The Looking Glass War Part 11

"But what did they say? Good heavens, you can't be fifteen years in a community without leaving some impression. There was a grocer wasn't there-Smethwick?-he lived with them after the war."

Haldane allowed himself a smile. "They said he was a good worker and very polite. Everyone says he's polite. They remember one thing only: he has a pa.s.sion for hitting a tennis ball round their back yard."

"Did you take a look at the garage?"

"Certainly not. I didn't go near it. I propose to call there this evening. I don't see that we have any other choice. After all, the man's been on our cards for twenty years."

"Is there nothing more you can find out?"

"We would have to do the rest through the Circus."

"Then let John Avery clear up the details." LeClerc seemed to have forgotten Avery was in the room. "As for the Circus, I'll deal with them myself." His interest had been arrested by a new map on the wall, a town plan of Kalkstadt showing the church and railway station. Beside it hung an older map of eastern Europe. Rocket bases whose existence had already been confirmed were here related to the putative site south of Rostock. Supply routes and chains of command, the order of battle of supporting arms, were indicated with lines of thin wool stretched between pins. A number of these led to Kalkstadt.

"It's good, isn't it? Sandford put it together last night," LeClerc said. "He does that kind of thing rather well."

On his desk lay a new whitewood pointer like a giant bodkin threaded with a loop of barrister's ribbon. He had a new telephone, green, smarter than Avery's, with a notice on it saying speech on this telephone is NOT secure. For a time Haldane and LeClerc studied the map, referring now and then to a file of telegrams which LeClerc held open in both hands as a choirboy holds a psalter.

Finally LeClerc turned to Avery and said, "Now, John." They were waiting for him to speak.

He could feel his anger dying. He wanted to hold on to it but it was slipping away. He wanted to cry out in indignation: how dare you involve my wife? He wanted to lose control, but he could not. His eyes were on the map.

"Well?"

"The police have been round to Sarah. They woke her in the middle of the night. Two men. Her mother was there. They came about the body at the airport: Taylor's body. They knew the pa.s.sport was phony and thought she was involved. They woke her up," he repeated lamely.

"We know all about that. It's straightened out. I wanted to tell you but you wouldn't let me. The body's been released."

"It was wrong to drag Sarah in."

Haldane lifted his head quickly: "What do you mean by that?"

"We're not competent to handle this kind of thing." It sounded very impertinent. "We shouldn't be doing it. We ought to give it to the Circus. Smiley or someone-they're the people, not us." He struggled on. "I don't even believe that report. I don't believe it's true! I wouldn't be surprised if that refugee never existed; if Gorton made the whole thing up. I don't believe Taylor was murdered."

"Is that all?" Haldane demanded. He was very angry.

"It's not something I want to go on with. The operation, I mean. It isn't right."

He looked at the map and at Haldane, then laughed a little stupidly. "All the time I've been chasing a dead man you've been after a live one! It's easy here, in the dream factory...but they're people out there, real people!"

LeClerc touched Haldane lightly on the arm as if to say he would handle this himself. He seemed undisturbed. He might almost have been gratified to recognize symptoms which he had previously diagnosed. "Go to your room, John, you're suffering from strain."

"But what do I tell Sarah?" He spoke with despair.

"Tell her she won't be troubled anymore. Tell her it was a mistake . . . tell her whatever you like. Get some hot food and come back in an hour. These airline meals are useless. Then we'll hear the rest of your news." LeClerc was smiling, the same neat, bland smile with which he had stood among the dead fliers. As Avery reached the door he heard his name called softly, with affection: he stopped and looked back.

LeClerc raised one hand from the desk and with a semicircular movement indicated the room in which they were standing.

"I'll tell you something, John. During the war we were in Baker Street. We had a cellar and the Ministry fixed it up as an emergency operations room. Adrian and I spent a lot of time down there. A lot of time." A glance at Haldane. "Remember how the oil lamp used to swing when the bombs fell? We had to face situations where we had one rumour, John, no more. One indicator and we'd take the risk. Send a man in, two if necessary, and maybe they wouldn't come back. Maybe there wouldn't be anything there. Rumours, a guess, a hunch one follows up; it's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck, and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop. Sometimes you stumbled on a thing like this: it could be very big, it could be a shadow. It may have been from a peasant in Flensburg, or it may come from the Provost of King's, but you're left with a possibility you dare not discount. You get instructions: find a man, put him in. So we did. And many didn't come back. They were sent to resolve doubt, don't you see? We sent them because we didn't know. All of us have moments like this, John. Don't think it's always easy." A reminiscent smile. "Often we had scruples like you. We had to overcome them. We used to call that the second vow." He leaned against the desk, informally. "The second vow," he repeated.

