The Little Drummer Girl

by John le Carré

  ‘Professor Minkel?’ she said.

  He had grey troubled eyes and looked even more embarrassed than Charlie was. It was suddenly like supporting a bad actor.

  ‘I am Professor Minkel,’ he conceded, as if he were not quite sure. ‘Yes. I am he. Why?’

  The sheer badness of his performance gave her strength. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Professor, my name is Imogen Baastrup from Johannesburg and I’m a graduate in social studies from Witwatersrand University,’ she said, all of a rush. Her accent was less South African than vaguely Antipodean; her manner mawkish but determined. ‘I had the great good fortune to hear your centenary lecture last year on minority rights in racially determined societies. That was a fine lecture. It changed my life, in fact. I meant to write to you but never got around to it. Do you mind, please, if I shake your hand?’

  She practically had to take it from him. He stared foolishly at his wife, but she had the better talent and was at least giving Charlie a smile. Taking his cue from her, Minkel smiled too, if wanly. If Charlie was sweating, she was nothing to Minkel: it was like dipping her hand in an oil pot.

  ‘Are you staying here long, Professor? What are you doing here? Don’t say you’re lecturing again?’

  In the background, out of focus, Rossino was asking the receptionist in English whether a Mr Boccaccio had checked in from Milan yet.

  Again Mrs Minkel came to the rescue: ‘My husband is making a European tour,’ she explained. ‘We are having a holiday, lecturing a little, visiting friends. We are really looking forward.’

  Thus encouraged, Minkel himself managed finally to speak: ‘And what brings you to Freiburg – Miss Baastrup?’ he asked, in the thickest German accent she had ever heard off stage.

  ‘Oh, I just thought I’d better see a little of the world before I decided what to do with my life,’ said Charlie.

  Get me out. Christ get me out. The receptionist was regretting that no reservation could be found for Mr Boccaccio, and alas the hotel was full; with the other half of herself, she was handing Mrs Minkel a room key. Somehow Charlie was thanking the Professor again for a really stimulating and instructive lecture, Minkel was thanking her for her kind words; Rossino, having thanked the receptionist, was heading briskly for the main entrance, Minkel’s briefcase mostly hidden by the smart black raincoat over his arm. With a last bashful effusion of thanks and apologies, Charlie went out after him, careful to show no sign of haste. As she reached the glass doors, she was in time to see the reflected image of the Minkels peering helplessly round them, trying to remember who had it last and where.

  Stepping between the parked taxis, Charlie reached the hotel car park, where Helga, wearing a loden cape with horn buttons, sat waiting in a green Citroën. Charlie got in beside her; Helga drove sedately to the car park exit, put in her ticket and money. As the boom lifted, Charlie began laughing, as if the boom had triggered off her laughter. She gulped, she put her knuckles in her mouth and her head on Helga’s shoulder, and broke into helpless, glorious mirth.

  ‘I was incredible, Helg! You should have seen me – Jesus!’

  At the junction, a young traffic policeman stared in puzzlement at the sight of two grown women weeping and laughing their heads off. Lowering her window, Helga blew him a kiss.

  In the operations room, Litvak sat over the radio, Becker and Kurtz stood behind him. Litvak seemed frightened of himself, muted and pale. He wore a headset with one earpiece, and a throat-pad microphone.

  ‘Rossino has taken a cab to the station,’ Litvak said. ‘He has the briefcase with him. He’s going to collect his bike.’

  ‘I don’t want him followed,’ Becker said across Litvak’s back to Kurtz.

  Litvak pulled off his throat pad and acted as though he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Not followed? We’ve got six men round that bike. Alexis has like fifty. We’ve put a homer on it and we’ve got cars standing by all over town. Follow the bike, we follow the briefcase. The briefcase takes us to our man!’ He swung to Kurtz, appealing for his support.

  ‘Gadi?’ said Kurtz.

  ‘He’ll use cut-outs,’ Becker said. ‘He always has done. Rossino will take it so far, hand it over, somebody else will take it on the next stage. By this afternoon, they’ll have dragged us through small streets, open country, and empty restaurants. There’s not a surveillance team in the world that could survive that without being recognised.’

