A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘Whatever there was of that has worn pretty thin by now,’ Bradfield remarked, with a hint of that dismay, or self-contempt, which Turner now occasionally discerned in him.

  ‘Then what about the Thursday meeting?’

  A look of sheer pain crossed Bradfield’s face.

  ‘My God, you are insufferable,’ he said, more as a mental note, a privately recorded judgment, than an insult directly intended.

  ‘The Thursday conference that never was! It was you who took Harting off that conference; you who gave the job to de Lisle. But Harting still went out Thursday afternoons all right. Did you stop him? Did you hell. I expect you even know where he went, don’t you.’ He held up the gunmetal key he had taken from Harting’s suit. ‘Because there’s a special place, you see. A hideaway. Or maybe I’m telling you something you know already. Who did he meet out there? Do you know that too? I used to think it was Praschko, until I remembered you fed me that idea, you yourself. So I’m going bloody carefully with Praschko.’

  Turner was leaning across the desk, shouting at Bradfield’s bowed head. ‘As to Siebkron, he’s rolling up a whole bloody network, like as not. Dozens of agents, for all we know; Harting was just one link in a chain. You can’t begin to control what Siebkron knows and doesn’t know. We’re dealing with reality, you know, not diplomacy.’ He pointed to the window and the blurred hills across the river. ‘They sell horses over there! They screw around, talk to friends, make journeys; they’ve been beyond the edge of the forest, they know what the world looks like!’

  ‘It requires very little, in an intelligent person, to know that,’ said Bradfield.

  ‘And that’s what I’m going to tell Lumley when I get back to the smoke. Harting didn’t work alone! He had a patron as well as a controller and for all I know, they were the same man! And for all I bloody well know, Leo Harting was Rawley Bradfield’s fancy boy! Having a bit of public school vice on the side!’

  Bradfield was standing up, his face contracted with anger. ‘Tell Lumley what you like,’ he whispered, ‘but get out of here and don’t ever come back,’ and it was then that Mickie Crabbe put his red, bubbling face round Miss Peate’s connecting door.

  He was looking puzzled and slightly indignant, and he was chewing absurdly at his ginger moustache. ‘Rawley, I say,’ he said and began again, as if he had started in the wrong octave. ‘Sorry to burst in, Rawley. I tried the door in the corridor but the latch was down. Sorry, Rawley. It’s about Leo,’ he said. The rest came out with rather a rush. ‘I’ve just seen him down at the railway station. Bloody well having a beer.’

  ‘Be quick,’ said Bradfield.

  ‘Doing a favour for Peter de Lisle. That’s all,’ Crabbe began defensively. Turner caught the smell of drink on his breath, mingling with the smell of peppermint. ‘Peter had to go down to the Bundestag. Debate on Emergency Legislation, big thing apparently, second day, so he asked me to cover the jamboree at the railway station. The Movement’s leaders, coming in from Hanover. Watch the arrivals, see who turned up. I often do odd jobs for Peter,’ he added apologetically. ‘Turned out to be a Lord Mayor’s Show. Press, television lights, masses of cars lined up in the road’ – he glanced nervously at Bradfield – ‘where the taxis stand, Rawley, you know. And crowds. All singing rah-rah and waving the old black flags. Bit of music.’ He shook his head in private wonder. ‘That square is plastered with slogans.’

  ‘And you saw Leo,’ Turner said, pressing. ‘In the crowd?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, the back of his head. Head and shoulders. Just a glimpse. No time to grab him: gone.’

  Turner seized him with his big stone hands. ‘You said you saw him having a beer!’

  ‘Let him go,’ said Bradfield.

  ‘Hey steady!’ For a moment Crabbe looked almost ferocious. ‘Well, I saw him later, you see. After the show was over. Face to face sort of thing.’

  Turner released him.

  ‘The train came in and everyone started cheering pretty loud, and shoving about and trying to get a glimpse of Karfeld. There was even a bit of fighting at the edges, I think, but that was mainly the journalists. Sods,’ he added with a spark of real hatred. ‘That shit Sam Allerton was there, by the way. I should think he started it.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Turner shouted, and Crabbe regarded him quite straightly, with an expression which spoke of bad form.

