The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré

All of these fiddly details were of immense importance to Pendel. Like Mrs Costello, he could get his mind round them, whereas the shelling from Ancon Hill and the hovering gunships cranking themselves round and coming in again were wearyingly familiar to him, part of everyday reality if that was what everyday reality was: a poor tailor boy lighting fires to please his friend and betters, then watching the world go up in smoke. And all the stuff you thought you cared about, ill-placed levity on the way there.

No, Your Honour, I did not start this war.

Yes, Your Honour, I grant you, it is possible I wrote the anthem. But allow me to point out with due respect that the one who writes the anthem does not necessarily start the war.

‘Harry, I do not understand why you remain outdoors when your family is begging you to join them. No, Harry, not in a minute. Now. We wish you to come inside please, and protect us.’

Oh Lou, oh Christ, I wish so much, so very much, that I could join them too. But I have to leave the lie behind, even if, hand on heart, I don’t know what the truth is. I have to stay and go at the same time, but at this moment, I can’t stay.

There had been no warning but then Panama was under warning all the time. Behave your little self or else. Remember you are not a country but a canal. Besides, the need for such warnings was exaggerated. Does a runaway blue Mercedes pram without a baby in it give a warning before it bounces down a couple of flights of snake-road and crashes into a bunch of fugitives? Of course it doesn’t. Does a football stadium give a warning before it collapses killing hundreds? Does a murderer warn his victim in advance that the police will call on him and ask whether he’s a British spy, and whether he would like to spend a week or two with a few hard cases in Panama’s best stocked nick? As to a specific warning of human intent – ‘We are about to bomb you’ – ‘We are about to betray you’ – why alarm everyone? A warning wouldn’t help the poor since there was nothing they could do about it, except what Mickie did. And the rich didn’t need a warning because it was by now an established principle of invading Panama that the rich were not at risk, which was what Mickie always said, whether he was drunk or sober.

So there was no warning and the helicopter gunships came in from the sea as usual but this time there was no resistance because there was no army, so El Chorrillo had taken the wise course of giving itself up before the planes got there, which was a sign that the place was finally coming to heel, and that Mickie in taking the same pre-empting line of action was not mistaken either, even if the results were messy. A block of flats similar to Marta’s fell to its knees of its own accord, reminding him of Mickie upside down. A makeshift primary school set fire to itself. A sanctuary for geriatrics blew a hole in its own wall almost the exact size of the hole in Mickie’s head. Then it turfed half its inmates into the street so that they could help deal with the fire problem, the way people had dealt with it in Guararé, mainly by ignoring it. And a whole lot of other people had sensibly started running before they could possibly have anything to run from – as a sort of fire drill – and screaming before they had been hit. And all this, Pendel noticed over Louisa’s yelling, had taken place before the first edge of troubled air reached his balcony in Bethania or the first tremors shook the broom cupboard under the stairs where Louisa had taken the children.

‘Dad!’ Mark this time. ‘Dad, come inside. Please! Please!’

‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’ Hannah now. ‘I love you!’

No, Hannah. No, Mark. Of love another time, please, and alas I cannot come inside. When a man sets fire to the world and kills his best friend into the bargain, and sends his non-mistress to Miami to spare her the further attentions of the police, though he had known from her turned away eyes that she wouldn’t go, he does his best to abandon any ideas he has of being a protector.

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