A Delicate Truth Read Free Page B

Let us take the
     hypothetical case of the operation aborting in a manner not foreseen by its expert
     planners of whom I pride myself as being one. Was there aninside man?
     they may ask. And who is this scholarly wanker Anderson who skulked in his hotel room
     reading books all day and all night? – they will start to wonder. Where is this Anderson
     to be found, in a colony no bigger than a fucking golf course? If that situation were to
     arise, I suspect you’d be grateful indeed not to have been the person you are in
     reality. Happy now, Paul?’
    Happy as a sandboy, Elliot. Couldn’t
     be happier. Totally out of my element, whole thing like a dream, but with you all the
     way. But then, noticing that Elliot looks a bit put out, and fearing that the detailed
     briefing he is about to receive will kick off on a bad note, he goes for a bit of
     bonding:
    ‘So where does a highly qualified chap
     like
you
fit into the scheme of things, if I may ask without being intrusive,
     Elliot?’
    Elliot’s voice acquires the
     sanctimoniousness of the pulpit:
    ‘I sincerely thank you for that
     question, Paul. I am a man of arms; it is my life. I have fought wars large and small,
     mostly on the continent of Africa. During these exploits I was fortunate enough to
     encounter a man whose sources of intelligence are legendary, not to say uncanny. His
     worldwide contacts speak to him as to no other in the safe knowledge that he will use
     their information in the furtherance of democratic principles and liberty.
Operation
     Wildlife
, the details of which I shall now unveil to you, is his personal
     brainchild.’
    And it is Elliot’s proud statement
     that elicits the obvious, if sycophantic, question:
    ‘And may one ask, Elliot, whether this
     great man has a name?’
    ‘Paul, you are now and for evermore
     family. I will therefore tell you without restraint that the founder and driving force
     of Ethical Outcomes is a gentleman whose name, in strictest confidence, is Mr Jay
     Crispin.’
     
    *
     
    Return to Harrow by black cab.
    Elliot says,
From now on, keep all
     receipts
. Pay off cabbie, keep receipt.
    Google Jay Crispin.
    Jay is nineteen and lives in Paignton,
     Devon. She is a waitress.
    J. Crispin, Veneer Makers, began life in
     Shoreditch in 1900.
    Jay Crispin auditions for models, actors,
     musicians and dancers.
    But of Jay Crispin, the driving force of
     Ethical Outcomes and mastermind of
Operation Wildlife
, not a glimpse.
     
    *
     
    Stuck once more at the overlarge window of
     his hotel prison, the man who must call himself Paul emitted a weary string of mindless
     obscenities, more in the modern way than his own.
Fuck
– then
double
     fuck
. Then more
fucks
, loosed off in a bored patter of gunfire aimed
     at the cellphone on the bed and ending with an appeal –
Ring, you little bugger,
     ring
– only to discover that somewhere inside or outside his head the same
     cellphone, no longer mute, was chirruping back at him with its infuriating
diddly-ah, diddly-ah, diddly-ah dee-dah-doh.
    He remained at the window, frozen in
     disbelief. It’s next-door’s fat Greek with a beard, singing in the shower.
     It’s those horny lovers upstairs: he’s grunting, she’s howling,
     I’m hallucinating.
    Then all he wanted in the world was to go to
     sleep and wake up when it was over. But by then he was at the bed, clutching the
     encrypted cellphone to his ear but, out of some aberrant sense of security, not
     speaking.
    ‘Paul? Are you there, Paul? It’s
     me.
Kirsty
, remember?’
    Kirsty the part-time minder he’d never
     set eyes on. Her voice the only thing he knew about her: pert, imperious, and the rest
     of her imagined. Sometimes he wondered whether he detecteda smothered
     Australian accent – a pair to Elliot’s South African. And sometimes he wondered
     what kind of body the voice might have, and at others whether it had a body at all.
    Already he could catch its sharpened tone,
     its air of