A Perfect Spy

by John le Carré

  “Take the lift, please, Mary,” said the young man, in Euro-American, handing her a piece of paper. “Apartment six, please. Six. You go up alone. You have that?”

  “Six,” Mary said.

  He smiled. “Sometimes when we are scared we kind of forget everything.”

  “Sure,” she said. She walked to the doorway and he smiled and waved at her. She pushed it open and saw an old lift waiting with its doors open, and an old janitor smiling too. They’ve all been to the same charm school, she thought. She got into the lift and told the janitor, “Six, please,” and the janitor launched her on her climb. As the doorway sank below her she had a last glimpse of the boy standing in the courtyard still smiling and a couple of well-dressed girls standing behind him, consulting some bit of paper. The bit of paper in her own hand read “Six, Herr König.” Odd, she thought as she slipped it into her handbag. With me it works the other way. When I’m scared I don’t forget a damn thing. Like the car number. Like the number of the second Mercedes behind us. Like the fringe of dyed black hair on the driver’s neck. Like the Opium perfume that the girl was wearing and Magnus always insists on bringing me when he goes on air journeys. Like the fat gold ring with the red seal on the boy’s left hand.

  The door to number 6 stood open. A brass plate beside it read “Interhansa Austria A.G.” She walked in and the door closed behind her. A girl again but not pretty. A sullen, strong girl with a flat Slav face and resentful, anti-Party manner. With a scowl she nodded Mary forward. She entered a dark drawing-room and saw nobody. At the far end of it stood another pair of doors, also open. The furnishings were old Vienna, phoney. Phoney old chests and oil paintings slipped by her as she advanced. Phoney lamp brackets reached at her from phoney imperial wallpaper. As she kept walking she had a reprise of the erotic expectation she had felt at the Wives’ meeting. He’s going to order me to undress and I shall obey. He’s going to lead me to a red fourposter and have me raped by footmen for his pleasure. But the second room contained no fourposter, it was a drawing-room like the first, with a desk and two armchairs and a heap of out-of-date Vogues on the coffee table. It was otherwise empty. Angry, Mary swung round intending to say something rude to the flat-faced Slav. Instead she found herself staring at him. He was standing in the doorway smoking a cigar and for a second she was puzzled she couldn’t smell it, but in some eerie way she knew that nothing about him was ever going to surprise her. The next moment the aroma had reached her and she was shaking his lazy hand as if this was the way they always greeted each other when they met fully dressed in Viennese apartments.

  “You are a courageous woman,” he remarked. “Are they expecting you back soon or what is the arrangement? What can we do to make life easier for you?”

  That’s perfectly right, she thought in absurd relief. The first thing you always ask your agent is how long you’ve got him for. The second is whether he needs immediate help. Magnus is in good hands. But she knew that already.

  “Where is he?” she said.

  He had the authority that enabled him to own to failure. “If only we knew, how happy we would both be!” he agreed as if her question had been a statement of despair, and with his long hand showed her to the chair that he required her to sit on. We, she thought. We are equals yet you are in command. No wonder Tom fell in love with you on sight.

  They were sitting opposite one another, she on the gilded sofa, he on the gilded chair. The Slav girl had brought a tray of vodka and some gherkins and black bread and her devotion to him was obscene, she preened and smirked so. She’s one of his Marthas, thought Mary, which was what Magnus called his Station secretaries. He poured two stiff ones, holding each glass carefully by turn. He drank to her, looking over the brim. That’s what Magnus does, she thought. And it’s you he learned it from.

  “Has he telephoned?” he asked.

  “No. He can’t.”

  “Of course not,” he agreed sympathetically. “The house is bugged and he knows that. Has he written?”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s wise. They are watching for him everywhere. They are immoderately angry with him.”

  “Are you?”

  “How can I be angry when I owe the man so much? His last message to me was that he didn’t want to see me any more. He said he was free and goodbye. I felt a genuine pang of jealousy. What freedom has he found so suddenly that he cannot share it with us?”

  “He said the same to me—I mean about being free. I think he said it to several people. To Tom as well.”

  Why do I talk to you as if you were an old lover? What sort of whore am I that I can throw off my loyalties with my clothes? If he had reached out to her and taken her hand she would have let him. If he had drawn her to him—

  “He should have come to me when I told him,” he said in the same philosophically reproachful tone. “‘It’s over, Sir Magnus,’ I said to him. That’s my name for him. Forgive me.”

  “In Corfu,” she said.

  “In Corfu, in Athens, everywhere I could speak to him. ‘Come with me. We are passé, you and I. It’s time for us oldies to leave the field to the next anguished generation.’ He wouldn’t see it. ‘Do you want to be like one of those poor old actors one has literally to drag from the stage?’ I said. He wouldn’t listen. He was so adamant they would clear him.”

  “They almost did. Maybe they did. He thought so.”

