The Russia House

by John le Carré

  He will walk until he falls, she thought. And I shall follow him.

  On the bench beside her a peasant woman in a saffron headscarf had begun to pray in Ukrainian. She was holding a small icon in both hands and bowing her head over it, deeper each time, till she was prodding her hairless forehead with the tin frame. Her eyes grew bright and as they closed Katya saw tears come out from between the lids. In the blink of a star I shall look like you, she thought.

  She remembered how he had told her about visiting a mortuary in Siberia, a factory for the dead, situated in one of the phantom cities where he worked. How the corpses came out of a chute and were passed round a carousel, male and female mixed, to be hosed and labelled and stripped of their gold by the old women of the night. Death is a secret like any other, he had told her; a secret is something that is revealed to one person at a time.

  Why do you always try to educate me to the meaning of death? she had demanded of him, sickened. Because you have taught me how to live, he had replied.

  The telephone is the safest in Russia, he had said. Even our lunatics in the security Organs would not think of tapping the unused telephone of an emergency hospital.

  She remembered their last meeting in Moscow, in the deepest part of winter. He had picked up a slow train at a backwater station, a place with no name in the centre of nowhere. He had bought no ticket and travelled hard class, pushing ten roubles into the conductor’s palm like everybody else. Our gallant competent Organs are so bourgeois these days they no longer know how to mix with the workers, he had said. She pictured him a waif in his thick underclothes, lying in semi-darkness on the top berth reserved for luggage, listening to the smokers’ coughing and the grumble of the drunks, suffocating from the stink of humanity and the leaky water-heater while he stared at the appalling things he knew and never spoke of. What kind of hell must that be, she wondered, to be tormented by your own creations? To know that the absolute best you can do in your career is the absolute worst for mankind?

  She saw herself waiting for him to arrive, bivouacked among the thousands of other waiting-wounded at the Kazansky railway station under the foul fluorescent lights. The train is delayed, is cancelled, is derailed, said the rumours. Heavy snowfalls all the way to Moscow. The train is arriving, it never started, I need never have bothered to tell so many lies. The station staff had poured formaldehyde into the lavatories and the whole concourse stank of it. She was wearing Volodya’s fur hat because it hid more of her face. Her mohair scarf covered her chin, her sheepskin coat the rest of her. She had never known such desire for anyone. It was a heat and a hunger at once inside the fur.

  When he stepped off the train and walked towards her through the slush, her body was stiff and embarrassed like a boy’s. As she stood beside him in the crowded metro, she nearly screamed in the silence as he pressed against her. She had borrowed Alexandra’s apartment. Alexandra had gone to the Ukraine with her husband. She unlocked the front door and made him go ahead. Sometimes he seemed not to know where he was or, after all her planning, not to care. Sometimes she was scared to touch him, he was too frail. But not today. Today she ran at him, grasped him with all her force, gathering him to her without skill or tenderness, punishing him for her months and nights of fruitless longing.

  But he? He embraced her as her father used to, keeping his waist clear of her and his shoulders firm. And as she pulled away from him she knew that the time was past when he could bury his torment in her body.

  You are the only religion I have, he whispered, kissing her brow with closed lips. Listen to me, Katya, while I tell you what I have decided to do.

  The peasant woman was kneeling on the floor, loving her icon, pressing it to her breast and lips. Katya had to climb over her to reach the gangway. A pale young man in a leather jacket had sat himself at the end of the bench. He had one arm tucked into his shirt, so she supposed it was his wrist that was broken. His head had fallen forward and as she squeezed past him she noticed that his nose was broken, too, though healed.

  The alcove was in darkness. A broken light bulb dangled uselessly. A massive wooden counter barred her way to the cloakroom. She tried to lift the flap but it was too heavy so she wriggled under it. She was standing among empty coat-racks and hangers and uncollected hats. The pillar was a metre across. A handwritten sign said NO CHANGE GIVEN and she read it by the light of an opening and closing door. The telephone was in its usual place on the other side, but when she placed herself before it she could hardly see it in the dark.

