A last forlorn glance at his BlackBerry tells him that his appeal remains unheeded. He switches it off and consigns it to the darkness of an inner pocket.
*
Having performed the ludicrous manoeuvres required of him by his minister, Toby arrives in the anteroom to the Private Office and confirms by internal telephone with the bemused security guards that he has successfully escaped their attention.
‘You were solid glass, Mr Bell, sir. I saw straight through you. Have a nice weekend.’
‘You too, and thanks a bundle.’
Poised over his desk, he is emboldened by a surge of indignation. Giles, you’re forcing me to do this.
The desk is supposedly prestigious: a kneehole-style reproduction antique with a tooled-leather worktop.
Seating himself in the chair before it, he leans forward and eases open the voluminous bottom right-hand drawer.
If there is a part of him that is still praying that his requests of Works Department have miraculously been answered during the night, let it pray no more. Like a rusting engine of war on a forgotten battlefield, the ancient tape recorder lies where she has lain for decades, waiting for the call that will never come: except that today it has. In place of voice activation, she boasts a timing device similar to the one on the microwave in his flat. Her aged spools are bare. But two giant tapes in dust-caked cellophane packets lie ready for duty on the shelf above her.
Up for off. Down for record.
And wait for tomorrow when I come and get you, if I’m not already in prison.
*
And tomorrow had finally come, and Isabel had gone. It was today, an unseasonably sunny spring Sunday, and church bells were summoning the sinners of Soho to repentance, and Toby Bell, bachelor of three hours’ standing, was still seated at his pavement table over his third – or was it fifth? – coffee of the morning, steeling himself to commit the irrevocable act of felony that he had been planning and dreading all night: to wit, retrace his steps to the ministerial anteroom, collect the tape and spirit it out of the Foreign Office under the noses of the security guards in the manner of the vilest spy.
He still had a choice. He had worked that out, too, in the long, wild reaches of the night. For as long as he sat at this tin table, he could argue that nothing untoward had happened. No security officer in his right mind would consider checking out an age-old tape recorder mouldering in the bottom of his desk drawer. And in the distant possibility that the tape was discovered, well, he had his answer ready: in the stressful run-up to an ultra-secret meeting of immense national importance, Minister Quinn had remembered the existence of a covert audio system and instructed Toby to activate it. Later, with his head full of affairs of state, Quinn would deny that he had given such an order. Well, an aberration of that kind, for those who knew the man, would by no means be out of character; and for those who remembered the tribulations of Richard Nixon, all too familiar.
Toby peered round for the pretty waitress and, through the café doorway, saw her leaning over the counter, flirting with the waiter.
She gave him a lovely smile and came trotting out to him, still flirting.
Seven pounds, please. He gave her ten.
He stood on the kerb, watching the happy world brush past him.
Turn left for the Foreign Office, I’m on my way to prison. Turn right to Islington, I go home to a blessedly empty flat. But already, in the brightness of the morning, he was striding purposefully down Whitehall.
‘Back again, Mr Bell? They must be running you ragged,’ said the senior guard, who liked a chat.
But the younger ones only glowered at their screens.
The mahogany door was closed, but don’t trust anything: Quinn may have snuck in early or, for all Toby knew, been in there all night, hunkered down with Jay Crispin, Roy Stormont-Taylor and Mr Music Brad.
He banged on the door, called ‘Minister?’ – banged again. No answer.
He strode to his desk, yanked open the bottom drawer and to his horror saw a pin-light burning. Christ Almighty: if anybody had spotted it!
He wound back the tape, coaxed it from its housing, returned switch and timer to their previous settings. With the tape wedged under his armpit he set out on his return journey, not forgetting a wave of ‘Cheerio’ to the older guard and a ‘fuck you’ nod of authority to the younger ones.
*
It is only minutes later, but already a calm of sleep has descended over Toby, and for a while he is standing still and everything is passing him by. When he wakes, he is in the Tottenham Court Road, eying the windows of second-hand electronics dealers and trying to decide which of them is the least likely to remember a thirty-something bloke in a baggy black jacket and chinos who wanted to buy a clapped-out second-hand family-sized tape recorder for cash.
