The Night Manager полностью

"Objection," Darker snaps. "Enforcement's the thin end of the wedge. If we let Burr in, we'll end up with every Mickey Mouse agency in Whitehall. Everybody knows these small outfits are up for grabs. They start trouble, then they haven't got the clout to end it. We've all seen Burr's background paper. Most of us know the case from other angles. The agenda says we're going to be talking command and control. The last thing we need is the subject of our discussions sitting here, listening in."

"But, Geoffrey," says Goodhew lightly, "you are the constant subject of our discussions."

The minister mutters something like "Oh, all right, leave things as they are for the moment," and the first round is a draw, with both protagonists slightly bloodied.

* * *

A few minutes of English chamber music while the heads of Air and Naval Intelligence describe their respective successes in tracking the Horatio Enriques. When they have completed their reports they proudly circulate full-plate photographs.

"Looks like a perfectly ordinary tanker to me," says the minister.

Merridew, who detests espiocrats, agrees. "Probably is," he says.

Somebody coughs. A chair creaks. Goodhew hears a kind of regal bray from higher up the scale than he is ready for, and recognizes it as the familiar sound of a senior British politician defacing a point of argument.

"Why is this one ours, anyway, Rex?" the minister wishes to know. "Bound for Poland. Panamanian ship, Curaçaoan company. Not our baby at all, far as I can see. You're asking me to push it upstairs to Number 10. I'm asking why we're sitting here talking about it at all."

"Ironbrand's a British company, Minister."

"No, it's not. It's Bahamian. Isn't it Bahamian?" Business, while the minister, with the mannerisms of a much older man, makes a show of rummaging through Burr's three-thousand word summary. "Yes. It's Bahamian. Says so here."

"Its directors are British, the men committing the crime are British, the evidence against them was gathered by a British agency under the aegis of your ministry."

"Then give our evidence to the Poles, and we can all go home," says the minister, very pleased with himself. "Splendid idea, if you ask me."

Darker smiles in icy admiration of the minister's wit, but prefers to take the unprecedented step of correcting Goodhew's English. "Can we say testimony, please, Rex? Rather than evidence? Before we all get carried away."

"I am not carried away, Geoffrey, nor shall I be, unless it is feet first," Goodhew retorts too loudly, to the discomfort of his supporters. "As to passing our evidence to the Poles, Enforcement will do that at its discretion, and not before a decision has been agreed on how to proceed against Roper and his accomplices. Responsibility for seizing the shipment of arms has been ceded to the Americans. I do not propose to cede the rest of our responsibility to the Poles unless those are my instructions from the minister. We are talking of a rich and well-organised crime syndicate in a very poor country. The perpetrators chose Gdansk because they think they can control it. If they're right, it will make no difference what we tell the Polish government; the cargo will be landed anyway, and we shall blow Burr's source for nothing except the pleasure of warning Onslow Roper that we are on his trail."

"Perhaps Burr's source is blown already," Darker suggests.

"Always a possibility, Geoffrey. Enforcement has many enemies, some across the river."

For the first time, Jonathan's ghostly shadow has fallen across their table. Goodhew has no personal knowledge of Jonathan, but he has shared enough of Burr's travail to share it again now. And perhaps this awareness fuels his sense of outrage, for once more he undergoes a startling change of colour as he resumes his argument, his voice a little above its customary level.

Under the agreed rules of Joint Steering, he says, every agency however small is sovereign in its sphere.

And every agency however large is obliged to provide support in aid of every other agency, while respecting its rights and freedoms.

In the Limpet case, he continues, this principle has come under repeated fire from the River House, who are demanding control of the operation on the grounds that such control is demanded by its counterpart in the United States ―

Darker has interrupted. It is Darker's strength to possess no middle gears. He has smouldering silence. He has, in extremis, the capacity to reverse his position when a battle looks irretrievably lost. And he has attack, which is what he uses now.