A Delicate Truth

by John le Carré

  ‘An Official Secrets Act declaration’ – her head still buried in his document – ‘stating that she’s aware of its terms and penalties.’ And to Lionel, before Kit could answer: ‘Or didn’t we do that for partners and significant others in his day? I forget when that came in, precisely.’

  ‘Well now, I don’t think I’m totally sure either,’ Lionel replied keenly. ‘Kit, what’s your take on this?’

  ‘No idea,’ Kit growled. ‘Never saw her sign any document of that sort. She certainly never told me she’d signed one.’ And as the sick fury he had been suppressing for too long came to the surface: ‘Hell does it matter what she signed or didn’t sign? Not my fault she knows what she knows. Not hers either. The girl’s desperate. I’m desperate. She wants answers. We all do.’

  ‘All?’ Frances repeated, lifting her pallid face to him in a kind of frigid alarm. ‘Who is all in this equation? Are you telling us there are other people who are aware of the content of this paper?’

  ‘If they are, it’s none of my doing,’ Kit retorted angrily, turning to Lionel for the male relief. ‘And not Jeb’s either. Jeb wasn’t gabby, Jeb stuck to the rules. Didn’t go to the press or any of that stuff. Stayed strictly inside the camp. Wrote to his MP, his regiment – and probably to you people, for all I know,’ he ended accusingly.

  ‘Yes, well, it’s all very painful and very unfair,’ Lionel agreed, delicately touching the top of his frizzy grey hair with his open palm as if to console it. ‘And I think I may say that we have gone to very serious lengths over the last years to get to the bottom of what was obviously a very controversial, very complex, many-faceted – what can we say, Frances? – episode.’

  ‘We being who?’ Kit grunted, but the question seemed to go unheard.

  ‘And everyone’s been very helpful and forthcoming – wouldn’t you agree, Frances?’ Lionel continued, and transferring his hand to his lower lip gave it too a consoling tweak. ‘I mean, even the Americans, who are normally very tight indeed about these things – and of course had no official locus at all, let alone unofficial – came through with a very clear statement distancing themselves from any hint that the Agency might have provided support-in-aid – for which we were duly grateful, weren’t we, Frances?’

  And turning to Kit again:

  ‘And of course we did hold an inquiry. Internally, obviously. But with due diligence. And as a result, poor Fergus Quinn fell on his sword, which – and I think, Frances, you would share this view – was absolutely the decent thing to do at the time. But these days, who does the decent thing? I mean, when one thinks of the politicians who haven’t resigned and should have done, poor Fergus comes over like a shining knight. Frances, I believe you had a point?’

  Frances had:

  ‘What I don’t understand, Sir Christopher, is what this document is supposed to be? Is it an accusation? A witness statement? Or simply a minute of what somebody said to you, and you have reported it on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, with no commitment on your own part either way?’

  ‘It’s what it is, for Christ’s sake!’ Kit retorted, his flame now fully lit. ‘Operation Wildlife was an utter cock-up. Total. The intelligence that prompted it was a lot of balls, two innocent people were shot dead, and there’s been a three-year cover-up by all parties involved – including, I strongly suspect, this place. And the one man who was willing to speak up has met an untimely death, which needs some very serious looking into. Bloody serious,’ he ended, on a bark.

  ‘Yes, well, I think we could just settle for unsolicited document of record, actually,’ Lionel murmured to Frances helpfully.

  Frances was not to be appeased:

  ‘Would I be overstating the case, Sir Christopher, if I suggested that the whole burden of your testimony against Mr Crispin and others is derived from what Jeb Owens said to you between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. on that one night in your club? I am excluding for the moment the so-called receipt that Jeb passed to your wife, and which I see you have added as an annexe of some sort.’

  For a moment Kit appeared too stunned to speak.

