A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘Herr Siebkron will see you immediately! Now, please! Yes! Immediately, please!’

  ‘I shall go at my own pace,’ Bradfield had snapped as they were ushered into the unpainted steel lift. ‘Don’t you dare order me about.’ And to de Lisle, ‘I shall speak to Siebkron. It’s like a trainload of monkeys.’

  The upper floors restored them. This was the Bonn they knew: the pale, functional interiors, the pale, functional reproductions on the wall, the pale unpolished teak; the white shirts, the grey ties and faces pale as the moon. They were seven. The two who sat to either side of Siebkron had no names at all, and de Lisle wondered maliciously whether they were clerks brought in to make up the numbers. Lieff, an empty-headed parade horse from Protocol Department, sat on his left; opposite him, on Bradfield’s right, an old Polizeidirektor from Bonn, whom de Lisle instinctively liked: a battle-scarred monument of a man, with white patches like covered bullet-holes in the leather of his skin. Cigarettes lay in packets on a plate. A stern girl offered decaffeinated coffee, and they waited until she had withdrawn.

  What does Siebkron want? he wondered for the hundredth time since the terse summons at nine o’clock that morning.

  The conference began, like all conferences, with a résumé of what was said at a previous occasion. Lieff read the minutes in a tone of unctuous flattery, like a man awarding a medal. It was an occasion, he implied, of the greatest felicity. The Polizeidirektor unbuttoned his green jacket, and lit a length of Dutch cigar till it burned like a spill. Siebkron coughed angrily but the old policeman ignored him.

  ‘You have no objection to these minutes, Mr Bradfield?’

  Siebkron usually smiled when he asked this question, and although his smile was as cold as the north wind, de Lisle could have wished for it today.

  ‘Off the cuff, none,’ Bradfield replied easily, ‘But I must see them in writing before I can sign them.’

  ‘No one is asking you to sign.’

  De Lisle looked up sharply.

  ‘You will allow me,’ Siebkron declared, ‘to read the following statement. Copies will be distributed.’

  It was quite short.

  The doyen, he said; had already discussed with Herr Lieff of Protocol Department, and with the American Ambassador, the question of the physical security of diplomatic premises in the event of civil unrest arising out of minority demonstrations in the Federal Republic. Siebkron regretted that additional measures were proving necessary, but it was desirable to anticipate unhappy eventualities rather than attempt to correct them when it was too late. Siebkron had received the doyen’s assurance that all diplomatic Heads of Mission would cooperate to the utmost with the Federal authorities. The British Ambassador had already associated himself with this undertaking. Siebkron’s voice had found a hard edge which was uncommonly close to anger. Lieff and the old policeman had turned deliberately to face Bradfield, and their expressions were frankly hostile.

  ‘I am sure you subscribe to this opinion,’ Siebkron said in English, handing a copy of the statement down the table.

  Bradfield had noticed nothing. Taking his fountain pen from an inside pocket, he unscrewed the cap, fitted it carefully over the butt and ran the nib along line after line of the text.

  ‘This is an aide-mémoire?’

  ‘A memorandum. You will find the German translation attached.’

  ‘I can see nothing here that requires to be in writing at all,’ Bradfield said easily. ‘You know very well, Ludwig, that we always agree on such matters. Our interests are identical.’

  Siebkron disregarded this pleasant appeal: ‘You also understand that Doktor Karfeld is not well disposed towards the British. This places the British Embassy in a special category.’

  Bradfield’s smile did not flinch. ‘It has not escaped our notice. We rely on you to see that Herr Karfeld’s sentiments are not expressed in physical terms. We have every confidence in your ability to do so.’

  ‘Precisely. Then you will appreciate my concern for the safety of all personnel of the British Embassy.’

  Bradfield’s voice came quite close to banter. ‘Ludwig, what is this? A declaration of love?’

  The rest came very fast, thrown down like an ultimatum: ‘I must accordingly ask you that until further notice all British Embassy staff below the rank of Counsellor be confined to the area of Bonn. You will kindly instruct them that for their own safety they will please be in their residences’ – he was reading again from the folder before him – ‘henceforth and until further notice, by eleven o’clock at night, local time.’

