A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘Did you ask Leo?’

  ‘He’d gone by then, hadn’t he?’

  Once more Turner had slipped into the routine of interrogation.

  ‘He carried a briefcase, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was he allowed to bring it in here?’

  ‘He brought in sandwiches and a thermos.’

  ‘So he was allowed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he have the briefcase Thursday?’

  ‘I think so. Yes, he would have done.’

  ‘Was it big enough to hold the despatch box?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he have lunch in here Thursday?’

  ‘He went out at about twelve.’

  ‘And came back?’

  ‘I told you: Thursday’s his special day. Conference day. It’s a left-over from his old job. He goes to one of the Ministries in Bad Godesberg. Something to do with outstanding claims. Last Thursday he had a lunch date first I suppose. Then went on to the meeting.’

  ‘Has he always been to that meeting? Every Thursday?’

  ‘Ever since he came into Registry.’

  ‘He had a key, didn’t he?’

  ‘What for? Key to where?’

  Turner was on unsure ground. ‘To let himself in and out of Registry. Or he knew the combination.’

  Meadowes actually laughed.

  ‘There’s me and Head of Chancery knows how to get in and out of here, and no one else. There’s three combinations and half a dozen burglar switches and there’s the strong-room as well. Not Slingo, not de Lisle, no one knows. Just us two.’

  Turner was writing fast.

  ‘Tell me what else is missing,’ he said at last.

  Meadowes unlocked a drawer of his desk and drew out a list of references. His movements were brisk and surprisingly confident.

  ‘Bradfield didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  Meadowes handed him the list. ‘You can keep that. There’s forty-three of them. They’re all box files, they’ve all disappeared since March.’

  ‘Since he went on his track.’

  ‘The security classifications vary from Confidential to Top Secret, but the majority are plain Secret. There’s Organisation files, Conference, Personality and two Treaty files. The subjects range from the dismantling of chemical concerns in the Ruhr in 1947 to minutes of unofficial Anglo-German exchanges at working level over the last three years. Plus the Green and that’s Formal and Informal Conversations –’

  ‘Bradfield told me.’

  ‘They’re like pieces, believe me, pieces in a puzzle … that’s what I thought at first … I’ve moved them round in my mind. Hour after hour. I haven’t slept. Now and then –’ he broke off. ‘Now and then I thought I had an idea, a sort of picture, a half picture, I’d say …’

  Stubbornly he concluded: ‘There’s no clear pattern to it, and no reason. Some are marked out by Leo to different people; some are marked “certified for destruction” but most are just plain missing. You can’t tell, you see. You just can’t keep tabs, it’s impossible. Until someone asks for the file you don’t know you haven’t got it.’

  ‘Box files?’

  ‘I told you. All forty-three. They weigh a couple of hundredweight between them I should think.’

  ‘And the letters? There are letters missing too.’

  ‘Yes,’ Meadowes said reluctantly. ‘We’re short of thirty-three incoming letters.’

  ‘Never entered, were they? Just lying about for anyone to pick up? What were the subjects? You haven’t put it down.’

  ‘We don’t know. That’s the truth. They’re letters from German Departments. We know the references because the bag room’s written them in the log. They never reached Registry.’

  ‘But you’ve checked the references?’

  Very stiffly Meadowes said: ‘The missing letters belong on the missing files. The references are the same. That’s all we can tell. As they’re from German Departments, Bradfield has ruled that we do not ask for duplicates until the Brussels decision is through: in case our curiosity alerts them to Harting’s absence.’

  Having returned his black notebook to his pocket, Turner rose and went to the barred window, touching the locks, testing the strength of the wire mesh.

  ‘There was something about him. He was special. Something made you watch him.’

  From the carriageway they heard the two-tone wail of an emergency horn approach and fade again.

  ‘He was special,’ Turner repeated. ‘All the time you’ve been talking, I’ve heard it. Leo this, Leo that. You had your eye on him; you felt him, I know you did. Why?’

  ‘There was nothing.’

