Leamas nodded abruptly and said, "Bloody typical Yank."
"Alec doesn't seem to like our American cousins," and Ashe, stepping in heavily, and Kiever, with complete disinterest, murmured, "Oh really?"
Kiever played it, Leamas reflected, very long. Like someone used to horses, he let you come to him. He conveyed to perfection a man who suspected that he was about to be asked a favor, and was not easily won.
After dinner Ashe said, "I know a place in Wardour Street—you've been there, Sam. They do you all right there. Why don't we summon a cab and go along?"
"Just a minute," said Leamas, and there was something in his voice which made Ashe look at him quickly. "Just tell me something, will you? Who's paying for this jolly?"
"I am," said Ashe quickly. "Sam and I."
"Have you discussed it?"
"Well—no."
"Because I haven't got any bloody money; you know that, don't you? None to throw about, anyway."
"Of course, Alec. I've looked after you up till now, haven't I?"
"Yes," Leamas replied. "Yes, you have."
He seemed to be going to say something else, and then to change his mind. Ashe looked worried, not offended, and Kiever as inscrutable as before.
* * *
Leamas refused to speak in the taxi. Ashe attempted some conciliatory remark and he just shrugged irritably. They arrived at Wardour Street and dismounted, neither Leamas nor Kiever making any attempt to pay for the cab. Ashe led them past a shop window full of "girlie" magazines, down a narrow alley, at the far end of which shone a tawdry neon sign: PUSSYWILLOW CLUB—MEMBERS ONLY. On either side of the door were photographs of girls, and pinned across each was a thin, hand-printed strip of paper which read Nature Study. Members Only.
Ashe pressed the bell. The door was at once opened by a very large man in a white shirt and black trousers.
"I'm a member," Ashe said. "These two gentlemen are with me."
"See your card?"
Ashe took a buff card from his wallet and handed it over.
"Your guests pay a quid a head, temporary membership. Your recommendation, right?" He held out the card and as he did so, Leamas stretched past Ashe and took it. He looked at it for a moment, then handed it back to Ashe.
Taking two pounds from his hip pocket, Leamas put them into the waiting hand of the man at the door.
"Two quid," said Leamas, "for the guests," and ignoring the astonished protests of Ashe he guided them through the curtained doorway into the dim hallway of the club. He turned to the doorman.
"Find us a table," said Leamas, "and a bottle of Scotch. And see we're left alone."
The doorman hesitated for a moment, decided not to argue, and escorted them downstairs. As they descended they heard the subdued moan of unintelligible music. They got a table on their own at the back of the room. A two-piece band was playing and girls sat around in twos and threes. Two got up as they came in but the big doorman shook his head.
Ashe glanced at Leamas uneasily while they waited for the whisky. Kiever seemed slightly bored. The waiter brought a bottle and three tumblers and they watched in silence as he poured a little whisky into each glass. Leamas took the bottle from the waiter and added as much again to each. This done, he leaned across the table and said to Ashe, "Now perhaps you'll tell me what the bloody hell's going on."
"What do you mean?" Ashe sounded uncertain. "What do you mean, Alec?"
"You followed me from prison the day I was released," he began quietly, "with some bloody silly story of meeting me in Berlin. You gave me money you didn't owe me. You've bought me expensive meals and you're putting me up in your flat."
Ashe colored and said, "If that's the—"
"Don't interrupt," said Leamas fiercely. "Just damn well wait till I've finished, do you mind? Your membership card for this place is made out for someone called Murphy. Is that your name?"
"No, it is not."
"I suppose a friend called Murphy lent you his membership card?"
"No, he didn't as a matter of fact. If you must know, I come here occasionally to find a girl. I used a phony name to join the club."
"Then why," Leamas persisted ruthlessly, "is Murphy registered as the tenant of your flat?"
It was Kiever who finally spoke.
"You run along home," he said to Ashe. "I'll look after this."
