do you
remember
how we used to get into debt? Good quartermastering will be essential on both fronts. But I think we're up to it, Nigel, don't you? I see it as a challenge myself. The sort of thing one dreams of in the midlife of one's career. A diplomatic El Dorado without the sweat of all that panning in the jungle.”

Maltby was musing. Stormont, tight-lipped at his side, had never known him so relaxed. Yet of himself he knew nothing at all. Or nothing he could explain. The sun was still radiant. Crouched in the blackness of the bandstand, he felt like a life prisoner who can't believe that the door of his cell stands open. His bluff was being called—but what bluff? Whom had he been fooling, except himself, as he watched the embassy flourish under Osnard's spurious alchemy? “Don't knock a good thing,” he had warned Paddy sharply when she had dared suggest that
BUCHAN
was a bit too gorgeous to be true, particularly when you got to know Andy a bit better.

Maltby was philosophising:

“An embassy is not equipped to
evaluate,
Nigel. We may have a
view,
that's different. We may have local knowledge. Of course we do. And sometimes it appears to conflict with what is told us by our betters. We have our senses. We can see and hear and sniff. But we don't have acres of files, computers, analysts and scores of delicious young debutantes scampering up and down corridors, alas. We have no overview. No awareness of the world's game. Least of all in an embassy as small and irrelevant as our own. We're bumpkins. You agree, I take it?”

“Did you tell them this?”

“Indeed I did, and on Osnard's magic telephone. One's words are so much more weighty when they're said in secret, don't you agree? We are
aware of our limitations,
I said. Our work is
humdrum.
From time to time we are granted glimpses of the bigger world.
BUCHAN
is such a glimpse. And we are
grateful,
we are
proud.
It is neither proper nor appropriate, I said, that a tiny embassy, charged
with reading the mood of the country and propagating the views of our own government, should be called upon to pass an objective judgment on matters too large for our horizons.”

“What made you say that?” Stormont asked. He meant to be louder, but something was catching his throat.

“
BUCHAN
, naturally. The Office accused me of being niggardly in my praise of the latest material. You too, by inference, were similarly accused. ‘
Praise?
' I said. ‘You can have all the praise you want. Andrew Osnard is a charming fellow, conscientious to a fault, and the
BUCHAN
operation has provided us with enlightenment and food for thought. We admire it. We support it. It enlivens our little community. But we do not presume to award it a place in the grand scheme of things. That is for your analysts and our masters.' ”

“And they were content with that?”

“They devoured it. Andy is a very nice fellow, as I told them. Goes down a treat with the girls. Asset to the embassy.” He broke off, leaving a note of question, and resumed on a lower key. “All right, maybe he doesn't quite play to eight. Maybe he cheats a bit here and there. Who doesn't? My point is, it's absolutely nothing to do with you or me or anyone else in this embassy, with the possible exception of young Andy, that the
BUCHAN
stuff is the most frightful tosh.”

Stormont's reputation for composure in crisis was deserved. He sat painfully still for a while—the bench was teak, and he had a bit of a back, particularly in damp weather. He considered the line of sterile ships, the Bridge of the Americas, the Old City and its ugly modern sister across the bay. He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. And he wondered whether, for reasons not yet revealed, he was witnessing the end of his career or beginning a new one of which the outlines were unclear to him.

Maltby by contrast was basking in a kind of confessional ease. He was leaning right back, his long, goatish head propped against an iron pillar of the bandstand, and his tone was magnanimity itself.

“Now I don't
know,
” he was saying, “and
you
don't know, which one of them makes it up. Is it
BUCHAN
? Is it Mrs.
BUCHAN
? Is it the subsources, whoever they are—Abraxas, Domingo, the woman Sabina or that disgusting journalist one sees around the place, Teddy Somebody? Or is it Andrew himself, bless him, and all else is vanity? He's young. They
could
be fooling him. On the other hand, he's quick-witted and he's a rogue. No he's not. He's rotten through and through. He's a
major
shit.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“Oh, I do, I do, enormously. And I don't hold the cheating against him one bit. A lot of chaps cheat, but it's usually the bad players like me. I mean, I've known chaps apologise. I've
practically
apologised myself a couple of times.” He bestowed a shameful grin on a pair of big yellow butterflies who had decided to join the conversation. “But Andy's a winner, you see. And winners who cheat
are
shits. How does he get on with Paddy?”

“Paddy adores him.”

“Oh my Lord, not too much, I hope? He's shagging Fran, I'm sorry to say.”

“Rubbish,” Stormont replied hotly. “They barely talk to each other.”

“That's because they're shagging in secret. They've been at it for months. Seems to have turned her head completely.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“My dear chap, I can't take my eyes off her, you
must
have noticed. I watch her every move. I've followed her. I don't
think
she spotted me. But then of course we prowlers rather hope they do. She left her flat and went to Osnard's. Didn't come out. Next morning, seven o'clock, I faked an urgent telegram and phoned her flat. No answer. You can't get it clearer than that.”

“And you haven't said anything to Osnard?”

“Whatever for? Fran's an angel, he's a shit, I'm a lecher. What would we possibly achieve?”

The bandstand started to crack and rattle with the next downpour, and they had to wait a few minutes for the sun.

“So what do you intend to do?” Stormont said gruffly, fending off all the questions he refused to ask himself.

“
Do,
did you say, Nigel?” It was Maltby as Stormont remembered him: arid, pedantic and aloof. “Whatever about?”

“
BUCHAN
. Luxmore. The Silent Opposition. The students. The people beyond that bridge over there, whoever they are. Osnard. The fact that
BUCHAN
is a fiction. If he is. That the reports are tosh, as you call them.”

