The Tailor of Panama (16 page)

Any normal ambassador would have taken his head of chancery aside, of course. Courtesy alone required it: “Oh, Nigel, I thought you should be the first to know . . .” But after a year of one another they had passed the stage where courtesy could be taken for granted. And anyway Maltby prided himself on his droll little surprises. So he held back the news until his Monday-morning ambassadorial meeting, which Stormont privately regarded as the low point of every working week.

His audience of one beautiful woman and three men including Stormont sat before his desk in a crescent of chrome chairs. Maltby faced them like the creature of a larger, poorer race. He was late forties and six feet three, with a mangy black forelock, a first-class honours degree in something useless and a permanent smirk that should never be mistaken for a smile. Whenever his gaze settled on the beautiful woman, you knew it would like to be there all the time and didn't dare, for no sooner had it settled than it darted shamefully away to the wall and only the smirk remained. The jacket of his suit hung over the back of his chair and the dandruff on it twinkled in the morning sun. His taste in shirts was flamboyant and this
morning he was nineteen stripes wide. Or so reckoned Stormont, who hated the ground he loped on.

If Maltby did not conform with the imposing image of British officialdom abroad, neither did his embassy. No wrought-iron gates, no gilded porticos or grand staircases to instil humility in lesser breeds without the law. No eighteenth-century portraits of great men in sashes. Maltby's patch of Imperial Britain was suspended quarter of the way up a skyscraper owned by Panama's biggest law firm and crowned with the insignia of a Swiss bank.

The embassy's front door was of bulletproof steel lined with a veneer of English oak. You attained it by touching a button in a silent lift. The royal crest, in this air-conditioned stillness, suggested silicone and funeral parlours. The windows, like the doors, had been toughened to frustrate the Irish and tinted to frustrate the sun. Not a whisper of the real world penetrated. The silent traffic, cranes, shipping, old town and new town, the brigade of women in orange tunics gathering leaves along the central reservation of the Avenida Balboa, were mere specimens in Her Majesty's inspection chamber. From the moment you set foot in British extraterritorial airspace, you were looking in, not out.

The meeting had discussed, in short order, Panama's chances of becoming a signatory to the North American Free Trade Agreement (negligible, in Stormont's view), Panama's relations with Cuba (seedy trade alliances, Stormont reckoned, mostly drug related), and the impact of the Guatemalan elections on the Panamanian political psyche (nil, as Stormont had already advised Department). Maltby had dwelt—as he invariably did—on the rebarbative topic of the Canal; on the omnipresence of the Japanese; and of Mainland Chinese disguised as representatives of Hong Kong; and on certain bizarre rumours in the Panamanian press of a Franco-Peruvian consortium that proposed to buy up the Canal with the aid of French know-how and Colombian drug
money. And it was somewhere around this point, most likely, that Stormont, partly out of boredom and partly in self-defence, drifted off into a troubled review of his life till now:

Stormont, Nigel, born too long ago, educated not very well at Shrewsbury and Jesus, Oxford. Second in History like everybody else, divorced like everybody else: except that my little escapade happened to make the Sunday newspapers. Married finally to Paddy, short for Patricia, peerless ex-wife of
cher collègue
at British Embassy, Madrid, after he tried to immolate me with a silver wassail bowl at the all-ranks Christmas party; and currently serving a three-year sentence in Sing Sing, Panama, local population 2.6 million, quarter of it unemployed, half of it below the poverty line. Personnel undecided what to do with me after this, if anything at all apart from chuck me on the scrap heap: see their crabbed reply of yesterday to mine of six weeks ago. And Paddy's cough a continuing anxiety—when will those bloody doctors find a cure for it?

“Why can't it be a wicked
British
consortium for a change?” Maltby was complaining in a thin voice delivered mostly through the nose. “I'd
adore
to be at the centre of a fiendish British plot. I never have. Have you, Fran?”

The beautiful Francesca Deane smiled blandly and said, “Alas.”

“Alas
yes
?”

“Alas no.”