  ‘First of all Meyer-Lothringen came out – the police had made a gangway for him out of cattle pens – then Tilsit, then Halbach, and everyone shouting like gyppos. Beatles,’ he said uncomprehendingly. ‘Kids mainly, they were, long-haired student types, leaning over the railings trying to touch the chaps’ shoulders. Karfeld didn’t make it. Some fellow near me said he must have gone out the other side, gone down the passage to avoid the crowd. He doesn’t like people coming too close, that’s what they say; that’s why he builds these damn great stands everywhere. So half the crowd charges off to see if they can find him. The rest hang around in case, and then there’s this announcement over the blower: we can all go home because Karfeld’s still in Hanover. Lucky for Bonn, that’s what I thought.’ He grinned. ‘What?’

  Neither spoke.

  ‘The journalists were furious and I thought I’d just give Rawley a ring to let him know Karfeld hadn’t turned up. London likes to keep track, you see. Of Karfeld.’ This for Turner. ‘They like to keep tabs on him, not have him talking to strange men.’ He resumed: ‘There’s an all-night Post Office by the hall there, and I was just coming out when it occurred to me’ – he made a feeble attempt to drag them into the conspiracy – ‘that maybe I ought to have a quick cup of coffee to collect my thoughts, and I happened to look through the glass door of the waiting-room. Doors are side by side, you see. Restaurant one side, waiting-room the other. It’s a sort of buffet in there with a few places to sit as well. I mean sit and not drink,’ he explained, as if that were a particular type of eccentricity he had occasionally met with. ‘There’s the first class on the left and the second class on the right, both glass doors.’

  ‘For pity’s sake!’ Turner breathed.

  ‘And there was Leo. In the second class. At a table. Wearing a trench coat, a sort of army-looking thing. Seemed in rather bad shape.’

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘I don’t know. Christ, that would be going it, wouldn’t it: eight in the morning.’ He looked very innocent. ‘But tired out and, well, not dapper, you know, not like he usually is. Gloss, bounce: all gone. Still,’ he added stupidly, ‘comes to all of us I suppose.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to him?’

  ‘No thanks. I know him in that mood. I gave him a wide berth and came back and told Rawley.’

  ‘Was he carrying anything?’ Bradfield said quickly. ‘Did he have a briefcase with him? Anything that could hold papers?’

  ‘Nothing about,’ Crabbe muttered, ‘Rawley old boy. Sorry.’

  They stood in silence, all three, while Crabbe blinked from one face to the other.

  ‘You did well,’ Bradfield muttered at last. ‘All right, Crabbe.’

  ‘Well?’ Turner shouted. ‘He did bloody badly! Leo’s not in quarantine. Why didn’t he talk to him, drag him here by the neck, reason with him? God Almighty, you’re not bloody well alive, either of you! Well? He may be gone by now; that was our last chance! He was probably waiting for his final contact; they’ve dirtied him up for the journey out! Did he have anyone with him?’ He pulled open the door. ‘I said, did he have anyone with him? Come on!’

  ‘A kid,’ said Crabbe. ‘Little girl.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Six or seven years old. Someone’s kid. He was talking to it.’

  ‘Did he recognise you?’

  ‘Doubt it. Seemed to look through me.’

  Turner seized his raincoat from the stand.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ said Crabbe, answering the gesture rather than the exhortation. ‘Sorry.’

&
nbsp; ‘And you! What are you standing there for? Come on!’

  Bradfield did not move.

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘I’m staying here. Crabbe has a car. Let him take you. It must be nearly an hour since he saw him, or thought he did, with all that traffic. He’ll be gone by now. I don’t propose to waste my own time.’ Ignoring Turner’s astonished gaze, he continued, ‘The Ambassador has already asked me not to leave the building. We expect word from Brussels any minute; it is highly likely that he will wish to call upon the Chancellor.’

  ‘Christ, what do you think this is? A tripartite conference? He may be sitting there with a caseful of secrets! No wonder he looks under the weather! What’s got into you now? Do you want Siebkron to find him before we do? Do you want him to be caught red-handed?’