  The white faces peered at them through the swathes of tobacco smoke like lamps through an anaesthetic. In the momentary confusion and bewilderment, only Bradfield’s voice, fluent and decisive as the voice of a commander in battle, did not waver.

  It was a principle of civil order which the British had learnt by bitter experience in many parts of the world, he said, that unpleasant incidents were actually provoked by over-elaborate precautions.

  Siebkron offered no comment.

  While making every allowance for Siebkron’s professional and personal concern, Bradfield felt obliged to warn him strongly against any gesture which might be misinterpreted by the outside world.

  Siebkron waited.

  Like Siebkron, Bradfield insisted, he himself had a responsibility to preserve Embassy morale and thus fortify the Junior Staff against strains yet to come. He could not support any measure at this stage which would look like a retreat in the face of an enemy who as yet had barely advanced … Did Siebkron really wish it said that he could not control a handful of hooligans? …

  Siebkron was standing up, the others with him. A terse inclination of the head replaced the obligatory handshake. The door opened and the leather coats led them briskly to the lift. They were in the wet courtyard. The roar of the motor-cycles deafened them. The Mercedes swept them into the carriageway. What on earth have we done? de Lisle wondered. What on earth have we done to deserve this? Whoever has thrown the rock through teacher’s window?

  ‘It’s nothing to do with last night?’ he asked Bradfield at last, as they approached the Embassy.

  ‘There is no conceivable connection,’ Bradfield retorted. He was sitting bolt upright, his expression stiff and angry.

  ‘Whatever the reason,’ he added, more as a memorandum to himself than by way of a confidence to de Lisle, ‘Siebkron is the one thread I dare not cut.’

  ‘Quite,’ said de Lisle and they got out. The sports were just ending.

  Behind the English Church, on a wooded hill, in a semi-rural avenue away from the centre of Bad Godesberg, the Embassy has built itself a modest piece of suburban Surrey. Comfortable stockbrokers’ houses, with open fireplaces and long corridors for servants they no longer have, hide behind the exiguous privet and laburnum of splendid isolation. The air trembles to the gentle music of the British Forces Network. Dogs of unmistakably English breed ramble in the long gardens; the pavements are obstructed by the runabout cars of British Counsellors’ wives. In this avenue, on each Sunday throughout the warmer months, a more agreeable ritual replaces the Chancery meeting. At a few minutes before eleven o’clock, dogs are summoned indoors, cats banished to the garden, as a dozen wives in coloured hats and matching handbags emerge from a dozen front doors, followed by their husbands in Sunday suits.

  Soon a little crowd has gathered in the road; someone has made a joke; someone has laughed; they glance round anxiously for stragglers, and upwards at the nearer houses. Have the Crabbes overslept? Should someone give them a ring? No, here they come at last. Gently they begin the move downhill to the church, the women leading, men following, their hands deep in their pockets. Reaching the church steps they all pause, smiling invitingly at the senior wife present. She, with a little gesture of surprise, climbs the steps ahead of them and disappears through the green curtain, leaving her inferiors to follow, quite by accident, the order of succession which protocol, had they cared about such things, would exactly have
demanded.

  That Sunday morning, Rawley Bradfield, accompanied by Hazel, his beautiful wife, entered the church and sat in their customary pew beside the Tills, who by the nature of things had gone ahead of them in the procession. Bradfield, though theoretically a Roman Catholic, regarded it as his iron duty to attend the Embassy Chapel; it was a matter on which he declined to consult either his Church or his conscience. They made a handsome couple. The Irish blood had come through richly in Hazel, whose auburn hair shone where the sunbeams touched it from the leaded window; and Bradfield had a way of deferring to her in public which was both gallant and commanding. Directly behind them, Meadowes the Registrar sat expressionless beside his blonde and very nervous daughter. She was a pretty girl, but the wives in particular were inclined to wonder how a man of her father’s rectitude could tolerate such a quantity of make-up.

