A Most Wanted Man

by John le Carré

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “I was returning to Germany. My homeland.”

  “From Vienna.”

  “Frères was about to open a branch in Germany. My Germany. I wished—yes, well, I wished,” she said angrily, and frowned through the net curtains and all the way into the garden, as if the fault lay there.

  “You wished to draw a line, perhaps? A line under the past?” Bachmann suggested.

  “I wished to reenter my own country in a pure state,” she retorted, with sudden animation. “Untainted. Don’t you understand?”

  “Not quite yet, but I’m getting there, I’m sure.”

  “I wished to make a clean beginning. With the bank. With my life. Is that not human nature? To wish a new beginning? Perhaps you don’t think so. Men are different.”

  “It was also the case, I believe, that your distinguished employer of many years had passed away, and Brue Junior”—using her own term for him—“had recently taken over the bank,” Bachmann suggested, lowering his voice in submission to her didactic tone.

  “That is the case, Herr Schneider. You have done your homework, I am pleased to note. So few do their homework these days. I was extremely young,” she reported, in a tone of unsparing self-diagnosis. “Younger than my years by far, remember. If I compare myself with modern youth, I was a total infant. I came of a poor family, and had no experience of the larger world whatever.”

  “But you were a raw recruit, first time in the field, allow me!” Bachmann protested, matching her indignation. “The orders came down from above and you obeyed them. You were young and innocent, and in a position of trust. Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself, Frau Ellenberger?”

  Did she hear him? And if she did, why then was she smiling? Her voice was changing. It was younger. As she started speaking again, a brighter cadence entered it, a softer, fresher, more Viennese lilt, that put a forgiving gloss on even her severest observations. And to the younger voice, a younger figure: still prim, still respectfully upright, but more active and flirtatious in its gestures. Stranger still was the fact that her very style of speech seemed chosen to please the ear of someone superior to her in both age and station, whereas Bachmann was neither; and that, by an unconscious act of retrospective ventriloquism, she was evoking not merely the voice of her vanished youth, but the voice in which the relationship with the person she was describing had been conducted.

  “There were those around me who were forward, Herr Schneider,” she remembered, fondly nonetheless. “Very forward, provided it secured them the attention of Mr. Edward.” A name to prize and own. A name to savor. “But that wasn’t my style at all, oh no. It was my reticence, not my forwardness, that commended me to him. He told me so himself. ‘Elli, when you’re scouting for a Girl Friday, better to pick the one from the back of the crowd.’ That was the rough side of him speaking,” she added dreamily. “It took me by surprise at first, the rough side. It took getting used to. You didn’t expect it of a gentleman of Mr. Edward’s refinement. Then it was all right. It was real,” she said proudly, and fell silent again.

  “And you were a mere—what at that time?” Bachmann inquired at length, but very delicately, determined not on any account to break the spell.

  “Twenty-two years old, and with the highest secretarial grades. My father had died when I was young, you see. A cloud hangs over the manner of his death, I don’t mind telling you. Hanged himself, I heard, but never officially. We’re Catholics. My mother’s brother was a priest in Passau and kind enough to take us in. What else could you be in Passau? Unfortunately, with the years, my uncle became overaffectionate towards me, and I felt it prudent, at the risk of upsetting my mother, to remove myself to secretarial college in Vienna. Yes. Well. There we were. He violated me, if you want to know. I hardly realized at the time. You don’t, not if you’re innocent.”

  And again she fell silent.

  “And Brue Frères was your first appointment,” Bachmann suggested.

  “I can only tell you,” Frau Ellenberger resumed, in answer to a question he hadn’t put, “that Mr. Edward treated me with exemplary consideration.”

  “I would have no doubt of that.”

  “Mr. Edward was a model of propriety.”

  “My office does not dispute that. We feel he was led astray.”

  “He was English in the best sense. When Mr. Edward confided in me, I felt flattered. When he invited me to accompany him socially, for example, to just a little dinner”—she was using the English words—“after a long day’s work before he went home to relax with his family, I felt proud to be selected.”

  “Who wouldn’t? Nobody.”

