A Most Wanted Man

by John le Carré

  “Then we have no use for it. You like it as little as I do. You are not yet ready to accept God’s reality in your life, but you are moral. That speaks well for our relationship. We shall build upon this understanding.”

  Bereft, she buried her face in her hands, but the gesture seemed not to interest him.

  “Kindly do not send me to this clinic, Annabel. I prefer it here in your house. When you have converted to Islam, this is where we must live. Tell this to Mr. Brue also. You must leave now, or you will be a provocation to me. It is better we don’t shake hands. Go with God, Annabel.”

  She had left her bicycle in the entrance hall. Misted harbor lights were shining through the dusk, and she had to blink several times before they cleared. Remembering that the cycle path ran on the other side of the road, she took her place in the huddle of pedestrians waiting at the zebra crossing. Somebody was saying her name. She couldn’t be sure the voice wasn’t inside her head, but it couldn’t have been because it was a woman’s whereas the voice inside her head was Issa’s. The external voice she was hearing, now that she listened to it properly, was talking to her about her sister.

  “Annabel! My God! How are you? How’s Heidi? Is it true she’s pregnant again already?”

  A burly woman of her own age. Green velveteen jacket, jeans. Short hair, no makeup, big smile. With her mind still struggling to return to the real world, Annabel temporized while she hunted for a connection: Freiburg? School? Skiing in Austria? The health club?

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “Heidi’s fine too. Are you out shopping?”

  The pedestrian light turned to green. They crossed side by side with Annabel’s bike between them.

  “Hey, Annabel! What are you doing this side of town? Don’t you live in Winterhude anymore?”

  A second woman had drawn up on Annabel’s left, the side with no bike. She was buxom with rosy cheeks and a gypsy headscarf. They had reached the curb and it was only the three of them. A strong hand closed round her wrist that held the bicycle. Another took hold of her left arm and, in a gesture that could have passed for affection, forced it behind her back. With the pain, Annabel had an absolutely clear recollection of the two women at the petrol station this morning.

  “You get quietly into the car,” the second woman explained, her lips in Annabel’s ear. “You sit in the backseat at the center, please, no fuss. Everything friendly and normal. My friend will look after your bike.”

  The battered yellow van had its back doors open. A male driver and a male passenger sat in the front, staring ahead of them. With the woman’s arm round her shoulder, Annabel allowed herself to be propelled onto the backseat. She heard the clunk of her bicycle behind her, followed by a thud. In the scramble, she hadn’t noticed they had taken her rucksack. In leisurely time, the women sat themselves either side of her, took one of her hands each, slipped a handcuff round it and wedged it out of sight on the seat between their bodies.

  “What are you going to do with him?” she whispered. “He’s locked up! Who’s going to feed him when I’m not there?”

  A black Saab saloon drove off ahead of them. The van followed close behind it. Nobody was in a hurry.

  9

  Assemble your facts clearly and calmly.

  You’re a lawyer.

  You may be an outraged woman with a volcano of fury in you waiting to erupt, but it’s the lawyer, not the woman, who will speak for you.

  This plonking iron lift you are riding in is conveying you upward, not downward. You know this from the feeling in your stomach, which is separate from other things you feel, such as nausea, and the aching pain of violation.

  You are therefore about to be delivered to an upper floor and not a cellar, for which you are cautiously grateful.

  This lift does not stop at intermediate floors. It has no controls, no mirrors, no window. It smells of diesel oil and field. It is a cattle lift. It smells of your school playing field in autumn.

  Those who ride in this lift do so at the will of others. You are standing between two women who abducted you by pretending to be your friends. They were then assisted by a third woman who did not pretend to be your friend. Not one of them identified herself. Not one used any name in your hearing except your own.

  Nobody, not even Issa, can describe to you what it feels like to lose your freedom but now you are beginning to learn.

  You are a lawyer beginning to learn.

