'A Delicate Truth,' by John le Carré The narrative opens as a midlevel Foreign Office functionary, alias Paul Anderson, frets in his hotel room in the British crown colony of Gibraltar, waiting to play his role in Operation Wildlife. Paul is acting as a "red telephone" for MP Fergus Quinn, reporting to London as a witness to a plan to abduct a putatively high-value jihadist arms dealer. When he discovers that the operation will be based on Gibraltar, "the notion that it was on the point of becoming the scene of an extraordinary rendition mounted by discharged British soldiers ...