The Russia House

by John le Carré

  No laughter, not even a smile from Larry himself. Quinn looked as though he were concealing an abdominal wound with difficulty.

  ‘It was you too, Mr. Brown, who quite by chance were able to quote the poet, speak out for the company during a discussion of his merits, and almost by magic to detach yourself from your companions and find yourself seated next to the man we call Goethe during lunch. “Meet our distinguished writer Goethe.” Mr. Brown, we have a field report from London regarding the girl Magda from Penguin Books. We understand it was obtained unobtrusively, in non-suspicious social circumstances, by a non-American third party. Magda had the impression you wished to handle the Nezhdanov interview on your own. Can you explain that, please?’

  Barley had disappeared again. Not from the room but from my understanding. He had left suspicion to the dreamers and entered his own realms of reality. It was Ned not Barley who, unable to contain himself in the face of this admission of Agency skulduggery, produced the desired outburst.

  ‘Well, she’s not going to tell your informant she was panting to tuck her boyfriend into bed for the afternoon, is she?’

  But again that single answer might have done the trick if Barley had not capped it with his own. ‘Maybe I did pack them off,’ he conceded in a remote but friendly enough voice. ‘After a week of book fair any reasonable soul has had enough of publishers to last him a lifetime.’

  Larry’s smile had a doubtful slant. ‘Well hell,’ he said, and shook his pretty head before handing over his witness to Todd.

  But not yet, because Quinn was speaking. Not to Barley, not to Sheriton, not even to Clive. Not really to anyone. But he was speaking all the same. The captive little mouth was writhing like a hooked eel.

  ‘This man been fluttered?’

  ‘Sir, we have protocol problems,’ Larry explained, with a glance at me.

  At first I honestly did not understand. Larry had to explain.

  ‘What we used to call a lie detector, sir. A polygraph. Known in the business as a flutterer. I don’t think you have them over there.’

  ‘We do in certain cases,’ said Clive hospitably from beside me before I had a chance to answer. ‘Where you insist on it, we bend towards you and apply it. They’re coming in.’

  Only then did the troubled, inward Todd take over. Todd was not prolix; he was at first bite not anything. But I had met counsel like Todd before: men who make a crusade of their charmlessness and learn to use their verbal clumsiness as a bludgeon.

  ‘Describe your relationship with Niki Landau, Mr. Brown.’

  ‘I haven’t one,’ Barley said. ‘We’ve been pronounced strangers till Doomsday. I had to sign a paper saying I’d never speak to him. Ask Harry.’

  ‘Prior to that arrangement, please?’

  ‘We had the odd jar together.’

  ‘The odd what?’

  ‘Jar. Drink. Scotch. He’s a nice chap.’

  ‘But not socially your class, surely? He did not go to Harrow and Cambridge, I take it?’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘Do you disapprove of the British social structure, Mr. Brown?’

  ‘One of the crying pities of the modern world, it always seemed to me, old boy.’

  ‘ “He’s a nice chap.” That means you like him?’

  ‘He’s an irritating little sod but I liked him, yes. Still do.’

  ‘You never did deals with him? Any deal?’

  ‘He worked for other houses. I was my own boss. What deals could we do?’

  ‘Ever buy anything from him?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I would like to know, please, what you and Niki Landau transacted together on the occasions when you were alone, often in Communist capital cities.’

  ‘He boasted about his conquests. He liked good music. Classical stuff.’

  ‘He ever discuss his sister with you? His sister still in Poland?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He ever express his resentment to you regarding the alleged ill-treatment of his father by the British authorities?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When was your last intimate conversation with Niki Landau, please?’

  Barley finally allowed himself to betray a certain irritation. ‘You make us sound like a pair of queens,’ he complained.

  Quinn’s face did not flicker. Perhaps he had made that deduction already.

  ‘The question was when, Mr. Brown,’ said Todd, in a tone suggesting that his patience was being stretched.

  ‘Frankfurt, I suppose. Last year. Couple of belts in the Hessischer Hof.’

  ‘That the Frankfurt book fair?’

  ‘One doesn’t go to Frankfurt for fun, old boy.’

  ‘No dialogue with Landau since?’

