The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré

‘I heard you arranged that,’ Hatry said.

‘Wouldn’t play twice, either way,’ Elliot replied, brushing aside the suggestion as irrelevant.

Ben Hatry imploded. An underground test. There was no bang, he was fully tamped. Just a high-pressured hiss as he expelled air, frustration and fury in one burst.

‘Jesus bloody Christ. That fucking Canal is yours, Elliot,’

‘India was yours once, Ben.’

Hatry didn’t bother to respond. He was staring through the curtained window at nothing that was worth his time.

‘We need a peg,’ Elliot repeated. ‘No peg, no war. President won’t swing. Final.’

It took Geoff Cavendish, with his polish and good robust looks to bring light and happiness back to the meeting.

‘Well, gentlemen, it seems to me we have a great deal of common ground. We must leave the timing to General Van’s judgment. Nobody disputes that. Can we talk around that a little? Tug, you’re straining at the leash, I see.’

Hatry had made the curtained window his own. The prospect of listening to Kirby had only deepened his despondency.

‘This Silent Opposition,’ Kirby said. ‘The Abraxas Group. Do you have a read on that, Elliot?’

‘Should I?’

‘Does Van?’

‘He likes them.’

‘Rather odd of him, isn’t it?’ said Kirby. ‘Considering the fellow is anti-Yank?’

‘Abraxas is not a puppet, he’s not a client,’ Elliot replied equably. ‘If we’re fielding a provisional Panamanian government till the country’s safe for elections again, Abraxas is worth a lot of Brownie points. The libs can’t scream colonial at us. Neither can the Pans.’

‘And if he’s no good you can always crash his plane, can’t you,’ said Hatry nastily.

Kirby again: ‘My point being, Elliot, Abraxas is our man. Not yours. Our man by his choice. That makes his opposition ours too. Ours to control, ours to equip and advise. I think we should all remember that. Van should remember it particularly. It would look very bad for General Van if it were ever to turn out that Abraxas had been taking Uncle Sam’s dollar. Or his chaps were equipped with Yankee arms. Don’t want to stigmatise the poor fellow as a Yankee quisling from the start, do we?’

The Colonel had an idea. His eyes opened wide and shone. His smile was heavenly.

‘Listen: we can do it false flag, Tug! We got assets out there! We can make it like Abraxas is getting stuff from Peru, Guatemala, Castro Cuba. We can make it anything. It’s not any kind of problem!’

Tug Kirby only ever made one point at a time. ‘We found Abraxas, we equip him,’ he said stonily. ‘We’ve got a first-class procurement man on the spot. You want to put up money, all offers gratefully received. But you put it up to us. Nothing local. Nothing direct. We run Abraxas, we supply him. He’s ours. And his students and his fishermen and anybody else he’s got. We supply the whole home side,’ he ended, and rapped his huge knuckles on the eighteenth-century table in case they hadn’t got the point.

‘All that’s if,’ said Elliot after a while.

‘If what?’ Kirby demanded.

‘If we go in,’ said Elliot.

Abruptly Hatry unlocked his gaze from the window and swung round to face Elliot.

‘I want exclusive first bite,’ he said. ‘My cameras and my scribes go in the first wave, my boys to run with the students and the fishermen, exclusive. Everyone else rides in the guard’s van with the spares,’

Elliot was drily amused. ‘Maybe you people should mount the invasion for us, Ben. Maybe that would solve your election problem for you. How about a rescue action to protect expatriate British citizens? Must be a couple of ’em down there in Panama.’

‘Glad you raised that question, Elliot,’ said Kirby.

A different axis. Kirby very tense and all eyes on him, even Hatty’s.

‘Why’s that, Tug?’ said Elliot.

‘Time we talked about just what our man does get out of this,’ Kirby retorted, blushing. Our man, meaning our leader. Our puppet. Our mascot.

‘You want him sitting with Van in the Pentagon war room, Tug?’ Elliot suggested playfully.

‘Don’t be bloody silly.’

‘You want British troops on US gunships? Be my guest.’

‘No we don’t, thank you. It’s your back yard. But we shall want credit.’

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