A Delicate Truth A Novel

2





On a sunny Sunday early in that same spring, a thirty-one-year-old British foreign servant earmarked for great things sat alone at the pavement table of a humble Italian café in London’s Soho, steeling himself to perform an act of espionage so outrageous that, if detected, it would cost him his career and his freedom: namely, recovering a tape recording, illicitly made by himself, from the Private Office of a Minister of the Crown whom it was his duty to serve and advise to the best of his considerable ability.

His name was Toby Bell and he was entirely alone in his criminal contemplations. No evil genius controlled him, no paymaster, provocateur or sinister manipulator armed with an attaché case stuffed with hundred-dollar bills was waiting round the corner, no activist in a ski mask. He was in that sense the most feared creature of our contemporary world: a solitary decider. Of a forthcoming clandestine operation on the Crown Colony of Gibraltar he knew nothing: rather, it was this tantalizing ignorance that had brought him to his present pass.

Neither was he in appearance or by nature cut out to be a felon. Even now, premeditating his criminal design, he remained the decent, diligent, tousled, compulsively ambitious, intelligent-looking fellow that his colleagues and employers took him for. He was stocky in build, not particularly handsome, with a shock of unruly brown hair that went haywire as soon as it was brushed. That there was gravitas in him was undeniable. The gifted, state-educated only child of pious artisan parents from the south coast of England who knew no politics but Labour – the father an elder of his local tabernacle, the mother a chubby, happy woman who spoke constantly of Jesus – he had battled his way into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, first as a clerk, and thence by way of evening classes, language courses, internal examinations and two-day leadership tests, to his present, coveted position. As to the Toby, which might by the sound of it set him higher on the English social ladder than his provenance deserved, it derived from nothing more elevated than his father’s pride in the holy man Tobias, whose wondrous filial virtues are set down in the ancient scripts.

What had driven Toby’s ambition – what drove it still – was something he barely questioned. His schoolfriends had wished only to make money. Let them. Toby, though modesty forbade him to say so in so many words, wished to make a difference – or, as he had put it a little shamefacedly to his examiners, take part in his country’s discovery of its true identity in a post-imperial, post-Cold War world. Given his head, he would long ago have swept away Britain’s private education system, abolished all vestiges of entitlement and put the monarchy on a bicycle. Yet even while harbouring these seditious thoughts, the striver in him knew that his first aim must be to rise in the system he dreamed of liberating.

And in speech, though he was speaking at this moment to no one but himself? As a natural-born linguist with his father’s love of cadence and an almost suffocating awareness of the brand-marks on the English tongue, it was inevitable that he should discreetly shed the last tinges of his Dorset burr in favour of the Middle English affected by those determined not to have their social origins defined for them.

With the alteration in his voice had come an equally subtle change in his choice of clothing. Conscious that any moment now he would be sauntering through the gates of the Foreign Office with every show of being at his managerial ease, he was wearing chinos and an open-necked shirt – and a shapeless black jacket for that bit of off-duty formality.

What was also not apparent to any outward eye was that only two hours previously his live-in girlfriend of three months’ standing had walked out of his Islington flat vowing never to see him again. Yet somehow this tragic event had failed to cast him down. If there was a connection between Isabel’s departure and the crime he was about to commit, then perhaps it was to be found in his habit of lying awake at all hours brooding on his unshareable preoccupations. True, at intervals throughout the night, they had vaguely discussed the possibility of a separation, but then latterly they often had. He had assumed that when morning came she would as usual change her mind, but this time she stuck to her guns. There had been no screams, no tears. He phoned for a cab, she packed. The cab came, he helped her downstairs with her suitcases. She was worried about her silk suit at the cleaner’s. He took the ticket from her and promised to send it on. She was pale. She did not look back, even if she could not resist the final word:

‘Let’s face it, Toby, you’re a bit of a cold fish, aren’t you?’ – with which she rode away, ostensibly to her sister in Suffolk, though he suspected she might have other irons in the fire, including her recently abandoned husband.

And Toby, equally firm of purpose, had set out on foot for his coffee and croissant in Soho as a prelude to grand larceny. Which is where he now sat, sipping his cappuccino in the morning sunshine and staring blankly at the passers-by. If I’m such a cold fish, how did I talk myself into this God-awful situation?

For answers to this and allied questions, his mind turned as of habit to Giles Oakley, his enigmatic mentor and self-appointed patron.


Berlin.

The neophyte diplomat Bell, Second Secretary (Political), has just arrived at the British Embassy on his first overseas posting. The Iraq War looms. Britain has signed up to it, but denies it has done so. Germany is dithering on the brink. Giles Oakley, the embassy’s éminence grise – darting, impish Oakley, dyed in all the oceans, as the Germans say – is Toby’s section chief. Oakley’s job, amid a myriad others less defined: to supervise the flow of British intelligence to German liaison. Toby’s: to be his spear-carrier. His German is already good. As ever, he’s a fast learner. Oakley takes him under his wing, marches him round the ministries and opens doors for him that would otherwise have remained locked against one of his lowly status. Are Toby and Giles spies? Not at all! They are blue-chip British career diplomats who have found themselves, like many others, at the trading tables of the free world’s vast intelligence marketplace.

The only problem is that the further Toby is admitted into these inner councils, the greater his abhorrence of the war about to happen. He rates it illegal, immoral and doomed. His discomfort is compounded by the knowledge that even the most supine of his schoolfriends are out on the street protesting their outrage. So are his parents who, in their Christian socialist decency, believe that the purpose of diplomacy should be to prevent war rather than to promote it. His mother emails him in despair: Tony Blair – once her idol – has betrayed us all. His father, adding his stern Methodist voice, accuses Bush and Blair jointly of the sin of pride and intends to compose a parable about a pair of peacocks who, bewitched by their own reflections, turn into vultures.

Little wonder then that with such voices dinning in his ear beside his own, Toby resents having to sing the war’s praises to, of all people, the Germans, even urging them to join the dance. He too voted heart and soul for Tony Blair, and now finds his prime minister’s public postures truthless and emetic. And with the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he boils over:

The scene is the Oakleys’ diplomatic villa in Grunewald. It is midnight as another ball-breaking Herrenabend – power dinner for male bores – drags to its close. Toby has acquired a decent crop of German friends in Berlin, but tonight’s guests are not among them. A tedious federal minister, a terminally vain titan of Ruhr industry, a Hohenzollern pretender and a quartet of free-loading parliamentarians have finally called for their limousines. Oakley’s diplomatic Ur-wife, Hermione, having supervised proceedings from the kitchen over a generous gin, has taken herself to bed. In the sitting room, Toby and Giles Oakley rake over the night’s takings for any odd scrap of indiscretion.

Abruptly, Toby’s self-control hits the buffers:

‘So actually screw, sod and f*ck the whole bloody thing,’ he declares, slamming down his glass of Oakley’s very old Calvados.

‘The whole bloody thing being what exactly?’ Oakley, the fifty-five-year-old leprechaun enquires, stretching out his little legs in luxurious ease, which is a thing he does in crisis.

With unshakable urbanity, Oakley hears Toby out, and as impassively delivers himself of his acid, if affectionate, response:

‘Go ahead, Toby. Resign. I share your callow personal opinions. No sovereign nation such as ours should be taken to war under false pretences, least of all by a couple of egomaniac zealots without an ounce of history between them. And certainly we should not have attempted to persuade other sovereign nations to follow our disgraceful example. So resign away. You’re exactly what the Guardian needs: another lost voice bleating in the wilderness. If you don’t agree with government policy, don’t hang around trying to change it. Jump ship. Write the great novel you’re always dreaming about.’

But Toby is not to be put down so easily:

‘So where the hell do you sit, Giles? You were as much against it as I was, you know you were. When fifty-two of our retired ambassadors signed a letter saying it was all a load of bollocks, you heaved a big sigh and told me you wished you were retired too. Do I have to wait till I’m sixty to speak out? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Till I’ve got my knighthood and my index-linked pension and I’m president of the local golf club? Is that loyalty or just funk, Giles?’

Oakley’s Cheshire-cat smile softens as, fingertips together, he delicately formulates his reply:

‘Where do I sit, you ask. Why, at the conference table. Always at the table. I wheedle, I chip away, I argue, I reason, I cajole, I hope. But I do not expect. I adhere to the hallowed diplomatic doctrine of moderation in all things, and I apply it to the heinous crimes of every nation, including my own. I leave my feelings at the door before I go into the conference room and I never walk out in a huff unless I’ve been instructed to do so. I positively pride myself on doing everything by halves. Sometimes – this could well be such a time – I make a cautious démarche to our revered masters. But I never try to rebuild the Palace of Westminster in a day. Neither, at the risk of being pompous, should you.’

And while Toby is fumbling for an answer:

‘Another thing, while I have you alone, if I may. My beloved wife Hermione tells me, in her capacity as the eyes and ears of Berlin’s diplomatic shenanigans, that you are conducting an inappropriate dalliance with the spouse of the Dutch military attaché, she being a notorious tart. True or false?’

Toby’s posting to the British Embassy in Madrid, which has unexpectedly discovered a need for a junior attaché with Defence experience, follows a month later.


Madrid.

Despite their disparity in age and seniority, Toby and Giles remain in close touch. How much this is due to Oakley’s string-pulling behind the scenes, how much to mere accident, Toby can only guess. Certain is that Oakley has taken to Toby in the way that some older diplomats consciously or otherwise foster their favoured young. Intelligence traffic between London and Madrid meanwhile was never brisker or more crucial. Its subject is not any more Saddam Hussein and his elusive weapons of mass destruction but the new generation of jihadists brought into being by the West’s assault on what was until then one of the more secular countries in the Middle East – a truth too raw to be admitted by its perpetrators.

Thus the duo continues. In Madrid, Toby – like it or not, and mainly he likes it – becomes a leading player in the intelligence marketplace, commuting weekly to London, where Oakley flits in the middle air between the Queen’s spies on one side of the river and the Queen’s Foreign Office on the other.

In coded discussions in Whitehall’s sealed basement rooms, new rules of engagement with suspected terrorist prisoners are cautiously thrashed out. Improbably, given Toby’s rank, he attends. Oakley presides. The word enhance, once used to convey spiritual exaltation, has entered the new American dictionary, but its meaning remains wilfully imprecise to the uninitiated, of whom Toby is one. All the same, he has his suspicions. Can these so-called new rules in reality be the old barbaric ones, dusted off and reinstated, he wonders? And if he is right, which increasingly he believes he is, what is the moral distinction, if any, between the man who applies the electrodes and the man who sits behind a desk and pretends he doesn’t know it’s happening, although he knows very well?

But when Toby, nobly struggling to reconcile these questions with his conscience and upbringing, ventures to air them – purely academically, you understand – to Giles over a cosy dinner at Oakley’s club to celebrate Toby’s thrilling new appointment on promotion to the British Embassy in Cairo, Oakley, from whom no secrets are hidden, responds with one of his doting smiles and hides himself behind his beloved La Rochefoucauld:

‘Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, dear man. In an imperfect world, I fear it’s the best we can manage.’

And Toby smiles back appreciatively at Oakley’s wit, and tells himself sternly yet again that he must learn to live with compromise – dear man being by now a permanent addition to Oakley’s vocabulary, and further evidence, were it needed, of his singular affection for his protégé.


Cairo.

Toby Bell is the British Embassy’s blue-eyed boy – ask anyone from the ambassador down! A six-month immersion course in Arabic and, blow me, the lad’s already halfway to speaking it! Hits it off with Egyptian generals and never once gives vent to his callow personal opinions – a phrase that has lodged itself permanently in his consciousness. Goes diligently about the business in which he has almost accidentally acquired expertise; barters intelligence with his Egyptian opposite numbers; and under instruction feeds them names of Egyptian Islamists in London who are plotting against the regime.

At weekends, he enjoys jolly camel rides with debonair military officers and secret policemen and lavish parties with the super-rich in their guarded desert condominiums. And at dawn, after flirting with their glamorous daughters, drives home with car windows closed to keep out the stench of burning plastic and rotting food as the ragged ghosts of children and their shrouded mothers forage for scraps in filthy acres of unsorted rubbish at the city’s edge.

And who is the guiding light in London who presides over this pragmatic trade in human destinies, sends cosy personal letters of appreciation to the reigning head of Mubarak’s secret police? – none other than Giles Oakley, Foreign Office intelligence broker extraordinaire and mandarin at large.

So it’s no surprise to anyone, except perhaps young Bell himself, that even while popular unrest throughout Egypt over Hosni Mubarak’s persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood is showing signs of erupting into violence four months ahead of the municipal elections, Toby should find himself whisked back to London and yet again promoted ahead of his years, to the post of Private Secretary, minder and confidential counsellor to the newly appointed Junior Minister of State to the Foreign Office, Fergus Quinn, MP, latterly of the Ministry of Defence.