  “That he was not merely old enough to be my uncle, but practically my grandfather, did not arouse my undue concern,” she resumed sternly, as if for the record. “Having already become accustomed to the attentions of an older man, I accepted them as normal for one in my position. The difference was, Mr. Edward had zest. He was not my uncle. When I told my mother what had occurred, she did not view my situation as unfortunate, but to the contrary advised me not to endanger it by petty considerations. Mr. Edward, having only one son to remember, would surely not forget a pretty young girl who had shown him loving friendship in his declining years.”

  “And he didn’t forget, did he?” Bachmann prompted, casting an appreciative eye round the room, but he had lost her again—and almost, it seemed to him, she had lost herself.

  “So at what point, exactly, would you say, Frau Ellenberger,” he resumed brightly, making a fresh start, “did the intrusion of Colonel Karpov cast a blight over your shared happiness, if I may put it thus?”

  Had she really not heard him?

  Still?

  She raised her eyebrows to their fullest extent. She tilted her head attentively to one side. Then she launched on another statement for the file.

  “The arrival of Grigori Borisovich Karpov as a major Frères client coincided with the full, improbable flowering of my relationship with Mr. Edward. I could not then, nor can I now, determine which event preceded the other. Mr. Edward had entered what I can but describe as his second or third youth. He was positive in his attentions to me, and in spirit a great deal more adventurous than many of the younger men of the Viennese banking community.” She mused for a while, started to say something, shook her head and gave a roguish smile of reminiscence. “Very positive, if you want to know.” The moment vanished. “You asked when, I believe. When he appeared on the scene, I suppose you mean. Karpov. Yes?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Let me tell you about Karpov, then.”

  “Please do.”

  “It would be tempting to describe Karpov as the archetypal Russian bear. But that’s only half the story. On Mr. Edward he acted like a revitalizing drug. ‘Karpov is my Spanish fly,’ he once remarked to me. Karpov’s irreverence towards the conventional norms of life struck a kindred spark in Mr. Edward’s heart. In the weeks preceding the inauguration of the Lipizzaner system, Mr. Edward had traveled to Prague, Paris and East Berlin for the sole purpose of meeting our new client.”

  “With you?”

  “With me sometimes, yes. With me often, in fact. And sometimes little Anatoly came along with his briefcase, bless him. I always wondered what he kept in it. A gun? Mr. Edward said it was his pajamas. Imagine a briefcase in a nightclub! And he paid for simply everything out of it! Just from one pocket at the front where he kept the cash. We never saw inside the main part. It was top secret. Being bald made it funnier somehow.”

  She allowed herself a little girl’s chuckle.

  “Not one dull minute, not with Karpov. Every encounter a blend of anarchy and culture and you never knew which you were going to get.” She pulled a sharp frown, correcting herself. “I will say this, Herr Schneider. Colonel Karpov was a genuine and passionate admirer of all forms of art, music and literature, also physics. And women too, of course. That goes without saying. In Russian he would describe himself as kult
urny. Cultured.”

  “Thank you,” said Bachmann, writing diligently in his notebook.

  The same strict tone: “After carousing until dawn in a nightclub, and availing himself of the upstairs rooms—twice or even three times, I may say—and discoursing about literature in between visits—he would need immediately to explore the art galleries and visit the city’s cultural sites. Sleep as we understand it was not a concept to him. For Mr. Edward, and for myself personally, it was an unrepeatable journey of education.”

  Her severity left her and she began laughing softly and rolling her head. To keep her company, Bachmann gave her his clown’s smile.

  “And were the Lipizzaner accounts openly discussed on these occasions?” he inquired. “Or was it all hush-hush, secretive—just between the two men alone? And Anatoly when he was there?”

  Another unnerving silence as her face turned suddenly bleak with memory.

  “Oh, Mr. Edward, even at his most liberated, was never less than secretive, I grant you!” she complained, acknowledging the question without directly answering it. “In banking matters, well, that was natural, I suppose. But also in matters relating to the private sphere. Sometimes I wondered whether I was the only one, quite apart from Mrs. Brue. But then she died,” she added with a pout. “He was distraught, I’m sure. So sad, really. I’d thought we might marry, you see. It turned out there wasn’t a vacancy. Not for Elli.”