  With the black Saab ahead of them to lead the way, they had made a stately procession past church steeples and dockyards, paused correctly at red lights, indicated right and left, traversed at moderate speed avenues of comfortable villas with lighted windows, entered an industrial wasteland, negotiated ruts of iron dragon’s teeth that had lain down before them, slowed but not stopped at a guardhouse flanked by rolls of razor wire, watched the red-and-white boom rise at the instance of the Saab and arrived in a floodlit asphalt courtyard of parked cars and black-eyed office blocks on one side, and on the other an ancient riding stable that was a distant cousin of the stables on the family estate in Freiburg.

  But the van didn’t stop. Selecting the darker side of the courtyard it continued, slowly and, as it seemed to Annabel, furtively, to pull up a few meters short of the stable. Releasing her hands from the locks between the seat cushions, her captors pulled her out onto the tarmac, and frog-marched her to a man-sized doorway. The man-door was opened from inside, she was bundled through it. A third, freckle-faced, younger woman with a boy’s haircut was waiting to help out. They were in a harness room without harnesses. Iron pegs and saddle racks sticking out from the walls. An old horse bucket with a regimental number stenciled on it. A low padded bench with a single blanket. A hospital basin of water. Soap. Towels. Rubber gloves.

  Each woman was guarding a third of her. The freckled woman’s eyes were the same color as Annabel’s. Perhaps that was why she was the one delegated to address her. She was a woman of the south, perhaps from Baden-Württemberg, where Annabel came from, another reason. You have a choice, Annabel, she was explaining. We are following standard procedure for those who consort with terrorists. You can either submit peaceably or you can be placed under restraint. Which is it to be?

  I’m a lawyer.

  Do you submit or not?

  Submitting, Annabel recited to herself the useless bits of last-minute advice that she handed out to clients before they faced their tribunals: be truthful…don’t lose your temper…don’t weep…keep your voice down and don’t try to flirt with them…they don’t want to hate you or love you, they don’t want to pity you…they want to get their job done, get paid and go home.

  The lift door opened, revealing a small white room, like the room they had put her grandmother in when she was dead. At the bare wooden table where her grandmother should have been lying sat the man who this morning had called himself Herr Dinkelmann, puffing at a Russian cigarette; she recognized the smell immediately. The same cigarette her father had smoked in Moscow after a good dinner.

  And next to Herr Dinkelmann, a tall wiry woman with graying hair and brown eyes who, though nothing like her mother in looks, had the same sagacity about her.

  And on the table before them, the contents of her rucksack, laid out like court exhibits but without their plastic bags and labels. And on the side of the table nearest to her a single chair for Annabel, the accused. Standing facing her judges, she heard the thumps and plonks of the cattle lift as it descended.

  “My real name is Bachmann,” Dinkelmann said, as if contradicting her. “If you’re thinking of suing us, it’s Günther Bachmann. And this is Frau Frey. Erna Frey. She sails. Spies and sails. I spy, but I don’t sail. Sit down, please.”

  Annabel walked to the table and sat down.

  “You want to register your protest now and get it over?” Bachmann inquired, drawing on his cigarette. “Rant about your special status as a lawyer, all that shit? Your amazing privileges, your client confidentiality? How you could get me thrown out on my ear tomorr
ow? How I’ve broken every rule in the book, which I have? Trampled on the very essence of the Constitution? Are you going to spout all that crap at me, or do we just assume it? Oh, and by the way, when’s your next appointment with the wanted terrorist Issa Karpov, whom you’ve secreted in your apartment?”

  “He’s not a terrorist. You are. I demand to speak to a lawyer immediately.”

  “Your mother, the big judge?”

  “A lawyer who can represent me.”

  “How about your illustrious father? Or maybe your brother-in-law in Dresden? I mean you’ve really got clout. A couple of phone calls, you can bring the entire legal establishment down on my head. The question is—do you want to? You don’t. It’s all bullshit. You want to save your boy’s neck. That’s all you want out of this. Sticks out a mile.”

  Erna Frey added her own, more thoughtful contribution.

