The Looking Glass War Part 12

"They might have been stuck," Haldane suggested and sipped his whisky. "Are you married, by the way?"

Leiser grinned, held his hand out flat, tipped it briskly to left and right, like a man talking about airplanes. "So, so," he said. His tartan tie was fastened to his shirt with a heavy gold pin in the shape of a riding crop against a horse's head. It was very incongruous.

"How about you, Captain?"

Haldane shook his head.

"No," Leiser observed thoughtfully, "no."

"Then there have been other occasions," Haldane went on, "where very serious mistakes were made because they hadn't the right information, or not enough. I mean not even we can have people permanently everywhere."

"No, of course," Leiser said politely.

The bar was filling up.

"I wonder whether you know of a different place where we might talk?" Haldane inquired. "We could eat, chat about some of the old gang. Or have you another engagement?" The lower cla.s.ses eat early.

Leiser glanced at his watch. "I'm all right till eight," he said. "You want to do something about that cough, sir. It can be dangerous, a cough like that." The watch was of gold; it had a black face and a compartment for indicating phases of the moon.

The Under Secretary, similarly conscious of the time, was bored to be kept so late.

"I think I mentioned to you," LeClerc was saying, "that the Foreign Office has been awfully sticky about providing operational pa.s.sports. They've taken to consulting the Circus in every case. We have no status, you understand; it's hard for me to make myself unpleasant about these things-they have only the vaguest notion of how we work. I wondered whether the best system might not be for my Department to route pa.s.sport requisitions through your Private Office. That would save the bother of going to the Circus every time."

"What do you mean, sticky?"

"You will remember we sent poor Taylor out under another name. The Office revoked his operational pa.s.sport a matter of hours before he left London. I fear the Circus made an administrative blunder. The pa.s.sport which accompanied the body was therefore challenged on arrival in the United Kingdom. It gave us a lot of trouble. I had to send one of my best men to sort it out," he lied. "I'm sure that if the Minister insisted, Control would be quite agreeable to a new arrangement."

The Under Secretary jabbed a pencil at the door which led to his Private Office. "Talk to them in there. Work something out. It sounds very stupid. Who do you deal with at the Office?"

"De Lisle," said LeClerc with satisfaction, "in General Department. He's the a.s.sistant. And Guillam at the Circus."

The Under Secretary wrote it down. "One never knows who to talk to in that place; they're so top-heavy."

"Then I may have to approach the Circus for technical resources. Wireless and that kind of thing. I propose to use a cover story for security reasons: a pretended training scheme is the most appropriate."

"Cover story? Ah yes: a lie. You mentioned it."

"It's a precaution, no more."

"You must do as you think fit."

"I imagined you would prefer the Circus not to know. You said yourself: no monolith. I have proceeded on that a.s.sumption."

The Under Secretary glanced again at the clock above the door. "He's been in a rather difficult mood: a dreary day with the Yemen. I think it's partly the Woodbridge by-election: he gets so upset about the marginals. How's this thing going, by the way? It's been very worrying for him, you know. I mean, what's he to believe?" He paused. "It's these Germans who terrify me. . . . You mentioned you'd found a fellow who fitted the bill." They moved to the corridor.

"We're onto him now. We've got him in play. We shall know tonight."

The Under Secretary wrinkled his nose very slightly, his hand on the Minister's door. He was a churchman and disliked irregular things.

"What makes a man take on a job like that? Not you; him, I mean."

LeClerc shook his head in silence, as if the two of them were in close sympathy. "Heaven knows. It's something we don't even understand ourselves."

"What kind of person is he? What sort of cla.s.s? Only generally, you appreciate."

"Intelligent. Self-educated. Polish extraction."

"Oh, I see." He seemed relieved. "We'll keep it gentle, shall we? Don't paint it too black. He loathes drama. I mean, any fool can see what the dangers are."

They went in.