‘From where I sit, you two are an ideal match,’ says Diana, his new Director of Regional Services, as she hacks away manfully at her open tuna sandwich over a dry self-service lunch at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. She is small, pretty and Anglo-Indian and talks in the heroic anachronisms of the Punjabi officers’ mess. Her shy smile, however, belies an iron purpose. Somewhere she has a husband and two children, but makes no mention of them in office hours.

‘You’re both young for your jobs – all right, he’s got ten years on you – but both ambitious as all get-out,’ she declares, unaware that the description applies equally to herself. ‘And don’t be fooled by appearances. He’s a thug, he beats the working-class drum, but he’s also ex-Catholic, ex-communist and New Labour – or what’s left of it now that its champion has moved on to richer pastures.’

Pause for a judicious munch.

‘Fergus hates ideology and thinks he’s invented pragmatism. And of course he hates the Tories, although half the time he’s to the right of them. He’s got a serious supporters’ club in Downing Street, and I don’t mean just the big beasts but the courtiers and spinmeisters. Fergus is their boy and they’re putting their shirts on him for as long as he runs. Pro-Atlantic to a fault, but if Washington thinks he’s the cat’s pyjamas, who are we to complain? Eurosceptic, that goes without saying. Doesn’t like us flunkies, but what politician does? And watch out for him when he bangs on about the G-WOT’ – the prevailing in-word for the Global War on Terror. ‘It’s out of style and I don’t need to tell you of all people that decent Arabs are getting awfully pissed off with it. He’s been told that already. Your job will be the usual. Stick to him like glue and don’t let him make any more puddles.’

‘More puddles, Diana?’ Toby asks, already troubled by some fairly loud rumours doing the rounds of the Whitehall gossip mill.

‘Ignore totally,’ she commands sternly, after another pause for accelerated mastication. ‘Judge a politician by what he did or didn’t do at Defence, you’d be stringing up half tomorrow’s Cabinet.’ And finding Toby’s eyes still on her: ‘Man made a horse’s arse of himself and got his wrist smacked. Case totally closed.’ And as a final afterthought: ‘The only surprising thing is that for once in its life Defence managed to hush up a force-twelve scandal.’

And with that, the loud rumours are officially declared dead and buried – until, in a concluding speech over coffee, Diana elects to exhume them and bury them all over again.

‘And just in case anyone should tell you different, both Defence and Treasury held a grand-slam internal inquiry with the gloves off, and concluded unanimously that Fergus had absolutely no case to answer. At worst, ill advised by his hopeless officials. Which is good enough for me, and I trust for you. Why are you looking at me like that?’

He isn’t looking at her in any way he is aware of, but he is certainly thinking that the lady is protesting too much.


Toby Bell, newly anointed Private Secretary to Her Majesty’s newly anointed Minister takes up his seals of office. Fergus Quinn, MP, marooned Blairite of the new Gordon Brown era, may not on the face of it be the sort of minister he would have chosen for his master. Born the only child of an old Glaswegian engineering family fallen on hard times, Fergus made an early name for himself in left-wing student politics, leading protest marches, confronting the police and generally getting his photograph in the newspapers. Having graduated in Economics from Edinburgh University, he disappears into the mists of Scottish Labour Party politics. Three years on, somewhat inexplicably, he resurfaces at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he meets and marries his present wife, a wealthy but troubled Canadian woman. He returns to Scotland, where a safe seat awaits him. The Party spin doctors quickly rate his wife unfit for presentation. An alcohol addiction is rumoured.

Soundings that Toby has taken round the Whitehall bazaar are mixed at best: ‘Sucks up a brief quick enough, but watch your arse when he decides to act on it,’ advises a bruised Defence Ministry veteran strictly off the record. And from a former assistant called Lucy: ‘Very sweet, very charming when he needs to be.’ And when he doesn’t? Toby asks. ‘He’s just not with us,’ she insists, frowning and avoiding his eye. ‘He’s out there fighting his demons somehow.’ But what demons and fighting them how is more than Lucy is willing or able to say.

At first sight, nonetheless, all augurs well.

True, Fergus Quinn is no easy ride, but Toby never expected different. He can be clever, obtuse, petulant, foul-mouthed and dazzlingly considerate in the space of half a day, one minute all over you, the next a brooder who locks himself up with his despatch boxes behind his heavy mahogany door. He is a natural bully and, as advertised, makes no secret of his contempt for civil servants; even those closest to him are not spared his tongue-lashings. But his greatest scorn is reserved for Whitehall’s sprawling intelligence octopus, which he holds to be bloated, elitist, self-regarding and in thrall to its own mystique. And this is all the more unfortunate since part of Team Quinn’s remit requires it to ‘evaluate incoming intelligence materials from all sources and submit recommendations for exploitation by the appropriate services’.

As to the scandal-at-Defence-that-never-was, whenever Toby is tempted to edge alongside it, he bumps up against what feels increasingly like a wall of silence deliberately constructed for his personal benefit: case closed, mate … sorry, old boy, lips sealed … And once, if only from a boastful clerk in Finance Section over a Friday-evening pint in the Sherlock Holmes – got away with daylight robbery, didn’t he? It takes the unlovable Gregory, seated by chance next to Toby at a tedious Monday focus session of the Staffing and Management Committee, to set his alarm bells ringing at full blast.

Gregory, a large and ponderous man older than his years, is Toby’s exact contemporary and supposed rival. But it is a fact known to all that, whenever the two of them are in line for an appointment, it’s always Toby who pips Gregory at the post. And so it might have been in the recent race for Private Secretary to the new Junior Minister, except that this time round the rumour mill decreed that there was no proper contest. Gregory had served a two-year secondment to Defence, bringing him into almost daily contact with Quinn, whereas Toby was virgin – which is to say, he brought no such murky baggage from the past.

The focus session drags to its inconclusive end. The room empties. Toby and Gregory remain by tacit agreement at the table. For Toby the moment provides a welcome opportunity to mend fences; Gregory is less sweetly disposed.

‘Getting along all right with King Fergie, are we?’ he enquires.

‘Fine, thanks, Gregory, just fine. A few wrinkles here and there, only to be expected. How’s life as Resident Clerk these days? Must be pretty eventful.’

But Gregory is not keen to discuss life as a Resident Clerk, which he regards as a poor second to Private Secretary to the new Minister.

‘Well, watch out he doesn’t flog the office furniture out the back door is all I can say,’ he advises with a humourless smirk.

‘Why? Is that his thing? Flogging furniture? He’d have a bit of a problem, humping his new desk down three floors, even him!’ Toby replies, determined not to rise.

‘And he hasn’t signed you up to one of his highly profitable business companies yet?’

‘Is that what he did to you?’

‘No way, old sport’ – with improbable geniality – ‘not me. I stayed clear. Good men are scarce, I say. Others weren’t so fly.’

And here without warning Toby’s patience snaps, which in Gregory’s company is what it tends to do.

‘Actually, what the hell are you trying to tell me, Gregory?’ he demands. And when all he gets is Gregory’s big, slow grin again: ‘If you’re warning me – if this is something I should know – then come out with it or go to Human bloody Resources.’

Gregory affects to weigh this suggestion.

‘Well, I suppose if it was anything you needed to know, old sport, you could always have a quiet word with your guardian angel Giles, couldn’t you?’


A self-righteous sense of purpose now swept over Toby which, even in retrospect, seated at his rickety coffee table on a sunny pavement in Soho, he could still not wholly justify to himself. Perhaps, he reflected, it was nothing more complicated than a case of pique at being denied a truth owed to him and shared by those around him. And certainly he would have argued that, since Diana had ordered him to stick like glue to his new master and not let him make puddles, he had a right to find out what puddles the man had made in the past. Politicians, in his limited experience of the breed, were repeat offenders. If and when Fergus Quinn offended in the future, it would be Toby who would have to explain why he had let his master off the lead.

As to Gregory’s jibe that he should go running to his guardian angel Giles Oakley: forget it. If Giles wanted Toby to know something, Giles would tell him. And if Giles didn’t, nothing on God’s earth was going to make him.

Yet something else, something deeper and more troubling, is driving Toby. It is his master’s near-pathological reclusiveness.

What in Heaven’s name does a man so seemingly extrovert do all day, cloistered alone in his Private Office with classical music booming out and the door locked not only against the outer world but against his very own staff? What’s inside those plump, hand-delivered, double-sealed, waxed envelopes that pour in from the little back rooms of Downing Street marked STRICTLY PERSONAL & PRIVATE which Quinn receives, signs for and, having read, returns to the same intractable couriers who brought them?

It’s not only Quinn’s past I’m being cut out of. It’s his present.


His first stop is Matti, career spy, drinking pal and former embassy colleague in Madrid. Matti is currently kicking his heels between postings in his Service’s headquarters across the river in Vauxhall. Perhaps the enforced inactivity will make him more forthcoming than usual. For arcane reasons – Toby suspects operational – Matti is also a member of the Lansdowne Club off Berkeley Square. They meet for squash. Matti is gangly, bald and bespectacled and has wrists of steel. Toby loses four–one. They shower, sit in the bar overlooking the swimming pool and watch the pretty girls. After a few desultory exchanges, Toby comes to the point:

‘So give me the story, Matti, because nobody else will. What went wrong at Defence when my minister was in the saddle?’

Matti does some slow-motion nodding of his long, goatish head:

‘Yes, well. There’s not a lot I can offer you, is there?’ he says moodily. ‘Your man went off the reservation, our lot saved his neck and he hasn’t forgiven us is about the long and short of it – silly bugger.’

‘Saved his neck how, for God’s sake?’

‘Tried to go it alone, didn’t he?’ says Matti contemptuously.

‘Doing what? Who to?’

Matti scratches his bald head and does another ‘Yes, well. Not my turf, you see. Not my area.’

‘I realize that, Matti. I accept it. It’s not my area either. But I’m the bloody man’s minder, aren’t I?’

‘All those bent lobbyists and arms salesmen beavering away at the fault lines between the defence industry and procurement,’ Matti complains, as if Toby is familiar with the problem.

But Toby isn’t, so he waits for more:

‘Licensed, of course. That was half the trouble. Licensed to rip off the Exchequer, bribe officials, offer them all the girls they can eat, holidays in Bali. Licensed to go private, go public, go any way they like, long as they’ve got a ministerial pass, which they all have.’

‘And Quinn had his snout in the trough with the rest of them, you’re saying?’

‘I’m not saying any bloody thing,’ Matti retorts sharply.

‘I know that. And I’m not hearing anything either. So Quinn stole. Is that it? All right, not exactly stole, perhaps, but diverted funds to certain projects in which he had an interest. Or his wife did. Or his cousin did. Or his aunt did. Is that it? Got caught, paid back the money, said he was awfully sorry, and the whole thing was swept under the carpet. Am I warm?’

A nubile girl bellyflops into the water to shrieks of laughter.

‘There’s a creep around called Crispin,’ Matti murmurs under the clamour. ‘Ever heard of him?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I haven’t either, so I’ll thank you to remember that. Crispin. Dodgy bastard. Avoid.’

‘Any reason given?’

‘Not specific. Our lot used him for a couple of jobs, then dropped him like a hot brick. Supposed to have led your man by the nose while he was Defence. All I know. Could be crap. Now get off my back.’

And with this Matti resumes his brooding contemplation of the pretty girls.


And as is often the way of life, from the moment Matti lets the name Crispin out of the box, it seems unable to let Toby go.

At a Cabinet Office wine and cheese party, two mandarins talk head to head: ‘Whatever happened to that shit Crispin, by the by?’ ‘Saw him hanging around the Lords the other day, don’t know how he has the gall.’ But on Toby’s approach the topic of their conversation turns abruptly to cricket.

At the close of an interministerial conference on intelligence with frenemy liaisons, as the current buzzword has it, the name acquires its own initial: well, let’s just hope you people don’t do another J. Crispin on us, snaps a Home Office director at her hated opposite number in Defence.

But is it really just a J? Or is it Jay like Jay Gatsby?

After half a night’s googling while Isabel sulks in the bedroom, Toby is none the wiser.

He will try Laura.


Laura is a Treasury boffin, fifty years old, sometime Fellow of All Souls, boisterous, brilliant, vast and overflowing with good cheer. When she descended unannounced on the British Embassy in Berlin as leader of a surprise audit team, Giles Oakley had commanded Toby to ‘take her out to dinner and charm the knickers off her’. This he had duly done, if not literally; and to such effect that their occasional dinners had continued without Oakley’s guidance ever since.

