The Tailor of Panama

by John le Carré

  “You know something Van said to me just the other day, Geoff?” said Elliot.

  “What’s that, old boy?” said Cavendish.

  “Everybody who is not American has a role for America. Mostly they are people who have no role for themselves. Mostly they’re jerking off.”

  “General Van’s deep,” said the Colonel.

  “Get on with it,” said Hatry.

  But Elliot took his time, resting his hands thoughtfully on his chest as if he were wearing a waistcoat and smoking a cheroot on his plantation.

  “Ben, we have no damn peg for this thing,” he confessed, as one journalist to another. “No hook. We have a condition. We do not have a smoking gun. No raped American nuns. No dead American babies. We have rumours. We have maybes. We have your spook reports, unsubstantiated by our spook agencies at this time, because that’s the way we say it has to be. This is not the moment to turn out the State Department’s bleeding hearts, or put billboards screaming Hands off Panama! at the White House railings. This is a moment for decisive action and having the national conscience adapt retrospectively. The national conscience will do that. We can help it. You can help it, Ben.”

  “I said I would. I will.”

  “But what you cannot give us is a peg,” Elliot said. “You cannot rape nuns. You cannot massacre babies for us.”

  Kirby let out a misplaced guffaw of laughter. “Don’t you be so sure about that, Elliot,” he cried. “You don’t know our Ben the way we do. What? What?”

  But all he got for applause was a pained frown from the Colonel.

  “Of course you’ve got a fucking peg,” Ben Hatry retorted caustically.

  “Name it,” Elliot said.

  “The denials, for fuck’s sake.”

  “What denials?” said Elliot.

  “Everyone’s. The Panamanians will deny it, the Frogs will deny it, the Japs will deny it. So they’re liars, the same as Castro was a liar. Castro denies his Russian rockets, so you go in. The Canal conspirators deny their conspiracy, so in you go again.”

  “Ben, those rockets were there,” said Elliot. “We had pictures of those rockets. We had a smoking gun. We have no smoking gun for this scenario. The American people got to see justice done. Talk doesn’t do it. Never did. We need a smoking gun. The President will need a smoking gun. If he doesn’t get one, he won’t swing.”

  “We don’t happen to have a few happy snaps of Jap engineers in false beards digging a second canal by flashlight, do we, Ben?” Cavendish asked facetiously.

  “No, we fucking don’t,” Hatry retorted, never raising his voice but never needing to. “So what are you going to do, Elliot? Wait till the Japs give you a photo call at lunchtime on the thirty-first of December in the year of Our Lord nineteen fucking ninety-nine?”

  Elliot was unmoved. “Ben, we don’t have one emotive argument that will play on our television screens. Last time round we got lucky. Noriega’s Dignity Battalions mishandled American women in the streets of Panama City. Until then we were grounded. We had drugs. So we wrote drugs big. We had Noriega’s attitude problem. We wrote that big. We had his ugliness, and we wrote that big. Lot of people think ugly is immoral. We worked on that. We had his sexuality and his voodoo. We played the Castro card. But it wasn’t till decent American women were harassed by disrespectful Hispanic soldiers in the name of dignity that the President felt obliged to send our boys in to teach them a little manners.”

  “I heard you arranged that,” Hatry said.

  “Wouldn’t play twice, either way,” Elliot replied, brushing aside the suggestion as irrelevant.

  Ben Hatry imploded. An underground test. There was no bang, he was fully tamped. Just a high-pressured hiss as he expelled air, frustration and fury in one burst.

  “Jesus bloody Christ. That fucking Canal is yours, Elliot.”

  “India was yours once, Ben.”

  Hatry didn’t bother to respond. He was staring through the curtained window at nothing that was worth his time.

  “We need a peg,” Elliot repeated. “No peg, no war. President won’t swing. Final.”

  It took Geoff Cavendish, with his polish and good robust looks, to bring light and happiness back to the meeting.

  “Well, gentlemen, it seems to me we have a great deal of common ground. We must leave the timing to General Van’s judgment. Nobody disputes that. Can we talk around that a little? Tug, you’re straining at the leash, I see.”

  Hatry had made the curtained window his own. The prospect of listening to Kirby had only deepened his despondency.

