The Little Drummer Girl

by John le Carré

  ‘Anton is a genius,’ Helga announced, with a laugh. ‘He is our guardian angel, he hates the law, but naturally he falls in love with what he hates. Do you agree? . . . Charlie, you must always agree with me. I am otherwise too disappointed.’ She drew nearer. ‘Violence is not the issue,’ she said, resuming a conversation they had not yet had. ‘Never. We make a violent action, we make a peaceful one, it is indifferent. The issue with us is to be logical, not to stand aside while the world runs itself, but to turn opinion into conviction and conviction into action.’ She paused, examining the effect of her statements upon her pupil. Their heads were very close. ‘Action is self-realisation, it is also objective. Yes?’ Another pause, but still no answer. ‘You know something else that will surprise you completely? I have an excellent relationship with my parents. You, you are different. One sees it in your letters. Anton also. Naturally, my mother is the more intelligent, but my father –’ She broke off again, but this time she was angered by Charlie’s silence, and her renewed weeping.

  ‘Charlie, stop now. Stop, okay? We are not old women finally. You loved him, we accept that as logical, but he is dead.’ Her voice had hardened surprisingly. ‘He is dead, but we are not individualists for private experience, we are fighters and workers. Stop weeping.’

  Grasping Charlie’s elbow, Helga lifted her bodily to her feet and marched her slowly down the length of the room.

  ‘Listen to me. Immediately. Once I had a very rich boyfriend. Kurt. Very fascistic, completely primitive. I used him for sex, like I use Anton, but also I tried to educate him. One day the German Ambassador in Bolivia, a Graf somebody, was executed by the freedom fighters. You remember this action? Kurt, who did not even know him, was immediately enraged: “The swine! These terrorists! It’s disgraceful!” I said to him, “Kurt” – this was his name – “who do you mourn for? People starve to death every day in Bolivia. Why should we bother about one dead Graf?” You agree with this evaluation, Charlie? Yes?’

  Charlie gave a faint shrug. Turning her round, Helga started the return journey.

  ‘Now I take a harder argument. Michel is a martyr, but the dead cannot fight and there are many other martyrs also. One soldier is dead. The revolution continues. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie whispered.

  They had reached the sofa. Taking up her sensible handbag, Helga pulled out a flat half-bottle of whisky on which Charlie noticed a duty-free label. She unscrewed the cap and handed her the bottle.

  ‘To Michel!’ she declared. ‘We drink to him. To Michel. Say it.’

  Charlie took a small sip, pulled a face. Helga took back the bottle.

  ‘Sit down, please. Charlie, I wish you to sit down. Immediately.’

  She sat listlessly on the sofa. Helga once more stood over her.

  ‘You listen to me and you answer, okay? I do not come here for fun, you understand? Nor for discussions. I like to discuss but not now. Say “Yes”.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie wearily.

  ‘He was attracted to you. This is a scientific fact. Even infatuated, actually. There was an unfinished letter to you on the desk in his apartment, full of fantastic statements concerning love and sex. All for you. Also politics.’

  Slowly, as if the sense of this had only gradually got through to her, Charlie’s blotched and twisted face became eager. ‘Where is it?’ she said. ‘Give it to me!’

  ‘It is being processed. In operations, everything must be evaluated, everything must be processed objectively.’

  Charlie started to her feet. ‘It’s mine! Give it to me!’

  ‘It is the property of the revolution. Possibly you shall have it later. One shall see.’ Not very gently, Helga pushed her back to the sofa. ‘This car. The Mercedes which is now an ash box. You drove it over the border into Germany? For Michel? A mission? Answer me.’

  ‘Austria,’ she muttered.

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘Through Yugoslavia.’

  ‘Charlie, I think you are seriously quite bad at accuracy: where from?’

  ‘Thessalonika.’

  ‘And Michel accompanied you on the journey, of course he did. This was normal with him, I think.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What no? You drove alone? So far? Ridiculous! He would never entrust you such a responsibility. I do not believe you one word. The whole story is lies.’

  ‘Who cares?’ said Charlie, with a return to apathy.

