John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 11

A pink folder marked "Random Pa.s.sages." Ben gives himself up to the authorities. Ben discovers there is another, real Secret Service, and joins it in the nick of time. A blue folder marked "Final Scenes," several of them addressed to "Poppy, dear b.l.o.o.d.y Poppy." A sheet of cartridge paper stolen from her sketch block on which Magnus has drawn a pattern of linked think-bubbles to form a flow chart of his ideas, exactly as Tom is taught to prepare his essays at school. Bubble: "If all Nature abhors a vacuum, how does a vacuum feel about all Nature?" Bubble: "Duplicity is when you please one person at the expense of another." Bubble: "We are patriots because we are afraid to be cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan because we are afraid to be patriots."

There was a tapping at the door but Brotherhood shook his head at Georgie, telling her to ignore it.

"It wasn't his true writing," Mary said. "It was all spiky. It ran for a while then seized up. It seemed to hurt him to go on."

Brotherhood didn't give a d.a.m.n whom it hurt.

"More," he said. "More. Hurry."

"It's me, sir," Fergus called through the door. "Urgent message, sir. Very."

"I said wait," Brotherhood ordered.

"'The systems of Ben's life are all collapsing,'" Mary continued. "'All his life he's been inventing versions of himself that are untrue. Now the truth is coming to get him and he is on the run. His Wentworth is standing at the door.

"More," said Brotherhood, towering over her.

"'Rick invented me, Rick is dying. What will happen when Rick drops his end of the string?'"

"Keep going."

"A quotation from Saint Luke. I never saw him open a Bible in his life. 'He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.'"

"And?"

"'He who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.' He'd illuminated the edges of the page for hours on end. Different inks."

"And?"

"'Wentworth was Rick's Nemesis. Poppy was mine. We each spent our lives trying to put right what we'd done to them.'"

"And again!"

"'Now everyone's after me. The Firm's after me, the Americans are after me, you're after me. Even poor Mary is after me, and she doesn't know you exist.'"

"You being who? Who's you in this poem?"

'"Poppy. My destiny. Dearest Poppy, best of best friends, get your b.l.o.o.d.y dogs off my doorstep.'"

"Poppy like the flowers," Brotherhood suggested, shoving away Georgie's microphone as he knelt beside her. "Like the flowers in the chimney. But singular. One Poppy."

"Yes."

"And Wentworth like the place. Sunny Wentworth, in tasteful Surrey?"

"Yes."

"Know him--her--anyone of that name?"

"No."

"Or Poppy?"

"No."

"On."

"There was a Chapter Eight," she said. "Out of the blue. No Two to Seven, but this Chapter Eight, all in his own handwriting and without a crossing-out. t.i.tled 'Overdue Bills,' whereas the Chapter Ones were unt.i.tled. Describing a day when Ben revolts against all his promises. Slipping from third to first person and staying there, whereas the Chapter Ones were 'he' and 'Ben.' 'The creditors are beating at the door, Wentworth to the fore, but Ben doesn't give a d.a.m.n. I lower my head and lift my shoulders, I wade at them, I punch and flail and b.u.t.t them while they smash my face in. But even with no face left I am doing what I should have done thirty-five years ago, to Jack and Rick and all the mothers and fathers, for stealing my life off my plate while I watched you do it. Poppy, Jack, the rest of you, driving me into a lifetime's--a lifetime's--a lifetime's--'"

She had stopped. Iron clamps had squeezed the breath out of her. The door opened and Fergus gatecrashed, a flouting of discipline for which he would surely be punished. Nigel was staring at him expressionlessly. Georgie was rolling her eyes at him, pointing at the door and mouthing Get out, get out, but Fergus stood his ground.

"A lifetime's what, for G.o.d's sake?" Brotherhood was shouting in her ear.

She was whispering. She was screaming. She was fighting the word inside her mouth, heaving and pressing at it but nothing came out. Brotherhood shook her, at first gently, then much harder, then very hard indeed.

"Betrayal," she said. '"We betray to be loyal. Betrayal is like imagining when the reality isn't good enough.' He wrote that. Betrayal as hope and compensation. As the making of a better land. Betrayal as love. As a tribute to our unlived lives. On and on, these ponderous aphorisms about betrayal. Betrayal as escape. As a constructive act. As a statement of ideals. Worship. As an adventure of the soul. Betrayal as travel: how can we discover new places if we never leave home? 'You were my Promised Land, Poppy. You gave my lies a reason.'"

And that was the very phrase she had got to in her reading, she explained--the one about Poppy and the Promised Land--when she turned round and saw Magnus in his shorts standing in the open doorway to his workroom, holding a big blue envelope in one hand and the telegram in the other, smiling like the head boy of one of his schools.

