The Mission Song

by John le Carré

  From his magician's bag he produces an antiquated hand-press of stippled grey metal which in my out-of-body state I identify as Aunt Imelda's orange squeezer. It is followed by a single A4-sized sheet of greaseproof paper on which are mounted eight peel-off, Soviet-style red stars with extra spikes. At Philip's beckoning I rise to my feet and position myself at Jasper's side while he addresses the delegates. His speech is not a rousing one. He has been advised, he tells us, that the parties to our contract are in accord. Since he has not been privy to our deliberations, and since complex matters of agriculture are outside the ambit of his professional expertise, he must absolve himself from responsibility for the technical wording of the contract which, in the event of a dispute, will be for a court to determine. Throughout my entire rendering, I have contrived to avoid Haj's eye.

  Philip invites all signatories to rise. Like communicants at Mass they form a queue with Franco at its head. The Mwangaza, too important to stand in line, lurks to one side, flanked by his handlers. Haj, whom I continue to ignore, brings up the rear. Franco stoops over my Swahili version, starts to sign, and recoils. Has he spotted an insult, a bad omen? And if not, why are his old eyes brimming with tears? He shuffles round, dragging his bad leg after him, until he is face to face with Dieudonne his many-times enemy and now, for however long, his brother-in-arms. His huge fists rise to shoulder height. Is he about to tear his new friend limb from limb?

  “ Tu veux?” he bellows in French — you want to do this?

  “Je veux bien, Franco,” Dieudonne replies shyly, upon which the two men fall into each other's arms in an embrace so fierce that I fear for his ribcage. Horseplay follows. Franco, eyes streaming, signs. Dieudonne shoves him aside and tries to sign, but Franco has him by the arm: he must have one more embrace. Finally Dieudonne signs. Haj rejects the fountain pen offered him and whisks one from the pocket of his Zegna. With no pretence of reading, he scrawls a reckless signature twice, once for the Swahili, once for the French. The applause starts with Philip and spreads to the Mwangaza's camp. I clap with the best of us.

  Our women appear with trays of champagne. We clink glasses, Philip speaks a few exquisitely chosen words on behalf of the Syndicate, the Mwangaza responds with dignity, I render both with gusto. I am thanked, though not lavishly. A jeep pulls up in the forecourt. The Mwangaza's handlers lead him away. Franco and Dieudonne are at the door, holding hands African-style, kidding with each other as Philip tries to shoo them towards the jeep. Haj offers me his own hand to shake. I accept it cautiously, not wishing to hurt it, not knowing how the gesture is meant.

  “You have a card?” he enquires. “I'm thinking of opening an office in London. Maybe I shall use you.”

  I delve in the pockets of my sweat-soaked Harris Tweed and fish out a card: Brian Sinclair, accredited interpreter, resident in a post-office box in Brixton. He examines it, then me. He laughs, but only softly, not the hyena cackle we are accustomed to. Too late, I realise he has yet again been addressing me in the Shi with which he assailed Dieudonne on the gazebo steps.

  “If you ever think of coming to Bukavu, send me an e-mail,” he adds carelessly, this time in French, and extracts a platinum card-case from the recesses of his Zegna.

  The card is before me as I write, not physically perhaps, but printed indelibly on my visual memory. It's a good three inches by two, with gilt edges. A second border inside the gilt portrays the romping animals of Kivu past and present: gorilla, lion, cheetah and elephant, an army of snakes locked in happy dance, but no zebras. For background we have scarlet hills with pink sky behind, and on the reverse side, the silhouette of a high-kicking chorus girl with a champagne glass in her hand. Haj's name and many qualifications are given with the flourish of a royal proclamation, first in French, then English, then Swahili. Below them come his business and home addresses in Paris and Bukavu, and after them a string of telephone numbers. And on the reverse side, next to the chorus girl, an e-mail address hastily hand-scrawled in ink.

  • • •

  Retracing my familiar path along the covered walkway, I was pleased to note that, in the haste traditional to the closing moments of all conferences, Spider and his helpers were already distributed about the grounds dismantling their handiwork. Spider in cap and quilted waistcoat stood feet astride on Haj's stone steps, reeling electric cable while he whistled. In the gazebo, two anoraks were mounted on ladders. A third was on his knees before the stone bench. In the boiler room, the Underground plan was propped with its face against the wall, wires coiled and bound. The tape decks were stowed in their black box.

  A brown burn-bag, mouth gaping and half full, stood on top of Spider's desk. Empty drawers were pulled open in the best Chat Room tradition. Anyone who has passed through Mr Anderson's hands is a slave to his rules of Personal Security, which range from What You May or May Not Tell Your Significant Other to not placing apple cores in your personal burn-bag lest they inhibit the incineration of secret waste and Spider was no exception. His digital audio tapes were immaculately tagged and numbered and slotted into trays. Beside them lay the exercise book in which he kept his log. Unused tapes, still in their boxes, were stacked on a shelf above them.

