'I'm afraid one couldn't possibly tell them anything of the sort, Nigel. It's a done thing,' Maltby replied. His donnish neigh set Stormont's teeth on edge every time. 'Within parameters, of course. One did fax a guarded objection to Personnel. Open-line stuff, one can't say much. The cost of coded signals these days is astronomic. All those machines and clever women, I suppose.' His smirk gave way to another downtrodden smile for Francesca. 'But one fights one's corner, naturally. Their response very much as you'd expect. Sympathetic to one's point of view but unyielding. Which in a way one can understand. After all, if one were in Personnel Department oneself, that's how one would respond. I mean they've no more choice than we have, have they? Given the circ.u.mstances.'

It was the word 'circ.u.mstances' attached as a postscript that provided Stormont with his first hint of the truth, but young Simon Pitt got in ahead of him. Simon was tall and flaxen and impish and wore a pony tail which Maltby's imperious wife had vainly ordered him to cut off. He was a new entrant, currently responsible for everything n.o.body else wanted: Visas, Information, Emba.s.sy computers on the blink, local British nationals and points below.

'Perhaps he could take over some of my stuff, sir,' he volunteered cheekily, one hand draped aloft to make the bid. 'How about "Dreams of Albion" for openers?' he added, referring to a touring collection of early English watercolours presently rotting in a Panamanian Customs shed to the shrill despair of the British Council in London.

Maltby picked his words with even more than his customary fastidiousness. 'No, Simon, I'm afraid I don't think he'll be able to take over "Dreams of Albion", thank you,' he replied, selecting a paper clip with his spidery fingers and unfolding it while he deliberated. 'Osnard's not strictly speaking one of us, you see. Rather more one of them, if you follow me,'

Even then, amazingly, Stormont failed to take the obvious inference. 'I'm sorry, Amba.s.sador, I don't read you. One of whom! Is he a contract man or something?' A frightful thought struck him. 'He's not drafted from industry, is he?'

Maltby bestowed a forbearing sigh on his paper clip. 'No, Nigel, he is not, so far as I know, drafted from industry. He may be drafted from industry. I don't know that he is not. I know nothing about his past and very little about his present. His future is also a closed book to me. He's a Friend. Not, I hasten to say, a real friend, although we shall all naturally live in hopes that he may in due course become one. One of those friends. Now do you follow me?'

He paused, allowing time for simpler minds to catch him up.

'He's from across the park, Nigel. Well, river now. They've moved, one hears. What was a park is now a river.'

Stormont had found his tongue. 'You mean the Friends are opening up a Station? Here in Panama? They can't be.'

'How interesting. Why not?'

'They left. They pulled out. When the Cold War ended they shut up shop and left the field to the Yankees. There's a product-sharing deal, conditional on them keeping their distance. I sit on the joint committee that supervises the traffic.'

'And so you do, Nigel. With distinction, if I may say so.'

'So what's changed?'

'Circ.u.mstance, one a.s.sumes. The Cold War ended so the Friends went away. Now the Cold War is coming back and the Yanks are going away. I'm only guessing, Nigel. I don't know. Any more than you do. They asked for their old slot. Our Masters decided to give it them.'

'How many?'

'One at present. No doubt if they're successful they'll ask for more. Perhaps we shall see the return of those heady days when the princ.i.p.al function of the Diplomatic Service was to provide cover for their activities.'

'Have the Americans been told?'

'No, and they're not to be. Osnard is to remain un-declared to anyone except ourselves.'

Stormont was digesting this when Francesca broke the silence. Fran was practical. Too practical sometimes.

'Will he work here in the Emba.s.sy? Physically, I mean.'

Maltby had a different voice for Francesca, as well as a different face. It hovered between instruction and caress.

'Indeed, yes, Fran. Physically and otherwise.'

'Will he have staff?'

'We are asked to make provision for one a.s.sistant, Fran.'

'Male or female?'

'To be determined. Not, one a.s.sumes, by the person selected, but these days one can't be sure.' Sn.i.g.g.e.r.

'What's his rank?' Simon Pitt this time.

'Do the Friends have ranks, Simon? How amusing. I always see their condition as a rank of its own. Don't you? There's all of us. And after us, there's all of them. Presumably they see it differently. He's an Etonian. Odd, the things the Office tells one and the things it doesn't. Still we mustn't pre-judge him.'

Maltby had been educated at Harrow.

'Does he speak Spanish?' Francesca was back.

'Fluently, we are told, Fran. But I never see languages as a guarantee of anything, do you? A man who can make a fool of himself in three languages strikes me as a three-times-bigger fool than a man who is confined to one.'

'When does he arrive?' Stormont again.

'Friday the thirteenth, appropriately. That is to say, the thirteenth is the date on which I am told he will arrive.'

'That's eight days from now,' Stormont protested.

