The Mission Song

by John le Carré

Of course not, I assure her.

  “And at the last minute, just before our coach departed, completely unexpectedly he jumped aboard and gave an impressive address on the prospects of peace and inclusiveness for all Kivu.”

  To you personally? I ask.

  “Yes, Salvo. To me personally. Out of thirty-six people in the coach, he spoke only to me. And I was completely naked.”

  • • •

  Her first objection to my preferred champion, Lord Brinkley, was so absolute that it smacked to me of Sister Imogene's fundamentalism.

  “But Salvo. If wicked people are dragging us into war and stealing our resources, how can there be grades of guilt among them? Surely each one is as evil as the next, since all are complicit in the same act?”

  “But Brinkley's not like the others,” I replied patiently. “He's a figurehead like the Mwangaza. He's the kind of man the others march behind when they want to do their thieving.”

  “He is also the man who was able to say yes.”

  “That's right. And he's the man who expressed his shock and moral outrage, if you remember. And practically accused Philip of double-dealing while he was about it.” And as a clincher: “If he's the man who can pick up the phone and say yes, he can also pick it up and say no.”

  Pressing my case harder, I drew on my wide experience of the corporate world. How often had I not observed, I said, that men at the helm were unaware of what was being done in their name, so preoccupied were they with raising funds and watching the market? And gradually she began nodding her acceptance, in the knowledge that there were after all areas of life where my grasp exceeded hers. Piling on the arguments, I reminded her of my exchange with Brinkley at the house in Berkeley Square: “And what happened when I mentioned Mr Anderson's name to him? He hadn't even heard of him!” I ended, and then waited for her response, which I sincerely hoped would not include any further advocacy for Baptiste. Finally I showed her my letter, thanking me for my support: Dear Bruno, signed, Yours ever, Jack. Even then she didn't totally give up:

  “If the Syndicate is so anonymous, how can they use Brinkley as a figurehead?” And because I had no good answer ready: “If you must go to one of your own, at least go to Mr Anderson whom you trust. Tell him your story and place yourself at his mercy.”

  But I was able once more to outmanoeuvre her, this time with my knowledge of the secret world. “Anderson washed his hands of me before I ever left his safe flat. The operation was deniable, I was deniable. Do you think he's going to un-deny me when I walk in and tell him the whole thing was a scam?”

  Side by side before my laptop, we went to work. Lord Brinkley's website was reticent about where he lived. Those who wished to write should do so care of the House of Lords. My Brinkley press cuttings came into their own. Jack was married to one Lady Kitty, an aristocratic heiress involved in good works on behalf of Britain's needy, which naturally commended her to Hannah. And Lady Kitty had a website.

  On it were listed the charities that enjoyed her patronage, plus the address to which donors could send their cheques, plus a notification of her Thursday coffee morning At Homes to which benefactors were invited by prior arrangement only. At Home being Knightsbridge, the heart of London's golden triangle.

  • • •

  It is an hour later. I lie awake, my head super-clear. Hannah, trained to sleep whenever she is able, does not stir. Silently pulling on my shirt and trousers, I take my cellphone and descend to the guest lounge, where Mrs Hakim is clearing away breakfast. After the mandatory exchange of commonplaces, I escape to the little garden which lies in a canyon among tall brown buildings. Printed into me is a running awareness of what our One-Day trainers would term Penelope's trade routes. After her torrid weekend with Thorne, she will be putting in at Norfolk Mansions for a morning refit before embarking on the rigours of the week. Her best telephoning is done from taxis paid for by her paper. Like all good journalists, she has thought a lot about her opening line.

  And fuck you too, Salvo darling! If you'd waited another week I could have spared you the bother! I won't enquire where you spent your weekend after making a laughing-stock of me in front of the proprietor. I just hope she's worth it, Salvo. Or should I be saying he? Fergus says he's afraid to go into the same loo with you . . .

  I returned to the bedroom. Hannah lay as I had left her. In the summer's heat, the bed-sheet was draped like a painter's veil across one breast and between her thighs.

  “Where were you?”

