A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘All alone. I thought of stopping but I didn’t. He hadn’t any car that I could see and he was miles from anywhere. And suddenly I thought, no; don’t stop; he’s at Church. He’s looking at the childhood he never had.’

  ‘You were fond of him, weren’t you?’

  De Lisle might have replied, for the question did not seem to disconcert him, but he was interrupted by an unexpected intruder.

  ‘Hullo. A new flunkey?’ The voice was slurred and gritty. As its owner was standing directly in the sun, Turner had to screw up his eyes in order to make him out at all; at length he discerned the gently swaying outline and the black unkempt hair of the English journalist who had saluted them at lunch. He was pointing at Turner, but his question, to judge by the cast of his head, was addressed to de Lisle.

  ‘What is he,’ he demanded, ‘pimp or spy?’

  ‘Which do you want to be, Alan?’ de Lisle asked cheerfully, but Turner declined to answer. ‘Alan Turner, Sam Allerton,’ he continued, quite unbothered. ‘Sam represents a lot of newspapers, don’t you, Sam? He’s enormously powerful. Not that he cares for power of course. Journalists never do.’

  Allerton continued to stare at Turner.

  ‘Where’s he come from then?’

  ‘London Town,’ said de Lisle.

  ‘What part of London Town?’

  ‘Ag and Fish.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘The Foreign Office, then. Hadn’t you guessed?’

  ‘How long’s he here for?’

  ‘Just visiting.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘You know what visits are.’

  ‘I know what his visits are,’ said Allerton. ‘He’s a bloodhound.’ His dead, yellow eyes slowly took him in: the heavy shoes, the tropical suit, the blank face and the pale, unblinking gaze.

  ‘Belgrade,’ he said at last. ‘That’s where. Some bloke in the Embassy screwed a female spy and got photographed. We all had to hush it up or the Ambassador wasn’t going to give us any more port. Security Turner, that’s who you are. The Bevin boy. You did a job in Warsaw, didn’t you? I remember that too. That was a balls-up, wasn’t it? Some girl tried to kill herself. Someone you’d been too rough with. We had to sweep that under the carpet as well.’

  ‘Run away, Sam,’ said de Lisle.

  Allerton began laughing. It was quite a terrible noise, mirthless and cancered; indeed it seemed actually to cause him pain, for as he sat down, he interrupted himself with low, blasphemous cries. His black, greasy mane shook like an ill-fitted wig; his paunch, hanging forward over his waistband, trembled uncertainly.

  ‘Well, Peter, how was Luddi Siebkron? Going to keep us safe and sound, is he? Save the Empire?’

  Without a word, Turner and de Lisle got up and made their way across the lawn towards the car park.

  ‘Heard the news, by the way?’ Allerton called after them.

  ‘What news?’

  ‘You chaps don’t know a thing, do you? Federal Foreign Minister’s just left for Moscow. Top-level talks on Soviet–German trade treaty. They’re joining Comecon and signing the Warsaw pact. All to please Karfeld and bugger up Brussels. Britain out, Russia in. Non-aggressive Rappallo. What do you think of that?’

  ‘We think you’re a bloody liar,’ said de Lisle.

  ‘Well, it’s nice to be fancied,’ Allerton replied, with a deliberate homosexual lisp. ‘But don’t tell me it won’t happen, lover boy, because one day it will. One day they’ll do it. They’ll have to. Slap Mummy in the face. Find a Daddy for the Fatherland. It isn’t the West any more, is it? So who’s it going to be?’ He raised his voice as they continued walking. ‘That’s what you stupid flunkies don’t understand! Karfeld’s the only one in Germany who’s telling the truth: the Cold War’s over for everyone except the fucking diplomats!’ His Parthian shot reached them as they closed the doors. ‘Never mind, darlings,’ they heard him say. ‘We can all sleep soundly now Turner’s here.’

  The little sports car nosed its way slowly down the sanitary arcades of the American Colony. A church bell, much amplified, was celebrating the sunlight. On the steps of the New England Chapel, a bride and groom faced the flashing cameras. They entered the Koblenzerstrasse and the noise hit them like a gale. Overhead, electronic indicators flashed out theoretical speed checks. The photographs of Karfeld had multiplied. Two Mercedes with Egyptian lettering on their number plates raced past them, cut in, swung out again and were gone.