  ‘Don’t recall one.’

  ‘Nothing at the London book fair this spring?’

  Barley appeared to rack his brains. ‘Oh my hat. Stella. You’re right.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Niki had spotted a girl who used to work for me. Stella. Decided he fancied her. He fancied everybody really. By way of being a stoat. Wanted me to introduce them.’

  ‘And you did?’

  ‘Tried to.’

  ‘You pimped for him. That the term?’

  ‘That’s right, old boy.’

  ‘What transpired, please?’

  ‘I asked her for a drink at the Roebuck round the corner, six o’clock. Niki turned up, she didn’t.’

  ‘So you were left alone with Landau? One on one?’

  ‘That’s right. One to one.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Stella, I suppose. The weather. Might have been anything.’

  ‘Mr. Brown, do you have anything very much to do with past or former Soviet citizens in the United Kingdom?’

  ‘Cultural Attaché, now and then. When he can be bothered to answer, which isn’t often. If a Sov writer comes over and the Embassy gives a binge for him, I’ll probably go along.’

  ‘We understand you like to play chess at a certain café in the area of Camden Town, London.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Is this not a café frequented by Russian exiles, Mr. Brown?’

  Barley raised his voice but otherwise held steady. ‘So I know Leo. Leo likes to lead from weakness. I know Josef. Josef charges at anything that moves. I don’t go to bed with them and I don’t trade secrets with them.’

  ‘You do have a very selective memory, though, don’t you, Mr. Brown? Considering the extraordinarily detailed accounts you give of other episodes and persons?’

  Still Barley did not flare, which made his reply all the more devastating. For a moment, indeed, it seemed he would not even answer; the tolerance that was now so deeply seated in him seemed to tell him not to bother.

  ‘I remember what’s important to me, old boy. If I haven’t got a dirty enough mind to match yours, that’s your bloody business.’

  Todd coloured. And went on colouring. Larry’s smile widened till it nearly split his face. Quinn had put on a sentry’s scowl. Clive had not heard a thing.

  But Ned was pink with pleasure and even Russell Sheriton, sunk in a crocodile’s sleep, seemed to be remembering, among so many disappointments, something vaguely beautiful.

  The same evening as I was taking a walk along the beach, I came on Barley and two of his guards, out of sight of the mansion, skimming flat stones to see who could get the most bounces.

  ‘Got you! Got you!’ he was shouting, leaning back and flinging his arms at the clouds.

  ‘The mullahs are smelling heresy,’ Sheriton declared over dinner, regaling us with the latest state of play. Barley had pleaded a headache and asked for an omelette in the boat-house. ‘Most of these guys came to town on a Margin of Safety ticket. That means raise military spending and develop any new system however crazy that will bring peace and prosperity to the arms industry for the next fifty years. If they’re not sleeping with the manufacturers, they’re sure as hell eati
ng with them. The Bluebird is telling them a very bad story.’

  ‘And if it’s the truth?’ I asked.

  Sheriton sadly helped himself to another piece of pecan pie. ‘The truth? The Sovs can’t play? They’re cost-cutting at every corner and the buffoons in Moscow don’t know one half of the bad news because the buffoons in the field cheat on them so they can earn their gold watches and free caviar? You think that’s the truth?’ He took a huge mouthful but it didn’t alter the shape of his face. ‘You think that certain unpleasant comparisons aren’t made?’ He poured himself some coffee. ‘You know what’s the worst thing for our democratically-elected neanderthals? The total worst? It’s the implications against us. Moribund on the Sov side means moribund our side. The mullahs hate that. So do the manufacturers.’ He shook his head in disapproval. ‘To hear the Sovs can’t do solid fuel from shit, their rocket motors suck instead of blow? Their early-warning errors worse than ours? Their heavies can’t even get out of the kennel? That our intelligence estimates are ludicrously exaggerated? The mullahs get terrible vibes from these things.’ He reflected on the inconstancy of mullahs. ‘How do you peddle the arms race when the only asshole you have to race against is yourself? Bluebird is life-threatening intelligence. A lot of highly-paid favourite sons are in serious danger of having their ricebowls broken, all on account of Bluebird. You want truth, that’s it.’