Haldane and Leiser took their places at a corner table, like early lovers in a coffee bar. It was one of those restaurants which rely on empty Chianti bottles for their charm and on very little else for their custom. It would be gone tomorrow, or the next day, and scarcely anyone would notice, but while it was there and new and full of hope, it was not at all bad. Leiser had steak, it seemed to be habit, and sat primly while he ate it, his elbows firmly at his sides.

At first Haldane pretended to ignore the purpose of his visit. He talked badly about the war and the Department; about operations he had half forgotten until that afternoon, when he had refreshed his memory from the files. He spoke-no doubt it seemed desirable-mainly of those who had survived.

He referred to the courses Leiser had attended; had he kept up his interest in radio at all? Well, no, as a matter of fact. How about unarmed combat? There hadn't been the opportunity, really.

"You had one or two rough moments in the war, I remember," Haldane prompted. "Didn't you have some trouble in Holland?" They were back to vanity and old times' sake.

A stiff nod. "I had a spot of trouble," he conceded. "I was younger then."

"What happened exactly?"

Leiser looked at Haldane, blinking, as if the other had waked him, then began to talk. It was one of those wartime stories which have been told with variations since war began, as remote from the neat little restaurant as hunger or poverty, less credible for being articulate. He seemed to tell it at second hand. It might have been a big fight he had heard on the wireless. He had been caught, he had escaped, he had lived for days without food, he had killed, been taken into refuge and smuggled back to England. He told it well; perhaps it was what the war meant to him now, perhaps it was true, but as with a Latin widow relating the manner of her husband's death, the pa.s.sion had gone out of his heart and into the telling. He seemed to speak because he had been told to; his affectations, unlike LeClerc's, were designed less to impress others than to protect himself. He seemed a very private man whose speech was exploratory; a man who had been a long time alone and had not reckoned with society; poised, not settled. His accent was good but exclusively foreign, lacking the slur and the elision which escapes even gifted imitators; a voice familiar with its environment, but not at home there.

Haldane listened courteously. When it was over he asked, "How did they pick you up in the first place, do you know?" The s.p.a.ce between them was very great.

"They never told me," he said blankly, as if it were not proper to inquire.

"Of course you are the man we need. You've got the German background, if you understand me. You know them, don't you? You have the German experience."

"Only from the war," Leiser said.

They talked about the training school. "How's that fat one? George somebody. Little sad bloke."

"Oh .. . he's well, thank you."

"He married a pretty girl." He laughed obscenely, raising his right forearm in an Arab gesture of s.e.xual prowess. "G.o.d Christ," he said, laughing again. "Us little blokes! Go for anything."

It was an extraordinary lapse. It seemed to be what Haldane had been waiting for. He watched him coolly for a long time. The silence became remarkable. Deliberately he stood up; he seemed suddenly very angry; angry at Leiser's silly grin and this whole cheap, incompetent flirtation; at these meaningless repet.i.tive blasphemies and this squalid derision of a person of quality.

"Do you mind not saying that? George Smiley happens to be a friend of mine."

He called the waiter and paid the bill, stalked quickly from the restaurant, leaving Leiser bewildered and alone, his White Lady held delicately in his hand, his brown eyes turned anxiously toward the doorway through which Haldane had so abruptly vanished.

Eventually he left, making his way back by the footbridge, slowly through the dark and the rain, staring down on the double alley of streetlights and the traffic pa.s.sing between them. Across the road was his garage, the line of illuminated pumps, the tower crowned with its neon heart of sixty-watt bulbs, alternating green and red. He entered the brightly lit office, said something to the boy, walked slowly upstairs toward the blare of music.

Haldane waited till he had disappeared from sight, then hurried back to the restaurant to order a taxi.

She had turned the phonograph on. She was listening to dance music, sitting in his chair, drinking. "Christ, you're late," she said. "I'm starving."

He kissed her.

"You've eaten," she said. "I can smell the food."

"Just a snack, Bett. I had to. A man called; we had a drink."

"Liar."

He smiled. "Come off it, Betty. We've got a dinner date, remember?"

"What man?"

