John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 34

Having thus, in his own estimation, skilfully circ.u.mvented the one awkwardness that might have stood between them, the intelligence predator in Pym now artfully advanced upon the pertinent question of what had become of Axel since his eviction, and what his access had been, and so by extension-- as Pym hoped--what cards he held, and what price he proposed to put on them as a reward for favouring the British over the Americans or even--dreadful thought--the French.

In this he met at first with no unpleasant inhibition on Axel's part since, doubtless out of deference to Pym's position of authority, he seemed resigned to take the pa.s.sive role. Nor could Pym fail to notice that his old friend in rendering account of himself a.s.sumed the familiar meekness of the displaced person in the presence of his betters. The Swiss had marched him across the German border, he said--and for ease of reference he mentioned the frontier point in case Pym wished to check. They had handed him over to the West German police who, having dealt him a ritual beating, handed him to the Americans, who beat him again, first for escaping, then for returning, and finally of course for being the red-toothed war criminal that he was not, but whose ident.i.ty he had unwisely purloined. The Americans put him in prison while they prepared a fresh case against him, they brought in fresh witnesses who were too frightened not to identify him, they set a date to try him, and still Axel could reach n.o.body who would vouch for him or say he was just Axel from Carlsbad and not a n.a.z.i monster brother. Worse still, as the rest of the evidence began to look increasingly thin, said Axel with an apologetic smile, his own confession became increasingly important, so they had naturally beaten him harder in order to obtain it. No trial was held, however. War crimes, even fict.i.tious ones, were becoming out of date, so one day the Americans had thrown him on another train and handed him over to the Czechs who, not to be outdone, beat him for the double crime of having been a German soldier in the war and an American prisoner after it.

"Then one day they stopped beating me and let me out," he said smiling and opening his hands once more. "For this, it seems, I had my dear dead father to thank. You remember the great Socialist who had fought in the Thalmann brigade in Spain?"

"Of course I do," said Pym, and it occurred to him as he watched Axel's quick hands gesticulating and his dark eyes twinkling that Axel had put aside the German in him and put on the Slav for good. "I had become an aristocrat," he said. "In the new Czechoslovakia I was Sir Axel suddenly. The old Socialists had loved my father. The new ones had been my friends at school and were already in the Party apparatus. 'Why do you beat up Sir Axel?' they asked my guards. 'He's got a good brain, stop hitting him and let him out. Okay, so he fought for Hitler. He's sorry. Now he'll fight for us, won't you, Axel?' 'Sure,' I said. 'Why not?' So they sent me to university."

"But what did you study?" said Pym amazed. "Thomas Mann? Nietzsche?"

"Better. How to use the Party to advance oneself. How to rise in the Youth Union. Shine in the committees. How to purge the faculties and students, climb over the backs of friends and the reputation of one's father. Which a.r.s.es to kick and which to kiss. Where to talk too much and where to shut your mouth. Maybe I should have learned that earlier."

Feeling he was close to the heart of things, Pym wondered whether it was time for him to take notes but decided not to destroy Axel's flow.

"Somebody had the nerve to call me a t.i.toist the other day," Axel said. "Since '49 it's the latest insult." Pym secretly wondered whether this was why Axel had come over. "Know what I did?"

"What?"

"I informed against him."

"No! What for?"

"I don't know. Something bad. It's not what you say, it's who you say it to. You should know that. You're a big spy, I hear. Sir Magnus of the British Secret Service. Congratulations. Is Corporal Kaufmann all right out there? Maybe you should take him something?"

"I'll deal with him later, thank you."

There was a hiatus while each in his separate way savoured the effect of this disciplinary note. They drank another toast, shaking their heads at one another over their luck. But inside himself Pym was less at ease than he let on. He had a sense of slipping standards and complicated undertones.

"So what work have you actually been up to these last days?" Pym asked, struggling to reclaim the ascendancy. "How does a sergeant from HQ Southern Command come to be wandering round the Soviet Zone of Austria, planning his defection?"

Axel was lighting himself a fresh cigar so Pym had to wait a minute for his answer.

"A sergeant I don't know. In my unit we have only aristos. Like you, I am also a great spy, Sir Magnus. It's a boom industry these days. We did well to select it."

