A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  Or as guilty.

  All Harting’s life took place that day. He had lived from Thursday to Thursday as others live from year to year. What kind of meeting did they have, Harting and his master? What kind of relationship after all these years of collaboration? Where did they meet? Where did he unpack those files and letters and breathlessly recite his intelligence? In the tower room of a slate-roofed villa? In a soft, linen bed with a soft silk girl and the jeans hanging on the bedpost? Under the bridge where the train went over? Or in the crumbling Embassy with a dusty chandelier, and old father Meadowes holding his little hand on the gilded sofa? In a pretty baroque bedroom of a Godesberg hotel? In a grey block on the new housing estate? In a coy bungalow with a wrought-iron name and stained glass let into the door? He tried to imagine them, Harting and his master, furtive yet assured, the whispered jokes and the whispered laughter. Here: this is a good one, the porno seller whispers; I hardly like to part with this myself. You do like it straight, don’t you? ‘Well, it’s nice to be fancied,’ Allerton lisped. Did they sit over a bottle as they casually planned their next assault upon the citadel, while in the background the camera clicked and the assistant gently shuffled the papers? Give it me once more, darling, but gently, like Tony. You’re not confident, dear, you haven’t read the manuals and learned the parts of the rifle.

  Or was it a hasty pick-up? A back-street encounter, a frantic exchange as they drove through the small alleys and prayed to God they had no accident? Or on a hilltop? By a football field, where Harting wore the Balkan hat and the grey uniform of the Movement?

  Cork was on the telephone to Miss Peate, and a note of awe had entered his voice:

  ‘Stand by for seven hundred groups from Washington. London please pass and decypher yourself. You’d better warn him now: he’s going to be in all night. Look, dear, I don’t care whether he’s conferring with the Queen of England. This one’s top priority, and it’s my job to let him know so if you won’t I will. Ooh, she is a bitch.’

  ‘I’m glad you think that,’ Turner said with one of his rare grins.

  ‘I reckon she captains the team.’

  ‘England versus the Rest of the World,’ Turner agreed and they both laughed.

  Was it with Praschko, then, that he had lunched at the Maternus? If so, Praschko could hardly be his regular contact, for he would not add the tell-tale P, that Harting, who covered his tracks so well; and would not lunch with Praschko in public either, after the trouble he had taken to sever his relationship. Was there, in that case, a middle-man, a cut-out, between Praschko and Harting? Or was this the day the system failed? Hold the line Turner, hold on to reason, for unreason will be your downfall. Make order out of chaos. Was this P the sign that Praschko proposed to see him in person, to warn him perhaps that Siebkron was on his trail? To order him – here was a chance – to order him at any risk and at all costs to steal the Green File before he ran?

  Thursday.

  He lifted the keys and swung them gently from his finger. Thursday was the day for meeting … pressure day … the day he was warned … the day before he left … the day of the weekly briefing and de-briefing … the day he borrowed the keys from Pargiter.

  Christ: had he really slept with Pargiter? There are certain sacrifices, General Shlobodovitch, which not even Leo Harting will make in the service of Mother Russia.

  The useless keys. What did he suppose he would get from them? Entry to the coveted despatch box? Balls. He would have observed the procedure; Meadowes had even instructed him in it. He would know very well there were no spare keys to the despatch box in the Duty Officer’s bunch. Entry to Registry itself then? Balls again. He would know at a glance that Registry was protected with better locks than these.

  So what key did he want?

  What key did he want so desperately that he imperilled his whole career as a spy in order to get a copy of it? What key did he want, that he made up to Jenny Pargiter and risked the disapproval of the Embassy – incurred it, indeed, if Meadowes and Gaunt were anything to go by. What key? The key to the lift, so that he could smuggle out his files, dump them in some hideaway on an upper floor and remove them singly and at leisure in his briefcase? Was that what the missing trolley meant?

  Fantastic visions presented themselves. He saw the little figure of Harting sprinting down the dark corridor, pushing the trolley ahead of him into the open lift, saw the pyramid of box files trembling on the upper shelf, and on the lower shelf the accidental by-product: the stationery, the seal, the diaries, the long-carriage typewriter from the pool … He saw the mini van waiting at the side entrance and Harting’s nameless master holding the door and he said, ‘Oh bugger it,’ schoolboy-style at the very moment when Miss Peate came to fetch the telegrams, and Miss Peate’s sigh was a statement of sexual abstinence.

