Agent Running in the Field

by John le Carré

  Using my uncancelled passport in the alias of Nicholas George Halliday – I was supposed to surrender it on my return to England but nobody asked me for it – I book myself a flight to Prague for the Monday morning and pay for it with my personal credit card. I email Ed regretfully cancelling our badminton fixture. He comes back with ‘Chicken’.

  On the Friday afternoon I receive a text from Florence on my family mobile. It tells me we can ‘talk if you want’ and offers me a number that is not the one she is texting from. I ring it from a pay-as-you-go mobile, get the answering service and discover I am relieved not to be talking to her directly. I leave a message saying I will try again in a few days, and come away thinking I sound like somebody I don’t know.

  At six the same evening I send an ‘all eyes’ to the Haven, copy to Human Resources, informing them that I am taking a week’s leave of absence for family reasons from 25 June to 2 July. If I am wondering what family reasons I am attending to, I need look no further than Steff who, after weeks of radio silence, has announced that she will be descending on us for Sunday lunch with ‘a vegetarian friend’. There are moments that are made for cautious reconciliation. As far as I am concerned, this is not one of them but I know my duty when I see it.

  *

  I am in our bedroom, packing for Karlovy Vary, sorting through my clothes for laundry marks and anything that shouldn’t belong to Nick Halliday. Prue, having conducted a long telephone conversation with Steff, has come upstairs to help me pack and tell me all about it. Her opening question is not designed for harmony.

  ‘Do you really need to take badminton gear all the way to Prague?’

  ‘Czech spies play it all the time,’ I reply. ‘Vegetarian boy or vegetarian girl?’

  ‘Boy.’

  ‘One we know, or one we have yet to know?’

  There have been precisely two of Steff’s many boyfriends that I managed to engage with. Both turned out to be gay.

  ‘This one is Juno, if you remember the name, and they’re on their way to Panama together. Juno being short for Junaid, she tells me, which means fighter, apparently. I don’t know whether that makes him any more appealing to you?’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘From Luton. At three in the morning. So they won’t be staying the night with us, you’ll be relieved to hear.’

  She is right. A new boyfriend in Steff’s bedroom and pot smoke coming out from under the door do not accord with my vision of family bliss, least of all when I am packing for Karlovy Vary.

  ‘Who the hell goes to Panama anyway?’ I demand just as irritably.

  ‘Well, I think Steff does. In rather a big way.’

  Mistaking her tone, I turn sharply to look at her.

  ‘What d’you mean? She’s going there and not coming back?’ – only to discover she is smiling.

  ‘Do you know what she said to me?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘We could make a quiche together. Steff and me. Between us. Make a quiche for lunch. Juno loves asparagus and we mustn’t talk about Islam because he’s a Muslim and doesn’t drink.’

  ‘Sounds ideal.’

  ‘It must be five years since Steff and I cooked anything together. She thought you men should be in the kitchen, remember? And we shouldn’t.’

  Entering the spirit of the occasion as best I can, I take myself to the supermarket, buy unsalted butter and soda bread, the two staples of Steff’s gastronomic regime, and to atone for my boorishness a bottle of ice-cold champagne even if Juno isn’t allowed any. And if Juno isn’t allowed, then my guess is that Steff won’t be either, because by now she is probably well on her way to converting to Islam.

  I return from shopping to find the pair of them standing in the hall. Two things then happen at once. A courteous, well-dressed young Indian man steps forward and takes my shopping bag from me. Steff throws her arms round me, tucks her head into the crook of my shoulder and leaves it there, then pulls back and says, ‘Dad! Look, Juno, isn’t he great?’ The courteous Indian man steps forward again, this time to be formally introduced. By now I have spotted a serious-looking ring on Steff’s wedding finger, but I have learned that with Steff it’s better to wait till I’m told.

  The women go to the kitchen to make quiche. I open the champagne and present each of them with a glass, then walk back to the drawing room and offer Juno one too because I don’t always take Steff’s guidance about her men literally. He accepts without demur and waits for me to invite him to sit down. This is new territory for me. He says he fears this has all come as a surprise to us. I assure him that with Steff nothing surprises us, and he seems relieved. I ask him, why Panama? He explains that he is a graduate zoologist and the Smithsonian has invited him to conduct a field study of large flying bats on the island of Barro Colorado on the Panama Canal and Steff is going along for the ride.