Needing suddenly to tend his outward appearance, Pym smoothed his hair back in a reflective gesture he was working on. "But you are still proposing to come over to us--a.s.suming that we can offer you the right sort of terms of course?" he asked, with hard-edged courtesy.

Axel waved away such a stupid idea. "I've paid my ticket same as you. So it's not perfect but it's my country. I've crossed my last frontier. They've got to put up with me."

Pym had a sensation of dangerous disconnection. "Then why are you here--if you don't want to defect--if I may ask."

"I heard about you. The great Lieutenant Pym of Div. Int., more latterly of Graz. Linguist. Hero. Lover. I was so excited to think of you spying on me. And me spying on you. It was so beautiful to think we were back in our old attic together, just that little thin wall between us--knock, knock! 'I've got to get in touch with this fellow,' I thought. Shake his hand. Give him a drink. Maybe we can set the world to rights, same as we used to in the old days."

"I see," said Pym. "Great."

"'Maybe we can put our heads together. We are reasonable men. Maybe he doesn't want to fight any more wars. Maybe I don't. Maybe we are tired of being heroes. Good men are scarce,' I thought. 'How many people in the world have shaken hands with Thomas Mann?'"

"n.o.body but me," said Pym with a burst of real laughter and they drank again.

"I owe you so much, Sir Magnus. You were so generous. I never knew a better heart. I yelled at you, cursed you. What did you do? Held my head when I threw up. Cooked me tea, cleaned the vomit and the s.h.i.t off me, fetched me books--back and forth to the library--read to me all night. I owe this man, I thought. I owe this man a step or two forward in his career. I should make him a gesture that is painful to me. If I can help him achieve a position of influence in the world, that's rare, that's already good. For the world as well as for him. Not many good men achieve a position of influence today. So I'll play a little trick and go and see him. And shake his hand. And say, thank you, Sir Magnus. And take him a gift to pay my debt to him and help him in his career, I thought. Because I love this man, do you hear?"

He had brought no straw hat filled with coloured packages but from the briefcase at his side he drew a folder and handed it to Pym across the table.

"You have landed a great coup, Sir Magnus," he declared proudly as Pym lifted the cover. "Took me a lot of spying to get it for you. A lot of risks. Never mind. It's better than Grimmelshausen, I think. If they ever find out what I've done, I can bring you my b.a.l.l.s as well."

Pym closes his eyes and opens them again, but it is the same night in the same barn. "I'm a little fat Czech sergeant who loves his vodka," Axel is explaining while Pym continues in a dream to turn the pages of his gift. "I'm a good soldier Schweik. Did we read that book? My name is Pavel. Hear me? Pavel."

"Of course we read it. It was great. Is this genuine, Axel? It isn't a joke or anything?"

"You think fat Pavel takes a risk like this to bring you a joke? He has a wife who beats him, kids who hate him, Russian bosses who treat him worse than a dog. Are you listening?"

With half his head, yes, Pym is listening. He is reading too.

"Your good friend Axel H, he doesn't exist. You never met him tonight. In Bern long ago, sure, you met a sickly German soldier who was writing a great book and maybe his name was Axel, what's a name? But Axel vanished. Some bad guy informed against him, you never knew what happened. Tonight you are meeting fat Sergeant Pavel of Czech Army Intelligence who likes garlic and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and betraying his superiors. He speaks Czech and German, and the Russians use him as a dogsbody because they don't trust the Austrians, One week he's hanging around their headquarters in Wiener Neustadt playing messenger boy and interpreter, the next he's freezing his a.r.s.e off on the zonal border looking for small spies. The week after that he's back in his garrison in Southern Czecho being kicked around by more Russians." Axel is tapping Pym's arm. "See this? Pay attention. Here's a copy of his paybook. Look at it, Sir Magnus. Concentrate. He brought it for you because he doesn't expect anybody ever to believe anything he says unless it is accompanied by Unterlagen.

You remember Unterlagen? Papers? They are what I didn't have in Bern. Take it with you. Show it to Membury."

Reluctantly Pym lifts his eyes from his reading long enough to notice the wad of glossy paper Axel is holding up for him to admire. A photocopy in those days is a big matter: plate photographs, tied into a looseleaf book with bootlaces through the holes. Axel presses it upon Pym and again rouses him sufficiently from the material in the folder to make him study the portrait of the bearer: a piggy, part-shaven little man with puffy eyes and a pout.