  Helga did. She was already furious. ‘Of course you don’t care! If you are a spy, why should you care? It is already clear to me what happened. I need ask no more questions, they are pure formality. Michel recruited you, he made you his secret love, and as soon as you were able, you took your story to the police in order to protect yourself and make a fortune of money. You are a police spy. I shall report this to certain quite effective people we are in touch with and you will be taken care of, even if it is twenty years from now. Executed.’

  ‘Great,’ said Charlie. ‘Terrific.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You do that, Helg. That’s just exactly what I need. Send them round, will you? Room sixteen, up the hotel.’

  Helga had gone to the window and torn back the curtain, apparently intending to summon Mesterbein. Looking past her, Charlie saw his little hire car with the interior light on, and Mesterbein’s hatted outline seated impassively in the driving seat.

  Helga tapped on the window. ‘Anton? Anton, come here at once, we have a complete spy among us!’ But her voice was too low for him, as she intended. ‘Why did Michel not tell us about you?’ she demanded, closing the curtain again and turning round to face her. ‘Why did he not share you with us? You – his dark horse for so many months. It’s too ridiculous!’

  ‘He loved me.’

  ‘Quatsch! He was using you. You have his letters still – to you?’

  ‘He ordered me to destroy them.’

  ‘But you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. How could you? You are a sentimental idiot, which may be seen immediately from your own letters to him. You exploited him, he spent money on you, clothes, jewels, hotels, and you sell him to the police. Of course you do!’

  Finding herself close to Charlie’s handbag, Helga picked it up and, on an impulse, tipped its contents over the dining-table. But the clues that were planted in it – the diary, the ballpoint pen from Nottingham, the matches from the Diogenes in Athens – were in her present mood too fine for her, she was looking for evidence of Charlie’s treachery, not her devotion.

  ‘This radio.’

  Her little Japanese job with an alarm clock on it for rehearsals.

  ‘What is it? It is a spy device. Where does it come from? Why does a woman like you carry a radio in her handbag?’

  Leaving her to her own preoccupations, Charlie turned away from her and stared sightlessly at the fire. Helga fiddled with the dials of the radio and picked up some music. She switched it off and put it irritably aside.

  ‘In Michel’s last letter that he did not post to you, he says you have kissed the gun. What does this mean?’

  ‘It means I kissed his gun.’ She corrected herself. ‘His brother’s gun.’

  Helga’s voice rose abruptly. ‘His brother? What brother?’

  ‘He had an elder brother. His hero. A great fighter. The brother gave him the gun, Michel made me kiss it as a pledge.’

  Helga was staring at her in disbelief. ‘Michel told you this?’

  ‘I read it in the papers, didn’t I?’

  ‘When did he tell it to you?’

  ‘On a hilltop in Greece.’

  ‘What else of this brother – quickly!’ She almost screamed.

  ‘Michel worshipped him. I told you.’

  ‘Give facts. Only facts. What else did he tell you about his brother?’

  But Charlie’s secret voice was telling her she had already gone far enough. ‘He’s a military secret,’ she said, and helped herself to a fresh cigarette.

  ‘Did he tell you where he is? What he is doing? Charli
e, I order you to tell me!’ She drew nearer. ‘Police, intelligence, maybe even the Zionists – everybody is looking for you. We have excellent relations with certain elements of the German police. They know already it was not the Dutch girl who drove the car through Yugoslavia. They have descriptions. They have many informations to incriminate you. If we wish, we can help you. But not until you have told everything that Michel has revealed to you about his brother.’ She leaned forward until her big pale eyes were not a hand’s width from Charlie’s own. ‘He had no right to talk to you about him. You have no right to this information. Give it to me.’

  Charlie considered Helga’s application but after due reflection rejected it.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  She was intending to go on: I promised and that’s it – I don’t trust you – get off my back – but when she had listened to plain ‘no’ for a time, she decided she liked it best alone.

  Your job is to make them need you, Joseph had said. Think of it as courtship. They will treasure most what they cannot have.

  Helga had developed an unearthly composure. The histrionics were over. She had entered a period of ice-cold disconnection, which Charlie understood instinctively because it was something she could do herself.

