A Most Wanted Man

by John le Carré

  “Provided he made a clean breast of them. Assuming Berlin sanctioned it. As a necessary part of the package. Yes.”

  The shadow of mutual hostility had passed. Martha was grinning broadly. “Günther, darling. How old are you, for fuck’s sake? A hundred and fifty?”

  “A hundred and forty-nine,” Bachmann replied, playing her game.

  “And to think I had my last ideal removed when I was seventeen and a half!” Martha cried, to a burst of general laughter, led by Ian Lantern.

  But Bachmann’s case was far from won. A covert survey of the faces round the table confirmed what he had feared from the start: that the prospect of a loving friendship with a terrorist paymaster did not suit every palate.

  “So we are giving our enemies citizenship today,” a known wag from the Foreign Ministry suggested acidly. “We are opening our arms, not only to Signpost, who is an identified international terrorist, but to our good friend Felix, an escaped Russian criminal jailbird with a string of convictions for Muslim-inspired acts of violence. Our hospitality towards foreign criminals seems to be unlimited. We have the man at our complete mercy, so we offer him German citizenship as an inducement. One wonders how much further our gallantry can go.”

  “It’s for the girl,” Bachmann growled, coloring.

  “Ah, of course. The lady in the case. I forgot.”

  “The girl would never have worked for us if we hadn’t given her our solemn promise Felix would go free. Without the girl, we would never have brought Felix to the water. The girl befriended him, the girl persuaded him to go to Signpost.”

  Realizing that his words had been greeted by an unbelieving, if not downright skeptical silence, Bachmann lowered his head belligerently into his shoulders. “I gave her my word. The one we never break, agent runner to agent. That was the deal. Approved by Joint.” This last sally being directed straight at Burgdorf while Axelrod frowned uneasily into the middle distance. “She’s his lawyer”—addressing the whole room now. “As his lawyer she’s pledged to do whatever it takes to protect her client. She cooperates because we have assured her that her client will benefit. He’ll go free and he’ll be left alone to study and pray, which is all he wants to do. That’s why she plays along with us.”

  “We’re also told she’s in love with him,” the same acid voice suggested, quite unrepentant. “Maybe the question is: How much love is left for us?”

  And Bachmann, despite a warning glance from Axelrod, might well have responded to this jibe in terms he would afterwards have regretted, had not Lantern deftly stepped into the breach to defuse the tension.

  “Might I wave my little Union Jack here, Ax?”—picking on Axelrod as the recipient of his British wit—“I feel I should just point out that without the involvement of a certain blue-chip British bank, there’d be no Felix to inherit his father’s money, and no Signpost to help him spend it!”

  But the ensuing laughter was uncertain and the tension did not ease. Martha was heads down with Newton and her ash-blonde mystery woman. Now her head came up with a jolt.

  “Günther. Ian. Ax. Okay. Answer me this, please. Are you boys really telling me you can pull this thing off? I mean, Jesus Christ, let’s just see what we’ve got here. One goofy liberal woman lawyer on the verge of a nervous breakdown. One semidefunct British banker who has the hots for her. And one semi-Chechen freedom fighter on the run from Russian justice who flies paper airplanes, listens to music and thinks one day he’ll be a doctor. And you boys truly think you can put them all together in one room, and they’re going to nail a dyed-in-the-wool Islamist money launderer who’s spent his entire life seeing round corners? Do I have this right? Or am I being a little soft in the head by any chance?”

  To Bachmann’s relief, Axelrod was this time able to respond from strength.

  “Felix doesn’t come out of blue sky, as far as Signpost is concerned, Martha. If you look at the material, you’ll see we’ve given him quite a write-up on the Islamist websites we control, and the signals people tell me our efforts have paid off. The Swedish wanted notice and the Russian police report didn’t do us any harm either. websites we’ve never heard of have picked him up and billed him as this great Chechen fighter and escape artist. By the time they all meet up, Felix’s fame will have gone ahead of him.”

  Somebody was asking about operational procedure. How long, once Signpost had been compromised and secured, could Bachmann hold on to him without arousing concerns as to his whereabouts?