Maltby was not the only man Francesca drove mad. Half Panama was after her. A body to kill for, the brains to go with it. One of those creamy blond English complexions that Latin men go crazy over. Stormont would catch sight of her at parties, surrounded by Panama's most eligible studs, every one of them begging for a date with her. But by eleven she'd be home in bed with a book, and next morning at nine sitting at her desk wearing her legal black power suit and no makeup, all set for another day in paradise.

“Don't you think a
terrifically
secret British bid to turn the Canal into a trout farm would be fun, Gully?” Maltby asked with
elephantine facetiousness of the tiny, immaculately rigged Lieutenant Gulliver RN, retired, the embassy's procurement officer. “Baby fish in the Miraflores locks, bigger chaps in the Pedro Miguel, grown-ups in Gatún Lake?
I
think it's a marvellous idea.”

Gully let out a boisterous laugh. Procurement was the last of his concerns. His job was to off-load as many British weapons as he could on anybody with enough drug money to pay for them, land mines a speciality.

“Marvellous idea, Ambass, marvellous,” he boomed with his habitual messroom heartiness, pulling a spotted handkerchief from his sleeve and vigorously dusting his nose with it. “Bagged a jolly good salmon over the weekend, by the by. Twenty-twopounder. Had to drive two hours to catch the bugger, but worth every mile.”

Gulliver had taken part in the Falklands Thing and won a gong for it. Since then, so far as Stormont knew, he had never left this side of the Atlantic. Occasionally when he was drunk he would raise a glass to “a certain patient little lady across the pond” and heave a sigh. But it was a sigh of gratitude rather than deprival.

“
Political
officer?” Stormont echoed.

He must have spoken louder than he realised. Perhaps he had nodded off. After sitting up with Paddy all night, he wouldn't be surprised.

“
I'm
the
political
officer, Ambassador. Chancery's the
political
section. Why isn't he being posted to chancery, where he belongs? Tell 'em no. Dig your toes in.”

“I'm afraid one couldn't possibly tell them anything of the sort, Nigel. It's a done thing,” Maltby replied. His donnish neigh set Stormont's teeth on edge every time. “Within parameters, of course. One did fax a guarded objection to Personnel. Open-line stuff, one can't say much. The cost of coded signals these days is astronomic. All those machines and clever women, I suppose.” His smirk gave
way to another downtrodden smile for Francesca. “But one fights one's corner, naturally. Their response very much as you'd expect. Sympathetic to one's point of view but unyielding. Which in a way one can understand. After all, if one were in Personnel Department oneself, that's how one would respond. I mean, they've no more choice than we have, have they? Given the circumstances.”

It was the word “circumstances” attached as a postscript that provided Stormont with his first hint of the truth, but young Simon Pitt got in ahead of him. Simon was tall and flaxen and impish and wore a ponytail, which Maltby's imperious wife had vainly ordered him to cut off. He was a new entrant, currently responsible for everything nobody else wanted: visas, information, embassy computers on the blink, local British nationals and points below.

“Perhaps he could take over some of my stuff, sir,” he volunteered cheekily, one hand draped aloft to make the bid. “How about ‘Dreams of Albion' for openers?” he added, referring to a touring collection of early English watercolours presently rotting in a Panamanian customs shed to the shrill despair of the British Council in London.

Maltby picked his words with even more than his customary fastidiousness. “No, Simon, I'm afraid I
don't
think he'll be able to take over ‘Dreams of Albion,' thank you,” he replied, selecting a paper clip with his spidery fingers and unfolding it while he deliberated. “Osnard's not strictly speaking one of
us,
you see. Rather more one of
them,
if you follow me.”

Even then, amazingly, Stormont failed to take the obvious inference. “I'm sorry, Ambassador, I don't read you. One of
whom?
Is he a contract man or something?” A frightful thought struck him. “He's not drafted from industry, is he?”

Maltby bestowed a forbearing sigh on his paper clip. “No, Nigel, he is not, so far as I know, drafted from industry. He
may
be drafted from industry. I don't
know
that he is not. I know nothing about his past and very little about his present. His future is also a closed book to me. He's a Friend. Not, I hasten to say, a real friend, although we
shall all naturally live in hopes that he may in due course become one. One of
those
Friends. Now do you follow me?”

