The Looking Glass War

by John le Carré

‘I’m sorry,’ Smiley spoke hastily, covering up, as if someone were dead and he had not known.

  ‘We didn’t really expect there would be. It was just a precaution. How much did Avery tell you, I wonder? We’re training up one or two of the old hands … and some of the new boys too. It’s something to do,’ Leclerc explained, ‘during the slack season … Christmas, you know. People on leave.’

  ‘I know.’

  Leclerc noticed that the claret was very good. He wished he had joined a smaller club; his own had gone off terribly. They had such difficulty with staff.

  ‘You have probably heard,’ Leclerc added, officially, as it were, ‘that Control has offered me full assistance for training purposes.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘My Minister was the moving spirit. He likes the idea of a pool of trained agents. When the plan was first mooted I went and spoke to Control myself. Later, Control called on me. You knew that, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes. Control wondered …’

  ‘He has been most helpful. Don’t think I am unappreciative. It has been agreed – I think I should give you the background, your own office will confirm it – that if the training is to be effective, we must create as nearly as possible an operational atmosphere. What we used to call battle conditions.’ An indulgent smile. ‘We’ve chosen an area in Western Germany. It’s bleak and unfamiliar ground, ideal for frontier-crossing exercises and that kind of thing. We can ask for the Army’s cooperation if we need it.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. What a good idea.’

  ‘For elementary reasons of security, we all accept that your office should only be briefed in the aspects of this exercise in which you are good enough to help.’

  ‘Control told me,’ said Smiley. ‘He wants to do whatever he can. He didn’t know you touched this kind of thing any more. He was pleased.’

  ‘Good,’ Leclerc said shortly. He moved his elbows forward a little across the polished table. ‘I thought I might pick your brains … quite informally. Rather as you people from time to time have made use of Adrian Haldane.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The first thing is false documents. I looked up our old forgers in the index. I see Hyde and Fellowby went over to the Circus some years ago.’

  ‘Yes. It was the change in emphasis.’

  ‘I’ve written down a personal description of a man in our employment; he is supposedly resident at Magdeburg for the purposes of the scheme. One of the men under training. Do you think they could prepare documents, Identity Card, Party Membership and that kind of thing? Whatever is necessary.’

  ‘The man would have to sign them,’ Smiley said. ‘We would then stamp on top of his signature. We’d need photographs too. He’d have to be briefed on how the documents worked; perhaps Hyde could do that on the spot with your agent?’

  A slight hesitation. ‘No doubt. I have selected a cover name. It closely approximates his own; we find that a useful technique.’

  ‘I might just make the point,’ Smiley said, with a rather comic frown, ‘since this is such an elaborate exercise, that forged papers are of very limited value. I mean, one telephone call to the Magdeburg Town Administration and the best forgery in the world is blown sky high …’

  ‘I think we know about that. We want to teach them cover, submit them to interrogation … you know the kind of thing.’

  Smiley sipped his claret. ‘I just thought I’d make the point. It’s so easy to get hypnotised by technique. I didn’t mean to imply … How is Haldane, by the way? He read Greats, you know. We were up together.’

  ‘Adrian is well.’

  ‘I liked your Avery,’ Smiley said politely. His heavy small face contracted in pain. ‘Do you realise,’ he asked impressively, ‘they still don’t include the Baroque period in the German syllabus? They call it a special subject.’

  ‘Then there is the question of clandestine wireless. We haven’t used that kind of thing much since the war. I understand it has all become a great deal more sophisticated. High-speed transmission and so on. We want to keep up with the times.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I believe the message is taped on a miniature recorder and sent over the air in a matter of seconds.’ He sighed. ‘But no one really tells us much. The technical people hold their cards very close to their chests.’

  ‘Is that a method in which our people could profitably be trained … in a month, say?’

  ‘And use under operational conditions?’ Smiley asked in astonishment. ‘Straight away, after a month’s training?’

  ‘Some are technically minded, you understand. People with wireless experience.’

  Smiley was watching Leclerc incredulously. ‘Forgive me. Would he, would they,’ he inquired, ‘have other things to learn in that month as well?’

  ‘For some it’s more a refresher course.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ Smiley said vaguely and added, ‘I don’t think our technical people would be very keen to part with this kind of equipment unless …’

  ‘Unless it were their own training operation?’

  ‘Yes,’ Smiley blushed. ‘Yes, that’s what I mean. They’re very particular, you know; jealous.’

  Leclerc lapsed into silence, lightly tapping the base of his wine glass on the polished surface of the table. Suddenly he smiled and said, as if he had shaken off depression, ‘Oh well. We shall just have to use a conventional set. Have direction-finding methods also improved since the war? Interception, location of an illegal transmitter?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, indeed.’

  ‘We would have to incorporate that. How long can a man remain on the air before they spot him?’

  ‘Two or three minutes, perhaps. It depends. Often it’s a matter of luck how soon they hear him. They can only pin him down while he’s transmitting. Much depends on the frequency. Or so they tell me.’

  ‘In the war,’ said Leclerc reflectively, ‘we gave an agent several crystals. Each vibrated at a fixed frequency. Every so often he changed the crystal; that was usually a safe enough method. We could do that again.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I remember that. But there was the headache of retuning the transmitter … possibly changing the coil … matching the aerial.’