  “And he was also secretive about his British friend Mr. Findlay, I seem to recall from your statement,” Bachmann reminded her, advancing featherlight on the question he had come to ask.

  Her face had darkened. She thrust her jaw forward in rejection, lips clamped together.

  “Wasn’t that his name? Findlay? The mysterious Englishman?” Bachmann lightly insisted. “That’s how it stands in your statement. Or have I got it wrong?”

  “No. You have not got it wrong. Findlay got it wrong. Very wrong indeed.”

  “Findlay the evil genius behind the Lipizzaner accounts, even?”

  “Nobody should be interested in Mr. Findlay. Mr. Findlay should be relegated to oblivion forthwith and forever, is what should happen to our Mr. Findlay,” she said, adopting a furious nursery-rhyme voice. “Mr. Findlay should be chopped up in little pieces and put in a pot until he’s done!”

  The sudden spurt of energy with which she delivered this pronouncement confirmed what Bachmann had for some time been suspecting: that while they might be drinking English tea out of fine china cups on a silver tray, with a silver strainer and a silver milk jug and a silver pitcher of boiled water, and nibbling tastefully at homemade Scottish shortcake, the fumes that came to him sporadically on her breath derived from something a lot more potent than mere tea.

  “He was that bad, eh?” Bachmann marveled. “Chop him up. Give him what he deserves.” But she had retreated into her own memories, so he might as well have been talking to himself. “Mind you, I do see your point. If somebody took my employer for a ride, I’d be pretty angry too. To sit there watching your boss being led up the garden path.” No response. “Still, he must have been quite a character, our Mr. Findlay. Mustn’t he? Anyone who was able to lead Mr. Edward off the straight-and-narrow—introduce him to Russian crooks like Karpov and his fixer extraordinaire—”

  He had broken the spell.

  “Findlay was not quite a character, thank you!” Frau Ellenberger retorted furiously. “He wasn’t a character at all. Mr. Findlay was assembled entirely from characteristics stolen from other people!” Then promptly put her hand to her lips to shut them up.

  “What did he look like, Findlay? Give me a word picture. Mr. Findlay.”

  “Sleek. Wicked. Shiny. Dry nose.”

  “How old?”

  “Forty. Or he pretended to be. But his shadow was much, much older.”

  “Height? General appearance? Any physical characteristics you remember?”

  “Two horns and a long tail and a very strong odor of sulfur.”

  Bachmann shook his head in wonder. “You really didn’t like him much, did you?”

  Frau Ellenberger underwent another of her abrupt metamorphoses. She sat up as straight as a schoolmistress, pursed her lips and fixed him with a look of stern reproach. “When a man is deliberately excluded from your life, Herr Schneider—one’s life—somebody to whom you are emotionally attached, to whom you have revealed yourself in all your womanhood—it is not unreasonable to regard that man with loathing and suspicion, the more so if he is the seducer and corrupter of your—of Mr. Edward’s banking integrity.”

  “Did you meet him often?”

  “Once, and once was quite enough to form a judgment. He made an appointment, posing as a normal potential client. He came to the bank and I engaged him in light conversation in the waiting room, which was a part of my duties. That was the only time he appeared at the bank. Thereafter, Findlay worked his evil magic and I was excluded utterly. By both of them.”

  “Could you explain that?”

  “We could be in the middle of a private moment, Mr. Edward and I. Alone. Or a dictation, it made no difference. The phone rang. It was Findlay. Mr. Edward had only to hear his voice and it was ‘Elli, go and powder your nose.’ If Findlay wished for a meeting with Mr. Edward, it occurred in the town, never at the bank, and I was again excluded. ‘Not tonight, Elli. Go and cook a chicken for your mother.’”

  “Did you complain to Mr. Edward about this shabby treatment?”

  “His reply to me was that there are some secrets on earth that not even I could be party to, and Teddy Findlay was one of them.”

  “Teddy?”

  “That was his first name.”

  “I don’t think you mentioned that.”