The Amba.s.sador craned his long neck towards a calendar portraying the Queen in a feathered hat. 'Is it? Well, well. I suppose it is.'

'Is he married?' asked Simon Pitt.

'Not that one is aware of, Simon.'

'Meaning no?' - Stormont again.

'Meaning that I have not been informed that he is, and since he has asked for bachelor accommodation I a.s.sume that, whatever he has, he will come without it.'

Flinging out his arms to either side of him, Maltby folded them carefully in half until his hands came to rest behind his head. His gestures, though bizarre, were seldom without meaning. This one denoted that the meeting was about to close for golf.

'It's a full-term appointment, by the way, Nigel, not a temporary thing. Unless he gets thrown out, of course,' he added, brightening slightly. 'Fran. Dear. The Office is becoming testy about that draft memorandum we discussed. Could you possibly burn some midnight oil or is it all spoken for?'

And the wolfish smile again, as sad as old age.

'Amba.s.sador.'

'Why, Nigel. How nice.'

It was quarter of an hour later. Maltby was putting papers into his safe. Stormont had caught him alone. Maltby was not pleased.

'What's Osnard supposed to be covering? They must have told you. You can't have given him a blank cheque.'

Maltby closed his safe, set the combination, cranked himself to his full height and glanced at his watch.

'Oh, I think I pretty much did. What's the point of not? They'll take what they want anyway. It isn't the Foreign Office's fault. Osnard's sponsored by some grand inter-ministerial body. One can't possibly resist.'

'Called what?'

'Planning & Application. It never occurred to me we were capable of either function.'

'Who heads them?'

'n.o.body. I asked the same question. Personnel gave me the same answer. I should take him and be grateful. So should you.'

Nigel Stormont sat in his room, sifting incoming correspondence. In his day he had earned himself a name for coolness under pressure. When scandal broke over him in Madrid, his deportment was grudgingly held to be exemplary. It also saved his skin, for when Stormont submitted his obligatory letter of resignation, the Head of Personnel was all for accepting it until Higher Authority stayed his hand.

'Well, well. The cat with nine lives,' Personnel had murmured, from the depths of his great dark palace in the former India Office, not so much shaking Stormont's hand as noting its particulars for future treatment. 'So it's not the dole for you after all. It's Panama. Poor you. Enjoy Maltby. I'm sure you will. And we'll talk about you in a year or two, won't we? Something to look forward to.'

When Personnel buried the hatchet, said the wits in the Third Room, he took compa.s.s-bearings on the grave.

Andrew Osnard, Stormont repeated to himself. Bird. A brace of osnards flew over. Gully's just shot an osnard. Very funny. A Friend. One of those friends. A bachelor. A Spanish-speaker. A full-term sentence unless he gets remission for bad behaviour. Rank unknown, everything unknown. Our new Political Officer. Sponsored by a body that doesn't exist. A done thing, arriving in one week with uns.e.xed a.s.sistant. Arriving to do what? To whom? To replace whom? One Nigel Stormont? He was not being fanciful, he was being realistic, even if Paddy's cough was stretching his nerves.

Five years ago it was unthinkable that some faceless upstart from the wrong side of the park, trained to hang around street corners and steam open mail, would be considered a suitable replacement for a pure-bred foreign servant of Stormont's cla.s.s. But that was before the days of Treasury streamlining and the trumpeted recruitment of outside managerial skills to drag the Foreign Service by the scruff of the neck into the twenty-first century.

G.o.d, how he loathed this government. Little England, plc. Directed by a team of lying tenth-raters not fit to run an amus.e.m.e.nt arcade in Clacton-on-Sea. Conservatives who would strip the country of its last lightbulb to conserve their power. Who thought the Civil Service a luxury as expendable as world survival or the nation's health, and the Foreign Service the most expendable luxury of the lot. No. In the present climate of quack remedies and quick fixes, it was not at all unthinkable that the post of Head of Chancery, Panama, should be voted redundant, and Nigel Stormont with it.

Why should we duplicate? he could hear the quangos of Planning & Application squawking from their one-day-a-week, thirty-five-thousand-a-year thrones. Why have one chap doing the posh work and another chap doing the dirty work? Why not put both jobs under one hat? Fly the Osnard bird in. And as soon as he's got the lie of the land, fly the Stormont bird out. Save a job! Rationalise a post! And we'll all go out to lunch on the taxpayer.

Personnel would love it. So would Maltby.

Stormont drifted round his room, poking at shelves. Who's Who contained not a single Osnard. Neither did Debrett's. Neither, he a.s.sumed, did Birds of Britain. The London telephone directory pa.s.sed from Osmotherly to Osner without drawing breath. But it was four years old. He flipped through a couple of old Foreign Office redbooks, searching the Spanish-speaking emba.s.sies for a sign of former Osnard incarnations. None spotted. Not settled, not in flight. He looked up Planning & Application in the Whitehall Directory. Maltby was right. No such body existed. He called Reg the administration officer to discuss the vexed issue of the leak in the roof of his hiring.