A girl performed a striptease, a young, drab girl with a dark bruise on her thigh. She had that pitiful, spindly nakedness which is embarrassing because it is not erotic; because it is artless and un-desiring. She turned slowly, jerking sporadically with her arms and legs as if she only heard the music in snatches, and all the time she looked at them with the precocious interest of a child in adult company. The tempo of the music increased abruptly, and the girl responded like a dog to the whistle, scampering back and forth. Removing her brassiere on the last note, she held it above her head, displaying her meager body with its three tawdry patches of tinsel hanging from it like old Christmas tree decorations.
They watched in silence, Leamas and Kiever.
"I suppose you're going to tell me that we've seen better in Berlin," Leamas suggested at last, and Kiever saw that he was still very angry.
"I expect you have," Kiever replied pleasantly. "I have often been to Berlin, but I am afraid I dislike night clubs."
Leamas said nothing.
"I'm no prude, mind, just rational. If I want a woman I know cheaper ways of finding one; if I want to dance I know better places to do it."
Leamas might not have been listening. "Perhaps you'll tell me why that sissy picked me up," he suggested. Kiever nodded.
"By all means. I told him to."
"Why?"
"I am interested in you. I want to make you a proposition, a journalistic proposition."
There was a pause.
"Journalistic," Leamas repeated. "I see."
"I run an agency, an international feature service. It pays well—very well—for interesting material."
"Who publishes the material?"
"It pays so well, in fact, that a man with your kind of experience of...the international scene, a man with your background, you understand, who provided convincing, factual material, could free himself in a comparatively short time from further financial worry."
"Who publishes the material, Kiever?" There was a threatening edge to Leamas' voice, and for a moment, just for a moment, a look of apprehension seemed to pass across Kiever's smooth face.
"International clients. I have a correspondent in Paris who disposes of a good deal of my stuff. Often I don't even know who does publish. I confess," he added with a disarming smile, "that I don't awfully care. They pay and they ask for more. They're the kind of people, you see, Leamas, who don't fuss about awkward details; they pay promptly, and they're happy to pay into foreign banks, for instance, where no one bothers about things like tax."
Leamas said nothing. He was holding his glass with both hands, staring into it.
Christ, they're rushing their fences, Leamas thought; it's indecent. He remembered some silly music hall joke—"This is an offer no respectable girl could accept—and besides, I don't know what it's worth." Tactically, he reflected, they're right to rush it. I'm down and out, prison experience still fresh, social resentment strong. I'm an old horse, I don't need breaking in; I don't have to pretend they've offended my honor as an English gentleman.
On the other hand they would expect practical objections. They would expect him to be afraid; for his Service pursued traitors as the eye of God followed Cain across the desert. And finally, they would know it was a gamble. They would know that inconsistency in human decision can make nonsense of the best planned espionage approach; that cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.
"They'd have to pay a hell of a lot," Leamas muttered at last. Kiever gave him some more whisky.
"They are offeri
ng a down payment of fifteen thousand pounds. The money is already lodged at the Banque Cantonale in Bern. On production of a suitable identification, with which my clients will provide you, you can draw the money. My clients reserve the right to put questions to you over the period of one year on payment of another five thousand pounds. They will assist you with any...resettlement problems that may arise."
"How soon do you want an answer?"
"Now. You are not expected to commit all your reminiscences to paper. You will meet my client and he will arrange to have the material...ghost written."
"Where am I supposed to meet him?"
"We felt for everybody's sake it would be simplest to meet outside the United Kingdom. My client suggested Holland."
"I haven't got my passport," Leamas said dully.
"I took the liberty of obtaining one for you," Kiever replied suavely; nothing in his voice or his manner indicated that he had done other than negotiate an adequate business arrangement. "We're flying to The Hague tomorrow morning at nine forty-five. Shall we go back to my flat and discuss any other details?"
Kiever paid and they took a taxi to a rather good address not far from St. James's Park.