  ‘What about my bloody testimony? I was there, wasn’t I? On the hillside! In Gibraltar. The minister’s man on the spot. He wanted my advice. I gave it to him. Don’t tell me nobody was recording what was being said back and forth. There’s no case for going in. My words, loud and clear. And Jeb agreed with me. They all did. Shorty, every man jack of them. But they’d got the order to go, so they went. Not because they’re sheep. But because that’s what decent soldiers do! However bloody silly the orders are. Which they were. Bloody silly. No rational grounds? Never mind. Orders are orders,’ he added, for emphasis.

  Frances was scrutinizing another page of Kit’s document:

  ‘But surely everything you saw and heard in Gibraltar tallied precisely with the account you were afterwards given by those who had planned the operation, and were in a position to assess the outcome? Which you were patently not, were you? You had absolutely no idea of the outcome. You simply take your tune from other people. First you believe what the planners tell you. Then you believe what Jeb Owens tells you. On no more substantial evidence than your own preferences. Am I not right?’

  And providing Kit with no opportunity to answer that question, she asked another:

  ‘Can you tell me, please, how much alcohol you had consumed before you went upstairs that night?’

  Kit faltered, then blinked several times, like a man who has lost his sense of time and place, and is trying to recover them.

  ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘Soon wore off. I’m used to drink. You get a shock like that, you sober up bloody fast.’

  ‘Did you sleep at all?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In your club. In your club bedroom. During the passage of that night and early morning. Did you sleep or not?’

  ‘How the hell could I sleep? We were talking all the time!’

  ‘Your document suggests Jeb abandoned you at first light and spirited himself out of the club, we know not how. Did you go back to sleep after Jeb had disappeared so miraculously?’

  ‘I hadn’t slept in the first place, so how could I go back to sleep? And his departure wasn’t miraculous. It was professional. He’s a pro. Was. Knew all the tricks of the trade.’

  ‘And when you woke up – abracadabra, he wasn’t there any more.’

  ‘He’d gone already, I told you! There was no bloody abracadabra about it! It was stealth. The chap was a master of stealth’ – as if propounding a concept that was new to him.

  Lionel chipped in, decent Lionel:

  ‘Kit – man to man – just tell us how much you and Jeb put away that night – give us a rough idea. Everybody balks about how much they actually drink, but if we’re going to get to the bottom of this, we need the whole story, warts and all.’

  ‘We drank warm beer,’ Kit retorted contemptuously. ‘Jeb sipped his and left most of it. That satisfy you?’

  ‘But in fact’ – Lionel looking at his gingery-haired fingers now, rather than at Kit – ‘when you really get down to it, we are talking two pints of beer, aren’t we? And Jeb, as you say, is no sort of drinker – or wasn’t, poor chap – so presumably you mopped up the rest. True?’

  ‘Probably.’

  Frances was once more talking to her notes.

  ‘So, effectively, two pints of beer on top of the very considerable quantity of alcohol you’d already drunk during and after dinner, not to mention two double eighteen-year-old Macallan whiskies consumed with Crispin at the Connaught before you ever reached your club. Calculated together, let us say eighteen to twenty units. One might also draw conclusions from the fact that, when you suborned the night porter, you specified one beer glass only. In effect, therefore, you were ordering for yourself. Alone.’

  ‘Have you been sniffing around my club? That’s bloody disgraceful! Of course it was only one beer glass! D’you think I wanted to tell the night porter I’d got a man in my room? Who did you talk to anyway?
The secretary? Christ Almighty!’

  He was appealing to Lionel, but Lionel was back to patting his hair, and Frances had more to say:

  ‘We are also reliably informed that it would be impossible for any individual, master of stealth though he may be, to infiltrate himself into your club’s premises, either through the service entrance at the rear, or through the front door, which is kept under surveillance at all times, both by the porter and by CCTV. Added to which, all club personnel are police vetted and security-aware.’

  Kit was fumbling, choking, fighting for lucidity, for moderation, for sweet reason:

  ‘Look here, both of you. Don’t grill me. Grill Crispin. Grill Elliot. Go back to the Americans. Find that fake doctor woman who told me Jeb had gone mad when he was already dead.’ Stumble. Breathe. Swallow. ‘And find Quinn, wherever he is. Get him to tell you what really happened down there on the rocks behind the houses.’