"Now, John, if you want to wait until the bombs are falling, till people are dying in the street..." He was suddenly serious, as if revealing his faith. "It's a great deal harder, I know, in peacetime. It requires courage. Courage of a different kind."

Avery nodded. "I'm sorry," he said.

Haldane was watching him with distaste.

"What the Director means," he said acidly, "is that if you wish to stay in the Department and do the job, do it. If you wish to cultivate your emotions, go elsewhere and do so in peace. We are too old for your kind here."

Avery could still hear Sarah's voice, see the rows of little houses hanging in the rain; he tried to imagine his life without the Department. He realized that it was too late, as it always had been, because he had gone to them for the little they could give him, and they had taken the little he had. Like a doubting cleric, he had felt that whatever his small heart contained was safely locked in the place of his retreat; now it was gone. He looked at LeClerc, then at Haldane. They were his colleagues. Prisoners of silence, the three of them would work side by side, breaking the arid land all four seasons of the year, strangers to each other, needing each other, in a wilderness of abandoned faith.

"Did you hear what I said?" Haldane demanded.

Avery muttered: "Sorry."

"You didn't fight in the war, John," LeClerc said kindly. "You don't understand how these things take people. You don't understand what real duty is."

"I know," said Avery. "I'm sorry. I'd like to borrow the car for an hour. . . send something round to Sarah, if that's all right."

"Of course."

He realized he had forgotten Anthony's present. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"Incidentally-" LeClerc opened a drawer of the desk and took out an envelope. Indulgently he handed it to Avery. "That's your pa.s.s, a special one from the Ministry. To identify yourself. It's in your own name. You may need it in the weeks to come."

"Thanks."

"Open it."

It was a piece of thick pasteboard bound in cellophane, green, the colour washed downward, darker at the bottom. His name was printed across it in capitals with an electric typewriter: mr. john avery. The legend ent.i.tled the bearer to make inquiries on behalf of the Ministry. There was a signature in red ink.

"Thanks."

"You're safe with that," LeClerc said. "The Minister signed it. He uses red ink, you know. It's tradition."

He went back to his room. There were times when he confronted his own image as a man confronts an empty valley, and the vision propelled him forward again to experience, as despair compels us to extinction. Sometimes he was like a man in flight, but running toward the enemy, desperate to feel upon his vanishing body the blows that would prove his being; desperate to imprint upon his sad conformity the mark of real purpose, desperate perhaps, as LeClerc had hinted, to abdicate his conscience in order to discover G.o.d.

THREE.

Leiser's Run To turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary -Rupert Brooke "1914"

Ten.

Prelude The Humber dropped Haldane at the garage.

"You needn't wait. You have to take Mr. LeClerc to the Ministry."

He picked his way reluctantly over the tarmac, past the yellow pumps and the advertis.e.m.e.nt shields rattling in the wind. It was evening; there was rain about. The garage was small but very smart; showrooms one end, workshops the other, in the middle a tower where somebody lived. Swedish timber and open plan; lights on the tower in the shape of a heart, changing colour continuously. From somewhere came the whine of a metal lathe. Haldane went into the office. It was empty. There was a smell of rubber. He rang the bell and began coughing wretchedly. Sometimes when he coughed he held his chest, and his face portrayed the submissiveness of a man familiar with pain. Calendars with showgirls hung on the wall beside a small handwritten notice, like an amateur advertis.e.m.e.nt, which read, St. Christopher and all his Angels please protect us from road accidents. F.L. At the window a budgerigar fluttered nervously in its cage. The first drops of rain thumped lazily against the panes. A boy came in, about eighteen, his fingers black with engine oil. He wore overalls with a red heart sewn to the breast pocket with a crown above it.

"Good evening," said Haldane. "Forgive me. I'm looking for an old acquaintance; a friend. We knew one another long ago. A Mr. Leiser. Fred Leiser. I wondered if you had any idea..."

"I'll get him," the boy said, and disappeared.

Haldane waited patiently, looking at the calendars and wondering whether it was the boy or Leiser who had hung them there. The door opened a second time. It was Leiser. Haldane recognized him from his photograph. There was really very little change. The twenty years were not drawn in forceful lines but in tiny webs beside each eye, in marks of discipline around the mouth. The light above him was diffuse and cast no shadow. It was a face which at first sight recorded nothing but loneliness. Its complexion was pale.

"What can I do for you?" Leiser asked. He stood almost at attention.

"Hullo, I wonder if you remember me?"

Leiser looked at him as if he were being asked to name a price, blank but wary.

"Sure it was me?"

"Yes."

"It must have been a long time ago," he said at last. "I don't often forget a face."

"Twenty years." Haldane coughed apologetically.

"In the war then, was it?"