  ‘And your special interest, Gadi?’ Kurtz enquired.

  ‘Berger will stay on Charlie all day long. Khalil will phone her at agreed intervals and places. If Khalil smells a rat, he’ll order Berger to kill her. If he doesn’t call for two hours, three hours, whatever their arrangement is, Berger will kill her anyway.’

  Seemingly undecided, Kurtz turned his back to both of them and wandered down the room. Then up again. Then down again, while Litvak watched him like a madman. Finally Kurtz picked up the hot line to Alexis and they heard him say, ‘Paul,’ in a consultative, do-me-a-favour sort of tone. He spoke quietly for a while, listened, spoke again, and rang off.

  ‘We have about nine seconds before he reaches the station,’ Litvak said wildly, listening to his headset. ‘Six.’

  Kurtz ignored him. ‘I am advised that Berger and Charlie have just entered a fashionable hairdresser’s,’ he said, coming back down the room again. ‘Looks like they’re going to have themselves prettied up for the great event.’ He drew to a halt before them.

  ‘Rossino’s cab just reached the station concourse,’ Litvak reported in despair. ‘He’s paying him off now.’

  Kurtz was looking at Becker. His regard was respectful, even tender. He was an old coach whose favourite athlete had finally found his form.

  ‘Gadi has won the day, Shimon,’ he said, his gaze still upon Becker. ‘Call off your kids. Tell them to rest up till evening.’

  A phone rang and again Kurtz took the call. It was Professor Minkel, having his fourth nervous breakdown of the operation. Kurtz heard him out, then spoke long and soothingly to his wife.

  ‘It’s a really nice day,’ he said, in suppressed exasperation as he rang off. ‘Everyone’s having a great time.’ Putting on his blue beret, he went off to meet Alexis for their joint inspection of the lecture hall.

  It was her most fraught wait ever, and her longest; a first night to end first nights. Worse still, she could do nothing alone, for Helga had appointed Charlie her ward and favoured niece, and would not let her out of her sight. From the hairdresser, where Helga, under the hairdryer, had received her first phone call, they went to a clothes store where Helga bought Charlie a pair of fur-lined boots, and silk gloves against what she called ‘fingers marks’. From there to the Cathedral, where Helga imperiously treated Charlie to a history lesson, and from there again, with much giggling and insinuation, to a small square where she was determined to introduce her to one Berthold Schwarz, ‘the most sexy person ever – Charlie you are certain to fall completely in love with him!’ Berthold Schwarz turned out to be a statue.

  ‘Is he not fantastic, Charlie? Do you not wish we could lift his skirts once? You know what he did, our Berthold? He was a Franciscan, a famous alchemist, and he invented gunpowder. He loved God so much he taught all His creatures to blow each other up. So the good citizens build him a statue. Naturally.’ Grasping Charlie’s arm, she cuddled her excitedly against her. ‘You know what we do after tonight?’ she whispered. ‘We come back, we bring some flowers for Berthold, we put them at his feet. Yes? Yes, Charlie?’

  The Cathedral spire was beginning to get on Charlie’s nerves: a fretted, jagged beacon, always black, stalking out ahead of her every time she turned a corner or entered a new street.

  For lunch they went to a smart restaurant where Helga treated Charlie to Baden wine, which had been grown, she said, in the volcanic soil of the Kaiserstuhl – a volcano, Charlie, think! – and now everything they ate or drank or saw had to be the subject of wearying and facetious innuendo. Over the Black Forest pie –
‘We must have everything bourgeois today’ – Helga was again summoned to the telephone, and returned saying they must leave for the university or they would never get everything done. So they entered a pedestrian underpass lined with prosperous little shops, and emerged before a portentous building of strawberry sandstone, with pillars and a curved front with gold lettering above it, which Helga was quick to translate.

  ‘So here is a fine message to you, Charlie. Listen. “The truth will make you free.” They are quoting Karl Marx for you, is that not beautiful and thoughtful?’

  ‘I thought it was Noel Coward,’ Charlie said and saw a flash of anger pass across Helga’s overexcited face.

