The Looking Glass War

by John le Carré

  ‘Thanks. I thought I’d have the body flown back.’ As they turned off the main road into the market square, Avery asked casually, as if he had no personal interest in the outcome, ‘What about his effects? I’d better take them with me, hadn’t I?’

  ‘I doubt whether the police will hand them over until they’ve had the go-ahead from the public prosecutor. The post-mortem report goes to him; he gives clearance. Did your brother leave a will?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘You’d not happen to know whether you’re an executor?’

  ‘No.’

  Sutherland gave a dry, patient laugh. ‘I can’t help feeling you’re a little premature. Next of kin is not quite the same as executor,’ he said. ‘It gives you no legal rights, I’m afraid, apart from the disposal of the body.’ He paused, looking back over his seat while he reversed the car into a parking space. ‘Even if the police hand your brother’s effects over to me, I’m not allowed to release them until I’ve had instructions from the Office, and they,’ he continued quickly, for Avery was about to interrupt him, ‘won’t issue such instructions to me until a grant of probate has been made or a Letter of Administration issued. But I can give you a death certificate,’ he added consolingly, opening his door, ‘if the insurance companies require it.’ He looked at Avery sideways, as if wondering whether he stood to inherit anything. ‘It’ll cost you five shillings for the Consular registration and five shillings per certified copy. What was that you said?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Together they climbed the steps to the police station.

  ‘We’ll be seeing Inspector Peersen,’ Sutherland explained. ‘He’s quite well disposed. You’ll kindly let me handle him.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He’s been a lot of help with my DBS problems.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘Distressed British Subjects. We get one a day in Summer. They’re a disgrace. Did your brother drink a lot, incidentally? There’s some suggestion he was—’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Avery said. ‘I hardly knew him in the last few years.’ They entered the building.

  Leclerc himself was walking carefully up the broad steps of the Ministry. It lay between Whitehall Gardens and the river; the doorway was large and new, surrounded with that kind of Fascist statuary which is admired by local authorities. Partly modernised, the building was guarded by sergeants in red sashes and contained two escalators; the one which descended was full, for it was half past five.

  ‘Under Secretary,’ Leclerc began diffidently. ‘I shall have to ask the Minister for another overflight.’

  ‘You’ll be wasting your time,’ he replied with satisfaction. ‘He was most apprehensive about the last one. He’s made a policy decision; there’ll be no more.’

  ‘Even with a target like this?’

  ‘Particularly with a target like this.’

  The Under Secretary lightly touched the corners of his in-tray as a bank manager might touch a statement. ‘You’ll have to think of something else,’ he said. ‘Some other way. Is there no painless method?’

  ‘None. I suppose we could try to stimulate a defection from the area. That’s a lengthy business. Leaflets, propaganda broadcasts, financial inducements. It worked well in the war. We would have to approach a lot of people.’

  ‘It sounds a most improbable notion.’

  ‘Yes. Things are different now.’

  ‘What other ways are there, then?’ he insisted.

  Leclerc smiled again, as if he would like to help a friend, but could not work miracles. ‘An agent. A short-term operation. In and out: a week altogether perhaps.’

  The Under Secretary said, ‘But who could you find for a job like that? These days?’

  ‘Who indeed? It’s a very long shot.’

  The Under Secretary’s room was large but dark, with rows of bound books. Modernisation had encroached as far as his Private Office, which was done in the contemporary style, but there the process had stopped. They could wait till he retired to do his room. A gas fire burnt in the marble fireplace. On the wall hung an oil painting of a battle at sea. They could hear the sound of barges in the fog. It was an oddly maritime atmosphere.

  ‘Kalkstadt’s pretty close to the border,’ Leclerc suggested. ‘We wouldn’t have to use a scheduled airline. We could do a training flight, lose our way. It’s been done before.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the Under Secretary, then: ‘This man of yours who died.’

  ‘Taylor?’

  ‘I’m not concerned with names. He was murdered, was he?’

  ‘There’s no proof,’ Leclerc said.

  ‘But you assume it?’

