The Innocent

by Ian Mcewan

  “Two. This one-hundred-and-twenty-dollar hour is going to be one lonely dude playing the bagpipes. Leonard, bagpipes is not everyone’s idea of a good time. It’s not anyone’s, for Chrissakes. Do you mean we’re going to have to sit there for one hour and listen to this howling shit?”

  Sometimes a white line flashed across the hole. Leonard mumbled into it, “We could dance.”

  In a theatrical gesture, Glass clamped his hand over his eyes. Leonard did not look up from his hole. The Beetle held its course.

  “Third. There are going to be some intelligence brass there, Leonard, including some of your own guys. D’you know what they’re going to say?”

  “When everyone’s had a few drinks,” Leonard said, “there’s nothing quite like a lament.”

  “Lament is right. They’re gonna say, Hmm, American food, German wines and Scottish entertainment. Is it Scotland in Gold? Do we have a special relationship with Scotland? Did Scotland join NATO?”

  “There was a singing dog,” Leonard muttered without lifting his head. “But there again, it was English.”

  Glass had not heard. “Leonard, you’ve screwed up, and I want you to fix it this morning, while there’s still time. We’ll drop this equipment off, then I’m going to drive you up to the Scots Greys barracks in Spandau. You’re going to talk to the sergeant, cancel the piper and get our money back. Okay?”

  They were being overtaken by a convoy of trucks, so Glass did not, notice that his passenger was giggling.

  The antenna cluster on the warehouse roof was visible. Glass was slowing down further. “These guys are going to need to see what we’ve got here. They can look, but they don’t need to know what it is, okay?”

  The giggling fit had passed. “Oh God,” Leonard said.

  They stopped. Glass was winding down his window as the sentry came toward them. It was not a face they recognized.

  “This one’s new,” Glass said. “And his friend. That means it’s going to take longer.”

  The face that filled the window was pink and large; the eyes were eager. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Morning, soldier.” Glass handed both passes to him.

  The sentry straightened and spent a minute examining them. Glass said without lowering his voice, “These guys are trained to be keen. They have to do six months’ duty before they ease off some.”

  It was true. Howie might have recognized them and waved them through.

  The eighteen-year-old face was in the window again. The passes were handed back. “Sir, I need to look in the trunk, and I have to see inside that bag.”

  Glass got out of the car and opened the front. He heaved the case onto the road and knelt by it. From where he sat, Leonard watched Glass unbuckling the straps. He had ten seconds or so left. He could, after all, just run off down the road. It could hardly make matters worse. He got out of the ear. The second sentry, who looked even younger than the first, had come up behind Glass and was touching him on the shoulder.

  “Sir, we’d like to see it in the guard room.”

  Glass was making a great show of arguing with no one. In security matters, his enthusiastic compliance was intended to set an example. One of the straps was already undone. Ignoring it, he hugged the whole case to his chest and staggered with it to the hut by the side of the road. The first soldier had opened Glass’s door, and now he stood back politely to allow Leonard to drag the other case out. The two sentries followed him as he carried the case with two hands to the hut.

  There was a small wooden table with a telephone on it. Glass put the telephone on the floor and with a squeezed-out grunt lifted his case onto the table. There was barely room for four of them in the hut. Leonard knew Glass well enough to recognize that all the straining and heaving had made him bad-tempered. He stood back, breathing noisily through his nose and stroking his beard. He had carried the case over; now it was up to the sentries to open it. And if they failed in their procedures, they could be sure of being reported.

  Leonard set his case by the table. He had it in mind to wait outside while the examination took place. After his dream, he did not want to see any more, and there was a good chance one of the young sentries was going to throw up in the confined space. Perhaps all three of them would. He stood in the doorway, however. It was hard not to watch. His life was about to change, and he felt no particular emotion. He had done his best, and he knew he was not an especially bad person. The first soldier had set his rifle down and was unbuckling the other strap. Leonard watched on, as though from a great distance. The world that had never much cared for Otto Eckdorf was about to explode with concern at his death. The soldier raised the lid and they all looked in at the covered pieces. Everything was packed in tight, but it did not much look like electronics. Even Glass could not conceal his curiosity. The smell of glue and rubber was rich, like pipe smoke. From nowhere, Leonard had an idea, and he acted without premeditation. He pushed his way to the table just as the sentry was reaching out to take hold of one of the pieces.