  ‘But only if I’m bug-free, Dad,’ Steff chimes in, poking her head round the door in her apron. ‘I’ve got to be fumigated and I can’t breathe on anything and I can’t even wear my new fuck-me shoes, can I, Juno?’

  ‘She can wear her own shoes, but she’s got to wear covers over them,’ Juno explains to me, ‘and nobody gets fumigated. That’s pure decoration, Steff.’

  ‘And we’ve got to look out for crocodiles as we step ashore, but Juno’s going to carry me, aren’t you, Juno?’

  ‘And deprive the crocodiles of a square meal? Certainly not. We are there to preserve the wildlife.’

  Steff gives a hoot of laughter and closes the door on us. Over lunch, she flashes her engagement ring round the table, but it’s mostly for my benefit because she has bubbled everything to Prue in the kitchen.

  Juno says they are waiting until Steff has graduated, which is going to take longer because she has switched to Medicine. Steff hadn’t got around to mentioning this fact to us, but Prue and I have also learned not to over-respond to such life-changing revelations.

  Juno had wanted to ask me formally for her hand, but Steff insisted that her hand was nobody’s property but her own. He asks me anyway, across the table, and I tell him it’s their decision alone, and they should take all the time they need. He promises they will. They want children – ‘Six,’ Steff cuts in – but only down the line, and meanwhile Juno would like to introduce us to his parents, who are both teachers in Mumbai, and they plan to visit England around Christmas time. And may Juno please enquire what my profession is, because Steff has been vague and his parents are sure to want to know. Was it civil service or social service? Steff had seemed unsure.

  Lounging across the table, one hand for her chin and the other for Juno, Steff waits for my answer. I had not expected her to keep our ski-lift conversation to herself and I hadn’t seen fit to ask her to do so. But evidently she has.

  ‘Oh, civil all the way,’ I protest with a laugh. ‘Actually foreign civil. Travelling salesman for the Queen with a bit of diplomatic status thrown in about sums it up.’

  ‘So commercial counsellor?’ Juno enquires. ‘May I tell them British commercial counsellor?’

  ‘Would do fine,’ I assure him. ‘Commercial counsellor come home and put out to grass.’

  To which Prue says: ‘Nonsense, darling. Nat always talks himself down.’

  And Steff says: ‘He’s a loyal servant of the Crown, Juno, and a shit-hot one, aren’t you, Dad?’

  When they’re gone Prue and I tell each other that maybe it was all a bit of a fairy tale, but if they split up tomorrow Steff will have turned a corner and become the girl we always knew she was. After washing up, we go to bed early because we need to make love and I have a crack-of-dawn flight.

  ‘So who’ve you got tucked away in Prague then?’ Prue asks me mischievously on the doorstep.

  I had told her it was Prague and a conference. I hadn’t told her it was Karlovy Vary and a walk in the woods with Arkady.

  *

  If there is one item of information from this seemingly endless period of waiting that I have left till last, that is
because at the time it occurred I attached no significance to it. On the Friday afternoon, just as the Haven was packing up for the weekend, Domestic Research section, a notoriously lethargic body, delivered itself of its findings concerning the three districts of North London on Sergei’s list. After making a number of useless observations about common watercourses, churches, power lines, places of historical interest and architectural note, they pointed out in a footnote that all three ‘districts under advisement’ were linked by the same bicycle route, which ran from Hoxton to Central London. For convenience they attached a large-scale map with the cycle route painted pink. I have it before me as I write.

  11

  Not much has been written, and I hope never will be, about agents who devote the best years of their lives to spying for us, take their salaries and bonuses and golden handshakes, and without fuss, without being exposed or defecting, retire to a peaceful life in the country they have loyally betrayed, or some equally benign environment.

