John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels

by John le Carré

  She came a step nearer. Alexandra wondered whether she was going to pull back the sheets and yank her to her feet. Mother Felicity could be rough as a soldier, for all her aristocratic blood. She was not a bully, but she was blunt and easily provoked.

  “Sasha, you will be late for breakfast. The other girls will look at you and laugh and say that we stupid Russians are always late. Sasha? Sasha, do you want to miss prayers? God will be very angry with you, Sasha. He will be sad and He will cry. He may have to think of ways of punishing you.”

  Sasha, do you want to go to Untersee?

  Alexandra pressed her eyelids closer together. I am six years old and need my sleep, Mother Felicity. God make me five, God make me four. I am three years old and need my sleep, Mother Felicity.

  “Sasha, have you forgotten it is your special day? Sasha, have you forgotten you have your visitor today?”

  God make me two, God make me one, God make me nothing and unborn. No, I have not forgotten my visitor, Mother Felicity. I remembered my visitor before I went to sleep, I dreamt of him, I have thought of nothing else since I woke. But, Mother Felicity, I do not want my visitor today, or any other day. I cannot, cannot live the lie, I don’t know how, and that is why I shall not, shall not, shall not let the day begin!

  Obediently, Alexandra clambered out of bed.

  “There,” said Mother Felicity, and gave her a distracted kiss before bustling off down the corridor, calling “Late again! Late again!” and clapping her hands—“Shoo, shoo!”—just as she would to a flock of silly hens.

  23

  The train journey to Thun took half an hour and from the station Smiley drifted, window-shopping, making little detours. Some guys get heroic and want to die for their countries, he thought. . . . Burning, that touches the stubbornness in people. . . . He wondered what it would touch in himself.

  It was a day of darkening blankness. The few pedestrians were slow shadows against the fog, and lake steamers were frozen in the locks. Occasionally the blankness parted enough to offer him a glimpse of castle, a tree, a piece of city wall. Then swiftly closed over them again. Snow lay in the cobble and in the forks of the knobbly spa trees. The few cars drove with their lights on, their tyres crackling in the slush. The only colours were in shop-windows: gold watches, ski clothes like national flags. “Be there by eleven earliest,” Toby had said; “eleven is already too early, George, they won’t arrive till twelve.” It was only ten-thirty but he wanted the time, he wanted to circle before he settled; time, as Enderby would say, to get his ducks in a row. He entered a narrow street and saw the castle lift directly above him. The arcade became a pavement, then a staircase, then a steep slope, and he kept climbing. He passed an English Tea-Room, an American-Bar, an Oasis Night-Club, each hyphenated, each neon-lit, each a sanitised copy of a lost original. But they could not destroy his love of Switzerland. He entered a square and saw the bank, the very one, and straight across the road the little hotel exactly as Toby had described it, with its café-restaurant on the ground floor and its barracks of rooms above. He saw the yellow mail van parked boldly in the no-parking bay, and he knew it was Toby’s static post. Toby had a lifelong faith in mail vans; he stole them wherever he went, saying nobody noticed or remembered them. He had fitted new number-plates but they looked older than the van. Smiley crossed the square. A notice on the bank door said “OPEN MONDAY TO THURSDAY 07.45–17.00, FRIDAY 07.45–18.15.” “Grigoriev likes the lunch-hour because in Thun nobody wastes his lunch-hour going to the bank,” Toby had explained. “He has completely mistaken quiet for security, George. Empty places, empty times, Grigoriev is so conspicuous he’s embarrassing.” He crossed a foot-bridge. The time was ten to eleven. He crossed the road and headed for the little hotel with its unencumbered view of Grigoriev’s bank. Tension in a vacuum, he thought, listening to the clip of his own feet and the gurgle of water from the gutters; the town was out of season and out of time. Burning, George, that’s always a hazard. How would Karla do it? he wondered. What would the absolutist do which we are not doing ourselves? Smiley could think of nothing, short of straight physical abduction. Karla would collect the operational intelligence, he thought, then he would make his approach—risking the hazard. He pushed the café door and the warm air sighed to him. He made for a window table marked “RESERVED.” “I’m waiting for Mr. Jacobi,” he told the girl. She nodded disapprovingly, missing his eye. The girl had a cloistered pallor, and no expression at all. He ordered café-crême in a glass, but she said that if it came in a glass, he would have to have schnapps with it.