By good fortune, it’s Toby’s turn. He selects Laura’s favourite restaurant off the King’s Road. As usual, she has dressed with panache for the event, in a huge, flowing kaftan hung with beads and bangles and a cameo brooch the size of a saucer. Laura loves fish. Toby orders a sea bass baked in salt to share and an expensive Meursault to go with it. In her excitement Laura seizes his hands across the table and shakes them like a child dancing to music.

‘Marvellous, Toby, darling,’ she blurts, ‘and high time too,’ in a voice that rolls like cannon fire across the restaurant; and then blushes at her own loudness and drops her voice to a genteel murmur.

‘So how was Cairo? Did the natives storm the embassy and demand your head on a pike? I’d have been utterly terrified. Tell all.’

And after Cairo, she must hear about Isabel, because as ever she insists on her rights as Toby’s agony aunt:

‘Very sweet, very beautiful, and a ninny,’ she rules when she has heard him out. ‘Only a ninny marries a painter. As for you, you never could tell the difference between brains and beauty, and I suppose that still applies. I’m sure the two of you are perfectly suited,’ she concludes, with another hoot of laughter.

‘And the secret pulse of our great nation, Laura?’ Toby enquires lightly in return, since Laura has no known love life of her own that may be spoken of. ‘How are things in the oh-so-hallowed halls of the Treasury these days?’

Laura’s generous face lapses into despair, and her voice with it:

‘Grim, darling, just appalling. We’re clever and nice, but we’re understaffed and underpaid and we want the best for our country, which is old-fashioned of us. New Labour loves Big Greed, and Big Greed has armies of amoral lawyers and accountants on the make and pays them the earth to make rings round us. We can’t compete; they’re too big to fail and too big to fight. Now I’ve depressed you. Good. I’m depressed too,’ she says, taking a merry pull at her Meursault.

The fish arrives. Reverent quiet while the waiter takes it off the bone and divides it.

‘Darling, what a thrill,’ breathes Laura.

They tuck in. If Toby is to chance his arm, this is his moment.

‘Laura.’

‘Darling.’

‘Who precisely is J. Crispin when he’s at home? And J standing for what? There was some scandal at Defence while Quinn was there. Crispin was mixed up in it. I hear his name all over town, I’m being kept out of the loop and it frightens me. Somebody even described him as Quinn’s Svengali.’

Laura studies him with her very bright eyes, looks away, then takes a second look, as if she isn’t comfortable with what she’s seen there.

‘Is this why you asked me to dinner, Toby?’

‘Partly.’

‘Wholly,’ she corrects him, drawing a breath that is nearly a sigh. ‘And I think you could have had the decency to tell me that was your fell purpose.’

A pause while they both collect themselves. Laura resumes:

‘You’re out of the loop for the very good reason that you’re not supposed to be in it. Fergus Quinn has been given a fresh start. You’re part of it.’

‘I’m also his keeper,’ he replies defiantly, recovering his courage.

Another deep breath, a hard look, before the eyes turn downward and stay there.

‘I’ll tell you bits,’ she decides finally. ‘Not all, but more than I should.’

She sits upright and, like a child in disgrace, talks to her plate.

Quinn walked into a quagmire, she says. Defence was in a state of corporate rot long before he came on the scene. Perhaps Toby knows that already? Toby does. Half its officials didn’t know whether they were working for the Queen or the arms industry, and didn’t give a hoot as long as their bread was buttered. Perhaps Toby knows that, too? Toby does. He has heard it from Matti, but doesn’t let on. She’s not making excuses for Fergus. She’s saying Crispin was there ahead of him and saw him coming.

Reluctantly, she once more helps herself to Toby’s hand, and this time taps it sternly on the table to the rhythm of her words as she scolds him:

‘And I’ll tell you what you did, you evil man’ – as if Toby himself is Crispin now – ‘you set up your own spy shop. Right there inside the ministry. While everyone round you was flogging arms, you were peddling raw intelligence: straight from the shelf, direct to buyer, no stops between. Unspun, untested, unpasteurized and above all untouched by bureaucratic hands. Which was music to Fergie’s ears. Does he still play music in his office?’

‘Mostly Bach.’

‘And you’re Jay like the bird,’ she adds, in a flurried answer to his earlier question.

‘And Quinn actually bought from him? Or his company did?’

Laura takes another pull of her Meursault, shakes her head.

Toby tries again:

‘Was the stuff any good?’

‘It was expensive, so it had to be good, didn’t it?’

‘What’s he like, Laura?’ Toby insists.

‘Your minister?’

‘No! Jay Crispin, of course.’

Laura takes a deep breath. Her tone becomes terminal, and even angry:

‘Just listen to me, dear, will you? The scandal at Defence is dead, and Jay Crispin is henceforth and forever banished from all ministerial and government premises on pain of death. A strong formal letter has been sent to him to that effect. He will never grace the corridors of Whitehall or Westminster again.’ Another breath. ‘The inspiring minister whom you have the honour to serve, on the other hand, bruiser though he may be, has embarked on the next stage of his distinguished career, I trust with your help. Now will you please get me my coat?’

After a week of flailing himself with remorse, Toby remains dogged by the same question: If the scandal at Defence is dead and Crispin will never walk the corridors of Whitehall or Westminster again, then what’s the bloody man doing lobbying the House of Lords?


Six weeks roll by. On the surface things continue uneventfully. Toby drafts speeches and Quinn delivers them with conviction, even when there’s nothing to be convinced of. Toby stands at Quinn’s shoulder at receptions and murmurs the names of foreign dignitaries into his ear as they approach. Quinn greets them as long-lost friends.

But Quinn’s continued secretiveness drives not only Toby but the entire ministerial staff to the edge of desperation. He will stalk out of a Whitehall meeting – at the Home Office, the Cabinet Office or Laura’s Treasury – ignore his official Rover, hail a cab and disappear without explanation till next day. He will cancel a diplomatic engagement and not inform the diary secretary, his special advisors or even his Private Secretary. The pencilled entries in the diary he keeps on his desk are so cryptic that Toby can decipher them only with Quinn’s grudging assistance. One day the diary disappears altogether.

But it’s on their trips abroad that Quinn’s secretiveness assumes in Toby’s eyes a darker hue. Spurning the hospitality offered by local British ambassadors, Quinn the People’s Choice prefers to take up residence in grand hotels. When the Foreign Office Accounts Department demurs, Quinn replies that he will pay his own way, which surprises Toby since, like many affluent people, Quinn is notoriously tight.

Or is some secret benefactor perhaps paying Quinn’s way for him? Why else would he keep a separate credit card for settling his hotel bills and shield it with his body if Toby chances to come too close?

Meanwhile, Team Quinn is acquiring a household ghost.


Brussels.

Returning to their grand hotel at six o’clock in the evening after a long day’s haggling with NATO officialdom, Quinn complains of a nauseous headache, cancels his dinner engagement at the British Embassy and retires to his suite. At ten, after heavy soul-searching, Toby decides he must call up to the suite and enquire after his master’s welfare. He gets voicemail. A DO NOT DISTURB notice hangs on the ministerial door. After further cogitation he descends to the lobby and shares his concerns with the concierge. Have there been any signs of life from the suite? Has the minister ordered room service, sent down for aspirin or – since Quinn is a notorious hypochondriac – for a doctor?

The concierge is bewildered:

‘But Monsieur le Ministre left the hotel in his limousine two hours ago,’ he exclaims, in haughty Belgian French.

Now Toby is bewildered. Quinn’s limousine? He hasn’t got one. The only limousine on offer is the ambassador’s Rolls, which Toby has cancelled on Quinn’s behalf.

Or did Quinn keep his embassy dinner engagement after all? The concierge presumes to correct him. The limousine was not a Rolls-Royce, monsieur. It was a Citroën sedan and the chauffeur was known personally to the concierge.

Then kindly describe to me exactly what took place – pressing twenty euros into the concierge’s waiting hand.

‘Most willingly, monsieur. The black Citroën pulled up at the front door at the same time as Monsieur le Ministre emerged from the centre lift. One suspects Monsieur le Ministre was advised by telephone of his car’s imminent arrival. The two gentlemen greeted each other here in the lobby, got into the car and rode away.’

‘You mean a gentleman got out of the car to collect him?’

‘From the back of the black Citroën sedan. He was a passenger, clearly, not a servant.’

‘Can you describe the gentleman?’

The concierge baulks.

‘Well, was he white?’ Toby demands impatiently.

‘Completely, monsieur.’

‘How old?’

The concierge would guess that the gentleman’s age was similar to the minister’s.

‘Have you seen him before? Is he a regular here?’

‘Never, monsieur. I assumed a diplomat, perhaps a colleague.’

‘Large, small, what did he look like?’

The concierge again hesitates.

‘Like yourself but a little older, and the hair shorter, monsieur.’

‘And they spoke what language? Did you hear them talking?’

‘English, monsieur. Natural English.’

‘Have you any idea where they went? Did you gather where they were going?’

The concierge summons the chasseur, a cheeky black Congolese boy in a red uniform with a pillbox hat. The chasseur knows exactly where they went:

‘To La Pomme du Paradis restaurant close to the palace. Three stars. Grande gastronomie!’

So much for Quinn’s nauseous headache, thinks Toby.

‘How can you be so sure of that?’ he demands of the chasseur, who is bobbing about in his anxiety to be of help.

‘It was the instruction he gave to the driver, monsieur! I heard all!’

‘Who gave the instruction? To do what?’

‘The gentleman who collected your minister! He sat down beside the driver and said: “Now one goes to La Pomme du Paradis” just as I was closing the door. His exact words, monsieur!’

Toby turns to the concierge:

‘You said the gentleman who collected my minister rode in the back. Now we hear he sat in the front when they drove off. Couldn’t the gentleman who collected him have been security?’

But it is the little Congolese chasseur who holds the floor, and he is not about to relinquish it:

‘It was necessary, monsieur! Three persons in the back with an elegant lady: that would not be polite!’

A lady, thinks Toby, in despair. Don’t tell me we’ve got that problem too.

‘And what kind of lady are we talking about?’ he asks, all jocular, but heart in mouth.

‘She was petite and very charming, monsieur, a person of distinction.’

‘And of what age, would you say?’

The chasseur cracks a fearless smile:

‘It depends which parts of the lady we are talking about, monsieur,’ he replies, and darts off before the concierge’s wrath can strike him down.

But next morning, when Toby knocks at the door of the ministerial suite under the pretext of presenting Quinn with a sheaf of flattering British press stories that he has printed off the Internet, it is not the shadow of a young lady or an old one that he glimpses seated at the breakfast table behind the frosted-glass partition to the salon as his minister brusquely opens the door to him, grabs the papers and slams the door in his face. It is the shadow of a man: a trim, straight-backed man of average height in a crisp dark suit and tie.

Like yourself but a little older, and the hair shorter, monsieur.


Prague.

To the surprise of his staff, Minister Quinn is only too happy to accept the hospitality of the British Embassy in Prague. The ambassadress, a recent Foreign Office conscript from the City of London, is an old buddy of Quinn’s from Harvard days. While Fergus was post-gradding in good governance, Stephanie was notching up a Master’s in Business Studies. The conference, which takes place in the fabled castle that is Prague’s pride, is spread over two days of cocktails, lunches and dinners. Its subject is how to improve intelligence liaison between NATO members formerly under the Soviet maw. By the Friday evening the delegates have departed, but Quinn will stay another night with his old friend and, in Stephanie’s words, enjoy ‘a small private dinner all for my old schoolmate Fergus’, meaning that Toby’s presence will not be required.

Toby passes the morning drafting his report on the conference, and the afternoon walking in the Prague hills. In the evening, captivated as ever by the glories of the city, he strolls beside the Vltava, wanders the cobbled streets, enjoys a solitary meal. On returning to the embassy, he chooses for his pleasure the long way past the castle and notices that the lights in the first-floor conference room are still burning.

From the street his view is constricted, and the lower half of each window is frosted. Nonetheless by climbing the hill a few paces and standing on tiptoe, he is able to discern the outline of a male speaker silently holding forth from a lectern on the raised platform. He is of average height. The bearing is erect and the jaw action perfunctory; the demeanour – he cannot say quite why – unmistakably British, perhaps because the hand gestures, while brisk and economic, are in some way inhibited. By the same token Toby has no doubt that English is the language being spoken.

Has Toby made the connection? Not yet. Not quite. His eye is too busy with the audience. It is about twelve strong and comfortably settled in an informal half-circle round the speaker. Only the heads are visible, but Toby has no difficulty in recognizing six of them. Four belong to the deputy chiefs of the Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Czech military intelligence services, every one of whom, only six hours earlier, professed his undying friendship to Toby before notionally boarding his plane or staff car for the journey home.

The two remaining heads, which are close together and set apart from the rest, are those of Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Czech Republic and her old Harvard chum, Fergus Quinn. Behind them on a trestle table lie the remnants of a lavish buffet that presumably replaced the small dinner all for Fergus.

