The Russia House

by John le Carré

  ‘Do you have a different name from the one you are using?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you British born, Mr. Brown?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you fly here, Mr. Brown?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you come here by boat, Mr. Brown?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you truthfully answered my questions so far, Mr. Brown?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you intend to answer my questions truthfully throughout the remainder of this test, Mr. Brown?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Merv, with a gentle smile while Stanley released the air from the cuff. ‘Those are what we call the non-relevant questions. Married?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Two, actually.’

  ‘Boys or girls?’

  ‘One of each.’

  ‘Wise man. Alrighty?’ He began pumping up the cuff again. ‘Now we go relevant. Easy now. That’s nice. That’s very nice.’

  In the open suitcase the four spectral wire claws described their four mauve skylines across the graph paper, while the four black needles nodded inside their dials. Merv had taken up a sheaf of questions and settled himself at a small table at Barley’s side. Not even Russell Sheriton had been allowed to know the questions the faceless desk inquisitors in Langley had selected. No casual tampering by Barley’s terrestrial cohabitants was to be allowed to breathe upon the mystic powers of the box.

  Merv spoke tonelessly. Merv, I was sure, prided himself upon the impartiality of his voice. He was the March of Time. He was Houston Control.

  ‘I am knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to supply untrue information to the intelligence services of Britain and the United States of America. Yes, I am so engaged. No, I am not so engaged.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My motive is to promote peace between nations. Yes or no?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am operating in collusion with Soviet Intelligence.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am proud of my mission on behalf of world Communism.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am operating in collusion with Niki Landau.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Niki Landau is my lover.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was my lover.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am homosexual.’

  ‘No.’

  A break while Stanley once more eased the pressure. ‘How’s it feeling, Mr. Brown? Not too much pain?’

  ‘Never enough, old boy. I thrive on it.’

  But we didn’t look at him in these breaks, I noticed. We looked at the floor or at our hands, or at the beckoning windbent trees outside the window. It was Stanley’s turn. A cosier tone, but the same mechanical flatness.

  ‘I am operating in collusion with the woman Katya Orlova and her lover.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The man I call Goethe is known to me as a plant of Soviet Intelligence.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The material he has passed to me has been prepared by Soviet Intelligence.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am the victim of sexual entrapment.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am being blackmailed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am being coerced.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By the Soviets?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am being threatened with financial ruin if I do not collaborate with the Soviets.’

  ‘No.’

  Another break. Round Three. Merv’s turn.

  ‘I lied when I said I had telephoned Katya Orlova from Leningrad.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘From Leningrad I called my Soviet Control and told him of my discussion with Goethe.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am the lover of Katya Orlova.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have been the lover of Katya Orlova at some time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am being blackmailed regarding my relationship with Katya Orlova.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have told the truth so far throughout this interview.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am an enemy of the United States of America.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My aim is to undermine the military preparedness of the United States of America.’

  ‘Do you mind running that one by me again, old boy?’

  ‘Hold it,’ said Merv, and at the suitcase Stanley held it, while Merv made a pencilled annotation on the graph paper. ‘Don’t break the rhythm, please, Mr. Brown. We have people do that on purpose when they want to shake off a bad question.’

  Round Four and Stanley’s turn again. The questions droned on and it was clear they would not stop until they had reached the nadir of their vulgarity. Barley’s ‘no’s had acquired a deadened rhythm and a mocking passivity. He remained sitting exactly as they had placed him. I had never seen him so still for so long.

  They broke again but Barley no longer relaxed between rounds. His stillness was becoming unbearable. His chin was lifted, his eyes were closed and he appeared to be smiling, God alone knew what about. Sometimes his ‘no’ fell before the end of a sentence. Sometimes he waited so long that the two men paused and looked up, the one from his dials and the other from his papers, and they seemed to me to have the torturer’s anxiety that they might have taxed their man too hard. Till the ‘no’ finally fell again, neither louder nor quieter, a letter delayed in the mail.

