Absolute Friends

by John le Carré

  The other thing Mundy has noticed, and continues to notice as they square up to greet each other, is Amory’s cap, which is a flat cap, green tweed, sporting, and certainly of a better cut than the cap favored by the Major when he was roaring at Mundy from the touchline, or Des when he was carving the beef for Sunday lunch, or Sasha when he was wearing his Tarnkappe.

  But a cap for all that.

  And since Mundy has never seen Amory wear a cap or any other sort of headgear, let alone one that smacks so offensively of the rural English classes who are his professed aversion—largely, Mundy suspects, because they are where he springs from—it can’t fail to excite his attention, even if he’s too polite or too Edinburgh-trained to remark on it.

  Stranger still, to anybody familiar with English manners, he doesn’t take it off when he steps inside the house. He pats Mundy’s shoulder. He does a cheerful “How are you, cobber?” Australian-style, and confirms in a quick question that nobody else is in the house or expected—“And if we’re disturbed, I’m your first pupil for September,” he adds, for cover. And then, like Sasha, he sweeps past Mundy and takes up a command position directly beneath the art nouveau skylight, a yard away from the island of packing cases and dust-sheets that, like a statue waiting to be unveiled, dominates the main hall.

  But the cap stays put, even while Mundy gives Amory his desired tour of the property. And that’s not because Amory has forgotten he’s wearing it. To the contrary, he gives it a tweak now and then to make sure it’s still there, in much the way Sasha used to tweak his beret; or a shove from behind as if he hasn’t got the angle quite right; then a tug at the peak to keep the sun out of his eyes, except that there isn’t any: the rain may have stopped, but the sky is black as soot.

  Their tour of the property is perfunctory. Perhaps Amory feels as uneasy about his presence here as Mundy does. And as always with Amory, though you forget it betweentimes, he says nothing without purpose.

  “Has our chum still not given you any clear picture of what he got up to in the Middle East?” he demands, as he peers down at the pile of soft goods that was Sasha’s temporary bed.

  “Not really. Traveling lecturer. The odd short-term contract where they needed a spare professor. Whatever came along, as far as I can see.”

  “Not what we’d call a full life then, was it?”

  “Plus a bit of aid work. Aid work was hard to come by because of his legs. Basically he was—well, just some kind of wandering academic bum, from the little he’s told me.”

  “A wandering radical academic bum,” Amory corrects him. “With radical and not so academic chums, perhaps.”

  And Mundy, instead of attempting to moderate this, says he supposes so, because by now it’s becoming clear to him that Amory, for whatever reasons, is playing to the gallery, and that Mundy’s job is to support him and not try to take over the scene. It’s the same role he used to play for Sasha when they were performing for the dread Lothar or the Professor, he thinks. Not every line has to be a masterpiece, he used to tell himself: just play it straight and the audience will come to you. He’s telling it to himself now.

  “And this will be the library,” Amory comments, examining the long room with its builders’ ladders and buckets.

  “It will.”

  “The shrine to objective truth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you seriously believe that crap?”

  Mundy has asked himself the same question a few hundred times by now, and is no nearer to a satisfactory answer.

  “When I listened to Dimitri, I believed it. When I got out of the room, it began to blur,” he replies.

  “And when you listen to Sasha?”

  “I try.”

  “And when you listen to yourself?”

  “It’s a problem.”

  “It is for all of us.”

  They are back in the hall, contemplating the veiled statue of library books.

  “Looked inside any of this stuff?” Amory asks, giving his cap another shove.

  “I’ve read a couple of the inventories.”

  “Got one handy?”

  Mundy pulls back the dust-sheet, picks a plastic envelope from the lid of a packing case and hands it to him.

  “Standard stuff then,” Amory remarks, when he has run his eye down the list. “Available in any lefty library.”

  “The strength of the library will be in its concentrated message,” Mundy says, quoting Sasha and sounding hollow to himself. He is preparing to trot out more of the same when Amory thrusts the inventory back at him to say he’s seen enough.

  “It stinks,” he announces to the house at large. “Specious, unreal and bloody suspicious. My only problem is, why are you working for that layabout Jay Rourke instead of a decent intelligence officer like me?”