For five minutes or longer – he will never know – Toby remains on the hillside, ignoring the passing night traffic, staring upward at the lighted windows of the castle, his concentration now fixed on the silhouetted figure at the lectern: on the trim, straight body, the crisp dark suit and the taut, emphatic gestures with which he spells out his rousing message.

But what is the mysterious evangelist’s message?

And why does it have to be spelt out here, rather than in the embassy?

And why does it meet with such conspicuous approval from Her Majesty’s minister and Her Majesty’s ambassador?

And who above all is the minister’s secret sharer, now in Brussels, now in Prague?


Berlin.

Having delivered a vacuous speech, written by Toby on demand under the title ‘The Third Way: Social Justice and Its European Future’, Quinn dines privately at the Adlon Hotel with unnamed guests. Toby, his day’s work done, sits chatting in the garden of Café Einstein with his old friends Horst and Monika and their four-year-old daughter, Ella.

In the five years Toby and Horst have known each other, Horst has risen swiftly through the ranks of the German Foreign Service to a position akin to Toby’s. Monika, despite the cares of motherhood, contrives to work three days a week for a human rights group that Toby rates highly. The evening sun is warm, the Berlin air crisp. Horst and Monika speak the north German that Toby is most comfortable with.

‘So, Toby’ – Horst, sounding not quite as casual as he means to. ‘Your Minister Quinn is Karl Marx in reverse, we hear. Who needs the state, when private enterprise will do the job for us? Under your new British socialism, we bureaucrats are redundant, you and I.’

Unsure where Horst is coming from, Toby prevaricates:

‘I don’t remember putting that into his speech,’ he says, with a laugh.

‘But behind closed doors, that is what he is telling us, is it not?’ Horst insists, lowering his voice further. ‘And what I am asking you is, Toby, off the record, do you support your Mr Quinn’s proposition? It’s not improper to have an opinion, surely. As a private person, you are entitled to an off-the-record opinion about a private proposition.’

Ella is crayoning a dinosaur. Monika is assisting her.

‘Horst, this is Greek to me,’ Toby protests, dropping his voice to match Horst’s. ‘What proposition? Made to whom? About what?’

Horst seems undecided, then shrugs.

‘Okay. Then I may tell my boss that Minister Quinn’s Private Secretary knows nothing? You don’t know that your minister and his talented business associate are urging my boss to invest informally in a private corporation that specializes in a certain precious commodity? You don’t know that the commodity on offer is supposedly of higher quality than anything available on the open market? I may tell him this officially? Yes, Toby?’

‘Tell your boss whatever you like. Officially or otherwise. Then tell me what on earth the commodity is.’

High-grade information, Horst replies.

More commonly known as secret intelligence.

Collected and disseminated in the private sphere only.

Unadulterated.

Untouched by government hands.

And this talented business associate of his? Does he have a name? – Toby, incredulously.

Crispin.

Quite a persuasive fellow, says Horst.

Very English.


‘Tobe. A quickie, sir, if I may.’

Since returning to London, Toby has found himself in an impossible quandary. Officially he knows nothing of his minister’s record of mixing private business with official duties, let alone of the scandal at Defence. If Toby goes to his regional director, who expressly forbade him to enquire into such matters, he will be betraying the confidences of Matti and Laura.

And Toby as ever is conflicted. His own ambitions matter to him too. After almost three months as the minister’s Private Secretary, he has no desire to compromise whatever bond he has forged with him, tenuous though it is.

He is wrestling with these abstractions when, at four o’clock one afternoon that same week, he receives the familiar summons over the ministerial phone. The mahogany door is for once ajar. He taps, shoves and enters.

‘Close it, please. Lock.’

He closes, locks. The minister’s manner strikes him as a bit too affable for comfort: and the more so when he rises blithely from his desk and, with an air of schoolboyish conspiracy, steers him to the bay window. The newly installed music system, his pride, is playing Mozart. He lowers the volume but is careful not to dowse it.

‘All well with you, Tobe?’

‘All fine, thanks.’

‘Tobe, I very much fear I’m about to screw up yet another evening for you. Are you game for that?’

‘Of course, Minister. If it’s necessary’ – thinking, Oh Christ, Isabel, theatre, dinner, not another.

‘I’m receiving royalty tonight.’

‘Literally?’

‘Figuratively. But probably a damn sight richer.’ Chuckle. ‘You help out with the honours, make your mark, go home. How’s that?’

‘My mark, Minister?’

‘Circles within circles, Tobe. There’s a chance you may be invited aboard a certain very secret ship. I’ll say no more.’

Aboard? Invited by whom? What ship? Under whose captaincy?

‘May I know the names of your royal visitors, Minister?’

‘Absolutely not’ – beaming smile of complicity – ‘I’ve spoken to the front gate. Two visitors for the minister at seven. No names, no pack drill. Out by eight thirty, nothing in the book.’

Spoken to the front gate? The man’s got half a dozen underlings at his beck and call, all bursting to speak to the front gate for him.

Returning to the anteroom, Toby rallies the reluctant staff. Judy, social secretary, is provided with a ministerial car and dispatched post-haste to Fortnum’s to buy two bottles of Dom Pérignon, one jar of foie gras, one smoked salmon pâté, a lemon and assorted crispbreads. She’s to use her own credit card and the minister will reimburse. Olivia, the diary secretary, phones the canteen and confirms that two bottles and two jars, contents unstated, can be kept on ice till seven provided it’s all right with Security. Grudgingly, it is. The canteen will supply an ice bucket and pepper. Only when all this is achieved may the remaining staff go home.

Alone at his desk, Toby affects to work. At 6.35 he descends to the canteen. At 6.40 he is back in the anteroom spreading foie gras and smoked salmon pâté on crispbread. At 6.55 the minister emerges from his sanctum, inspects the display, approves it and places himself before the anteroom door. Toby stands behind him, on his left side, thus leaving the ministerial right hand free to greet.

‘He’ll be on the dot. Always is,’ Quinn promises. ‘So will she, the darling. She may be who she is, but she’s got his mindset.’

Sure enough, as Big Ben strikes he hears footsteps approach down the corridor, two pairs, the one strong and slow, the other light and skittish. A man is outstriding a woman. Punctually at the last stroke, a peremptory rap resounds on the anteroom door. Toby starts forward but is too late. The door is thrust open and Jay Crispin enters.

The identification is immediate and definite and so expected as to be anticlimactic. Jay Crispin, in the flesh at last, and high time too. Jay Crispin, who caused an unsung scandal at Defence and will never grace the corridors of Whitehall and Westminster again; who spirited Quinn from the lobby of his grand hotel in Brussels, sat in the front passenger seat of the Citroën sedan that took him to La Pomme du Paradis, breakfasted with him in the ministerial suite and orated from the lectern in Prague: not a ghost, but himself. Just a trim, regular-featured, rather obviously pretty man of no depth: a man, in short, to be seen through at a glance; so why on earth hasn’t Quinn seen through him?

And halfway down Crispin’s left arm, clinging to it with one bejewelled claw, trips a tiny woman in a pink chiffon dress with matching hat and high-heeled shoes with diamanté buckles. Age? It depends which parts of the lady we are talking about, monsieur.

Quinn reverently takes her hand and ducks his heavy boxer’s head over it in a crude half-bow. But Quinn and Crispin are old buddies reunited: see the rugged handshake, the manly shoulder-patting of the Jay-and-Fergus show.

It’s Toby’s turn to be acknowledged. Quinn lavishly to the fore:

‘Maisie, allow me to present my invaluable Private Secretary, Toby Bell. Tobe, kindly pay your respects to Mrs Spencer Hardy of Houston, Texas, better known to the world’s elite as the one and only Miss Maisie.’

A touch like gauze drawn across Toby’s palm. A Deep South murmur of ‘Why hullo there, Mr Bell!’ followed by a vampish cry of ‘Hey, now listen, Fergus, I’m the only belle around here!’ to gusts of sycophantic laughter in which Toby obligingly joins.

‘And Tobe, meet my old friend Jay Crispin. Old friend since – when, for God’s sake, Jay?’

‘Good to meet you, Toby,’ Crispin drawls in upper-end English of the very best sort, taking Toby’s hand in a kinsman’s grasp and, without releasing it, vouchsafing him the sort of sturdy look that says: We’re the men who run the world.

‘And good to meet you’ – omitting the ‘sir’.

‘And we do what here, exactly?’ – Crispin, still gripping his hand.

‘He’s my Private Secretary, Jay! I told you. Bound to me body and soul and assiduous to a fault. Correct, Tobe?’

‘Pretty new to the job, aren’t we, Toby?’ – finally letting his hand go, but keeping the ‘we’ because they’re these two blokish chaps together.

‘Three months,’ the minister’s voice chimes in again excitedly. ‘We’re twins. Correct, Tobe?’

‘And where were we before, may one enquire?’ – Crispin, sleek as a cat and about as trustworthy.

‘Berlin. Madrid. Cairo,’ Toby replies with deliberate carelessness, fully aware that he’s supposed to be making his mark, and determined not to. ‘Wherever I’m sent, really’ – you’re too f*cking close. Get out of my airspace.

‘Tobe was posted out of Egypt just when Mubarak’s little local difficulties started to appear on the horizon, weren’t you, Tobe?’

‘As it were.’

‘See much of the old boy?’ – Crispin enquires genially, his face puckering in earnest sympathy.

‘On a couple of occasions. From a distance’ – mainly I dealt with his torturers.

‘What do you reckon to his chances? Sits uneasy on his throne, from all one hears. Army a broken reed, Muslim Brotherhood rattling at the bars: I’m not sure I’d like to be in poor Hosni’s shoes right now.’

Toby is still hunting for a suitably anodyne reply when Miss Maisie rides to his rescue:

‘Mr Bell. Colonel Hosni Mubarak is my friend. He is America’s friend, and he was put on earth by God to make peace with the Jews, to fight communism and jihadist terror. Anybody seeking the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in his hour of need is an Iscariot, a liberal and a surrender monkey, Mr Bell.’

‘So how about Berlin?’ Crispin suggests, as if this outburst has not taken place. ‘Toby was in Berlin, darling. Stationed there. Where we were just days ago. Remember?’ – back to Toby – ‘what dates are we talking here?’

In a wooden voice, Toby recites for him the dates he was in Berlin.

‘What sort of work, actually, or aren’t you allowed to say?’ – innuendo.

‘Jack of all trades, really. Whatever came up,’ Toby replies, with assumed casualness.

‘But you’re straight – not one of them?’ – tipping Toby the insider’s smile. ‘You must be, or you wouldn’t be here, you’d be the other side of the river’ – knowing glance for the one and only Miss Maisie of Houston, Texas.

‘Political Section, actually. General duties,’ Toby replies in the same wooden voice.

‘Well, I’m damned’ – turning delightedly to Miss Maisie – ‘Darling, the cat’s out of the bag. Young Toby here was one of Giles Oakley’s bright boys in Berlin during the run-up to Iraqi Freedom.’

Boys? F*ck you.

‘Do I know Mr Oakley?’ Miss Maisie enquires, coming closer to give Toby another look.

‘No, darling, but you’ve heard of him. Oakley was the brave chap who led the in-house Foreign Office revolt. Got up the round robin to our Foreign Secretary urging him not to go after Saddam. Did you draft it for him, Toby, or did Oakley and his chums cobble it together all by themselves?’

‘I certainly didn’t draft anything of the sort, and I’ve never heard of such a letter, if it ever existed, which I seriously doubt,’ the astonished Toby snaps in perfect truth as elsewhere in his mind he grapples, not for the first time, with the enigma that is Giles Oakley.

‘Well, jolly good luck to you, anyway,’ says Crispin dismissively and, turning to Quinn, leaves Toby to contemplate at his leisure the same straight, suspect back that he glimpsed through the frosted glass of his minister’s hotel suite in Brussels, and again through the castle window in Prague.


Urgently google Mrs Spencer Hardy of Houston, Texas, widow and sole heiress of the late Spencer K. Hardy III, founder of Spencer Hardy Incorporated, a Texas-based multinational corporation trading in pretty well everything. Under her preferred sobriquet of Miss Maisie voted Republican Benefactress of the Year; Chairperson, the Americans for Christ Legion; Honorary President of a cluster of not-for-profit pro-life and family-value organizations; Chair of the American Institute for Islamic Awareness. And, in what looked almost like a recent add-on: President and CEO of an otherwise undescribed body calling itself Ethical Outcomes Incorporated.

Well, well, he thought: a red-hot evangelist and ethical to boot. Not a given. Not by any means.


For days and nights, Toby agonizes over the choices before him. Go running to Diana and tell all? – ‘I disobeyed you, Diana. I know what happened at Defence and now it’s happening all over again to us.’ But what happened at Defence is none of his business, as Diana forcefully informed him. And the Foreign Office has many hellholes earmarked for discontents and whistle-blowers.

