A Most Wanted Man

by John le Carré

  “Shall? How long has your distinguished client been in this country?”

  “He has been ill and is only now recovering.”

  “And meantime?”

  “Meantime, my client is pursued, stateless and in great peril.”

  “But by God’s mercy he is here among us,” Dr. Abdullah objected, unpersuaded.

  “Meantime”—Annabel continued firmly—“and until we receive binding assurances from the German authorities that my client will in no circumstance be expelled to Turkey or Russia, he refuses to place himself in their hands.”

  “In whose hands, then, has he placed himself now, if I may inquire?” Dr. Abdullah insisted, eyes darting from Annabel to Issa to Brue and back. “Is he a trick? Are you? Are all of you a trick?”—including Brue now in his sweeping gaze—“I am here in the service of Allah. I have no choice. But in whose service are you here? I ask this question from the heart: Are you good people, or are you out to destroy me? Are you here, in some way I do not understand, to make a fool or a knave of me? If my question offends you, pardon me. These are terrible times.”

  Determined to leap to Annabel’s defense, Brue was still assembling his response when she came in ahead of him, and this time she dispensed with a translation.

  “Dr. Abdullah,” she said, in a voice that suggested either anger or desperation.

  “Madam?”

  “My client has come here tonight at great risk to himself in order to present your charities with a very large sum of money. He asks only that he may give, and you receive. He asks for nothing in return—”

  “God will reward him.”

  “—beyond the assurance that his medical studies will be paid for by one of the charities he endows. Will you give him that assurance or do you propose to continue questioning his intentions?”

  “With God’s will his medical studies will be provided for.”

  “He does however insist on your absolute silence regarding his identity, his situation here in Germany and the source of the monies he is about to hand over to your charities. Those are the terms. If you will honor them, so will he.”

  Dr. Abdullah’s gaze returned to Issa: the haunted eyes, the haggard face, stretched taut in pain and confusion, the long, starved hands cupped together, the threadbare overcoat, the woolen skullcap and quarter-beard.

  And as Abdullah looked at him, his own gaze softened.

  “Issa, my son.”

  “Sir.”

  “Am I correct to believe that you have not received much instruction regarding our great religion?”

  “You are right, sir!” Issa barked, his voice leaping out of control in his impatience.

  But Abdullah’s small, bright eyes had homed on the bracelet that Issa was nervously passing through his fingers.

  “Is that made of gold, Issa, the ornament you are wearing?”

  “It is the best gold, sir”—with an apprehensive glance at Annabel while she translated this.

  “The small book that is attached to it: It is a depiction of the Holy Koran?”

  A nod from Issa, well before Annabel had finished translating the question.

  “And is the name of Allah—are those His holy words—engraved upon its pages?”

  To Annabel only, and only after a long pause following her translation, came Issa’s “Yes, sir.”

  “And has it not reached your ears, Issa, that such objects, and such display, being merely poor imitations of Christian and Jewish practice—for example, the golden Star of David or the Christian cross—are forbidden to us?”

  Issa’s face darkened. His head fell forward and he stared intently downward at the bracelet in his hand.

  Annabel came to his rescue: “It was his mother’s,” she said, unprompted by any word from her client. “It was the tradition of her people and tribe.”

  Ignoring her interjection as if it had never happened, Abdullah continued to reflect upon the gravity of Issa’s offense.

  “Put it back on your wrist, Issa,” he said at last. “Pull your sleeve over it so that I am not obliged to look at it.” And having listened to Annabel’s translation, and waited until his command had been obeyed, he resumed his homily.

  “There are men in the world, Issa, who care only for the dunya—by this is meant money and material status in the short life we lead here on earth. And there are men in the world who care nothing for the dunya but everything for the akhira—by this is meant the eternal life that we lead afterwards, according to our merits and failures in the eyes of God. Our life in the dunya is the time given to us for sowing. In the akhira we shall see what our harvest is. Tell me now, Issa, what it is that you are renouncing, and for whom?”

  Annabel had barely completed her translation before Issa rose to his feet and shouted: “Sir! Please! I am renouncing my father’s sins for God!”