  Then he gives Mundy a fat wink, and another buffet on the shoulder, before proposing they get the hell out of here and go somewhere foully expensive for lunch.

  “And we’ll take my car, if you don’t mind,” he murmurs as they set off down the path. “It’s cleaner than yours.”

  Inside the BMW, Amory keeps his cap on, but the levity he displayed indoors deserts him and lunch is no longer the first thing on his mind.

  “Do you know this town well, Edward?”

  “I lived here for three years.”

  “I’m a glutton for medieval castles. Places with very thick walls and maybe a band playing. I rather think I spotted something of the kind as I drove here. We’ll pick up a wurst as we go.”

  They park in the old university square. Mysterious as ever, Amory has got himself a permit.

  For half his life, Mundy has been a witness to Amory’s facial mannerisms. He has known him resolutely impassive under strain; and resolutely indifferent in success. He has watched the shutters come down when he has attempted to penetrate Amory’s private life: to this day he is not sure whether Amory is married or single, or if he has children. Once or twice, in a supposed moment of confidence, Amory has referred to an infinitely forbearing wife and two achieving children at university, but Mundy is never certain that he hasn’t lifted the scenario from the pages of John Buchan. Otherwise, he has remained what he was when he first appeared at Mundy’s bedside in the military hospital in Berlin: a dedicated professional who never crosses the white line, and doesn’t expect you to cross it either.

  It is therefore disturbing to Mundy, as they tramp with the crowds up the steep cobbled lane towards the castle ruins, to see signs of indecision in his old mentor. Nothing has prepared Mundy for this loss of sureness in his last remaining adult. It is not till they reach the castle’s apothecary museum, and are standing on the wobbly redbrick floor, bowed over a glass case of materia medica, that Amory at last removes his cap and, taking a deep breath through his nose with his lips pressed together, speaks the first small part of what is on his mind.

  “My instructions are unequivocal. You take Rourke’s shilling. You stay with the operation to the end and beyond. You work for Rourke exactly as you would work for us. Got it?” He has transferred his attention to a wooden effigy of the healing St. Roch, and the dog that brought him his daily bread while an angel cured him of the plague.

  Mundy stoops obediently beside him. “No,” he replies, with a firmness that surprises him. “I haven’t got it at all. Not any part of it.”

  “And neither have I. And so far as I can read it from what I’m not being told, neither has anyone in the Service.”

  Not shop anymore. Not firm, office or outfit. Amory may be speaking softly but he is speaking in clear text.

  “So who gave you your orders if the Service didn’t?” Mundy asks stupidly, as they head back into the crowded courtyard.

  “Our masters, who d’you think?” Amory retorts, as if it is Mundy, not he, who is speaking out of turn. “The advisor to the advisor to the Highest in the Land gave the orders. Whoever makes his Ovaltine at night. ‘Do as you’re told and shut up and this conversation never took place.’ So I’
m doing as I’m told.”

  But you’re not shutting up, thinks Mundy as they follow a group of plump Frenchwomen down a steep stone staircase.

  “Do you happen to know the great Dimitri’s real name by any chance?” Amory murmurs, very close to Mundy’s ear.

  They have reached the cellar darkness of the Big Barrel and are surrounded by tour groups of French, Japanese and Germans, but apparently no English Spokens. Amory is talking under the cover of their polyglot chatter.

  “I thought you might,” Mundy replies.

  “What I know about Dimitri, or any other part of this so-called operation, would go on the back of a very small water beetle,” says Amory.

  “Well, Rourke must know his name, for heaven’s sake!”

  “You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?” Amory agrees, gazing up admiringly at the Big Barrel’s monstrous belly. “It would be logical, in the normal scheme of things, if one is pursuing the greatest villain of the moment, night and day, to know the fellow’s name.”

  “Well, have you asked him?”

  “Not allowed to. Haven’t spoken to dear old Jay—not since he paid his state visit to Bedford Square. He’s far too secret these days. All dialogue with the dear man has to go through channels.”