  ‘That lift,’ Turner said suddenly. ‘In the Embassy. How long’s it been out of action?’

  ‘God, when was anything? Mid-April I suppose.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘You’re thinking of the trolley? Which also disappeared in mid-April?’

  ‘You’re not bad,’ Turner said. ‘You’re not bad at all.’

  ‘And you would be making a most terrible mistake if you ever thought you were a specialist,’ de Lisle retorted, with that same unpredictable force which Turner had discerned in him before. ‘Just don’t go thinking you’re in a white coat, that’s all; don’t go thinking we’re all laboratory specimens.’ He swung violently to avoid a double lorry and at once a motorised scream of fury rose from behind them. ‘I’m saving your soul though you may not notice it.’ He smiled. ‘Sorry. I’ve got Siebkron on my nerves, that’s all.’

  ‘He put P. in his diary,’ Turner said suddenly. ‘After Christmas: meet P. Give P. dinner. Then it faded out again. It could have been Praschko.’

  ‘It could have been.’

  ‘What Ministries are there in Bad Godesberg?’

  ‘Buildings, Scientific, Health. Just those three so far as I know.’

  ‘He went to a conference every Thursday afternoon. Which one would that be?’

  De Lisle pulled up at the traffic lights and Karfeld frowned down on them like a cyclops, one eye ripped off by a dissenting hand.

  ‘I don’t think he did go to a conference,’ de Lisle said cautiously. ‘Not recently anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Who told you he went?’

  ‘Meadowes. And Meadowes got it from Leo and Leo said it was a regular weekly meeting and cleared with Bradfield. Something to do with claims.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said de Lisle softly. He pulled away, holding the left-hand lane against the predatory flashing of a white Porsche.

  ‘What does “Oh God” mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not what you think perhaps. There was no conference, not for Leo. Not in Bad Godesberg, not anywhere else; not on Thursdays, not on any other day. Until Rawley came, it’s true, he attended a low-level conference at the Buildings Ministry. They discussed private contracts for repairing German houses damaged by Allied manoeuvres. Leo rubber-stamped their proposals.’

  ‘Until Bradfield came?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what happened? The conference had run down, had it? Like the rest of his work.’

  ‘More or less.’

  Instead of turning right into the Embassy gateway, de Lisle filtered to the left bay and prepared to make the circuit a second time.

  ‘What do you mean? “More or less”?’

  ‘Rawley put a stop to it.’

  ‘To the conference?’

  ‘I told you: it was mechanical. It could be done by correspondence.’

  Turner was almost in despair. ‘Why are you fencing with me? What’s going on? Did he stop the conference or not? What part’s he playing in this?’

  ‘Take care,’ de Lisle warned him, lifting one hand from the steering-wheel. ‘Don’t rush in. Rawley sent me instead of him. He didn’t like the Embassy to be represented by someone like Leo.’

  ‘Someone like –’

  ‘By a temporary. That’s all! By a temporary without full status. He felt it was wrong so he got me to go along in his place. After that, Leo never spoke to me again. He thought I’d
intrigued against him. Now that’s enough. Don’t ask me any more.’ They were passing the Aral garage again, going north. The petrol attendant recognised the car and waved cheerfully to de Lisle. ‘That’s your mede or measure. I’m not going to discuss Bradfield with you if you bully me till you’re blue in the face. He’s my colleague, my superior and –’

  ‘And your friend! Christ forgive me: who do you represent out here? Yourselves or the poor bloody taxpayer? I’ll tell you who: the Club. Your Club. The bloody Foreign Office; and if you saw Rawley Bradfield standing on Westminster Bridge hawking his files for an extra pension, you’d bloody well look the other way.’

  Turner was not shouting. It was rather the massive slowness of his speech which gave it urgency.