  He thought he’d finished, but discovered he hadn’t:

  ‘And hold yourselves a proper public inquiry. Trace that poor bloody woman and her child and get some compensation for her relatives! And when you’ve done that, find out who killed Jeb the day before he was going to sign up to my document and put in his own word.’ And somewhat erratically: ‘And don’t for God’s sake believe anything that charlatan Crispin tells you. Man’s a liar to his boots.’

  Lionel had finished patting his hair:

  ‘Yes, well, Kit, I don’t want to make a big matter of this but, if push ever came to shove, you’d be in a pretty unhealthy position, frankly. A public inquiry of the sort you’re hankering after – which could result from, well, from your document – is light years away from the sort of hearing that Frances and I envisage. Anything deemed in the smallest way to go against national security – secret operations successful or otherwise, extraordinary rendition whether merely planned or actually achieved, robust interrogation methods, ours or more particularly the Americans’ – goes straight into the Official Secrets box, I’m afraid, and the witnesses with it’ – raising his eyes respectfully to Frances, which is the cue for her to square her shoulders and place her hands flat on the open folder before her as if she is about to levitate.

  ‘It is my duty to advise you, Sir Christopher,’ she announces, ‘that you are in a most serious position. Yes, acknowledged, you took part in a certain very secret operation. Its authors are scattered. The documentation, other than your own, is patchy. In the few files that are available to this Office, no names of participants are mentioned – save one. Yours. Which does rather mean that in any criminal investigation that resulted from this document, your name would predominate as senior British representative on the ground, and you would have to answer accordingly. Lionel?’ – turning hospitably to him.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s the bad news, Kit, I’m afraid. And the good news is, frankly, pretty hard to come by. We have a new set of rules since your day for cases where sensitive issues are involved. Some already in place; others, we trust, imminent. And, very unfortunately, Wildlife does tick a lot of those boxes. Which would mean, I’m afraid, that any inquiry would have to take place behind closed doors. Should it find against you – and should you elect to bring a suit – which would naturally be your good right – then the resultant hearing would be conducted by a hand-picked and very carefully briefed group of approved lawyers, some of whom would obviously do their best to speak for you and others not so for you. And you – the claimant, as he or she is rather whimsically called – would I’m afraid be banished from the court while the government presented its case to the judge without the inconvenience of a direct challenge by you or your representatives. And under the rules currently being discussed, the very fact that a hearing is being conducted might of itself be kept secret. As of course, in that case, would the judgement.’

  After a rueful smile to harbinger a further spot of bad news, and a pat for his hair, he resumed:

  ‘And then, as Frances so rightly says, if there were ever a criminal case against you, any prosecution would take place in total secrecy until a sentence was handed down. Which is to say, I’m afraid, Kit’ – allowing himself another sympathetic smile, though whether for the law or its victim was unclear – ‘draconian though it may sound, Suzanna wouldn’t necessarily know you were on trial, assuming for the moment that you were. Or at least not until you’d been found guilty – assuming, once more, that you had been. There would be a jury of sorts – but of course its members would have to be very heavily vetted by the security services prior to selection, which obviously does rather stack the odds against one. And you, for your part, would be allowed to see the evidence against you – at least, let us say, in broad brush – but I’m afraid not share it with your nearest and dearest. Oh and whistle-blowing per se would absolutely not be a defence, whistle-blowing being – and may it forever remain so in my personal view – by definition a risk business. I’m deliberately not pulling my punches here, Kit. I think Frances and I both feel we owe you that. Don’t we, Frances?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Kit whispered incoherently. And then again, fearing he might not have spoken aloud: ‘Jeb’s dead.’

  ‘Most unhappily, yes, he is,’ Frances agreed, for the first time accepting a point of Kit’s argument. ‘Though not perhaps in the circumstances you seek to imply. A sick soldier killed himself with his own weapon. Regrettably, that is a practice that is on the increase. The police have no grounds for suspicion, and who are we to dispute their judgement? Meanwhile, your document will be kept on record in the hope that it will never have to be used against you. I trust you share that hope.’