  “Which bloody channels?” Mundy demands, surprised by Amory’s lack of reverence for the old mystique, and his own.

  “Some born-again marvel in the U.S. Embassy in London who calls himself special defense liaison officer and is so grand he doesn’t bother to speak to his ambassador,” Amory replies in one long, carefully pointed expletive, as they clamber back up the steps and into the sunlight.

  It has not occurred to Mundy—and why should it since it has never happened before?—that Amory’s perplexity might exceed his own. Nor that Amory’s anger might one day get the better of his discretion.

  “There’s a new Grand Design about in case you haven’t noticed, Edward,” he announces, loudly enough for anyone who cares to hear him. “It’s called preemptive naïveté, and it rests on the assumption that everyone in the world would like to live in Dayton, Ohio, under one god, no prizes for guessing whose god that is.”

  “Where does Dimitri get his money from?” Mundy demands, desperate for hard ground, as they start back down the path towards the town.

  “Oh my dear fellow, all those bad Arabs, who d’you think? He’s doing their dirty work in Europe for them, rallying the Euro-anarchists to the flag, so he’s worth every penny,” Amory replies airily. “Red squirrels,” he goes on, pausing to peer into the branches of an oak tree. “How nice. I thought the grays had eaten them all up.”

  “I don’t believe Sasha knows any part of this,” Mundy urges, forgetting in his perturbation the conventional our chum. “I don’t believe he’s the man Rourke says he is. If anything, he’s mellowed. Grown up. Rourke’s talking up a storm.”

  “Oh, Jay’s talking up a storm all right. It’s whipping down the corridors of Whitehall and Capitol Hill at a splendid rate.” Amory again breaks off, this time to allow two lanky boys in lederhosen to clatter past them. “No, I don’t expect our chum—your chum—knows a damn thing about any of it, poor soul,” he resumes reflectively. “He was never much of a one to see round corners at the best of times, was he? He’s fallen for Dimitri hook, line and sinker by all accounts. Besides, he’s too busy signing up all those lefty academics and producing core libraries of counterculture. Lot of interesting books there, by the way, Edward. You should take a look at them sometime.”

  Which to Mundy’s ear makes a thunderous contrast to his earlier dismissal of them. They are entering the Corn Market. At its center, a bronze Mother of Christ proudly displays her child, while her foot tramples the fallen beast of Protestantism.

  “Rourke isn’t Agency anymore, by the way,” Amory is saying. “Did I happen to mention that? He signed up with a politically motivated group of corporate empire-builders four years ago. Oil chaps, most of them. Strong attachment to the arms industry. And all of them very close to God. In those days they were fringe but today they’re playing to packed houses. Good people, mind. Just like we gung-ho British imperialists used to be, and I’d rather hoped we weren’t anymore.” They are close to the town center. Amory seems to know the way. “Unfortunately, I never took much interest in politics before. Now it’s a bit late,” he remarks through his all-weather smile. “However, please don’t let that discourage you. The fact that this or that improbable rumor has come my way should not deter either of us from serving our country exactly as we are commanded”—his voice now heavy with sarcasm. “All that matters as far as our lords and masters are concerned—whether they’re sitting in Washington or Downing Street—is that this splendid operation will play a vital role in the task of bringing Europe and the United States closer together in our unipolar world. They regard your mission as absolutely —” He searches in vain for an adequate superlative.

  “Alpha double plus?” Mundy suggests.

  “Thank you. And if you play your part to the hilt—which I’m sure you will—there’ll be no limit to their bounty. Huge cash prizes just waiting for the lucky winner. Medals, titles, directorships. You have but to ask. As one long familiar with your mercenary streak, I feel I must make this clear to you.”

  “Rourke’s offered me a pretty good package too, actually.”

  “Of course he has! And so he should! What more could you ask? A double whammy. Go for it. And talking of double whammies”—Amory drops his voice. They are standing shoulder to shoulder before Ritter’s Hotel, studying its superb baroque façade. Rain is falling, and other pedestrians have taken to the doorways—“consider this possibility, Edward, while we’re about it. Suppose Brother Jay and Dimitri Who Has No Other Name, instead of being at each other’s throats, which ideologically they plainly are —” He breaks off, waits for a group of nuns to pass. “Are you hearing me?”