  She stared at it, willing it to ring. Her panic was over. She was strong again. Where are you? she wondered. In one of your postal numbers, one of your blurs on the map? In Kazakhstan? In the Middle Volga? In the Urals? He visited all of them, she knew. In the old days she had been able to tell by his complexion when he had been working outdoors. At other times he looked as though he had been underground for months. Where are you with your dreadful guilt? she wondered. Where are you with your terrifying decision? In a dark place like this? In a small-town telegraph office that is open round the clock? She imagined him arrested, the way she sometimes dreamed of him, trussed and white in a hut, tied to a wooden horse, scarcely bucking any more as they went on beating him. The phone was ringing. She lifted the receiver and heard a flat voice.

  ‘This is Pyotr,’ he said, which was their code to protect each other – if I am in their hands, and they force me to call you, I shall tell them a different name so that you can hide.

  ‘And this is Alina,’ she replied, amazed that she could speak at all. After that she didn’t care. He’s alive. He hasn’t been arrested. They are not beating him. They have not tied him to a wooden horse. She felt lazy and bored. He was alive, he was speaking to her. Facts, no emotion, his voice at first remote and only half familiar. Backwards and forwards, only facts. Do this. He said this. I said this. Tell him I thank him for coming to Moscow. Tell him he is behaving like a reasonable human being. I am well. How are you?

  She rang off, too weak to talk any more. She returned to the lecture hall and sat on a bench with the rest of them, reaching for breath, knowing nobody would care.

  The boy in the leather jacket was still lounging on the bench. She noticed his bent nose again, perfect yet off-true. She remembered Barley again and was grateful for his existence.

  He lay on his bed in his shirt-sleeves. His bedroom was an airless box hacked from a grand bedchamber and filled with the water-chorus of every Russian hotel, the snuffle of the taps, the trickle of the cistern from the tiny bathroom, the gulping of the huge black radiator, the groan of the refrigerator as it flung itself upon a fresh cycle of convulsions. He was sipping whisky from a toothmug, pretending to read by the useless bedlight. The telephone lay at his elbow, and beside the telephone lay his notebook for messages and great thoughts. Phones can be alive whether or not they’re on their cradles, Ned had warned him. Not this one, it isn’t, thought Barley. This one’s dead as a dodo till she rings. He was reading wonderful Marquez but the print was like barbed wire to him; he kept stumbling and having to go back.

  A car went by in the street, then a pedestrian. Then it was the turn of the rain, cracking like tired shot against the window panes. Without a scream or a laugh or a cry of anger, Moscow had returned herself to the great spaces.

  He remembered her eyes. What did they see in me? A relic, he decided. Dressed in my father’s suit. A lousy actor concealed by his own performance, and behind the greasepaint nothing. She was looking for the conviction in me and saw instead the moral bankruptcy of my English class and time. She was looking for future hope and finding vestiges of a finished history. She was looking for connection and saw the notice on me saying ‘reserved’. So she took one look at me and ran.

  Reserved for whom? For what great day or passion have I reserved myself?

  He tried to imagine her body. With a face like that, who needs a body anyway?

  He drank. She’s courage. She’s trouble. He drank again. Katya, if that’s who you
are, I am reserved for you.

  If.

  He wondered what else there was to know of her. Nothing except the truth. There had been an epoch, long forgotten, when he had mistaken beauty for intelligence, but Katya was so obviously intelligent there could be no problem this time of confusing the two qualities. There had been another epoch, God help him, when he had mistaken beauty for virtue. But in Katya he had sensed such iridescent virtue that if she were to pop her head round the door at this moment and tell him she had just murdered her children, he would instantly find six ways of assuring her she was not to blame.

  If.

  He took another pull of Scotch and with a jolt remembered Andy.

  Andy Macready, trumpeter, lying in hospital with his head cut off. Thyroid, said his missus vaguely. When they’d first discovered it, Andy didn’t want the surgery. He’d prefer to take the long swim and not come back, he said, so they got drunk together and planned the trip to Capri, one last great meal, a gallon of red and the long swim to nowhere through the filthy Mediterranean. But when the thyroid really got to him Andy discovered he preferred life to death, so he voted for the surgery instead. And they cut his head off his body, all but the vertebrae, and kept him going on tubes. So Andy was alive still, with nothing to live for and nothing to die of, cursing that he hadn’t done the swim in time, and trying to find a meaning for himself that death wouldn’t take away.