* * *
Kiever's flat was luxurious and expensive, but its contents somehow gave the impression of having been hastily assembled. It is said there are shops in London which will sell you bound books by the yard, and interior decorators who will harmonize the color scheme of the walls with that of a painting. Leamas, who was not particularly receptive to such subtleties, found it hard to remember that he was in a private flat and not a hotel. As Kiever showed him to his room (which looked onto a dingy inner courtyard and not onto the street) Leamas asked him:
"How long have you been here?"
"Oh, not long," Kiever replied lightly, "a few months, not more."
"Must cost a packet. Still, I suppose you're worth it."
"Thanks."
There was a bottle of Scotch in his room and a syphon of soda on a silver-plated tray. A curtained doorway at the farther end of the room led to a bathroom and lavatory.
"Quite a little love nest. All paid for by the great Worker State?"
"Shut up," said Kiever savagely, and added, "If you want me, there's an intercom telephone to my room. I shall be awake."
"I think I can manage my buttons now," Leamas retorted.
"Then good night," said Kiever shortly, and left the room. He's on edge, too, thought Leamas.
* * *
Leamas was awakened by the telephone at his bedside. It was Kiever. "It's six o'clock," he said, "breakfast at half past."
"All right," Leamas replied, and rang off. He had a headache.
* * *
Kiever must have telephoned for a taxi, because at seven o'clock the doorbell rang and Kiever asked, "Got everything?"
"I've no luggage," Leamas replied, "except a toothbrush and a razor."
"That is taken care of. Are you ready otherwise?"
Leamas shrugged. "I suppose so. Have you any cigarettes?"
"No," Kiever replied, "but you can get some on the plane. You'd better look through this," he added, and handed Leamas a British passport. It was made out in his name with his own photograph mounted in it, embossed by a deep-press Foreign Office seal running across the corner. It was neither old nor new; it described Leamas as a clerk, and gave his status as single. Holding it in his hand for the first time, Leamas was a little nervous. It was like getting married: whatever happened, things would never be the same again.
"What about money?" Leamas asked.
"You don't need any. It's on the firm."
8
Le Mirage
It was cold that morning, the light mist was damp and gray, pricking the skin. The airport reminded Leamas of the war: machines, half hidden in the fog, waiting patiently for their masters; the resonant voices and their echoes, the sudden shout and the incongruous clip of a girl's heels on a stone floor; the roar of an engine that might have been at your elbow. Everywhere that air of conspiracy which generates among people who have been up since dawn—of superiority almost, from the common experience of having seen the night disappear and the morning come. The staff had that look which is informed by the mystery of dawn and animated by the cold, and they treated the passengers and their luggage with the remoteness of men returned from the front: ordinary mortals and nothing for them that morning.
Kiever had provided Leamas with luggage. It was a detail: Leamas admired it. Passengers without luggage attract attention, and it was not part of Kiever's plan to do that. They checked in at the airline desk and followed the signs to passport control. There was a ludicrous moment when they lost the way and Kiever was rude to a porter. Leamas supposed Kiever was worried about the passport—he needn't be, thought Leamas, there's nothing wrong with it.
The passport officer was a youngish little man with an Intelligence Corps tie and some mysterious badge in his lapel. He had a ginger mustache and a North Country accent which was his life's enemy.
"Going to be away for a long time, sir?" he asked Leamas.
"A couple of weeks," Leamas replied.
"You'll want to watch it, sir. Your passport's due for renewal on the thirty-first."
"I know," said Leamas.
They walked side by side into the passengers' waiting room. On the way Leamas said: "You're a suspicious sod, aren't you, Kiever?" and the other laughed quietly.
"Can't have you on the loose, can we? Not part of the contract," he replied.
They still had twenty minutes to wait. They sat down at a table and ordered coffee. "And take these things away," Kiever added to the waiter, indicating the used cups, saucers and ashtrays on the table.
"There's a trolley coming around," the waiter replied.
