John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels

by John le Carré

  The wealthier poor, if they had no roof, built themselves giddy crow’s-nests, two feet by eight, on home-made cantilevers driven into their drawing-room floors. Deathwish maintained there were suicides all the time. That was what grabbed him about the place, he said. When he wasn’t fornicating, he liked to hang out of the window with his Nikon, hoping to catch one, but he never did. Down to the right lay the graveyard, which Deathwish said was bad luck and knocked a few dollars off the rent.

  While he was eating, the phone rang again.

  “What story?” said Luke.

  “Wanchai whores have hijacked Big Moo,” Jerry said. “Taken him to Stonecutters Island and are holding him to ransom.”

  Other than Luke, it tended to be Deathwish’s women who called, but they didn’t want Jerry instead. The shower had no curtain, so Jerry had to squat in a tiled corner, like a boxer, in order not to flood the bathroom. Returning to the bedroom, he put on his suit, grabbed a bread knife, and counted twelve wood blocks from the corner of the room. With the knife blade he dug up the thirteenth. In a hollowed recess cut into the tar-like under-surface lay one plastic bag containing a roll of American bills of large and small denominations; one escape passport, driving licence, and air-travel card in the name of Worrell, contractor; and one small-arm, which, in defiance of every Circus regulation under the sun, Jerry had procured from Deathwish, who did not care to take it on his travels. From this treasure chest he extracted five one-hundred-dollar bills and, leaving the rest untouched, replaced the wood block.

  He dropped the camera and two spare cassettes into his pockets, then, whistling, stepped onto the tiny landing. His front door was guarded by a white-painted grille which would have delayed a decent burglar for ninety seconds. Jerry had picked the lock when he had nothing better to do, and that was how long it took him. He pressed the button for the lift, and it arrived full of Chinese, who all got out. It happened every time; Jerry was just too big for them, too ugly, and too foreign.

  From scenes like these, thought Jerry, with willed cheerfulness as he plunged into the pitch darkness of the city-bound bus, St. George’s children go forth to save the Empire.

  Time spent in preparation is never time wasted runs the Nursery’s laborious maxim on counter-surveillance.

  Sometimes Jerry became Sarratt man and nothing else. By the ordinary logic of things he could have gone to his destination directly; he had every right. By the ordinary logic of things there was no reason on earth, particularly after their revelries of last night, why Jerry should not have taken a cab to the front door, barged gaily in, bearded his new-found bosom friend, and be done with it. But this was not the ordinary logic of things, and in the Sarratt folklore Jerry was approaching the operational moment of truth: the moment when the back door closed on him with a bang, after which there was no way out but forward. The moment when everyone of his twenty years of tradecraft rose in him and shouted “caution.” If he was walking into a trap, this was where the trap was sprung. Even if they knew his route in advance, still the static posts would be staked out ahead of him, in cars and behind windows, and the surveillance teams locked on to him in case of fumble or branch lines. If there was ever a last opportunity to test the water before he jumped, it was now. Last night, around the haunts, he could have been watched by a hundred local angels and still not have known for certain he was their quarry. But here he could weave and count the shadows; here, in theory at least, he had a chance to know.

  He glanced at his watch. Exactly twenty minutes to go, and even at Chinese rather than European pace he needed seven. So he sauntered, but never idly. In other countries, in almost any place in the world outside Hong Kong, he would have given himself far longer. Behind the Curtain, Sarratt lore said, half a day, preferably more. He’d have posted himself a letter, just so that he could walk half-way down the street, stop dead at the post-box, and double back, checking the feet that faltered and the faces that ducked away; looking for the classic formations, a two this side, a three across the road, a front tail who floats ahead of you.

  But paradoxically, though this morning he zealously went through the steps, another side of him knew he was wasting his time; knew that in the East a round-eye could live all his life in the same block and never have the smallest notion of the secret tic-tac on his doorstep. At every corner of each teeming street he entered, men waited, lounged, and watched, strenuously employed in doing nothing. The beggar who suddenly stretched his arms and yawned; the crippled shoeshine boy who dived for his escaping feet and, having missed them, drove the backs of his brushes together in a crack; the old hag selling bi-racial pornography who cupped her hand and shrieked one word into the bamboo scaffolding above her: though in his mind Jerry recorded them, they were as obscure to him today as they had been when he first came East—twenty?—Lord help us, twenty-five years ago. Pimps? Numbers boys? Dope pedlars pushing the coloured twists of candy paper—“Yellow two dollar, blue five dollar? You chase dragon, like quick-shot?” Or were they ordering up a bowl of rice from the food stalls across the way? In the East, sport, survival is knowing you don’t know.