'Poor Paddy's having to chase round the spare bedroom with pudding basins every time it rains, Reg,' he complained. 'And it rains a h.e.l.l of a lot.'

Reg was locally employed and lived with a Panamanian hairdresser called Gladys. n.o.body had met Gladys, and Stormont suspected she was a boy. For the fifteenth time they went over the history of the bankrupt contractor, the pending law suit and the unhelpful att.i.tude of the Panamanian Protocol department.

'Reg, what are we doing about office s.p.a.ce for Mr Osnard? Should we be discussing it?'

'I don't know what we should be discussing and what we shouldn't, Nigel. I've been taking my orders from the Amba.s.sador, haven't I?'

'And what orders has His Excellency been pleased to issue?'

'It's the east corridor, Nigel. All of it. It's brand new locks for his steel door, they came by courier yesterday, Mr Osnard to bring his own keys. It's steel cupboards in the old visitors' waiting room for his papers, combinations to be set by Mr Osnard on arrival, no record to be taken, as if we would. And I'm to make sure he's got lots and lots of points for his electronics. He's not a cook, is he?'

'I don't know what he is, Reg, but I'll bet you do.'

'Well, he sounds very nice on the telephone, Nigel, I will say. Like the BBC but human.'

'What do you talk about?'

'Number one was his car. He wants a hire car till he gets his own, so I'm to hire him one and he's sent me a fax of his driver's licence.'

'Say what sort?'

Reg giggled. 'Not a Lamborghini, he said, and not a three-wheeler. Something he could wear a bowler hat in if he wore a bowler hat because he's tall.'

'What else?'

'His flat, how soon we'd have it ready for him. We found him ever such a nice one, if I can get those decorators out in time. High up above the Club Union, I told him. You can spit on their blue rinses and their toupees any time you like. It's only a lick of paint I'm asking. White, I said to him, broken to the colour of your choice, so what's your choice? Not pink, thank you, he says, and not daffodil. How about a nice warm camel-t.u.r.d brown? I had to laugh.'

'How old is he, Reg?'

'My goodness, I've not a notion. He could be anything, really.'

'Still, you've got his driving licence there, haven't you?'

'Andrew Julian Osnard,' Reg read aloud, very excited. 'Date of Birth 01 10 1970 Watford. Well I never, that's where my Mum and Dad got married.'

Stormont was standing in the corridor, drawing himself a coffee from the machine when young Simon Pitt sidled up to him and offered him a spy's eyeline of a pa.s.sport photograph cupped into the hollow of his palm.

'What do you say, Nigel? Carruthers of the Great Game or an overweight Mata Hari in drag?'

The photograph was of a well-nourished Osnard with both ears showing, sent in advance so that Simon could arrange to have his diplomatic pa.s.s prepared by Panamanian Protocol in time for his arrival. Stormont stared at it and for a moment his whole private world seemed to slide out of his control: his ex-wife's alimony, too large but he'd insisted that she have it, Claire's university maintenance, Adrian's ambition to read for the Bar, his secret dream of finding a stone farmhouse on a hillside in the Algarve with its own olives and winter sun and dry air for Paddy's cough. And a full pension to make the fantasy come true.

'Looks a nice enough chap,' he conceded, as his innate decency a.s.serted itself. 'Quite a lot behind the eyes. Could be fun.'

Paddy's right, he thought. I shouldn't have sat up the night with her. I should have got some sleep of my own.

On Mondays, by way of consolation after morning prayers, Stormont lunched at the Pavo Real with Yves Legrand, his opposite number at the French Emba.s.sy because they both loved a duel and good food.

'Oh, and by the way, we're getting a new man at last, I'm pleased to say,' said Stormont, after Legrand had entrusted him with a couple of confidences that were nothing of the kind. 'Young chap. Your sort of age. On the political side.'

'Will I like him?'

'Everyone will,' said Stormont firmly.

Stormont was scarcely back at his desk when Fran rang him on the internal telephone.

'Nigel. The most amazing thing. Can you guess what?'

'I don't expect so.'

'You know my weird half-brother Miles?'

'Not personally, but he is a concept to me.'

'Well, you know Miles was at Eton, obviously.'

'No, but I know now.'

'Well it's Miles' birthday today so I rang him. Can you believe, he was in the same house as Andy Osnard! He says he's absolutely sweet, a bit tubby, a bit murky, but frightfully good in the school play. And he was sacked for venery.'

'For what?'

'Girls, Nigel. Remember? Venus. It can't have been boys or that would be Adonery. Miles says it may have been for not paying his fees as well. He can't remember who got him first, whether it was Venus or the Bursar.'

In the lift Stormont met Gulliver carrying a briefcase and looking grave.

'Serious matters afoot tonight, Gully?'