A Delicate Truth A Novel

That’s an order.’
    Toby wakes to discover he is the beneficiary of his master’s election-winning smile:
    ‘So then, Toby. Tell me I’ve ruined your weekend for you, the way they’ve ruined mine.’
    ‘Not at all, Minister.’
    ‘But?’
    ‘Well, one question.’
    ‘Many as you like. Fire away.’
    Actually he has two.
    ‘If I may ask, Minister, where will you be? You personally. While I am taking’ – he hesitates – ‘taking these precautions.’
    The electoral smile widens.
    ‘Let’s say, minding my own fucking business, shall we?’
    ‘Minding your own business until you arrive, Minister?’
    ‘My timing will be impeccable, thank you. Any more?’
    ‘Well, I was wondering, perhaps gratuitously: how will your parties get out again? You said the systems will be deactivated for two hours. If your second party is arriving in short order and the system is reactivated at 13.45, that leaves you not much more than ninety-odd minutes for your meeting.’
    ‘Ninety minutes will hack it easy. Don’t give it a thought’ – the smile by now radiant.
    ‘You’re absolutely sure of that?’ Toby urges, seized by a need to extend the conversation.
    ‘Of course I’m bloody sure. Dinna fash yersel’! Couple of handshakes all round and we’re home free.’
     
    *
     
    It is the lunch hour of the same day before Toby Bell feels able to slip away from his desk, hasten down Clive Steps and take up a position beneath a spreading London plane tree on the edge of St James’s Park as a prelude to composing his emergency text to Oakley’s cellphone.
    During the time since Quinn has served him with his bizarre instructions, he has mentally drafted any number of versions. But rumour has it that Office security staff keep a watch on personal communications emanating from inside the building, and Toby has no wish to excite their curiosity.
    The plane tree is an old friend. Set on a rise, it stands a stone’s throw from Birdcage Walk and the War Memorial. A hundred yards on, and the bay windows of the Foreign Office frown sternly down on him, but the passing world of storks, mallards, tourists and mums with prams deprives them of their menace.
    His eye and hand are dead steady as he holds his BlackBerry before him. So is his mind. It is a truth that puzzles Toby as much as it impresses his employers that he is immune to crisis. Isabel may be mercilessly dissecting his shortcomings: she did so in spades last night. Police cars and fire engines may be howling in the street, smoke pouring out of adjoining houses, the enraged populace on the march: they did all that and more in Cairo. But crisis, once it strikes, is Toby’s element, and it has struck now.
    Say you’ve been jilted by your girlfriend and need to weep on my shoulder, or some such nonsense.
    Natural decency dictates he will not take Isabel’s name in vain. Louisa comes to mind. Has he had a Louisa? A hasty roll call assures him he has not. Then he will have her now: Giles. Louisa just walked out on me. Desperately need your urgent advice. Can we speak soonest? Bell.
    Press ‘send’.
    He does, and glances at the illustrious bay windows of the Foreign Office with their layers of net curtain. Is Oakley sitting up there even now, munching a sandwich at his desk? Or is he locked in some underground fastness with the Joint Intelligence Committee? Or ensconced in the Travellers Club with his fellow mandarins, redrawing the world over a leisurely lunch? Wherever you are, just for God’s sake read my message soonest and get back to me, because my nice new master is going off his head.
     
    *
     
    Seven interminable hours have passed, and still not a peep out of Oakley. In the living room of his first-floor flat in Islington, Toby sits at his desk pretending to work while Isabel potters ominously in the kitchen. At his left elbow lies his BlackBerry, at his right the house telephone, and in front of him a draft paper Quinn has commissioned on opportunities for private–public partnerships in the Gulf. In theory, he is revising it. In reality, he is mentally tracking Oakley through every possible version of his day and willing him to respond. He has re-sent his message twice: once as soon as he was clear of the Office, and again as he emerged from Angel underground station before he arrived home. Why he should have regarded his own flat as an insecure launch pad for text messages to Oakley he can’t imagine, but he did. The same inhibitions guide him now,