  Bachmann said it all depended on Signpost’s arrangements for that night. Time was against them. The girl and Felix were both getting frayed.

  The focus turned to Arni Mohr. Desperate to make his presence felt, he was describing his last night’s visit to police headquarters, where to a select gathering he had outlined a part, not all, naturally, of the planned operation.

  As Bachmann listened, despair overcame him like a sickness. The police proposed to place shooters round the bank against the possibility that Signpost was wearing a suicide belt, Mohr announced proudly.

  And since it must be assumed that Signpost would arrive armed, they also proposed to cover the crucial encounter at Brue Frères Bank from all five directions: the Alster shore, both sides of the street and both ends.

  Also the rooftops, Mohr went on. His master plan was to close off the area as soon as Signpost was admitted to the bank, and repopulate it with his own version of humanity: in cars, on bicycles, on foot. With police assistance, all nearby houses and hotels would be evacuated.

  Keller agreed.

  Burgdorf did not disagree.

  Martha, though only an observer, was pleased to offer her approval.

  Newton said anything they could do to help: toys, night-vision stuff, any small thing at all.

  The ash-blonde mystery woman signified her agreement with a tight-lipped nod of her hatchet face.

  In an effort to moderate Mohr’s grandiose scheme, Axelrod reminded him that the precautions he and the police were advocating should leave no footprint, either before, during or after Signpost’s visit to Brue Frères. If word got out—to the media, to the Muslim community that held him in such esteem—all hope of Signpost acting as a high-value informant was scuppered.

  And yes, Axelrod conceded, as far as he was concerned, Arni Mohr himself could be present when the police technically arrested Signpost, but only if Bachmann thought an arrest desirable as a means of intimidating him before beginning the befriending process. Was everyone comfortable with that?

  Everyone except Bachmann apparently was. Suddenly the meeting was over. The jury—assisted by its observers—would retire to consider its verdict, and Bachmann, not for the first time, could go back to his stable and sweat it out.

  “Excellent work, Bachmann,” Burgdorf told him, patting his shoulder in a rare gesture of physical contact.

  To Bachmann’s ear, the plaudit sounded like an obituary.

  Bachmann sat at his desk, head in hands, while opposite him Erna Frey toiled methodically at her computer.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  “As well as can be expected.”

  “How well’s that?”

  “As long as she thinks Issa’s worse off than she is, she can hold out.”

  “Good.”

  “Is it?”

  What more could Bachmann say? Was it his fault if Erna too had fallen for the girl? Was it Erna’s? Everyone else seemed to have fallen for her, so why shouldn’t Erna? Love was whatever you could put up with and still do the job.

  Elsewhere in the stables the mood was just as glum. Maximilian and Niki were decrypting and checking the day’s incomings, doing whatever they did instead of going home. But not a human voice reached Bachmann’s ear, not a laugh or exclamation, whether from the researchers next door or the listeners along the corridor, or the little band of drivers and street watchers on the floor below.

  Standing at the window and filled with a sense of déjà vu, Bachmann watched Keller’s official helicopter l
ift off for Cologne, then Burgdorf’s for Berlin with a covey of officials and Axelrod; last aboard was Martha without her Newton, or her ash-blonde.

  A line of black Mercedes headed for the main gate. The boom rose and stayed risen.

  The encrypted phone was ringing on Bachmann’s desk. He put it to his ear and grunted an occasional “yes, Michael,” “no, Michael.”

  Erna Frey remained at her computer.

  Bachmann said, “Good-bye, Michael,” and rang off. Erna Frey continued with her work.

  “We’ve got it,” Bachmann said.

  “Got what?”

  “The green light. With conditions. We can go ahead. As soon as possible. They’re worried we’re sitting on a volcano. I get the first eight hours of him.”

  “Eight. Not nine.”

  “Eight will do it. If he hasn’t taken the bait after eight hours, Arni can have the police arrest him.”

  “And where will you be taking him for your eight hours, if I may ask? The Atlantic? The Four Seasons?”