  Leclerc smiled patiently. ‘I think we both know, Under Secretary, that it is very dangerous to make broad assumptions when decisions of policy are involved. I’m still asking for another overflight.’

  The Under Secretary coloured.

  ‘I told you it’s out of the question. No! Does that make it clear? We were talking of alternatives.’

  ‘There’s one alternative, I suppose, which would scarcely touch on my Department. It’s more a matter for yourselves and the Foreign Office.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Drop a hint to the London newspapers. Stimulate publicity. Print the photographs.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Watch them. Watch the East German and Soviet diplomacy, watch their communications. Throw a stone into the nest and see what comes out.’

  ‘I can tell you exactly what would come out. A protest from the Americans that would ring through these corridors for another twenty years.’

  ‘Of course. I was forgetting that.’

  ‘Then you’re very lucky. You suggested putting an agent in.’

  ‘Only tentatively. We’ve no one in mind.’

  ‘Look,’ said the Under Secretary, with the finality of a man much tried. ‘The Minister’s position is very simple. You have produced a report. If it is true, it alters our entire defence position. In fact it alters everything. I detest sensation, so does the Minister. Having put up the hare, the least you can do is have a shot at it.’

  Leclerc said, ‘If I found a man there’s the problem of resources. Money, training and equipment. Extra staff perhaps. Transport. Whereas an overflight …’

  ‘Why do you raise so many difficulties? I understood you people existed for this kind of thing.’

  ‘We have the expertise, Under Secretary. But I cut down, you know. I have cut down a lot. Some of our functions have lapsed: one must be honest. I have never tried to put the clock back. This is, after all’ – a delicate smile – ‘a slightly anachronistic situation.’

  The Under Secretary glanced out of the window at the lights along the river.

  ‘It seems pretty contemporary to me. Rockets and that kind of thing. I don’t think the Minister considers it anachronistic.’

  ‘I’m not referring to the target but the method of attack: it would have to be a crash operation at the border. That has scarcely been done since the war. Although it is a form of clandestine warfare with which my Department is traditionally at home. Or used to be.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘I’m only thinking aloud, Under Secretary. I wonder whether the Circus might not be better equipped to deal with this. Perhaps you should approach Control. I can promise him the support of my armaments people.’

  ‘You mean you don’t think you can handle it?’

  ‘Not with my existing organisation. Control can. As long, that is, as the Minister doesn’t mind bringing in another Department. Two, really. I didn’t realise you were so worried about publicity.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Control will feel bound to inform the Foreign Office. It’s his duty. Just as I inform you. And from then on, we must accept that it will be their headache.’

  ‘If those people know,’ the Under Secretary said with contempt, ‘it’ll be round every damned club by tomorrow.’

  ‘There is that danger,’ Lec
lerc conceded. ‘More particularly, I wonder whether the Circus has the military skills. A rocket site is a complicated affair: launch pads, blast shields, cable troughs; all these things require proper processing and evaluation. Control and I could combine forces, I suppose—’

  ‘That’s out of the question. You people make poor bedfellows. Even if you succeeded in cooperating, it would be against policy: no monolith.’

  ‘Ah yes. Of course.’

  ‘Assume you do it yourself, then; assume you find a man, what would that involve?’

  ‘A supplementary estimate. Immediate resources. Extra staff. A training establishment. Ministerial protection; special passes and authority.’ The knife again: ‘And some help from Control … we could obtain that under a pretext.’

  A foghorn echoed mournfully across the water.

  ‘If it’s the only way …’

  ‘Perhaps you’d put it to the Minister,’ Leclerc suggested.

  Silence. Leclerc continued, ‘In practical terms we need the best part of thirty thousand pounds.’

  ‘Accountable?’

  ‘Partially. I understood you wanted to be spared details.’

  ‘Except where the Treasury’s concerned. I suggest that you make a minute about costs.’

  ‘Very well. Just an outline.’

  The silence returned.

  ‘That is hardly a large sum when set against the risk,’ the Under Secretary said, consoling himself.