And somewhere along the way he must have stopped at a cashpoint, bought himself a copy of the day’s Observer, and also a carrier bag with a Union Jack on it, because the tape is nestling inside the bag between the pages of the newspaper.
And probably he has already dropped in on two or three shops before he lucked out with Aziz, who has this brother in Hamburg whose line of business is shipping scrap electronic equipment to Lagos by the container load. Old fridges, computers, radios and clapped-out giant tape recorders: this brother can’t get enough of them, which is how Aziz comes to be keeping this pile of old stuff in his back room for his brother to collect.
And it is also how Toby, by a miracle of luck and persistence, becomes the owner of a replica of the Cold War-era tape recorder in the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk, except that this version was coloured a sleek pearl-grey and came in its original box which, as Aziz regretfully explained, made it a collector’s item and therefore ten quid more, plus I’m afraid it’s got to be another sixteen for the adaptor if you’re going to wire it up to anything.
Manhandling his booty into the street, Toby was accosted by a sad old woman who had mislaid her bus pass. Discovering he had no loose change, he astonished her with a five-pound note.
Entering his flat, he was brought to a dead halt by Isabel’s scent. The bedroom door was ajar. Nervously he pushed it open, then the door to the bathroom.
It’s all right. It’s just her scent. Jesus. You never know.
He tried wiring up the tape recorder on the kitchen table but the flex was too short. He uncoupled an extension lead from the living room and attached it.
Grunting and whimpering, the great Hebbelian Wheel of Life began to turn.
*
You know what you are, don’t you? You’re a bloody little drama queen.
No titles, no credits. No soothing introductory music. Just the minister’s unopposed, complacent assertion, delivered to the beat of his bespoke suede boots by Lobb at a thousand pounds a foot, as he advances across the Private Office, presumably to his desk.
You’re a drama queen, you understand? D’you even know what a drama queen is? You don’t. Well, that’s because you’re pig-ignorant, isn’t it?
Who the hell’s he talking to? Did I come in too late? Did I set the timer wrong?
Or is Quinn addressing his Jack Russell bitch Pippa, an election accessory that he sometimes brings in to amuse the girls?
Or has he paused in front of the gilt-framed looking-glass and he’s giving himself the New Labour mirror test, and soliloquizing while he does it?
Preparatory honking of ministerial throat. It’s Quinn’s habit to clear his throat before a meeting, then wash his mouth with Listerine with his loo door open. Evidently, the drama queen – whoever he or she is – is being berated in absentia, and probably in the mirror.
Squeak of leather as he lowers himself into his executive throne, ordered from Harrods on the same day he took office, along with new blue carpet and a clutch of encrypted phones.
Unidentified scratching sounds from desk area. Probably tinkering with the four empty red ministerial despatch boxes he insists on keeping at his elbow, as opposed to the full o
nes Toby isn’t allowed to open.
Yes. Well. Good of you to come, anyway. Sorry to fuck up your weekend. Sorry you fucked up mine as a matter of fact, but you don’t give a shit about that, do you? How’ve you been? Lady wife in good form? Glad to hear it. And the little brats all well? Give them a kick up the arse from me.
Footsteps approaching, faint but getting louder. Party the first is arriving.
The footsteps have passed through the unmanned, unlocked side entrance, traversed unmonitored corridors, scaled staircases, without pausing to pee: all just as Toby did yesterday in his role of ministerial guinea pig. The footsteps approaching the anteroom. One pair only. Hard soles. Leisured, nothing stealthy. These are not young feet.
And they’re not Crispin’s feet either. Crispin marches as to war. These are peaceful feet. They are feet that take their time, they’re a man’s and – why does Toby think he knows this, but he does – they’re a stranger’s. They belong to someone he hasn’t met.
