The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré

‘No, Andy.’

‘Call ’em a bunch o’ limp-wristed, over-educated fag-gots, bitch about the CIA college boys in their button-down collars straight out o’ Yale?’

Pendel collects his memories. Judiciously.

‘He did a bit, Andy. It was in the air, I’ll put it that way.’

Osnard writing with slightly more enthusiasm.

‘Lament Yankee loss o’ power, speculate about the future ownership o’ the Canal?’

‘There was tension, Andy. The students were spoken of, and not with what I call respect.’

‘Just his words, mind ol’ boy? I’ll do the purple, you do the words.’

Pendel did his words as requested. ‘ “Harry,” he says to me – very quiet, this is – I’m worrying about his collar from the front – “My advice to you is, Harry, sell your shop and your house and get your wife and family out of this hell-hole of a country while there’s time. Milton Jenning was a great engineer. His daughter deserves better.” I was numb. I didn’t speak. I was too moved. He asked me how old our children were and he was highly relieved to discover they were not of university age, because he didn’t like to think of Milton Jenning’s grandchildren running in the streets with a lot of long-haired Commie bums.’

‘Wait.’

Pendel waited.

‘Okay. More.’

‘Then he said I should take care of Louisa, and how she was a daughter worthy of her father on account of putting up with that duplicitous bastard Dr Ernesto Delgado of the Canal Commission, God rot him. And the General’s not a man for language, Andy. I was shaken. So would you be.’

‘Delgado a bastard?’

‘Correct, Andy,’ said Pendel, recalling that gentleman’s unhelpful posture at dinner in his house, as well as several years of having him shoved down his throat as a latterday Braithwaite.

‘Hell’s he being duplicitous about?’

‘The General didn’t say, Andy, and it’s not my place to ask.’

‘Say anything about the US military bases staying or going?’

‘Not as such, Andy.’

‘Hell does that mean?’

‘There were jokes. Gallows humour. Remarks to the effect that it won’t be long before the toilets start to back up.’

‘Safety o’ shipping? Arab terrorists threatening to paralyse the Canal? Essential for the Yanks to stay and continue the war on drugs, control the arms boys, keep the peace?’

Pendel modestly shook his head to each of these suggestions. ‘Andy, Andy, I’m a tailor, remember?’ – and he bestowed a virtuous smile on a plume of ospreys swirling in a blue heaven.

Osnard ordered two glasses of aircraft fuel. Under its influence, his performance sharpened and specks of light re-entered his small black eyes.

‘All right. Come-to-Jesus time. What did Mickie say? Does he want to play or not?’

But Pendel wouldn’t be hurried. Not on the matter of Mickie. He was telling the story in his own time, about his own friend. He was cursing his own fluence and wishing very hard that Mickie had never put in an appearance at the Club Unión that night.

‘He may want to play, Andy. If he does it’ll be on terms. He’s got to put his thinking-cap on.’

Osnard writing again. Osnard’s sweat pattering on the plastic tablecloth. ‘Where did you meet him?’

‘At the Caesar’s Park, Andy. In the long wide corridor outside the casino there. It’s where Mickie holds court when he doesn’t mind who he’s with.’

Truth had briefly raised her dangerous head. Only the day before, Mickie and Pendel had sat in the very spot he described while Mickie had heaped love and invective on his wife and mourned the grief of his children. And Pendel his faithful cellmate sympathised, careful to say nothing that would push Mickie either way.

‘Pitch him the eccentric millionaire philanthropist bit?’

‘I did, Andy, and he took note.’

‘Tell him a nationality?’

‘I fudged, Andy. Like you said to. “My friend is Western, highly democratic but not a Yanqui,” I said. “And that’s as far as I am prepared to go.” “Harry boy,” he said – which is what he calls me, Harry boy – “if he’s English I’m halfway there. Kindly remember I’m an Oxford man and a former high officer of the Anglo-Panamanian Society of Culture.” “Mickie,” I said, “trust me, I can go no further. My eccentric friend has a certain quantity of money and he’s prepared to put that quantity at your disposal provided he’s persuaded of the rightness of your cause and I’m not talking loose change. If someone’s selling Panama down the Canal,” I said, “if it’s the jackboots and salute the Führer in the streets again, and upsetting the chances of a small gallant young nation as she sets out on her maiden voyage towards democracy, then my eccentric friend is there to help any way he can with his millions.”‘

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