  ‘So. You drove the car to Austria. And then?’

  ‘I dumped it where he told me, we met up and went to Salzburg.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Plane and car.’

  ‘And? In Salzburg?’

  ‘We went to a hotel.’

  ‘The name of the hotel, please?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I didn’t notice.’

  ‘Then describe it.’

  ‘It was old and big and near a river. And beautiful,’ she added.

  ‘And you had sex. He was very virile, he had many orgasms, as usual.’

  ‘We went for a walk.’

  ‘And after the walk you had sex. Don’t be silly, please.’

  Once more, Charlie let her wait. ‘We meant to, but I fell asleep as soon as we’d had dinner. I was exhausted from the drive. He tried to wake me a couple of times, then gave up. In the morning he was dressed by the time I woke.’

  ‘And then you went with him to Munich – yes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Caught an afternoon plane to London.’

  ‘What car did he have?’

  ‘A hire car.’

  ‘What make?’

  She pretended not to remember.

  ‘Why did you not go with him to Munich?’

  ‘He didn’t want us crossing the border together. He said he had work to do.’

  ‘He told you this? Work to do? Nonsense! What work? No wonder you were able to betray him!’

  ‘He said he had orders to pick up the Mercedes and deliver it somewhere for his brother.’

  This time Helga showed no astonishment, not even indignation, at the scale of Michel’s abysmal indiscretion. Her mind was upon action, and action was what she believed in. Striding to the door, she flung it open and waved imperiously for Mesterbein to return. She swung round, hands on hips, and stared at Charlie, and her big pale eyes were a dangerous and alarming void.

  ‘You are suddenly like Rome, Charlie,’ she remarked. ‘All roads lead to you. It is too perverse. You are his secret love, you drive his car, you spend his last night on earth with him. You knew what was in that car when you drove it?’

  ‘Explosives.’

  ‘Nonsense. Of what sort?’

  ‘Russian plastic, two hundred pounds of it.’

  ‘The police told you this. It is their lie. The police lie always.’

  ‘Michel told me.’

  Helga let out a false, angry laugh. ‘Oh, Charlie! Now I don’t believe you one word. You are lying to me completely.’ With a soundless tread, Mesterbein loomed up behind her. ‘Anton, everything is known. Our little widow is a complete liar, I am sure of it. We shall do nothing to help her at all. We leave at once.’

  Mesterbein stared at her, Helga stared at her. Neither seemed half as certain as Helga’s words suggested. Not that Charlie cared either way. She sat like a slumped doll, indifferent once more to anything except her own bereavement.

  Sitting beside her again, Helga put her arm round Charlie’s unresponsive shoulders. ‘What was the brother’s name?’ she said. ‘Come.’ She kissed her lightly on the cheekbone. ‘We shall be your friends perhaps. We must be careful, we must bluff a little. This is natural. All right, tell me first Michel’s name.’

  ‘Salim, but I swore never to use it.’

  ‘And the brother’s name?’

  ‘Khalil,’ she muttered. She began weeping again. ‘Michel worshipped him,’ she said.

  ‘And his workname?’

  She didn’t understand, she didn’t care. ‘It was a military secret,’ she said.

  She had decided to keep driving till she dropped – a Yugoslavia all over again. I’ll walk out of the show, I’ll go to Nottingham and kill myself in our motel bed.

  She was on the moor again, alone and touching eighty before she nearly went off the road. She stopped the car and took her hands sharply from the wheel. The muscles in the back of her neck were twisting like hot wires and she felt sick.

  She was sitting on the verge, putting her head forward between her knees. A couple of wild ponies had come over to stare at her. The grass was long and full of the dawn’s dew. Trailing her hands, she moistened them and pressed them to her face to cool it. A motorcycle went slowly by and she saw a boy looking at her as if uncertain whether to stop and help. Between her fingers she watched him disappear below the skyline. One of ours, one of theirs? She returned to the car and wrote down the number; just for once, she didn’t trust her memory. Michel’s orchids lay on the seat beside her; she had claimed them when she took her leave.