  “Then in a cup,” he said, capitulating.

  Why had he asked for a glass in the first place?

  Tension in a vacuum, he thought again, looking round. Hazard in a blank place.

  The café was modern Swiss antique. Crossed plastic lances hung from stucco pillars. Hidden speakers played harmless music; the confiding voice changed language with each announcement. In a corner, four men played a silent game of cards. He looked out of the window, into the empty square. Rain had started again, turning white to grey. A boy cycled past wearing a red woollen cap, and the cap went down the road like a torch until the fog put it out. The bank’s doors were double, he noticed, opened by electronic eye. He looked at his watch. Eleven-ten. A till murmured. A coffee machine hissed. The card-players were dealing a new hand. Wooden plates hung on the wall: dancing couples in national costume. What else was there to look at? The lamps were wrought iron but the illumination came from a ring of strip lighting round the ceiling and it was very harsh. He thought of Hong Kong, with its Bavarian beer cellars on the fifteenth floor, the same sense of waiting for explanations that would never be supplied. And today is only preparation, he thought: today is not even the approach. He looked at the bank again. Nobody entering, nobody leaving. He remembered waiting all his life for something he could no longer define: call it resolution. He remembered Ann, and their last walk. Resolution in a vacuum. He heard a chair squeak and saw Toby’s hand held out for him, Swiss style, to shake, and Toby’s bright face sparkling as if he’d just come in from a run.

  “The Grigorievs left the house in Elfenau five minutes ago,” he said quietly. “Grigorieva’s driving. Most likely they die before they get here.”

  “And the bicycles?” Smiley said anxiously.

  “Like normal,” said Toby, pulling up a chair.

  “Did she drive last week?”

  “Also the week before. She insists. George, I mean that woman is a monster.” The girl brought him a coffee unbidden. “Last week, she actually hauled Grigoriev out of the driving seat, then drove the car into the gatepost, clipped the wing. Pauli and Canada Bill were laughing so much we thought we’d get static on the whisperers.” He put a friendly hand on Smiley’s shoulder. “Listen, it’s going to be a nice day. Believe me. Nice light, a nice layout, all you got to do is sit back and enjoy the show.”

  The phone rang, and the girl called, “Herr Jacobi!” Toby walked easily to the counter. She handed him the receiver and blushed at something he whispered to her. From the kitchen, the chef came in with his small son: “Herr Jacobi!” The chrysanthemums on Smiley’s table were plastic but someone had put water in the vase.

  “Ciao,” Toby called cheerfully into the phone, and came back. “Everyone in position, everyone happy,” he announced with satisfaction. “Eat something, okay? Enjoy yourself, George. This is Switzerland.”

  Toby stepped gaily into the street. Enjoy the show, thought Smiley. That’s right. I wrote it, Toby produced it, and all I can do now is watch. No, he thought, correcting himself: Karla wrote it, and sometimes that worried him quite a lot.

  Two girls in hiking kit were entering the double doors of the bank. A moment later and Toby had followed them in. He’s packing the bank, thought Smiley. He’ll man every counter two-deep. After Toby, a young couple, arm in arm, then a stubby woman with two shopping bags. The yellow mail van had not budged: nobody moves a mail van. He noticed a public phone-box, and two fi
gures huddled into it, perhaps sheltering from the rain. Two people are less conspicuous than one, they liked to say at Sarratt, and three are less conspicuous than a pair. An empty tour coach passed. A clock struck twelve and, right on cue, a black Mercedes lurched out of the fog, its dipped headlights glittering on the cobble. Bumping clumsily onto the kerb, it stopped outside the bank, six feet from Toby’s mail van. Soviet Embassy car numbers end with 73, Toby had said. She drops him and drives round the block a couple of times till he comes out. But today, in the filthy weather, the Grigorievs had apparently decided to flout the parking laws and Karla’s laws too, and rely on their CD plates to keep them out of trouble. The passenger door opened and a stocky figure in a dark suit and spectacles scampered for the bank entrance, carrying a brief-case. Smiley had just time to record the thick grey hair and rimless spectacles of Grigoriev’s photographs before a lorry masked his view. When it moved on, Grigoriev had disappeared, but Smiley had a clear sight of the formidable bulk of Grigorieva herself, with her red hair and learner-driver scowl, seated alone at the steering-wheel. George, believe me, that’s a very distorting woman. Seeing her now, her set jaw, her bullish glare, Smiley was able for the first time, if cautiously, to share Toby’s optimism. If fear was the essential concomitant of a successful burn, Grigorieva was certainly someone to be afraid of.

