The Little Drummer Girl

by John le Carré

  So she loved them more and more, a four-day miracle. She loved their shyness, their virginity, their discipline, and their authority over her. She loved them as captors and as friends. But for all her love, they never gave her back her passport, and if she came too near to their machine guns they drew back from her with dangerous and unbending glances.

  ‘Come, please,’ said Danny, tapping softly on her door to wake her. ‘Our Captain is prepared.’

  It was three in the morning and still dark.

  She remembered afterwards about twenty cars, but it could have been only five, because it all happened very fast, a zigzag of increasingly alarming journeys across town, in sand-coloured saloons with aerials front and back and bodyguards who didn’t speak. The first car was waiting at the foot of the building, but on the courtyard side where she hadn’t been before. It wasn’t till they were out of the courtyard and racing down the street that she realised she had left the boys behind. At the bottom of the street, the driver seemed to see something he didn’t like, for he threw the car into a screeching U-turn that nearly tipped it, and as they raced back up the road she heard a rattle and a shout from close to her, and felt a heavy hand shove her head down, so she supposed that the gunfire was meant for them.

  They went over a crossroads on red and missed a lorry by a prayer; they mounted a pavement to the right, then made a wide arc left into a sloped car park overlooking a deserted lido. She saw Joseph’s half-moon again, hanging over the sea, and for a second she imagined she was on the drive to Delphi. They pulled up beside a big Fiat and almost tossed her into it; she was away again, the property of two new bodyguards, heading down a pitted motorway with riddled buildings either side and a pair of lights following very close. The mountains straight ahead of her were black, but those to her left were grey because a glow from the valley lit their flanks, and beyond the valley lay the sea again. The needle was on 140, but suddenly it was on nothing at all because the driver had turned his lights out and the pursuit car had done the same.

  To their right ran a line of palms, to their left the central reservation that divided the two carriageways, a pavement six feet across, sometimes gravel, sometimes vegetation. With a great bump they mounted it and with another landed on the opposing carriageway. Traffic was hooting at them and Charlie was shouting, ‘Jesus!’ but the driver was not receptive to blasphemy. Putting his lights on full, he drove straight at the oncoming traffic before wrenching the car left again under a small bridge, and suddenly they were careering to a halt in an empty mud road and changing to a third car, this time a Land-Rover with no windows. It was raining. She hadn’t noticed it till now, but as they bundled her into the back of the Land-Rover, a downpour soaked her to the skin and she saw a shellburst of white lightning smash against the mountains. Or perhaps it was a shell.

  They were climbing steeply, a winding road. Through the back of the Land-Rover she could see the valley fall away; through the windscreen, between the heads of the bodyguard and driver, she could watch the rain leaping out of the tarmac like shoals of dancing minnows. There was a car in front of them, and Charlie knew from the way they followed it that it was theirs; there was a car behind them, and from the way they didn’t bother with it, it was theirs as well. They made another change and perhaps another; they approached what seemed to be a deserted schoolhouse, but this time the driver cut the engine while he and the bodyguard sat with their machine guns at the windows, waiting to see who else came up the hill. There were road checks where they stopped and others where they drove through with no more than a slow lift of the hand at the passive sentries. There was a road check where the bodyguard in the front seat lowered his window and fired a burst of machine-gun fire into the darkness, but the only response was a panicky whining of sheep. And there was a last terrifying leap into blackness between two sets of headlamps that were turned full on to them, but by then she was past being terrified; she was shaken and punchdrunk and she didn’t give a damn.

  The car pulled up; she was in the forecourt of an old villa with boy sentries with machine guns posing in silhouette on the roof like heroes in a Russian movie. The air was cold and clean and full of all the Greek smells that the rain had left behind – cypress and honey and every wild flower in the world. The sky was full of storms and smoking cloud; the valley lay stretched below them in receding squares of light. They led her through a porch and into the hall, and there, by the dimmest of overhead lamps, she had her first sight of Our Captain: a brown, lopsided figure with a hank of straight black schoolboy hair, and an English-looking walking stick of natural ash to support his limping legs, and a wry smile of welcome brightening his pitted face. To shake hands with her, he hung the walking stick over his left forearm, letting it dangle, so that she had the feeling of holding him up for a second before he set himself straight again.

  ‘Miss Charlie, I am Captain Tayeh and I greet you in the name of the revolution.’

  His voice was brisk and businesslike. It was also, like Joseph’s, beautiful.

  Fear will be a matter of selection, Joseph had warned her. Unfortunately, no one can be frightened all the time. But with Captain Tayeh, as he calls himself, you must do your best, because Captain Tayeh is a very clever man.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Tayeh said, with cheerful insincerity.

  The house was not his, for he could find nothing he wanted. Even for an ashtray he had to stomp around in the gloom, humorously questioning objects whether they were too valuable to use. Nevertheless the house belonged to somebody he liked, for she observed a friendliness about his manner that said, That’s typical of them – yes, that’s exactly where they would keep their drink. The light was still sparse, but as her eyes grew accustomed to it she decided she was in a professor’s house; or a politician’s; or a lawyer’s. The walls were lined with real books that had been read and flagged and shoved back none too tidily; a painting that hung over the fireplace could have been Jerusalem. All else was a masculine disorder of different tastes: leather chairs and patchwork cushions and a jarring hotchpotch of Oriental carpets. And pieces of Arab silver, very white and ornate, glinting like treasure chests out of dark recesses. And a separate study down two steps into an alcove, with an English-style desk and a panoramic view of the valley she had just emerged from, and of the sea coast in the moonlight.