  “In the garden. Getting divorced.”

  15

  Hannah in her firm-minded way had convinced me that I should not take the tapes and notepads with me into the Brinkley house. And since she was equally determined to see me to the front door and wait outside till I emerged, we reached a compromise whereby she would sit with my stolen goods in a nearby corner café, and I would call her on my cellphone when I judged the moment right, whereupon she would drop them in unattributably at the front door and return to the café to wait for me.

  It was five o'clock of the Monday evening before we emerged from Mr Hakim's emporium and with due circumspection boarded a bus to Finchley Road tube station. It was six before we were scanning the finely curved Knightsbridge terrace from the pavement across the road, and twenty past by the time I had settled Hannah at a window table in the café. On the bus journey she had undergone a loss of confidence, in contrast to my own mood, which was increasingly upbeat.

  “A couple of hours from now, our troubles will be over,” I assured her, massaging her back in an effort to relax her, but her only response was to say she proposed to pray for me.

  Approaching the target house, I was offered the choice of descending to a basement marked TRADE or mounting the steps to a pillared doorway boasting an old-style bell pull. I chose the latter. The door was opened by a plump-faced Latino woman in a black uniform, complete with white collar and pinny.

  “I'd like to speak to Lord Brinkley, please,” I said, summoning the imperious tone of my more upmarket clients.

  “He office.”

  “How about Lady Kitty?” I asked, staying the door with one hand and with the other extracting the Brian Sinclair card. Beneath my alias, I had written BRUNO SALVADOR. And on the back, the words SYNDICATE INTERPRETER.

  “No come,” the maid commanded me and, true to her intention, this time succeeded in slamming the door, only for it to be opened seconds later by Lady Kitty herself.

  Ageless as such high-society ladies are, she wore a short skirt, Gucci belt and straight ash-blonde hair. Among the tiers of finest-quality jewellery on her wrists, I identified a tiny Cartier watch in two tones of gold. Her silk-white legs were tipped with Italian shoes of faultless elegance. Her blue eyes appeared permanently startled, as if from some horrific vision.

  “You want Brinkley,” she informed me, her gaze flitting in nervous looks between my card and my face as if she was doing my portrait.

  “I've been doing some rather important work for him over the weekend,” I explained, and broke off, uncertain how much she was cleared for.

  “This weekend?”

  “I need to talk to him. It's a personal matter.”

  “Couldn't you have rung?” she enquired, eyes even more startled than before.

  “I'm afraid not.” I fell back on the Official Secrets Act. “It wouldn't have been prudent — secure,” I explained, with innuendo. “Not on the telephone. We're not allowed to.”

  “We?”

  “The people who've been working for Lord Brinkley.”

  We ascended to a long drawing room with high red walls and gilt mirrors and the smell of Aunt Imelda's Willowbrook: pot pourri and honey.

  “I'll put you in here,” she announced, showing me a smaller room that was a replica of the first. “He should be home by now. Can I fix you a drink? You are good. Then read his newspaper or something.”

  Left alone, I made a discreet optical reconnaissance of my surroundings. One antique bombe desk, locked. Photographs of
Etonian sons and Central African leaders. A resplendent Marechal Mobutu in uniform: Pour Jacques, mon amifidele, 1980. The door opened. Lady Kitty strode to a sideboard and extracted a frosted silver cocktail shaker and one glass.

  “That common little secretary of his,” she complained, mimicking a proletarian accent: “‘Jack's in a meeting, Kitty.’ God, I hate them. What's the point of being a peer if everybody calls you Jack? You can't tell them or they take you to a tribunal.” She arranged herself carefully on the arm of a sofa and crossed her legs. “I told her it's a crisis. Is it?”

  “Not if we can catch it in time,” I replied consolingly.

  “Oh we shall. Brinkley's frightfully good at all that. Catch anything any time. Who's Maxie?” There are occasions in a part-time secret agent's life when only the lie direct will suffice.

  “I've never heard of Maxie.”

