The Tailor of Panama (28 page)

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 Americans. 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 countinghouses 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. . . .

Using an alias, Osnard puts on the guise of a Foreign Office research officer and invites Hector Pride to lunch at Simpson's and spends twice what Luxmore has allowed for the occasion. Pride, like many of his profession, speaks and eats and drinks a great deal, but does not care to listen. Osnard waits until the pudding to pop the question, then until the Gorgonzola, by which time Pride's patience has evidently run out, for to Osnard's dismay he abandons his monologue on the effect of Inca culture on contemporary Peruvian thought and explodes in ribald laughter.

“Why don't you make a pass at me?” he booms, to the alarm of diners either side. “What's wrong with me? Got the girl in the bloody taxi, haven't you? So put your hand up her skirt!”

Pride, it transpires, is employed by a hated sister service of British Intelligence, which also owns his newspaper.

“There's this man Pendel I talked to you about,” Osnard reminds Luxmore, taking advantage of his gloom. “The one with the wife in the Canal Commission. I can't help thinking they're ideal.”

He has been thinking it for days and nights, and thinking no one else.
Chance favours only the prepared mind.
He has drawn Pendel's criminal record, pored over Pendel's criminal photographs, full face and side view, studied his statements to the police, though most were patently fabricated by his audience, read psychiatrists' and almoners' reports, records of his behaviour in prison, dug out whatever he could on Louisa and the tiny, inward world of the Zonian. Like an occult diviner, he has opened himself to Pendel's psychic intimations and vibrations, studied him as intently as would a medium his map of the impenetrable jungle
where the plane is believed to have disappeared: I am coming to find you, I know what you are, wait for me,
chance favours only the prepared mind.

Luxmore reflects. Only a week ago he has ruled this same Pendel unworthy of the high mission he has in mind:

As my head joe, Andrew? As yours? In a red-hot post? A tailor? We'd be the laughingstock of the Top Floor!

And when Osnard again presses him, this time after lunch, when Luxmore's mood tends to be more generous:

I am a stranger to prejudice, young Mr. Osnard, and I respect your judgment. But those East End fellows end up stabbing you in the back. It's in their blood. Good heavens, we are not yet reduced to recruiting jailbirds!

But that is a week ago, and the Panamanian clock is ticking louder.

“You know, I think we may be onto a winner here,” Luxmore declares as he sucks his teeth and leafs through Pendel's compendious file a second time. “It was prudent of us to test the ground elsewhere first, oh yes. The Top Floor will surely give us marks for that”—the boy Pendel's implausible confession to the police flits by him, owning up to everything, incriminating no one—“the man's first-class material once you look under the surface; just the type we need for a small criminal nation”—suck—“we'd a fellow not unlike him working in the docks in Buenos Aires during the Falklands difficulty.” His eye settles for a moment on Osnard, but there is no suggestion in his glance that he considers his subordinate similarly qualified for criminal society. “You'll have to ride him, Andrew. They've a hard mouth, these East End haberdashers, are you up to that?”

“I think so, sir. If you give me the odd tip here and there.”

“A villain is all to the good in this game, provided he's
our
villain”—immigration papers of the father Pendel never knew— “and the wife indubitably an asset”—suck—“one foot in the Canal Commission already, my God. Daughter of an American
engineer too, Andrew; I see a steadying hand here. Christian too. Our East End gentleman has done well for himself. No religious barriers to progress, we notice, eh-hem. Self-interest always firmly to the fore, as usual”—suck—“Andrew, I begin to see shapes here forming before us in the sky. You'll have to look at his accounts three times, I'll tell you that for nothing. He'll graft, he'll have the nose, the cunning, but can you handle him? Who's going to run who? That'll be the problem”—a glimpse of Pendel's birth certificate, bearing the name of the mother who ran away— “these fellows certainly know how to get into a man's drawing room too, no doubt of that, oh yes.
And
get their pound of flesh. We'll be throwing you in at the deep end, I fear. Can you handle it?”

“I believe I can, actually.”

“Yes, Andrew. So do I. A real hard customer, but
ours,
that's the point. A natural assimilator, prison trained, knows the dark side of the street”—suck—“
and
the dirty underbelly of the human mind. There's jeopardy here, which I like. So will the Top Floor.” Luxmore slapped the file shut and started pacing again, this time in widths. “If we can't appeal to his patriotism, we can put the frighteners on him and appeal to his greed. Let me tell you about head joes, Andy.”

“Please do, sir.”

The
sir
, though by tradition reserved for the Chief of Service, is Osnard's contribution to Luxmore's self-powered flight.

“You can take a
bad
head joe, young Mr. Osnard. And you can stand him before the opposition's safe with the combination ringing in his stupid ears, and he'll come back to you empty-handed. I know. I've been there. We'd one during the Falklands conflagration. But a
good
one, you can dump him blindfolded in the desert and he'll sniff out his target in a week. Why? He's got the larceny”— suck—“I've seen it many times. Remember that, Andy. If a man hath not larceny, he is nothing.”