  “Your choice is between us and nobody, I’m afraid, dear. There are a lot of people not far from where we’re sitting who’d like nothing better than to make Issa the subject of a dramatic police arrest, and claim the credit for it. And of course the police would be thrilled if they could arrest the people who would be seen as his accomplices. Leyla, Melik, Mr. Brue for all we know, even your brother, Hugo. It would be splendid headlines for them, whatever the outcome. Did I mention Sanctuary North? Imagine what poor Ursula’s backers would say. And then there’s you. Herr Werner’s official object of investigation, to use the disagreeable terminology Herr Werner so enjoys. Abusing your lawyer status. Knowingly harboring a wanted terrorist. Lying to the authorities and the rest. Your career over at—what?—call it forty by the time you’re out of prison.”

  “I don’t care what you do to me.”

  “But you’re not the one we’re talking about, are you, dear? Issa is.”

  Bachmann, whose attention span was apparently limited, had already lost interest in the conversation and was picking his way through the things from her rucksack: her ring-backed notebook, diary, driving license, identity card, her headscarf—lifting it ostentatiously to his nose as if checking it for perfume that she never wore. But it was Tommy Brue’s check that he kept returning to, tilting it to the light, scrutinizing it back and front, poring over the figures or the handwriting and shaking his head in studied mystification.

  “Why didn’t you pay this in?” he demanded.

  “I was waiting.”

  “For what? Dr. Fischer of the clinic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t have lasted long, would it? Fifty grand. Not at that place.”

  “Long enough.”

  “For what?”

  Annabel gave a hopeless shrug: “To try. That’s all. Just try.”

  “Did Brue say there was going to be more where this came from?”

  About to answer, Annabel abruptly changed her mind. “I need to know what makes you two think you’re different,” she said defiantly, turning to Erna Frey.

  “Who from, dear?”

  “The people you say want to have him arrested by the police and sent back to Russia or Turkey.”

  Replying for both of them, Bachmann once more took up Brue’s check and studied it as if the answer lay there.

  “Oh, we’re different, okay,” he growled. “That’s for sure. But you’re asking us what we intend to do with your boy.” He laid the check before him, but not to lose sight of it. “Well, I’m not sure we know that, Annabel. In fact, I’m sure we don’t. We like to think we make the weather here. We hang loose. We wait as long as we can. And we see what Allah provides,” he added, poking at the check with his finger. “And if Allah comes through—well, maybe your boy will end up a free soul, living in the West and able to indulge his wildest hopes and dreams. If not—if Allah doesn’t come through—or you don’t—well, it’s back to where he came from, isn’t it? Unless the Americans put in a bid for him. In which case, we won’t know where he is. And probably he won’t either.”

  “We’re trying to do the best for him, dear,” Erna Frey said with such patent sincerity in her voice that Annabel was for a moment driven to believe her. “Günther knows that too, he just doesn’t say it very well. We don’t think Issa’s bad. We’re not making that kind of judgment at all. And we know he’s a bit cranky; well, who wouldn’t be? But we do think he may be able to help us get to some very bad people all the same.”

  Annabel tried to laugh. “As a spy? Issa? You’re mad! You’re as sick as he is!”

  “As a whatever the fuck,” Bachmann retorted irritably. “Nobody’s part in this play is written yet. That includes yours. What we do know is, if you’re on board with us, and we get to where we want to get, between us we’ll be saving a whole heap more innocent lives than ever you would feeding the fucking rabbits at Sanctuary North.”

  Picking up the check from the table, he rose impatiently to his feet. “So the first thing I want to know is: What in God’s name is a Russian-speaking, not very successful, ex-Viennese British banker doing, turning out on a Friday night to pay his respects to Mr. Issa Karpov? You want to go somewhere more civilized, or are you going to stay at that table and sulk?’”

  But Erna Frey had a gentler message: “We won’t tell you all the truth, dear, we can’t. But whatever we do tell you will be true.”

  It was long past midnight and still she hadn’t wept.

  She had told them everything she knew, half knew, guessed and half guessed, down to the last dregs, but she hadn’t wept, she hadn’t even complained. How come she had sided with them so quickly? What had happened to the rebel in her—to her fabled powers of argument and resistance so prized by the family forum? Why hadn’t she woven another web of lies of the sort she had woven for Herr Werner? Was this Stockholm syndrome? She was reminded of a pony she once had. He was called Moritz, and Moritz was a delinquent. He was unbreakable and unrideable. Not a family in all Baden-Württemberg would have him—until Annabel heard about him and, to exert her power, overrode her parents and raised money among her school friends to buy him. When Moritz was delivered, he kicked the groom, kicked a hole in his stall and broke his way into the paddock. But next morning when Annabel in trepidation went out to him, he strolled towards her, lowered his head for the halter and became her slave forevermore. He’d had a bellyful of opposition and wanted somebody else to take charge of his problems.

