Free A Delicate Truth by John le Carré Page B

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, goany 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