The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The arrival of the first material from Panama Station to bear the codename BUCHAN TWO had raised Scottie Luxmore, its originating genius in London, to unprecedented heights of self-congratulation. But this morning his euphoria had given way to a fretful nervousness. He paced at twice his usual speed. His hortatory Scottish voice had acquired a creak. His gaze veered restlessly across the river, northward and westward where his future now lay.

‘Cherchez la femme, Johnny boy,’ he advised a haggard youth named Johnson, who had succeeded Osnard in the ungrateful post of Luxmore’s personal assistant. ‘The female of the species is worth five men in this business any day.’

Johnson, who like his predecessor had mastered the essential art of sycophancy, leaned forward in his chair to show how keenly he was listening.

‘They have the perfidy, Johnny. They have the nerve, they are born dissemblers. Why do you suppose she insisted on working exclusively through her husband?’ His voice had the protest of a man pleading excuses in advance. ‘She knew very well she would outshine him. Where would he be then? On the pavement. Dispensed with. Paid off. Why should she let that happen?’ He wiped his open palms down the sides of his trousers. ‘Swap two salaries for one and make a fool of her man while she’s about it? Not our Louisa. Not our BUCHAN two!’ His eyes narrowed, as if he had recognised some-one at a distant window. But his peroration did not pause. ‘I knew what I was doing. So did she. Never underrate a woman’s intuition, Johnny. He’s reached his ceiling. He’s played out.’

‘Osnard?’ said Johnson hopefully. It was six months since he had been assigned to Luxmore’s shadow and still no posting was in sight for him.

‘Her husband, Johnny,’ Luxmore retorted irritably, and drew the tips of his fingers in a clawing gesture down one side of his bearded cheek. ‘BUCHAN ONE. Oh, his work was promising enough at first. But he’d no breadth of vision, they never have. No scale. No awareness of history. It was all tittle-tattle and warmed-up leftovers and covering his own backside. We could never have stuck with him, I see that now. She saw it too. She knows her man, that woman. Knows his limitations better than we do. And her own strength.’

‘The analysts are a bit worried there’s no collateral,’ ventured Johnson, who could never resist a chance to chip at Osnard’s pedestal. ‘Sally Morpurgo called the BUCHAN TWO stuff overwritten and undersourced.’

The shot caught Luxmore on the turn, just as he was beginning his fifth length of the carpet. He smiled the broad, blank smile of an entirely humourless man.

‘Did she now? And Miss Morpurgo is a most intelligent person, no question.’

‘Well, I think she is.’

‘And women are harsher on other women than we men are. Rightly.’

‘It’s true. I hadn’t thought of it till now.’

‘They are also subject to certain jealousies – envy is perhaps the better word here – from which we men are naturally immune. Are we not, Johnny?’

‘I expect so. No. Yes, I mean.’

‘What is Miss Morpurgo’s objection precisely?’ Lux-more asked in the tone of a man who can take fair criticism.

Johnson wished he had kept his mouth shut.

‘She just says, well, there’s no collateral. From the entire daily deluge, as she called it. Zero. No sigint, no friendly liaison, not a squeak out of the Americans. No travel int, no satellites, no unusual diplomatic traffic. It’s Black-Hole stuff all the way. She says.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Well, not quite, actually.’

‘Don’t spare me, Johnny.’

‘She said that never in the whole history of human intelligence had so much been paid for so little. It was a joke.’

If Johnson had hoped to undermine Luxmore’s confidence in Osnard and his works, he was disappointed. Luxmore’s breast swelled and his voice recovered its didactic Scottish pulse.

‘Johnny.’ A suck of the front teeth. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that a proven negative today is the equivalent of yesterday’s proven positive?’

‘No, it hasn’t, actually.’

‘Then reflect for a moment, I beseech you. It takes a crafty mind indeed, Johnny, to hide his tracks from the ears and eyes of modern technology, does it not? From credit cards to travel tickets, telephone calls, fax machines, banks, hotels, you name it. We cannot buy a bottle of whisky at the supermarket these days without advising the world that we have done so. “No trace” in such circumstances comes close to proof of guilt. These men of the world understand that. They know what it takes to be unseen, unheard, unknown.’

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