  ‘He’ll want his code books too,’ Cork warned her.

  ‘He happens to be quite aware of the decoding procedure, thank you.’

  ‘Here, what’s up then, what’s going on in Brussels?’ Turner asked.

  ‘Rumours.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘If they wanted you to know that, they would hardly use the person-to-person procedure, would they?’

  ‘You don’t know London,’ said Turner.

  As she left she managed even in her walk – in her loping, English touch-nothing, feel-nothing, sex-is-for-the-lower-classes walk – to convey her particular contempt for Turner and all his works.

  ‘I could murder her,’ Cork said confidently, ‘I could cut her nasty throat. I wouldn’t have a moment’s regret. Three years she’s been here and the only time she smiled was when the Old Man creased his Rolls-Royce.’

  It was absurd. No questions; he knew it was absurd. Spies of Harting’s calibre do not steal; they record, memorise, photograph; spies of Harting’s calibre act by graft and calculation, not by impulse. They cover their tracks and survive to deceive again tomorrow.

  Nor do they tell transparent lies.

  They do not tell Jenny Pargiter that choir practice takes place on Thursdays when she can find out within five minutes that they take place on Fridays. They do not tell Meadowes that they are attending conferences in Bad Godesberg, when both Bradfield and de Lisle know that they are not; and have not done so for two years or more. They do not draw their balance of pay and allowances before they defect, as a signal to anyone who happens to be interested; they do not risk the curiosity of Gaunt in order to work late at night.

  Work where?

  He wanted privacy. He wanted to do by night things he could not do by day. What things? Use his camera in some remote room where he had concealed the files, where he could turn the lock upon himself? Where was the trolley? Where was the typewriter? Or was their disappearance, as Meadowes had assumed, really unconnected with Harting? At present there was only one answer: Harting had hidden the files in a cache during the day, he had photographed them at night in privacy, and he returned them the next morning … Except that he hadn’t returned them. So why steal?

  A spy does not steal. Rule one. An Embassy, discovering a loss, can change its plans, re-make or revoke treaties, take a dozen prophylactic measures to anticipate and minimise the harm that has been done. The best girl is the girl you don’t have. The most effective deceit is the deceit which is never discovered. Then why steal? The reason was already clear. Harting was under pressure. Calculated though his actions might be, they had all the marks of a man racing against time. What was the hurry? What was the deadline?

  Slowly, Alan; gently, Alan; be like Tony, Alan. Be like lovely, slow, willowy, rhythmical, anatomically conversant, friendly Tony Willoughby, well known in the best clubs and famous for his copulative technique.

  ‘I’d rather have a boy really, first,’ said Cork. ‘I mean, when you’ve got one behind you, you can branch out. Mind you, I don’t hold with large families I will say. Not unless you can solve the servant problem. Are you married by the by? Oh dear, sorry I asked.’

  Supp
ose for a moment that that furious private journey in Registry was the result of a dormant Communist sympathy re-awakened by the events of last autumn; suppose that was what had driven him. Then to what hasty end was his fury directed? Merely to the deadline dictated by a greedy master? The first stage was easily deduced: Karfeld came to power in October. From then on, a popular nationalist party was a reality; even a nationalist government was not impossible. For a month, two months, Harting broods. He sees Karfeld’s face on every hoarding, hears the familiar slogans. ‘He really is an invitation to Communism,’ de Lisle had said … The awakening is slow and reluctant, the old associations and sympathies lie deep and are slow in coming to the surface. Then the moment of decision, the turning point. Either alone, or as a result of Praschko’s persuasion, he determines to betray. Praschko approaches him: the Green File. Get the Green File and our old cause will be served. … Get the Green File by decision-day in Brussels … The contents of that file, Bradfield had said, could effectively compromise our entire posture in Brussels …

  Or was he being blackmailed? Was that the nature of the race? Must he choose between satisfying a greedy master or being compromised by an unknown indiscretion? Was there something in the Cologne incident, for example, which reflected to his discredit: a woman, an involvement in some seedy racket? Had he embezzled Rhine Army funds? Was he selling off tax-free whisky and cigarettes? Had he drifted into a homosexual entanglement? Had he, in fact, succumbed to any one of the dozen classic temptations which are the staple diet of diplomatic espionage? Girl, replace those jeans immediately.