  *

  Reaching the foot of the great staircase, Kit appears to forget which way to turn, but fortunately Lancaster is on hand to guide him to the front gates.

  ‘What did you say your name was, my dear fellow?’ Kit asks him as they shake hands.

  ‘Lancaster, sir.’

  ‘You’ve been very kind,’ says Kit.

  *

  The news that Kit Probyn had been positively sighted in the smoking room of his club in Pall Mall – transmitted yet again by text over Emily’s black burner, thanks to a tip-off from her mother – had reached Toby just as he was settling down at the long table in the third-floor conference room to discuss the desirability of engaging in talks with a Libyan rebel group. What excuses he had pleaded for leaping from his seat and stalking out of the room now escaped him. He remembered pulling the silver burner from his pocket in full view of everyone – he had no alternative – and reading the text and saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m terribly sorry,’ then probably something about somebody dying, given that the news of Jeb’s death still occupied his mind.

  He remembered pelting down the stairs past a Chinese delegation coming up, then running and walking the thousand-odd yards from the Office to Pall Mall, all the while talking feverishly to Emily, who had summarily abandoned her evening surgery and got herself on to a tube headed for St James’s Park. The club secretary, she had reported before she descended, had at least honoured his promise to inform Suzanna the moment Kit appeared, if not with the good grace that might have been expected of him:

  ‘Mum said he made Dad sound like some sort of criminal on the loose. Apparently the police went round there this afternoon, asking a lot of questions about him. Said it was to do with something called enhanced vetting. How much he drank and whether he’d had a man in his room when he stayed in the club recently, if you can believe it. And had he bribed the night porter to serve them food and drink – what on earth was that about?’

  Panting from his exertions and clutching the silver burner to his ear, Toby took up his agreed position next to the flight of eight stone steps that led up to the imposing portals of Kit’s club. And suddenly Emily was flying towards him – Emily as he’d never seen her – Emily the runner, the freed wild child, her raincoat billowing, dark hair streaming behind her against a slate-grey sky.

  They climbed the steps, Toby leading. The lobby was dark and
smelt of cabbage. The Secretary was tall and desiccated.

  ‘Your father has removed himself to the Long Library,’ he informed Emily in a dispirited nasal twang. ‘Ladies can’t go in, I’m afraid. You’re allowed downstairs, but only after 6.30.’ And to Toby, having looked him over: tie, jacket, matching trousers. ‘You’re all right to go in as long as you’re his guest. Will he vouch for you as his guest?’

  Ignoring the question, Toby turned to Emily:

  ‘No need for you to hang around in here. Why don’t you hail a cab and sit in it till we come?’

  At low-lit tables, amid cages of ancient books, greying men drank and murmured head to head. Beyond them, in an alcove given over to marble busts, sat Kit, alone, bowed over a glass of whisky, his shoulders shaking to the uneasy rhythm of his breathing.

  ‘It’s Bell,’ Toby said into his ear.

  ‘Didn’t know you were a member,’ Kit replied, without lifting his head.

  ‘I’m not. I’m your guest. So I’d like you to buy me a drink. Vodka, if that’s all right. A large one,’ he told a waiter. ‘On Sir Christopher’s tab, please. Tonic, ice, lemon.’ He sat down. ‘Who’ve you been talking to at the Office?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about that. You made your démarche. Is that right?’

  Kit, head down. Long pull of Scotch:

  ‘Some bloody démarche,’ he muttered.

  ‘You showed them your document. The one you’d drafted while you were waiting for Jeb.’

  With improbable alacrity, the waiter set Toby’s vodka on the table, together with Kit’s bill and a ballpoint pen.

  ‘In a minute,’ Toby told him sharply, and waited till he’d left. ‘Just please tell me this. Did your document – does your document – make any mention of me? Maybe you found it necessary to refer to a certain illegal tape recording? Or Quinn’s erstwhile Private Secretary. Did you, Kit?’

  Kit’s head still down, but rolling from side to side.