  Phone Andy’s missus, he thought. Ask her how her old man is. He peered at his watch, calculating what time it was in the real or unreal world of Mrs. Macready. His hand started for the phone but didn’t pick it up in case it rang.

  He thought of his daughter Anthea. Good old Ant.

  He thought of his son Hal in the City. Sorry I screwed it up for you, Hal, but you’ve still got a bit of time left to get it right.

  He thought of his flat in Lisbon and the girl crying her heart out, and he wondered with a shudder what had become of her. He thought of his other women, but his guilts weren’t quite up to their usual, so he wondered about that too. He thought of Katya again and realised he had been thinking of her all the time.

  A tap at the door. She has come to me. She is wearing a simple housecoat and is naked underneath. Barley, she whispers, darling. Will you still love me afterwards?

  She does nothing of the kind. She has no precedent and no sequel. She is not part of the familiar, well-thumbed series.

  It was Wicklow, his guardian angel, checking on his ward.

  ‘Come on in, Wickers. Care for a spot?’

  Wicklow raised his eyebrows, asking has she phoned? He was wearing a leather jacket and there were drops of rain on it. Barley shook his head. Wicklow poured himself a glass of mineral water.

  ‘I’ve been running through some of the books they pushed at us today, sir,’ he said, in the fancy tone they both adopted for the microphones. ‘I wondered whether you’d like an update on some of the non-fiction titles.’

  ‘Wickers, date me up,’ said Barley hospitably, stretching himself on the bed again while Wicklow took the chair.

  ‘Well there is just one of their submissions I’d like to share with you, sir. It’s that fitness handbook on dieting and exercises. I think we might consider it for one of our co-production splashes. I wondered whether we could sign one of their top illustrators and raise the Russian impact level.’

  ‘Raise it. Sky’s the limit.’

  ‘Well I’ll have to ask Yuri first.’

  ‘Ask him.’

  Hiatus. Let’s run that through again, thought Barley.

  ‘Oh, by the way, sir. You were asking why so many Russians use the word “convenient”.’

  ‘Well now, so I was,’ said Barley, who had been asking nothing of the kind.

  ‘The word they’re thinking of is udobno. It means convenient but it also means proper, which must be a bit confusing sometimes. I mean it’s one thing not to be convenient. It’s another not to be proper.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ Barley agreed after long thought while he sipped his Scotch.

  Then he must have dozed because the next thing he knew he was sitting bolt upright with the receiver to his ear and Wicklow standing over him. This was Russia, so she didn’t say her name.

  ‘Come round,’ he said.

  ‘I am sorry to call so late. Do I disturb you?’

  ‘Of course you do. All the time. That was a great cup of tea. Wish it could have lasted longer. Where are you?’

  ‘You invited me for dinner tomorrow night, I think.’

  He was reaching for his notebook. Wicklow held it ready.

  ‘Lunch, tea, dinner, all three of them,’ he said. ‘Where do I send the glass coach?’ He scribbled down an address. ‘What’s your home telephone number, by the way, in case I get lost or you do?’ She gave him that too, reluctantly, a departure from principle, but she gave it all the same. Wicklow watched him write it all down, then softly left the room as they continued talking.

  You never know, Barley thought, steadying his mind with another long pull of Scotch when he had rung off. With beautiful, intelligent, virtuous women, you simply never know where they stand. Is she pining for me, or am I a face in her crowd?

  Then suddenly the Moscow fear hit him at gale force. It sprang out at him when he was least expecting it, after he had fought it off all day. The muffled terrors of the city burst thundering upon his ears and after them the piping voice of Walter.

  ‘Is she really in touch with him? Did she invent the stuff herself? Is she in touch with someone different, and if so who?’