  She was sitting where he had told her to sit, on the leather sofa, but Tayeh himself was still bumping relentlessly about the room on his stick, doing everything singly while he shot her glances from different angles, getting the measure of her; now the glasses; now a smile; now, with another smile, vodka; and lastly Scotch, apparently his favourite brand, for he studied the label approvingly. A boy sat either end of the room, each with a machine gun across his knees. A pile of letters lay strewn over the table, and she knew without looking that they were her own letters to Michel.

  Do not mistake seeming confusion for incompetence, Joseph had warned her; no racist thoughts, please, about Arab inferiority.

  The lights went out completely but they often did; even in the valley. He stood over her, framed against the huge window, a vigilant smiling shadow leaning on a stick.

  ‘Do you know what it’s like for us when we go home?’ he asked, still gazing at her. But his stick was pointed to the big picture window. ‘Can you imagine what it is like to be in your own country, under your own stars, standing on your own land, with a gun in your hand, looking for the oppressor? Ask the boys.’

  His voice, like other voices she knew, was even more beautiful in the dark.

  ‘They liked you,’ he said. ‘Did you like them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which one you liked best?’

  ‘All equally,’ she said, and he laughed again.

  ‘They say you are much in love with your dead Palestinian. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His stick was still pointing at the window. ‘In the old days, if you had the courage, we would take you with us. Over the border. Attack. Ave
nge. Come back. Celebrate. We would go together. Helga says you want to fight. You want to fight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anybody, or just Zionists?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. He was drinking. ‘Some of the scum we get, they want to blow the whole world up. Are you like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They are scum, those people. Helga – Mr Mesterbein – necessary scum. Yes?’

  ‘I haven’t had time to find out,’ she said.

  ‘Are you scum?’

  ‘No.’

  The lights came on. ‘No,’ he agreed, continuing to examine her. ‘No, I don’t think you are. Maybe you change. Ever killed anybody?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re lucky. You’ve got police. Your own land. Parliament. Rights. Passports. Where do you live?’

  ‘In London.’

  ‘Which part?’

  She had a feeling that his injuries made him impatient of her answers; that they drove his mind beyond them all the time, to other questions. He had found a tall chair and was dragging it carelessly towards her, but neither of the boys got up to help him, and she guessed they didn’t dare. When he had the chair where he wanted, he pulled a second up to it, then sat on the one and with a grunt swung his leg onto the other. And when he had done all that, he dragged a loose cigarette from the pocket of his tunic and lit it.

  ‘You’re our first English, know that? Dutch, Italian, French, German. Swedes. Couple of Americans. Irish. They all come to fight for us. No English. Not till now. The English come too late as usual.’

  A wave of recognition passed over her. Like Joseph, he spoke from pains she had not experienced, from a viewpoint she had yet to learn. He was not old, but he had a wisdom that had been acquired too early. Her face was close to the little lamp. Perhaps that was why he had put her there. Captain Tayeh is a very clever man.

  ‘If you want to change the world, forget it,’ he remarked. ‘The English did that already. Stay home. Act your little parts. Improve your mind in a vacuum. It’s safer.’

  ‘Not now it isn’t,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you could go back.’ He drank some whisky. ‘Confess. Reform. A year in prison. Everyone should spend a year in prison. Why kill yourself fighting for us?’

  ‘For him,’ she said.

  With his cigarette, Tayeh irritably waved away her romanticism. ‘Tell me what’s for him? He’s dead. In a year or two, we shall all be dead. What’s for him?’

  ‘Everything. He taught me.’

  ‘Did he tell you what we do – bomb? – shoot? – kill? . . . Never mind.’

  For a time the only thing he cared about was his cigarette. He watched it burn, he inhaled from it and scowled at it, then he stubbed it out and lit another. She guessed he did not really like to smoke.

  ‘What could he teach you?’ he objected. ‘A woman like you? He was a little boy. He couldn’t teach anybody. He was nothing.’

  ‘He was everything,’ she repeated woodenly, and once again felt him lose interest, like someone bored by callow conversation. Then she realised he had heard something ahead of everybody else. He gave a swift order. One of the boys leapt to the door. We run faster for crippled men, she thought. She heard soft voices from outside.

  ‘Did he teach you to hate?’ Tayeh suggested, as if nothing had happened.

  ‘He said hate was for Zionists. He said that to fight we must love. He said anti-Semitism was a Christian invention.’

  She broke off, hearing what Tayeh had heard so long before: a car coming up the hill. He hears like the blind, she thought. It’s because of his body.

  ‘You like America?’ he enquired.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever been?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How can you tell you don’t like it if you haven’t been?’ he asked.