  A stone concourse surrounded the building. An elderly policeman patrolled it, eyeing the girls incuriously as they gawped and pointed, tourists to their fingertips. Four steps led to the front entrance. Inside it, the lights of a large hall glinted through darkened glass doors. The side entrance was guarded by statues of Homer and Aristotle, and it was here that Helga and Charlie lingered longest, admiring the sculptures and the pompous architecture while they secretly measured distances and approaches. A yellow poster announced Minkel’s lecture for that evening.

  ‘You are scared, Charlie,’ Helga whispered, without waiting for an answer. ‘Listen, after this morning you will triumph totally, you are perfect. You will show what is truth and what is lies, you will show them also what freedom is. For great lies, we need a great action, it is logical. A great action, a great audience, a great cause. Come.’

  A modern pedestrian bridge led across the dual carriageway. Macabre stone totem-poles presided at either end. From the bridge they passed through the university library to a student café slung like a concrete cradle over the carriageway. Through its glass walls, while they drank their coffee, they could watch staff and students leave and enter the lecture hall. Helga was once again waiting for a phone call. It came, and as she returned from it, she saw something in Charlie’s expression that angered her.

  ‘What is the matter with you?’ she hissed. ‘You are filled with compassion for Minkel’s charming Zionist opinions suddenly? So noble, so fine? Listen, he is worse than Hitler, a complete tyrant in disguise. I buy you a schnapps to give you courage.’

  The heat of the schnapps was still burning her as they reached the empty park. The pond was frozen over; early darkness was gathering; the evening air prickled with specks of freezing water. Very loudly, an old bell chimed the hour. A second bell, smaller and higher-pitched, tinkled after it. Her green cape pulled tight around her, Helga at once let out a cry of pleasure.

  ‘Oh, Charlie, listen! You hear that little bell? It is silver. You know why? I tell you. A traveller on his horse lost his way one night. There were robbers, it was bad weather, he was so glad to see Freiburg that he gave a silver bell to the Cathedral. Every evening now, it rings. Is that not beautiful?’

  Charlie nodded, trying to smile, but without success. Throwing a strong arm round her, Helga gathered her into the folds of her cape. ‘Charlie – listen – you want I give you another sermon?’

  She shook her head.

  Still holding Charlie to her breast, Helga glanced at her watch, then down the path into the half-darkness.

  ‘You know something else about this park, Charlie?’

  I know that it is the second most awful place in the world. And I never award first prizes.

  ‘Then I tell you another story about it. Yes? In the war there was a he-goose here. You say he-goose?’

  ‘Gander.’

  ‘This gander was an air-raid siren. When the bombers came, he was the first who heard them, and when he screamed the citizens went at once to their cellars, not waiting for the official warning. The gander died, but after the war the citizens were so grateful they built him a monument. So there is Freiburg for you. One statue to their bomber monk, another to their air-raid warning. Are they not crazy, these little Freibourgeois?’ Stiffening, Helga glanced at her watch again and then into the misty darkness. ‘He is here,’ she said very quietly, and turned to say goodbye.

  No, thought Charlie. Helg, I love you, you can have me for breakfast every day, just don’t make me go to Khalil.

  Laying her hands flat on Charlie’s cheeks, Helga kissed her softly on the lips.

  ‘For Michel, yes?’ She kissed her again, more fiercely. ‘For the revolution and peace and for Michel. Walk straight down the path, you come to a gate. A green Ford is waiting there. You sit in the back, directly behind the driver.’ One more kiss. ‘Oh, Charlie, listen, you are too fantastic. We shall be friends always.’

  Charlie started down the path, paused, looked back. Stiff and oddly dutiful in the twilight, Helga stood watching her, her green loden cape hanging round her like a policeman’s.

  Helga waved, a royal side-to-side flap of her big hand. Charlie waved back, watched by the Cathedral spire.