  “I had no wish to. We were Teddy and Elli. Only on the telephone, of course. And on the strength of one encounter in the waiting room during which we discussed nothing of substance. It was all pretend. That was what Findlay was about: pretense. Our supposed familiarity on the telephone would never have survived reality, you may be sure. Mr. Edward wished me to be amused by his impertinence, so naturally I was.”

  “What makes you so sure Findlay was behind the Lipizzaner operation?”

  “He set it up!”

  “Set it up with Karpov?”

  “With Anatoly, acting on Karpov’s behalf, sometimes. So I understood. From afar. But the brainchild was his alone. He boasted about it. My Lipizzaners. My little stable. My Mr. Edward, was what he was really saying. It was all planned. Poor Mr. Edward never had a chance. He was lured. First the facetious phone call, very charming, requesting the appointment—private and personal, of course, no third parties, nothing on the file. Then the flattering invitation to the British embassy and a drink with the ambassador to make it all official. Official what? may I ask. Nothing about the Lipizzaners was official! They were the opposite of official. They were doped and hobbled from the start. Bandy-legged imposters posing as blood horses is what they were!”

  “Ah yes, the embassy,” Bachmann agreed hazily, as if the embassy had momentarily escaped his memory—because a halfway-decent interrogator does not smash the door down. But in reality the British embassy was complete news to him and would be to Erna Frey. Nothing in her statement of seven years ago had prepared them for the involvement of the British embassy in Vienna.

  “Now just where did the embassy come up?” he asked, in simulated embarrassment. “Run that by me again, if you would, Frau Ellenberger. Perhaps I didn’t do my homework as well as we thought.”

  “Mr. Findlay had initially represented himself as some kind of British diplomat,” she replied scathingly. “An informal diplomat, if there is such a breed, which I doubt.”

  To judge by Bachmann’s face he doubted it too, although he had been one himself.

  “Later he reinvented himself as a financial consultant. If you ask me, he was never either one of them. He was a charlatan and that was all he ever was.”

  “So the Lipizzaners began their lives courtesy of th
e British embassy in Vienna,” Bachmann mused aloud. “Of course they did! I remember now. Forgive my little lapse.”

  “That was where the whole Lipizzaner plan was cooked up, I’ve no doubt of it. On the night Mr. Edward returned from that first meeting at the embassy, he outlined the entire arrangement to me. I was shocked, but it was not my place to appear so. Thereafter, whatever refinements or improvements were proposed invariably followed consultations with Mr. Findlay. Whether in a foreign town, or in Vienna, but well away from the bank, or over the telephone in an artfully disguised form that Mr. Edward insisted on referring to as their word code. It was a term I had never heard him use before. Good night, Herr Schneider.”

  “Good night, Frau Ellenberger.”

  But Bachmann didn’t move. And neither did she. In his entire career, he afterwards confided to Erna Frey, he had never come so close to a moment of psychic intuition. Frau Ellenberger had ordered him to leave but he hadn’t left, because he knew she had more she was dying to tell him, but she was afraid of telling it. She was grappling with her sense of loyalty on the one hand and her outrage on the other. Suddenly, the outrage won.

  “And now he’s back,” she whispered, her eyes widening in astonishment. “Doing it all over again to poor Mr. Tommy, who isn’t half the man his father was. I smelled his voice the moment he telephoned. Sulfur, that’s what I smelled. He’s a Beelzebub. Foreman. This time he called himself Foreman. Boss of the show, he has to be, always did. Next week it’ll be Fiveman!”

  Just a hundred meters along the road from where Bachmann’s car was waiting stood a clump of lakeside woodland with a public footpath winding through it. Handing his briefcase to the driver, he was seized with a spontaneous desire to saunter there alone. A bench offered itself, and he sat on it. Dusk was falling. Hamburg’s magic hour had begun. Deep in thought, he gazed at the darkening lake and the lights of the city rising round it. For a moment back there, like a thief with a conscience, he had had a sense of having robbed the wrong person. Shaking his head at this momentary weakening of purpose, he hauled a cell phone from a pocket of his bureaucratic suit and selected Michael Axelrod’s direct line.