  ‘You make me puke. All of you. The whole sodding circus. You didn’t give a twopenny damn for Leo, any of you, while he was here. Common as dirt, wasn’t he? No background, no childhood, no nothing. Shove him the other side of the river where he won’t be noticed! Tuck him away in the catacombs with the German staff! Worth a drink but not worth dinner! What happens now? He bolts, and he takes half your secrets with him for good measure, and suddenly you’ve got the guilts and you’re blushing like a lot of virgins holding your hands over your fannies and not talking to strange men. Everybody: you, Meadowes, Bradfield. You know how he wormed his way in there, how he conned them all; how he stole and cheated. You know something else too: a friendship, a love affair, something that made him special for you, made him interesting. There’s a whole world he lived in and none of you will put a name to it. What was it? Who was it? Where the hell did he go on Thursday afternoons if he didn’t go to the Ministry? Who ran him? Who protected him? Who gave him his orders and his money and took his information off him? Who held his hand? He’s a spy, for Christ’s sake! He’s put his hand in the till! And the moment you find out, you’re all on his side!’

  ‘No,’ said de Lisle. They were pulling up at the gate; the police were converging on them, tapping on the window. He let them wait. ‘You’ve got it wrong. You and Leo form a team of your own. You’re the other side of the wire. Both of you. That’s your problem. Whatever definitions, whatever labels. That’s why you’re beating the air.’

  They entered the car park and de Lisle drove round to the canteen side where Turner had stood that morning, staring across the field.

  ‘I’ve got to see his house,’ Turner said. ‘I’ve got to.’ They were both looking ahead of them, through the windscreen.

  ‘I thought you’d ask me that.’

  ‘All right, forget it.’

  ‘Why should I? I’ve no doubt you’ll go anyway. Sooner or later.’

  They got out and walked slowly over the tarmac. The despatch riders were lying on the lawn, their motor-bikes stacked round the flagpole. The geraniums, martially arranged, glinted like tiny guardsmen along the verges.

  ‘He loved the Army,’ de Lisle said, as they climbed the steps. ‘He really loved it.’

  As they paused to show their passes yet again to the weasel sergeant, Turner chanced to look back at the carriageway.

  ‘Look!’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s the pair that picked us up at the airport.’

  A black Opel had lumbered into the filter bay; two men sat in the front; from his vantage point on the steps, Turner could make out easily the multiple reflectors of the long driving mirror glittering in the sunlight.

  ‘Ludwig Siebkron took us to lunch,’ de Lisle said with a dry smile, ‘and now he’s brought us home. I told you: don’t go thinking you’re a specialist.’

  ‘Then where were you on Friday night?’

  ‘In the woodshed,’ de Lisle snapped, ‘waiting to murder Lady Ann for her priceless diamonds.’

  The cypher room was open again. Cork lay on a truckle bed, a handbook on Caribbean bungalows lay beside him on the floor. On the desk in the dayroom was a blue Embassy envelope addressed to Alan Turner Esquire. His name was typewritten; the style was stiff and rather gauche. There were a number of things, the writer said, which Mr Turner might care to know about in connection with the matter which had brought him to Bonn. If it were convenient, the writer continued, he might care to call for a glass of sherry wine at the above address at half past six o’clock. The address was in Bad Godesberg and the writer was Miss Jenny Pargiter of Press and Information Section, presently on attachment to Chancery. She had signed her name and typed it beneath the signature for reasons of clarity; the P was written rather large, Turner decided; and as he opened the blue rexine diary he permitted himself a rare if puzzled smile of anticipation. P for Praschko; P for Pargiter. And P was the initial on the diary. Come on, Leo, let’s have a look at your guilty secret.

  8

  Jenny Pargiter

  ‘I assume,’ Jenny Pargiter began, in a prepared statement, ‘that you are used to dealing in delicate matters.’

  The sherry stood between them on the glass-topped sofa table. The flat was dark and ugly: the chairs were Victorian wicker, the drapes German and very heavy. Constable reproductions hung in the dining alcove.

  ‘Like a doctor, you have standards of professional confidence.’

  ‘Oh sure,’ said Turner.

  ‘It was mentioned at Chancery meeting this morning that you were investigating Leo Harting’s disappearance. We were warned not to discuss it, even among ourselves.’

  ‘You’re allowed to discuss it with me,’ said Turner.

  ‘No doubt. But I naturally would wish to be told how much further any confidence might go. What, for instance, is the relationship between yourselves and Personnel Department?’

  ‘It depends on the information.’