  ‘Suppose a man is used to a conventional set. You tell me the chances of interception are greater now than they were in the war? You say allow two or three minutes?’

  ‘Or less,’ said Smiley, watching him. ‘It depends on a lot of things … luck, reception, amount of signal traffic, density of population …’

  ‘Supposing he changed his frequency after every two and a half minutes on the air. Surely that would meet the case?’

  ‘It could be a slow business.’ His sad, unhealthy face was wrinkled in concern. ‘You’re quite sure this is only training?’

  ‘As far as I remember,’ Leclerc persisted, courting his own idea, ‘these crystals are the size of a small matchbox. We could give them several. We’re only aiming at a few transmissions; perhaps only three or four. Would you consider my suggestion impractical?’

  ‘It’s hardly my province.’

  ‘What is the alternative? I asked Control; he said speak to you. He said you’d help, find me the equipment. What else can I do? Can I talk to your technical people?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Control rather agreed with the technical side, that we should give all the help we can, but not compromise new equipment. Risk compromising it, I mean. After all, it is only training. I think he felt that if you hadn’t full technical resources you should …’

  ‘Hand over the commitment?’

  ‘No, no,’ Smiley protested, but Leclerc interrupted him. ‘These people would eventually be used against military targets,’ he said angrily. ‘Purely military. Control accepts that.’

  ‘Oh quite.’ He seemed to have given up. ‘And if you want a conventional set, no doubt we can dig one up.’

  The waiter brought a decanter of port. Leclerc wat
ched Smiley pour a little into his glass, then slide the decanter carefully across the polished table.

  ‘It’s quite good, but I’m afraid it’s nearly finished. When this is gone we shall have to break into the younger ones. I’m seeing Control first thing tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll have no objection. About the documents, I mean. And crystals. We could advise you on frequencies, I’m sure. Control made a point of that.’

  ‘Control’s been very good,’ Leclerc confessed. He was slightly drunk. ‘It puzzles me sometimes.’

  12

  Two days later, Leiser arrived at Oxford. They waited anxiously for him on the platform, Haldane peering among the hurrying faces in the crowd. It was Avery, curiously, who saw him first: a motionless figure in a camel-hair coat at the window of an empty compartment.

  ‘Is that him?’ Avery asked.

  ‘He’s travelling first class. He must have paid the difference.’ Haldane spoke as if it were an affront.

  Leiser lowered the window and handed out two pigskin cases shaped for the boot of a car, a little too orange for nature. They greeted one another briskly, shaking hands for everyone to see. Avery wanted to carry the luggage to the taxi, but Leiser preferred to take it himself, a piece in each hand, as if it were his duty. He walked a little away from them, shoulders back, staring at the people as they went by, startled by the crowd. His long hair bounced with each step.

  Avery, watching him, felt suddenly disturbed.

  He was a man; not a shadow. A man with force to his body and purpose to his movement, but somehow theirs to direct. There seemed to be nowhere he would not walk. He was recruited; and had assumed already the anxious, brisk manner of an enlisted man. Yet, Avery accepted, no single factor wholly accounted for Leiser’s recruitment. Avery was already familiar, during his short association with the Department, with the phenomenon of organic motivation; with operations which had no discernible genesis and no conclusion, which formed part of an unending pattern of activity until they ceased to have any further identity; with that progress of fruitless courtships which, in the aggregate, passed for an active love life. But as he observed this man bobbing beside him, animate and quick, he recognised that hitherto they had courted ideas, incestuously among themselves; now they had a human being upon their hands, and this was he.

  They climbed into the taxi, Leiser last because he insisted. It was mid-afternoon, a slate sky behind the plane trees. The smoke rose from the North Oxford chimneys in ponderous columns like proof of a virtuous sacrifice. The houses were of a modest stateliness; romantic hulls redecked, each according to a different legend. Here the turrets of Avalon, there the carved trellis of a pagoda; between them the monkey-puzzle trees, and the half-hidden washing like butterflies in the wrong season. The houses sat decently in their own gardens, the curtains drawn, first lace and then brocade, petticoats and skirts. It was like a bad water-colour, the dark things drawn too heavy, the sky grey and soiled in the dusk, the paint too worked.

  They dismissed the taxi at the corner of the street. A smell of leaf mould lingered in the air. If there were children they made no noise. The three men walked to the gate. Leiser, his eyes on the house, put down his suitcases.

  ‘Nice place,’ he said with appreciation. He turned to Avery: ‘Who chose it?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ He patted his shoulder. ‘You did a good job.’ Avery, pleased, smiled and opened the gate; Leiser was determined that the others should pass through first. They took him upstairs and showed him his room. He still carried his own luggage.

  ‘I’ll unpack later,’ he said. ‘I like to make a proper job of it.’

  He walked through the house in a critical way, picking things up and looking at them; he might have come to bid for the place.

  ‘It’s a nice spot,’ he repeated finally; ‘I like it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Haldane, as if he didn’t give a damn.