  “This Silent Opposition,” Kirby said. “The Abraxas Group. Do you have a read on that, Elliot?”

  “Should I?”

  “Does Van?”

  “He likes them.”

  “Rather odd of him, isn’t it?” said Kirby. “Considering the fellow is anti-American?”

  “Abraxas is not a puppet, he’s not a client,” Elliot replied equably. “If we’re fielding a provisional Panamanian government till the country’s safe for elections again, Abraxas is worth a lot of Brownie points. The libs can’t scream colonial at us. Neither can the Pans.”

  “And if he’s no good you can always crash his plane, can’t you,” said Hatry nastily.

  Kirby again: “My point being, Elliot, Abraxas is our man. Not yours. Our man by his choice. That makes his opposition ours too. Ours to control, ours to equip and advise. I think we should all remember that. Van should remember it particularly. It would look very bad for General Van if it were ever to turn out that Abraxas had been taking Uncle Sam’s dollar. Or his chaps were equipped with American arms. Don’t want to stigmatise the poor fellow as a Yankee quisling from the start, do we?”

  The Colonel had an idea. His eyes opened wide and shone. His smile was heavenly.

  “Listen: we can do it false flag, Tug! We got assets out there! We can make it like Abraxas is getting stuff from Peru, Guatemala, Castro Cuba. We can make it anything. It’s not any kind of problem!”

  Tug Kirby only ever made one point at a time. “We found Abraxas, we equip him,” he said stonily. “We’ve got a first-class procurement man on the spot. You want to put up money, all offers gratefully received. But you put it up to us. Nothing local. Nothing direct. We run Abraxas, we supply him. He’s ours. And his students and his fishermen and anybody else he’s got. We supply the whole home side,” he ended, and rapped his huge knuckles on the eighteenth-century table in case they hadn’t got the point.

  “All that’s if,” said Elliot after a while.

  “If what?” Kirby demanded.

  “If we go in,” said Elliot.

  Abruptly Hatry unlocked his gaze from the window and swung round to face Elliot.

  “I want exclusive first bite,” he said. “My cameras and my scribes go in the first wave, my boys to run with the students and the fishermen, exclusive. Everyone else rides in the guard’s van with the spares.”

  Elliot was drily amused. “Maybe you people should mount the invasion for us, Ben. Maybe that would solve your election problem for you. How about a rescue action to protect expatriate British citizens? Must be a couple of ’em down there in Panama.”

  “Glad you raised that question, Elliot,” said Kirby.

  A different axis. Kirby very tense and all eyes on him, even

  Hatry’s.

  “Why’s that, Tug?” said Elliot.

  “Time we talked about just what our man does get out of this,” Kirby retorted, blushing. Our man meaning our leader. Our puppet. Our mascot.

  “You want him sitting with Van in the Pentagon war room, Tug?” Elliot suggested playfully.

  “Don’t be bloody silly.”

  “You want British troops on American gunships? Be my guest.”

  “No, we don’t, thank you. It’s your back yard. But we shall want credit.”

  “How much, Tug? I’m told you drive a hard bargain.”

  “Not that kind of credit. Moral credit.”

  Elliot smiled.
So did Hatry. Morality, their expressions implied, was negotiable.

  “Our man to be visibly and loudly at the forefront,” Tug Kirby announced, counting off terms on his enormous fingers. “Our man to wrap himself in the flag, your man to cheer him on while he does it, Rule Britannia and bugger Brussels. The special relationship seen to be up and running—right, Ben? Visits to Washington, handshakes, high profile, lot of kind words for our man. And your man to come to London as soon as you’ve swung him. He’s overdue and it’s been noticed. The role of British Intelligence to be leaked to the respectable press. We’ll give you a text—right, Ben? The rest of Europe out of it and the Frogs in disgrace as usual.”

  “Leave that shit to me,” Hatry said. “He doesn’t sell newspapers. I do.”

  They parted like unreconciled lovers, worried they had said the wrong things, failed to say the right ones, not been understood. We’ll run it by Van as soon as we get back, said Elliot. See what his sense is. General Van is long term, said the Colonel. General Van is a true visionary. The General has his eyes on the Jerusalem. The General knows how to wait.

  “Give me a fucking drink,” said Hatry.

  They sat alone, three Englishmen in withdrawal with their whiskies.