  “To your safe flat down on the harbor front.”

  “You’ll drag him there by the short hairs?”

  “Invite him. As soon as he comes out of the bank. ‘Herr Doktor, I represent the German government and we would like to talk to you about certain illegal financial transactions you have just made.’”

  “And he says?”

  “He’s in the car by then. He can say what he likes.”

  13

  She’s catatonic.

  They’re driving her mad.

  Another week of this, she’ll do the full Georgie on them, if she hasn’t done it already. She probably thought I was mad too.

  When we met at the Atlantic, I was dear old Tommy Brue, failing scion of a failing bank and a failed marriage, a balloon adrift.

  At the house of the Turks, I was a guilt-ridden old fart buying himself into her life for fifty thousand euros she never touched.

  And what am I now, as I drive northwest at a regulation one hundred and thirty kilometers an hour? The blackmailed servant of my late father’s corrupters on my way to sweet-tongue a venerable Muslim scholar who’s five percent bad into saving the skin of the boy she probably loves.

  “You are merely responding to the wishes of another rich client,” Lantern had assured him in the course of yesterday evening’s otherwise torrid briefing session at his odious safe flat that stank of chlorine from the communal swimming pool in the courtyard six floors below. “Albeit from the darker side of your bank, which explains why you’re exercising particular discretion. And you are about to consult the investment manager of his choice, never mind of what stripe, and you’re in for a fat commission whichever way he cuts the cake,” he added, in the assertive tones of a miniature head prefect at Brue’s detested public school. “It’s your perfectly normal banking situation, Tommy.”

  “Not in my book, it isn’t.”

  “Also in the line of normal banking practice,” Lantern persisted, magnanimously ignoring this impertinence, “you have undertaken to explore—in accordance with your client’s wishes, as conveyed to you by his legal advisor—whether or not the gentleman you are about to visit is an appropriate fit. Is that a fair summary?”

  “It’s a summary of a sort, I suppose,” Brue said, helping himself uninvited to a generous scotch.

  “You will be shrewd and you will be objective. You will decide, in the fullness of your professional wisdom, what is the best way forward for both parties: for your client, and for your bank. The interests of the elevated Muslim gentleman you are consulting are of secondary concern to you, if at all.”

  “And in the fullness of my professional wisdom, I shall decide that he’s the right elevated Muslim gentleman for the job,” Brue suggested in similar coin.

  “Well, it’s not exactly as if you were spoiled for choice, is it, Tommy?” said little Lantern, turning on his winning smile.

  Twelve hours earlier, Mitzi had had her own spot of news for him.

  “Bernhard’s being a bore,” she remarked, while Brue was deep in his Financial Times. “Hildegard’s leaving him.”

  Brue drank some coffee, then dabbed his lips with his napkin. In the games they played, the first rule of life was never to be surprised by anything.

  “Then surely Hildegard’s the one who’s being a bore,” he suggested.

  “Hildegard’s always a bore.”

  “So what’s poor Bernhard done that’s making him a bore?” Brue inquired, taking the man’s part.

  “Proposed marriage to me. I’m to leave you and get a divorce and go to Sylt with him for the summer while we decide where to live for the rest of our lives,” she said indignantly. “Can you imagine sharing Bernhard’s old age with him?”

  “It’s hard for me to imagine sharing anything with Bernhard, to be frank.”

  “And Hildegard thinks she’s suing you.”

  “Me?”

  “Or me, what’s the difference? For luring her husband away from her. She thinks you’re rich. So you’ll have to sue Bernhard to shut her up. I’m going to ask your buddy Westerheim who’s the best lawyer.”

  “Has Hildegard considered the publicity?”

  “She adores publicity. Wallows in it. It’s the most vulgar thing I ever heard.”

  “Have you accepted Bernhard’s proposal?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Ah. And how far have you got in your deliberations?”

  “I’m not sure how much use we are to each other anymore, Tommy.”

  “You and Bernhard?”

  “You and me.”