  Avery went with him to his room to see if he could help.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Leiser asked. He was more at ease with Avery; more vulgar.

  ‘John.’

  They shook hands again.

  ‘Well, hullo, John; glad to meet you. How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-four,’ he lied.

  A wink. ‘Christ, I wish I was thirty-four. Done this kind of thing before, have you?’

  ‘I finished my own run last week.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘That’s the boy. Where’s your room?’

  Avery showed him.

  ‘Tell me, what’s the set-up here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Who’s in charge?’

  ‘Captain Hawkins.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Not really. I shall be around.’

  ‘All the time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He began unpacking. Avery watched. He had brushes backed with leather, hair lotion, a whole range of little bottles of things for men, an electric shaver of the newest kind and ties, some in tartan, others in silk, to match his costly shirts. Avery went downstairs. Haldane was waiting. He smiled as Avery came in. ‘Well?’

  Avery shrugged, too big a gesture. He felt elated, ill at ease. ‘What do you make of him?’ he asked.

  ‘I hardly know him,’ Haldane said drily. He had a way of terminating conversations. ‘I want you to be always in his company. Walk with him, shoot with him, drink with him if you must. He’s not to be alone.’

  ‘What about his leave in between?’

  ‘We’ll see about that. Meanwhile, do as I say. You will find he enjoys your company. He’s a very lonely man. And remember he’s British: British to the core. One more thing – this is most important – do not let him think we have changed since the war. The Department has remained exactly as it was: that is an illusion you must foster even’ – he did not smile – ‘even though you are too young to make the comparison.’

  They began next morning. Breakfast over, they assembled in the drawing-room and Haldane addressed them.

  The training would be divided into two periods of a fortnight each, with a short rest in between. The first was to be a refresher course; in the second, old skills, now revived, would be related to the task which lay ahead. Not until the second period would Leiser be told his operational name, his cover and the nature of his mission; even then, the information would reveal neither the target area nor the means by which he was to be infiltrated.

  In communications as in all other aspects of his training he would graduate from the general to the particular. In the first period he would familiarise himself once more with the technique of cyphers, signal plans and schedules. In the second he would spend much time actually transmitting under semi-operational conditions. The instructor would arrive during that week.

  Haldane explained all this with pedagogic acrimony while Leiser listened carefully, now and then briskly nodding his assent. Avery found it strange that Haldane took so little care to conceal his distaste.

  ‘In the first period we shall see what you remember. We shall give you a lot of running about, I’m afraid. We want to get you fit. There’ll be small-arms training, unarmed combat, mental exercises, tradecraft. We shall try to take you walking in the afternoons.’

  ‘Who with? Will John come?’

  ‘Yes. John will take you. You should regard John as your adviser on all minor matters. If there is anything you wish to discuss, any complaint or anxiety, I trust you will not hesitate to mention it to either one of us.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘On the whole, I must ask you not to venture out alone. I should prefer John to accompany you if you wish to go to the cinema, do some shopping or whatever else the time allows. But I fear you may not have much chance of recreation.’

  ‘I don’t expect it,’ Leiser said; ‘I don’t need it.’ He seemed to mean he didn’t want it.

  ‘The wireless instructor, when he comes, will not know your name. That is
a customary precaution: please observe it. The daily woman believes we are participating in an academic conference. I cannot imagine you will have occasion to talk to her, but if you do, remember that. If you wish to make inquiries about your business, kindly consult me first. You should not telephone without my consent. Then there will be other visitors: photographers, medical people, technicians. They are what we call ancillaries and are not in the picture. Most of them believe you’re here as part of a wider training scheme. Please remember this.’

  ‘OK,’ said Leiser. Haldane looked at his watch.

  ‘Our first appointment is at ten o’clock. A car will collect us from the corner of the road. The driver is not one of us: no conversation on the journey, please. Have you no other clothes?’ he asked. ‘Those are scarcely suitable for the range.’

  ‘I’ve got a sports coat and a pair of flannels.’

  ‘I could wish you less conspicuous.’

  As they went upstairs to change, Leiser smiled wryly at Avery. ‘He’s a real boy, isn’t he? The old school.’

  ‘But good,’ Avery said.

  Leiser stopped. ‘Of course. Here, tell me something. Was this place always here? Have you used it for many people?’

  ‘You’re not the first,’ Avery said.

  ‘Look, I know you can’t tell me much. Is the outfit still like it was … people everywhere … the same set-up?’

  ‘I don’t think you’d find much difference. I suppose we’ve expanded a bit.’

  ‘Are there many young ones like you?’

  ‘Sorry, Fred.’

  Leiser put his open hand on Avery’s back. He used his hands a lot.

  ‘You’re good, too,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother about me. Not to worry, eh, John?’

  They went to Abingdon: the Ministry had made arrangements with the parachute base. The instructor was expecting them.

  ‘Used to any particular gun, are you?’

  ‘Browning three-eight automatic, please,’ Leiser said, like a child ordering groceries.

  ‘We call it the nine-millimetre now. You’ll have had the Mark One.’

  Haldane stood in the gallery at the back while Avery helped wind in the man-sized target to a distance of ten yards and paste squares of gum-strip over the old holes.