  “Of course you have, or you wouldn't be putting on that silly frown. Well, I've got my shirt riding on him, whether you've heard of him or not.” She plucked meditatively at the bosom of her designer blouse. “Such as it is, poor thing. Are you married, Bruno?”

  Go for another forthright denial? Or remain as close to the truth as security permits?

  “I am indeed” — to Hannah, not Penelope.

  “And have you simply oodles of marvellous babies?”

  “I'm afraid not yet” — apart from Noah.

  “But you will. In the fullness of time. You're trying day and night. Does the wife work?”

  “She certainly does.”

  “Hard?”

  “Very.”

  “Poor her. Did she manage to come with you this weekend, while you were devilling for Brinkley?”

  “We weren't really having that sort of weekend,” I replied, forcing away images of Hannah seated naked beside me in the boiler room.

  “Was Philip there?”

  “Philip?”

  “Yes, Philip. Don't be arch.”

  “I'm afraid I don't know a Philip.”

  “Of course you do. He's your Mr Big. Brinkley eats out of his hand.” Which is precisely Brinkley's problem, I thought, grateful to have my expectations confirmed.

  “And Philip never leaves telephone messages. None of you do. ‘Just say Philip rang,’ as if there was only one Philip in the whole world. Now tell me you don't know him.”

  “I've already said I don't.”

  “You have and you're blushing, which is sweet. He probably made a pass at you. Brinkley calls him the African Queen. What languages do you interpret?”

  “I'm afraid that's something I'm not allowed to say.”

  Her gaze had settled on the shoulder-bag that I had placed beside me on the floor.

  “What are you toting in there, anyway? Brinkley says we're to search everybody who comes into the house. He's got a battery of CCTVs over the front door and brings his women through the back so that he doesn't catch himself napping.”

  “Just my tape recorder,” I said, and held it up to show her.

  “What for?”

  “In case you haven't got one.”

  “We're in here, darling.”

  She had heard her husband before I had. Bounding to her feet she whisked her glass and the shaker into the sideboard, slammed it shut, squirted something into her mouth from an inhaler in her blouse pocket and, like a guilty schoolgirl, attained the door to the large drawing room in two wide strides.

  “His name's Bruno,” she declaimed gaily to the approaching footsteps. “He knows Maxie and Philip and pretends he doesn't, he's married to a hard-working woman and wants babies but not yet, and he's got a tape recorder in case we haven't.”

  My moment of truth was at hand. Lady Kitty had vanished, her husband stood before me, attired in a sharp double-breasted navy pinstripe suit, waisted in the latest thirties fashion. Not a hundred yards away, Hannah was waiting for the summons. I had pre-typed the number of her cellphone into my own. In a matter of minutes, if all went to plan, I would be presenting Jack Brinkley with the evidence that, contrary to whatever he might think, he was about to undo all the good work he had done for Africa over the years. He looked first at me, then carefully round the room, then at me again.

  “This yours?” He was holding my business card by one corner as if it was sopping wet.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You're Mr Who exactly?”

  “Sinclair, sir. But only officially. Sinclair was my alias for the weekend. You'll know me better by my real name, Bruno Salvador. We've corresponded.”

  I had decided not to mention his Christmas cards because they weren't personalised, but I knew he'd remember my letter of support to him, and clearly he did, because his head lifted and, being a tall man, he did what judges on the bench do: peered down at me over the top of his horn-rimmed spectacles to see what he'd got.

  “Well then, let's get rid of that thing first, shall we, Salvador?” he suggested and, having taken my recorder from me and made sure there was no tape in it, gave it back to me, which I remember was the nearest we got to a handshake.

  He had unlocked his bombe desk and sat himself sideways to it. He was examining his own letter to me, with the handwritten PS saying how much he hoped we might meet one day, and — since he was at that time a Member of Parliament — what a pity I wasn't living in his constituency, with two exclamation marks, which always made me smile. From the jovial way he read it, it could have been a letter to himself, and one he was happy to receive. And when he'd finished, he didn't stop smiling, but laid it before him on the desk, implying he might need to dip into it later.

  “So what's your problem exactly, Salvador?”