  8

  In the situation room in the basement of the Russia House the atmosphere was of a tense and permanent night air-raid. Ned sat at his command desk before a bank of telephones. Sometimes one winked and he spoke into it in terse monosyllables. Two female assistants softly put round the telegrams and cleared the out-trays. Two illuminated post-office clocks, one London time, one Moscow time, shone like twin moons from the end wall. In Moscow it was midnight. In London nine. Ned scarcely looked up as his head janitor unlocked the door to me.

  It was the earliest I had been able to get away. I had spent the morning at the Treasury solicitors’ and the afternoon with the lawyers from Cheltenham. Supper was helping to entertain a delegation of espiocrats from Sweden before they were packed off to the obligatory musical.

  Walter and Bob were bowed over a Moscow street map. Brock was on the internal telephone to the cypher room. Ned was immersed in what seemed to be a lengthy inventory. He waved me to a chair and shoved a batch of incoming signals at me, scribbled messages from the front.

  0954 hrs Barley has successfully telephoned Katya at October. They have made an appointment for 2015 at the Odessa tonight. More.

  1320 hrs irregulars have followed Katya to number 14 so-and-so street. She posted a letter at what appears to be an empty house. Photographs to follow soonest by bag. More.

  2018 hrs Katya has arrived at the Odessa Hotel. Barley and Katya are talking in the canteen. Wicklow and one irregular observing. More.

  2105 hrs Katya departs Odessa. Summary of conversation to follow. Tapes to follow soonest by bag. More.

  2200 hrs interim. Katya has promised to telephone Barley tonight. More.

  2250 hrs Katya followed to the so-and-so hospital. Wicklow and one irregular covering. More.

  2325 hrs Katya receives phone call on disused hospital telephone. Speaks three minutes twenty seconds. More.

  And now suddenly, no more.

  Spying is normality taken to extremes. Spying is waiting.

  ‘Is Clive Without India receiving tonight?’ Ned asked, as if my presence had reminded him of something.

  I replied that Clive would be in his suite all evening. He had been locked up in the American Embassy all day, and he had told me he proposed to be on call.

  I had a car so we drove to Head Office together.

  ‘Have you seen this bloody document?’ Ned asked me, tapping the folder on his lap.

  ‘Which bloody docu
ment is that?’

  ‘The Bluebird distribution list. Bluebird readers and their satraps.’

  I was cautiously non-committal. Ned’s bad temper in mid-operation was legendary. The light on the door of Clive’s office was green, meaning come in if you dare. The brass plate said ‘Deputy’ in lettering to outshine the Royal Mint.

  ‘What the devil’s happened to the need-to-know, Clive?’ Ned asked him, waving the distribution list as soon as we were in the presence. ‘We give Langley one batch of highly sensitive, unsourced material and overnight they’ve recruited more cooks than broth. I mean what is this? Hollywood? We’ve got a live joe out there. We’ve got a defector in place we’ve never met.’

  Clive toured the gold carpet. He had a habit when he was arguing with Ned of turning his whole body at once, like a playing-card. He did so now.

  ‘So you think the Bluebird readership list too long?’ he enquired in the tone of one taking evidence.

  ‘Yes, and so should you. And so should Russell Sheriton. Who the devil are the Pentagon Scientific Liaison Board? What’s the White House Academic Advisory Team when it’s at home?’

  ‘You would prefer me to take a high line and insist Bluebird be confined to their Inter Agency Committee? Principals only, no staff, no aides? Is that what you are telling me?’

  ‘If you think you can get the toothpaste back in the tube, yes.’

  Clive affected to consider this on its merits. But I knew, and so did Ned, that Clive considered nothing on its merits. He considered who was in favour of something and who was against it. Then he considered who was the better ally.

  ‘Firstly, not a single one of those elevated gentlemen I have mentioned is capable of making head or tail of the Bluebird material without expert guidance,’ Clive resumed in his bloodless voice. ‘Either we let them flounder in ignorance or we admit their appendages and accept the price. The same goes for their Defense Intelligence team, their Navy, Army, Air Force and White House evaluators.’