The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré

‘I’m sorry about Mickie,’ Pendel muttered after a pause. ‘I couldn’t stop myself.’

‘When we can’t hurt our enemies we hurt our friends. As long as you know that.’

‘I do.’

‘The Bear rang.’

‘About his article?’

‘He didn’t mention the article. He said he needs to see you. Soon. He’s in his usual place. He made it sound like a threat.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Boulevard Balboa on the Avenida Balboa was a low, sparse brasserie with a polystyrene ceiling and prison striplights boxed in with wooden slats. Some years ago it had been blown up, nobody remembered why. The big windows looked across the Avenida Balboa to the sea. At a long table, a heavy-jowled man protected by black-suited bodyguards in sunglasses was pontificating to a television camera. The Bear sat in his own space, reading his own newspaper. The tables around him were empty. He was wearing a P&B striped blazer and a sixty-dollar Panama hat from the boutique. His shiny pitch-black pirate beard looked as if it had just been shampooed. It matched the jet-black frames of his spectacles.

‘You rang, Teddy,’ Pendel reminded him after a minute of sitting unnoticed on the wrong side of the newspaper.

The newspaper reluctantly descended.

‘What about?’ the Bear asked.

‘You phoned, I came. The jacket looks nice then.’

‘Who bought the rice farm?’

‘A friend of mine.’

‘Abraxas?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Why of course not?’

‘He’s running out.’

‘Who says?’

‘He does.’

‘Maybe you pay Abraxas. Maybe he works for you. You got some racket with Abraxas? You doing drugs together, like his father?’

‘Teddy, I think you’re out of your mind.’

‘How did you pay off Rudd? Who’s this mad millionaire you boast about without giving Rudd a piece of the action? That was most offensive. Why have you opened this ridiculous clubroom above your shop? Have you sold out to somebody? What’s going on?’

‘I’m a tailor, Teddy. I make clothes for gentlemen and I’m expanding. Are you going to give me some nice free publicity, then? There was an article in the Miami Herald not a long time back, I don’t know if it came your way.’

The Bear sighed. His voice was inert. Compassion, humanity, curiosity had all drained out of it long ago, if they had ever been there in the first place.

‘Let me explain the principles of journalism,’ he said. ‘I make money two ways. One way, people pay me to write stories, so I write them. I hate writing but I must eat, I must finance my appetites. Another way, people pay me not to write stories. For me, that’s the better way because I don’t have to write anything and I still get the money. If I play my cards right I get more for not writing than for writing. There’s a third way I don’t like. I call it my last recourse. I go to certain people in government and offer to sell them what I know. But that way’s unsatisfactory.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like selling in the dark. If I deal with somebody ordinary – with you – with him over there – and I know I can ruin his reputation or his business or his marriage, and he knows it too, then the story has its price, we can agree on something, it’s normal commercial discourse. But when I go to the certain people in government’ – very slightly, he shook his long head in disapproval – ‘I don’t know what it’s worth to them. Some of them are smart. Some are donkeys. You don’t know whether they’re ignorant or they’re not telling you. So it’s bluff, it’s counterbluff, it’s time-consuming. Maybe they also threaten me with my own dossier in order to beat me down. I don’t like wasting my life that way. You want to do business, you want to give me a quick answer and save me trouble, I’ll give you a good price. Since you have a mad millionaire at your disposal, clearly he must be factored into any objective assessment of your means.’

Pendel had the sensation of putting his smile together by numbers, first one side then the other side, then the cheeks and, when he allowed them to focus, the eyes. Finally his voice.