  Crouched at Maximilian’s side, fists braced on the worktable that ran beneath the rows of screens, Bachmann had watched every inflection and gesture that passed between the four players. Nothing he had seen of Issa surprised him: he felt he had known him ever since his arrival in Germany. A first scrutiny of Signpost had also shown him what he expected to see, and had seen countless times in television replays and in press photographs accompanied by editorials extolling the wit, moderation and inclusiveness of one of Germany’s leading Muslims: a man in his late prime, darting, charismatic and intelligent, caught between his cultivated image of reclusiveness and his love of self-promotion.

  Yet it was Annabel who held center stage for him. Her artful juggling of the interrogation by Abdullah had left him mute with admiration, and he was not alone. Maximilian sat rigid, his hands spread in midmovement over his keyboard while Niki watched the screen from between her fingers.

  “Heaven protect us from lawyers,” Bachmann breathed at last to their relieved laughter. “Didn’t I say she was a natural?”

  And to himself: Erna, you should have seen your poor girl just now.

  The mood in Brue’s office remained solemn but, to Brue, tedious rather than tense. Having discovered the gaps in Issa’s learning, Dr. Abdullah was lecturing him on the nature of the broadly based Muslim charities he championed and the system that financed them. Brue was leaning back in his bank manager’s leather chair, listening to him with what he hoped looked like keen interest while admiring Annabel’s translation.

  Zakat, Dr. Abdullah went on indefatigably, was defined in Muslim law not as a tax but as an act of serving God.

  “That is very correct, sir,” Issa muttered when Annabel translated this. Brue put on an expression of pious approbation.

  “Zakat is the giving heart of Islam,” Dr. Abdullah continued methodically, and paused for Annabel to translate. “The giving of a portion of a man’s wealth is prescribed by God and the Prophet, peace be upon Him.”

  “But I shall give all!” Issa cried, again rising to his feet, even before he had heard Annabel out. “Every kopeika, sir! You will see! I will give one hundred percent. To all of my brothers and sisters in Chechnya!”

  “But also to the Umma at large, because we are all of one great family,” Dr. Abdullah patiently reminded him.

  “Sir! Please! Chechen are my family!” Issa cried, catching Annabel in the full flood of her translation. “Chechnya is my mother!”

  “However, since we are in the West tonight, Issa,” Dr. Abdullah continued firmly, as if he hadn’t heard this, “allow me to inform you that many Western Muslims today, rather than give their zakat to personal friends or blood relations, prefer to hand it to our many Islamic charities to be distributed within the Umma as need demands. I understand this to be also your personal wish.”

  Pause for Annabel’s translation. Another pause while Issa digests it, head down, brows together—and signifies his concurrence.

  “And it was on this understanding,” Abdullah went on, coming to the point at last, “that I prepared a list of charities that I considered deserving of your generosity. You have received that list, as I und
erstand it, Issa. And you have made certain selections from it. Is that true?”

  It was true.

  “So were you content with that list, Issa? Or should I explain to you more precisely the function of the charities I have recommended?”

  But Issa by now had had enough. “Sir!” he blurted, yet again springing to his feet. “Dr. Abdullah! My brother! Assure me of only one thing, please! We are giving this money to God and to Chechnya. That is all I need to hear! It is the money of thieves, rapists and murderers. It is bad profit from riba! It is haraam! It is profit from alcohol and pork and pornography! It is not the money of God! It is the money of Satan!”

  Having listened implacably to Annabel’s translation, and assisted her with the Arabic words, Abdullah delivered his measured response.

  “You are giving the money to perform God’s will, my good brother Issa. You are wise and right to give it, and when you have given it, you will be free to study, and to worship God in modesty and chastity. Perhaps it is true that the money was stolen, and put to usury and other purposes forbidden by God’s laws. But soon it will be God’s alone, and He will be merciful to you in whatever comes after the earthly life, since none but God can judge how you will be rewarded, whether in heaven or in hell.”

  Which was when Brue at last felt able to make his move.

  “Well then,” he said brightly, also rising to his feet in company with Issa. “May I suggest we now adjourn to the cashier’s office and complete our business there? Assuming Frau Richter approves, of course.”

