The Night Manager Page #2

For the right price, he could have

landed in the breakfast room. I’m

sending the helicopter to pick them

up.

HERR STRIPPLI hands over the booking form.

PINE stares at it. His face flickers. His hand clenches. His

palms become sweaty.

HERR STRIPPLI gazes across and buttons his coat ready to

leave.

TNM Ep1 PRE-SHOOTING SCRIPT 15-3-15 55.

HERR STRIPPLI (CONT’D)

You know of him?

PINE:

No.

He smiles slightly. Then looks back at the paperwork.

A name.

The name is R. ROPER.

HERR STRIPPLI:

He used to come every year, but

that was long before your time.

PINE:

Yes I expect so.

The hand still clenched. Does it shake slightly?

HERR STRIPPLI:

This parcel came for them. Please

give it to them when they arrive.

Good night Mr Pine.

HERR STRIPPLI takes his coat, and with a clipped precision,

walks away through the revolving doors into the night like a

wraith.

Left alone, PINE’s face betrays almost nothing. PINE stares

at the courier parcel on the ground.

Then looks back at the name.

R. ROPER.

A drip of sweat falls from PINE’s forehead on to the paper

where the name is written. It smudges with the name. ROPER.

PINE sits breathing hard. The hotel swoons slightly in front

of him:

SMASH CUT TO:

6 EXT. CAIRO STREET. DAY. FIVE YEARS AGO. 6

JONATHAN PINE, white cotton shirt, five years younger, is

walking fast through a chaotic Arab Spring Cairo. Wild

increase in tempo here, fast cuts. Action, movement. Intense

heat and humidity. Madness.

TNM Ep1 PRE-SHOOTING SCRIPT 15-3-15 66.

People shouting slogans, TV cameras, women putting spent

military bullet cartridges on their fingers to show to the TV

cameras, burnt out cars, roars of a distant crowd, men

running, women screaming, the echo of bullets, buildings

burnt and looted. PINE navigating it without fear and with

some skill.

An explosion nearby! PINE walks on fast hearing the

increasing roar of bullets, the heat of danger in the air.

Faces stare out of alleyways, friends or foes? Who can say?

He walks on.

7 EXT. CAIRO. NEFERTITI HOTEL. FORECOURT. DAY. 7

PINE walks across the forecourt of the Nefertiti Hotel, one

of Cairo’s finest and most expensive. PRIVATE SECURITY MEN

guard the perimeter, tension in the air. He shows ID, they

let PINE through and he walks fast into the hotel.

8 INT. CAIRO. NEFERTITI HOTEL. FOYER. DAY. 8

PINE walks into the panicked foyer, filled with anxious

guests trying to leave, journalists trying to arrange

transport. It’s bedlam.

The MAITRE D sees him. French Arab.

MAITRE D:

You’re not due here til eight.

PINE:

Thought you might need some help

getting people out...

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