  He was using the reflections in the marble facing of the shops: shelves of amber, shelves of jade, credit-card signs, electrical gadgets, and pyramids of black luggage nobody ever seemed to carry. At Cartier’s, a beautiful girl was laying pearls on a velvet tray, putting them to bed for the day. Sensing his presence, she lifted her eyes to him; and in Jerry, despite his preoccupation, the old Adam briefly stirred. But one glance at his shambler’s grin and his shabby suit and his buckskin boots told her all she needed to know: Jerry Westerby was not a potential customer. There was news of fresh battles, Jerry noticed, passing a news-stand. The Chinese-language press carried front-page photographs of decimated children, screaming mothers, and troops in American-style helmets. Whether Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Korea, or the Philippines, Jerry couldn’t tell. The red characters of the headline had the effect of splashed blood. Maybe Deathwish was in luck.

  Thirsty from last night’s booze, Jerry cut through the Mandarin and plunged into the twilight of the Captain’s Bar, but he only drank water in the Gents. Back in the lobby, he bought a copy of Time but didn’t like the way the plain-clothes crushers looked at him, and left. Joining the crowds again, he sauntered toward the post office, built 1911 and since pulled down, but in those days a rare and hideous antique made beautiful by the clumsy concrete of the buildings round it; then he doubled through the arches into Pedder Street, passing under a green corrugated bridge where mailbags trailed like turkeys on the gibbet. Doubling yet again, he crossed to the Connaught Centre, using the foot-bridge to thin out the field.

  In the glittering steel lobby, a peasant woman was scrubbing out the teeth of a stationary escalator with a wire brush, and on the promenade a group of Chinese students gazed in respectful silence at Henry Moore’s “Oval with Points.” Looking back, Jerry glimpsed the brown dome of the old law courts dwarfed by the Hilton’s beehive walls: Regina versus Westerly, he thought, “and the prisoner is charged with blackmail, corruption, pretended affection, and a few others we shall dream up before the day is out, my Lord.” The harbour was alive with shipping, most of it small. Beyond it, the New Territories, pocked with excavation, shoved vainly against muddy clouds of smog. At their feet, new godowns, and factory chimneys belching brown smoke.

  Retracing his steps, he passed the big Scottish business houses: Jardines, Swire, old opium money washed moderately clean. Must be a holiday, he thought. Ours or theirs? In Statue Square a leisurely carnival was taking place, with fountains, beach umbrellas, Coca-Cola sellers, and about half a million Chinese who stood in groups or shuffled past him like a barefoot army, darting glances at his size. Loudspeakers, building drills, wailing music. He crossed Jackson Road and the noise level fell a little.

  Ahead of him, on a patch of perfect English lawn, fifteen white-clad figures lounged. The all-day cricket match had just begun. At the receiving end, a lank, disdainful figure in an outd
ated cap was fiddling with his batting gloves. Pausing, Jerry watched, grinning in fond familiarity. The bowler bowled. Medium pace, bit of inswing, dead wicket. The batsman played a gracious stroke, missed, and took a leg-bye in slow motion. Jerry foresaw a long dull innings to no applause. He wondered who was playing whom, and decided it was the usual Peak mafia playing itself. On the leg boundary, across the road, rose the Bank of China, a vast and fluted cenotaph festooned with crimson slogans loving Mao. At its base, granite lions looked on sightlessly while flocks of white-shirted Chinese photographed each other against their flanks.

  But the bank which Jerry had his eye on stood directly behind the bowler’s arm. A Union Jack was posted at its pinnacle, an armoured van more confidently at its base. The doors stood open and their burnished surfaces glittered like fool’s gold. While Jerry continued his shambling arc toward it, a gang of helmeted guards, escorted by tall Indians with elephant guns, emerged suddenly from the interior blackness and nursed three black money boxes down the wide steps as if they held the Host itself. The armoured van drove away, and for a sickening moment Jerry had visions of the bank’s doors closing after it.

