A Murder of Quality AND Call for the Dead

by John le Carré

  Then came a blessed day when someone must have drawn the blinds and let in the grey winter light. He heard the sound of traffic outside and knew at last that he would live.

  So the problem of dying once more became an academic one— a debt he would postpone until he was rich and could pay in his own way. It was a luxurious feeling, almost of purity. His mind was wonderfully lucid, ranging like Prometheus over his whole world; where had he heard that: “the mind becomes separated from the body, rules a paper kingdom …”? He was bored by the light above him, and wished there was more to look at. He was bored by the grapes, the smell of honeycomb and flowers, the chocolates. He wanted books, and literary journals; how could he keep up with his reading if they gave him no books? There was so little research done on his period as it was, so little creative criticism on the seventeenth century.

  It was three weeks before Mendel was allowed to see him. He walked in holding a new hat and carrying a book about bees. He put his hat on the end of the bed and the book on the bedside table. He was grinning.

  “I bought you a book,” he said; “about bees. They’re clever little beggars. Might interest you.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed. “I got a new hat. Daft really. Celebrate my retirement.”

  “Oh yes, I forgot. You’re on the shelf too.” They both laughed, and were silent again.

  Smiley blinked. “I’m afraid you’re not very distinct at the moment. I’m not allowed to wear my old glasses. They’re getting me some new ones.” He paused. “You don’t know who did this to me, do you?”

  “May do. Depends. Got a lead, I think. I don’t know enough, that’s the trouble. About your job, I mean. Does the East German Steel Mission mean anything to you?”

  “Yes, I think so. It came here four years ago to try and get a foot in the Board of Trade.”

  Mendel gave an account of his transactions with Mr Scarr. “… Said he was Dutch. The only way Scarr had of getting in touch with him was by ringing a Primrose telephone number. I checked the subscriber. Listed as the East German Steel Mission, in Belsize Park. I sent a bloke to sniff round. They’ve cleared out. Nothing there at all, no furniture, nothing. Just the telephone, and that’s been ripped out of its socket.”

  “When did they go?”

  “The third of January. Same day as Fennan was murdered.” He looked at Smiley quizzically. Smiley thought for a minute and said:

  “Get hold of Peter Guillam at the Ministry of Defence and bring him here tomorrow. By the scruff of the neck.”

  Mendel picked up his hat and walked to the door.

  “Good-bye,” said Smiley; “thank you for the book.”

  “See you tomorrow,” said Mendel, and left.

  Smiley lay back in bed. His head was aching. Damn, he thought, I never thanked him for the honey. It had come from Fortnum’s, too.

  Why the early morning call? That was what puzzled him more than anything. It was silly, really, Smiley supposed, but of all the unaccountables in the case, that worried him most.

  Elsa Fennan’s explanation had been so stupid, so noticeably unlikely. Ann, yes; she would make the exchange stand on its head if she’d felt like it, but not Elsa Fennan. There was nothing in that alert, intelligent little face, nothing in her total independence to support the ludicrous claim to absent-mindedness. She could have said the exchange had made a mistake, had called the wrong day, anything. Fennan, yes; he had been absent-minded. It was one of the odd inconsistencies about Fennan’s character which had emerged in the inquiries before the interview. A voracious reader of Westerns and a passionate chess player, a musician and a sparetime philosopher, a deep thinking man—but absent-minded. There had been a frightful row once about him taking some secret papers out of the Foreign Office, and it turned out that he had put them in his despatch case with his Times and the evening paper before going home to Walliston.

  Had Elsa Fennan, in her panic, taken upon herself the mantle of her husband? Or the motive of her husband? Had Fennan asked for the call to remind him of something, and had Elsa borrowed the motive? Then what did Fennan need to be reminded of—and what did his wife so strenuously wish to conceal?

  Samuel Fennan. The new world and the old met in him. The eternal Jew, cultured, cosmopolitan, self-determinate, industrious and perceptive: to Smiley, immensely attractive. The child of his century; persecuted, like Elsa, and driven from his adopted Germany to university in England. By the sheer weight of his ability he had pushed aside disadvantage and prejudice, finally to enter the Foreign Office. It had been a remarkable achievement, owed to nothing but his own brilliance. And if he was a little conceited, a little disinclined to bide the decision of minds more pedestrian than his own, who could blame him? There had been some embarrassment when Fennan pronounced himself in favour of a divided Germany, but it had all blown over, he had been transferred to an Asian desk, and the affair was forgotten. For the rest, he had been generous to a fault, and popular both in Whitehall and in Surrey, where he devoted several hours each week-end to charity work. His great love was skiing. Every year he took all his leave at once and spent six weeks in Switzerland or Austria. He had visited Germany only once, Smiley remembered—with his wife about four years ago.