"That is me, Sir Magnus," Axel says, and bangs Pym on the shoulder quite hard to a.s.sure his attention, exactly as he used to in Bern. "Look at him, will you? He's a greedy, grubby fellow. Farts a lot, scratches his head, steals his Commandant's chickens. But he doesn't like his country to be occupied by a bunch of sweating Ivans who swagger round the streets of Prague and tell him he's a stinking little Czech, and he doesn't like being packed down to Austria at somebody's whim to play toady to a lot of drunk Cossacks. So he's brave too, you follow me? He's a brave little greasy coward."

Pym again pauses in his reading, this time to register a bureaucratic complaint which later causes him some shame. "It's all very well inventing this delightful character, Axel, but what am I to do with him?" he reasons in an aggrieved tone. "I'm supposed to produce a defector, not a paybook. They want a warm body back there in Graz. I haven't got one, have I?"

"You idiot!" cries Axel, pretending to be exasperated by Pym's obtuseness. "You guileless English baby! Have you never heard of a defector in place? Pavel is a defector! He's defecting but staying where he is. In three weeks' time he'll come here again, bring you more material. He'll defect not just once but if you are sensible twenty times, a hundred. He's an intelligence clerk, a courier, a low-grade fieldman, a bottlewasher, a coding sergeant and a pimp. Don't you understand what that means in terms of access? He will bring you wonderful intelligence again and again. His friends in the frontier unit will help him cross. Next time we meet you will have Vienna's questions for him. You will be at the centre of a fantastic industry: 'Can you get us this, Pavel? What does this mean, Pavel?' If you're polite to him, if you come alone, bring him a nice present, maybe he'll answer them."

"And will it be you--will I see you?"

"You will see Pavel."

"And will you be Pavel?"

"Sir Magnus. Listen." Pushing aside the briefcase that lay between them, Axel bangs his gla.s.s beside Pym's and yanks his chair so close that his shoulder is nudging against Pym's shoulder and his mouth is at Pym's ear. "Are you being very, very attentive now?"

"Of course I am."

"Because I think you are so fantastically stupid you better not play this game at all. Listen." Pym is grinning exactly as he used to grin when Axel was explaining why he was a Trottel for not understanding Kant. "What Axel is doing for you tonight, he can never undo in his whole life. I am risking my b.l.o.o.d.y neck for you. Like Sabina gave you her brother, Axel gives you Axel. Do you understand? Or are you too s.h.i.t-stupid to recognise that I am putting my future in your hands?"

"I don't want it, Axel. I'd rather give it back."

"It's too late. I have stolen the papers, I have come over, you have seen them, you know what they contain. Pandora's box cannot be closed again. Your nice Major Membury--those clever aristos in Div. Int.--none of them ever saw such information. Do you follow this?"

Pym nods, Pym shakes his head. Pym frowns, smiles, and tries to look in every way he can the worthy and mature custodian of Axel's destiny.

"In return, you must swear me one thing. I told you earlier you must not promise. Now I tell you you must. To me, Axel, you must promise loyalty. Sergeant Pavel, he's a different matter. Sergeant Pavel you can betray and invent as much as you like--he is an invention anyway. But I Axel--this Axel here--look at me--I do not exist. Not for Membury, not for Sabina, not even for yourself. Even when you are lonely and bored and you need to impress somebody or buy somebody or sell somebody, I am not a creature in your game. If your own people threaten you, if they torture you, you must still deny me. If they put you on the cross in fifty years from now, will you lie for me? Answer."

Pym finds time to marvel that after energetically denying Axel's existence for so long he should be promising him to deny it for still longer. And that it must be a very rare thing indeed to be offered a second chance to prove one's loyalty after failing so miserably at the first attempt.

"I will," says Pym.

"What will you?"

"I will keep you secret. I'll lock you in my memory and give you the key."

"For always. Sabina's brother Jan also?"

"For always. Jan too. That's the whole Soviet Order of Battle in Czechoslovakia you've given me," says Pym in a trance. "If it's genuine."

"It's a little bit old, but you British know how to value antiquity. Your maps in Vienna and Graz are older. And they are not so genuine. You like Membury?"

"I think so. Why?"

"Me too. You are interested in fish? You are helping him to restock the lake?"