  ‘So why stick your neck out?’ I objected. ‘If it’s not a popular ticket, why run on it?’

  And suddenly I didn’t know where to put myself.

  It isn’t often that old Palfrey stops a conversation, causes every head to swing round at him in amazement. And I certainly hadn’t meant to this time. Yet Ned and Bob and Clive were staring at me as if I had taken leave of my senses, and Sheriton’s young men – we had two of them, if I remember rightly – independently put down their forks and began independently wiping their fingers on their napkins.

  Only Sheriton didn’t seem to have heard. He had decided that a little cheese wouldn’t hurt him after all. He had pulled the trolley to him, and was morosely examining the display. But none of us imagined that cheese was uppermost in his mind, and it was clear to me that he was buying time while he wondered whether to reply and how.

  ‘Harry,’ he began carefully, addressing not me but a piece of Danish blue. ‘Harry, I swear to God. You have before you a man committed to peace and brotherly love. By this I mean that my primary ambition is to knock so much shit out of the Pentagon firebreathers that they will never again tell the President of the United States that twenty rabbits make a tiger, or that every fucking sardine fisherman three miles out of port is a Soviet nuclear submarine in drag. I also wish to hear no more bullshit about digging little holes in the ground and surviving nuclear war. I am a glasnostic, Harry. I have made certain discoveries about myself. I was born a glasnostic, my parents are old glasnostics from way back. For me, glasnosticism is a way of life. I want my children to live. Quote me and enjoy me.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had any children,’ said Ned.

  ‘Figurative,’ said Sheriton.

  But Sheriton, if you pulled away the wrapping, was telling us a truthful version of his new self. Ned sensed it, I sensed it. And if Clive didn’t, that was only because he had deliberately abbreviated his perceptions. It was a truth that lay not so much in his words, which as often as not were designed to obscure his feelings rather than express them, but in a new and irrepressible humility that had entered his manner since his cut-throat days in London. At the age of fifty, after quarter of a century as a Cold War brawler, Russell Sheriton, to use Walter’s expression, was shaking his mid-life bars. It had never occurred to me that I could like him, but that evening I began to.

  ‘Brady’s bright,’ Sheriton warned us with a yawn as we turned in. ‘Brady can hear the grass growing.’

  And Brady, parse him how you would, was bright as boot-buttons.

  You spotted it in his clever face and in the nerveless immobility of his courteous body. His ancient sports coat was older than he was, and as he came into the room you knew he took pleasure in being unspectacular. His young assistant wore a sports coat too and, like his master, had a classy dowdiness.

  ‘Looks like you’ve done a fine thing, Barley,’ Brady said cheerfully in his Southern lilt, setting his briefcase on the table. ‘Anybody say thank you along the way? I’m Brady and I’m too damned old to fool around with funny names. This is Skelton. Thank you.’

  The billiards room again but without Quinn’s table and upright chairs. Instead, we lounged gratefully in deep cushions. A storm was brewing. Randy’s vestals had closed the shutters and put on lights. As the wind rose, the mansion began clinking like restless bottles on a shelf. Brady unpopped his briefcase, a gem from the days when they knew how to make them. Like the university professor he occasionally was, he wore a polka-dot blue tie.

  ‘Barley, did I read somewhere, or am I dreaming, you once played sax in the great Ray Noble’s band?’

  ‘Beardless boy in those days, Brady.’

  ‘Wasn’t Ray just the sweetest man you ever knew? Didn’t he make the best sound ever?’ Brady asked as only Southerners can.

  ‘Ray was a prince.’ Barley hummed a few bars from ‘Cherokee’.

  ‘Too bad about his politics,’ Brady said, smiling. ‘We all tried to talk him out of that nonsense, but Ray would go his way. Ever play chess with him?’

  ‘Yes I did, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Who won?’

  ‘Me, I think. Not sure. Yes, me.’

  Brady smiled. ‘So did I.’

  Skelton smiled too.

  They talked London and which part of Hampstead Barley lived in: ‘Barley, I just love that area. Hampstead is my idea of civilisation.’ They talked the bands Barley had played. ‘My God, don’t tell me he’s still around! At his age I wouldn’t even buy unripe bananas!’ They talked British politics and Brady just had to know what it was that Barley thought so wrong with Mrs. T.