  The driver wore a fur hat that hid half his face, and he had pulled up the fur collar of his coat. He did not turn to greet her, and from where she sat she had no picture of him, except that by the line of his cheekbone he was young, and she had a suspicion he was Arab. He drove slowly, first through the evening traffic, then into countryside, down straight, narrow lanes where the snow still lay. They passed a small railway station, approached a level crossing, and stopped. Charlie heard a warning bell ring and saw the high painted boom waver and start its descent. Her driver slammed the car into second gear and raced over the crossing, which closed neatly behind them just as they reached safety.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, and heard him laugh – one guttural peal; he was Arab, for sure. He drove up a hill and once more stopped the car, this time at a bus-stop. He handed her a coin.

  ‘Take a two-mark ticket, the next bus that way,’ he said.

  It’s our annual school treasure hunt on Foundation Day, she thought; the next clue takes you to the next clue; the last clue takes you to the prize.

  It was pitch dark and the first stars were appearing. A biting country wind was blowing off the hills. Away down the road she saw the lights of a petrol station, but no houses anywhere. She waited five minutes, a bus pulled up with a sigh. It was three-quarters empty. She bought her ticket and sat down near the door, knees together, eyes nowhere. For the next two stops no one boarded; at the third, a boy in a leather jacket leapt in and sat himself cheerfully beside her. He was her American chauffeur of last night.

  ‘Two stops from now is a new church,’ he said conversationally. ‘You get out, you walk past the church, down the road, keeping on the right sidewalk. You come to a parked red vehicle with a little devil hanging from the driver’s mirror. Open the passenger door, sit down, wait. That’s all you do.’

  The bus drew up, she got out and started walking. The boy remained on the bus. The road was straight and the night extremely dark. Ahead of her, perhaps five hundred yards, she saw a crooked splash of red under a street lamp. No sidelights. The snow squeaked under her new boots, and the noise added to her feeling of being detached from her body. Hullo, feet, what are you doing down there? March, girl, march. The van came nearer and she saw it was a little Coca-Cola van driven high on the kerb. Fifty yards beyond it under the next lamp was a tiny café, and beyond the café again nothing but the bare snow plateau and the straight, pointless road to nowhere. What had possessed anybody to put a café in such a godless spot was a riddle for another life.

  She opened the van door and got in. The interior was strangely bright from the street lamp overhead. She smelt onions and saw a cardboard box full of them among the crates of empty bottles that filled the back. A plastic devil with a trident dangled from the driver’s mirror. She remembered a similar mascot in the van in London, when Mario had hijacked her. A heap of grimy cassettes lay at her feet. It was the quietest place in the world. A single light approached her slowly down the road. It came level and she saw a young priest on a bicycle. His face turned to her as he ticked past, and he looked offended, as if she had challenged his chastity. She w
aited again. A tall man in a peaked cap stepped out of the café, sniffed the air, then peered up and down the street, uncertain what time of day it was. He returned to the café, came out again, walked slowly towards her until he came alongside. He tapped on Charlie’s window with the fingertips of one gloved hand. A leather glove, hard and shiny. A bright torch shone on her, blacking him off from her completely. Its beam held her, travelled slowly round the van, returned to her, dazzling her in one eye. She lifted a hand to shield herself, and as she lowered it, the beam followed it to her lap. The torch went out, her door opened, one hand closed on her wrist and hauled her out of the car. She was standing face to face with him, and he was taller than she was by a foot, broad and square to her. But his face was in black shadow under the peak of his cap, and he had turned his collar up against the cold.

  ‘Stand very still,’ he said.

  Unslinging her shoulder bag, he first felt the weight of it, then opened it and looked inside. For the third time in its recent life, her little clock radio received careful attention. He switched it on. It played. He switched it off, fiddled with it, and slipped something into his pocket. For a second, she thought he had decided to keep the radio for himself. But he hadn’t after all, for she saw him drop it back into the bag, and the bag into the van. Then, like a deportment instructor correcting her posture, he put the tips of a gloved hand on each of her shoulders, straightening her up. His dark gaze was on her face all the time. Letting his right arm dangle, he began lightly touching her body with the flat of his left hand, first her neck and shoulders, now her collarbone and shoulder blades, testing the spots where the straps of her bra would have been if she had worn one. Now her armpits and down her sides to her hips; her breasts and belly.