  In his mind’s eye Smiley now imagined the scene that was playing inside the bank, exactly as he and Toby had planned. The bank was a small one, a team of seven could flood it. Toby had opened a private account for himself: Herr Jacobi, a few thousand francs. Toby would take one counter and occupy it with small transactions. The foreign-exchange desk was also no problem. Two of Toby’s people, armed with a spread of currencies, could keep them on the run for minutes. He imagined the hubbub of Toby’s hilarity, causing Grigoriev to raise his voice. He imagined the two girl hikers doing a double act, one rucksack dumped carelessly at Grigoriev’s feet, recording whatever he happened to say to the cashier; and the hidden cameras snapping away from toggle bags, rucksacks, brief-cases, bedrolls, or wherever they were stowed. “It’s the same as the firing-squad, George,” Toby explained when Smiley said he was worried about the shutter noise. “Everybody hears the click except the quarry.”

  The bank doors slid open. Two businessmen emerged, adjusting their raincoats as if they had been to the lavatory. The stubby woman with the two shopping bags followed them out, and Toby came after her, chatting volubly to the girl hikers. Next came Grigoriev himself. Oblivious of everything, he hopped into the black Mercedes and planted a kiss on his wife’s cheek before she had time to turn away. He saw her mouth show criticism of him, and Grigoriev’s placatory smile as he replied. Yes, Smiley thought, he certainly has something to be guilty about; yes, he thought, remembering the watchers’ affection for him; yes, I understand that too. But the Grigorievs did not leave; not yet. Grigoriev had hardly closed his door before a tall, vaguely familiar woman in a green Loden coat came striding down the pavement, tapped fiercely on the passenger window, and delivered herself of what seemed to be a homily upon the sins of parking on pavements. Grigoriev was embarrassed, Grigorieva leaned across him and bawled at her—Smiley even heard the word Diplomat in heavy German rise above the sound of the traffic—but the woman remained where she was, her handbag under her arm, still swearing at them as they drove away. She’ll have snapped them in the car with the bank doors in the background, he thought. They photograph through perforations: half a dozen pin-holes and the lens can see perfectly.

  Toby had returned and was sitting beside him at the table. He had lit a small cigar. Smiley could feel him trembling like a dog after the chase.

  “Grigoriev drew his normal ten thousand,” he said. His English had become a little rash. “Same as last week, same as the week before. We got it, George, the whole scene. The boys are very happy, the girls too. George, I mean they are fantastic. Completely the best. I never had so good. What do you think of him?”

  Surprised to be asked, Smiley actually laughed.

  “He’s certainly henpecked,” he agreed.

  “And a nice fellow, know what I mean? Reasonable. I think he’ll act reasonable too. That’s my view, George. The boys are the same.”

  “Where do the Grigorievs go from here?”

  A sharp male voice interrupted him. “Herr Jacobi!”

  But it was only the chef, holding up a glass of schnapps to drink Toby’s health. Toby returned the toast.

  “Lunch at the station buffet, first-class,” he continued. “Grigorieva takes pork chop and chips, Grigoriev steak, a glass of beer. Maybe they take also a couple of vodkas.”

  “And after lunch?”

  Toby gave a brisk nod, as if the question required no elucidation.

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s where they go. George, cheer up. That guy will fold, believe me. You never had a wife like that. And Natasha’s a cute kid.” He lowered his voice. “Karla’s his meal ticket, George. You don’t always understand the simple things. You think she’d let him give up the new apartment? The Mercedes?”