  ‘I have already told you: secrets are not sacrosanct. We would prefer them kept, it is true. In relation to what I have to do here –’

  ‘Those secrets are, aren’t they? What about the bloody Green File?’

  Bradfield hesitated.

  ‘I’ve no authority over him,’ Turner cried. ‘I don’t even know what he looks like! What am I supposed to do when I see him? Tell him you’d like a word with him? You’re his boss, aren’t you? Do you want Ludwig Siebkron to find him first?’ Tears had started absurdly to his eyes. His voice was one of utter supplication. ‘Bradfield!’

  ‘He was all alone,’ Crabbe muttered, not looking at Bradfield, ‘just him and himself, old boy. And the kid. I’m sure of that.’

  Bradfield stared at Crabbe, and then at Turner, and once again his face seemed crowded by private pains scarcely held at bay.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said at last, very reluctantly, ‘I am his superior. I am responsible. I had better be there.’ Carefully double-locking the outer door, he left word with Miss Peate that Gaveston should stand in for him, and led the way downstairs.

  New fire extinguishers, just arrived from London, stood like red sentinels along the corridor. At the landing, a consignment of steel beds awaited assembly. A file-trolley was loaded with grey blankets. In the lobby two men, mounted on separate ladders, were erecting a steel screen. Dark Gaunt watched them in bewilderment as they swept through the glass doors into the car park, Crabbe leading. Bradfield drove with an arrogance which took Turner by surprise. They raced across the lights on amber, keeping to the left lane to make the turn into the station road. At the traffic check he barely halted; both he and Crabbe had their red cards ready at the window. They were on wet cobble, skidding on the tramlines and Bradfield held the wheel still, waiting patiently for the car to come to its senses. They approached an intersection where the sign said ‘Yield’, and ran straight over it under the wheels of an oncoming bus. The cars were fewer, the streets were packed with people.

  Some carried banners, others wore the grey gabardine raincoats and black Homburg hats which were the uniform of the Movement’s supporters. They yielded reluctantly, scowling at the number plates and the glittering foreign paintwork. Bradfield neither sounded his horn nor changed gear, but let them wake to him and avoid him as they might. Once he braked for an old man who was either deaf or drunk; once a boy slapped the roof of the car with his bare hand, and Bradfield became very still and pale. Confetti lay on the steps, the pillars were covered with slogans. A cab driver was yelling as if he had been hit. They had parked in the cab rank.

  ‘Left,’ Crabbe called as Turner ran ahead of him. A high doorway admitted them to the main hall.

  ‘Keep left,’ Turner heard Crabbe shout for the second time.

  Three barriers led to the platform; three ticket collectors sat in their glass cages. Notices warned him in three languages not to ask them favours. A group of priests, whispering, turned to eye him disapprovingly: haste, they said, is not a Christian quality. A blonde girl, her face chestnut brown, swung dangerously past him with a rucksack and well-worn skis, and he saw the trembling of her pullover.

  ‘He was sitting just there,’ Crabbe whispered, but by then Turner had flung open the glazed swing door and was standing inside the restaurant, glaring through the cigarette smoke at each table in turn. A loudspeaker barked a message about changing at Cologne. ‘Gone,’ Crabbe was saying. ‘Sod’s flown.’

  The smoke hung all around, lifting in the glow of the long tube lights, curling into the darker corners. The smell was of beer and smoked ham and municipal disinfectant; the far counter, white with Dutch tiles, glinted like an ice wall in the fog. In a brown-wood cubicle sat a poor family on the move; the women were old and dressed in black, their suitcases were bound with rope; the men were reading Greek newspapers. At a separate table a little girl rolled beermats to a drunk, and that was the table Crabbe was pointing at.

  ‘Where the kiddie is, you see. He was having a Pils.’

  Ignoring the drunk and the child, Turner picked up the glasses and stared at them uselessly. Three small cigar ends lay in the ashtray. One was still slightly smouldering. The child watched him as he stooped and searched the floor and rose again empty handed; she watched him stride from one table to the next, glaring into the faces, seizing a shoulder, pushing down a newspaper, touching an arm.

  ‘Is this him?’ he yelled. A lonely priest was reading Bildzeitung in a corner; beside him, hiding in his shadow, a dark-faced gypsy ate roast chestnuts out of a bag.