  Leonard held the young man’s wrist while he spoke. “If this search is going to proceed, then there’s something I have to say to Mr. Glass in private. There are serious security implications, and I won’t need more than a minute.”

  The soldier withdrew his hand and turned to Glass. Leonard closed the case.

  Glass said, “Is that okay, boys? One minute?”

  “That’s fine,” one of them said.

  Glass followed Leonard out of the hut. They stood by the red-and-white-striped barrier.

  “I’m sorry, Bob,” Leonard said. “I didn’t know they were going to go right into the packing.”

  “They’re new, that’s all. And you shouldn’t have taken the stuff out of here.”

  Leonard relaxed against the barrier. He had nothing to lose. “There were reasons for that. But listen. I’m going to have to break with procedure to protect a more important matter. I have to tell you now that I have level four clearance here.”

  Glass seemed to come to attention. “Level four?”

  “It’s largely technical,” Leonard said, and reached for his wallet. “I’m level four, and those chaps are messing about with highly sensitive material. I want you to phone MacNamee at the Olympic Stadium. This is his card. Get him to call the duty officer here. I want this search called off. What’s in those cases is beyond classification. Tell MacNamee that—he’ll know what I’m talking about.”

  Glass asked no questions. He turned and walked quickly back to the hut. Leonard heard him tell the sentries to close and secure the case. One of them must have queried the order, for Glass shouted, “Jump to it, soldier! This is a lot bigger than you!”

  While Glass was on the phone, Leonard wandered off along the roadside. It was turning into a fine spring morning. There were yellow and white flowers growing in the ditch. There were no plants he could identify. Five minutes later Glass came out of the hut, followed by the soldiers carrying the cases. Leonard and Glass stood back while the soldiers loaded the luggage into the car. Then they raised the barrier and stood at attention as the car went through.

  Glass said, “The duty officer gave those poor guys hell. And MacNamee gave the duty officer hell. That’s quite a secret you’re carrying around.”

  “It really is,” Leonard said.

  Glass parked the car and switched the engine off. The duty officer and two soldiers were waiting for them by the double doors. Before they got out Glass put his hand on Leonard’s shoulder and said, “You’ve come quite a way since your cardboard-burning days.”

  They got out. Leonard said over the Beetle’s roof, “It’s an honor to be involved.”

  The soldiers took the cases. The duty officer wanted to know where they were to be taken, and Leonard suggested the tunnel. He wanted to go down there and be soothed. But it was not quite the same, making the descent with Glass and the duty officer at his side, and the two soldiers coming up behind. Once they were down the main shaft, the bags were loaded onto a littl
e wooden truck, which the soldiers pushed. They passed the barbed-wire coils that marked the beginning of the Russian sector. A few minutes later they all squeezed past the amplifiers, and Leonard showed the place under the desk where the cases were to be stowed.

  Glass said, “I’ll be damned. I’ve passed those bags a hundred times and never thought of looking inside.”

  “Don’t start now,” Leonard said.

  The duty officer put a wire seal on both cases. “To be opened,” he said, “on your authority alone.”

  They went up to the canteen for coffee. Leonard’s level four revelation had conferred a kind of promotion. When Glass mentioned going out to Spandau to find the Scots Greys sergeant, it was the easiest thing in the world for Leonard to put his hand to his forehead.

  “I can’t face it. I’ve been up two nights in a row. Tomorrow, perhaps.”

  And Glass said, “Don’t worry. I’ll do it myself.”

  He offered Leonard a ride home. But Leonard was not certain where he wanted to be. He had new problems now. He wanted to be where he could think about them. So Glass dropped him off on the way into town, at the Grenzallee station at the end of the U-Bahn line.