  Having settled into his pew, Bradfield searched the hymnal for the advertised numbers – there were certain of them which he had proscribed on the grounds of taste – then glanced round the church to check absentees. There being none, he was about to return to his hymnal when Mrs Vandelung, the Dutch Counsellor’s wife, and currently Vice-President of the International Ladies, leaned over her pew to enquire in a breathy, somewhat hysterical undertone why there was no organist. Bradfield glanced at the little lighted alcove, at the empty stool with the embroidered cushion on the seat, and in the same instant he appeared to become aware of the embarrassed silence all round him which was accentuated by the creaking of the west door as Mickie Crabbe, whose turn it was to act as sidesman, closed it without benefit of a Voluntary. Rising quickly Bradfield walked down the aisle. From the front row of the choir, John Gaunt, the Chancery Guard, watched with veiled apprehension. Jenny Pargiter, upright as a bride, looked stiffly ahead of her, seeing nothing but the light of God. Janet Cork, wife of the cypher clerk, stood beside her, her mind upon her unborn child. Her husband was in the Embassy, serving a routine shift in the cypher room.

  ‘Where the devil’s Harting?’ Bradfield asked, but one glance at Crabbe’s expression told him that his question was wasted. Slipping out into the road, he hastened a short way up the hill and opened a small iron gate leading to the vestry, which he entered without knocking.

  ‘Harting’s failed to appear,’ he said curtly. ‘Who else plays the organ?’

  The Chaplain, who found the Embassy a challenge but believed he was making headway, was a Low Church man with a wife and four children in Wales. No one knew why they would not join him.

  ‘He’s never missed before. Never.’

  ‘Who else can play?’

  ‘Perhaps the ferry isn’t running. There’s a lot of trouble about, I hear.’

  ‘He could come the long way by the bridge. He’s done it often enough. Can no one stand in for him?’

  ‘Not that I know,’ said the Chaplain, fingering the tip of his golden stole, his thoughts far away. ‘But there’s never been occasion to enquire, not really.’

  ‘Then what are you going to do?’

  ‘Perhaps someone could give a note,’ the Chaplain suggested doubtfully, but his gaze had fixed on a baptismal postcard that was tucked behind a calendar. ‘Maybe that would be the answer. Johnny Gaunt has a nice tenor, being Welsh.’

  ‘Very well, the choir must lead. You’d better tell them at once.’

  ‘Trouble is, you see, they don’t know the hymns, Mr Bradfield,’ the Chaplain said. ‘He wasn’t at Friday’s choir practice either, you see. He didn’t come, not really. We had to scrap it, see.’

  Stepping back into the fresh air, Bradfield found himself face to face with Meadowes, who had quietly left his place beside his daughter and followed him to the back of the church.

  ‘He’s vanished,’ Meadowes said, dreadfully quietly. ‘I’ve checked everywhere. Sick list, the doctor; I’ve been to his house. His car’s in the garage; he’s not used his milk. No one’s seen or heard of him since Friday. He didn’t come to Exiles. It was a special occasion for my daughter’s birthday, but he didn’t come to that either. He’d got engagements but he was going to look in. He’d promised her a hair-dryer as a present; it’s not like him, Mr Bradfield, it’s not his way at all.’

  For one moment, just for one moment, Bradfield’s composure seemed to desert him. He stared furiously at Meadowes, then back at the church, as if undecided which to destroy; as if either in anger or despair he would rush down the path and burst open the doors and cry out the news to those who waited so complacently within.

  ‘Come with me.’

  Even as they entered the main gates of the Embassy and long before the police check cleared them, they could recognise the signs of crisis. Two army motor-cycles were parked on the front lawn. Cork, the cypher clerk on call, was waiting on the steps, an Everyman guide to investments still in his hand. A green German police van, its blue light flashing, had stationed itself beside the canteen, and they could hear the crackle of its radio.

  ‘Thank the Lord you’ve come, sir,’ said Macmullen the Head Guard, ‘I sent the duty driver down; he must have passed you on the carriageway.’

  All over the building bells were ringing.

  ‘There’s a message in from Hanover, sir, from the Consulate General; I didn’t hear too well. The rally’s gone mad, sir; all hell’s broken loose. They’re storming the library and they’re going to march on the Consulate; I don’t know what the world’s coming to; worse than Grosvenor Square. I could hear their screaming on the telephone, sir.’

