A Delicate Truth (14 page)

‘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
fucking 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.