  Where does he get his stoicism from? No, no, to everything. Why does he sit there like a man preparing himself for the indignities of age, meekly mouthing ‘no’? What does this meekness mean, no, yes, no, no, till lunchtime, when they take him off the machine?

  But in another part of my head, I think I knew the answer, even if I could not yet put it into words: his reality had moved elsewhere.

  Spying is waiting.

  We waited three days, and you may still count the hours in my grey hairs. We had split on lines of seniority: Sheriton to go with Bob and Clive to Langley; Ned to stay on the island with his joe, Palfrey to remain with them on standby, though what I was standing by for was a mystery to me. I hated the island by then and I suspected that Ned and Barley did too, though I could get no nearer to Ned than I could to Barley. He had become remote and for the time being humourless. Something had happened to his pride.

  So we waited. And played distracted chess, seldom finishing a game. And listened to Randy talk about his yacht. And listened for the telephone. And to the screaming of the birds and the pulse of the sea.

  It was a mad time, and the vagaries of the isolated place with its fuming skies and storms and patches of idyllic beauty made it madder. A ‘dungeon fog’, as Randy called it, enveloped us and with it a mindless fear that we would never leave the island. The fog cleared but we were still there. The shared intimacy should have drawn us closer, but both men had withdrawn to their kingdoms, Ned to his room and Barley to the outdoor. With the rain whipping over the island like grapeshot I would peer through the streaming window and glimpse Barley pounding over the cliff in his oilskins, picking up his knees as if wrestling with uncomfortable shoes – or once, playing solitary cricket on the beach with Edgar the guard, a piece of driftwood and a tennis ball. In sunny spells he sported an old blue sailing cap which he had unearthed from a sea-chest in his room. He wore it with a grim face, eyes upon unconquered colonies. One day Edgar appeared with an old yellow dog he had unearthed from somewhere and they made it run back and forth between them. On another day there was a regatta off the mainland and a shoal of white yachts clustered in a ring like tiny teeth. Barley stood watching them interminably, seemingly delighted by the carnival, while Edgar stood off watching Barley.

  He’s thinking of his Hannah, I thought. He’s waiting for life to provide him with the moment of choice. It did not occur to me till much later that some people do not take their d
ecisions in quite that way.

  My last image of the island has the convenient distortions of a dream. I had spoken to Clive only twice on the telephone, which for him was virtually a blackout. Once he wished to know ‘how your friends are bearing up’ and I gathered from Ned that he had already asked him the same question. And once he needed to hear about the arrangements I had made for Barley’s compensation, including the subsidies to his company, and whether the monies would come from our own funds or in the form of a supplementary estimate. I had a few notes with me and was able to enlighten him.

  It is midday and The New York Times and Washington Post have just arrived on the table in the sunroom. I am stooped over them when I hear Randy yelling at the guards to get Ned to the telephone. As I turn, I see Ned himself entering from the garden side and striding across the hall to the communications room. I glance beyond him, up to the first-floor landing, and I see Barley, a motionless silhouette. There are some old bookcases up there, and that morning he has persuaded Randy to unlock them so that he can browse. It is the landing with the semi-circular window, the one that looks over the hydrangeas to the sea.

  He is standing with his back turned and a book hanging from one long hand, and he is staring at the Atlantic. His feet are apart, his spare hand is raised, as it often is, to somewhere near his head, as if to fend off a blow. He must have heard everything that is going on – Randy’s yell, then Ned’s hasty footsteps across the hall, followed by the slam of the communications room door. The landing floor is tiled and footsteps come chiming up that stairwell like squeaky church bells. I can hear them now as Ned emerges from the communications room, goes a few steps and halts.

  ‘Harry! Where’s Barley?’

  ‘Up here,’ says Barley quietly over the banister.

