The Night Manager

Fastening the waistband of his trousers, Burr went off for a pee, leaving Jonathan mysteriously elated. Hate him? Hate was not an emotion he had so far indulged. He could do anger; certainly he could mourn. But hate, like desire, seemed a lowly thing until it had a noble context, and Roper with his Sotheby's catalogue and his beautiful mistress had not yet provided one.

Nevertheless, the idea of hate, dignified by Sophie's murder ― of hate turned perhaps to revenge ― began to appeal to Jonathan. It was like the promise of a distant great love, and Burr had appointed himself its procurer.

* * *

"So why?" Burr continued cosily, settling back into his chair. "That's what I kept asking myself. Why's he doing it? Why does Mr. Jonathan Pine the distinguished hotelier risk his career pinching faxes and snitching on a valued client? First Cairo, now again in Zürich. 'Specially after you were cross with us. Quite right. I was cross with us too."

Jonathan pretended to address the question for the first time. "You just do it," he said.

"No, you don't. You're not an animal, all instinct. You decide to do it. What drove you?"

"Something stirred, I suppose."

"What stirred? How does it stop stirring? What would stir it again?"

Jonathan took a breath but for a moment did not speak. He had discovered that he was angry, and didn't know why. "If a man's peddling a private arsenal to an Egyptian crook... and he's English... and you're English... and there's a war brewing... and the English are going to be fighting on the other side ― "

"And you've been a soldier yourself..."

" ― you just do it," Jonathan repeated, feeling his throat clog.

Burr pushed aside his empty plate and leaned forward across the table. " 'Feeding the rat' ― isn't that the climbers' expression? The rat that gnaws inside us, telling us to take the risk? It's quite a big rat, yours is, I suppose, with that father of yours to live up to. He was undercover too, wasn't he? Well, you knew that."

"No, I'm afraid I didn't," said Jonathan politely as his stomach turned.

"They had to put him back into uniform after he was shot. They didn't tell you?"

Jonathan's hotelier smile, cast iron from cheek to cheek. His hotelier voice, iron soft. "No. They didn't. Really not. How strange. You'd think they would, wouldn't you?"

Burr shook his head at the enigmatic ways of civil servants.

* * *

"I mean, you did retire quite early, when you work it out," Burr resumed reasonably. "It's not everyone gives up a promising army career at twenty-five in favour of being a night flunky. Not with all the sailing and climbing and Outward Bound activities in the world. What made you choose hoteling, for heaven's sake? Of all the ways you could have gone, why that one?"

To submit, thought Jonathan.

To abdicate.

To rest my head.

Mind your own fucking business.

"Oh, I don't know," he confessed with a self-negating smile. "For the quiet life, I suppose. I expect I'm a bit of a closet sybarite, if I'm honest."

"Well now, I don't believe that, as a matter of fact, Jonathan. I've been following you very closely these weeks and thinking about you in some depth. Let's talk army a bit more, can we? Because I was very impressed by some of the things I read about your military career."

Great, thought Jonathan, now very lively in his mind. We're talking Sophie, so we're talking hate. We're talking hate, so we're talking hoteling. We're talking hoteling, so we're talking army. Very logical. Very rational.

All the same, he could find no fault with Burr. Burr was from the heart, which was his saving. He might be clever. He might have mastered the grammar of intrigue, he had an eye for human strength and failings. But the heart still led, as Goofhew knew and Jonathan could feel, which was why he permitted Burr to wander in his private kingdom, and why Burr's sense of mission was beginning to throb like a war drum in Jonathan's ear.

SIX

It was mellow time. Confidence time. They had agreed on a glass of plum spirit to wash down their coffee.

"I had a Sophie once," Burr recalled, not altogether truthfully. "Surprised I didn't marry her, come to think of it. I usually do. My current one's called Mary, which always strikes me as a bit of a comedown. Still, we've been together, oh, must be five years now. She's a doctor, as a matter of fact. Just a GP, parish priest with a stethoscope. Social conscience the size of a somewhat enlarged pumpkin. Seems to be panning out quite well."

"Long may it last," said Jonathan gallantly.

"Mary's not my first wife, mind. She's not my second, to be frank. I don't know what it is about me and women. I've aimed up, I've aimed down, I've aimed sideways; I never get it right. Is it me, is it them? I ask myself."