Meanwhile, the omens around him are daily multiplying. Whether this is Crispin’s work he can only guess, but how else to explain the ostentatious cooling of the minister’s attitude towards him? Entering or leaving his Private Office, Quinn now grants him barely a nod. It’s no longer Tobe but Toby, a change he would once have welcomed. Not now. Not since he failed to make his mark and be invited aboard a certain very secret ship. Incoming phone calls from Whitehall’s heavy hitters that were until now routinely passed through the Private Secretary are rerouted to the minister’s desk by way of one of several newly installed direct lines. In addition to the heavily flagged despatch boxes from Downing Street that Quinn alone may handle, there are the sealed black canisters from the US Embassy. One morning a super-strong safe mysteriously appears in the Private Office. The minister alone has the combination to it.

And only last weekend, when Quinn is about to be driven to his country house in his official car, he does not require Toby to pack his briefcase for him with essential papers for his attention. He will do it himself, thank you, Toby, and behind locked doors. And no doubt, when Quinn arrives the other end, he will embrace the rich Canadian alcoholic wife whom his Party’s spin doctors have ruled unfit for public presentation, pat his dog and his daughter, and once more lock himself away, and read them.

It therefore comes like an act of divine providence when Giles Oakley, now revealed as the closet author of a round-robin letter to the Foreign Secretary about the insanity of invading Iraq, calls Toby on his BlackBerry with an invitation to dine that same evening:

‘Schloss Oakley, 7.45. Wear what you like and stick around afterwards for a Calvados. Is that a yes?’

It is a yes, Giles. It is a yes, even if it means cancelling another pair of theatre tickets.


Senior British diplomats who have been restored to their motherland have a way of turning their houses into overseas hirings. Giles and Hermione are no exception. Schloss Oakley, as Giles has determinedly christened it, is a sprawling twenties villa on the outer fringes of Highgate, but it could as well be their residence in Grunewald. Outside, the same imposing gates and immaculate gravel sweep, weed free; inside, the same scratched Chippendale-style furniture, close carpeting and contract Portuguese caterers.

Toby’s fellow dinner guests include a counsellor at the German Embassy and his wife, a visiting Swedish ambassador to Ukraine, and a French woman pianist called Fifi and her lover Jacques. Fifi, who is fixated on alpacas, holds the table in thrall. Alpacas are the most considerate beasts on earth. They even produce their young with exquisite tact. She advises Hermione to get herself a pair. Hermione says she would only be jealous of them.

Dinner over, Hermione commands Toby to the kitchen, ostensibly to give a hand with coffee. She is fey, willowy and Irish and speaks in hushed, revelatory gasps while her brown eyes spark to their rhythm.

‘This Isabel you’re shagging’ – poking a forefinger inside his shirt front and tickling his chest hairs with the tip of her lacquered fingernail.

‘What about her?’

‘Is she married like that Dutch floozie you had in Berlin?’

‘Isabel and her husband split up months ago.’

‘Is she blonde like the other one?’

‘As it happens, yes, she is blonde.’

‘I’m blonde. Was your mother blonde at all?’

‘For God’s sake, Hermione.’

‘You know you only go with the married ones because you can give them back when you’ve finished with them, don’t you?’

He knows nothing. Is she telling him he can borrow her too, and give her back to Oakley when he’s finished with her? God forbid.

Or was she – a thought that only came to him now as he sipped his coffee at his pavement table in Soho and pursued his sightless contemplation of the passers-by – was she softening him up in advance of her husband’s grilling?


‘Nice chat with Hermione?’ Giles asks sociably from his armchair, pouring Toby a generous shot of very old Calvados.

The last guests have taken their leave. Hermione has gone to bed. For a moment they are back in Berlin, with Toby about to vent his callow personal opinions and Oakley about to shoot them down in flames.

‘Super, as always, thanks, Giles.’

‘Did she invite you to Mourne in the summer?’

Mourne, her castle in Ireland, where she is reputed to take her lovers.

‘I don’t think she did, actually.’

‘Snap it up, is my advice. Unspoilt views, decent house, nice bit of water. Shooting, if you’re into it, which I’m not.’

‘Sounds great.’

‘How’s love?’ – the eternal question, every time they meet.

‘Love’s fine, thanks.’

‘Still Isabel?’

‘Just.’

It is Oakley’s pleasure to switch topics without warning and expect Toby to catch up. He does so now.

‘So, dear man, where in God’s name is your nice new master? We seek him here, we seek him there. We tried to get him to come and talk to us the other day. The swine stood us up.’

By us, Toby assumes the Joint Intelligence Committee, of which Oakley is some sort of ex-officio member. How this should be is not something Toby asks. Does the man who ran up a seditious joint letter to the Foreign Secretary urging him not to go after Saddam, thereafter earn himself a seat at the Office’s most secret councils? – or is he treated, as other rumours have it, as some kind of licensed contrarian, now cautiously admitted, now shut out? Toby has ceased to marvel at the paradoxes of Oakley’s life, perhaps because he has ceased to marvel at his own.

‘I understand my minister had to go to Washington at short notice,’ he replies guardedly.

Guarded because, whatever Foreign Office ethic says, he is still, somehow, the minister’s Private Secretary.

‘But he didn’t take you with him?’

‘No, Giles. He didn’t. Not this time.’

‘He carted you around Europe with him. Why not Washington?’

‘That was then. Before he started making his own arrangements without consulting me. He went to Washington alone.’

‘You know he was alone?’

‘No, but I surmise it.’

‘You surmise it why? He went without you. That’s all you know. To Washington proper, or the Suburb?’

For ‘Suburb’ read Langley, Virginia, home of the Central Intelligence Agency. Again Toby has to confess he doesn’t know.

‘Did he treat himself to British Airways First Class in the best traditions of Scottish frugality? Or slum it in Club, poor chap?’

Starting to yield despite himself, Toby takes a breath:

‘I assume he travelled by private jet. It’s how he went there before.’

‘Before being when exactly?’

‘Last month. Out on the sixteenth, back on the eighteenth. On a Gulfstream. Out of Northolt.’

‘Whose Gulfstream?’

‘It’s a guess.’

‘But an informed one.’

‘All I know for a fact is he was driven to Northolt by private limo. He doesn’t trust the Office car pool. He thinks the cars are bugged, probably by you, and that the chauffeurs listen in.’

‘The limo being the property of –?’

‘A Mrs Spencer Hardy.’

‘Of Texas.’

‘I believe so.’

‘Better known as the mountainously wealthy Miss Maisie, born-again benefactress of America’s Republican far right, friend of the Tea Party, scourge of Islam, homosexuals, abortion and, I believe, contraception. Currently residing in Lowndes Square, London SW. One entire side of it.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Oh yes. One of her many residences worldwide. And this is the lady, you tell me, who supplied the limousine to take your nice new master to Northolt airport. I have the right lady?’

‘You do, Giles, you do.’

‘And in your estimation it was therefore the same lady’s Gulfstream that conveyed him to Washington?’

‘It’s a guess, but yes.’

‘You are also aware, no doubt, that Miss Maisie is the protectress of one Jay Crispin, rising star in the ever-growing firmament of private defence contractors?’

‘Broadly.’

‘Jay Crispin and Miss Maisie recently paid a social call on Fergus Quinn in his Private Office. Were you present for those festivities?’

‘Some of them.’

‘With what effect?’

‘I seem to have blotted my copybook.’

‘With Quinn?’

‘With all of them. There was talk of asking me aboard. It didn’t happen.’

‘Consider yourself fortunate. Did Crispin accompany Quinn to Washington in Miss Maisie’s Gulfstream, do you suppose?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Did the lady herself go?’

‘Giles, I just don’t know. It’s all guesswork.’

‘Miss Maisie sends her bodyguards to Messrs Huntsman on Savile Row to have them decently dressed. You didn’t know that either?’

‘Actually, no, I didn’t.’

‘Then drink some of that Calvados and tell me what you do know for a change.’


Rescued from the isolation of half-knowledge and suspicions that until now he has been unable to share with a living soul, Toby flops back in his armchair and basks in the luxury of confession. He describes, with growing indignation, his sightings in Prague and Brussels, and recounts Horst’s probings in the garden of Café Einstein, until Oakley cuts him short:

‘Does the name Bradley Hester sound familiar?’

‘I’ll say it does!’

‘Why the humour?’

‘He’s the Private Office house pet. The girls adore him. Brad the Music Man, they call him.’

‘We’re speaking of the same Bradley Hester, I take it: assistant cultural attaché at the US Embassy?’

‘Absolutely. Brad and Quinn are fellow music nuts. They’ve got a project going – transatlantic orchestral exchanges between consenting universities. They go to concerts together.’

‘Quinn’s diary says so?’

‘When last seen. Used to,’ Toby replies, still smiling at the recollection of tubby, pink-faced Brad Hester with his signature shabby music case chatting away to the girls in his queeny East Coast drawl while he waits to be admitted to the presence.

But Oakley doesn’t warm to this benign image:

‘And the purpose of these frequent visits to the Private Office is to discuss musical exchanges, you say.’

‘They’re written in stone. Brad’s the one date of the week that Quinn never breaks.’

‘Do you handle the paperwork that results from their discussions?’

‘Good Lord, no. Brad takes care of all that. He has people. As far as Quinn’s concerned, their project is extramural, not to be done in office hours. To his credit, he’s quite particular about it,’ Toby ends, slowing down as he meets Oakley’s frigid stare.

‘And you accept that preposterous notion?’

‘I do my best. For want of any other,’ Toby says, and grants himself a cautious sip of Calvados while Oakley contemplates the back of his left hand, turning his wedding ring, testing it against the knuckle for looseness.

‘You mean you really don’t smell a rat when Mr Bradley Hester, Assistant Cultural Attaché, marches in with his music case or whatever he brings? Or you refuse to?’

‘I smell rats all the time,’ Toby retorts sulkily. ‘What’s the difference?’

Oakley lets this go. ‘Well, Toby, I hate to disillusion you, if that’s what I’m doing. Mr Cultural Attaché Hester is not quite the amiable clown you appear determined to take him for. He’s a discredited freelance intelligence pedlar of the far-right persuasion, born again, not to his advantage, and grafted on to the Agency’s station in London at the behest of a caucus of wealthy American conservative evangelicals convinced that the Central Intelligence Agency is overrun with red-toothed Islamic sympathizers and liberal faggots, a view your nice new master is disposed to share. He is notionally employed by the United States government, but in practice by a fly-by-night company of defence contractors trading under the name of Ethical Outcomes Incorporated, of Texas and elsewhere. The sole shareholder and chief executive officer of this company is Maisie Spencer Hardy. She, however, has devolved her duties to one Jay Crispin, with whom she is having a ball. Jay Crispin, besides being an accomplished gigolo, is the intimate of your distinguished minister, who appears determined to outdo the militarist zeal that informs his late great leader, Brother Blair, though not, it seems, his luckless successor. Should Ethical Outcomes Incorporated ever find itself supplementing the feeble efforts of our national intelligence agencies by mounting a privately funded stealth operation, your friend the Music Man will be tasked with supplying the offshore logistics.’

And while Toby is digesting this, Oakley, as so often, changes direction:

‘There’s an Elliot somewhere in the mix,’ he muses. ‘Is Elliot a name to you? Elliot? Carelessly dropped? Overheard at the keyhole?’

‘I don’t listen at keyholes.’

‘Of course you do. Albanian-Greek renegade, used to call himself Eglesias, ex-South African Special Forces, killed some chap in a bar in Jo’burg and came to Europe for his health? That sort of Elliot? Sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘Stormont-Taylor?’ Oakley persists, in the same dreamy tone.

‘Of course!’ Toby cries in relief. ‘Everyone knows Stormont-Taylor. So do you. He’s the international lawyer’ – effortlessly evoking the strikingly handsome Roy Stormont-Taylor, Queen’s Counsel and television idol, with his flowing white mane and too-tight jeans, who three times in the last few months – or is it four? – has, like Bradley Hester, been warmly received by Quinn before being spirited behind the mahogany door.

‘And what, so far as you are aware, is Stormont-Taylor’s business with your nice new master?’

‘Quinn doesn’t trust government lawyers, so he consults Stormont-Taylor for an independent opinion.’

‘And on what particular matter, do you happen to know, does Quinn consult the bold and beautiful Stormont-Taylor, who happens also to be an intimate of Jay Crispin?’

A fraught silence while Toby asks himself just who is being held to account here – Quinn or himself.

‘How the f*ck should I know?’ he demands irritably – to which Oakley offers only a sympathetic ‘How indeed?’

The silence returns.