“My dear man. We're not being asked to
do
anything. We're merely the servants of a higher cause.”

“But if London's swallowing it whole, and you think it's total crap—”

Maltby leaned forward in the way he would normally lean across his desk, fingertips together in an attitude of mute obstruction. “Go on.”

“Then you've got to tell them,” said Stormont stoutly.

“Why?”

“To stop them being led up the garden path. Anything could happen.”

“But Nigel. I thought we had already agreed that we were not evaluators.”

A sleek olive-coloured bird had entered their domain and was quizzing them for crumbs.

“I've nothing for you,” Maltby assured it anxiously. “I really haven't. Oh
damn
,” he exclaimed, plunging his hands into his pockets, patting them vainly for anything that would do. “Later,” he told it. “Come back tomorrow. No, the day after, about this time. We've got a top spy descending on us.”

“Our duty here in the embassy, in these circumstances, Nigel, is to provide logistical support,” Maltby went on in a tight, businesslike tone. “You agree?”

“I suppose it is,” said Stormont doubtfully.

“To assist, where assistance is helpful. To applaud, to encourage, to cool brows. To ease the burden on those in the firing seat.”

“Driving seat,” said Stormont absently. “Or firing line, I suppose, if that's what you mean.”

“Thank you. Why is it that whenever I reach for a modern metaphor I come unstuck? I suppose I imagined a tank at that moment. One of Gully's, paid for in gold bars.”

“I suppose you did.”

Maltby's voice gathered power as if for the benefit of the audience outside the bandstand, but there was none. “So it is in this spirit of wholehearted collaboration that I have made the point to London—and I am sure you will agree with me—that Andrew Osnard, whatever his sterling virtues, is too inexperienced to be handling very large sums of money, whether in the form of cash or gold. And that it is only fair, on him as well as the recipients of the money, that he be provided with a paymaster. As his ambassador, I have selflessly volunteered for the task. London sees the wisdom of this. Whether Osnard sees it is to be doubted, but he can scarcely object, particularly since it is we—you and I, Nigel—who in due course will be taking over liaison with the Silent Opposition and the students. Money from secret funds is notoriously hard to account for and quite impossible to pursue once it has disappeared into the wrong hands. All the more important that it be scrupulously husbanded while it is in our care. I have asked that chancery be provided with a safe of the type that Osnard has in his strong room. The gold—and whatever else— will be stored there, and you and I will be joint key holders. If Osnard decides that he requires a large sum of money he may come to us and state his case. Assuming the sum is within the agreed guidelines you and I will jointly draw the cash and place it in the appropriate hands. Are you a rich man, Nigel?”

“No.”

“Nor I. Did your divorce effectively impoverish you?”

“Yes.”

“I would imagine so. And it will be no better when my turn comes. Phoebe is not easily satisfied.” He glanced at Stormont for confirmation of this, but Stormont's face, turned towards the Pacific, was set in iron.

“It's so very unreasonable of life,” Maltby went on by way of small talk. “Here we are in middle age, healthy chaps with healthy appetites. We made a few mistakes, faced up to them, learned the lessons. And we've still got a few precious, wonderful years before the Zimmer frame. Only one blot spoils an otherwise perfect prospect. We're broke.”

From the sea Stormont's eyes had lifted to a range of cottonwool clouds that had formed above the distant islands. And it seemed to him that he saw snow on them, and Paddy, cured of her cough, pottering cheerfully up the path to the chalet, bearing shopping from the village.

“They want me to sound out the Americans,” he said mechanically. “Who do?” Maltby asked quickly.

“London,” said Stormont in the same toneless voice.

“To what end?”

“To find out how much they know. About Silent Oppositions. Students. Secret meetings with the Japanese. I'm to test the water and give nothing away. Fly kites, trail coats. All the fatuous things that people tell you to do when they're sitting on their arses in London. Neither State nor the CIA has seen Osnard's material, apparently. I'm to find out whether they have independent awareness.”

“Meaning: whether they know?”

“If you prefer,” said Stormont.

Maltby was indignant. “Oh, I do
detest
the Americans. They expect everyone to go to the devil at the same hectic pace as themselves. It takes hundreds of years to do it properly. Look at us.”

“Suppose the Americans know none of it. Suppose it's virgin. Or they are.”

“Suppose there's nothing to know. That's
far
more likely.”

“
Some
of it may be true,” said Stormont with a kind of stubborn gallantry.

“On the principle that a broken clock tells the truth once every twelve hours, yes, I grant you, some of it may be true,” said Maltby with contempt.

“And suppose the Americans believe it. Whether it's true or not,” Stormont went on doggedly. “Fall for it, if you like. London did.”

“
Which
London? Not
our
London, that's for sure. And of
course
the Americans won't believe it. Not the real ones. Their systems are vastly superior to ours. They'll prove it's tosh, they'll thank us, say they've taken note and shred it.”

Stormont refused to be put off. “People don't
trust
their own systems. Intelligence is like exams. You always think the chap sitting next to you knows more than you do.”

“Nigel,” said Maltby firmly, with all the authority of his appointment. “Allow me to remind you that we are not evaluators. Life has given us a rare opportunity to find fulfillment in our work and be of service to those whom we regard. A golden future stretches ahead of us. The crime in such cases is to waver.”

Still staring ahead of him but without the consolation of the clouds, Stormont sees his future until now. Paddy's cough eating her to nothing. The decaying British health service all they can afford. Premature retirement to Sussex on a pittance. The goinggoing-gone of every dream he has ever cherished. And the England that he used to love six feet underground.