  “Well, it's your problem, sir, actually, if you'll pardon me. I was just the interpreter.”

  “Oh really? Interpreting what?”

  “Well, everyone really, sir. Maxie obviously. He doesn't speak anything. Well, English. Philip doesn't speak much Swahili. So I was caught in the crossfire, so to speak. Juggling the whole thing. Above and below the waterline.”

  I smiled deprecatingly to myself, because I rather hoped that by now he'd have received some word of my achievements on his behalf, which when you put them end to end were considerable, whether or not I'd ended up on the wrong side of the fence, which was what I wanted to explain to him as part of my personal rehabilitation in his eyes.

  “Waterline? What waterline?”

  “It was Maxie's expression, actually, sir. Not mine. For when I was in the boiler room. Listening in to the delegates' conversations while they recessed. Maxie had a man called Spider.” I paused in case the name rang a bell, but apparently it didn't. “Spider was this professional eavesdropper. He had a lot of antiquated equipment he'd cobbled together at the last minute. A sort of DIY kit. But I don't expect you were aware of that either.”

  “Aware of what exactly?”

  I began again. There was no point in holding back. It was even worse than I feared. Philip hadn't told him a fraction of the story.

  “The whole island was bugged, sir. Even the gazebo on the hilltop was bugged. Whenever Philip reckoned we'd reached a critical moment in negotiations, he'd call a recess, and I'd dive down to the boiler room and listen in, and relay the gist to Sam upstairs so that Philip and Maxie would be ahead of the game next time we convened. And take advice from the Syndicate and Philip's friends over the sat-phone when they needed it. Which was how we focussed on Haj. He did. Philip. Well, with Tabizi's help, I suppose. I was the unwitting instrument.”

  “And who is Haj, if I may ask?”

  It was shocking but true. Exactly as I had predicted, Lord Brinkley had no notion of what had been perpetrated under his aegis — not even in his role as the only man who could say yes.

  “Haj was one of the delegates, sir,” I said, adopting a softer approach. “There were three. Two militia chiefs — warlords, if you like — and Haj. He's the one who gouged you for an extra three million dollars,” I reminded him, with a rueful smile that he seemed to share: and so he should, gi
ven the moral outrage he had expressed so clearly over the satellite telephone.

  “The other two chiefs being who?” he enquired, still puzzled.

  “Franco, the Mai Mai man, and Dieudonne, who's a Munyamulenge. Haj doesn't have a militia as such, but he can always rustle one up any time he needs one, plus he's got a minerals comptoir in Bukavu, and a beer business, and a bunch of hotels and nightclubs, and his father Luc is a big player in Goma. Well, you know that, don't you?”

  He was nodding, and smiling in a way that told me we were connecting. In any normal situation, I reckoned, he would by now be pressing a button on his desk and sending for the luckless executive responsible for the cock-up, but since he showed no sign of doing that, but to the contrary had folded his hands together under his chin in the manner of somebody settling down for a good long listen, I decided to take the story from the top, rather as I had done with Hannah, though in a much condensed form and with a lot less concern for the sensibilities of my distinguished audience, and perhaps too little, as I began to fear when we approached the devastating moment of truth regarding Haj's maltreatment.

  “So where does all this lead us, in your opinion?” he asked, with the same confiding smile. “What's your bottom line here, Salvador? Do we take it straight to the Prime Minister? The President of the United States? The African Union? Or all of them at once?”

  I permitted myself a consoling laugh. “Oh I don't think that's necessary, sir. I don't think we need take it that far at all, frankly.”

  “I'm relieved.”

  “I think it's just a case of calling a halt immediately, and making absolutely sure the halt happens. We've got twelve full days before they're due to go in, so there's plenty of time. Stop the war plan, stand the Mwangaza down until he can find proper, ethical supporters — well, like yourself, sir — tear up the contract—”

  “There's a contract, is there?”

  “Oh indeed there is! A really shady one, if I may say so, sir. Drafted by Monsieur Jasper Albin of Besançon — whom you have used in the past, and whom presumably your people decided to use again — and rendered into Swahili by none other than my humble self.”