  Frau Richter approved.

  “Go now, sir?” Maximilian asked Bachmann, as the three of them watched Brue and Signpost head for the door, followed by Issa and Annabel.

  He meant: Is it time for you to get into your taxi, and for me to signal your two watchers to follow you in the Audi?

  Bachmann jabbed a thumb at the screen that linked the van to Berlin.

  “No green light,” he objected, and did his best to pull a raw smile at the wondrous ways of those Berlin bureaucrats.

  No positively last, final, irrevocable, undeniable, unqualifiable, fucking green light. Not from Burgdorf, from Axelrod, not from the whole overinflated, suited, tight-arsed, divisive lawyer-driven pack of them together, he meant. Was the jury really still out? Was Joint even now looking under its lush leather sofas for yet another way of saying no? Were they perhaps debating whether five percent bad was really bad enough to justify upsetting the bruised sensitivities of our moderate Muslim community?

  I’m offering you the way out, for God’s sake! he screamed at the pack of them in his mind. Do this my way, nobody will even know! Or maybe I should turn this whole thing in, and helicopter up to Berlin and explain to you fellows just what five percent bad means out there in the real world that you’re so diligently protected from: slaughterhouse blood washing over your toe caps, and the hundred percent dead scattered in five percent bits over a square kilometer of the town square?

  But his worst fear was the one that he scarcely dared express, even to himself: it was of Martha and her kind. Martha who observes and doesn’t take part, as if that were ever a role she would settle for. Martha who is Burgdorf’s neoconservative soul mate. Martha who laughs aloud at the Felix operation as if it were some fancy European party game mounted by a bunch of liberal German dilettantes. He imagined her now in Berlin. Was the cutthroat Newton at her side? No, he’d stayed behind in Hamburg with the ash-blonde. He imagined Martha in the Joint ops room, telling Burgdorf what was good for him if he wanted the top job. Telling him how Langley never forgets its friends.

  “No green light, sir,” Maximilian confirmed. “Stand by till advised.”

  She was his lawyer and she knew nothing but her brief.

  And her brief, imposed on her by Issa’s desperate situation and rammed home by Erna Frey, was to bring her client to the table, let him sign over his money and get him his passport to freedom.

  She was not a judge like her mother, or a diplomatic bigot like her father. She was a lawyer and Issa was her mandate and whether this gentle Muslim sage was right, wrong, innocent or guilty, was no part of that brief. Günther had said he did not intend to harm a hair of his head and she believed him. Or so she was telling herself as the four of them descended the fine marble staircase of Brue’s bank, with Brue leading and Abdullah following—why so shaky suddenly?—and Issa and Annabel bringing up the rear.

  Issa was leaning backwards, trailing his right arm for her to take hold of, but only the cloth, only ever the cloth. She could feel the heat of him through it, and she fancied she could feel his pulse beating, but it was probably her own.

  “What’s Abdullah done?” she had asked Erna Frey yet again at lunchtime, hoping that the imminence of action might loosen her tongue.

  “He’s one small part of a big untidy boat, dear,” Erna the impassioned sailor had replied enigmatically. “A bit like a cotter pin. And if you don’t know your way round the boat, about as difficult to find. And about as easy to lose again.”

  Peering past Issa, she could see Dr. Abdullah’s white skullcap bobbing precariously six stairs below her: one small part of an untidy boat.

  The door to the cashier’s office stood open. Brue, father to Georgina, was standing over the computer. Could he work it? If he needs my help, he’ll get it.

  In the van, Bachmann and his crew of two were gripped by the same silence that had descended over the group of four gathered in the cashier’s office. One camera set in the end wall of the cashier’s office provided the fish-eye master shot, a second the close-up of Brue seated at the keyboard, laboriously typing with two fingers the sort codes and account numbers supplied from a printout by Dr. Abdullah and scanned by a third camera that was concealed in the overhead light fitting. On a separate screen relayed from Joint in Berlin, the same list was being reproduced to the faltering rhythm of Brue’s typing. Charities not included in the group that Dr. Abdullah had already submitted for Issa’s approval were highlighted in red.

  “For God’s sake, Michael,” Bachmann pleaded over the direct line to Axelrod. “If not now, when?”