  “Brotherhood won a little time and that was all. Not even Jack could sweep back the tide for ever. Besides—Jack has joined the bad guys now. Hell hath no fury like a deceived protector.”

  He taught Magnus his style, she thought, in another spurt of recognition. The style he was always wanting for his novel. He taught him how to be superior to human foibles and how to give a Godlike laugh at himself as a way of fending off morbidity. He did all the things for him that a woman is grateful for, except that Magnus is a man.

  “His father seems to have been quite a mystery man,” he said, lighting himself another cigar. “What’s all that about, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I never met him. Did you?”

  “Many times. In Switzerland when Magnus was a student, his father was a great British sea captain who had gone down with his ship.”

  She laughed. Heaven help me, I’m actually laughing. Now it’s me who’s found the style.

  “Oh yes. Then when I next heard of him he was a great financial baron. His tentacles extended to every banking house in Europe. He had miraculously recovered from being drowned.”

  “Oh Christ,” she said. And burst out again in cathartic, uncontrollable laughter.

  “Since I was German at the time I naturally felt greatly relieved. I had had a really bad conscience about sinking his father until then. What is it about your husband, do you know, that gives us such a bad, bad conscience?”

  “His potential,” she said unthinkingly, and took a long pull of vodka. She was trembling and her cheeks were burning hot. He watched her calmly, helping her to steady.

  “You’re his other life,” she said.

  “He always told me I was his oldest friend. If you know different, please don’t destroy my illusions.”

  She was getting it back. Her head. The room was clearing and her head with it. “I understood that position was reserved for somebody called Poppy,” she said.

  “Where did you hear that name?”

  “It’s in the great book he’s been writing. ‘Poppy, my dearest, oldest friend.’”

  “Is that all?”

  “Oh no. There’s much more. Poppy gets a big hand on every fifth page. Poppy this, Poppy that. When they found the camera and the codebook they found dried poppies with them, as a keepsake.”

  She had hoped to disconcert him, but all she drew from him was a smile of gratification.

  “I’m flattered. Poppy is the fanciful codename he awarded me many years ago. I have been Poppy for most of our lives.”

  Somehow she stayed in there fighting. “So what is he?” s
he demanded. “Is he a Communist? He can’t be. It’s too ridiculous.”

  He opened his long hands. He smiled again, infectiously, offering an immediate bond of his bewilderment. He was invulnerable. “I’ve asked myself the same question many times. And then I think—well, who believes in marriage these days? He’s a searcher. Isn’t that enough? In our profession I am sure we should not ask for more. Can you imagine being married to a sedentary ideologist? I had an uncle once who was a Lutheran pastor. He bored us all to death.”

  She was getting stronger. Less mad. More indignant. “What did Magnus do for you?” she asked.

  “He spied. Selectively, it is true. But treasonably it is also true. And often very energetically—something you will understand about him. When his life is happy he believes in God and wants everyone to have a gift. When he is down he will sulk and refuse to go to church. Those of us who run him have to live with that.”

  Nothing had happened to her. She was upright and drinking vodka in a stranger’s safe flat. He has pronounced the sentence, she thought calmly, as if she were attending someone else’s trial. Magnus is dead. Mary is dead. Their marriage is dead. Tom is an orphan with a traitor for a father. Everybody’s absolutely fine.

  “But then I don’t run him,” she objected, answering his point quite calmly.

  He appeared not to notice the new coldness in her voice. “Allow me to sell myself to you a little. I am fond of your husband.”

  And so you should be, she thought. After all, he sacrificed us to you.

  “I also owe him,” he continued. “Whatever he wants for the rest of his life, I can give it to him. I am greatly to be preferred to Jack Brotherhood and his service.”

  You’re not, she thought. You are absolutely not.

  “Did you say something?” he asked.

  She smiled sadly for him and shook her head.

  “Brotherhood wishes to catch your husband and punish him. I am the opposite. I wish to find him and reward him. Whatever he will allow us to give, we will give it.” He drew on his cigar.

  You’re a sham, she thought. You seduce my husband and call yourself his friend and mine.

  “You know this trade, Mary. I don’t need to tell you that a man in his position is a most desirable commodity. Put more frankly, we cannot afford to lose him. The last thing we want is to have him sitting in an English prison for the rest of his useful life, telling the authorities what he’s been doing these thirty and more years. Nor do we particularly want him to write a book.”

  You want, she thought. What about us?

  “We would much prefer him to enjoy a well-earned retirement with us—distinction, medals, his family around him if they wish it—where we can still consult him as we need. I can’t guarantee that we will permit him to lead the double life he is accustomed to but in every other respect we shall do our best to meet his needs.”

  “He doesn’t want you any more though, does he? That’s why he’s hiding.”

  He puffed at his cigar, flapping a hand between them to stop the smoke from bothering her. But it bothered her anyway. It would shame and disgust and accuse her for the rest of her life. He was talking again. Reasonably.

