A Delicate Truth A Novel

passing up and down Clive Steps, he succumbs to the same wave of nervous nausea that afflicted him on that gorgeous spring Sunday morning three years ago when he came here to filch his illicit tape recording.
    At the front gate, he takes a calculated risk:
    ‘Tell me, please’ – displaying his pass to the security guard – ‘has a retired member called Sir Christopher Probyn checked in today, by any chance?’ And to be helpful: ‘P–R–O–B–Y–N.’
    Wait while guard consults computer.
    ‘Not here. Could have checked in elsewhere. Did he have an appointment, at all?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ says Toby and, back at his post, resumes his department’s deliberations about which way to look in Libya.
     
    *
     
    ‘Sir Christopher?’
    ‘The same.’
    ‘I’m Asif Lancaster from the Executive Director’s department. How d’you do, sir?’
    Lancaster was a black man, spoke with a Mancunian accent and looked about eighteen years old, but to Kit’s eye most people seemed to these days. Nevertheless he warmed to the fellow at once. If the Office had finally opened its gates to the Lancasters of the world, he reasoned vaguely, then surely he could expect a more receptive ear when he told them a few home truths about their handling of Operation Wildlife and its aftermath.
    They had reached a conference room. Easy chairs. A long table. Watercolours of the Lake District. Lancaster holding out his hand.
    ‘Look here, there’s one thing I have to ask you,’ said Kit, even now not quite willing to part with his document. ‘Are you and your people cleared for Wildlife ?’
    Lancaster looked at him, then at the envelope, then allowed himself a wry smile.
    ‘I think I can safely say we are,’ he replied and, gently removing it from Kit’s unresisting grasp, disappeared to an adjoining room.
     
    *
     
    It was another ninety minutes by the gold Cartier watch presented to him by Suzanna on their twenty-fifth before Lancaster opened the door to admit the promised senior legal advisor and his sidekick. In that period, Lancaster had appeared no fewer than four times, once to offer Kit coffee, once to bring it, and twice to assure him that Lionel was on the case and would be heading this way ‘just as soon as he and Frances have got their heads round the paperwork’.
    ‘ Lionel? ’
    ‘Our deputy legal advisor. Spends half his week in the Cabinet Office, and the other half with us. He tells me he was assistant legal attaché in Paris when you were commercial counsellor there.’
    ‘Well, well, Lionel ,’ Kit says, brightening as he recalls a worthy, rather tongue-tied young man with fair hair and freckles who made it a point of honour to dance with the plainest women in the room.
    ‘And Frances?’ he enquires hopefully.
    ‘Frances is our new Director in Charge of Security, which comes under the Executive Director’s umbrella. Also a lawyer, I’m afraid.’ Smile. ‘Used to be in private practice, till she saw the light, and is now happily with us.’
    Kit was glad of this information since it would not otherwise have occurred to him that Frances was happy. Her demeanour on sitting herself opposite him across the table struck him as positively mournful: thanks not least to her black business suit, short-cropped hair and apparent refusal to look him in the eye.
    Lionel, on the other hand, though it was twenty years on, had remained his decent, rather prissy self. True, the freckles had given way to liver spots, and the fair hair had faded to an uneasy grey. But the blameless smile was undimmed and the handshake as vigorous as ever. Kit remembered that Lionel used to smoke a pipe and supposed he’d given it up.
    ‘Kit, super to see you,’ he declared, bringing his face a little closer than Kit had bargained for in his enthusiasm. ‘How’s well-earned retirement? God knows, I’m looking forward to mine! And marvellous things we hear about your Caribbean tour, by the way.’ Drop of the voice: ‘And Suzanna? How’s all that going? Things looking up a bit?’
    ‘Very much so. Yes, fine, thank you, great improvement,’ Kit replied. And gruffly, as an afterthought: ‘A bit keen to get this over, frankly, Lionel. We both are. Been a bit of an ordeal. ’Specially for Suki.’
    ‘Yes, well, of course we’re absolutely aware of that, and more than grateful to you for your extremely helpful, not to say timely , document, and for bringing the whole thing to our attention without – well – rocking