  For several minutes after Glass had left, Leonard strolled around the ticket hall, exulting in his freedom. He had been carrying those cases for months, for years. He sat down on a bench. They weren’t here now, but he had not disposed of them yet. He sat and stared at the welts on his hands. The temperature in the tunnel was eighty degrees, perhaps more under the desk by the amplifiers. In two days or less the cases would be stinking. It might be possible to get them out with some kind of elaborate level four story, but even now MacNamee would be on his way to the warehouse from the stadium, bursting to know just what equipment Leonard had managed to get his hands on. It was a mess. He had set out to leave the cases in the public anonymity of a railway station with international connections, and he had ended up leaving them in a confined and private space where they were entirely identified with him. It was a terrible mess. He sat trying to think his way through the problem, but all that came was what a mess it was.

  The bench he was on faced the ticket office. He let his head drop. He was wearing a good suit and a tie and his shoes were shiny. No one could take him for a tramp. He drew his feet up and slept for two hours. Though his sleep was deep, he was aware of the footsteps of passengers echoing in the hall, and it was comforting somehow to be safely asleep among these strangers.

  He woke in a panic. It was ten past noon. MacNamee would be at the warehouse looking for him. If the government scientist was impatient or careless, he might even try to use his authority to have the seals broken on the cases. Leonard stood up. He had only an hour or two in which to act. He needed to talk to someone. It pained him to think of Maria. He could not bear to go near her flat. The bench slats had cut into his buttocks, and his suit was creased. He wandered toward the ticket office. It was a characteristic of his tiredness that he did not make plans. Instead he found himself beginning to follow them through, as though under orders. He bought a ticket to Alexanderplatz, in the Russian sector. There was a train waiting to leave, and one came in immediately at Hermannplatz, where he had to change. This ease confirmed him in his intention. He was being drawn to it—to a huge, an appalling solution. He had a ten-minute walk from Alexanderplatz along Königstrasse. At one point he had to stop and ask the way.

  The place was larger than he had imagined it. He had been expecting something narrow and intimate, with high-backed booths for whispering in. But the Café Prag was vast, with a remote and grubby ceiling and scores of small round tables. He chose a conspicuous place and ordered a coffee. Class had once told him that you only had to wait until one of the Hundert Mark Jungen came across. The place was filling up for lunch. There were plenty of serious-looking types at the tables. They could just as easily have been local office workers as spies from half-a-dozen nations.

  He passed the time drawing a map in pencil on a paper napkin. Fifteen minutes went by, and nothing happened. It was, Leonard decided, one of those Berlin stories. The Café Prag was said to be a stock exchange of unofficial information. In fact it was a large, dull East Berlin café where the coffee was weak and lukewarm. He was on his third cup and feeling sick. He had not eaten in two days. He was searching his pockets for East marks when a young man, face ablaze with freckles, sat down opposite him.

  “Vous êtes français.” It was a statement of fact.

  “No,” Leonard said, “English.”

  The man was about Leonard’s age. He had his hand up for a waiter. He seemed to feel no need to explain or apologize for his error. It was simply an opening line. He ordered two coffees and extended a speckled hand across the table. “Hans.”

  Leonard shook it and said, “Henry.” It was his father’s name and felt less like a lie.

  Hans took out a pack of Camels, offered one and was rather self-conscious, Leonard thought, with his Zippo. Hans’s English was faultless. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

  “I haven’t been here before.”

  The coffee that did not quite taste of coffee arrived, and when the waiter had left them Hans said, “So, you like it here in Berlin?”

  “Yes, I do,” Leonard said. He had not imagined there would have to be small talk, but it was probably the custom. He wanted to get things right, so he asked politely, “Did you grow up here?”

  Hans replied with an account of a childhood in Kassel. When he was fifteen his mother had married a Berliner. It was hard to concentrate on the story. The pointless details made him feel hot, and now Hans was asking him about his life in London. After Leonard had given a brief sketch of his childhood there, he concluded by saying that he found Berlin far more interesting. Immediately he regretted his words.