  ‘They’ve given you the thumbs-up!’ Ned shouts, jubilant as a schoolboy. ‘They apologise. I spoke to Bob, I spoke to Clive, I spoke to Haggarty. Goethe’s is the most important stuff they’ve handled for years. Official. They’ll go for him a hundred per cent. There’ll be no turning back any more. You’ve beaten their whole apparatus.’

  Ned was used to Barley’s distracted ways by then, so he should not have been surprised when Barley gave no sign of having heard him. His gaze was still fixed on the Atlantic. Did he think he saw a small boat founder? Everybody does. Watch the Maine seas for long enough and you see them everywhere, a sail, a hull, now the speck of a survivor’s head or hand, ducking under the sea’s swell never to resurface. You must go on watching for a long time to know you are looking at ospreys and cormorants going about their hunting.

  But Ned in his excitement manages to be wounded. It is one of those rare moments in him when the professional drops his guard and reveals the unfinished man inside.

  ‘You’re going back to Moscow, Barley! That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? To see it through?’

  And Barley at last, concerned that he has hurt Ned’s feelings. Barley half-turning so that Ned can see his smile. ‘Yes, old boy. Of course it is. Just what I wanted.’

  Meanwhile it is my turn in the communications room. Randy is beckoning me in.

  ‘Is that you, Palfrey?’

  It is I.

  ‘Langley are taking over the case,’ says Clive, as if this were the other part of the great news. ‘They’re giving it a full-facility grading, Palfrey. That’s the highest they go,’ he adds quellingly.

  ‘Oh well. Congratulations,’ I say and, taking the telephone from my ear, stare at it in disbelief while Clive’s drawl continues to ooze out of it like a tap nothing can turn off. ‘I want you to draw up a document of understanding immediately, Palfrey, and prepare a full-length agreement to cover the usual contingencies. We’ve got them eating out of our hand, so I expect you to be firm. Firm but fair. We’re dealing with very realistic people, Palfrey. Hardnosed.’

  More. Still more. And more yet. Langley to take over Barley’s pension and resettlement as earnest of their total operational control. Langley to share equally in the running of the source, but to have a casting vote in the event of disagreement.

  ‘They’re preparing a full-scale shopping list, Palfrey, a grand slam. They’re taking it to State, Defense, the Pentagon and the scientific bodies. All the biggest questions of the day will be canvassed and set down for the Bluebird to respond to. They know the risks but that isn’t deterring them. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, they reason. That takes courage.’

  It is his Despatch Box voice. Clive has India at last. ‘In the great offence-defence stand-off, Palfrey, nothing exists in a vacuum,’ he explains loftily, quoting, I had no doubt, what somebody had said to him an hour before. ‘It’s a matter of the finest tuning. Every question is as important as every answer. They know that. They see it clearly. They can pay the source no higher compliment than to prepare a no-holds-barred questionnaire for him. It’s a thing they haven’t done for many, many years. It breaks precedent. Recent precedent anyway.’

  ‘Does Ned know?’ I ask, when I can get a word in.

  ‘He can’t. None of us can. We’re talking the highest strategic classifications.’

  ‘I meant, does he know you’ve made them a present of his joe?’

  ‘I want you to come down to Langley immediately and thrash out terms with your opposite numbers here. Randy will arrange transport. Palfrey?’

  ‘Does he know?’ I repeat.

  Clive makes one of his telephone silences, in which you are supposed to work out all the ways in which you are at fault.

  ‘Ned will be brought up to date when he gets back to London, thank you. That will be quite soon enough. Until then I shall expect you to say nothing. The rôle of the Russia House will be respected. Sheriton values the link. It will even be enlarged in certain ways, perhaps permanently. Ned should be grateful.’

  The news was nowhere more joyfully received than in the British trade press. Marriage with a Future, trumpeted Booknews a few weeks later in its trailer for the Moscow book fair. The long-rumoured engagement between Abercrombie & Blair of Norfolk Street, Strand, and Potomac Traders, Inc. of Boston, Mass., is ON! Seventeen-stone entrepreneur Jack Henziger has finally weighed in beside Barley Scott Blair of A. & B. with a new joint company titled Potomac & Blair, which plans an aggressive campaign in the fast-opening East Bloc markets. ‘This is a shop window on tomorrow,’ declares confident Henziger.