The flat was very clean. Curtains and carpets were flowered, the polished surfaces protected with lace. Everything was protected; vases, lamps, ashtray, all were carefully guarded, as if Leiser expected nothing from nature but stark collision. He favoured a suggestion of the antique: it was reflected in the scrolled woodwork of the furniture and the wrought iron of the lamp brackets. He had a mirror framed in gold and a picture made of fretwork and plaster; a new clock with weights which turned in a gla.s.s case.

When he opened the c.o.c.ktail cabinet it played a brief tune on a music box.

He mixed himself a White Lady, carefully, like a man making up medicine. She watched him, moving her hips to the record, holding her gla.s.s away to one side as if it were her partner's hand, and the partner were not Leiser.

"What man?" she repeated.

He stood at the window, straight-backed like a soldier. The flashing heart on the roof played over the houses, caught the staves of the bridge and quivered in the wet surface of the Avenue. Beyond the houses was the church, like a cinema with a spire, fluted brick with vents where the bells rang. Beyond the church was the sky. Sometimes he thought the church was all that remained, and the London sky was lit with the glow of a burning city.

"Christ, you're really gay tonight."

The church bells were recorded, much amplified to drown the noise of traffic. He sold a lot of petrol on Sundays. The rain was running harder against the road; he could see it shading the beams of the car lights, dancing green and red on the tarmac.

"Come on, Fred, dance."

"Just a minute, Bett."

"Oh, for Christ's sake what's the matter with you? Have another drink and forget it."

He could hear her feet shuffling across the carpet to the music; the tireless jingle of her charm bracelet.

"Dance, for Christ's sake."

She had a slurred way of talking, slackly dragging the last syllable of a sentence beyond its natural length; it was the same calculated disenchantment with which she gave herself, sullenly, as if she were giving money, as if men had all the pleasure and women the pain.

She stopped the record, careless as she pulled the arm. The needle scratched in the loudspeaker.

"Look, what the h.e.l.l goes on?"

"Nothing I tell you. I've just had a hard day, that's all. Then this man called, somebody I used to know."

"I keep asking you: who? Some woman, wasn't it? Some tart."

"No, Betty, it was a man."

She came to the window, nudging him indifferently. "What's so b.l.o.o.d.y marvellous about the view anyway? Just a lot of rotten little houses. You always said you hated them. Well, who was it?"

"He's from one of the big companies."

"And they want you?"

"Yes . . . they want to make me an offer."

"Christ, who'd want a b.l.o.o.d.y Pole?"

He hardly stirred. "They do."

"Someone came to the bank, you know, asking about you. They all sat together in Mr. Dawnay's office. You're in trouble, aren't you?"

He took her coat and helped her into it, very correct, elbows wide.

She said: "Not that new place with waiters, for Christ's sake."

"It's nice there, isn't it? I thought you fancied it there. You can dance too; you like that. Where do you want to go then?"

"With you? For Christ's sake! Somewhere where there's a bit of life, that's all."

He stared at her. He was holding the door open. Suddenly he smiled.

"O.K. Bett. It's your night. Slip down and start the car, I'll book a table." He gave her the key. "I know a place, a real place."

"What the h.e.l.l's come over you now?"

"You can drive. We'll have a night out." He went to the telephone.

It was shortly before eleven when Haldane returned to the Department. LeClerc and Avery were waiting for him. Carol was typing in the private office.

"I thought you'd be here earlier," LeClerc said.

"It's no good. He said he wouldn't play. I think you'd better try the next one yourself. It's not my style anymore." He seemed undisturbed. He sat down. They stared at him incredulously.

"Did you offer money?" LeClerc asked finally. "We have clearance for five thousand pounds."

"Of course I offered money. I tell you he's just not interested. He was a singularly unpleasant person."

"I'm sorry." He didn't say why.

They could hear the tapping of Carol's typewriter. LeClerc said, "Where do we go from here?"

"I have no idea." He glanced restlessly at his watch.

"There must be others, there must be."

"Not on our cards. Not with his qualifications. There are Belgians, Swedes, Frenchmen. But Leiser was the only German speaker with technical experience. On paper, he's the only one."