  It was not in character. De Lisle was right: there was a thrust, a driving purpose to Harting’s actions which went beyond self-preservation; an aggression, a ruthlessness, a fervour which was infinitely more positive than the reluctant compliance of a man under threat. In this underworld life which Turner was now investigating, Harting was not a servant but a principal. He was not deputed but appointed; he was not oppressed, but an oppressor, a hunter, a pursuer. In that, at least, there was an identity between Turner and Harting. But Turner’s quarry was named. His tracks, up to a point, were clear. Beyond that point they vanished into the Rhine mist. And most confusing of all was this: though Harting hunted alone, Turner reflected, he had not wanted for patronage …

  Was Harting blackmailing Bradfield?

  Turner asked the question suddenly, sitting up quite straight. Was that the explanation of Bradfield’s reluctant protection? Was that why he had found him work in Registry, allowed him to vanish without explanation on Thursday afternoons, to wander round the corridors with a briefcase?

  He looked once more at the diary and thought: question fundamentals. Madam, show this tired schoolboy your fundamentals, learn the parts, read the book from scratch … that was your tutor’s advice and who are you to ignore the advice of your tutor. Do not ask why Christ was born on Christmas Day, ask whether he was born at all. If God gave us our wit, my dear Turner, He gave us also the wit to see through His simplicity. So why Thursday at all? Why the afternoon? Why regular meetings? However desperate, why did Harting meet his contact in the daylight, in working hours, in Godesberg, when his absence from the Embassy had to be the occasion of a lie in the first place? It was absurd. Balls, Turner, such as they are. Harting could meet his contact at any time. At night in Königswinter; on the forest slopes of Chamberlain’s Petersberg; in Cologne, Koblenz, in Luxembourg or over the Dutch border at weekends when no excuse, truthful or untruthful, need be offered to anyone.

  He dropped his pencil and swore out loud.

  ‘Trouble?’ Cork enquired. The robots were chattering wildly and Cork was tending them like hungry children.

  ‘Nothing that prayer won’t cure,’ said Turner, recalling something he had said to Gaunt that morning.

  ‘If you want to send that telegram,’ Cork warned him, unperturbed, ‘you’d better hurry.’ He was moving quickly from one machine to the other, tugging at papers and knobs as if his task were to keep them all at work. ‘The balloon’s going up in Brussels by the look of it. Threat of a complete Hun walk-out if we don’t raise our ante on the Agricultural Fund. Haliday-Pride says he thinks it’s a pretext. In half an hour I’ll be taking bookings for June if we go on at this rate.’

  ‘What sort of pretext?’

  Cork read out loud. ‘A convenient door by which to leave Brussels until the situation in the Federal Republic returns to normal.’

  Yawning, Turner pushed the telegram forms aside. ‘I’ll send it tomorrow.’

  ‘It is tomorrow,’ said Cork gently.

  If I smoked I’d smoke one of your cigars. I could do with a bit of soma just now, he thought; if I can’t have one of those, I’ll have a cigar instead. From beginning to end, he knew the whole thesis was wrong.

  Nothing worked, nothing interlocked, nothing explained the energy, nothing explained itself. He had constructed a chain of which no one link was capable of supporting the others. Holding his head in his hand, he let the Furies loose and watched them posture in grotesque slow motion before his tired imagination: the faceless Praschko, master spy, controlling from a position of parliamentary impregnability a network of refugee agents; Siebkron, the self-seeking custodian of public security, suspecting the Embassy of complicity in a massive betrayal to Russia, alternately guarding and persecuting those whom he believes to be responsible. Bradfield, rigorous, upperclass academic, hater and protector of spies, inscrutable for all his guilty knowledge, keeper of the keys to Registry, to the lift and the despatch box, about to vanish to Brussels after staying up all night; fornicating Jenny Pargiter, compelled into far more sinister complicity by an illusory passion which had already blackened her name all over the Embassy; Meadowes, blinded by a frustrated father’s love for the little Harting, precariously loading the last of the forty files on to his trolley; de Lisle, the ethical queer, fighting for Harting’s right to betray his friends. Each, magnified and distorted, looked towards him, danced, twisted and vanished in the face of Turner’s own derisive objections. The very facts which only hours before had brought him to the brink of revelation now threw him back into the forests of his own doubt.