  Such a man was Woodpecker, otherwise Arkady, one-time head of Moscow Centre’s rezidentura in Trieste, my former badminton opponent and British agent. To describe his self-recruitment to the cause of liberal democracy is to trace the turbulent journey of an essentially decent man – my view, not everyone’s by any means – strapped from birth to the rollercoaster of contemporary Russian history.

  The illegitimate street-child of a Tbilisi prostitute of Jewish origin and a Georgian Orthodox priest is secretly nurtured in the Christian faith, then spotted by his Marxist teachers as an outstanding pupil. He grows a second head and becomes an instant convert to Marxism–Leninism.

  At sixteen he is again spotted, this time by the KGB, trained as an undercover agent and tasked with the infiltration of Christian counter-revolutionary elements in northern Ossetia. As a former Christian and perhaps a present one, he is well qualified for the task. Many of those he informs on are shot.

  In recognition of his good work he is appointed to the lowest ranks of the KGB where he earns himself a reputation for obedience and ‘summary justice’. This does not prevent him from attending night school in higher Marxist dialectic or acquiring foreign languages and thereby making himself eligible for intelligence work overseas.

  He is dispatched on foreign missions, lends a hand in ‘extra-legal measures’, euphemism for assassination. Before he becomes too sullied he is recalled to Moscow to be instructed in the gentler arts of fake diplomacy. As an espionage foot soldier under diplomatic cover he serves in the rezidenturas of Brussels, Berlin and Chicago, engages in field reconnaissance and counter-surveillance, services agents he never meets, fills and empties countless dead letter boxes and continues to participate in the ‘neutralization’ of real or imagined enemies of the Soviet state.

  Nonetheless, with the advance of maturity no amount of patriotic zeal can prevent him from embarking on an internal re-evaluation of his life’s path, from his Jewish mother to his incomplete renunciation of Christianity to his headlong embrace of Marxism–Leninism. Yet even as the Berlin Wall comes down, his vision of a golden age of Russia-style liberal democracy, popular capitalism and prosperity for all is rising from the rubble.

  But what role will Arkady himself play in this long-delayed regeneration of the mother country? He will be what he has always been: her stalwart and protector. He will shield her from saboteurs and carpetbaggers, be they foreign or home-bred. He understands the fickleness of history. Nothing endures that is not fought for. The KGB is no more: good. A new, idealistic spy service will protect all Russia’s people, not merely her leaders.

  It takes his former comrade-in-arms Vladimir Putin to deliver the final disenchantment, first with the suppression of Chechnya’s yearnings for independence, then of his own beloved Georgia’s. Putin had always been a fifth-rate spy. Now he was a spy turned autocrat who interpreted all life in terms of konspiratsia. Thanks to Putin and his gang of unredeemed Stalinists, Russia was not going forward to a bright future, but backwards into her dark, delusional past.

  ‘You are London’s man?’ he bellows into my ear in English.

  We are two diplomats – technically consuls – one Russian, one English, sitting out a dance at the annual New Year’s Eve party of Trieste’s leading sports club, where in the course of three months we have played five games of badminton. It is the winter of 2008. After the events of August, Georgia is having Moscow’s gun held to her head. The band is playing sixties hit tunes with brio. No eavesdropper or hidden microphone would stand a chance. Arkady’s driver and bodyguard, who in the past has watched our games from the balcony and even accompanied us to the changing room, is tonight carousing with a newfound lady friend on the other side of the dance floor.

  I must have said ‘yes, I am London’s man’ but I have not heard myself above the din. Ever since our third badminton session when I made my impromptu pass at him, I have been waiting for this moment. It is clear to me that Arkady has been waiting for it too.

  ‘Then tell London he is willing,’ he orders me.

  He? He means the man he is about to become.

  ‘He works only to you,’ he continues, still in English. ‘He will play against you here again in four weeks with great bitterness, same time, singles only. He will challenge you officially by telephone. Tell London he will need matching racquets with hollow handles. These racquets will be exchanged at a convenient moment in the changing room. You will arrange this for him.’

  What does he want in return? I ask.

  ‘Liberty for his people. All people. He is not materialist. He is idealistic.’