  Barley appeared to have to think about that, and at first came up with no suggestions. Perhaps he had caught Ned’s warning eye.

  ‘Hell, Barley, it’s not her fault she hasn’t any worthwhile opponents, is it?’

  ‘Woman’s a bloody Red,’ Barley growled, to the secret alarm of the British side.

  Brady didn’t laugh, just raised his eyebrows and waited, as we all did.

  ‘Elective dictatorship,’ Barley continued, quietly gathering steam. ‘A thousand legs good, two legs lousy. God bless the corporation and bugger the individual.’

  He seemed to be about to enlarge on this thesis, then changed his mind, and to our relief, let it rest.

  Nevertheless it was a light enough beginning, and after ten minutes of it Barley must have been feeling pretty much at ease. Until in his languid way Brady came to ‘this present thing you’ve gotten yourself into, Barley,’ and proposed that Barley should go over the turf again in his own words, ‘but homing in on that historic eye-to-eye you two fellows had in Leningrad.’

  Barley did as Brady wanted, and though I like to think I listened quite as sharply as Brady, I heard nothing in Barley’s narrative that seemed to me contradictory or particularly revealing beyond what was already on the record.

  And at first blush Brady didn’t seem to hear anything surprising either, for when Barley had finished, Brady gave him a reassuring smile and said, ‘Well now, thank you, Barley,’ in a voice of apparent approval. His slender fingers poked among his papers. ‘Worst thing about spying, I always say, is the hanging around. Must be like being a fighter pilot,’ he said, selecting a page and peering at it. ‘One minute sitting home eating your chicken dinner, next minute frightening the hell out of yourself at eight hundred miles an hour. Then it’s back home in time to wash the dishes.’ He had apparently found what he was looking for. ‘Is that how it felt to you, Barley, stuck out there in Muscovy without a prayer?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Hanging around waiting for Katya
? Hanging around waiting for Goethe? You seemed to do quite some hanging around after you and Goethe had finished your little pow-wow, didn’t you?’

  Perching his spectacles on the tip of his nose, Brady was studying the paper before passing it to Skelton. I knew the pause was contrived but it scared me all the same, and I think it scared Ned for he glanced at Sheriton, then anxiously back to Barley. ‘According to our field reports, you and Goethe broke up around fourteen thirty-three Leningrad time. Seen the picture? Show it to him, Skelton.’

  All of us had seen it. All but Barley. It portrayed the two men in the gardens of the Smolny after they had said goodbye. Goethe had turned away. Barley’s hands were still held out to him from their farewell embrace. The electronic timeprint in the top left corner said fourteen thirty-three and twenty seconds.

  ‘Remember your last words to him?’ Brady asked, with an air of sweet reminiscence.

  ‘I said I’d publish him.’

  ‘Remember his last words to you?’

  ‘He wanted to know whether he should look for another decent human being.’

  ‘One hell of a goodbye,’ Brady remarked comfortably, while Barley continued to look at the photograph, and Brady and Skelton looked at Barley. ‘What did you do then, Barley?’

  ‘Went back to the Europe. Handed over his stuff.’

  ‘What route did you take? Remember?’

  ‘Same way I got there. Trolleybus into town, then walked a bit.’

  ‘Have to wait long for the trolleybus?’ Brady asked, while his Southern accent became, to my ear at least, more of a mocking-bird than a regional digression.

  ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Five minutes. Maybe longer.’

  I could not remember one occasion until now when Barley had pleaded an imperfect memory.

  ‘Many people in line?’

  ‘Not many. A few. I didn’t count.’

  ‘The trolleybus runs every ten minutes. The ride into town takes another ten. The walk to the Europe, at your pace, ten. Our people have timed it all ways up. Ten’s the outside. But according to Mr. and Mrs. Henziger, you didn’t show up in their hotel room till fifteen fifty-five. That leaves us with quite a tidy hole, Barley. Like a hole in time. Mind telling me how we’re going to fill it? I don’t expect you went on a drinking spree, did you? You were carrying some pretty valuable merchandise. I’d have thought you wanted to unload it pretty quick.’