"Sometimes. Yes."

"That's important work. Do it with him. Help him. It's a lousy world, Sir Magnus. A few happy fish will make it better."

It was six in the morning when Pym left. Kaufmann had long ago put himself to bed in the jeep. Pym could see his boots sticking over the tailboard. Pym and Axel walked as far as the white stone, Axel leaning on his arm the way he used to when they walked beside the Aare. As they reached it Axel stooped and picked a harvest poppy and handed it to Pym, Then he picked another for himself which on reflection he handed to Pym also.

"There is one of me and one of you, Sir Magnus. There will never be another of either of us. You are the keeper of our friendship. Give my love to Sabina. Tell her that Sergeant Pavel sends her a special kiss to thank her for her help."

A man with a highly regarded source is an admired man and a well-fed one, Tom, as Pym quickly discovered in the next few weeks. Visiting Very Senior Officers from Vienna take him to dinner just for the touch of him and the vicarious feel of his achievement. Membury comes too, a grinning, loping Caesar dwarfing his Antony, hauling on his ear, dreaming of fish and smiling at the wrong people. Other officers less senior but still substantial alter their opinion of Pym overnight and send him smarmy notes by interzonal bag. "Marlene sends her love and is so sad that you had to leave Vienna without saying goodbye to her. It looked for a moment as if I might become your C.O. but fate decreed otherwise. M and I hope to be engaged as soon as we get clearance from the War Office." He is a cult of one and to know him is to be an insider: "The fantastic work young Pym is doing--if I had my way, I'd give him a third pip, national serviceman or not." "You should have heard London on the scrambler, they're sending it to the top." On London's orders, no less, Sergeant Pavel receives the codename Greensleeves and Pym a commendation. Voluptuous Czech interpreters are proud of him, and demonstrate their pleasure in refined ways.

"You must never tell me what happened, it is a rule," Sabina ordered him, biting him half to death between her deep sad lips.

"I never will."

"He is handsome, Jan's friend? He is beautiful? Like you? I would love him immediately, yes?"

"He is tall and beautiful and very intelligent."

"s.e.xy also?"

"Very s.e.xy."

"Homms.e.xual like you?"

"Totally."

The description pleased her in some deep and satisfying way.

"You are good man, Magnus," she a.s.sured him. "You have good taste that you protect this man like my brother."

The due day came round when Sergeant Pavel was to make his second appearance. As Axel had predicted, Vienna had prepared a dense crop of follow-up questions for him concerning his first offering. Pym arrived with them written out in a shorthand notebook. He also brought brown smoked-salmon sandwiches and an excellent Sancerre from Membury. He brought cigarettes and Naafi mint chocolates and everything else the gastronomic experts of Div. Int. could think of to fill the tummy of a brave defector in place. While they ate the smoked salmon and drank vodka, they cleared up the outstanding points.

"So what have you got for me this time round?" Pym enquired cheerfully when they had reached a natural break in the proceedings.

"Nothing," Axel replied comfortably, helping himself to more vodka. "We let them starve a little. Gives them a better appet.i.te next time."

"Pavel's having a crisis of conscience," Pym reported next day to Membury, obeying Axel's instructions to the letter. "He's having wife trouble and his daughter is going to bed with a no-good Russian officer every time Pavel is sent down to Austria. I didn't press him. I told him we were there and he could trust us and we're not adding to his pressures. I believe in the long run he's going to thank us for that. But I did ask him our questions about the concentrated armour east of Prague and he was interesting."

A visiting colonel from Vienna was sitting in. "What did he say?" asked the colonel, following Pym closely.

"He said he thinks it's guarding something."

"Any idea what?"

"Weaponry of some sort. Could be rockets."

"Stay with him," the colonel advised, and Membury puffed out his cheeks and looked like the proud father he had become.

At their third meeting source Greensleeves solved the mystery of the concentrated armour and produced hi addition a breakdown of the total Soviet air strength in Czechoslovakia as of November last. Or nearly total. Vienna was in any case amazed, and London authorised the payment of two small gold bars on condition that the British a.s.say marks first be removed for reasons of deniability. Sergeant Pavel was thus characterised as a greedy man which made everybody feel easier. For several months after this Pym scampered back and forth between Axel and Membury like a butler serving two masters. Membury wondered whether he should meet Greensleeves in person: Vienna seemed to think it would be a good idea. Pym tried for him but came back with the sad news that he would treat only with Pym. Membury resigned himself. It was the breeding season for trout. Vienna summoned Pym and dined him. Colonels, air commodores, and naval persons vied to stake their claim to him. But it was Axel, as it turned out, who was his true proprietor and parent company.