He paused, allowing time for simpler minds to catch him up.

“He's from across the
park,
Nigel. Well, river now. They've moved, one hears. What was a park is now a river.”

Stormont had found his tongue. “You mean the Friends are opening up a station? Here in Panama? They can't be.”

“How interesting. Why not?”

“They left. They pulled out. When the Cold War ended they shut up shop and left the field to the Americans. There's a product-sharing deal, conditional on them keeping their distance. I sit on the joint committee that supervises the traffic.”

“And so you do, Nigel. With distinction, if I may say so.”

“So what's changed?”

“Circumstance, one assumes. The Cold War ended, so the Friends went away. Now the Cold War is coming back and the Americans are going away. I'm only guessing, Nigel. I don't
know.
Any more than you do. They asked for their old slot. Our masters decided to give it to them.”

“How many?”

“One at present. No doubt if they're successful they'll ask for more. Perhaps we shall see the return of those heady days when the principal function of the Diplomatic Service was to provide cover for their activities.”

“Have the Americans been told?”

“No, and they're not to be. Osnard is to remain undeclared to anyone except ourselves.”

Stormont was digesting this when Francesca broke the silence. Fran was practical. Too practical sometimes.

“Will he work here in the embassy? Physically, I mean.”

Maltby had a different voice for Francesca, as well as a different face. It hovered between instruction and caress.

“Indeed, yes, Fran. Physically and otherwise.”

“Will he have staff?”

“We are asked to make provision for one assistant, Fran.”

“Male or female?”

“To be determined. Not, one assumes, by the person selected, but these days one can't be sure.” Snigger.

“What's his rank?” Simon Pitt this time.

“Do the Friends have ranks, Simon? How amusing. I always see their condition as a rank of its own. Don't you? There's all of
us.
And after us, there's all of
them.
Presumably they see it differently. He's an Etonian. Odd, the things the Office tells one and the things it doesn't. Still, we mustn't prejudge him.”

Maltby had been educated at Harrow.

“Does he speak Spanish?” Francesca was back.

“Fluently, we are told, Fran. But I never see languages as a guarantee of anything, do you? A man who can make a fool of himself in three languages strikes me as a three times bigger fool than a man who is confined to one.”

“When does he arrive?” Stormont again.

“Friday the thirteenth, appropriately. That is to say, the thirteenth is the date on which I am
told
he will arrive.”

“That's eight days from now,” Stormont protested.

The ambassador craned his long neck towards a calendar portraying the Queen in a feathered hat. “Is it? Well, well. I suppose it is.”

“Is he married?” asked Simon Pitt.

“Not that one is aware of, Simon.”

“Meaning no?”—Stormont again.

“Meaning that I have not been informed that he is, and since he has asked for bachelor accommodation, I assume that, whatever he has, he will come without it.”

Flinging out his arms to either side of him, Maltby folded them carefully in half until his hands came to rest behind his head. His gestures, though bizarre, were seldom without meaning. This one denoted that the meeting was about to close for golf.

“It's a full-term appointment, by the way, Nigel, not a temporary thing. Unless he gets thrown out, of course,” he added, brightening
slightly. “Fran. Dear. The Office is becoming testy about that draft memorandum we discussed. Could you possibly burn some midnight oil, or is it all spoken for?”

And the wolfish smile again, as sad as old age.

“Ambassador.”

“Why, Nigel. How nice.”

It was quarter of an hour later. Maltby was putting papers into his safe. Stormont had caught him alone. Maltby was not pleased.

“What's Osnard supposed to be covering? They must have told you. You can't have given him a blank cheque.”

Maltby closed his safe, set the combination, cranked himself to his full height and glanced at his watch.

“Oh, I think I pretty much did. What's the point of not? They'll take what they want anyway. It isn't the Foreign Office's fault. Osnard's sponsored by some grand interministerial body. One can't possibly resist.”

“Called what?”