  Moscow Book Fair, here they come!

  The newsflash was accompanied by a warming photograph of Barley and Jack Henziger shaking hands across a bowl of flowers. The photograph was taken by the Service photographer in the safe house in Knightsbridge. Flowers by Miss Coad.

  I met Hannah the day following my return from the island and I assumed we would make love. She looked tall and golden, which is the way she always looks when I have not seen her for a while. A Thursday, so she was taking her fourteen-year-old son Giles to some spurious consultant behind Harley Street. I have never cared for Giles, probably because I know that he was conceived on the rebound, too soon after I had sent her back to Derek. We sat in our usual evil café drinking rancid tea, while she waited for him to come out, and smoked, a thing I hate. But I wanted her, and she knew it.

  ‘Whereabouts in America?’ she said, as if it mattered.

  ‘I don’t know. Some island full of ospreys and bad weather.’

  ‘I bet they weren’t real ospreys.’

  ‘They were, actually. They’re common there.’

  And I saw by the strain in her eyes that she wanted me too.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got to take Giles home,’ she said, when we had sufficiently read each other’s thoughts.

  ‘Put him in a cab,’ I suggested.

  But by then we were opposed to each other once more, and the moment was dead.

  13

  Katya collected Barley at ten o’clock on the Sunday morning from the forecourt of the immense Mezhdunarodnaya, which was where Henziger had insisted they stay. Westerners know it familiarly as ‘the Mezh’. Both Wicklow and Henzige
r, seated in the hotel’s preposterous Great Hall, contrived to witness their happy reunion and departure.

  The day was fine and autumn-scented and Barley had started waiting for her early, hovering in the forecourt amid the blind limousines that fetched and disgorged their Third World chieftains in a steady flow. Then at last her red Lada popped up among them like a burst of fun at a funeral, with Anna’s white hand streaming out of the rear window like a handkerchief and Sergey, upright as a commissar beside her, clutching his fishing net.

  It was important to Barley to notice the children first. He had thought about it and told himself it was what he would do, because nothing was insignificant any more, nothing could be left to chance. Only when he had waved enthusiastically at both of them therefore and pulled a face at Anna through the back window, did he allow himself to peer into the front, where Uncle Matvey sat squarely in the passenger seat, his polished brown face glowing like a chestnut and his sailor’s eyes twinkling under the brim of his plaid cap. Sunshine or storm, Matvey had put on his best things to honour the great Englishman: his twill jacket, his best boots and bow tie. The crossed enamelled flags of the Revolution were pinned to his lapel. Matvey lowered his window and Barley reached through it, grasping his hand and yelling ‘Hullo, hullo’ at him several times. Only then did he venture to look at Katya. And there was a kind of hiatus as if he had forgotten his lines or his cover story, or simply how beautiful she was, before he hoisted his smile.

  But Katya showed no such reticence.

  She leapt out of the car. She was wearing badly-cut slacks and looked marvellous in them. She rushed round to him beaming with happiness and trust. She yelled, ‘Barley!’ And by the time she reached him she had flung her arms so wide that her body was cheerfully and unthinkingly open to him for his embrace – which as a good Russian girl she then decorously curtailed, standing back from him but still holding on to him, examining his face, his hair, his ancient outdoor gear, while she chatted away in a flood of spontaneous goodfellowship.

  ‘It is so good, Barley. Really so good to see you!’ she was exclaiming. ‘Welcome to the book fair, welcome to Moscow again. Matvey could not believe it, your phone call from London! “The English were always our friends,” he said. “They taught Peter how to sail, and if he had not known how to sail, we would not today have a navy.” He is speaking of Peter the Great, you see. Matvey lives only for Leningrad. Do you not admire Volodya’s fine car? I am so grateful he has something he can love at last.’