He was a short man, very straight; in build he was not unlike LeClerc. He might have been a waiter. His sleeves were rolled up a little way, there was a lot of hair on the forearms. His shirt was white and expensive; a monogram on the pocket. He looked like a man who spent a good deal on his clothes. He wore a gold ring; a golden wristband to his watch. He took great care of his appearance; Haldane could smell the lotion on his skin. His long brown hair was full, the line along the forehead straight. Bulging a little at the sides, the hair was combed backwards. He wore no parting; the effect was definitely Slav. Though very upright he had about him a certain swagger, a looseness of the hips and shoulders, which suggested a familiarity with the sea. It was here that any comparison with LeClerc abruptly ceased. He looked, despite himself, a practical man, handy in the house or starting the car on a cold day; and he looked an innocent man, but travelled He wore a tartan tie.

"Surely you remember me?" Haldane pleaded.

Leiser stared at the thin cheeks, touched with points of high colour, at the hanging, restless body and the gently stirring hands, and there pa.s.sed across his face a look of painful recognition, as if he were identifying the remains of a friend.

"You're not Captain Hawkins, are you?"

"That's right."

"G.o.d Christ," said Leiser, without moving. "You're the people who've been asking about me."

"We're looking for someone with your experience, a man like you."

"What do you want him for, sir?"

He still hadn't moved. It was very hard to tell what he was thinking. His eyes were fixed on Haldane.

"To do a job, one job."

Leiser smiled, as if it all came back to him. He nodded his head toward the window. "Over there?" He meant somewhere beyond the rain.

"Yes."

"What about getting back?"

"The usual rules. It's up to the man in the field. The war rules."

He pushed his hands into his pockets, discovered cigarettes and a lighter. The budgerigar was singing.

"The war rules. You smoke?" He gave himself a cigarette and lit it, his hands cupped around the flame as if there were a high wind. He dropped the match on the floor for someone else to pick up.

"G.o.d Christ," he repeated, "twenty years. I was a kid in those days, just a kid."

Haldane said, "You don't regret it, I trust. Shall we go and have a drink?" He handed Leiser a card. It was neatly printed: Captain A. Hawkins. Written underneath was a telephone number.

Leiser read it and shrugged. "I don't mind," he said and fetched his coat. Another smile, incredulous this time. "But you're wasting your time, Captain."

"Perhaps you know someone. Someone else from the war who might take it on."

"I don't know a lot of people," Leiser replied. He took a jacket from the peg and a nylon raincoat of dark blue. Going ahead of Haldane to the door, he opened it elaborately as if he valued formality. His hair was laid carefully upon itself like the wings of a bird.

There was a pub on the other side of the avenue. They reached it by crossing a footbridge. The rush hour traffic thundered beneath them; the cold, plump raindrops seemed to go with it. The bridge trembled to the drumming of the cars. The pub was Tudor with new horse bra.s.ses and a ship's bell very highly polished. Leiser asked for a White Lady. He never drank anything else, he said. "Stick to one drink, Captain, that's my advice. Then you'll be all right. Down the hatch."

"It's got to be someone who knows the tricks," Haldane observed. They sat in a corner near the fire. They might have been talking about trade. "It's a very important job. They pay more than in the war." He gave a gaunt smile. "They pay a lot of money these days."

"Still, money's not everything, is it?" A stiff phrase, borrowed from the English.

"They remembered you. People whose names you've forgotten, if you even knew them." An unconvincing smile of reminiscence crossed his thin lips: it might have been years since he had lied. "You left quite an impression behind you, Fred; there weren't many as good as you. Even after twenty years."

"They remember me then, the old crowd?" He seemed grateful for that, but shy, as if it were not his place to be held in memory. "I was only a kid then," he repeated. "Who's there still, who's left?"

Haldane, watching him, said, "I warned you, we play the same rules, Fred. Need to know, it's all the same." It was very strict.

"G.o.d Christ," Leiser declared. "All the same. Big as ever, then, the outfit?"

"Bigger." Haldane fetched another White Lady. "Take much interest in politics?"

Leiser lifted a clean hand and let it fall.

"You know the way we are," he said. "In Britain, you know." His voice carried the slightly impertinent a.s.sumption that he was as good as Haldane.

"I mean," Haldane prompted, "in a broad sense." He coughed his dusty cough. "After all, they took over your country, didn't they?" Leiser said nothing, "What did you think of Cuba, for instance?"

Haldane did not smoke, but he had bought some cigarettes at the bar, the brand Leiser preferred. He removed the cellophane with his slim, ageing fingers, and offered them across the table. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "The point was, you see, in the Cuba thing the Americans knew. It was a matter of information. Then they could act. Of course they made overflights. One can't always do that." He gave another little laugh. "One wonders what they would have done without them."

"Yes, that's right." He nodded his head like a dummy. Haldane paid no attention.