"There was someone else inside him," Mary said, shocking herself. "It wasn't him."

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean? You just said it was Magnus, standing in the doorway. What are you getting at?"

She didn't know either. "It was something that had happened to him when he was young. Someone standing in doorways watching him. He was doing it back somehow. I could see the recognition in his face."

"What did he say?" Nigel suggested helpfully.

She had a voice for Magnus, or perhaps it was just a facial expression. Empty yet impenetrable. Tirelessly polite: "Hullo, old love. Catching up with the great novel, are we? Not exactly Jane Austen, I'm afraid, but some of it may be usable when I get a proper run at it."

The tablecloth was spread on the floor, his books and half his papers on it. But his smile flashed victory and relief as he held the telegram towards her. She took it from his hand and walked with it to the window in order to read it. Or to distract his attention from the desk.

"It was from you, Jack," she said, "using your cover name of Victor. Addressed to Pym care of Pembroke. Return at once, you said. All is forgiven. Committee rea.s.sembles Vienna Monday 10 a.m. Victor."

Taking his time, Brotherhood had turned to Fergus at last.

"What the h.e.l.l do you want?" he said.

Fergus spoke the way Tom did when he had been holding back too long, waiting for the grown-ups to let him in.

"Crash message from the Station clerk at the Emba.s.sy, sir," he blurted. "He phoned it through in word code. I've just unb.u.t.toned it. The Station burnbox is missing from the strongroom."

Nigel had a funny little gesture designed to ease a charged atmosphere. He raised his beloved hands and, with the fingertips pointing loosely towards Heaven, flapped them as if he were drying his nails. But Brotherhood, still kneeling at Mary's side, seemed suddenly to have been seized by lethargy. He rose slowly, then slowly pa.s.sed his hand across his mouth as if he had a bad taste on the tip of his tongue.

"Since when?"

"Not known, sir. Not signed out. They've been searching for it for this last hour. They can't find it. That's all they know. There's a diplomatic courier card that goes with it. The card's disappeared too."

Mary had not yet grasped the mood. The synchronisation has gone wrong, she thought. Who is in the doorway, Fergus or Magnus? Jack's gone deaf. Jack who questions in salvoes has run out of ammunition."Chancery guard says Mr. Pym called at the Emba.s.sy first thing Thursday morning on his way to the airport, sir. The guard hadn't thought to mention it because he hadn't put him into his log. It was upstairs, down again and sorry about your father, sir. But when he came down the stairs he was carrying this heavy black pouch."

"And the guard didn't think to question him at all?"

"Well he wouldn't, sir, would he? Not with his father dead and him being in a hurry."

"Anything else missing?"

"No, sir, just the burnbox, sir, so far as he's got. And the card like I said."

"Where are you going?" said Mary.

Nigel was on his feet, tugging at the points of his waistcoat, while Brotherhood was loading things into his jacket pocket for a long journey on his own. His yellow cigarettes. His pen and notebook. His old German lighter.

"What's a burnbox?" Mary said, close on panic. "Where are you going? I'm talking! Sit down!"

Finally Brotherhood remembered her, and stared down at her where she sat.

"You wouldn't know, would you," he said. "Of course you wouldn't. You were grade nine. You never got high enough to find out." Explaining was a ch.o.r.e but he managed it for old times' sake. "A burnbox is what it says. Little metal box. In this instance it's a diplomatic pouch, steel-lined. Burns whatever is inside it as soon as you tell it to. It's where a Station Chief keeps his crown jewels."

"So what's in it?"

Nigel and Brotherhood exchanged glances. Fergus still had his eyes wide open.

"What's in it?" she repeated as a different and more elusive fear began to grip her.

"Oh. Not much," said Brotherhood. "Agents in place. All our Czechs. A few Poles. Hungarian or two. Just about everything we have that's run from Vienna. Or used to be. Who's Wentworth?"

"You asked. I don't know. A place. What else is in the burnbox?"

"So it is. A place."

She had lost him. Jack. Gone. Lost him as a lover, as a friend, as an authority. His face was her father's face when she took him the news of Sam's death. The love had gone out of him and the last of his faith with it.

"You knew," he said casually. He was halfway to the door, not even looking at her. "You b.l.o.o.d.y knew, for years and years."

We all did, she thought. But she hadn't the heart to say it to him or, for that matter, the interest.

As if the bell had rung for the end of visiting time, Nigel also prepared to make his exit. "Now, Mary, I'm leaving you Georgie and Fergus for company. They'll agree their cover with you and tell you how to play everything. They'll report to me all the time. From now on, so will you. Only to me. Do you understand? If you need to leave a message or anything like that, I'm Nigel, I'm Head of Secretariat, my E A. is called Marcia. Don't talk to anybody else in the Firm at all. I'm afraid that's an order. Even Jack," he added, meaning Jack particularly.