  Alexandra’s weekly visitor arrived, always punctual, always at the same time, which was on Fridays after rest. At one o’clock came lunch, which on Fridays consisted of cold meat and Rösti and Kompott of apples or perhaps plums, depending on the season, but she couldn’t eat it and sometimes she made a show of sicking it up or running to the lavatory or calling Felicity-Felicity and complaining, in the basest language, about the quality of the food. This never failed to annoy her. The hostel took great pride in growing its own fruit, and the hostel’s brochures in Felicity-Felicity’s office contained many photographs of fruit and blossom and Alpine streams and mountains indiscriminately, as if God, or the sisters, or Dr. Rüedi, had grown the whole lot specially for the inmates. After lunch came an hour’s rest and on Fridays this daily hour was Alexandra’s worst, her worst of the whole week, when she had to lie on the white iron bedstead and pretend she was relaxing, while she prayed to any God that would have her that Uncle Anton might be run over or have a heart attack, or, best of all, cease to exist—locked away with her own past and her own secrets and her own name of Tatiana. She thought of his rimless spectacles and in her imagination she drove them into his head and out the other side, taking his eyes with them, so that instead of his soggy gaze to stare at, she would see straight through him to the world outside.

  And now at last rest had ended, and Alexandra stood in the empty dining hall in her best frock, watching the lodge through the window while two of the Marthas scoured the tiled floor. She felt sick. Crash, she thought. Crash on your silly bicycle. Other girls had visitors, but they came on Saturdays and none had Uncle Anton, few had men of any sort; it was mainly wan aunts and bored sisters who attended. And none got Felicity-Felicity’s study to sit in, either, with the door closed and nobody present but the visitor; that was a privilege which Alexandra and Uncle Anton enjoyed alone, as Sister Beatitude never tired of pointing out. But Alexandra would have traded all of those privileges, and a good few more besides, for the privilege of not having Uncle Anton’s visit at all.

  The lodge gates opened and she began trembling on purpose, shaking her hands from the wrists as if she had seen a mouse, or a spider, or a naked man aroused for her. A tubby figure in a brown suit began cycling down the drive. He was not a natural cyclist, she could tell from his self-consciousness. He had not cycled here from any distance, bringing a breath of outside. It could be baking hot, but Uncle Anton neither sweated nor burned. It could be raining heavily, but Uncle Anton’s mackintosh and hat, when he reached the main door, would scarcely be wet, and his shoes were never muddied. Only when the giant snowfall had come, three weeks ago, or call it years, and put a metre’s thickness of extra padding round the dead castle, did Uncle Anton look anything like a real man living in the real elements; in his thick knee boots and anorak and fur hat, skirting the pine trees as he plodded up the track, he stepped straight out of the memories she was never to mention. And when h
e had embraced her, calling her “my little daughter,” slapping his big gloves down on Felicity-Felicity’s highly polished table, she felt such a surge of kinship and hope that she would catch herself smiling for days afterwards.

  “He was so warm,” she confided to Sister Beatitude in her bit of French. “He held me like a friend! Why does the snow make him so fond?”

  But today there was only sleet and fog and big floppy flakes that would not settle on the yellow gravel.

  He comes in a car, Sasha—Sister Beatitude told her once—with a woman, Sasha. Beatitude had seen them. Twice. Watched them, naturally. They had two bicycles strapped to the roof of the car, upside down, and the woman did the driving, a big strong woman, a bit like Mother Felicity but not so Christian, with hair red enough to scare a bull. When they reached the edge of the village, they parked the car behind Andreas Gertsch’s barn, and Uncle Anton untied his bicycle and rode it to the lodge. But the woman stayed in the car and smoked, and read Schweizer Illustrierte, sometimes scowling at the mirror, and her bicycle never left the roof; it stayed there like an upturned sow while she read her magazine! And guess what! Uncle Anton’s bicycle was illegal! The bicycle—as a good Swiss, Sister Beatitude had checked the point quite naturally—Uncle Anton’s bicycle had no plaque, no licence, he was a criminal at large, and so was the woman, though she was probably too fat to ride it!

  But Alexandra cared nothing for illegal bicycles. It was the car she wanted to know about. What type? Rich or poor? What colour, and above all, where did it come from? Was it from Moscow, from Paris, where? But Sister Beatitude was a country girl and simple, and in the world beyond the mountains most foreign places were alike to her. Then what letters were on the number-plate, for goodness’ sake, silly? Alexandra had cried. Sister Beatitude had not noticed such matters. Sister Beatitude shook her head like the dumb dairymaid she was. Bicycles and cows she understood. Cars were beyond her mark.