  ‘But, Charlie, don’t be too utterly ridiculous!’ Helga had protested. ‘You are too sentimental altogether.’

  And screw you too, Helg. They’re mine.

  She was on a high, treeless plateau of pink and brown and grey. Sunrise was in her driving mirror. Her car radio gave nothing but French. It sounded like question and answer about girlish problems, but she couldn’t understand the words.

  She was passing a sleeping blue caravan parked in a field. An empty Land-Rover stood beside it, and beside the Land-Rover baby linen hung from a telescopic clothesline. Where had she seen a clothesline like that before? Nowhere. Nowhere ever.

  She lay on her bed at the guest house, watching the day lighten on the ceiling, listening to the clatter of the doves on her window-sill. Most dangerous is when you come down from the mountain, Joseph had warned. She heard a surreptitious footfall in the corridor. It’s them. But which them? Always the same question. Red? No, Officer, I have never driven a red Mercedes in my life so get out of my bedroom. A drop of cold sweat ran over her naked stomach. In her mind, she traced its course across her navel to her ribs, then onto the sheet. A creak of floorboards, a suppressed puff of exertion: he’s looking through the keyhole. A corner of white paper appeared beneath her door. And wriggled. And grew. Humphrey the fat-boy was delivering her Daily Telegraph.

  She had bathed and dressed. She drove slowly, taking lesser roads, stopping at a couple of shops along the way, as he had taught her. She had dressed herself dowdily, her hair was anyhow. Nobody observing her numb manner and neglected appearance could have doubted her distress. The road darkened; diseased elm trees closed over her, an old Cornish church crouched among them. Stopping the car again, she pushed open the iron gate. The graves were very old. Few were marked. She found one that lay apart from the others. A suicide? A murderer? Wrong: a revolutionary. Kneeling, she reverently laid the orchids at the end where she had decided his head was. Impulse mourning, she thought, stepping into the bottled, ice-cold air of the church. Something Charlie would have done in the circumstances, in the theatre of the real.

  For another hour she continued aimlessly in this way, pulli
ng up for no reason at all, except perhaps to lean on a gate and stare at a field. Or to lean on a gate and stare at nothing. It wasn’t till after twelve that she was certain the motorcyclist had finally stopped tailing her. Even then, she made several vague detours and sat in two more churches before joining the main road to Falmouth.

  The hotel was a pantiled ranch on the Helford Estuary, with an indoor pool and a sauna and a nine-hole golf course and guests who looked like hoteliers themselves. She had been to the other hotels, but not, till now, to this one. He had signed in as a German publisher, bringing a stack of unreadable books with him to prove it. He had tipped the switchboard ladies lavishly, explaining that he had international correspondents who were no respecters of his sleep. The waiters and porters knew him as a good touch who sat up all hours of the night. He had lived that way under different names and pretexts for the last two weeks, as he stalked Charlie’s progress down the peninsula on his solitary safari. He had lain on beds and stared at ceilings as Charlie had. He had talked to Kurtz on the telephone, and kept himself abreast of Litvak’s field operations hour by hour. He had talked to Charlie sparingly, fed her little meals, and taught her more tricks of secret writing and communications. He had been as much a prisoner to her as she to him.

  He opened the door to her and she walked past him with a distracted frown, not knowing what to feel. Murderer. Bully. Cheat. But she had no appetite for the obligatory scenes; she had played them all, she was a burnt-out mourner. He was already standing as she entered, and she expected him to come forward and embrace her, but he stood his ground. She had never seen him so grave, so held back. Deep shadows of worry ringed his eyes. He was wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows – cotton, not silk. She stared at it, aware after all of what she felt. No cuff-links. No medallion at the neck. No Gucci shoes.

  ‘You’re on your own then,’ she said.

  He did not follow her meaning.

  ‘You can forget the red blazer, can’t you? You’re you and no one else. You’ve killed your own bodyguard. No one left to hide behind.’

  Opening her handbag, she handed him her little clock radio. From the table, he picked up her original model and dropped it into the handbag for her. ‘Oh indeed,’ he said with a laugh, closing her bag. ‘Our relationship is henceforth unmediated, I would say.’