  It had been natural enough that Fennan should join the Left at Oxford. It was the great honeymoon period of university Communism, and its causes, heaven knows, lay close enough to his heart. The rise of Fascism in Germany and Italy, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the Franco rebellion in Spain, the slump in America, and above all the wave of anti-Semitism that was sweeping across Europe: it was inevitable that Fennan should seek an outlet for his anger and revulsion. Besides, the Party was respectable then; the failure of the Labour Party and the Coalition Government had convinced many intellectuals that the Communists alone could provide an effective alternative to Capitalism and Fascism. There was the excitement, an air of conspiracy and comradeship which must have appealed to the flamboyance in Fennan’s character and given him comfort in his loneliness. There was talk of going to Spain; some had gone, like Cornford from Cambridge, never to return.

  Smiley could imagine Fennan in those days—volatile and earnest, no doubt bringing to his companions the experience of real suffering, a veteran among cadets. His parents had died—his father had been a banker with the foresight to keep a small account in Switzerland. There had not been much, but enough to see him through Oxford, and protect him from the cold wind of poverty.

  Smiley remembered so well that interview with Fennan; one among many, yet different. Different because of the language. Fennan was so articulate, so quick, so sure. “Their greatest day,” he had said, “was when the miners came. They came from the Rhondda, you know, and to the comrades it seemed the spirit of Freedom had come down with them from the hills. It was a hunger march. It never seemed to occur to the Group that the marchers might actually be hungry, but it occurred to me. We hired a truck and the girls made stew—tons of it. We got the meat cheap from a sympathetic butcher in the market. We drove the truck out to meet them. They ate the stew and marched on. They didn’t like us really, you know, didn’t trust us.” He laughed. “They were so small— that’s what I remember best—small and dark like elves. We hoped they’d sing and they did. But not for us—for themselves. That was the first time I had met Welshmen.

  “It made me understand my own race better, I think—I’m a Jew, you know.”

  Smiley had nodded.

  “They didn’t know what to do when the Welshmen had gone. What do you do when a dream has come true? They realized then why the Party didn’t much care about intellectuals. I think they felt cheap, mostly, and ashamed. Ashamed of their beds and their rooms, their full bellies and their clever essays. Ashamed of their talents and their humour. They were always saying how Keir Hardie taught himself shorthand with a piece of chalk on the coal face, you know. They were ashamed of having pencils and paper. But it’s no good just throwing them away, is it? That’s what I learnt in the end. That’s why
I left the Party, I suppose.”

  Smiley wanted to ask him how Fennan himself had felt, but Fennan was talking again. He had shared nothing with them, he had come to realize that. They were not men, but children, who dreamt of freedom-fires, gipsy music, and one world tomorrow, who rode on white horses across the Bay of Biscay or with a child’s pleasure bought beer for starving elves from Wales; children who had no power to resist the Eastern sun, and obediently turned their tousled heads towards it. They loved each other and believed they loved mankind, they fought each other and believed they fought the world.

  Soon he found them comic and touching. To him, they might as well have knitted socks for soldiers. The disproportion between the dream and reality drove him to a close examination of both; he put all his energy into philosophical and historical reading, and found, to his surprise, comfort and peace in the intellectual purity of Marxism. He feasted on its intellectual ruthlessness, was thrilled by its fearlessness, its academic reversal of traditional values. In the end it was this and not the Party that gave him strength in his solitude, a philosophy which exacted total sacrifice to an unassailable formula, which humiliated and inspired him; and when he finally found success, prosperity and integration, he turned his back sadly upon it as a treasure he had outgrown and must leave at Oxford with the days of his youth.

  This was how Fennan had described it and Smiley had understood. It was scarcely the story of anger and resentment that Smiley had come to expect in such interviews, but (perhaps because of that) it seemed more real. There was another thing about that interview: Smiley’s conviction that Fennan had left something important unsaid.

  Was there any factual connection between the incident in Bywater Street and Fennan’s death? Smiley reproached himself for being carried away. Seen in perspective, there was nothing but the sequence of events to suggest that Fennan and Smiley were part of a single problem.

  The sequence of events, that is, and the weight of Smiley’s intuition, experience or what you will—the extra sense that had told him to ring the bell and not use his key, the sense that did not, however, warn him that a murderer stood in the night with a piece of lead piping.

  The interview had been informal, that was true. The walk in the park reminded him more of Oxford than of Whitehall. The walk in the park, the café in Millbank—yes, there had been a procedural difference too, but what did it amount to? An official of the Foreign Office walking in the park, talking earnestly with an anonymous little man … Unless the little man was not anonymous!

  Smiley took a paper-back book and began to write in pencil on the fly-leaf:

  “Let us assume what is by no means proven: that the murder of Fennan and the attempted murder of Smiley are related. What circumstances connected Smiley with Fennan before Fennan’s death?

  1. Before the interview on Monday, 2 January, I had never met Fennan. I read his file at the Department and I had certain preliminary inquiries made.

  2. On 2 January I went alone to the Foreign Office by taxi. The FO arranged the interview, but did not, repeat not, know in advance who would conduct it. Fennan therefore had no prior knowledge of my identity, nor had anyone else outside the Department.

  3. The interview fell into two parts; the first at the FO, when people wandered through the room and took no notice of us at all, the second outside when anyone could have seen us.”

  What followed? Nothing, unless …

  Yes, that was the only possible conclusion: unless whoever saw them together recognized not only Fennan but Smiley as well, and was violently opposed to their association.