  ‘The potential risk. We want to clarify. I don’t pretend to be convinced. Merely suspicious, heavily suspicious.’ He couldn’t resist adding, ‘The Circus would ask twice as much. They’re very free with money.’

  ‘Thirty thousand pounds, then, and our protection?’

  ‘And a man. But I must find him for myself.’ A small laugh.

  The Under Secretary said abruptly: ‘There are certain details the Minister will not want to know. You realise that?’

  ‘Of course. I imagine you will do most of the talking.’

  ‘I imagine the Minister will. You’ve succeeded in worrying him a good deal.’

  Leclerc remarked with impish piety, ‘We should never do that to our master; our common master.’

  The Under Secretary did not seem to feel they had one. They stood up.

  ‘Incidentally,’ Leclerc said, ‘Mrs Taylor’s pension. I’m making an application to the Treasury. They feel the Minister should sign it.’

  ‘Why, for God’s sake?’

  ‘It’s a question of whether he was killed in action.’

  The Under Secretary froze. ‘That is most presumptuous. You’re asking for Ministerial confirmation that Taylor was murdered.’

  ‘I’m asking for a widow’s pension,’ Leclerc protested gravely. ‘He was one of my best men.’

  ‘Of course. They always are.’

  The Minister did not look up as they came in.

  But the Police Inspector rose from his chair, a short, plump man with a shaven neck. He wore plain clothes. Avery supposed him to be a detective. He shook their hands with an air of professional bereavement, sat them in modern chairs with teak arms and offered cigars out of a tin. They declined, so he lit one himself, and used it thereafter both as a prolongation of his short fingers when making gestures of emphasis, and as a drawing instrument to describe in the smoke-filled air objects of which he was speaking. He deferred frequently to Avery’s grief by thrusting his chin downwards into his collar and casting from the shadow of his lowered eyebrows confiding looks of sympathy. First he related the circumstances of the accident, praised in tiresome detail the efforts of the police to track down the car, referred frequently to the personal concern of the President of Police, whose anglophilia was a byword, and stated his own conviction that the guilty man would be found out, and punished with the full severity of Finnish law. He dwelt for some time on his own admiration of the British, his affection for the Queen and Sir Winston Churchill, the charms of Finnish neutrality and finally he came to the body.

  The post-mortem, he was proud to say, was complete, and Mr Public Prosecutor (his own words) had declared that the circumstances of Mr Malherbe’s death gave no grounds for suspicion despite the presence of a considerable amount of alcohol in the blood. The barman at the airport accounted for five glasses of Steinhäger. He returned to Sutherland.

  ‘Does he want to see his brother?’ he inquired, thinking it apparently a delicacy to refer the question to a third party.

  Sutherland was embarrassed. ‘That’s up to Mr Avery,’ he said, as if the matter were outside his competence. They both looked at Avery.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Avery said.

  ‘There is one difficulty. About the identification,’ Peersen said.

  ‘Identification?’ Avery repeated. ‘Of my brother?’

  ‘You saw his passport,’ Sutherland put in, ‘before you sent it up to me. What’s the difficulty?’

  The policeman nodded. ‘Yes, yes.’ Opening a drawer he took out a handful of letters, a wallet and some photographs.

  ‘His name was Malherbe,’ he said. He spoke fluent English with a heavy American accent which somehow suited the cigar. ‘His passport was Malherbe. It was a good passport, wasn’t it?’ Peersen glanced at Sutherland. For a second Avery thought he detected in Sutherland’s clouded face a certain honest hesitation.

  ‘Of course.’

  Peersen began to sort through the letters, putting some in a file before him and returning others to the drawer. Every now and then, as he added to the pile, he muttered: ‘Ah, so,’ or ‘Yes, yes.’ Avery could feel the sweat running down his body; it drenched his clasped hands.

  ‘And your brother’s name was Malherbe?’ he asked again, when he had finished his sorting.

  Avery nodded. ‘Of course.’

  Peersen smiled. ‘Not of course,’ he said, pointing his cigar and nodding in a friendly way as if he were making a debating point. ‘All his possessions, his letters, his clothes, driving licence, all belong to a Mr Taylor. You know anything of Taylor?’

