A Delicate Truth

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Authors: John le Carré
Tags: Fiction, General
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coffee and croissant in Soho as a prelude to grand larceny. Which is
     where he now sat, sipping his cappuccino in the morning sunshine and staring blankly at
     the passers-by. If I’m such a cold fish, how did I talk myself into this God-awful
     situation?
    For answers to this and allied questions,
     his mind turned as of habit to Giles Oakley, his enigmatic mentor and self-appointed
     patron.
     
    *
     
    Berlin.
    The neophyte diplomat Bell, Second Secretary
     (Political), has just arrived at the British Embassy on his first overseas posting. The
     Iraq War looms. Britain has signed up to it, but denies it has done so. Germany is
     dithering on the brink. Giles Oakley, the embassy’s
éminence grise

     darting, impish Oakley, dyed in all the oceans, as the Germans say – is Toby’s
     section chief. Oakley’s job, amid a myriad others less defined: to supervise the
     flow of British intelligence to German liaison. Toby’s: to be his spear-carrier.
     His German is already good. As ever, he’s a fast learner. Oakley takes him under
     his wing, marches him round the ministries and opens doors for him that would otherwise
     have remained locked against one of his lowly status. Are Toby and Giles spies? Not at
     all! They are blue-chip British career diplomats who have found themselves, like many
     others, at the trading tables of the free world’s vast intelligence
     marketplace.
    The only problem is that the further Toby is
     admitted into these inner councils, the greater his abhorrence of the war about to
     happen. He rates it illegal, immoral and doomed. His discomfort is compounded by the
     knowledge that even the most supine of his schoolfriends are out on the street
     protesting their outrage. So are his parents who, in their Christian socialist decency,
     believe that the purpose of diplomacy should be to prevent war rather than to promote
     it. His mother emails him in despair: Tony Blair – once her idol – has betrayed us all.
     His father, adding his stern Methodist voice, accuses Bush and Blair jointly of the sin
     of pride and intends to compose a parable about a pair of peacocks who, bewitched by
     their own reflections, turn into vultures.
    Little wonder then that with such voices
     dinning in his ear beside his own, Toby resents having to sing the war’s praises
     to, of all people, the Germans, even urging them to join the dance. He too voted heart
     and soul for Tony Blair, and now finds hisprime minister’s
     public postures truthless and emetic. And with the launch of
Operation Iraqi
     Freedom
, he boils over:
    The scene is the Oakleys’ diplomatic
     villa in Grunewald. It is midnight as another ball-breaking
Herrenabend
– power
     dinner for male bores – drags to its close. Toby has acquired a decent crop of German
     friends in Berlin, but tonight’s guests are not among them. A tedious federal
     minister, a terminally vain titan of Ruhr industry, a Hohenzollern pretender and a
     quartet of free-loading parliamentarians have finally called for their limousines.
     Oakley’s diplomatic
Ur
-wife, Hermione, having supervised proceedings from
     the kitchen over a generous gin, has taken herself to bed. In the sitting room, Toby and
     Giles Oakley rake over the night’s takings for any odd scrap of indiscretion.
    Abruptly, Toby’s self-control hits the
     buffers:
    ‘So actually screw, sod and fuck the
     whole bloody thing,’ he declares, slamming down his glass of Oakley’s very
     old Calvados.
    ‘The whole bloody thing being
what
exactly?’ Oakley, the fifty-five-year-old leprechaun enquires,
     stretching out his little legs in luxurious ease, which is a thing he does in
     crisis.
    With unshakable urbanity, Oakley hears Toby
     out, and as impassively delivers himself of his acid, if affectionate, response:
    ‘Go ahead, Toby. Resign. I share your
     callow personal opinions. No sovereign nation such as ours should be taken to war under
     false pretences, least of all by a couple of

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