  She had raised the sherry glass to the level of her eye and appeared to be measuring the fluid content. It was an attitude evidently designed to demonstrate her sophistication and her ease of mind.

  ‘Supposing someone – supposing I myself had been injudicious. In a personal matter.’

  ‘It depends who you’ve been injudicious with,’ Turner replied, and Jenny Pargiter coloured suddenly.

  ‘That is not what I meant at all.’

  ‘Look,’ said Turner, watching her, ‘if you come and tell me in confidence that you’ve left a bundle of files in the bus, I’ll have to give details to Personnel Department. If you tell me you’ve been going out with a boy friend now and then, I’m not going to fall over in a faint. Mainly,’ he said, pushing his sherry glass across the table for her to replenish, ‘Personnel Department don’t want to know we exist.’ His manner was very casual, as if he barely cared. He sat impassively, filling the whole chair.

  ‘There is the question of protecting other people, third parties who cannot necessarily speak for themselves.’

  Turner said, ‘There’s also the question of security. If you didn’t think it was important, you wouldn’t ask to see me in the first place. It’s up to you. I can’t give you any guarantees.’

  She lit a cigarette with sharp, angular movements. She was not an ugly girl, but she seemed to dress either too young or too old, so that whatever Turner’s age, she was not his contemporary.

  ‘I accept that,’ she said and regarded him darkly for a moment, as if assessing how much Turner could take. ‘However, you have misunderstood the reason why I asked you to call here. It is this. Since you are quite certain to be told all manner of rumours about Harting and myself, I thought it best if you heard the truth from me.’

  Turner put down his glass and opened his notebook.

  ‘I arrived here just before Christmas,’ Jenny Pargiter said, ‘from London. Before that I was in Djakarta. I returned to London intending to be married. You may have read of my engagement?’

  ‘I think I must have missed it,’ said Turner.

  ‘The person to whom I was engaged decided at the last minute that we were not suited. It was a very courageous decision. I was then posted to Bonn. We had known one another for many years; we had read the same subject at university and I had always assumed we had much in c
ommon. The person decided otherwise. That is what engagements are for. I am perfectly content. There is no reason for anyone to be sorry for me.’

  ‘You got here at Christmas?’

  ‘I asked particularly to be here in time for the holiday. In previous years, we had always spent Christmas together. Unless I was in Djakarta of course. The … separation on this occasion was certain to be painful to me. I was most anxious to mitigate the distress with a new atmosphere.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘As a single woman in an Embassy, one is very often overcome with invitations at Christmas. Almost everyone in Chancery invited me to spend the festive days with them. The Bradfields, the Crabbes, the Jacksons, the Gavestons: they all asked me. I was also invited by the Meadowes. You have met Arthur Meadowes no doubt.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Meadowes is a widower and lives with his daughter, Myra. He is in fact a B3, though we no longer use those grades. I found it very touching to be invited by a member of the Junior Staff.’

  Her accent was very slight, provincial rather than regional, and for all her attempts at disowning it, it mocked her all the time.

  ‘In Djakarta we always had that tradition. We mixed more. In a larger Embassy like Bonn, people tend to remain in their groups. I am not suggesting there should be total assimilation: I would even regard that as bad. The A’s, for instance, tend to have different tastes as well as different intellectual interests to the B’s. I am suggesting that in Bonn the distinctions are too rigid, and too many. The A’s remain with the A’s and the B’s with the B’s even inside the different sections: the economists, the attachés, Chancery; they all form cliques. I do not consider that right. Would you care for more sherry?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So I accepted Meadowes’ invitation. The other guest was Harting. We spent a pleasant day, stayed there till evening, then left. Myra Meadowes was going out – she had been very ill, you know; she had a liaison in Warsaw, I understand, with a local undesirable and it very nearly ended in tragedy. Personally I am against anticipated marriages. Myra Meadowes was going to a young people’s party and Meadowes himself was invited to the Corks’, so there was no question of our remaining. As we were leaving, Harting suggested we went for a walk. He knew a place not far away; it would be nice to drive up there and get some fresh air after so much food and drink. I am very fond of exercise. We had our walk and then he proposed that I should go back with him for supper. He was very insistent.’