  “Don’t get in your taxi, Günther.”

  “We’ve nailed him, for fuck’s sake! What are they waiting for?”

  “Stay where you are. Don’t go any nearer to the bank till I personally give you the word. That’s an order.”

  No nearer to the bank than who? Arni Mohr? Lantern and his unidentified passenger? But Axelrod had once again rung off. Bachmann stared at the screens, caught Niki’s eye and looked away. An order, he had said. An order who from? Axelrod? Burgdorf? Burgdorf with Martha whispering into his ear? Or a consensus order from a committee that was at war with itself and lived in a capsule where the smell of warm blood never entered?

  His gaze returned sharply to Niki. A black, incongruously old-fashioned telephone that sat on a ledge above the screens was ringing out its homely tone. Niki’s features didn’t flicker. She didn’t raise her eyebrows to him in question, or exhort him or join him in his hesitation. She let the phone go on ringing out, and waited for a sign from him. Bachmann nodded to her: take it. She tipped her head, waiting for the spoken word.

  “Take the call,” he said aloud.

  She lifted the receiver and spoke in a brisk, half-singing voice that was relayed over the van’s speaker system. “Hansa Taxis! Thank you for calling. Pickup where, please.”

  Sounding more relaxed than they had heard him all evening, Brue spelled out the bank’s address at dictation speed.

  “Phone number?”

  Brue gave it.

  “One second, please!” Niki sang and, making a pause to indicate that she was consulting her computer, put her hand over the mouthpiece of the black phone while she again waited for Bachmann’s instruction. For a moment longer, he deliberated. Then, standing up, he picked the seaman’s cap from the hook on the door and clapped it on his head. Then the workman’s jacket, sleeve by sleeve. Then a last tug to make it sit tight on his shoulders. />
  “Tell him I’m on my way,” he said.

  Niki took her hand from the mouthpiece.

  “Ten minutes,” she said, and rang off.

  From the door, Bachmann took a last look at the screens.

  “It’s just go,” he said, to Maximilian and Niki both. “If the green light comes through, that’s all you have to say to me. Go.”

  “What if it doesn’t?” Niki asked for both of them.

  “Doesn’t what?”

  “Doesn’t come through. If the green light doesn’t.”

  “Then you don’t say anything, do you?”

  Brue hated the very sight of the cashier’s office with its wall-to-wall high-tech toys, and not only for reasons of his own incompetence. One of the saddest moments of his life had been standing before the bonfire in his garden in Vienna with his first wife, Sue, one side of him and and Georgie the other, watching the fabled Brue Frères card index go up in smoke. Another battle lost. Another past destroyed. From now on, we’ll be like all the rest.

  Dr. Abdullah smells of baby powder, he noticed as he laboriously touched in one set of figures. Back there in his house, Brue hadn’t noticed it. Perhaps the old boy had put on a double dose for the occasion. He wondered if Annabel had noticed it; when this was over, he’d ask her.

  Abdullah’s white shirt and skullcap were burning bright under the strip lighting, and he was leaning into Brue, nudging up against him with his shoulder while he obligingly pointed with his index finger, now a sort code, now the amount of cash to be electronically transferred.

  To be honest, Abdullah was getting a bit too much into Brue’s airspace for his liking, what with the body contact, and the baby powder and the heat inside the room. But Arab men, Brue had read, made nothing of it: perfectly happy to walk down the street or sit in cafés holding hands with each other, and they can be the butchest chaps on the block. All the same, he wished Abdullah would ease off a bit, he was putting him off his stroke.

  Ismail. Why was he thinking of Ismail suddenly? Maybe because he’d always wished he’d been able to provide Georgie with a brother. That was some boy. If I’d looked like that at his age, I’d have cut quite a swath. Or perhaps I did look like that, but failed to cut a swath. Way it goes. Fatima, off to—where was it?—Balliol?—London School of Economics, that’s it. Georgie never ascended to those heights. Bright as paint, see through you in a flash, nothing gets past old Georgie, but not the kind of mind you can educate. Born educated in a lot of ways. But not a learner in the formal sense, not Georgie.