  Meadowes followed Bradfield hastily up the stairs.

  ‘You said a hair-dryer? He was giving your daughter a hair-dryer?’

  It was a moment of deliberate inconsequence, of deliberate slowness perhaps, a nervous gesture before battle was joined. Meadowes at least construed it thus.

  ‘He’s ordered it specially,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Bradfield, and was about to enter the cypher room when Meadowes addressed him once more.

  ‘The file’s gone,’ he whispered. ‘The Green File for the special minutes. It’s been gone since Friday.’

  3

  Alan Turner

  It was a day to be nearly free; a day to stay in London and dream of the country. In St James’s Park, the premature summer was entering its third week. Along the lake, girls lay like cut flowers in the unnatural heat of a Sunday afternoon in May. An attendant had lit an improbable bonfire and the smell of burnt grass drifted with the echoes of the traffic. Only the pelicans, hobbling fussily round their island pavilion, seemed disposed to move; only Alan Turner, his big shoes crunching on the gravel, had anywhere to go; for once, not even the girls could distract him.

  His shoes were of a heavy brown brogue and much repaired at the welts. He wore a stained tropical suit and carried a stained canvas bag. He was a big, lumbering man, fair-haired, plain-faced and pale, with the high shoulders and square fingers of an alpinist, and he walked with the thrusting slowness of a barge; a broad, aggressive, policeman’s walk, wilfully without finesse. His age was hard to guess. Undergraduates would have found him old, but old for an undergraduate. He could alarm the young with age, and the aged with his youth. His colleagues had long ceased to speculate. It was known that he was a late entrant, never a good sign, and a former fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, which takes all kinds of people. The official Foreign Office publications were reserved. While they shed a merciless light on the origin of all their other Turners, in the matter of Alan they remained tight-lipped, as if, having considered all the facts, they felt that silence was the kindest policy.

  ‘They’ve called you in too, then,’ said Lambert, catching him up. ‘I must say, Karfeld’s really gone to town this time.’

  ‘What the hell do they expect us to do? Man the barricades? Knit blankets?’

  Lambert was a small, vigorous man and he liked it said of him that he could mix with anyone. He occupied a senior position in Western Department and ran a cricket team open to all grades.

 
They began the ascent of Clive Steps.

  ‘You’ll never change them,’ said Lambert. ‘That’s my view. A nation of psychopaths. Always think they’re being got at. Versailles, encirclement, stab in the back; persecution mania, that’s their trouble.’

  He allowed time for Turner to agree with him.

  ‘We’re bringing in the whole of the Department. Even the girls.’

  ‘Christ, that’ll really frighten them. That’s calling up the reserves, that is.’

  ‘This could put paid to Brussels, you know. Bang it clean on the nose. If the German Cabinet loses its nerve on the home front, we’re all up a gum-tree.’ The prospect filled him with relish. ‘We shall have to find a quite different solution in that case.’

  ‘I thought there wasn’t one.’

  ‘The Secretary of State has already spoken to their Ambassador; I am told they have agreed full compensation.’

  ‘Then there’s nothing to worry about, is there? We can get on with our weekend. All go back to bed.’

  They had reached the top of the steps. The founder of India, one foot casually upon a plateau of vanquished bronze, stared contentedly past them into the glades of the Park.

  ‘They’ve kept the doors open.’ Lambert’s voice was tender with reverence. ‘They’re on the weekday schedule. My, they are going at it. Well,’ he remarked, receiving no admiring echo, ‘you go your way, I go mine. Mind you,’ he added shrewdly, ‘it could do us a lot of good. Unite the rest of Europe behind us against the Nazi menace. Nothing like the stamp of jackboots to stiffen the old alliances.’ With a final nod of undeterred goodwill he was assumed into the imperial darkness of the main entrance. For a moment, Turner stared after him, measuring his slight body against the Tuscan pillars of the great portico, and there was even something wistful in his expression, as if actually he would quite like to be a Lambert, small and neat and adept and unbothered. Rousing himself at last, he continued towards a smaller door at the side of the building. It was a scruffy door with brown hardboard nailed to the inside of the glass and a notice denying entrance to unauthorised persons. He had some difficulty getting through.