‘I agree. Totally. He’d laugh at us. That’s what they do. Shylock us and laugh.’
‘Bigger bonuses, on the other hand, wake him up. We’ve seen it before and we saw it tonight.’
‘We did, did we?’
‘You want to see him shovelling the stuff into his briefcase.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘On the other hand, he has given us Alpha and Beta and the students, he has put the Bear on a semi-conscious footing, he has recruited Abraxas to a point, and he has recruited Marco.’
‘And we’ve paid him every inch of the way. Handsomely. And what have we had for it to date? Promises. Chickenfeed. “Stand by for the Big One.” It makes me sick, Andrew. Sick.’
‘I put that point to him fairly energetically, if I may say so, sir.’
Luxmore’s voice softened immediately. ‘I’m sure you did, Andrew. If I implied otherwise, I am truly sorry. Go on. Please.’
‘My personal conviction -‘ Osnard resumed, with enormous diffidence –
‘That’s the only one that counts, Andrew!’
‘- is that we work towards incentives only. If he delivers, we pay. The same goes, according to him, if he delivers his wife.’
‘Holy Mother, Andrew! He said that to you? He sold his wife to you?’
‘Not yet, but she’s on the market.’
‘Not in twenty years of this Service, Andrew. Not in all its history, has a man sold his wife to us for gold.’
Osnard had a special gear for talking money, a lower, more fluid engine-tone.
‘I’m suggesting we put him on a regular bonus for every subsource he recruits, to include his wife. The bonus to be calculated as a proportion of the subsource’s salary. A flat rate. If she earns a bonus, he earns a piece of it.’
‘Additional?’
‘Absolutely. There’s also the unsolved question of what Sabina should pay her students.’
‘Don’t spoil them, Andrew! What about Abraxas?’
‘If and when the Abraxas organisation delivers the conspiracy, the same commission is payable to Pendel, calculated as twenty-five per cent of what we pay Abraxas and his group by way of bonus.’
Now Luxmore made the silence.
‘Did I hear if and when? What am I hearing there exactly, Andrew?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I just can’t help wondering whether Abraxas isn’t stringing us along. Or Pendel is. Forgive me. It’s late.’
‘Andrew.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Listen to me, Andrew. That’s an order. There is a conspiracy. Don’t lose heart merely because you’re tired. Of course there is a conspiracy. You believe it, I believe it. One of the greatest opinion-makers in the world believes it. Personally. Profoundly. The best brains in Fleet Street believe it, or they very soon will. A conspiracy is out there, it is being cobbled together by an evil inner circle of the Panamanian elite, it centres on the Canal and we shall find it! Andrew?’ Alarm, suddenly. ‘Andrew!’
‘Sir?’
‘Scottie, if you don’t mind. We’ve done with sir. Are you at peace in your heart, Andrew? Are you under strain? Are you comfortable? My goodness me I feel an ogre, never enquiring after your personal wellbeing amid all this. I am not without influence in the upper corridors these days, nor yet across the river. It saddens me when a diligent and loyal young man asks nothing for himself in these materialist times,’
Osnard gave the kind of embarrassed laugh that loyal and diligent young men give when they are embarrassed.
‘I could do with some sleep if you’ve got any to spare.’
‘Get some, Andrew. Now. As long as you like. That’s an order. We need you.’
‘Will do, sir. Good night,’
‘Good morning, Andrew. I mean it now. And when you wake up, you’ll hear that conspiracy loud and clear again, resounding like a hunting horn in your ears, and you’ll spring from your bed and ride out in search of it, I know you will. I’ve been there. I’ve heard it too. We went to war for it.’
‘Good night, sir.’
But the diligent young spymaster’s day was far from over. File while your memory is hot the trainers had dinned into him ad nauseam. Returning to the strongroom he unlocked a bizarre metal casket to which he alone possessed the combination and extracted from it a red hand-bound volume similar in weight and portent to a ship’s log, and encompassed by a kind of iron chastity belt, the two ends of which met in a second lock which Osnard also opened. Returning to his office he set the book on his desk beside his reading light, next to the bottle of Scotch, and his notes and tape recorder from the shabby briefcase.