The Night Manager

And gradually it dawned on him, if a dawning can take place in total blackens, that his life had consisted of a run of rehearsals for a play he had failed to take part in. And that what he needed to do from now on, if there was going to be a now on, was abandon his morbid quest for order, and treat himself to a little chaos, on the grounds that while order was demonstrably no substitute for happiness, chaos might open the way to it.

Every man has his personal devil waiting for him somewhere.

I know their unstinted devotion to the free-market economy, provided it's their freedom and somebody else's economy.

There is no one better than a good Englishman and no one worse than a bad one. I have observed you. I think you are a good one. Mr Pine, do you know Richard Roper?

Even his Englishness was a well-kept secret.

The snow is still falling and the worst man in the world is drawn towards it like a man who is contemplating his childhood in the dancing flakes.

There's no such thing as a decision. There never was. There's whether you've had a good day or a bad day, there's going forward because there's nothing behind and running because if you stand still any longer you'll fall over. There's movement or there's stagnation, there's the past that drives you and the regimental chaplain who preaches that only the obedient are free and the women who say you have no feelings, but they can't live without you.

Promise to build a chap a house, he won't believe you. Threaten to burn his place down, he'll do what you tell him. Fact of life.

And gradually it dawned on him, if a dawning can take place in total blackness, that his life has consisted of a run of rehearsals for a play he had failed to take part in. And that what he needed to do from now on, if there was going to be a now on, was abandon his morbid quest for order and treat himself to a little chaos, on the grounds that while order was demonstrably no substitute for happiness, chaos might open the way to it.

Guns have their own silence. It is the silence of the dead to come.

Trouble with arms is, everyone thought they were recession-proof, but they’re not. Iran–Iraq was an arms dealers’ charter, and they thought it would never end. Since then it’s been downhill all the way. Too many manufacturers chasing too few wars. Too much loose hardware being dumped on the market. Too much peace about and not enough hard currency. Our Dicky did a bit of the Serbo-Croat thing, of course – Croats via Athens, Serbs via Poland – but the numbers weren’t in his league and there were too many dogs in the hunt. Cuba’s gone dead, so’s South Africa, they make their own. Ireland isn’t worth a light or he’d have done that too. Peru, he’s got a thing going there, supplying the Shining Path boys. And he’s been making a play for the Muslim insurgents in the Southern Philippines, but the North Koreans are in there ahead of him and I’ve a suspicion he’s going to get his nose bloodied again.

Hotel’s full up, I’m afraid, Mr. Roper, Jonathan rehearsed in another last-ditch effort to fend off the inevitable. Herr Meister is desolated. A temporary clerk has made an unpardonable error. However, we have managed to obtain rooms for you at the Baur au Lac, et cetera.

You give the air of looking for someone, Sophie had said. But I think the missing person is yourself. Each

When God finished putting together Dicky Roper, He took a deep breath and shuddered a bit, then He ran up our Jonathan to restore the ecological balance.

It was him taught Idi Amin’s lads how to extract voluntary confessions with the aid of an electric cattle-prod. Our chum likes them English and he likes them with a dirty past. He

shoes and a leather jacket. When Burr had

band above her and calls to somebody she

Dining alone had always been his particular pleasure, and tonight, in deference to the war’s depletion, Maître Berri had promoted him from his single-seater by the service door to one of the high altars at the window.

The pallor of his eyes caught you by surprise. You expected more challenge from him, heavier shadows. And