  For my main selections I consulted the logbook. The handwritten list at the front comprised the tapes that were known to me: guest suite, royal apartments, et cetera. I selected five. But what was the list at the back, also handwritten? And who or what was S? Why, in the column where the location of the microphone should be entered, did we get instead the letter S? S for Spider? S for Syndicate? S for Sinclair? Or how about here was a thought! — S for satellite? Was it conceivable that Philip or Maxie or Sam or Lord Brinkley, or one of his no-name partners, or all of them, had decided for reasons of self-protection, for the record, for the archive, to bug their own telephone conversations? I decided it was. There were three tapes marked S in ballpoint. Grabbing three blanks, I scrawled the same S on their spines and helped myself to the originals.

  My next task was to hide the tapes around my body. For the second time since I had been forced to put it on, I was grateful for my Harris Tweed. With its over-large interior pockets it could have been tailor-made for the job. The waistband of my grey flannels was equally accommodating, but my notepads were unyielding and ring-backed. I was deliberating what to do with them when I heard Philip's voice, the sleek one he used onstage. “Brian, dear man. Here you are. I've been dying to congratulate you. Now I can.”

  He was poised in the doorway, one pink-sleeved arm for the frame and his slip-on shoes comfortably crossed. My instinct was to be gracious, but in the nick of time I remembered that, after a peak performance such as the one I had given, I was more likely to feel drained and scratchy.

  “Glad you liked it,” I said.

  “Tidying up?”

  “That's right.”

  To prove it, I tossed one of my notepads into the burn-bag. I turned back to find Philip standing directly in front of me. Had he spotted the bulges round my midriff? He raised his hands and I thought he was going to make a grab for them, but instead he reached past me and retrieved my notepad from the burn-bag.

  “Well, I must say,” he marvelled, licking his finger and flipping through my pencilled pages. “No good complaining it's all Greek to me, is it? The Greeks couldn't make head nor tail of it either.”

  “Mr Anderson calls it my Babylonian cuneiform,” I said.

  “And these twiddly bits in the margin — they are what?”

  “Notes to self.”

  “And what do they say to self?”

  “Style points. Innuendo. Things to pick up on when I'm rendering.”

  “Such as?”

  “Statements as questions. When something's meant as a joke and isn't. Sarcasm. You can't do much with sarcasm, not when you're rendering. It doesn't come over.”

  “How perfectly fascinating. And you keep all that in your head.”

  “Not really. That's why I write it down.”

  He's the customs offic
er at Heathrow who pulls you out of the arrivals queue because you're a zebra. He doesn't ask you where you've stashed your cocaine, or whether you've been attending an Al Qaeda training course. He wants to hear where you spent your holiday, and was the hotel nice, while he reads your body language and blink rate, and waits for the tell-tale change in your voice-level.

  “Well, I'm most impressed. You did it all so well. Upstairs, downstairs, everywhere,” he said, returning the notepad to the burn-bag. “And you're married. To a popular journalist, I gather.”

  “That's right.”

  “And she's a beauty, I'm told.”

  “People say so.”

  “You must make a fine pair.”

  “We do.”

  “Well, just remember careless pillow-talk costs lives.”

  He had gone. To make sure he had gone, I tiptoed to the top of the cellar staircase and was in time to see him disappear round the corner of the building. On the hillside Spider and his men were still hard at work. I returned to the boiler room, recovered the notepad and gathered up the other three. Helping myself to four new ones from a stack, I scuffed their covers, numbered them in the same manner as my used ones and dropped them into the burn-bag as replacements. My pockets and waistband were full to bursting. With two notepads in the small of my back and one in each pocket, I waded up the cellar steps and back along the covered walkway to the relative safety of my bedroom.

  • • •

  It's back to Blighty at last! We're three thousand feet above sea-level and there's a street fest in every cage and why not? We're ourselves again, the same band of brothers that set out from Luton in the same no-name aeroplane twenty-four hours earlier, coming home with our tails up and a contract in our pocket, everything to play for and the Cup within our grasp! Philip is not among us. Where he has gone, I neither know nor care. Perhaps to the Devil, and let's hope so. First down the plane's aisle minces Spider in an improvised chef's hat, passing out plastic plates, beakers, knives and forks. After him trots Anton with a hand-towel for an apron around his midriff, bearing our no-name donor's hamper from Messrs Fortnum & Mason of Piccadilly. Hot on his heels ambles big Benny our gentle giant with a magnum of nearly cold champagne. Not even the great lawyer Jasper, cloistered in the end cage that he occupied on the outward journey, can resist the festive spirit. True, at first he makes a show of refusing everything, but after a sharp word from Benny and a glance at the label on the botde, he tucks in with a will, as I do, because a top interpreter who has played his part to the full must never be a killjoy. My imitation leather night-bag nestles above me in the overhead webbing.

  “What did you make of 'em, old boy?” Maxie asks, doing his T. E. Lawrence act of dropping down beside me, beaker in hand. And it's really nice to see our skipper having a proper drink for a change, not just Malvern water. It's nice to see him so flushed and pumped up with success.

  “The delegates, Skipper?” I ask judiciously. “What did I make of them?”

  “Think they'll come through? Haj wobbled a bit, I thought. The other two seemed pretty solid. But will they deliver two weeks from now?”