"What else is in the burnbox?" she repeated.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Routine stores. Don't you worry yourself." He came to her and, emboldened by Brotherhood's intimacy with her, placed a hand awkwardly on her shoulder. "Listen. This needn't all be as bad as it sounds. We have to take precautions, naturally. We have to a.s.sume the worst and cover ourselves. But Jack does have a rather Gothic way of looking at things sometimes. The less dramatic explanations are often a lot closer to home. Jack's not the only one with experience."

6.

A dark sea rain had enveloped Pym's England and he strode in it warily. It was early evening and he had been writing for longer than he had written in his whole life and now he was empty and accessible and afraid. A foghorn sounded--one short, two long--a lighthouse or a ship. Pausing under a lamp he again studied his watch. A hundred and ten minutes to go, fifty-three years gone. Bandstand empty, bowling green awash. Shop-windows still wearing their fly-blown yellow cellophane against the summer's sun.

He was heading out of town. He had bought a plastic cape from Blandy the haberdasher. "Good evening, Mr. Canterbury, sir, what can we be doing you for?" In the rain its hood pattered round him like a tin roof. Inside its skirts he carried his shopping for Miss Dubber: the bacon from Mr. Aitken, only mind and tell him he's to cut it on number five, give him half a chance he'll make it thicker. And tell that Mr. Crosse three of his tomatoes were rotten last week, not just bad, rotten. If I don't have replacements I'll never go to him again. Pym had followed her instructions to the letter, though not with the ferocity she would have wished, for both Crosse and Aitken were recipients of his secret subventions, and for years had been sending Miss Dubber bills for only half what she had spent. From Farways the travel agent he had also obtained details of a senior citizens' tour of Italy departing Gatwick in six days. I'll phone her cousin Melanie in Bognor, he thought. If I offer to pay for Melanie as well, Miss Dubber won't be able to refuse.

A hundred and six minutes. Only four gone. From countless pressing memories in his head clamouring to be acknowledged, Pym selected instead Washington and the balloon. Of all the crazy ways we ever had of talking, really that balloon took the biscuit. You wanted a chat, I wouldn't meet you. I was running scared and had appointed you my unperson. But you wouldn't be put down, you never would. To humour me, you launched a miniature silver-coated gas balloon over the rooftops of Washington, D.C. Half a metre diameter; sometimes Tom gets them free at the supermarkets. As we drove our separate cars on either side of town, you told me in German what a fool I was to do a Garbo on you. Over matched handsets that hopped like bedbugs between the frequencies and must have sent the listeners just as frantic.

He was climbing the cliff path, past lighted bungalows cut from the gardens of a great house. I'll phone that doctor of hers and get him to persuade her that a break is what she needs. Or the vicar, she'd listen to him. Below him the fairy lights of the Amus.e.m.e.nt Palace glowed like fat berries in the mist. Alongside them he could make out the blue-white neons of the Softa Ice Parlour. Penny, he thought. You'll never see me again unless it's my face in the newspaper. Penny belonged to his secret army of lovers, so secret she didn't know she was a member. Five years ago she was selling fish and chips from a Portacabin on the promenade and was in love with a leather-boy called Bill who beat her up, until Pym ran the licence number of Bill's motorbike across the Firm computer and established he was married and had kids in Taunton. In a disguised hand he sent the details to the local vicar and a year later Penny was married to a jolly Italian ice-cream seller called Eugenio. But not tonight she wasn't. Tonight, as Pym had approached her cafe for his regular two scoops of Cornish, she was head to head with a burly man in a trilby whom Pym hadn't liked the look of one bit. It was just an ordinary traveller, he told himself as a gust of wind filled his cape. A food salesman, a taxman. Who hunts alone these days apart from Jack? And Jack it isn't, not by thirty years. It was the car, he thought. Those clean wings, the smart aerial. The pitch of his head as he listened.

"Any callers, Miss D?" said Pym, setting out his packages on the sideboard.

Miss Dubber was sitting in the kitchen watching American soap-opera and having her one of the day. Toby sat in her lap.

"They're so wicked, Mr. Canterbury," she said. "There's not one among them we'd have here even for a night, would we, Toby? What's that tea you bought? I said a.s.sam, you silly man, take it back."

"It is a.s.sam," Pym said gently, stooping to show her. "They've put it in a new packing and given you three pence off. Any callers while I was out?"

"Only the gasman for the meter."

"That usual? Or someone new?"

"New, dear. They're all new these days." Lightly kissing her cheek he straightened her new shawl over her shoulders. "Give yourself a nice stiff vodka, darling," she said.

But Pym declined, saying he must work.