  Over the flat, uninviting countryside the sky was black. The autobahn shone like glass. Headlights of oncoming cars lunged at him. So we’re no use to each other anymore. Good. I’ll be fine on my own. I’ll sell the bank while there’s still a bit to sell, and get myself a life. Might even pop over to California for old Georgie’s wedding. He still hadn’t told Mitzi he was going to be a grandfather, which pleased him. Maybe he never would.

  Had Georgie let her mother into the secret? He hoped so. Old Sue would be happy as a sandboy. All bark and no bite, old Sue was, once you got past the fierce bit. Rather wished he’d realized that a bit earlier, to be frank. Before Mitzi, rather than after Mitzi, so to speak. Nothing to be done about it now, mind. Not with Sue tucked up safe and sound with her Italian wine grower. Nice chap, by all accounts. Perhaps they’ll name a cuvée after the baby.

  Then whatever exultation he had briefly felt vanished into the clatter of the wet road, and he was back with Annabel, revisiting his protective anger at what they had turned her into: the robotic walk, the remoteness of her choirboy voice, so far from the fervor with which she had assailed him in Melik’s bedroom: without your fucking bank, my client wouldn’t be here!

  “The bank owes you, Frau Richter,” he proclaimed aloud to the windscreen, aping his own pomposity. “And so I am pleased to say, the bank is about to pay its debt.”

  The bank loves you, he continued in his mind. Not to possess you, but to help you find your courage again so that you can live the life I conspicuously failed to live myself. Are you in love with Issa, Annabel? Georgie would love him instantly. She’d love you too. And she’d tell you to take care of me, which is the way Georgie thinks. Everybody should take care of everybody. That’s why she gets let down so much. Does it even matter whether you’re in love with Issa? Love in the dictionary sense? It emphatically does not. It matters that you set him free.

  “What happens to Annabel at the end of all this jollity?” Brue had demanded of Lantern at the same extended briefing as he sipped his scotch, by no means his first, and Lantern his umpteenth glass of sparkling water. It had been a day of days, even by Brue’s standards: at breakfast, Mitzi’s bombshell about Bernhard. At the office, a full-scale revolt by the counting room concerning shift work over public holidays. Followed by an hour talking to his revered solicitor in Glasgow, who appeared never to have heard of divorce before. Followed by two hours
of injudicious lunching at the À la Carte and being hilariously witty for the benefit of a couple of humorless rich clients from Oldenburg. Followed by a hangover that he was now busy topping up.

  “What happens to her, Lantern?” he repeated.

  “It’s a strictly German matter, Tommy,” Lantern replied judiciously, resorting once more to his head prefect’s voice. “My guess is, they’ll leave her in place. As long as she doesn’t write her memoirs, or otherwise rock the boat.”

  “Not good enough, I’m afraid.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Your guess. Want firm assurances. Written ones. To her, copy to me.”

  “Copy of what precisely, Tommy? I think you’re a bit pissed, aren’t you? Maybe we should leave this subject for another time.”

  Brue was bestriding the grimy room.

  “Who says there’ll be another time? There may not be. Not if I withdraw my labor. How about that? What?”

  “Well, in that case, Tommy, London might have no option but to use certain sanctions that we have regarding your bank.”

  “Use them, old boy, my advice. Enjoy them to the full. Be my guest. Frères goes down the tube. Much moaning at the bar. But for how long? And from who? Whom?” It was hardball at last. Long overdue, in Brue’s opinion. The knives were out, and fuck ’em. “Banks go down the tube every day. Specially the old, inefficient ones like mine. Not the same as what happens to you boys when your dream operation goes pear-shaped, is it? I can smell a big deal a mile off, and this is a big deal. Pity about young Ian: we used to think highly of him. Let’s hope he’ll find himself a decent job on the outside. Cheers. Bloody good health to you and all who sail in you.”

  He waited for a “cheers” back, and was pleased not to receive one.

  “Just tell me what it is exactly that would put your mind at rest, Tommy,” Lantern suggested, in a voice as flat as a speaking clock’s.

  “An OBE, for starters. Tea with the Queen. And ten-millionquid compensation for turning Frères into a Russian laundromat.”