The Little Drummer Girl

by John le Carré

  At the same second exactly, Rossino’s engine burst into life, ripping the damp night apart with its roar of triumphant laughter. Me too, she thought. It’s the funniest day of my life.

  Rossino drove slowly, keeping to small roads and following a carefully thought-out route.

  You drive, I’ll follow. Maybe it’s time I became Italian.

  A warm drizzle had cleared away much of the snow, but he drove with respect for the bad surface, and for his important passenger. He was yelling joyful things at her and seemed to be having a great time, but she wasn’t interested in sharing his mood. They passed through a big gateway and she shouted, ‘Is this the place?’ without knowing or caring from Adam what place she was talking about, but the gateway gave on to an unmade road over hills and valleys of private forest, and they crossed them alone, under a bobbing moon that used to be Joseph’s private property. She looked down and saw a sleeping village draped in a white shroud; she smelt Greek pine trees and felt her warm tears being dashed away by the wind. She held Rossino’s trembling, unfamiliar body tucked into her own, and told him: Help yourself, there’s nothing left.

  They descended a last hill, came out of another gateway, and entered a road lined with bare larches like the trees in France on family holidays. The track climbed again, and as they reached the crest, Rossino cut the engine and coasted down a footpath into a forest. He opened a saddle bag and pulled out a bundle of clothes and a handbag, and tossed them to her. He held a torch, and while she changed he watched her by the light of it, and there was a moment when she stood half naked in front of him.

  You want me, take me; I’m available and unattached.

  She was without love and without value to herself. She was where she had started, and the whole rotten world could screw her.

  She poured her junk from one handbag to the other, powder compact, tampons, bits of money, her packet of Marlboros. And her cheap little radio alarm clock for rehearsals – press the volume, Charlie, are you listening? Rossino took her old passport and handed her a new one, but she didn’t bother to find out what nationality she had become.

  Citizen of Nowheresville, born yesterday.

  He gathered up her old clothes and dumped them into the saddle bag, together with her old shoulder bag and spectacles. Wait here but look towards the road, he said. He’ll shine a red light twice. He had been gone barely five minutes before she saw it winking through the trees. Hooray, a friend at last.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Khalil took her arm and almost carried her to the shiny new car because she was weeping and trembling so much she wasn’t very good at walking. After the humble clothes of a van driver, he seemed to have put on the full disguise of the unimpeachable German manager: soft black overcoat, shirt and tie, groomed and swept-back hair. Opening her door, he took off the overcoat and tucked it solicitously round her as if she were a sick animal. She had no idea how he expected her to be, but he seemed less shocked by her condition than respectful of it. The engine was already running. He turned the heating on full.

  ‘Michel would be proud of you,’ he said kindly, and considered her a moment by the interior light. She started to answer, but broke out weeping again instead. He gave her a handkerchief; she held it in both hands, twisting it round her fingers while the tears fell and fell. They set off down the wooded hillside.

  ‘What happened?’ she whispered.

  ‘You have won a great victory for us. Minkel died as he was opening the briefcase. Other friends of Zionism are reported to be severely wounded. They are still counting.’ He spoke in savage satisfaction. ‘They speak of outrage. Shock. Cold-blooded murder. They should visit Rashidiyeh one day. I invite the whole university. They should sit in the shelters and be machine-gunned as they come out. They should have their bones broken and watch their children being put to torture. Tomorrow the whole world will read that Palestinians will not become the poor blacks of Zion.’

  The heating was powerful, but it was still not enough. She pulled his coat more tightly round her. Its lapels were of velvet and she could smell its newness.

  ‘You want to tell me how it went?’ he enquired.

  She shook her head. The seats were plush and soft, the engine quiet. She listened for cars but heard none. She looked in the mirror. Nothing behind, nothing in front. When was there ever? She caught Khalil’s dark eye staring at her.

  ‘Don’t worry. We look after you. I promise. I am glad you are in grief. Others when they kill, they laugh and triumph. Got drunk, tore off their clothes like animals. All this I have seen. But you – you weep. This is very good.’

  The house was beside a lake and the lake was in a steep valley. Khalil drove past it twice before he turned into the drive, and his eyes as he scanned the roadside were Joseph’s eyes, dark and purposeful and all-seeing. It was a modern bungalow, a rich man’s second home. It had white walls and Moorish windows and a sloping red roof where the snow had not managed to lie. The garage was joined to it. He drove in and the doors closed. He switched off the engine and drew a long-barrelled automatic pistol from inside his jacket. Khalil, the one-handed shooter. She stayed in the car, staring at the toboggans and the firewood stored along the back wall. He opened her door.

  ‘Walk after me. Three metres, no closer.’

  A steel side door led to an interior corridor. She waited, then went after him. The drawing-room lights were already lit, a wood fire was burning in the grate. Pony-skin sofa. Suburban rustic furniture. A log table laid for two. In an ice bucket on its wrought-iron stand, one bottle of vodka.

  ‘Stay here,’ he said.