  Why? In what way was Smiley dangerous? His eyes suddenly opened very wide. Of course—in one way, in one way only—as a security officer.

  He put down his pencil.

  And so whoever killed Sam Fennan was anxious that he should not talk to a security officer. Someone in the Foreign Office, perhaps. But essentially someone who knew Smiley too. Someone Fennan had known at Oxford, known as a communist, someone who feared exposure, who thought that Fennan would talk, had talked already, perhaps? And if he had talked already then of course Smiley would have to be killed—killed quickly before he could put in his report.

  That would explain the murder of Fennan and the assault on Smiley. It made some sense, but not much. He had built a cardhouse as high as it would go, and he still had cards in his hand. What about Elsa, her lies, her complicity, her fear? What about the car and the 8.30 call? What about the anonymous letter? If the murderer was frightened of contact between Smiley and Fennan, he would scarcely call attention to Fennan by denouncing him. Who then? Who?

  He lay back and closed his eyes. His head was throbbing again. Perhaps Peter Guillam could help. He was the only hope. His head was going round. It hurt terribly.

  9

  TIDYING UP

  Mendel showed Peter Guillam into the ward, grinning hugely.

  “Got him,” he said.

  The conversation was awkward; strained for Guillam at least, by the recollection of Smiley’s abrupt resignation and the incongruity of meeting in a hospital ward. Smiley was wearing a blue bedjacket, his hair was spiky and untidy above the bandages and he still had the trace of a heavy bruise on his left temple.

  After a particularly awkward pause, Smiley said: “Look, Peter, Mendel’s told you what happened to me. You’re the expert—what do we know about the East German Steel Mission?”

  “Pure as the driven snow, dear boy, except for their sudden departure. Only about three men and a dog in the thing. They hung out in Hampstead somewhere. No one quite knew why they were here when they first came but they’ve done quite a decent job in the last four years.”

  “What are their terms of reference?”

  “God knows. I think they thought when they arrived that they were going to persuade the Board of Trade to break the European steel rings, but they got the cold shoulder. Then they went in for consular stuff with the accent on machine tools and finished products, exchange of industrial and technical information and so on. Nothing to do with what they came for but rather more acceptable, I gather.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Oh—couple of technicians—Professor Doktor someone and Doktor someone else—couple of girls and a general dogsbody.”

  “Who was the dogsbody?”

  “Don’t know. Some young diplomat to iron out the wrinkles. We have them recorded at the Department. I can send you details, I suppose.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “No, of course not.”

  There was another awkward pause. Smiley said: “Photographs would be a help, Peter. Could you manage that?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Guillam looked away from Smiley in some embarrassment. “We don’t know much about the East Germans really, you know. We get odd bits here and there, but on the whole they’re something of a mystery. If they operate at all they don’t do it under Trade or Diplomatic cover—that’s why, if you’re right about this chap, it’s so odd him coming from the Steel Mission.”

  “Oh,” said Smiley flatly.

  “How do they operate?” asked Mendel.

  “It’s hard to generalize from the very few isolated cases we do know of. My impression is that they run their agents direct from Germany with no contact between controller and agent in the operational zone.”

  “But that must limit them terribly,” cried Smiley. “You may have to wait months before your agent can travel to a meeting place outside his own country. He may not have the necessary cover to make the journey at all.”

  “Well, obviously it does limit him, but their targets seem to be so insignificant. They prefer to run foreign nationals—Swedes, expatriate Poles and what not, on short-term missions, where the limitations of their technique don’t matter. In exceptional cases where they have an agent resident in the target country, they work on a courier system, which corresponds to the Soviet pattern.”

  Smiley was listening now.

  “As a matter of fact,” Guillam
went on, “the Americans intercepted a courier quite recently, which is where we learnt the little we do know about GDR technique.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Oh well, never waiting at a rendezvous, never meeting at the stated time but twenty minutes before; recognition signals—all the usual conjuring tricks that give a gloss to low-grade information. They muck about with names, too. A courier may have to contact three or four agents—a controller may run as many as fifteen. They never invent cover names for themselves.”

  “What do you mean? Surely they must.”

  “They get the agent to do it for them. The agent chooses a name, any name he likes, and the controller adopts it. A gimmick really—” He stopped, looking at Mendel in surprise.

  Mendel had leapt to his feet.

  Guillam sat back in his chair and wondered if he were allowed to smoke. He decided reluctantly that he wasn’t. He could have done with a cigarette.

  “Well?” said Smiley. Mendel had described to Guillam his interview with Mr Scarr.

  “It fits,” said Guillam. “Obviously it fits with what we know. But then we don’t know all that much. If Blondie was a courier, it is exceptional—in my experience at least—that he should use a trade delegation as a staging post.”

  “You said the Mission had been here four years,” said Mendel. “Blondie first came to Scarr four years ago.”

  No one spoke for a moment. Then Smiley said earnestly: “Peter, it is possible, isn’t it? I mean they might under certain operational conditions need to have a station over here as well as couriers.”