  “Trying to.”

  “Suppose Dimitri and Jay, instead of being deadly enemies, were two horses from the same stable. Would that make any sense to you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, think about it, Edward. Exert your underused gray cells. Your guess is quite as good as mine, probably better. Lying for one’s country is a noble profession as long as one knows what the truth is, but alas I don’t anymore. So let us echo our masters and agree that this conversation never took place. And let us both blindly serve our Queen and country, notwithstanding the fact that both are wholly owned subsidiaries of the one great Hyperpower in the Sky. Agreed?”

  Mundy neither agrees nor disagrees. They are approaching the Universitätsplatz, where Amory parked his BMW.

  “However,” Amory resumes, “just in case you should decide to get as far away from here as you can in the shortest possible time, I’ve brought you a couple of fake passports. One is for you and one is for our chum, in recognition of services rendered by the little bastard. I’m sorry I couldn’t do Zara as well, but at least she’s out of the way. You’ll find them in the door pocket of the BMW on the passenger side, wrapped in a copy of the Süddeutsche. There’s a bit of money, not a great deal. I had to steal it from the reptile fund.” Amory’s face falls and becomes its age. “I’m very, very sorry,” he says simply. “For myself as well as you. Divided loyalty was never my thing. Don’t tell our chum where you got them from, will you? You never know who he may fall for next.”

  As they reach the BMW the rain stops, so Amory puts on his cap.

  He has walked and drunk a bit, not a lot, just taken the edge off his nerves. He has tried to connect himself with the man he used to be, looked up a couple of old haunts but the faces have changed and so have the haunts. From a park bench in the Old City he has tried to phone Zara in Ankara and got no reply. But then he doesn’t really expect one, does he? They’re having a welcome-back knees-up at one of the other farms, of course they are! They’ll be getting her to dance, not that she’ll need any encouragement. Makes you wonder, when a girl who can dance like that falls
for a giraffe like me.

  All the same, from the same park bench, he has rung the airline and established that their plane landed safely at its destination three hours late.

  Just odd her cellphone doesn’t work. But then didn’t I read somewhere that the Americans have depleted the satellites—something to do with Saddam’s world-menacing strike power that mysteriously didn’t show up on the day?

  He walks again. Anywhere but across the bridge and up the hill and back to the school. With a child’s wonder, he examines the eternal spire of the Church of the Holy Ghost carved against the evening sky. What would it be like really and absolutely to believe? Like Zara. Like Mustafa. Like Jay Rourke’s chums. To know, really and absolutely know, that there’s a Divine Being not set in time or space who reads your thoughts better than you ever did, and probably before you even have them? To believe that God sends you to war, God bends the path of bullets, decides which of his children will die, or have their legs blown off, or make a few hundred million on Wall Street, depending on today’s Grand Design?

  He is climbing the hill after all. No excuses: there was nowhere else to go. If he knew how Sasha was getting back from Hamburg, that would be another matter. He might try to head him off, go to the airport, the railway station, the terminal and say: Sasha, sport, we’ve got to elope. But Sasha doesn’t need to know. He just needs to do what he’s told.

  Elope, Teddy? I think you are being a little bit ridiculous, actually. We have a great mission to fulfill. Are you losing heart again already? Maybe I should find you a replacement.

  He goes on climbing. Perhaps the Lord will provide after all. Or Rourke will. Or Dimitri will, now that we suspect they come from the same stable. In the meantime my job is to get back to the school and wait till Sasha shows up. Then we’ll discuss who elopes when and who with and why. The Süddeutsche is folded lengthwise inside his jacket. One corner prods his neck. It’s been a bloody long day, Edward, dear boy. What time did you get up? I didn’t. In the small hours I was driving Zara and Mustafa to Munich airport and I haven’t put my head down since. Then maybe you’re too tired to face the microphones tonight, Edward. Maybe give yourself a break, dear boy, and pin a note on the school door: “Gone to the Blue Boar for the night. Join me there. Tschüss, Teddy.”