  If ever a man recruited himself more sweetly, I have yet to hear of it. After two years in Trieste we lost him to Moscow Centre while he was number two in their Northern Europe department. For as long as he was in Moscow he refused contact. When he was posted to Belgrade under cultural cover my masters in Russia department didn’t want me to be seen following him around so they gave me Trade Consul in Budapest and I ran him from there.

  It was not till the final years of his career that our analysts began to spot signs, first of exaggeration, then of outright fabrication in his reports. They made more of this than I did. To me it was a just another case of an agent growing old and tired, losing his nerve a little, but not wanting to cut the cord. It was only after Arkady’s two masters – Moscow Centre lavishly and we rather more discreetly – had toasted him and decked him with medals in appreciation of his selfless devotion to our respective causes that we learned from other sources that, as his two careers were approaching their close, he had been diligently laying down the foundations of a third: gathering to himself a slice of his country’s criminal wealth on a scale that neither his Russian nor his British paymasters at their most munificent could have dreamed of.

  *

  The bus from Prague plunges deeper into the darkness. The black hills to either side of us rise steadily higher against the night sky. I am not afraid of heights but dislike depths and I am wondering what I’m doing here, and how I have talked myself into a wildcat journey that I would not willingly have undertaken ten years ago or wished on a fellow officer half my age. On field officer training courses, over a Scotch at the end of a long day, we used to address the fear factor: how to balance the odds and measure your fear against them, except we didn’t say fear, we said courage.

  The bus fills with light. We enter the main thoroughfare of Karlovy Vary, formerly Carlsbad, beloved spa of Russia’s nomenklatura since Peter the Great and today its wholly owned subsidiary. Glistening hotels, bathhouses, casinos and jewellery shops with blazing windows float sedately past on either side. Between them flows a river crossed by a noble footbridge. Twenty years back, when I came here to meet a Chechen agent who was enjoying a well-earned holiday with his mistress, the town was still ridding itself of the drab grey paint of Soviet Communism. The grandest hotel was the Moskva and the only luxury to be found was in secluded former rest homes where a few years previously the Party’s chosen and their nymphs had disporte
d themselves safe from the proletarian gaze.

  It is ten past nine. The bus has pulled up at the terminal. I alight and begin walking. Never look as though you don’t know where to go. Never dawdle with intent. I am a newly arrived tourist. I am a pedestrian, the lowest of the low. I am taking stock of my surroundings as any good tourist may. I have a travel bag slung over my shoulder with the handle of my badminton racquet protruding. I am one of those silly-looking English middle-class walkers except I haven’t got a guidebook in a plastic envelope tethered round my neck. I am admiring a poster for the Karlovy Vary film festival. Perhaps I should buy a ticket? The poster next along proclaims the healing virtues of the famous baths. No poster announces that the town is also celebrated as the watering-hole of choice for the better class of Russian organized criminal.

  The couple ahead of me are unable to progress at a sensible pace. The woman behind me carries a bulky carpetbag. I have completed one side of the high street. It’s time to cross the noble footbridge and saunter down the other side. I am an Englishman abroad who is pretending he can’t make up his mind whether to buy his wife a Cartier gold watch or a Dior gown or a diamond necklace or a fifty-thousand-dollar suite of reproduction Imperial Russian furniture.

  I have arrived in the floodlit forecourt of the Grand Hotel and Casino Pupp, formerly the Moskva. The illuminated flags of all nations undulate in the evening breeze. I am admiring the brass paving stones engraved with the names of illustrious guests from past and present. Goethe was here! So was Sting! I am thinking it is time I caught a cab, and here is one pulling up not five yards from me.

  A family of Germans clambers out. Matching tartan luggage. Two children’s bicycles, brand new. The driver nods to me. I hop in beside him and toss my travel bag on to the rear seat. Does he speak Russian? Scowl. Niet. English? German? A smile, a shake of the head. I have no Czech. On winding unlit roads we climb into the forested hills, then steeply descend. A lake appears on our right. A car with full headlights comes racing at us on the wrong side. My driver holds his course. The car gives way.