"Sir Magnus," Axel whispered. "Something very terrible has happened." His smile had lost its bounce. His eyes were haunted and there were heavy shadows under them. Pym had brought any number of Naafi delicacies but he refused them all. "You have to help me, Sir Magnus," he said, darting scared looks towards the barn door. "You're my only hope. Help me, for Christ's sake. Do you know what they do to people like me? Don't look at me like that! Think of something for a change! It's your turn!"

I am in the barn at this moment, Tom. I have lived there these thirty and more years. Miss Dubber's stippled ceiling has rolled away, leaving the old rafters and the upside-down bats dangling from the roof. I can smell his cigar smoke as I sit here and I can see the holes of his dark eyes in the lamplight as he whispers Pym's name like the invalid he used to be: get me music, get me painting, get me bread, get me secrets. But there is no self-pity in his voice, no supplication or regret. That was never Axel's way. He demands. His voice is sometimes soft, it is true. But it is never less than powerful. He is his man, as ever. He is Axel, he is owed. He has crossed frontiers and been beaten. Of myself I am thinking nothing at all. Not now, not then.

"They are arresting my friends back home, did you hear? Two of our group were dragged from their beds yesterday morning in Prague. Another vanished on his way to work. I had to tell them about us. It was the only way."

The import of this statement takes a moment to penetrate Pym's worried understanding. Even when it has done so, his voice remains mystified: "About us? Me? What did you say? Who to, Axel?"

"Not in detail. In principle. Nothing bad. Not your name. It's okay, just more complicated, takes more handling. I've been more cunning than the others. In the end it may be better."

"But what did you tell them about MS?"

"Nothing. Listen. For me it's different. The others, they work in factories, in the universities, they've no back door. When they're tortured they tell the truth and the truth kills them. But me, I'm a big spy, I've got a strong position, same as you. 'Sure,' I say to them. 'I go over the border. That's my job. I collect intelligence, remember?'... I act indignant, I demand to see my senior officer. He's not bad, this senior officer. Not a hundred percent, maybe sixty. But he hates the Ivans too. I'm cultivating a British traitor,' I tell him. 'He's a big fish. An army officer. I have kept it secret from you because of the many t.i.toists inside our organisation. Get the secret police off my back and you can share his product with me when I put the heat on him.'"

Pym has given up speech by now. He doesn't bother to ask what the senior officer says in reply, or to what extent the real life of Axel may be compared with the fict.i.tious life of Sergeant Pavel. The cells are dying all over him, in his head, his groin, his bone marrow. His loving thoughts about Sabina are as old as childhood memories to him. There is only Pym and Axel and disaster in the world. He is changing into an old man even while he listens. The ignorance of ages is descending on him.

"He says I've got to bring him proof," says Axel a second time.

"Proof?" Pym mumbles. "What sort of proof? Proof? I don't follow you."

"Intelligence." Axel rubs his finger against his thumb, exactly as E. Weber once did. "Pinka-pinka. Product. Money. Something a British traitor like you could give me when I blackmailed him. It doesn't have to be the secrets of the atom bomb but it has to be good. Good enough to keep him quiet. No junk, you understand? He's got senior officers too." Axel smiles, though it is not a smile I care to recollect even now. "There's always one guy higher up the ladder, isn't there, Sir Magnus? Even when you think you're at the top. Then when you reach the top, there they are again below you, 'swinging on your boots. That's how it is in a system like ours. 'No fabrication,' he says to me. 'Whatever it is, it's got to have quality. Then we can fix it.' Steal for me, Sir Magnus. As you love my freedom, get me something wonderful."

"You look as though you've been seeing things," Corporal Kaufmann says as Pym returns to the jeep.

"It's my stomach," says Pym.

But on the journey back to Graz he began to feel better. Life is duty, he reflected. It's just a question of establishing which creditor is asking loudest. Life is paying. Life is seeing people right if it kills you.