‘So, Giles,’ Toby announces finally, ever the first to break on such occasions.

‘So what, dear man?’

‘Who the hell – or what the hell – is Jay Crispin in the scheme of things?’

Oakley pulls a sigh and shrugs. When he offers a reply, it comes in grudging fragments:

‘Who’s anybody?’ he demands of the world at large, and breaks into grumpy telegramese. ‘Third son of a posh Anglo-American family. Best schools. Sandhurst at second attempt. Ten years of bad soldiering. Retirement at forty. We’re told voluntary, but one doubts it. Bit of City. Dumped. Bit of spying. Dumped. Sidles up alongside our burgeoning terror industry. Rightly observes that defence contractors are on a roll. Smells the money. Goes for it. Hullo, Ethical Outcomes and Miss Maisie. Crispin charms people,’ he goes on in puzzled indignation. ‘All sorts of people, all the time. God alone knows how. Granted, he does a lot of bed. Probably goes in both directions – good luck to him. But bed doesn’t last the whole drink through, does it?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Toby agrees, his mind darting uncomfortably to Isabel.

‘So tell me,’ Oakley continues, executing yet another unannounced change of direction. ‘What possessed you to spend precious hours of the Queen’s time trawling through Legal Department’s archives and pulling out files on such obscure places as Grenada and Diego Garcia?’

‘My minister’s orders,’ Toby retorts, refusing to be surprised any longer either by Oakley’s omniscience or his penchant for dealing questions from the bottom of the pack.

‘Orders delivered to you personally?’

‘Yes. He said I should prepare a paper on their territorial integrity. Without the knowledge of Legal Department or the special advisors. Actually, without the knowledge of anyone’ – now that he came to think of it. ‘Classify it top secret, bring it to him by Monday 10 a.m. without fail.’

‘And you prepared such a paper?’

‘At the cost of a weekend, yes.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Spiked.’

‘Meaning?’

‘My paper went out on submission, didn’t have the traction and was spiked. According to Quinn.’

‘Do you mind treating me to a short precis of its contents?’

‘It was just a résumé. The alphabet. An undergraduate could do it.’

‘Then tell me the alphabet. I’ve forgotten it.’

‘In 1983, following the assassination of Grenada’s leftist president, the Americans invaded the island without our say-so. They called the operation Urgent Fury. The fury was mainly ours.’

‘How come?’

‘It was our patch. A former British colony, now a member of the Commonwealth.’

‘And the Americans invaded it. Shame on them. Go on.’

‘The American spies – your beloved Suburb – had fantasies that Castro was about to use Grenada’s airport as a launch pad. It was bullshit. The Brits had helped build the airport and weren’t best pleased to be told it was a threat to America’s lifeblood.’

‘And our response, in a word?’

‘We told the Americans, please be so good as never to do anything like that again on our turf without our permission in advance, or we’ll be even more cross.’

‘And they told us?’

‘To go f*ck ourselves.’

‘And did we?’

‘The American point was well taken’ – resorting to sarcastic Foreign Office mode. ‘Our grip on our Crown territories is so tenuous that the State Department considers it’s doing us a favour by acknowledging it. They only do it when it suits them, and in the case of Grenada it didn’t suit them.’

‘So go f*ck ourselves again?’

‘Not quite. They rowed back and an entente was hacked out.’

‘To what effect, this entente? Go on.’

‘In future, if the Americans were going to do something dramatic on our turf – a special op under the guise of going to the assistance of the oppressed inhabitants, et cetera – they had to ask us nicely first, get our approval in writing, invite us to be part of the action and share the product with us at the end of the day.’

‘By product, you mean intelligence.’

‘I do, Giles. That’s what I mean. Intelligence by another name.’

‘And Diego Garcia?’

‘Diego Garcia was the template.’

‘For what?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Giles!’

‘I am unencumbered by background knowledge. Kindly tell me exactly what you told your nice new master.’

‘Ever since we obligingly depopulated Diego Garcia for them back in the sixties, the Americans have our permission to use it as a convenience for their blind-eye operations, but only on our terms.’

‘The blind eye being in this case a British one, I take it.’

‘Yes, Giles. I see I can get nothing past you. Diego Garcia remains a British possession, so it’s still a British blind eye. You know that much, I trust?’

‘Not necessarily.’

It is a principle of Giles when negotiating never to express the smallest satisfaction. Toby has watched him apply it in Berlin. Now he is watching him apply it to Toby.

‘Did Quinn discuss the finer aspects of your paper with you?’

‘There weren’t any.’

‘Come. It would only be courteous. What about the application of the Grenada experience to more substantial British possessions?’

Toby shakes his head.

‘So he didn’t discuss with you, even in the broadest brush, the rights and wrongs of an American intrusion into British Crown territory? On the basis of what you had unearthed for him?’

‘Not even.’

A stage pause, of Oakley’s making.

‘Does your paper point a moral?’

‘It limps to a conclusion, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Which is?’

‘That any unilateral action by the Americans on British-owned territory would have to have a British fig leaf for cover. Otherwise, it would be no go.’

‘Thank you, Toby. So what or who, I wonder, in your personal judgement, sparked this enquiry?’

‘Honestly, Giles, I’ve no idea.’

Oakley raises his eyes to Heaven, lowers them, sighs:

‘Toby. Dear man. A busy minister of the Crown does not instruct his gifted young Private Secretary to burrow his way through dry-as-dust archives in search of precedent without first sharing his game plan with said underling.’

‘This one f*cking well does!’

And there you have Giles Oakley, the consummate poker player. He springs to his feet, tops up Toby’s Calvados, sits back and declares himself content.

‘So tell me’ – all-confiding now that they are at ease with each other again – ‘what on earth does one make of your nice new master’s bizarre request of the Office’s hard-pressed Human Resources Department?’

And when Toby protests yet again – but meekly this time because, after all, they are so relaxed – that he hasn’t a clue what Oakley is talking about, he is rewarded with a satisfied chuckle.

‘For a low flyer, Toby! Come! He’s looking for a low flyer by yesterday. You must know that! He’s got half our resourceful humanoids standing on their heads, looking for the right fellow. They’ve been calling round the houses, asking for recommendations.’

Low flyer?

For a fleeting moment Toby’s mind wrestles with the spectre of a daredevil pilot gearing up to fly under the radar of one of Britain’s vanishing protectorates. And he must have said something of this, because Giles almost laughs aloud and vows it’s the best thing he’s heard in months.

‘Low as opposed to high, dear man! A reliable has-been from the ranks of our own dear Service! Job qualifications: an appropriately lacklustre record, his future behind him. An honest-to-God Foreign Service dobbin, no frills, one shot left in his locker before retirement. You in twenty-eight years’ time or whatever it is,’ he ends teasingly.

So that’s it, thinks Toby, trying his best to share Giles’s little joke. He’s telling me, in the gentlest possible way, that Fergus Quinn, not content with cutting me out of the loop, is actively seeking my replacement: and not just any replacement, but a has-been who will be so scared of losing his pension that he will bend whichever way he is ordered by his nice new master.


The two men stand side by side on the doorstep, waiting in the moonlight for Toby’s cab. Toby has never seen Oakley’s face more earnest – or more vulnerable. The playfulness in his voice, the little grace notes, are gone, replaced by a note of urgent warning:

‘Whatever they’re plotting, Toby, you are not to join it. You hear something, you take note, you text me on the cellphone number you already have. Marginally that will be more secure than email. Say you’ve been jilted by your girlfriend and need to weep on my shoulder, or some such nonsense.’ And as if he hasn’t made his point strongly enough: ‘You do not on any account become part of it, Toby. You agree to nothing, you sign nothing. You do not become an accessory in any way.’

‘But accessory to what, Giles, for pity’s sake?’

‘If I knew, you’d be the last person I’d tell. Crispin looked you over and mercifully didn’t care for what he saw. I repeat: count yourself lucky you didn’t pass the test. If it had gone the other way, God alone knows where you might have ended up.’

The cab arrives. Extraordinarily, Oakley holds out his hand. Toby takes it and discovers that it is damp with sweat. He releases it and climbs into the cab. Oakley taps on the window. Toby lowers it.

‘It’s all prepaid,’ Oakley blurts. ‘Just give him a pound tip. Don’t pay twice, whatever you do, dear man.’


‘A quickie, Master Toby, sir, of your goodness.’

Somehow, a whole week has passed. Isabel’s resentment at Toby’s neglect has erupted into sullen fury. His apologies – abject, but distracted – have further incensed her. Quinn has shown himself equally intractable, now fawning on Toby for no good reason, now cutting him dead, now vanishing without explanation for an entire day and leaving him to pick up the pieces.

And on the Thursday in the lunch hour, a strangled call from Matti:

‘That game of squash we never had.’

‘What about it?’

‘It didn’t happen.’

‘I thought we’d already agreed that.’

‘Just checking,’ said Matti, and rang off.

Now it’s ten o’clock in the morning of yet another Friday and the familiar summons Toby has been dreading has rung out over the internal phone.

Is the Champion of the Working Classes about to pack him off to Fortnum’s for more Dom Pérignon? Or is he shaping up to tell him that, appreciative as he is of Toby’s talents, he proposes to replace him with a low flyer and wants to give Toby the weekend to recover from the shock?

The big mahogany door ajar as before. Enter, close, and – anticipating Quinn’s command – lock. Quinn at his desk, looking like ministerial thunder. His officious voice, the one he uses for gravitas on Newsnight. The Glaswegian accent all but forgotten:

‘I fear I am about to interfere with your plans for a mini-break with your significant other, Toby,’ he announces, managing to imply that Toby has only himself to blame. ‘Is that going to cause you major problems?’

‘None at all, Minister,’ Toby replies, mentally saying goodbye to a brief getaway in Dublin, and probably to Isabel as well.

‘I happen to be under considerable pressure to hold an extremely secret meeting here tomorrow. In this very room. A meeting of the highest national importance.’

‘You wish me to attend it, Minister?’

‘Far from it. On no account may you attend, thank you. You’re not cleared; your presence is in no way desirable. Don’t take that personally. However, once again I wish your assistance in making the advance preparations. No champagne this time, alas. No foie gras either.’

‘I understand.’

‘I doubt it. However, for the meeting that has been thrust upon me, certain exceptional security measures require to be taken. I wish you, as my Private Secretary, to take them for me.’

‘Of course.’

‘You sound puzzled. Why?’

‘Not puzzled, Minister. It’s just – if your meeting is so secret, why does it have to be held in this room at all? Why not outside the Office altogether? Or in the soundproof room upstairs?’

Quinn jerks up his heavy head, scenting insubordination, then consents to answer:

‘Because my very insistent visitor – visitors plural, actually – are in a position to call the shots, and it is my bounden duty as minister to deliver. Are you up for it, or do I look for someone else?’

‘Entirely up for it, Minister.’

‘Very well. You know, I take it, a certain side door leading into this building from Horse Guards? For the tradesmen and non-classified deliveries? A green metal door with bars in front of it?’

Toby knows the door but, not being what the Man of the People calls a tradesman, hasn’t had occasion to use it.

‘You know the ground-floor corridor that leads to it? Beneath us now, as we stand here? Two floors down?’ – losing patience – ‘As you come in by the main doors, for God’s sake, on the right-hand side of the lobby. You pass it every day. Yes?’

Yes, he knows the corridor, too.

‘Tomorrow morning, Saturday, my guests – my visitors, all right? – whatever they want to call themselves’ – the note of resentment now becoming a refrain – ‘will arrive at that side entrance in two parties. Separately. One after the other. In short order. Still with me?’

‘Still with you, Minister.’

‘I’m glad. From 11.45 to 13.45 hours precisely – for those two hours only, got it? – that side entrance will be unmanned. No member of security staff will be on duty for those one hundred and twenty minutes. All video cameras and other security devices covering that side entrance, and the route from that side entrance to this room, will be rendered inert. Deactivated. Switched off. For those two hours only. I’ve fixed it all personally. You don’t have to do anything on that front, so don’t even try. Now follow me closely.’

The minister raises a squat, muscular palm to Toby’s face and demonstratively tweaks the little finger with the thumb and index finger of the other hand:

‘On your arrival tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. you go straight to Security Department and confirm that my instruction to vacate and unlock the side entrance and turn off all surveillance systems has been duly noted and is about to be complied with.’

Ring finger. The gold ring very thick, with the cross of St Andrew embossed in bold blue.

‘At 11.50 a.m. you proceed to the external side entrance by way of Horse Guards and enter the building by means of the said door, which has been unlocked in accordance with my instructions to Security Department. You then advance along the ground-floor corridor, establishing en route that the corridor and the rear staircase leading up from it are in no way occupied or obstructed. Still with me?’