Regaining his room he checked the papers on his desk. Stapler to handle of teacup. Book matches to pencil. Burnbox aligned to desk leg, ignore. Miss Dubber is no Mary. Shaving, he caught himself thinking of Back. I saw your ghost, he thought. Not here but in Vienna. Just as I used to see you in the flesh in Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington. I saw your ghost in every shop-window and autumn doorway while I tried to clear my itchy back. You were wearing your camel-hair coat and smoking the cigar you never drew on without frowning. Following me, you were, and your blue eyes shadowed like a drowned man's, the pupils stuck against the upper lids to scare me. "Where are you off to, old son, where are those fine legs of yours taking you so late at night? Got a nice lady, have you? Someone who thinks the world of you? Come on, old son. You can tell your old man. Give us a hug." In London you were lying on your deathbed but I wouldn't go to you, I wouldn't know about you or talk about you, it was my way of mourning you. "No, I will not. No, I will not," I used to say each time my heel hit the cobble. So you came to me instead. To Vienna and did a Wentworth on me. Every corner I turned you were there. Until I felt your loving stare like a heat on the back I could never clear. Get off me, d.a.m.n you, I whispered. What death was I wishing you? All of them by turns. Die, I told you. Do it on the pavement where everyone can see. Stop adoring me. Stop believing in me. Did you want money? Not any more. You had waived your claim to it in favour of the greatest claim of all. You wanted Magnus. You wanted my living spirit to enter your dying body and give you back the life I owed you. "Having a bit of fun, are we, son? Old Poppy's crackerjack, I can see that for openers. What are you two hatching up together there? Come on, you can tell your old pal! Got some piece of business, have you? Putting a few bob in your pockets, are you, the way your old man taught you?"

Three minutes. I always like to cut it fine. Pym wiped his face clean and from an inside pocket drew his faithful copy of Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus, bound in worn brown buckram and much travelled. He laid it ready on the desk beside a pad of paper and a pencil, crossed the room and knelt down in front of dear old Winston's wireless, spinning the bakelite tuning dial until he had the wavelength.

Volume down. Switch on. Wait. A man and a woman discussing in Czech the economics of a fruit cooperative. Discussion fades in midsentence. Time signal announces evening news. Stand by. Pym is calm. Operational calm.

But he is also a little bit transported. There is a serenity here that is not quite of this world, a hint of mystical affinity in his youthful loving smile that says "Hullo there" to someone not quite of this earth. Of all those who have known him, other than this extraterrestrial stranger, perhaps only Miss Dubber has seen the same expression.

Item one, harangue against American imperialists following breakdown of latest round of arms talks. Sound of page turning, signal for get ready. Noted. You are going to talk to me. I am thankful. I appreciate this gesture. Item two coming up. Presenter introduces college professor from Brno. Good evening, Professor, and how is the Czech Secret Service this evening? The professor speaks, a pa.s.sage for translation. All nerves extended, the all of me at full stretch. First sentence: THE TALKS HAVE ENDED IN DEADLOCK. Ignore. IN ANOTHER BID. Write it down. Slowly. Don't rush. Patience again while we wait for the first numeral. Here it is. A FIFTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD WELDER FROM PLZEN. He switched off the wireless and, pad in hand, returned to his desk, eyes straight ahead of him. Opening his Grimmelshausen at page 55, he found five lines down without even counting and on a fresh sheet of paper wrote out the first ten letters of that line, then converted diem to numerals according to their position in the alphabet. Subtract without carrying. Don't reason, do it. He was adding again, still not carrying. He was converting numbers into letters. Don't reason. NEV...VER...RMI...IND...DEW... There's nothing here. It's gobbledegook. Tune in again at ten and take a fresh reading. He was smiling. He was smiling like a saint when the agony is over. The tears were starting to his eyes. Let them. He was standing, holding the page in both hands above his head. He was weeping. He was laughing. He could scarcely read what he had written. NEVER MIND, E. WEBER LOVE YOU ALWAYS. POPPY.

"You cheeky sod," he whispered aloud, punching away more tears. "Oh Poppy. Oh my."

"Is anything wrong, Mr. Canterbury?" Miss Dubber demanded sternly.

"I came to take that vodka off you, Miss D. Vodka," he explained. "Vodka and something."

He was already mixing it.

"You've only been upstairs an hour, Mr. Canterbury. We don't call that working, do we, Toby? No wonder the country's in a fuss."

Pym's smile widened. "What fuss is that?"

"The football crowds. Setting such a bad example to the foreigners. You'd never have let that happen, would you, Mr. Canterbury?"

"Of course I wouldn't."

Warm orange juice from the bottle, oh glory! Chalky water from the tap, where else would you find it? He sat with her for an hour, bubbling on about the charms of Naples, before he returned to his task of saving the country.