  “Nice little meeting,” said Cavendish.

  “Shits,” said Kirby.

  “Buy the Silent Opposition,” Hatry ordered. “Make sure it can speak and shoot. How real are the students?”

  “They’re iffy, Chief. Maoists, Trots, Peaceniks, a lot of ’em overage. They could jump either way.”

  “Who the fuck cares which way they jump? Buy the sods and turn them loose. Van wants a peg. He’s dreaming of it but doesn’t dare to ask. Why d’you think the bastard sent his flunkies and stayed home? Maybe the students can supply the peg. Where’s Luxmore’s report?”

  Cavendish handed it to him, and he read it for the third time before pushing it back at him.

  “Who’s the bitch who writes our doom and gloom shit?” he asked.

  Cavendish said a name.

  “Give it to her,” Hatry said. “Tell her I want the students larger. Link them with the poor and the oppressed, drop the Communism. And give us more about the Silent Opposition looking to Britain as a democratic role model for Panama in the twenty-first century. I want crisis. ‘As terror walks the streets of Panama,’ that shit. First editions, Sunday. Get onto Luxmore. Tell him it’s time to get his fucking students out of bed.”

  Luxmore had never been on such a dangerous mission. He was exalted, he was terrified. But then abroad always terrified him. He was desperately, heroically alone. An impressive passport in the jacket he must not remove enjoined all foreigners to grant the Queen’s well-beloved messenger Mellors safe conduct across their borders. Piled on the first-class seat beside him were two bulky black leather briefcases, sealed with wax, embossed with the royal crest and fitted with broad shoulder straps. The rules of his assumed office allowed him neither sleep nor drink. The briefcases must remain at all times within his sight and reach. No profane hand was permitted to defile the pouches of a Queen’s Messenger. He was to befriend nobody, though out of operational necessity he had exempted a matronly British Airways stewardess from this edict. Halfway across the South Atlantic, he had unexpectedly needed to relieve himself. Twice he had risen to stake his claim, only to see himself anticipated by an unladen passenger. Finally, in the extreme of need, he had prevailed on the stewardess to stand guard over a vacant lavatory for him while he struggled crablike down the aisle with his burdens banging wildly against dozing Arabs, lurching into drinks trolleys.

  “Must be ever such heavy secrets you’ve got in there,” the air hostess commented gaily as she saw him safely into dock.

  Luxmore was delighted to recognise a fellow Scot.

  “Where are you from, then, my dear?”

  “Aberdeen.”

  “But how splendid! The silver city, my God!”

  “How about you?”

  Luxmore was about to respond with a generous description of his Scottish provenance when he remembered that his false passport had Mellors born in Clapham. His embarrassment deepened when she held the door back for him while he fought the pouches for floor space to manoeuvre. Returning to his place he scanned the rows for potential hijackers and saw nobody he trusted.

  The plane started its descent. My God, imagine! thought Luxmore, as awe at his mission and a hatred of flying alternated with the nightmare of discovery—she crashes into the sea—the pouches with her. Rescue ships from America, Cuba, Russia, and Britain race to the spot! Who was the mysterious Mellors? Why did his pouches plummet to the bottom of the ocean? Why were no papers found floating on the surface? Why will no one come forward to claim him? No widow, child, relative? The pouches are raised. Will Her Majesty’s Government kindly explain their extraordinary contents to a breathless world?

  “Miami’s your lot for this time, then, is it?” the air hostess asked, watching him saddle up to disembark. “I’ll bet you’ll be glad of a nice hot bath when you’re shot of that lot.”

  Luxmore kept his voice low in case Arabs overheard him. She was a good Scottish lass and deserved the truth.

  “Panama,” he murmured.

  But she had already left him. She was too busy asking passengers to make sure their seats were in the upright position and their belts securely fastened.

  19

  “They charge greens fees according to one’s rank,” Maltby explained, selecting a middle iron for his approach shot. The flag stood eighty yards away, for Maltby a day’s journey. “Private soldiers pay next to nothing. Achievers pay more as they go up the scale. They say the General can’t afford to play at all.” He pulled a shaggy grin. “I did a deal,” he confided proudly. “I’m a sergeant.”

