A Delicate Truth (8 page)

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 fuck 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.