Middle finger:

‘You then make your way at your usual pace and, acting as my personal guinea pig, proceed by way of the rear staircase and adjoining landing – don’t skip or pause for a pee or anything, just walk – to this very room where we are now standing. You then confirm with Security, by internal telephone, that your journey has passed undetected. I’ve squared them, so again don’t do anything beyond what I’ve told you to do. That’s an order.’

Toby wakes to discover he is the beneficiary of his master’s election-winning smile:

‘So then, Toby. Tell me I’ve ruined your weekend for you, the way they’ve ruined mine.’

‘Not at all, Minister.’

‘But?’

‘Well, one question.’

‘Many as you like. Fire away.’

Actually he has two.

‘If I may ask, Minister, where will you be? You personally. While I am taking’ – he hesitates – ‘taking these precautions.’

The electoral smile widens.

‘Let’s say, minding my own f*cking business, shall we?’

‘Minding your own business until you arrive, Minister?’

‘My timing will be impeccable, thank you. Any more?’

‘Well, I was wondering, perhaps gratuitously: how will your parties get out again? You said the systems will be deactivated for two hours. If your second party is arriving in short order and the system is reactivated at 13.45, that leaves you not much more than ninety-odd minutes for your meeting.’

‘Ninety minutes will hack it easy. Don’t give it a thought’ – the smile by now radiant.

‘You’re absolutely sure of that?’ Toby urges, seized by a need to extend the conversation.

‘Of course I’m bloody sure. Dinna fash yersel’! Couple of handshakes all round and we’re home free.’


It is the lunch hour of the same day before Toby Bell feels able to slip away from his desk, hasten down Clive Steps and take up a position beneath a spreading London plane tree on the edge of St James’s Park as a prelude to composing his emergency text to Oakley’s cellphone.

During the time since Quinn has served him with his bizarre instructions, he has mentally drafted any number of versions. But rumour has it that Office security staff keep a watch on personal communications emanating from inside the building, and Toby has no wish to excite their curiosity.

The plane tree is an old friend. Set on a rise, it stands a stone’s throw from Birdcage Walk and the War Memorial. A hundred yards on, and the bay windows of the Foreign Office frown sternly down on him, but the passing world of storks, mallards, tourists and mums with prams deprives them of their menace.

His eye and hand are dead steady as he holds his BlackBerry before him. So is his mind. It is a truth that puzzles Toby as much as it impresses his employers that he is immune to crisis. Isabel may be mercilessly dissecting his shortcomings: she did so in spades last night. Police cars and fire engines may be howling in the street, smoke pouring out of adjoining houses, the enraged populace on the march: they did all that and more in Cairo. But crisis, once it strikes, is Toby’s element, and it has struck now.

Say you’ve been jilted by your girlfriend and need to weep on my shoulder, or some such nonsense.

Natural decency dictates he will not take Isabel’s name in vain. Louisa comes to mind. Has he had a Louisa? A hasty roll call assures him he has not. Then he will have her now: Giles. Louisa just walked out on me. Desperately need your urgent advice. Can we speak soonest? Bell.

Press ‘send’.

He does, and glances at the illustrious bay windows of the Foreign Office with their layers of net curtain. Is Oakley sitting up there even now, munching a sandwich at his desk? Or is he locked in some underground fastness with the Joint Intelligence Committee? Or ensconced in the Travellers Club with his fellow mandarins, redrawing the world over a leisurely lunch? Wherever you are, just for God’s sake read my message soonest and get back to me, because my nice new master is going off his head.


Seven interminable hours have passed, and still not a peep out of Oakley. In the living room of his first-floor flat in Islington, Toby sits at his desk pretending to work while Isabel potters ominously in the kitchen. At his left elbow lies his BlackBerry, at his right the house telephone, and in front of him a draft paper Quinn has commissioned on opportunities for private–public partnerships in the Gulf. In theory, he is revising it. In reality, he is mentally tracking Oakley through every possible version of his day and willing him to respond. He has re-sent his message twice: once as soon as he was clear of the Office, and again as he emerged from Angel underground station before he arrived home. Why he should have regarded his own flat as an insecure launch pad for text messages to Oakley he can’t imagine, but he did. The same inhibitions guide him now, when he decides that, importunate though it may be, the time has come to try Oakley at his home.

‘Just popping out to get us a bottle of red,’ he tells Isabel through the open kitchen door, and makes it to the hallway before she can reply that there’s a perfectly good bottle of red in the stores cupboard.

In the street, it is pouring with rain and he has not thought to provide himself with a raincoat. Fifty yards along the pavement, an arched alley leads to a disused foundry. He dives into it and from its shelter dials the Oakley residence.

‘Who the hell’s this, for God’s sake?’

Hermione, outraged. Has he woken her? At this hour?

‘It’s Toby Bell, Hermione. I’m really sorry to trouble you, but something a bit urgent’s come up, and I wondered whether I could have a quick word with Giles.’

‘Well, I’m afraid you can’t have a quick word with Giles, or a slow one, for that matter, Toby. As I suspect you’re thoroughly aware.’

‘It’s just work, Hermione. Something urgent’s cropped up,’ he repeated.

‘All right, play your little games. Giles is in Doha, and don’t pretend you didn’t know. They packed him off at crack of dawn for a conference that’s supposed to have blown up. Are you coming round to see me or not?’

‘They? Which they?’

‘What’s it to you? He’s gone, hasn’t he?’

‘How long will he be gone for? Did they say?’

‘Long enough for what you’re after, that’s for sure. We’ve no live-in servants any more. I expect you knew that too, didn’t you?’

Doha: three hours ahead. Brutally, he rings off. To hell with her. In Doha they eat late, so it’s still the dinner hour for delegates and princelings. Huddled in the alleyway, he gets through to the Foreign Office resident clerk and hears the ponderous voice of Gregory, unsuccessful contender for his job.

‘Gregory, hullo. I have to get in touch with Giles Oakley rather urgently. He’s been rushed to Doha for a conference and for some reason he’s not picking up his messages. It’s a personal thing. Can you get word to him for me?’

‘If it’s personal? Tricky, I’m afraid, old sport.’

Don’t go there. Stay calm:

‘Do you happen to know if he’s staying with the ambassador?’

‘Up to him. Maybe he prefers big, expensive hotels like you and Fergus.’

Exert Herculean restraint:

‘Well, kindly give me the number of the residence anyway, will you? Please, Gregory?’

‘I can give you the embassy. They’ll have to put you through. Sorry about that, old sport.’

Delay, which Toby perceives as deliberate, while Gregory hunts for the number. He dials it and gets a laborious female voice telling him, first in Arabic and then in English, that if he wishes to apply for a visa he should present himself in person at the British Consulate between the following hours and be prepared for a long delay. If he wishes to contact the ambassador or a member of the ambassador’s household, he should leave his message now.

He leaves it:

‘This is for Giles Oakley, currently attending the Doha Conference.’ Breath. ‘Giles, I sent you several messages, but you don’t seem to have picked them up. I’m having serious personal problems, and I need your help as soon as possible. Please call me any time of day or night, either on this line or, if you prefer, on my home number.’

Returning to his flat, he realizes too late that he has forgotten to buy the bottle of red wine that he went out to get. Isabel notices, but says nothing.


Somehow, morning has broken. Isabel lies asleep beside him, but he knows that one careless move on his part and they will either quarrel or make love. In the night they have done both, but this has not prevented Toby from keeping his BlackBerry at his bedside and checking it for messages on the grounds that he is on call.

Neither have his thought processes been idle during this time, and the conclusion they have reached is that he will give Oakley until ten o’clock this morning, when he is pledged to perform the antics required of him by his minister. If by that time Oakley has not responded to his messages he will take the executive decision: one so drastic that at first glance he recoils at the prospect, then cautiously tiptoes back to take a second look.

And what does he see in his mind’s eye, lying in wait for him in the deep right-hand drawer of his very own desk in the ministerial anteroom? Covered in mildew, verdigris and, if only in his imagination, mouse droppings?

A Cold War-era, pre-digital, industrial-sized tape recorder – an apparatus so ancient and lumbering, so redundant in our age of miniaturized technology as to be an offence to the contemporary soul: for which reason, if for no other, Toby has repeatedly requested its removal on the grounds that if any minister wished for a secret recording of a conversation in his Private Office, the devices available to him were so discreet and varied that he would be spoiled for choice.

But thus far – providentially or otherwise – his pleas have gone unanswered.

And the switch that operates this monster? Pull out the drawer above, hunt around with your right hand, and there it is: a sharp, hostile nipple mounted on a brown Bakelite half-cup, up for off, down for record.


0850 hours. Nothing from Oakley.

Toby likes a good breakfast but this Saturday morning doesn’t feel peckish. Isabel is an actress and therefore doesn’t touch breakfast, but she is in conciliatory mode and wishes to sit with him for friendship and watch him eat his boiled egg. Rather than precipitate another row, he boils one and eats it for her. He finds her mood suspect. On any past Saturday morning when he has announced he must pop into the office to clear up a bit of work, she has remained demonstratively in bed. This morning – although by rights they should be enjoying their weekend, sampling the delights of Dublin – she is all sweetness and understanding.

The day is sunny so he thinks he will leave early and walk it. Isabel says a walk is just what he needs. For the first time ever, she accompanies him to the front door, where she bestows a fond kiss on him, then stands watching him down the stairs. Is she telling him she loves him, or waiting till the coast is clear?


0952 hours. Still nothing from Oakley.

Having maintained a vigil over his BlackBerry while marching at exaggerated speed through the sparsely populated London streets, Toby starts his countdown to Birdcage Walk by way of The Mall and, adjusting his pace to that of the sightseers, advances on the green side door with metal bars in front of it.

He tests the handle. The green door yields.

He turns his back on the door and with studied casualness takes in Horse Guards, the London Eye, a group of wordless Japanese schoolchildren and – in a last, desperate appeal – the spreading London plane tree from whose shade he had yesterday dispatched the first of his unanswered messages to Oakley.

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 ‘f*ck 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 ones Toby isn’t allowed to open.

Yes. Well. Good of you to come, anyway. Sorry to f*ck up your weekend. Sorry you f*cked 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 f*cked 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 something 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.


‘All done, Jeb?’ Quinn is asking, in a tone of saintly tolerance. ‘No more where that came from?’

‘Well, we do have a couple of supplementaries, like, since you ask, Minister. Compensation in the worst contingency is one. Medevac for if we’re wounded is another. We can’t stay lying there, can we? We’d be embarrassing either way, dead or wounded. What happens to our wives and dependants, like? That’s another one, now we’re not regiment any more till we’re reinstated. I said I’d ask, even if it was a bit on the academic side,’ he ends, on a note that to Toby’s ear is too concessive by half.

‘Not academic at all, Jeb,’ Quinn protests expansively. ‘Quite the reverse, if I may say so! Let me make this very clear’ – the Glaswegian Man of the People’s accent taking convenient wing as Quinn enters his hectoring salesman’s mode – ‘the legal headache you describe has been thought through at the very highest level and totally discounted. Thrown out of court. Literally.’

By whom? By Roy Stormont-Taylor, the charismatic television lawyer, on one of his many social visits to the Private Office?

‘And I’ll tell you why it’s been thrown out, if you want to know, Jeb, which you very rightly do, if I may say so. Because no British team will be taking part in an act of extraordinary rendition. Period. The British team will be based on precious British soil. Solely. You will be protecting British shores. Furthermore, this government is on record, at all levels, as refuting any suggestion of involvement in extraordinary rendition whatsoever, past, present or future. It is a practice that we abhor and condemn unconditionally. What an American team does is entirely its own affair.’

In Toby’s racing imagination the minister here casts Jeb a glower of immense import, then shakes his brawler’s gingery head in frustration as if to say: if only his lips weren’t sealed.

‘Your remit, Jeb, is – repeat – to capture or otherwise neutralize with minimum force an HVT’ – hasty translation, presumably for Paul’s benefit – ‘High-value Target, right? – target, not terrorist, though in this case the two happen to be one and the same – with a very large price on his head who has been unwise enough to intrude himself on to British territory’ – hitting the prepositions, a sure sign to Toby’s ear of his insecurity. ‘Of necessity, you will be there incognito, undeclared to the local authorities, in accordance with the tightest possible security. As will Paul. You will achieve your aim by approaching your HVT from the landward side only, at the same time as your non-British sister force approaches from the sea, albeit in British territorial waters, whatever the Spanish may say to the contrary. Should this non-British seaborne team, of its own volition, elect to abstract or exfiltrate that target and remove him from the jurisdiction – i.e. out of British territorial waters – neither you personally, nor any member of your team, will be complicit in that act. To recapitulate’ – and incidentally wear down – ‘you are a landborne protection force exercising its duty of defending sovereign British territory in a totally legal and legitimate manner under international law, and you have no further responsibility whatever for the outcome of the operation, be you clad in military uniform or civilian attire. I am quoting directly a legal opinion passed down to me by arguably the best and most qualified international lawyer in the land.’