  He lashed at the ball. Startled, it scurried sixty yards through sopping grass to safety, and hid. He loped after it. Stormont followed. An old Indian caddie in a straw hat was carrying a collation of ancient clubs in a mildewed bag.

  The well-tended links of Amador are a bad golfer’s dream, and Maltby was a bad golfer. They lie in well-groomed strips between a pristine U.S. Army base built in the vintage ’20s, and the shore that runs beside the entrance to the Canal. There is a guard hut. There is a straight empty road protected by a bored American soldier and a bored Panamanian policeman. No one goes there much except the army and its wives. On one horizon lies El Chorrillo and beyond it the Satanic towers of Punta Paitilla, this morning softened by tiers of rolling cloud. Out to sea lie the islands and the causeway, and the obligatory line of motionless ships waiting for their turn to pass under the Bridge of the Americas.

  But for the bad golfer the most seductive feature of the place is the straight grass trenches that are sunk thirty feet below sea level and, having once been a part of the Canal works, serve as ducts for the imperfectly struck ball. The bad golfer may hook, he may slice. The trenches, for as long as he remains within their care, forgive him everything. All that is asked is that he connect and stay low.

  “And Paddy’s well and everything,” Maltby suggested, discreetly improving the lie of the ball with the toe of his cracked golf shoe. “Her cough’s better.”

  “Not really,” said Stormont.

  “Oh dear. What do they say?”

  “Not much.”

  Maltby played again. The ball sped across the green and once more vanished. Maltby hurled himself after it. Rain fell. It was falling at ten-minute intervals but Maltby seemed unaware of it. The ball lay pertly at the centre of an island of sodden sand. The old caddie handed Maltby an appropriate club.

  “You should get her away somewhere,” he advised Stormont airily. “Switzerland or wherever one goes these days. Panama’s so insanitary. You never know which side the germs are coming from. Fuck.”

  Like some primeval insect his ball scuttled into a clump of rich green pampas. Through sheets of rain Stormont watched his ambassador hack at it in huge arcs until it crept sullenly onto the green. Tension
while Maltby performed a long putt. A peal of triumph as he holed out. He’s snapped, thought Stormont. Mad. High time. A word, Nigel, if you’d be so good, Maltby had said on the telephone at one o’clock this morning, just as Paddy was getting off to sleep. Thought we might have it on the hoof, Nigel, if that’s all right by you. Whatever you say, Ambassador.

  “Otherwise the embassy seems a rather happy spot these days,” Maltby resumed as they strode out towards the next trench. “Barring Paddy’s cough and poor old Phoebe.” Phoebe, his wife, neither so poor nor so old.

  Maltby was unshaven. A ratty grey pullover, soaked through, hung from his upper body like a suit of chain mail of which he had mislaid the trousers. Why doesn’t the bloody man treat himself to a set of waterproofs? Stormont marvelled, as more rain seeped down his own neck.

  “Phoebe’s never happy,” Maltby was saying. “I can’t think why she came back. I loathe her. She loathes me. The children loathe us both. There seems absolutely no point in any of it. We haven’t screwed for simply years, thank God.”

  Stormont preserved an appalled silence. Not once in the eighteen months that they had known each other had Maltby confided in him. Now suddenly, for reasons unknown, there was no limit to their frightful intimacy.

  “You got divorced all right,” Maltby complained. “Yours was quite a public sort of thing too, if I remember. But you got over it. Your children speak to you. The Office didn’t chuck you out.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Well, I do wish you’d have a word with Phoebe about it. Do her the world of good. Tell her you’ve been through it and it’s not as bad as its reputation. She doesn’t talk to people properly, that’s part of the problem. Prefers to boss them about.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if Paddy talked to her,” Stormont said.

  Maltby was teeing up. He did this, Stormont noticed, without bending his knees. He simply folded himself in two, then unfolded himself, talking all the while.

  “No, I think you should do it, quite honestly,” he went on, while he addressed the ball with menacing feints. “She worries about me, you see. She knows she can get on alone. But she thinks I’ll be on the phone all the time asking her how to boil an egg. I wouldn’t do any such thing. I’d move in a gorgeous girl and boil eggs for her all day long.” He drove and the ball shot upward, beyond the salvation of the trench. For a while it seemed content with its straight path. Then it changed its mind, turned left, and disappeared into walls of rain.