  ‘What were these rumours? What was it they said about him that frightened you? Was he somebody’s fancy-boy, Arthur? Something for Johnny Slingo, was he, in his old age? Working the queers’ circuit was he, is that what all the blushing’s for?’

  Meadowes shook his head. ‘You’ve lost your sting,’ he said. ‘You can’t frighten me any more. I know you; I know your worst. It’s nothing to do with Warsaw. He wasn’t that kind. I’m not a child and Johnny’s not a homosexual either.’

  Turner continued to stare at him. ‘There’s something you heard. Something you knew. You watched him, I know you did. You watched him cross a room; how he stood, how he reached for a file. He was doing the silliest bloody job in Registry and you talk about him as if he was the Ambassador. There was chaos in here, you said so yourself. Everyone except Leo chasing files, making up, entering, connecting, all standing on your heads to keep the ball rolling in a crisis. And what was Leo doing? Leo was on Destruction. He could have been making flax for all his work mattered. You said so, not me. So what was it about him? Why did you watch him?’

  ‘You’re dreaming. You’re twisted and you can’t see anything straight. But if by any chance you were right, I wouldn’t even whisper it to you on my deathbed.’

  A notice outside the cypher room said: ‘Back at two fifteen. Phone 333 for emergencies.’ He banged on Bradfield’s door and tried the handle; it was locked. He went to the banister and looked angrily down into the lobby. At the front desk a young Chancery Guard was reading a learned book on engineering. He could see the diagrams on the right-hand page. In the glass-fronted waiting-room, the Ghanaian Chargé in a velvet collar was staring thoughtfully at a photograph of Clydeside taken from very high up.

  ‘All at lunch, old boy,’ a voice whispered from behind him.

  ‘Not a Hun will stir till three. Daily truce. Show must go on.’ A hanging, vulpine figure stood among the fire extinguishers. ‘Crabbe,’ he explained, ‘Mickie Crabbe, you see,’ as if the name itself were an excuse. ‘Peter de Lisle’s just back, if you don’t mind. Been down at the Ministry of the Interior, saving women and children. Rawley’s sent him to feed you.’

  ‘I want to send a telegram. Where’s room three double three?’

  ‘Proles’ rest room, old boy. They’re having a bit of a kip after all the hoohah. Troubled times. Give it a break,’ he suggested. ‘If it’s urgent it’ll keep, if it’s important it’s too late, that’s what I say.’ Saying it, Crabbe led him along the silent corridor like a decrepit courtier lighting him to bed. Passing the lift, Turner paused and stared at it once more. It was firmly padlocked and the notice said ‘Out of order.’

  Jobs are separate, he told himself, why worry, for God’s sake? Bonn is not Warsaw. Warsaw was a hundred years ago. Bonn is today. We do what we have to do and move on. He saw it again, the Rococo room in the Warsaw Embassy, the chandelier dark with dust, and Myra Meadowes alone on the daft sofa. ‘Another time they post you to an Iron Curtain country,’ Turner was shouting, ‘you bloody well choose your lovers with more care!’

  Tell her I’m leaving the country, he thought; I’ve gone to find a traitor. A full-grown, four-square, red-toothed, paid-up traitor.

  Come on, Leo, we’re of one blood, you and I: underground men, that’s us. I’ll chase you thro
ugh the sewers, Leo; that’s why I smell so lovely. We’ve got the earth’s dirt on us, you and I. I’ll chase you, you chase me and each of us will chase ourselves.

  7

  De Lisle

  The American club was not as heavily guarded as the Embassy. ‘It’s no one’s gastronomic dream,’ de Lisle explained, as he showed his papers to the GI at the door, ‘but it does have a gorgeous swimming-pool.’ He had booked a window table overlooking the Rhine. Fresh from their bathe, they drank Martinis and watched the giant brown helicopters wavering past them towards the landing-strip up river. Some were marked with red crosses, others had no markings at all. Now and then white passenger ships, sliding through the mist, bore huddled groups of tourists towards the land of the Nibelungs; the boom of their own loudspeakers followed them like small thunder. Once a crowd of schoolchildren passed, and they heard the strains of the Lorelei banged out on an accordion, and the devoted accompaniment of a heavenly, if imperfect, choir. The seven hills of Königswinter were much nearer now, though the mist confused their outline.