There were half a dozen reconstructed Pyms wandering the streets of Graz that night, Tom, and there isn't one of them I need now feel ashamed of, or wouldn't happily embrace as a long-lost son who had paid his debt to society and come home, if he knocked on Miss Dubber's door at this moment and said, Father, it's me. I don't think there was a night in his life when he thought less about himself and more about his obligation to others than when he was patrolling his city kingdom under the shadows of crumbling Hapsburg glories, pausing now at the leafy gates of Membury's s.p.a.cious married quarters, now at the doorway to Sabina's unprepossessing apartment house, while he made his plan and flashed them rea.s.suring promises. "Don't worry about a thing," he told Membury in his heart. "You will suffer no humiliation, your lake will continue to be stocked and your post will be safe for as long as you care to adorn it. The Highest in the Land will continue to respect you as the presiding genius of the Greensleeves operation." "Your secrets are in my hands," he whispered to Sabina's unlit window. "Your employment by the British, your heroic brother Jan, your exalted opinion of your lover Pym are all secure. I shall cherish them as I cherish your soft warm body sleeping its troubled sleep."

He took no decisions because he had no doubts. The lone crusader had identified his mission, the skilled spy would take care of the detail, the loyal attacher would never again betray his friend in exchange for the illusion of being a servant of national necessity. His loves, his duties and allegiances had never been clearer. Axel, I owe you. Together we can change the world. I will bring you gifts as you brought gifts to me. I will never again send you to the camps. If he contemplated alternatives, then it was only to reject them as disastrous. Over the last months the inventive Pym had built Sergeant Pavel into a figure of joy and admiration in the secret corridors of Graz, Vienna and Whitehall. Under his skilful hand the choleric little hero's drinking, womanising and quixotic bursts of courage had become a legend. Even if Pym were prepared to break Axel's trust a second time, how could he go to Membury and say: "Sir. Sergeant Pavel does not exist. Greensleeves is my friend Axel, who requires that we give him genuine British secrets"? Membury's kindly eyes would pop open, his innocent face would collapse in lines of sadness and despair. His trust in Pym would wither, his reputation with it: Membury to the lantern, sack Membury; Membury, his wife and all his daughters, go home. An even worse disaster would result if Pym were to strike a compromise by visiting Axel's dilemma upon the fict.i.tious Sergeant Pavel. He had played that scene, too, in his imagination: "Sir. Sergeant Pavel's frontier-crossings have been noticed. He has told the Czech secret police that he has a British agent in play. We must therefore give him chickenfeed to back his story." Div. Int. had no mandate to run double agents. Graz even less so. Even a defector in place was stretching things. Only Greensleeves' insistence on being handled by Pym personally had prevented a takeover by London long ago, and there was already a lot of earnest talk going on about who would get Pavel when Pym's military service expired. To place Sergeant Pavel in the position of a double agent would unloose a string of immediate consequences, all frightful: Membury would lose Greensleeves to London; Pym's successor would discover the deception in five minutes; Axel would once more be betrayed and his chances of survival forfeit; the Memburys would be posted to Siberia.

No, Tom. As Pym walked the momentous night away under a canopy of unreachable ideals, eschewing Sabina's bed in his purity of soul, he was not tormenting himself over great choices. He was not examining his immortal spirit in antic.i.p.ation of what purists might call a treasonable act. He did not consider that tomorrow was the day set for his irrevocable execution--the day on which all hope for Pym would die and your father would be born. He was watching the dawn rise on a day of beauty and harmony. A day when a bad record could be put straight, when the fate of everyone he was responsible for rested in his care, when the electors of his secret const.i.tuency would go down on their knees and thank Pym and his Maker that he had been born to see them right. He was glowing and exulting. He was letting his goodwill and self-faith fill him up with courage. The secret crusader had placed his sword upon the altar and was transmitting fraternal messages to the G.o.d of Battles.

"Axel, come over!" Pym had begged him. "Forget about Sergeant Pavel. You can be an ordinary defector. I'll look after you. I'll get you everything you need. I promise."

But Axel was as fearless as he was determined. "Do not advise me to betray my friends, Sir Magnus. I am the only one who can save them. Did I not tell you I have crossed my last frontier? If you help me, we can win a great victory. Be here on Wednesday at the same time."