Le Carré - Single & single [inglés]

This gun is not a gun.

Or such was Mr Winsers determined conviction when the youthful Alix Hoban, European Managing Director and Chief Executive of Trans-Finanz Vienna, St. Petersburg and Istanbul, introduced a pallid hand into the breast of his Italian blazer and extracted neither a platinum cigarette case nor an engraved business card, but a slim blue-black automatic pistol in mint condition, and pointed it from a distance of six inches at the bridge of Mr Winsers beakish but strictly non-violent nose. This gun does not exist. It is inadmissible evidence. It is no evidence at all. It is a non-gun.

Mr Alfred Winser was a lawyer, and to a lawyer facts were there to be challenged. All facts. The more self-evident a fact might appear to the layman, the more vigorously must the conscientious lawyer contest it. And Winser at that moment was as conscientious as the best of them. Nevertheless, he dropped his briefcase in his astonishment. He heard it fall, he felt the pressure of it linger on his palm, saw with the bottom of his eyes the shadow of it lying at his feet: my briefcase, my pen, my passport, my air tickets and travellers cheques. My credit cards, my legality. Yet he did not stoop to pick it up, though it had cost a fortune. He remained staring mutely at the non-gun.

This gun is not a gun. This apple is not an apple. Winser was recalling the wise words of his law tutor of forty years ago as the great man spirited a green apple from the depths of his frayed sports coat and brandished it aloft for the inspection of his mostly female audience: It may look like an apple, ladies, it may smell like an apple, feel like an apple - innuendo - but does it rattle like an apple? - shakes it - cut like an apple? - hauls an antique breadknife from a drawer of his desk, strikes. Apple translates into a shower of plaster. Carols of laughter as the great man kicks aside the shards with the toe of his sandal.

But Winsers reckless flight down memory lane did not stop there. From his tutors apple it was but a blinding flash of sunlight to his greengrocer in Hampstead where he lived and dearly wished himself at this moment: a cheery, unarmed apple-purveyor in a jolly apron and straw hat who sold, as well as apples, fine fresh asparagus that Winsers wife Bunny liked, even if she didnt like much else her husband brought her. Green, remember, Alfred, and grown above ground, never the white - pressing the shopping basket on him. And only if theyre in season, Alfred, the forced ones never taste. Why did I do it? Why do I have to marry people in order to discover I dont like them? Why cant I make up my mind ahead of the fact instead of after it? What is legal training for, if not to protect us from ourselves? With his terrified brain scouring every avenue of possible escape, Winser took comfort in these excursions into his internal reality. They fortified him, if only for split seconds, against the unreality of the gun.

This gun still does not exist.

But Winser couldnt take his eyes off it. He had never seen a gun so close, never been obliged to take such intimate note of colour, line, markings, burnishment and style, all perfectly pointed up for him in the glaring sunlight. Does it fire like a gun? Does it kill like a gun, extinguish like a gun, removing face and features in a shower of plaster? Bravely, he revolted against this ridiculous possibility. This gun does not, absolutely does not exist! It is a chimera, a trick of white sky, heat and sunstroke. It is a fever gun brought on by bad food, bad marriages and two exhausting days of smoky consultations, unsettling limousine rides through sweltering, dusty, traffic-choked Istanbul, by a giddying early-morning dash in the Trans-Finanz private jet above the brown massifs of central Turkey, by a suicidal three-hour drive over switchback coast roads and hairpin bends under red rock precipices to the worlds utter end, this arid boulder-strewn promontory of buckthorn and broken beehives six hundred feet above the Eastern Mediterranean, with the morning sun already turned to full, and Hobans unblinking gun - still there and still a phantasm - peering like a surgeon into my brain.

He closed his eyes. See? he told Bunny. No gun. But Bunny was bored as usual, urging him to have his pleasure and leave her in peace, so instead he addressed the Bench, a thing he hadnt done for thirty years:

My Lord, it is my pleasant duty to advise the Court that the matter of Winser versus Hoban has been amicably resolved. Winser accepts that he was mistaken in suggesting that Hoban brandished a gun during a site conference in the southern Turkish hills. Hoban in return has provided a full and satisfactory explanation of his actions

And after that, out of habit or respect, he addressed his Chairman, Managing Director and Svengali for the last twenty years, the eponymous founder and creator of the House of Single, the one and only Tiger Single himself:

Its Winser here, Tiger. Very well indeed, thank you, sir, and how about your good self? Delighted to hear it. Yes, I think I can say that everything is exactly as you wisely predicted, and the response to date has been entirely satisfactory. Only one small thing - water under the bridge now - not a breakpoint - our clients man Hoban gave the impression of drawing a gun on me. Nothing in it, all a fantasy, but one does like to be forewarned

Even when he opened his eyes and saw the gun exactly where it had been before, and Hobans childlike eyes contemplating him down its barrel, and his childs hairless forefinger crooked round the trigger, Winser did not abandon the remnants of his legal position. Very well, this gun exists as an object, but not as a gun. It is a joke gun. An amusing, harmless, practical joke. Hoban purchased it for his small son. It is a facsimile of a gun and Hoban, in order to introduce some light relief into what for a young man has no doubt been a lengthy and tedious negotiation, is flourishing it as a prank. Through numb lips, Winser contrived a species of jaunty smile in keeping with his newest theory.

Well, thats a persuasive argument, I must say, Mr Hoban, he declared bravely. What do you want me to do? Waive our fee?

But in reply he heard only a hammering of coffin-makers, which he hastily converted to the clatter of builders in the little tourist port across the bay as they fixed shutters and rooftiles and pipes in a last-minute rush to make ready for the season after playing backgammon all winter. In his longing for normality, Winser savoured the smells of paintstripper, blowtorches, fish cooking on charcoal, the spices of street vendors, and all the other lovely and less lovely scents of Mediterranean Turkey. Hoban barked something in Russian to his colleagues. Winser heard a scramble of feet behind him but dared not turn his head. Hands yanked his jacket from his back, others explored his body - armpits, ribs, spine, groin. Memories of more acceptable hands momentarily replaced those of his assailants, but provided no solace as they groped their way downward to his calves and ankles, searching for a secret weapon. Winser had never carried a weapon in his life, secret or otherwise, unless it was his cherrywood walking stick to fend off rabid dogs and sex maniacs when he was taking a turn on Hampstead Heath to admire the lady joggers.

Reluctantly he remembered Hobans too-many hangers-on. Seduced by the gun, he had briefly imagined it was just Hoban and himself alone here on the hilltop, face to face and nobody in earshot, a situation any lawyer expects to use to his advantage. He now conceded that ever since they had left Istanbul, Hoban had been attended by a gaggle of unappetising advisers. A Signer dEmilio and a Monsieur Franois had joined them on their departure from Istanbul airport, coats over their shoulders, no arms showing. Winser had cared for neither man. Two more undesirables had been waiting for them at Dalaman, equipped with their own hearse-black Land Rover and driver. From Germany, Hoban had explained, introducing the pair, though not by name. From Germany they might be, but in Winsers hearing they spoke only Turkish and they wore the undertaker suits of country Turks on business.