  Hans said, “But surely this can’t be so. London is a world capital. Berlin is finished. Its greatness is all in the past.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Leonard said. “Perhaps I just like to be abroad.” That too was a mistake, for now they were talking about the pleasures of foreign travel. Hans asked Leonard which other countries he had been in, and Leonard was too tired to offer less than the truth. He had been to Wales and West Berlin.

  Hans was exhorting him to be more adventurous. “You are English, you have the opportunities.” Then there followed a list of places, headed by the United States, that Hans intended to visit. Leonard looked at his watch. It was ten past one. He was not certain what that meant. People would be looking for him. He was not certain what it was he was going to tell them.

  As soon as Leonard looked at his watch, Hans brought his list to a close and glanced around the room. Then he said, “Henry, I think you came looking for something. You wanted to buy something, is that right?”

  “No,” Leonard said. “I want to give something to the right person.”

  “You have something to sell?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m happy to give it away.”

  Hans offered Leonard another cigarette. “Listen, my friend. I’ll give you some advice. If what you have is free, people will think it’s worthless. If it’s good, then you must make people pay.”

  “Fine,” Leonard said. “If someone wants to give me money, that’s fine.”

  “I could take what you have and sell it myself,” Hans said. “All the profit would be mine. But I like you. Perhaps I’ll visit you in London one day, if you give me your address. So I’ll take a commission. Fifty percent.”

  “Anything,” Leonard said.

  “So then. What is it you have?”

  Leonard lowered his voice. “What I have is of interest to the Soviet military.”

  “That’s good, Henry,” Hans said at normal volume. “I have a friend here today who knows someone in the High Command.”

  Leonard produced his map. “On the east side of the Schönefelder Chaussee, just north of this cemetery here in Altglienicke, their telephone lines are being tapped. They run along a ditch here. I’ve m
arked the spot where they should look.”

  Hans took the map. “How can they tap these lines? It’s not possible.”

  Leonard could not help his pride. “There’s a tunnel. I’ve marked it with a thick line. It runs from what looks like a radar station in the American sector.”

  Hans was shaking his head. “It would be too far. It’s not possible. No one will believe this. I wouldn’t get twenty-five marks.”

  Leonard was close to laughter. “It’s a huge project. They don’t have to believe it. They just need to go and look.”

  Hans took the map and stood up. He shrugged and said, “I’ll talk to my friend.”

  Leonard watched him cross to the far side of the room and speak to a man who was obscured by a pillar. Then both went out through a set of swing doors to where the lavatories and telephone were. A couple of minutes later Hans came back, looking livelier.

  “My friend says it looks interesting, at least. He’s trying to reach his contact now.”

  Hans went back across the room. Leonard waited until he was out of sight, then he left the café. He was fifty yards down the street when he heard a shout. A man with a white tablecloth tucked around his waist was sprinting toward him waving a slip of paper. He owed for five coffees. He was just paying up and apologizing when Hans came running up. His freckles were garish in daylight.

  The waiter went away and Hans said, “You were going to give me your address. And look—my friend paid two hundred marks.”

  Leonard walked on, and Hans kept by his side. Leonard said, “You keep the money, and I’ll keep my address.”

  Hans linked his arm through Leonard’s. “This isn’t what we agreed.”

  The touch gave Leonard a thrill of horror. He shook his arm free.

  “Don’t you like me, Henry?” Hans said.

  “No, I don’t,” Leonard said. “Bugger off.” He increased his pace. When he glanced over his shoulder, Hans was walking back toward the café.

  At Alexanderplatz Leonard fell into another dither. He needed to sit down and rest his foot, but before he did that, he had to decide where to go. He ought to see Maria, and he knew he still could not face her. He wanted to go home, but MacNamee might be waiting for him. If the seals had been broken on the cases, the military police would be there. In the end he bought a ticket to Neu-Westend. He could make up his mind on the train.