  With elaborate diffidence de Lisle pointed out the Petersberg, a regular wooded cone capped by a rectangular hotel. Neville Chamberlain had stayed there in the thirties, he explained: ‘That was when he gave away Czechoslovakia, of course. The first time, I mean.’ After the war it had been the seat of the Allied High Commission; more recently the Queen had used it for her State Visit. To the right of it was the Drachenfels, where Siegfried had slain the dragon and bathed in its magic blood.

  ‘Where’s Harting’s house?’

  ‘You can’t quite see it,’ de Lisle said quietly, not pointing any more. ‘It’s at the foot of the Petersberg. He lives, so to speak, in Chamberlain’s shadow.’ And with that he led the conversation into more general fields.

  ‘I suppose the trouble with being a visiting fireman is that you so often arrive on the scene after the fire’s gone out. Is that it?’

  ‘Did he come here often?’

  ‘The smaller Embassies hold receptions here if their drawing-rooms aren’t big enough. That was rather his mark, of course.’

  Once again his tone became reticent, though the dining-room was empty. Only in the corner near the entrance, seated in their glass-walled bar, the inevitable group of foreign correspondents mimed, drank and mouthed like sea horses in solemn ritual.

  ‘Is all America like this?’ de Lisle enquired. ‘Or worse?’ He looked slowly round. ‘Though it does give a sense of dimension, I suppose. And optimism. That’s the trouble with Americans, isn’t it, really? All that emphasis on the future. So dangerous. It makes them destructive of the present. Much kinder to look back, I always think. I see no hope at all for the future, and it gives me a great sense of freedom. And of caring: we’re much nicer to one another in the condemned cell, aren’t we? Don’t take me too seriously, will you?’

  ‘If you wanted Chancery files late at night, what would you do?’

  ‘Dig out Meadowes.’

  ‘Or Bradfield?’

  ‘Oh, that would be really going it. Rawley has the combinations, but only as a long stop. If Meadowes goes under a bus, Rawley can still get at the papers. You really have had a morning of it, haven’t you,’ he added solicitously. ‘I can see you’re still under the ether.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Oh, I’d draw the files in the afternoon.’

  ‘Now; with all this working at night?’

  ‘If Registry’s open on a crisis schedule there’s no problem. If it’s closed, well, most of us have safes and strong-boxes, and they’re cleared for overnight storage.’

  ‘Harting didn’t have one.’

  ‘Shall we just say he from now on?’

  ‘So where would he work? If he drew files in the evening, classified files, and worked late: what would he do?’

  ‘He’d take them to his room I suppose, and hand in the files to the Chancery Guard when he left. If he’s not working in Registry. The Guard has a safe.’

  ‘And the Guard would sign for them?’

  ‘Oh Lordy, yes. We’re not that irresponsible.’

  ‘So I could tell from the Guard’s night book?’

  ‘You could.’

  ‘He left without saying good-night to the Guard.’

  ‘Oh my,’ said de Lisle, clearly very puzzled. ‘You mean he took them home?’

  ‘What kind of car did he have?’

  ‘A mini shooting-brake.’

  They were both silent.

  ‘There’s nowhere else he might have worked, a special reading room, a strong-room on the ground floor?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ de Lisle said flatly. ‘Now I think you’d better have another of those things, hadn’t you, and cool the brain a little?’

  He called the waiter.

  ‘Well, I’ve had a simply ghastly hour at the Ministry of the Interior with Ludwig Siebkron’s faceless men.’

  ‘What doing?’