  A dreadful block was forming in Avery’s mind. The envelope, what should he do with the envelope? Go to the lavatory, destroy it now before it was too late? He doubted whether it would work: the envelope was stiff and shiny. Even if he tore it, the pieces would float. He was aware of Peersen and Sutherland looking at him, waiting for him to speak and all he could think of was the envelope weighing so heavily in his inside pocket.

  He managed to say, ‘No, I don’t. My brother and I …’ Step-brother or half-brother? ‘… my brother and I did not have much to do with one another. He was older. We didn’t really grow up together. He had a lot of different jobs, he could never quite settle down to anything. Perhaps this Taylor was a friend of his … who …’ Avery shrugged, bravely trying to imply that Malherbe had been something of a mystery to him also.

  ‘How old are you?’ Peersen asked. His respect for the bereaved seemed to be dwindling.

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘And Malherbe?’ he threw out conversationally. ‘He was how many years older, please?’

  Sutherland and Peersen had seen his passport and knew his age. One remembers the age of people who die. Only Avery, his brother, had no idea how old the dead man was.

  ‘Twelve,’ he hazarded. ‘My brother was forty-four.’ Why did he have to say so much?

  Peersen raised his eyebrows. ‘Only forty-four? Then the passport is wrong as well.’

  Peersen turned to Sutherland, poked his cigar towards the door at the far end of the room and said happily, as if he had ended an old argument between friends, ‘Now you are seeing why I have a problem about identification.’

  Sutherland was looking very angry.

  ‘It would be nice if Mr Avery looked at the body,’ Peersen suggested, ‘then we can be sure.’

  Sutherland said, ‘Inspector Peersen. The identity of Mr Malherbe has been established from his passport. The Foreign Office in London has ascertained that Mr Avery’s name was quoted by Mr Malherbe as
his next of kin. You tell me there is nothing suspicious about the circumstances of his death. The customary procedure is now for you to release his effects to me for custody pending the completion of formalities in the United Kingdom. Mr Avery may presumably take charge of his brother’s body.’

  Peersen seemed to deliberate. He extracted the remainder of Taylor’s papers from the steel drawer of his desk, added them to the pile already in front of him. He telephoned somebody and spoke in Finnish. After some minutes an orderly brought in an old leather suitcase with an inventory which Sutherland signed. Throughout all this, neither Avery nor Sutherland exchanged a word with the Inspector.

  Peersen accompanied them all the way to the front door. Sutherland insisted on carrying the suitcase and papers himself. They went to the car. Avery waited for Sutherland to speak, but he said nothing. They drove for about ten minutes. The town was poorly lit. Avery noticed there was a chemical on the road, in two lanes. The crown and gutters were still covered with snow. He was reminded of riding in the Mall, a thing he had never done. The street lamps were neon, shedding a sickly light which seemed to shrink before the gathering darkness. Now and then Avery was aware of steep timbered roofs, the clanging of a tram or the tall white hat of a policeman.

  Occasionally he stole a glance through the rear window.

  7

  Woodford stood in the corridor smoking his pipe, grinning at the staff as they left. It was his hour of magic. The mornings were different. Tradition demanded that the junior staff arrived at half past nine; officer grades at ten or quarter past. Theoretically, senior members of the Department stayed late in the evening, clearing their papers. A gentleman, Leclerc would say, never watched the clock. The custom dated from the war, when officers spent the early hours of the morning debriefing reconnaissance pilots back from a run, or the late hours of the night dispatching an agent. The junior staff had worked shift in those days, but not the officers, who came and went as their work allowed. Now tradition fulfilled a different purpose. Now there were days, often weeks, when Woodford and his colleagues scarcely knew how to fill the time until five thirty; all but Haldane, who supported on his stooping shoulders the Department’s reputation for research. The rest would draft projects which were never submitted, bicker gently among themselves about leave, duty rosters and the quality of their official furniture, give excessive attention to the problems of their section staff.