  I put aside the question of Haj's wobbling and draw upon my father's repertoire of aphorisms. “Skipper, I'll tell you frankly. The important thing with your Congolese is to know how much you don't know. I couldn't say that before, but now I will.”

  “You haven't answered my question.”

  “Skipper, it is my firm belief that two weeks from now, they will be at your side as promised,” I reply, unable to equivocate in my need to be of service to him.

  “Chaps!” Maxie is yelling down the aisle. “I want to hear it for Sinclair. We ran him ragged and he didn't blink.”

  A cheer goes up, glasses are raised. I am lifted on a wave of emotion combining guilt, pride, solidarity and gratitude. When my eyes clear, Maxie is proffering a white envelope similar to the one that was peeking out of Haj's buff folder.

  “Five grand US, old boy. That what Anderson told you?”

  It was, I admitted.

  “I got 'em up to seven. Not enough in my view, but best I could do.”

  I start to thank him but my head is down, so I'm not sure he hears me. The bulletproof hand thumps my shoulder for the last time, and when I look up Maxie is at the other end of the plane and Benny is shouting at us to watch our arses for landing. Obediently, I reach for my night-bag and prepare to watch my arse, but it was too late, we had landed.

  I never saw them go. Perhaps I didn't want to. What more was there to say? I have an apocryphal image of them with their kitbags slung over their shoulders, whistling Colonel Bogey while they march out of the rear doors of the green shed, and up a small incline to a no-name bus.

  A woman security guard escorts me down airport corridors. The night-bag is tapping at my hip. I am standing before a fat man who sits behind a desk. The night-bag is on the floor beside me. On the desk, a sports bag of red nylon.

  “You're to check contents and identify your possessions,” says the fat man, not looking at me.

  I unzip the sports bag and identify my possessions: one dinner jacket, dark red with matching trousers, one dress shirt, white, one cummerbund, silk, and the whole lot rolled into a tight ball round my patent leather shoes. One padded envelope containing passport, wallet, diary, miscellaneous personal effects. My black silk dress socks are wedged into my left patent leather dress shoe. I pull them out and reveal my cellphone.

  I am in the rear of a black or midnight blue Volvo Estate on my way to gaol. My driver is the same woman security guard. She wears a peaked cap. I see her snub nose in the driving mirror. The night-bag is squashed between my knees. The nylon sports bag is on the seat beside me. My cellphone is against my heart.

  Dusk is falling. We pass through a subtopia of hangars, machine workshops, brick offices. Floodlit iron gates festooned in razor wire spring at us. Bulked-out armed police in jockey hats loiter. My driver points the bonnet of the car straight at the closed gates and accelerates. They part. We cross a lake of tarmac and pull up beside a traffic island covered in red and yellow flowers.

  The doors of the Volvo unlock themselves. I'm free after all.

  The time by the Arrivals hall clock is twenty past nine of a hot Saturday evening. I'm back in the England I never left, and I need to change some dollars.

  “Have a great weekend,” I urge the driver, which, being interpreted, means thank you for helping me smuggle my tapes and notepads out of Luton airport.

  The speed-coach to Victoria station stands empty and pitch dark. Drivers smoke and chat beside it. The escaped prisoner selects a corner at the back, places the night-bag between his feet and slings the red sports bag onto the rack above his head.

  He presses the power button on his cellphone. It lights up, then begins to tremble. He dials 121 and presses green. A severe woman warns him that he has FIVE new messages.

  Penelope, Friday, 1915: Salvo. You mad bastard. Where the fuck are you? We've looked everywhere. You show up late and are seen by several witnesses sneaking out of a side door halfway through the party. Why? Fergus has tried the loos and the bars downstairs and sent people running up and down the road shouting for you — (muffled “yes, darling, I know”) — we're in the limo, Salvo, and we're on our way to Sir Matthew's house for dinner. Fergus has the address in case you've lost it. God, Salvo!

  Thorne the Horn, Friday, 1920: (Scots brogue, London-weighted) Salvo, listen, we're hellish worried for you, old man. If you've not signified that you're in the land of the living within the hour, I'm proposing to have my people drag the rivers. Now do you have a pencil handy at all? And a piece of paper? What? — (garbled, roar of coarse laughter) — Penelope says you write things on your arm! What else do you write them on, man? (A Belgravia address follows. End of message)

  Penelope, Friday, 2030: I am in Sir Matthew's hall, Salvo. It's a very beautiful hall. I have received your message, thank you. I don't give a fuck who your oldest and best corporate client is, you have no ri
ght to humiliate me like this. In one minute, Fergus. You may not know this, Salvo, but Sir Matthew happens to be extremely superstitious. Thanks to you, we are thirteen at table on a Friday. So what is happening even as I speak is that Fergus is desperately phoning around for — ah, he's found one! — and whom have you found, Fergus? (a hand descends over the phone) — he's found Jellicoe. Jelly will step into the breach. He possesses no dinner jacket but Fergus has ordered him to sober himself up and come as he is. So don't turn up here, whatever else you do, Salvo. Just go on doing whatever the fuck you're doing. Sir Matthew's table does not take fifteen and I have suffered enough fucking embarrassment for one night!