  But once again the question was rhetorical, a point he was making to himself in the dialogue he was conducting around her. The car was pulling into the forecourt. She heard footsteps and subdued voices, and saw the beams of its headlamps cross the room before they were put out.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered.

  Two other boys appeared, one carrying a plastic bag, the other a machine gun. They stood still, waiting respectfully for Tayeh to address them. The letters lay between them on the table and, when she remembered how important they had been, their disorder was majestic.

  ‘You are not followed and you are going south,’ Tayeh said to her. ‘Finish your vodka and go with the boys. Maybe I believe you, maybe I don’t. Maybe it won’t matter too much. They have clothes for you.’

  It was not a car but a grimy white ambulance with green crescents painted on the sides and a lot of red dust over the bonnet, and a tousled boy in dark glasses at the wheel. Two more boys crouched on the torn bunk beds in the back with their machine guns jammed uncomfortably into the narrow space, but Charlie sat up boldly beside the driver, wearing a grey hospital tunic and headscarf. It was not night any more but a cheerful dawn, with a heavy red sun to their left that kept hiding as they wound carefully down the hill. She tried English small talk on the driver but he became angry. She gave a happy ‘Hi there’ to the boys behind, but one was sullen and the other ferocious, so she thought, Fight your own damn revolution, and studied the view. South, he had said. For how long? For what? But there was an ethic about not asking questions, and her pride and her instinct of survival required she conform to it.

  The first checkpoint came as they entered the city; there were four more before they left it on the coast road south, and at the fourth a dead boy was being loaded into a taxi by two men, while women screamed and beat on the roof. He was on his side with an empty hand pointing downwards, still grasping for something. After the first death there is no other, Charlie recited to herself, thinking of the murdered Michel. The blue sea opened to their right, and once more the landscape became ridiculous. It was as if civil war had broken out along the English seaside. Wrecks of cars and bullet-spattered villas lined the road; in a playing field, two children kicked a football to each other across a shell crater. The little yachting jetties lay smashed and half submerged; even the northbound fruit lorries that nearly ran them off the road had a fugitive desperation.

  Again they stopped for a road check. Syrians. But German nurses in Palestinian ambulances were of no interest to anyone. She heard the revving of a motorcycle and glanced incuriously towards it. A dusty Honda, its carrier bags crammed with green bananas. A live chicken dangling by its legs from the handlebars. And, in the saddle, Dimitri listening earnestly to the engine. He wore the half-uniform of a Palestinian soldier, and a red kaffiyeh round his neck. Shoved through the khaki epaulette of his shirt, like a girl’s favour, was a bold sprig of white heather to say, ‘We’re with you,’ because white heather was the sign she had been looking out for these last four days.

  From now on, only the horse knows the way, Joseph had told her; your job is stay in the saddle.

  Once again, they made a family and waited.

  Their home this time was a small house near Sidon with a concrete verandah that had been split in two by a shell from an Israeli warship, leaving rusted iron rods sticking out like the antennae of a giant insect. The back garden was a tangerine orchard where an old goose pecked at the fallen fruit; the front was a tip of mud and scrap metal that had been a famous emplacement during the last invasion, or the last but five. In the adjacent paddock a wrecked armoured car was shared between a family of yellow chickens and a refugee spaniel with four fat puppies. Beyond the armoured car lay the blue Christian sea of Sidon, with its Crusader fortress stuck out on the waterfront like a perfect sandcastle. From Tayeh’s seemingly endless stock of boys, Charlie had acquired two more: Kareem and Yasir. Kareem was plump and clownish, and made a show of regarding his machine gun as a dead weight, puffing and grimacing whenever he was obliged to shoulder it. But when she smiled at him in sympathy he became flustered and hurried away to join Yasir. His ambition was to become an engineer.
He was nineteen and had been fighting six years. He spoke English in a whisper, and put ‘use to’ with almost every verb.

  ‘When Palestine will use to be free, I study in Jerusalem,’ said Kareem. ‘Meantime’ – he tilted his hand and sighed at the awful prospect – ‘maybe Leningrad, maybe Detroit.’

  Yes, Kareem agreed politely, he use to have a brother and a sister, but his sister had died in a Zionist air attack on the camp at Nabatiyeh. His brother was moved to Rashidiyeh camp and died in a naval bombardment three days later. He described these losses modestly, as if they ranked low in the general tragedy.

  ‘Palestine is use to be a little cat,’ he told Charlie mysteriously one morning, as she was standing patiently at her bedroom window in a billowing white nightdress while he held his machine gun at the ready. ‘She needs much stroking or she use to go wild.’

  He had seen a bad-looking man in the street, he explained, and had come up to see whether he should kill him.

  But Yasir, with his boxer’s lowered brow and scorching, furious gaze, could not speak to her at all. He wore a red check shirt and a black lanyard looped over his shoulder to denote Military Intelligence, and when darkness fell, he stood in the garden, watching the sea for Zionist raiders. He was a big Communist, Kareem explained sympathetically, and he was going to destroy colonialism everywhere in the world. Yasir hated Westerners even when they claimed to love Palestine, said Kareem. His mother and all his family had died at Tal al-Zataar.