  So was that what she had done now? Chucked in the towel and said, “All right, damn you, have me,” the way she’d said it to men a couple of times when the sheer crassness of their persistence had reduced her to furious submission?

  No. The devil was in the logic, she was convinced of it: in the willed detachment with which the lawyer in her stepped back and recognized that she hadn’t got even the prayer of a case to argue, let alone win—not on behalf of her client, nor herself, though she was the last person she cared about. It was the hard-nosed lawyer in her—so she desired adamantly to believe—that told her that her one hope was to throw herself on the mercy of the court: which was to say, her handlers.

  Yes, she was emotionally wiped out. Of course she was. Yes, the loneliness and strain of keeping such a huge secret to herself for so long had taken her to the limits of her endurance. And there was a certain relief, even pleasure, in becoming a child again, in handing the big decisions of her life to people wiser and older than herself. But even when she had put these factors into the balance, it was still the lawyer’s logic—so she determinedly reassured herself—that had persuaded her to make a clean breast of all she knew.

  She had told about Brue and Mr. Lipizzaner and the key and Anatoly’s letter, about Issa and Magomed, and then about Brue again: how he looked and spoke, and how he had reacted to this moment or that one, in the Atlantic, in the café before going to Leyla’s house. And what was that again about studying in Paris? And all that money he gave her suddenly—why? Was it to get into your knickers, dear? Erna Frey asking this question, not Bachmann. Where pretty women were concerned, he was too susceptible.

  Bu
t this was not a confession dragged out of her by stealth or threats or inducements. This was Annabel shamefully indulging herself: a cathartic release of knowledge and emotions that had been locked up in her too long, a sweeping away of all the barriers she had erected in her mind: against Issa, Hugo, Ursula, the plumbers and decorators and electricians, and most of all against herself.

  And they were right: she had no choice. Like Moritz she was exhausted by her own opposition. She needed friends not enemies if Issa was to be saved, whether they were truly different from the others, or only pretending to be.

  A narrow corridor led to a tiny bedroom. The double bed was made up with fresh sheets. So tired that she could have gone to sleep standing, Annabel peered round her while Erna Frey demonstrated how the shower worked, and tut-tutted as she whisked away the dirty towels and replaced them with fresh ones from a drawer.

  “Where will you two sleep?” Annabel asked, without knowing why she cared.

  “Now don’t you worry, dear. Just get yourself some good rest. You’ve had a very hard day of it, and tomorrow is going to be just as hard.”

  If I sleep, I shall return to prison, Annabel.

  Tommy Brue was not in prison, but then neither was he sleeping.

  By four o’clock of the same morning, he had stolen from the marital bed and tiptoed barefoot down the stairs to the study where he kept his address book. There were six numbers listed under “Georgie.” Five were crossed out. The sixth was marked “K’s cell phone” in his own hand. K for Kevin, her last known address. It was three months since he’d called it, and much longer since he’d succeeded in getting past Kevin. But this time something was urgently wrong with her and he knew it.

  Don’t call it premonition. Don’t call it a panic attack. Call it what it is: a father’s fear.

  Using his cell phone so that no telltale pin light should appear on the bedside phone at Mitzi’s head, he touched Kevin’s number, closed his eyes and waited to hear the slack-mouthed drawl informing him that, yeah, well, sorry about that, Tommy, but Georgie doesn’t feel like speaking to you right now, she’s okay, she’s great, but she kinda gets upset. But this time he was going to demand to speak to her. He was going to insist on his paternal rights, not that he had any. A burst of rock music entrenched his resolve. So did the recorded voice of Kevin advising him that if you really have to leave a message, man, maybe just leave it, but since nobody picks up messages much around here, why not hang up and call another time—until that message itself was cut short by a woman’s voice.