"Take them," Kiever repeated, angry again. "It's disgusting, leaving dirty dishes there like that."
The waiter just turned and walked away. He didn't go near the service counter and he didn't order their coffee. Kiever was white, ill with anger. "For Christ's sake," Leamas muttered, "let it go. Life's too short."
"Cheeky bastard, that's what he is," said Kiever.
"All right, all right, make a scene; you've chosen a good moment, they'll never forget us here."
* * *
The formalities at the airport at The Hague provided no problem. Kiever seemed to have recovered from his anxieties. He became jaunty and talkative as they walked the short distance between the plane and the customs sheds. The young Dutch officer gave a perfunctory glance at their luggage and passports and announced in awkward, throaty English, "I hope you have a pleasant stay in the Netherlands."
"Thanks," said Kiever, almost too gratefully, "thanks very much."
They walked from the customs shed along the corridor to the reception hall on the other side of the airport buildings. Kiever led the way to the main exit, between the little groups of travelers staring vaguely at kiosk displays of scent, cameras and fruit. As they pushed their way through the revolving glass door, Leamas looked back. Standing at the newspaper kiosk, deep in a copy of the Continental Daily Mail stood a small, froglike figure wearing glasses, an earnest, worried little man. He looked like a civil servant. Something like that.
* * *
A car was waiting for them in the parking lot, a Volkswagen with a Dutch registration, driven by a woman who ignored them. She drove slowly, always stopping if the lights were amber, and Leamas guessed she had been briefed to drive that way and that they were being followed by another car. He watched the side view mirror, trying to recognize the car but without success. Once he saw a black Peugeot with a CD number, but when they turned the corner there was only a furniture van behind them. He knew The Hague quite well from the war, and he tried to work out where they were heading. He guessed they were traveling northwest toward Scheveningen. Soon they had left the suburbs behind them and were approaching a colony of villas bordering the dunes along the seafront.
Here they stopped. The woma
n got out, leaving them in the car, and rang the front doorbell of a small cream-colored bungalow which stood at the near end of the row. A wrought-iron sign hung on the porch with the words LE MIRAGE in pale blue Gothic script. There was a notice in the window which proclaimed that all the rooms were taken.
The door was opened by a kindly, plump woman who looked past the driver toward the car. Her eyes still on the car, she came down the drive toward them, smiling with pleasure. She reminded Leamas of an old aunt he'd once had who beat him for wasting string.
"How nice that you have come," she declared; "we are so pleased that you have come!"
They followed her into the bungalow, Kiever leading the way. The driver got back into the car. Leamas glanced down the road which they had just traveled; three hundred yards away a black car, a Fiat perhaps, or a Peugeot, had parked. A man in a raincoat was getting out.
Once in the hall, the woman shook Leamas warmly by the hand. "Welcome, welcome to Le Mirage. Did you have a good journey?"
"Fine," Leamas replied.
"Did you fly or come by sea?"
"We flew," Kiever said; "a very smooth flight." He might have owned the airline.
"I'll make your lunch," she declared, "a special lunch. I'll make you something specially good. What shall I bring you?"
"Oh, for God's sake," said Leamas under his breath, and the doorbell rang. The woman went quickly into the kitchen; Kiever opened the front door.
He was wearing a mackintosh with leather buttons. He was about Leamas' height, but older. Leamas put him at about fifty-five. His face had a hard, gray hue and sharp furrows; he might have been a soldier. He held out his hand.
"My name is Peters," he said. The fingers were slim and polished. "Did you have a good journey?"
"Yes," said Kiever quickly, "quite uneventful."
"Mr. Leamas and I have a lot to discuss; I do not think we need to keep you, Sam. You could take the Volkswagen back to town."
Kiever smiled. Leamas saw the relief in his smile.
"Good-bye, Leamas," said Kiever, his voice jocular. "Good luck, old man." Leamas nodded, ignoring Kiever's hand.
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