Re-enter, in Toby’s imagination, the bold and beautiful Roy Stormont-Taylor, QC, whose advice according to Giles Oakley is startlingly free of official caution.

‘So what I’m saying, Jeb, is’ – the Glaswegian accent now positively priestly – ‘here we are, with the countdown to D-Day already ringing in our ears – you as the Queen’s soldier, me as the Queen’s minister, and Paul here, shall we say – yes, Paul?’

‘Your red telephone?’ Paul offers helpfully.

‘So what I’m saying is, Jeb: keep your feet squarely planted on that precious bit of British rock, leave the rest to Elliot and his boys, and you’re in legal clover. You were defending sovereign British territory, you were assisting in the apprehension of a known criminal, as were others. What happens to the said criminal once he’s been removed from British territory – and British territorial waters – is no concern of yours, nor should it be. Ever.’


Toby switched off the recorder.

‘British rock?’ he whispered aloud, head in hands.

With a capital R or a small one, please?

Listen again in horrified disbelief.

Then a third time as he again scribbled feverishly on Isabel’s shopping pad.

Rock. Hold it there.

That precious bit of British Rock to keep your feet squarely planted on: more precious by far than Grenada, where the ties to Britain were so flimsy that American troops could barge in without so much as ringing the doorbell.

There was but one Rock in the world that met these stringent qualifications, and the notion that it was on the point of becoming the scene of an extraordinary rendition mounted by discharged British soldiers out of uniform and American mercenaries who were legally inviolate was so monstrous, so incendiary, that for a while Toby, for all the Foreign Office instruction he had received in measured, non-judgemental responses at all times, could only stare stupidly at the kitchen wall before listening to whatever was left.


‘So have we any more questions where those came from, or are we done?’ Quinn is enquiring genially.

In his imagination, Toby, like Jeb, is looking at the raised eyebrows and grim-set half-smile that tell you that the minister, courteous though he is, has reached the limit of his allotted time and yours.

Is Jeb deterred? Not in Toby’s book, he isn’t. Jeb’s a soldier, and knows an order when he hears one. Jeb knows when he’s had his say and can’t say more. Jeb knows the countdown has begun and there’s a job to do. Only now do the sirs come:

He is grateful for the minister’s time, sir.

He is grateful for the legal opinion of the best and most qualified international lawyer in the land, sir.

He will pass Quinn’s message back to his men. He can’t speak for them, but thinks they will feel better about the operation, sir.

His last words fill Toby with dread:

‘And very nice to have met you too, Paul. See you on the night, as they say.’

And Paul, whoever he is – such a patently low flyer, now that the afterthought presents itself to Toby’s raging mind – what’s he doing, or rather not doing, while the minister throws his magic dust in Jeb’s eyes?

I’m your red telephone, silent till rung.


Expecting to hear little more from the tape than departing footsteps, Toby is again jerked to attention. The footsteps fade, the door closes and is locked. Squelch of Lobb shoes advancing on desk.

‘Jay?’

Has Crispin been there all this time? Hiding in a cupboard, ear to the keyhole?

No. The minister is talking to him on one of his several direct lines. His voice is fond, almost obsequious.

‘We’re there, Jay. Bit of nitpicking, as had to be expected. Roy’s formula went down a treat … Absolutely not, old boy! I didn’t offer it, he didn’t ask for it. If he had asked, I’d have said, “Sorry, mate, not my business. If you feel you’ve a claim, take it up with Jay” … probably fancies himself a cut above you bounty-hunters …’ A sudden outburst, part anger, part relief: ‘And if there’s one thing in the world I can’t stand, it’s being preached at by a f*cking Welsh dwarf!’

Laughter, distantly echoed over the phone. Change of subject. Ministerial yeses and of courses:

‘… and Maisie’s all right with that, is she? Still on side, no headaches? Atta girl …’

Long silence. Quinn again, but with a submissive fall in the voice:

‘Well, I suppose if that’s what Brad’s people want, that’s what they must have, no question … all right, yes, fourish … the wood, or Brad’s place? … the wood suits me a lot better, to be frank, more private … No, no, thanks, no limo. I’ll grab a common black cab. See you fourish.’


Toby sat on the edge of his bed. On the sheets, traces of their final loveless coupling. On the BlackBerry beside him, the text of his last message to Oakley sent an hour ago: love life shattered vital we talk soonest, Toby.

Change sheets.

Clear bathroom of Isabel’s detritus.

Wash up last night’s supper dishes.

Pour rest of red Burgundy down sink.

Repeat after me: countdown’s already begun … here we are with the bloody clock ticking … see you on the night, as they say, Paul.

Which night? Last night? Tomorrow night?

And still no message.

Make omelette. Leave half.

Switch on Newsnight, encounter one of God’s little ironies. Roy Stormont-Taylor, Queen’s Counsel, the silkiest silk in the business, in striped shirt and white open-necked collar, is pontificating on the essential differences between law and justice.

Take aspirin. Lie on bed.

And at some point, unknown to himself, he must have dozed off, because the shriek of a text message on his BlackBerry woke him like a fire alarm:

Urge you forget lady permanently.

No signature.

Text back, furiously and impulsively: No way. Too bloody important. Vital we discuss soonest. Bell.


All life has ceased.

After the headlong sprint, the sudden, endless, fruitless wait.

To sit all day long at his kneehole desk in the ministerial anteroom.

To work methodically through his emails, take phone calls, make them, barely recognizing his own voice. Giles, where in God’s name are you?

At night, when he should be celebrating bachelorhood regained, to lie awake longing for Isabel’s chatter and the solace of their carnality. To listen to the sounds of carefree passers-by in the street below his window and pray to be one of them; to envy the shadows in the curtained windows opposite.

And once – is it night one or two? – to be woken from a half-sleep to the absurdly melodious strains of a male choir declaring itself – as if for Toby’s ears alone – ‘impatient for the coming fight as we wait the morning’s light’. Convinced he is going mad, he scrambles to the window and sees below him a ring of ghostly men in green, bearing lanterns. And he remembers belatedly that it’s St Patrick’s Day and they are singing ‘A Soldier’s Song’ and Islington has a thriving Irish population: which in turn sends his mind skimming back to Hermione.

Try calling her again? No way.

As to Quinn, the minister has providentially embarked on one of his unexplained absences, this time an extended one. Providentially? – or ominously? Only once does he offer any sign of life: a mid-afternoon phone call to Toby’s cellphone. His voice has a metallic echo, as if it is speaking from a bare cell. Its tone verges on the hysterical:

‘Is that you?’

‘It is indeed, Minister. Bell. What can I do for you?’

‘Just tell me who’s been trying to get hold of me, that’s all. Serious people, not riff-raff.’

‘Well, to be frank, Minister, nobody very much. The lines have been strangely quiet’ – which is no less than the truth.

‘What do you mean, “strangely”? Strangely how? What’s strange? There’s nothing strange going on, hear me?’

‘I wasn’t suggesting there was, Minister. Just that the silence is – unusual?’

‘Well, keep it that way.’

As to Giles Oakley, unwavering object of Toby’s despair, he is being equally elusive. First, according to Victoria, his assistant, he is still in Doha. Then he is in conference all day and possibly all night as well, and may on no account be disturbed. And when Toby asks whether the conference is in London or Doha, she replies tartly that she is not authorized to supply details.

‘Well, did you tell him it was urgent, Victoria?’

‘Of course I bloody did.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘That urgency is not synonymous with importance,’ she replies haughtily, no doubt quoting her master word for word.

It is another twenty-four hours before she calls him on the internal line, this time all sweetness and light:

‘Giles is at Defence right now. He’d love to talk to you but it’s likely to drag on a bit. Could you possibly meet him at the foot of the Ministry’s steps at half seven, take a stroll along the Embankment and enjoy the sun?’

Toby could.


‘And you heard all this how?’ Oakley enquired conversationally.

They were strolling along the Embankment. Chattering girls in skirts flounced past them arm in arm. The evening traffic was a stampede. But Toby was hearing nothing but his own too-strident voice and Oakley’s relaxed interjections. He had tried to look him in the eye and failed. The famous Oakley pebble jaw was set tight.

‘Let’s just say I picked it up in bits,’ Toby said impatiently. ‘What does it matter? A file Quinn left lying about. Things I overheard him whispering on the phone. You instructed me to tell you if I heard anything, Giles. Now I’m telling you!’

‘I instructed you when, exactly, dear man?’

‘At your own house. Schloss Oakley. After a dinner discussing alpacas. Remember? You asked me to stick around for a Calvados. I did. Giles, what the f*ck is this?’

‘Odd. I have no memory of any such conversation. If it took place, which I dispute, then it was surely private, alcohol-induced and not in any circumstance for quotation.’

‘Giles!’

But this was Oakley’s official voice, speaking for the record; and Oakley’s official face, not a muscle moving.

‘The further suggestion that your minister, who I understand to have spent a relaxing and well-deserved weekend in his recently acquired Cotswold mansion in the company of close friends, was engaged in promoting a hare-brained covert operation on the shores of a sovereign British colony – wait! – is both slanderous and disloyal. I suggest you abandon it.’

‘Giles. I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Giles!’

Grabbing Oakley’s arm, he drew him into a recess in the railing. Oakley looked down icily at Toby’s hand; and then, with his own, gently removed it.

‘You are mistaken, Toby. Were such an operation to have occurred, do you not imagine that our intelligence services, ever alert to the danger of private armies going off the reservation, would have advised me? They did not so advise me, therefore it has manifestly not occurred.’

‘You mean the spies don’t know? Or are deliberately looking the other way?’ – thoughts of Matti’s phone call – ‘What are you telling me, Giles?’

Oakley had found a spot for his forearms and was straining forward as if to relish the bustling river scene. But his voice remained as lifeless as if he were reading from a position paper:

‘I am telling you, with all the emphasis at my command, that there’s nothing for you to know. There was nothing to know, and there will never be anything to know, outside the fantasies of your heat-oppressed brain. Keep it for your novel, and get on with your career.’

‘Giles,’ Toby pleaded, as if in a dream. But Oakley’s features, cost him what it might, remained rigidly, almost passionately, in denial.

‘Giles what?’ he demanded irritably.

‘This isn’t my heat-oppressed brain talking to you. Listen: Jeb. Paul. Elliot. Brad. Ethical Outcomes. The Rock. Paul’s in our very own Foreign Office. He’s a member in good standing. Our colleague. He’s got a sick wife. He’s a low flyer. Check the leave-of-absence roster and you’ve got him nailed. Jeb’s Welsh. His team comes from our own Special Forces. They’ve been struck off the regimental roll in order to be deniable. The Brits push from the land, Crispin and his mercenaries pull from the sea with a little help from Brad Hester, graciously financed by Miss Maisie and legalled by Roy Stormont-Taylor.’

In a silence made deeper by the clatter round him, Oakley went on smiling fixedly at the river.

‘And all this you have from fag ends of conversation you weren’t supposed to overhear, but did? Misrouted files with stickers and caveats all over them that just happened to come your way. Men bound together in conspiracy who just happened to reveal their plans to you in careless conversation. How very resourceful you are, Toby. I seem to remember your telling me you didn’t listen at keyholes. For a moment, I had the very vivid feeling you had been present at the meeting. Don’t,’ he commanded, and for a moment, neither man spoke.

‘Listen to me, dear man,’ he resumed, in an altogether softer tone. ‘Whatever information you imagine you possess – hysterical, anecdotal, electronic, don’t tell me – destroy it before it destroys you. Every day, all across Whitehall, idiotic plans are aired and abandoned. Please, for your own future, accept that this was another.’

Had the lapidary voice faltered? What with the bustling shadows of pedestrians, the passing lights and din of river traffic, Toby could not be sure.


Alone in the kitchen of his Islington flat, Toby first played the analogue tapes on his replica recorder, at the same time making a digital recording. He transferred the digital recording to his desktop, then to a memory stick for back-up. Then buried the recording as deep in the desktop as it would go, while aware that if the technicians ever got their hooks on it nothing was going to be buried deep enough and the only thing to do in that unhappy eventuality was to smash the hard drive with a hammer and distribute the fragments over a wide area. With a strip of industrial-quality masking tape conveniently left behind by an odd-job man, he pasted the memory stick behind a foxed photograph of his maternal grandparents on their wedding day which hung in the darkest corner of the hallway, next to the coat hooks, and tenderly consigned it to them for safekeeping. How to dispose of the original tape? Wiping it clean wasn’t enough. Having cut it into small pieces, he set fire to them in the sink, nearly setting fire to the kitchen in the process, then flushed what remained down the sink disposal unit.

His posting to Beirut followed five days later.