  She stood at the centre of the floor, clutching her handbag in both hands, while he moved from room to room, so silently that the only sound she heard was the opening and closing of cupboards. She began to shiver again, violently. He returned to the drawing-room, put away his gun, dropped into a crouch before the fire, and set to work to build it into a blaze. To keep away the animals, she thought, watching him. And the sheep safe. The fire roared and she sat before it on the sofa. He switched on the television. It showed an old black-and-white movie from the taverna on the hilltop. He did not turn up the sound. He placed himself before her.

  ‘Would you like some vodka?’ he asked politely. ‘I do not drink, but you must please yourself.’

  She would, so he poured some for her, far too much.

  ‘You want to smoke?’

  He handed her a leather box and lit her cigarette for her.

  The lighting in the room brightened; her glance went swiftly to the television and she found herself staring straight into the excited, over-expressive features of the weaselly little German she had seen not an hour earlier at Marty’s side. He was posed beside the police van. Behind him she could see her bit of pavement and the side door of the lecture hall, fenced off with fluorescent tape. Police cars, fire engines, and ambulances bustled in and out of the cordoned area. Terror is theatre, she thought. The background changed to a shot of green tarpaulins, erected to keep the weather out while the search continued. Khalil turned up the sound and she heard the wailing of ambulances behind the sleek, well-modulated voice of Alexis.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s leading the investigation. Wait. I tell you.’

  Alexis vanished, and was replaced with a studio shot of Oberhauser unscathed.

  ‘That’s the idiot who opened the door to me,’ she said.

  Khalil held up his hand to her to be quiet. She listened and realised, with a detached curiosity, that Oberhauser was giving a description of herself. She caught ‘Süd Afrika’ and a reference to brown hair; she saw his hand lift to describe her spectacles; the camera switched to a trembling finger pointing to a pair similar to those which Tayeh had given to her.

  After Oberhauser came our artist’s first impression of the suspect, which looked like nobody on earth, except possibly an old advertisement for a liquid laxative that had featured large at railway stations ten years earlier. Afte
r that came one of the two policemen who had spoken to her, adding his own shamefaced description.

  Switching off the set, Khalil again came and stood before her.

  ‘You allow?’ he asked shyly.

  She picked up her handbag and put it the other side of her so that he could sit down. Did it hum? Bleep? Was it a microphone? What the hell did it do?

  Khalil spoke precisely – a seasoned practitioner offers his diagnosis.

  ‘You are a little bit at risk,’ he said. ‘Mr Oberhauser remembers you, so does his wife, so do the policemen, and so do several people in the hotel. Your height, your figure, your spoken English, your acting talent. Also unfortunately there was an Englishwoman who overheard part of your conversation with Minkel and believes you are not South African at all, but English. Your description has gone to London, and we know that the English already have bad thoughts about you. The region here is on full alert, road blocks, spot checks, everybody is falling over his feet. But you will not worry.’ He took her hand and held it firmly. ‘I shall protect you with my life. Tonight we shall be safe. Tomorrow we shall smuggle you to Berlin and send you home.’

  ‘Home,’ she said.

  ‘You are one of us. You are our sister. Fatmeh says you are our sister. You have no home, but you are part of a great family. We can make you a new identity, or you can go to Fatmeh, live with her as long as you wish. Though you never fight again, we shall take care of you. For Michel. For what you have done for us.’

  His loyalty was appalling. Her hand was still in his, his touch powerful and reassuring. His eyes shone with a possessive pride. She got up and walked from the room, taking her handbag with her.

  A double bed, the electric fire lit, both bars regardless of expense. A bookshelf of Nowheresville bestsellers: I’m OK – You’re OK, The Joy of Sex. The corners of the bed turned down. The bathroom lay beyond it, pine-clad, sauna adjoining. She took out the radio and looked at it, and it was her old one, down to the last scratch: just a little heavier, stronger in the hand. Wait until he sleeps. Until I do. She stared at herself. That artist’s impression wasn’t so bad after all. A land for no people, for a people with no land. First she scrubbed her hands and fingernails; then on an impulse she stripped and treated herself to a long shower, if only to stay away from the warmth of his trust for a little longer. She doused herself with body lotion, helping herself from the cabinet above the basin. Her eyes interested her; they reminded her of Fatima the Swedish girl at the training school – they had the same furious blankness of a mind that had learned to renounce the perils of compassion. The same self-hate exactly. She returned to find him laying food on the table. Cold meats, cheese, a bottle of wine. Candles, already lit. He pulled back a chair for her in the best European style. She sat down; he sat opposite her and began eating at once, with the natural absorption he gave to everything. He had killed and now he was eating: what could be more right? My maddest meal, she thought. My worst and maddest. If a violinist comes to our table, I’ll ask him to play ‘Moon River’.

  ‘You still regret what you have done?’ he asked, as a matter of interest, like ‘Has your headache gone?’