“I really will,” says Osnard.

Another gear. Sits sharply to his desk. Reaches for telephone. Stays his hand. “Call up Registry,” he orders Osnard. “Have them pick us a random code name out of the hat. A code name shows intent. Draft me a submission, not above one page in length. They're busy men up there.” Takes up telephone finally. Taps number. “Meanwhile I shall make a couple of private telephone calls to one or two influential members of the public who are sworn to secrecy and shall remain forever nameless”—suck— “those amateurs from Treasury will put their spoke in anything. Think Canal, Andrew. Everything rides on the Canal.” Stops in tracks, replaces receiver on cradle. Eyes turn to smoked-glass window where filtered black clouds menace the Mother of Parliaments. Beat. “I shall tell them that, Andrew,” he breathes. “
Everything rides on the Canal
. It shall be our slogan when we are dealing with people from all walks of life.”

But Osnard's thoughts remain on earthly things. “We're going to have to work out quite a tricky pay structure for him, aren't we, sir?”

“Why's that? Nonsense. Rules are made to be broken. Didn't they teach you that? Of course they didn't. Those trainers are all has-beens. I see you have a point to press. Out with it.”

“Well, sir.”

“Yes, Andrew.”

“I'd like to get a reading on his financial situation as of now. In Panama. If he's making a pot of money—”

“Yes?”

“Well, we'll have to offer him a pot, won't we? A fellow netting quarter of a million bucks a year and we offer him another twenty-five thousand, we're unlikely to be tempting him. If you follow me.”

“So?”—playful, drawing the boy out.

“Well, sir, I wondered if one of your friends in the City might get onto Pendel's bank under a pretext and find out the score.”

Luxmore is already on the telephone, spare hand thrust down the seam of his trousers.

“Miriam, dear. Find me Geoff Cavendish. Failing him, Tug. And, Miriam. It's urgent.”

It was another four days before Osnard was once more summoned to the presence. Pendel's wretched bank statements lay about on Luxmore's desk, courtesy of Ramón Rudd. Luxmore himself was standing stock-still at his window, savouring a moment of history.

“He's appropriated his wife's savings, Andrew. Every penny. Can't resist usury. They never can. We've got him by the short-and-curlies.”

He waited while Osnard read the figures.

“A salary's no good to him, then,” said Osnard, whose grasp on financial matters was a deal more sophisticated than his master's.

“Oh. Why not?”

“It'll go straight into his bank manager's pocket. We're going to have to bankroll him from day one.”

“How much?”

Osnard by now had a figure in his mind. He doubled it, knowing the virtue of starting as he meant to continue.

“My God, Andrew. As much as that?”

“It could be more, sir,” said Osnard bleakly. “He's in up to his neck.”

Luxmore's gaze turned to the City's skyline for comfort.

“Andrew?”

“Sir?”

“I mentioned to you that a grand vision has certain components.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of them is scale. Don't send me dross. No grapeshot. Not ‘Here, Scottie, take this bag of bones and see what your analysts make of it.' Do you follow me?”

“Not quite, sir.”

“The analysts here are idiots. They don't make connections. They don't see shapes forming in the sky. A man reaps as he sows. Do you understand me? A great intelligencer catches history in the act. We can't expect some little nine-till-five fellow on the
third floor who's worried about his mortgage to catch history in the act. Can we? It takes a man of vision to catch history in the act. Does it not?”

“I'll do my best, sir.”

“Don't let me down, Andrew.”

“I'll try not to, sir.”

But if Luxmore had chanced to turn round at that moment, he would have found to his surprise that Osnard's demeanour lacked the meekness of his tone. A smile of triumph lit his guileless young face, and sparks of greed his eyes. Packing, selling the car, swearing allegiance to each of half a dozen girlfriends and performing other chores associated with his departure, Andrew Osnard took a step not normally expected of a young Englishman setting out to serve his Queen in foreign climes. Through a distant relative in the West Indies he opened a numbered account on Grand Cayman, having first established that the compliant bank had a branch in Panama City.

13

Osnard paid off the clapped-out Pontiac and stepped into the night. The prickly quiet and low lighting reminded him of training school. He was sweating. In this bloody climate he usually was. Underpants nipping at his crotch. Shirt like a wet dishcloth. Hate it. Cars without lights crackled stealthily past him over the wet drive. High cropped hedges provided for extra discretion. It had rained and stopped again. Bag in hand, he crossed a tarmac courtyard. A naked six-foot plastic Venus, lit from somewhere inside her vulva, shed a sickly glow. He stubbed his foot against a plant tub, swore, this time in Spanish, and came upon a row of garages with plastic ribbons dangling over their doorways and a low-powered candle bulb lighting each number. Reaching number 8, he shoved aside the ribbons, groped his way to a red pinlight on the far wall, and pressed it: the fabled pushbutton. A genderless Voice from the Beyond thanked him for his visit.