  Not logical visions. Not nervous visions, either. Merely that for a moment Jerry expected fumble with the same trained pessimism with which a gardener foresees drought or an athlete a foolish sprain on the eve of a great match; or a fieldman with twenty years on the clock foresees just one more unpredictable frustration. But the doors stayed open, and Jerry veered away to the left. Give the guards time to relax, he thought. Shepherding the money will have made them jumpy. They’ll see too sharply, they’ll remember things.

  Turning, he began a slow, dreamy stroll toward the Hong Kong Club: Wedgwood porticoes, striped blinds, and a smell of stale English food at the doorway. Cover is not a lie, they tell you. Cover is what you believe. Cover is who you are. On Saturday morning Mr. Gerald Westerby, the not very distinguished journalist, heads for a favourite watering-hole. . . . On the Club steps, Jerry paused, patted his pockets, then turned full circle and struck out purposefully for his destination, making two long sides of the square as he watched for the last time for the slurring feet and turned-down glances. Mr. Gerald Westerby, discovering he is short of weekend cash, decides on a quick visit to the bank. Elephant guns slung carelessly at their shoulders, the Indian guards studied him without interest.

  Except, Mr. Gerald Westerby doesn’t!

  Cursing himself for being a damned fool, Jerry remembered that the time was after twelve o’clock, and that at twelve sharp the banking halls were closed. After twelve it was upstairs only, and that was the way he had planned it.

  Relax, he thought. You’re thinking too much. Don’t think: do. In the beginning was the deed. Who had said that to him once? Old George, for God’s sake, quoting Goethe. Coming from him, of all people!

  As he began the run-in, a wave of dismay hit him, and he knew it was fear. He was hungry. He was tired. Why had George left him alone like this? Why did he have to do everything for himself? Before the fall they’d have posted baby-sitters ahead of him—even someone inside the bank—just to watch for rain. They’d have had a reception team to skim the take almost before he left the building, and an escape car in case he had to slip away in his socks. And in London, he thought sweetly, talking himself down, they’d have had dear old Bill Haydon—wouldn’t they?—passing it all to the Russians, bless him.

  Thinking this, Jerry willed upon himself an extraordinary hallucination, quick as the flash of a camera, and as slow to fade. God had answered his prayers, he thought. The old days were here again, after all, and the street was alive with a grand-slam supporting cast. Behind him a blue Peugeot had pulled up and two bullish round-eyes sat in it studying a Happy Valley race-card. Radio aerial, the works. From his left, American matrons sauntered by, laden with guidebooks and a positive obligation to observe. And from the bank itself, as he advanced swiftly on its portals, a couple of solemn money-men emerged, wearing just that grim stare watchers sometimes use in order to discourage an enquiring eye.

  Senility, Jerry told himself. You’re over the hill, sport, no question. Dotage and funk have brought you to your knees. He bounded up the steps, jaunty as a cock robin on a hot spring day.

  The lobby was big as a railway station, the canned music as martial. The banking area was barred and he saw no one lurking, not even a phantom stand-off man. The lift was a gold cage with a spittoon filled with sand for cigarettes, but by the ninth floor the largeness of downstairs had all gone. Space was money. A narrow cream corridor led to an empty reception desk. Jerry strolled easily, marking the emergency exit and the service lift, which the bearleaders had already charted for him in case he had to do a duck-dive. Queer how they knew so much, he thought, with so few resources; must have dug out an architect’s drawing from somewhere.

  On the counter, one teak sign reading “Trustee Department Enquiries.” Beside it, one grimy paperback on fortune-telling by the stars, open and much annotated. But no receptionist, because Saturdays are different. On Saturdays you get the best ride, they had said. He looked cheerfully round, nothing on his conscience. A second corridor ran the width of the building, office doors to the left, soggy vinyl-covered partitions to the right. From behind the partitions came the slow pat of an electric typewriter as someone typed a legal document, and the slow Saturday singsong of Chinese secretaries without a lot to do except wait for lunch and the free afternoon.