  “I am at my wits’ end, to be frank. I have done all I can to put Brotherhood and everyone else off the scent and to find your husband ahead of them. I still have not the least idea where he is and I feel a complete fool.”

  “What happened to the people he betrayed?” she said.

  “Magnus? Oh he hates bloodshed. He always made that clear.”

  “That never stopped anybody yet from shedding blood.”

  Once more a pause for his private gravity. “You are right,” he agreed. “And he chose a hard profession. I’m afraid it’s a little late for us all to ponder our moralities.”

  “Some of us are rather new to them,” she said. But she could not move him. “Why did you ask me here?”

  She met his gaze and saw that though nothing had changed in his expression his face was different, which was what happened sometimes when she looked at Magnus.

  “Before you came I had ideas that you and your son might care to start a new life in Czechoslovakia and that Magnus would therefore be strongly tempted to join you.” He indicated a briefcase at his side. “I brought passports for you and all that nonsense. I was absurd. Having met you, I realise you are not defector material. However, it still occurs to me as a possibility that you do know where he is, and that you have managed, because you are a capable woman, not to tell anybody. You cannot suppose he is better off with his pursuers than he would be with me. So if you do know, I think you should tell me now.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” she said. And closed her mouth before she could add: and if I did, you would be the last person on earth I would ever tell.

  “But you have theories. You have ideas. You have been thinking of nothing else night and day ever since he left, surely. Magnus, where are you? It’s your one thought, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. You know more about him than I do.”

  She was beginning to hate his sanctimony. His manner of pondering before he spoke to her, as if wondering whether she was up to his next question.

  “Did he ever talk to you about a woman called Lippsie?”

  “No.”

  “She died when he was young. She was Jewish. All her friends and relations had been killed by the Germans. It seems she adopted Magnus as some kind of support. Then changed her mind and killed herself instead. The reasons, as usual with Magnus, are clouded. It was a curious example for a child, nonetheless. Magnus is a great imitator, even when he doesn’t know it. Really I sometimes think he is entirely put together from bits of other people, poor fellow.”

  “He never told me about her,” she repeated doggedly.

  He brightened. Just as Magnus might. “Come, Mary. Do you not have the consoling feeling there is someone looking after him? I am sure there is. My understanding of him has always been that he is attracted only to human beings, not to ideas at all. He hates to be alone because then his world is empty. So who is looking after him? Let us try to think whom he would like—I’m not talking of women, you see. Only of friends.”

  She was smoothing her skirt, looking for her coat. “I’ll take a cab,” she said. “You don’t need to ring for one. There’s a stand just on the corner. I saw it as I came.”

  “Why not his mother? She would be a good person.”

  She stared at him, unable for a moment to believe her ears.

  “Not long ago he talked to me about his mother for the first time,” he explained. “He said he had taken to visiting her again. I was surprised. Also flattered, I confess. He unearthed her somewhere and put her in a house. Does he see her much?”

  She had the wit. Still in the nick of time she felt her cunning come rushing back to take command of her. Magnus hasn’t got a mother, you idiot. She’s dead, he hardly knew her, and he doesn’t care. The one true thing I know of him, and will swear for him on the Last Day, is that Magnus Pym is not now and never has been the adult son of any woman. But Mary kept her head. She didn’t fling insults at him, or sneer at him, or laugh out loud in relief that Magnus had lied to his oldest, dearest friend with the same precision with which he had lied to his wife, his child and his country. She spoke reasonably and sensibly as a good spy always does.

  “He likes to chat with her now and then, certainly,” she conceded. Picking up her handbag she peered inside it as if to make sure she had money for her taxi.

  “Then might he not have taken himself off to Devon and stayed with her? She was so grateful to have her bit of sea air at last. And Magnus was so proud he had been able to work the magic for her. He spoke interminably of the wonderful walks they had together on the beach. How he took her to church on Sundays and fixed her garden for her. Maybe he is doing something as innocent as that?”

  “Her house was the first place they looked,” Mary lied, closing her handbag. “They frightened the poor old lady out
of her skin. How do I get in touch with you if I need you? Throw a newspaper over the wall?”

  She stood up. He stood up also, though not so easily. His smile was still in place, his eyes were still as wise and sad and merry in the style that Magnus envied so.

  “I don’t think you will need me, Mary. And perhaps you are right that Magnus does not want me any more either. Just as long as he wants someone. That’s all we must worry about if we love him. There are so many ways of taking vengeance on the world. Sometimes literature is simply not enough.”

  The alteration in his tone momentarily halted her in her hurry to get out.

  “He’ll find an answer,” she said carelessly. “He always does.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  They walked towards the front door, slowly in order to allow for his limp. He summoned the lift for her and held back the grille. She got in. Her last sight of him was through the bars, still watching her. By then she was liking him again, and frightened stiff.