At the door to the anteroom they hesitate but don’t knock. These feet have been instructed not to knock. They cross the anteroom, passing – oh, mother! – within two feet of Toby’s desk and the recorder grinding away inside it with its pin-light on.
Will the feet hear it? Apparently they won’t. Or if they do, they make nothing of it.
The feet advance. The feet enter the presence without knocking, presumably because that too is what they’ve been told to do. Toby waits for the squeak of the ministerial chair, doesn’t hear it. He is briefly assailed by a dreadful thought: what if the visitor, like cultural attaché Hester, has brought his own music?
Heart in mouth, he waits. No music, just Quinn’s offhand voice:
‘You weren’t stopped? Nobody questioned you? Bothered you?’
It’s minister to inferior, and they already know each other. It’s minister to Toby on an off day.
‘At no stage was I bothered or in any way molested, Minister. Everything went like clockwork, I’m glad to say. Another fault-free round.’
Another? When was the last fault-free round? And what’s with the equestrian reference? Toby has no time to linger.
‘Sorry about screwing up your weekend,’ Quinn is saying, in a familiar refrain. ‘Not of my doing, I can assure you. Case of first-night wobblies on the part of our intrepid friend.’
‘It’s of no consequence whatever, Minister, I assure you. I had no plans beyond clearing out my attic, a promise I am only too happy to defer.’
Humour. Not appreciated.
‘You saw Elliot, then. That went off all right. He filled you in. Yes?’
‘Insofar as Elliot was able to fill me in, Minister, I’m sure he did.’
‘It’s called need-to-know. What did you make of him?’ – not waiting for an answer. ‘Good bloke on a dark night, they tell me.’
‘I shall be happy to take your word for it.’
Elliot, Toby is remembering, Albanian-Greek renegade … ex-South African Special Forces … killed some chap in a bar … came to Europe for his health.
But by now the scenting British animal in Toby has parsed the visitor’s voice, and hence its owner. It is self-assured, middle to upper class, literate and non-combative. But what surprises him is its cheeriness. It’s the notion that its owner is having fun.
The minister again, imperious:
‘And you’re Paul, right? That’s understood. Some sort of conference academic. Elliot’s got it all worked out.’
‘Minister, a large part of me has been Paul Anderson since our last conversation, and it shall remain Paul Anderson until my task is complete.’
‘Elliot tell you why you’re here today?’
‘I’m to shake the hand of the leader of our small British token force, and I’m to be your red telephone.’
‘That your own, is it?’ – Quinn, after a beat.
‘My own what, Minister?’
‘Your own expression, for Heaven’s sake. Red telephone? Out of your own head. You made it up? Yes or no?’
‘If it’s not too frivolous.’
‘It’s bang on the button, as it happens. I might even use it.’
‘I should be flattered.’
Disconnect resumes.
‘These Special Forces types are inclined to get a bit uppity.’ Quinn, a statement for the world. ‘Want everything cut, dried and legalled before they’ll get out of bed in the morning. Same problem all across the country, if you want my view. Wife still doing all right, is she?’
‘In the circumstances, splendidly, thank you, Minister. And never a word of complaint, I may say.’
‘Yeah, well, women. What they’re good at, isn’t it? They know how to deal with that stuff.’
‘Indeed they do, Minister. Indeed they do.’
Which is the cue for the arrival of party the second: another single pair of footsteps. They are lightweight, heel to toe and purposeful. On the point of casting them as Crispin’s, Toby finds himself quickly corrected:
‘Jeb, sir,’ they announce, coming to a smart halt.
*
Is this the drama queen who has fucked up Quinn’s weekend? Whether he is or not, with Jeb’s arrival a different Fergus Quinn takes the stage. Gone the sulky lethargy and in place of it enter the raunchy, straight-from-the-shoulder Glaswegian Man of the People that his electorate falls for every time.