  There were four glazed doors with penny-sized eyeholes for looking in or out. Jerry ambled down the corridor, glancing through each as if glancing were his recreation, hands in pockets, a slightly daft smile aloft. The fourth on the left, they had said, one door, one window. A clerk walked past him, then a secretary on dinky, clicking heels, but Jerry, though scruffy, was European and wore a suit, and neither challenged him.

  “Morning, gang,” he muttered, and they wished him “Good day, sir,” in return.

  There were iron bars at the end of the corridor and iron bars over the windows. A blue night-light was fixed to the ceiling, he supposed for security but he didn’t know: fire, space protection—he didn’t know, the bearleaders hadn’t mentioned it, and stinks and bangs were not his thing. The first room was an office, unoccupied except for a few dusty sports trophies on the window-sill and an embroidered coat of arms of the bank athletics club on the pegboard wall. He passed a pile of apple boxes marked “Trustee.” They seemed to be full of deeds and wills. The cheese-paring tradition of the old China trading houses died hard, apparently. A notice on the wall read “Private” and another “By Appointment Only.”

  The second door gave on to a corridor and a small archive, which was likewise empty. The third was a “Directors Only” lavatory ; the fourth had a staff notice-board mounted directly beside it and a red light bulb on the jamb and an important name-plate in Letraset saying “J. Frost, Deputy Chief Trustee, Appointments Only, Do Not Enter When Light Is On.” But the light was not on, and the penny-sized eyehole showed one man at his desk alone, and the only company he had was a heap of files, and scrolls of costly paper bound in green silk on the English legal pattern, and two closed-circuit television sets for the Stock Exchange prices, dead, and the harbour view, mandatory to the higher-executive image, sliced into pencil-grey lines by mandatory Venetian blinds. One shiny, podgy, prosperous little man in a sporty linen suit of Robin Hood green, working far too conscientiously for a Saturday. Moisture on his brow, black crescents beneath his arms, and—to Jerry’s informed eye—the leaden immobility of a man recovering very slowly from debauch.

  A corner room, thought Jerry. One door only, this one. One shove and you’re away. He took a last glance up and down the empty corridor. Jerry Westerby on stage, he thought. If you can’t talk, dance. The door gave immediately. He stepped gaily inside wearing his best shy smile.

  “Gosh, Frostie, hullo, super. Am I early or late? Sport—I say—most extraordinary thing back there. In the corridor—nearly fell over them—lot of apple boxes fu
ll of legal bumf. ‘Who’s Frostie’s client?’ I asked myself. ‘Cox’s Orange Pippins? Or Beauty of Bath?’ Beauty of Bath, knowing you. Thought it was rather a giggle, after last night’s high jinks round the parlours.”

  All of which, feeble though it might have sounded to the astonished Frost, got him into the room with the door closed, fast, while his broad back masked the only eyehole and his soul sent prayers of gratitude to Sarratt for a soft landing, and prayers of preservation to his Maker.

  A moment of theatricality followed Jerry’s entry. Frost lifted his head slowly, keeping his eyes half shut, as if the light were hurting them, which it probably was. Spotting Jerry, he winced and looked away, then looked at him again to confirm that he was flesh. Then he wiped his brow with his handkerchief.

  “Christ,” he said. “It’s his nibs. What the hell are you doing here, you disgusting aristocrat?”

  To which Jerry, still at the door, responded with another large grin, and a lifting of one hand in a Red Indian salute, while he marked down the worry points precisely: the two telephones, the grey box for inter-office speaking, and the wardrobe safe with a keyhole but no combination lock.

  “How did they let you in? I suppose you flashed your Honourable at them. What do you mean by it, barging in here?” Not half as displeased as his words suggested, Frost had left his desk and was waddling down the room. “This isn’t a cathouse, you know. This is a respectable bank. More or less.”

  Arriving at Jerry’s considerable bulk, he stuck his hands on his hips and gazed at him, shaking his head in wonder. Then patted Jerry’s arm, then prodded him in the stomach, amid more shaking of the head.

  “You alcoholic, dissolute, lecherous, libidinous . . .”

  “Newshound,” Jerry prompted.

  Frost was not above forty, but nature had already printed on him the crueller marks of littleness, such as a floor-walker’s fussiness about the cuffs and fingers, and a moistening of his lips and pursing of them all at once. What redeemed him was a transparent sense of fun, which leapt to his damp cheeks like sunlight.