  ‘No.’

  ‘This?’

  ‘Sorry, old boy,’ said Crabbe, very nervous now. ‘No luck. I say, go easy.’

  By the stained-glass window two soldiers were playing chess. A bearded man was making the motions of eating, but there was no food before him. Outside on the platform a train was arriving, and the vibration shook the crockery. Crabbe was addressing the waitress. He was hanging over her, whispering, and his hand was on the flesh of her upper arm. She shook her head.

  ‘We’ll try the other one,’ he said, as Turner joined them. They walked across the room together, and this woman nodded, proud to have remembered, and made a long story, pointing at the child and talking about ‘der kleine Herr’, the little gentleman, and sometimes just about ‘der Kleine’, as if ‘gentleman’ were a tribute to her interrogators rather than to Harting.

  ‘He was here till a few minutes ago,’ Crabbe said in some bewilderment. ‘Her version, anyway.’

  ‘Did he leave alone?’

  ‘Didn’t see.’

  ‘Did he make any impression on her?’

  ‘Steady. She’s not a big thinker, old boy. Don’t want her to fly away.’

  ‘What made him leave? Did he see someone? Did someone signal to him from the door?’

  ‘You’re stretching it, old son. She didn’t see him leave. She didn’t worry about him, he paid with every order. As if he might leave in a hurry. Catch a train. He went out to watch the hoo-hah, when the boys arrived, then came back and had another cigar and a drink.’

  ‘What’s the matter then? Why are you looking like that?’

  ‘It’s bloody odd,’ Crabbe muttered, frowning absurdly.

  ‘What’s bloody odd?’

  ‘He’s been here all night. Alone. Drinking but not drunk. Played with the kid part of the time. Greek kid. That was what he liked best: the kid.’ He gave the woman a coin and she thanked him laboriously.

  ‘Just as well we missed him,’ Crabbe declared. ‘Pugnacious little sod when he gets like this. Go for anyone when he’s got his dander up.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Crabbe grimaced in painful reminiscence: ‘You should have seen him that night in Cologne,’ he muttered, still staring after the waitress. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘In the fight? You were there?’

  ‘I tell you,’ Crabbe repeated. He spoke from the heart. ‘When that lad’s really going, he’s best avoided altogether. Look.’ He held out his hand. A wooden button lay in the palm and it was identical to the buttons in the scratched tin in Königswinter. ‘She picked this up from the table,’ he said. ‘She thought it might be something he needed. She was
hanging on to it in case he came back, you see.’

  Bradfield came slowly through the doorway. His face was taut but without expression.

  ‘I gather he’s not here.’

  No one spoke.

  ‘You still say you saw him?’

  ‘No mistake, old boy. Sorry.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we must believe you. I suggest we go back to the Embassy.’ He glanced at Turner. ‘Unless you prefer to stay. If you have some further theory to test.’ He looked round the buffet. Every face was turned towards them. Behind the bar, a chrome machine was steaming unattended. Not a hand moved. ‘You seem to have made your mark here anyway.’ As they walked slowly back to the car, Bradfield said, ‘You can come into the Embassy to collect your possessions but you must be out by lunchtime. If you have any papers, leave them with Cork and we’ll send them on by bag. There’s a flight at seven. Take it. If you can’t get a seat, take the train. But go.’

  They waited while Bradfield spoke to the policemen and showed them his red card. His German sounded very English in tone but the grammar was faultless. The policeman nodded, saluted and they took their leave. Slowly they returned to the Embassy through the sullen faces of the aimless crowd.

  ‘Extraordinary place for Leo to spend the night,’ Crabbe muttered, but Turner was fingering the gunmetal key in the OHMS envelope in his pocket, and still wondering, for all his sense of failure, whose door it had unlocked.

  13

  The Strain of Being a Pig

  He sat at the cypher-room desk, still in his raincoat, packing together the useless trophies of his investigation: the army holster, the folded print, the engraved paper knife from Margaret Aickman; the blue-bound diary for counsellors and above, the little notebook for diplomatic discounts, and the scratched tin of five wooden buttons cut to size; and now the sixth button and the three stubs of cigar.