‘Jeb! Good man. Really, really great. Very proud indeed. Let me say first that we’re fully appreciative of your concerns, right? And we’re here to solve them any which way we can. I’ll do the easy bit first. Jeb, this is Paul, okay? Paul, meet Jeb. You see each other. You see me. I see you both. Jeb, you’re standing in the Minister’s Private Office, my office. I am a minister of the Crown. Paul, you’re an established senior foreign servant of long experience. Do me a favour and confirm that for Jeb here.’
‘Confirmed to the hilt, Minister. And honoured to meet you, Jeb’ – to a rustle of shaking hands.
‘Jeb, you will have seen me on television, going the rounds of my constituency, performing at Question Time in the House of Commons and all that.’
Wait your turn, Quinn. Jeb’s a man who thinks before he answers.
‘Well now, I have visited your website, as a matter of fact. Very impressive, too.’
Is this a Welsh voice? It assuredly is: the Welsh lilt with all its cadences in place.
‘And I in turn have read enough of your record, Jeb, to tell you straight off that I admire and respect you, and your men, plus I’m totally confident you’ll all do a really, really fine job. Now then: the countdown’s already begun, and very understandably and rightly, you and your men wish to be one hundred per cent assured of the British chain of command and control. You have last-minute worries you need to get off your chest: absolutely understood. So do I.’ Joke. ‘Now. Let me address a couple of niggles that have reached me and see where we stand, right?’
Quinn is pacing, his voice darting in and out of the steam-age microphones hidden in the wooden panelling of his office as he swishes past them:
‘Paul here will be your man on the spot. That’s for starters. Plus it’s what you’ve been asking for, right? It is not proper or desirable that I, as a Foreign Office minister, give direct military orders to a man in the field, but you, at your own request, will have your own official-unofficial Foreign Office advisor, Paul here, at your elbow, to assist and advise. When Paul conveys a command to you, it will be a command that comes from the top. It will be a command that bears the imprimatur – signature, that is – of certain people over there.’
Is he pointing at Downing Street as he says this? The slur of a body movement suggests he is.
‘I’ll put it this way, Jeb. This little red fellow sitting here connects me directly with those certain people. Got it? Well, Paul here will be our red telephone.’
Not for the first time in Toby’s experience, Fergus Quinn has brazenly stolen a man’s line without attribution. Is he waiting for applause and not getting it? Or is it someth
ing in Jeb’s expression that sets him going? Either way, his patience snaps:
‘For Christ’s sake, Jeb. Look at you! You’ve got your guarantees. You’ve got Paul here. You’ve got your green light, and here we are with the bloody clock ticking. What are we actually talking about?’
But Jeb’s voice displays no such disquiet under fire:
‘Only I tried to have a word with Mr Crispin about it, see,’ he explains, in his comforting Welsh rhythm. ‘But he didn’t seem to want to listen. Too busy. Said I should sort it out with Elliot, him being the designated operational commander.’
‘What the hell’s wrong with Elliot? They tell me he’s absolutely top of the range. First rate.’
‘Well, nothing really. Except Ethical’s sort of a new brand to us, like. Plus we’re operating on the basis of Ethical’s intelligence. So naturally we thought we’d better come to you, well, for reassurance, like. Only it’s no bother for Crispin’s boys, is it? Them being American and exceptional, which is why they were chosen, I suppose. Big money on the table if the operation is successful, plus the international courts can’t lay a finger on them. But my boys are British, aren’t they? So am I. We’re soldiers, not mercenaries. And we don’t fancy sitting in prison in The Hague for an indeterminate period of time accused of participating in an act of extraordinary rendition, do we? Plus we’ve been struck off regimental books for reasons of deniability. The regiment can wash its hands of us any time it wants if the operation comes unstuck. Common criminals, we’d be, not soldiers at all, according to our way of thinking.’
*
Here Toby, who until now had kept his eyes closed the better to visualize the scene, wound back the tape and played the same passage again, then, leaping to his feet, grabbed a kitchen notebook with Isabel’s scrawls all over it, tore off the top few pages and scribbled down such abbreviations as extr/rendition, US exceptnls and no int./justice.
A Delicate Truth Page 11