  ‘Oh, mourning the poor Miss Eich. That was gruesome. It was also very odd,’ he confessed. ‘It really was very odd indeed.’ He drifted away. ‘Did you know that blood plasma came in tins? The Ministry now say that they want to store some in the Embassy canteen, just in case. It’s the most Orwellian thing I’ve ever heard; Rawley’s going to be quite furious. He thinks they’ve gone much too far already. Apparently none of us belongs to groups any more: uniblood. I suppose it makes for equality.’ He continued, ‘Rawley’s getting pretty cross about Siebkron.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The lengths he insists on going to, just for the sake of the poor English. All right, Karfeld is desperately anti-British and anti-Common Market. And Brussels is crucial, and British entry touches the nationalist nerve and maddens the Movement, and the Friday rally is alarming and everyone’s very much on edge. One accepts all that wholeheartedly. And nasty things happened in Hanover. But we still don’t deserve so much attention, we really don’t. First the curfew, then the bodyguards, and now these wretched motor-cars. I think we feel he’s crowding us on purpose.’ Reaching past Turner, de Lisle took the enormous menu in his slender, woman’s hand. ‘How about oysters? Isn’t that what real people eat? They have them in all seasons here. I gather they get them from Portugal or somewhere.’

  ‘I’ve never tried them,’ Turner said with a hint of aggression.

  ‘Then you must have a dozen to make up,’ de Lisle replied easily and drank some more Martini. ‘It’s so nice to meet someone from outside. I don’t suppose you can understand that.’

  A string of barges chased up river with the current.

  ‘The unsettling thing is, I suppose, one doesn’t feel that ultimately all these precautions are for our own good. The Germans seem suddenly to have their horns drawn in, as if we were being deliberately provocative; as if we were doing the demonstrating. They barely talk to us down there. A total freeze up. Yes. That’s what I mean,’ he concluded. ‘They’re treating us as if we were hostile. Which is doubly frustrating when all we ask is to be loved.’

  ‘He had a dinner party on Friday night,’ Turner said suddenly.

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘But it wasn’t marked in his diary.’

  ‘Silly man.’ He peered round but no one came. ‘Where is that wretched boy?’

  ‘Where was Bradfield on Friday night?’

  ‘Shut up,’ said de Lisle crisply. ‘I don’t like that kind of thing. And then there’s Siebkron himself,’ he continued as if nothing had happened. ‘Well, we all know he’s shifty; we all know he’s juggling with the Coalition and we all know he had political aspirations. We also know he has an appalling security problem to cope with next Friday, and a lot of enemies waiting to say he did it badly. Fine –’ He nodded his head at the river, as if in some way it were involved in his perplexities – ‘So why spend six hours at the deathbed of poor Fräulein Eich? What’s so fascinating about watching her die? And why go to the ridiculous lengths of putting the sentries on every tiny British hiring in the area? He’s got an obsession a
bout us, I swear he has; he’s worse than Karfeld.’

  ‘Who is Siebkron? What’s his job?’

  ‘Oh, muddy pools. Your world in a way. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’ He blushed, acutely distressed. Only the timely arrival of the waiter rescued him from his embarrassment. He was quite a young boy, and de Lisle addressed him with inordinate courtesy, seeking his opinion on matters beyond his competence, deferring to his judgment in the selection of the Moselle and enquiring minutely after the quality of the meat.

  ‘They say in Bonn,’ he continued when they were alone again, ‘to borrow a phrase, that if you have Ludwig Siebkron for a friend you don’t need an enemy. Ludwig’s very much a local species. Always someone’s left arm. He keeps saying he doesn’t want any of us to die. That’s exactly why he’s frightening: he makes it so possible. It’s easy to forget,’ he continued blandly, ‘that Bonn may be a democracy but it’s frightfully short of democrats.’ He fell silent. ‘The trouble with dates,’ he reflected at last, ‘is that they create compartments in time. Thirty-nine to forty-five. Forty-five to fifty. Bonn isn’t pre-war, or war, or even post-war. It’s just a small town in Germany. You can no more slice it up than you can the Rhine. It plods along, or whatever the song says. And the mist drains away the colours.’

  Blushing suddenly, he unscrewed the cap of the Tabasco and applied himself to the delicate task of allocating one drop to each oyster. It claimed his entire attention. ‘We all apologise for Bonn. That’s how you recognise the natives. I wish I collected model trains,’ he continued brightly. ‘I would like to place far greater emphasis on trivia. Do you have anything like that: a hobby, I mean?’