‘Why not call it criminal?’ Osnard suggests helpfully.
Luxmore shakes his head. The man is not yet born who can correct Scottie Luxmore’s adjectives with impunity. Osnard’s self-appointed mentor and guide has one more card to play and Osnard must watch him do it, since little that Luxmore ever does is real unless it is observed by others. Picking up a green telephone that links him with other immortals on Whitehall’s Mount Olympus, he contrives a facial expression that is at once playful and significant.
‘Tug!’ he cries delightedly – and for a moment Osnard mistakes the word for an instruction rather than the nickname it turns out to be. ‘Tell me, Tug, am I correct in my belief that the Planners & Appliers are having themselves a little get-together next Thursday at a certain person’s house? – I am. Well, well. My spies are not always so accurate, hem, hem. Tug, will you do me the honour of lunching you that day, the better to prepare you for the ordeal, ha, ha? And if friend Geoff were able to join us, may I take it you would not be averse? My shout, now, Tug, I insist. Listen, where would be congenial to us, I am wondering? Somewhere a wee bit apart from the mainstream, I was thinking. Let us avoid the more obvious watering-holes. I have in mind a small Italian restaurant just off the Embankment there – do you have a pencil handy, Tug?’
And meanwhile he pivots on one heel, rises on his toes, and lifts his knees in slow mark time in order to avoid falling over the telephone cable at his feet.
‘Panama?’ cried Personnel jovially. ‘As a first posting? You? Stuck out there on your own at your tender age? All those gorgeous Panamanian girls to tempt you? Dope, sin, spies, crooks? Scottie must be off his head!’
And having had his fun, Personnel did what Osnard knew all along he was going to do. He posted him to Panama. Osnard’s inexperience was no obstacle. His precocity in the black arts was well attested by his trainers. He was bilingual and in operational terms unsullied.
‘Have to find yourself a head joe,’ Personnel lamented as an afterthought. ‘Apparently we’ve no one on the books down there. We seem to have left the place to the Yankees. More fool us. You report direct to Luxmore, you understand? Keep the analysts out of this until otherwise instructed.’
Find us a banker, young Mr Osnard – suck of the Scottish front teeth inside the beard – one who knows the world! These modern bankers put themselves about, not like the old sort at all. I remember we had a couple in Buenos Aires during the Falklands fracas.
Assisted by a central computer whose existence has been roundly denied by both Westminster and Whitehall, Osnard calls up the file of every British banker in Panama but finds only a handful and nobody who on closer enquiry can be counted on to know the world.
Find us one of your state-of-the-art tycoons then, young Mr Osnard – wrinkle of the sagacious Scottish eyes – someone with a finger in all the pies!
Osnard calls up the particulars of every British businessman in Panama and though some are young, none has a finger in all the pies, much as he might like to have.
Then find us a scribbler, young Mr Osnard. Scribblers can ask questions without attracting interest, go anywhere, take risks! There must be a decent one somewhere. Seek him out. Bring him to me, if you please forthwith!
Osnard calls up the particulars of every British journalist known to take the odd swing through Panama and speak Spanish. A well-dined, mustachioed man in a bow tie is held to be approachable. His name is Hector Pride and he writes for an unheard-of English language monthly called The Latino, published out of Costa Rica. His father is a wine shipper from Toledo.
Just the fellow we need, young Mr Osnard! – ferociously bestriding his carpet – Sign him. Buy him. Money is no obstacle. If the skinflints of Treasury lock up their coffers, the counting houses of Threadneedle Street shall open theirs. I have that assurance from on high. It is a strange country, you may say, young Mr Osnard, that obliges its industrialists to pay for their intelligence, but such is the harsh nature of our cost-conscious world…