  ‘They’re pigs,’ she said and meant it. ‘Ruthless, murderous –’ She started to weep again but caught herself in time. Her knife and fork were shaking so much she had to put them down. She heard a car pass; or was it an aeroplane? My handbag, she thought chaotically – where did I leave it? In the bathroom, away from his prying fingers. She picked up her fork again and saw Khalil’s beautiful, untamed face studying her across the guttering candlelight exactly as Joseph’s had done on the hilltop outside Delphi.

  ‘Maybe you are trying too hard to hate them,’ he suggested, as a cure.

  It was the worst play she had ever been in, and the worst dinner party. Her urge to smash the tension was the same as the urge to smash herself. She stood up and heard her knife and fork clatter to the floor. She could just see him through the tears of her despair. She started to unbutton her dress, but her hands were in such disorder that she couldn’t make them work for her. She went round the table to him and he was already getting up as she hauled him to his feet. His arms came round her; he kissed her, then lifted her across his body, and bore her like his wounded comrade to the bedroom. He laid her on the bed and suddenly, by God knew what desperate chemistry of her mind and body, she was taking him. She was upon him and undressing him; she was drawing him into her as if he were the last man on earth, on the earth’s last day; for her own destruction and for his. She was devouring him, suckling him, cramming him into the screaming empty spaces of her guilt and loneliness. She was weeping, she was shouting to him, filling her own deceiving mouth with him, turning him over and obliterating herself and Joseph’s memory beneath his fierce body’s weight. She felt his surge but clasped him defiantly inside her long after his movement had ceased, her arms locked round him as she hid herself from the advancing storm.

  He was not asleep, but he was already dozing. He lay with his tousled dark head on her shoulder, his good arm thrown carelessly across her breast.

  ‘Salim was a lucky boy,’ he murmured, with a smile in his voice. ‘A girl like you, that’s a cause to die for.’

  ‘Who says he died for me?’

  ‘Tayeh said this was possible.’

  ‘Salim died for the revolution. The Zionists blew up his car.’

  ‘He blew himself up. We read many German police reports of this incident. I told him never to make bombs, but he disobeyed me. He had no talent for the task. He was not a natural fighter.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’ she said, pulling away from him.

  It was a patter, like paper crackling, a row of dotted sounds, then nothing. She imagined a car rolling softly over gravel with its engine off.

  ‘Someone is fishing on the lake,’ Khalil said.

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘You never fished at night?’ He laughed drowsily. ‘You never took a little boat on the sea, with a lamp, and caught fishes with your hands?’

  ‘Wake up. Talk to me.’

  ‘Better to sleep.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m afraid.’

  He began to tell her a story of a night mission he had made into the Galilee long ago, he and two others. How they were crossing the sea in a rowing boat, and it was so beautiful that they lost all sense of what they had come for, and fished instead. She interrupted him.

  ‘It wasn’t a boat,’ she insisted. ‘It was a car, I heard it again. Listen.’

  ‘It was a boat,’ he said sleepily.

  The moon had found a space between the curtains, and shone towards them across the floor. Getting up, she went to the window and without touching the curtains stared out. Pine woods lay all around, the moonpath on the lake was a white staircase reaching downward to the centre of the world. But there was no boat anywhere and no light to lure the fish. She returned to the bed and his right arm slipped across her body, drawing her to him, but when he sensed her resistance he gently drew away from her and turned languidly onto his back.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she said again. ‘Khalil. Wake up.’ She shook him fiercely, then kissed him on the lips. ‘Wake up,’ she said again.

  So he roused himself for her, because he was a kind man, and had appointed her his sister.

  ‘You know what was strange about your letters to Michel?’ he asked. ‘The gun. “From now on, I shall dream of your head on my pillow, and your gun beneath it” – lovers’ talk. Beautiful lovers’ talk.’

  ‘Why was it strange? Tell me.’

  ‘I had exactly such a conversation with him once. Precisely on this very matter. “Listen, Salim,” I told him. ‘Only cowboys sleep with their guns under the pillow. If you remember nothing else I teach you, remember this. When you are in bed, keep your gun at your side where you can hide it better, and where your hand is. Learn to sleep that way. Even when you have a woman.” He said he would. Always he promised me. Then he forgot. Or found a new woman. Or a new car.’
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  ‘Broke the rules then, didn’t he?’ she said and, seizing his gloved hand, considered it in the half-darkness, pinching each dead finger in turn. They were of wadding, all but the smallest and the thumb.

  ‘So what did this lot?’ she demanded brightly. ‘Mice? What did this lot, Khalil? Wake up.’

  He took a long time to answer. ‘One day in Beirut, I am a little stupid like Salim. I am in the office, the post comes, I am in a hurry, I am expecting a certain parcel, I open it! This was an error.’

  ‘So? What happened? You opened it and there was a bang, was there? Bang go your fingers. That how you did your face too?’

  ‘When I woke up in hospital, there was Salim. You know something? He was very pleased I had been stupid. “Next time, before you open a parcel, show it to me or read the postmark first,” he says. “If it comes from Tel Aviv, better you return it to the sender.”’