  Yet how else, he told himself, as he locked away his possessions in the steel cupboard and abandoned Cork to the protesting machines; how else, the minister would ask, breaking the seed cake on the little plate with his soft, enormous hand, how else do fancies multiply, how else is wisdom forged, and a course of Christian action finally resolved upon, if not through doubt? Surely, my dear Mrs Turner, doubt is Our Lord’s greatest gift to those in need of faith? As he walked into the corridor feeling giddy and very sick, he asked himself once more: what secrets are kept in the magic Green File? And who the hell is going to tell me: me, Turner, a temporary?

  The dew was rising out of the field and rolling on to the carriageway like steam. The roads glistened under the wet grey clouds, the wheels of the traffic crackled in the heavy damp. Back to the grey, he thought wearily. No more hunt today. No little angel to submit to this old hairless ape. No absolutes yet at the end of the trail; nothing to make a defector of me.

  The night porter at the Adler looked at him kindly. ‘You were entertained?’ he asked, handing him the key.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘One should go to Cologne. It is like Paris.’

  De Lisle’s dinner jacket was draped carefully over his armchair with an envelope pinned to the sleeve. A bottle of Naafi whisky stood on the table. ‘If you want to take a look at that property,’ Turner read, ‘I’ll collect you on Wednesday morning at five.’ A postscript wished him a pleasant evening at the Bradfields’, and requested him in a facetious aside not to pour tomato soup down the lapels as de Lisle did not wish to have his politics misread; particularly, he added, since Herr Ludwig Siebkron of the Federal Ministry of the Interior was expected to be of the company.

  Turner ran a bath, took the tumbler from the basin and half filled it with whisky. Why had de Lisle relented? Out of compassion for a lost sou
l? Save us. And since this was the end to a night of silly questions, why was he being invited to meet Siebkron? He went to bed and half slept until afternoon, dreaming of Bournemouth and the spiky, unclimbable conifers that ran along the bare cliffs at Branksome; and he heard his wife say, as she packed the children’s clothes into the suitcase, ‘I’ll find my road, you find yours, and let’s see who gets to Heaven first.’ And he heard Jenny Pargiter’s crying again, on and on, a call for pity in an empty world. Don’t worry, Arthur, he thought, I wouldn’t go near Myra to save my life.

  10

  Kultur at the Bradfields

  ‘You should forbid them more, Siebkron,’ Herr Saab declared recklessly, his voice thick with burgundy. ‘They are crazy damn fools, Siebkron. Turks.’ Saab had out-talked and out-drunk them all, forcing them into embarrassed silence. Only his wife, a little blonde doll of unknown origin and a sweet, revealed bosom, continued to vouchsafe him admiring glances. Invalids, incapable of retaliation, the remaining guests sat dying under the sheer tedium of Herr Saab’s diatribe. Behind them, two Hungarian servants moved like nurses along the beds, and they had been told – there was no doubt in Turner’s mind – that Herr Ludwig Siebkron merited more attention than all the other patients put together. And needed it. His pale, magnified eyes were already drained of all but the last drops of life; his white hands were folded like napkins beside his plate, and his entire listless manner was that of a person waiting to be moved.

  Four silver candlesticks, 1729, by Paul de Lamerie, octagonal based and, in the words of Bradfield’s father, quite decently marked, joined Hazel Bradfield to her husband like a line of diamonds down the long table. Turner sat at the centre, midway between the second and third, held rigid by the iron bands of de Lisle’s dinner jacket. Even the shirt was too small for him. The head porter had obtained it for him in Bad Godesberg for more money than he had ever paid for a shirt in his life, and now it was choking him and the points of the half-starched collar were stabbing the flesh of his neck.