Single & Single

by John le Carré

  “What do you do, then?”

  Investment, says Oliver. Asset management. Portfolios. Mostly round the leisure industry.

  “Where else do you go? Apart from Istanbul.”

  Moscow. Petersburg. Georgia. Wherever business calls, really.

  “Anybody waiting for you in Chelsea, is there? Somebody you ought to ring? Square—say you’re all right?”

  Not really.

  “Don’t want people worrying about you, do we?”

  My goodness, no—jolly laugh.

  “Who’ve you got, then? Wife? Kids?”

  Oh no, no, thank God. Or not yet, anyway.

  “Girlfriend?”

  Off and on.

  “They’re the best sort really, aren’t they? Off-and-ons.”

  I suppose they are.

  “Less trouble.”

  Much. The boy leaves, Oliver sits alone again, but not for long. The door opens and Brock enters, bearing Oliver’s passport and wearing full Customs uniform—the only time Oliver ever saw him in it, and as he later learns the first time Brock has worn it in the twenty-something years he has been assigned to less recognizable duties. And it is not till Oliver is several lives wiser that he pictures Brock standing the other side of the mirror throughout the boy’s careless inquisition, unable to believe his luck while he struggles into his regalia.

  “Good evening, Mr. Single,” says Brock, shaking Oliver’s passive hand. “Or may we call you Oliver so that we don’t confuse you with your revered father?”

  The parasol was quartered green-and-orange. Oliver’s side was green, leaving his big face sallow. But Brock’s straw hat gave off a jaunty glow and his sharp eyes shone with hobgoblin merriment beneath its rakish brim.

  “So who told Tiger where to find you?” Brock inquired comfortably, more in the manner of somebody airing a theme than eliciting a reply. “He’s not psychic, is he? Not omniscient. Ears everywhere. Is he? Who bubbled?”

  “You did, probably,” said Oliver gracelessly.

  “I did? Why should I do that?”

  “Probably got a new agenda.”

  Brock’s smile rested contentedly in place. He was taking stock of his prize possession, checking what had happened to it in the years it had been out to grass. You’re one marriage and one child and one divorce older, he was thinking. And me still stuck with what I’ve got, thank God. He was looking for signs of wear in Oliver and not seeing any. You’re a finished product and don’t know it, he thought, remembering other informants he’d resettled. You think the world will come and change you but it never does. You’re who you are until you die.

  “Maybe you had a new agenda,” Brock countered good-humoredly.

  “Oh great. Sure. ‘I miss you, Dad. Let’s kiss and make up. Bygones are bygones.’ Sure.”

  “You might have done. Knowing you. Got homesick. Dose of the guilts. After all, you changed your mind over your gratuity money a few times, I seem to remember. First you dithered. Then it was no, Nat, not on your nelly. Then it was yes, Nat, I’ll take it. I thought you might have done a U-turn on Tiger too.”

  “You know bloody well the gratuity money was for Carmen’s sake,” Oliver snapped from his shade the other side of the tea table.

  “This is for Carmen’s sake too. Could be. Five million of the best. Maybe you and Tiger cut a deal, I thought. Tiger comes up with the money so Oliver does the love. I can see filial loyalties being restored on the strength of a five-million down payment on Carmen. What’s the logic of it otherwise? None that I’m aware, not from Tiger’s point of view. It’s not as if he was burying a bag of fivers in the family allotment, is it?” No answer. None expected. “He can’t go back with a spade and a lantern and dig them up in a year’s time when he needs them, can he?” Still none. “It’s not even Carmen’s for another quarter of a century. What’s Tiger bought himself for his five million quid? His granddaughter’s never even heard of him. If you have your way, she never will. He must have bought something. Then I thought, perhaps it’s our Oliver he’s bought—why not? People change, I thought, love conquers all. Perhaps you really did kiss and make up. Given a five-million-quid sweetener to help the medicine go down, anything’s possible.”

  In a totally unexpected gesture, Oliver flung up his great arms in surrender, stretched until they creaked, then let them flop to his sides. “You’re being bloody ridiculous and you know it,” he told Brock, without any particular animosity.

  “Somebody told him,” Brock insisted. “He didn’t just find you from nowhere, Oliver. Some little bird whispered in his ear.”

  “Who killed Winser?” Oliver countered.

  “I don’t think I mind, do you? Not when I survey the glorious field of candidates. House of Single’s got more scoundrels among its valued clients these days than the entire rogues’ gallery at Scotland Yard. Could be any one of them, far as I’m concerned.” You’re never ahead of him, thought Brock, facing out Oliver’s glower: you never fool him, you never deflect him, he’s thought out all the worst things for himself long ago. All you do is tell him which ones have come true. Some case officers of Brock’s acquaintance, when they were handling informants, thought they were God in high heels. Not Brock, not ever, and least of all with Oliver. With Oliver, Brock saw himself as a guest on sufferance, liable to be thrown out anytime. “Your friend Alix Hoban of Trans-Finanz Vienna killed him, according to a certain whisperer I know, and he was assisted by a full supporting cast of fellow hoodlums. He made a phone call while he was about it too. We think he was reporting progress to somebody. Only we’re not telling anyone about all that, because we don’t want undue attention drawn to House of Single.”

  Oliver waited for the second part of this announcement but, finding none forthcoming, rested his chin in his hand and his elbow on his big knee and fixed Brock with an appraising stare. “Trans-Finanz Vienna, in my recollection, is a wholly owned subsidiary of First Flag Construction Company of Andorra,” he said through a bunch of heavy fingers.

  “And still is, Oliver, still is. Your memory is as sharp as ever.”

  “It was me set the bloody company up, wasn’t it?”

  “Now you come to mention it, I believe it was.”

  “And First Flag is the wholly owned fiefdom of Yevgeny and Mikhail Orlov, House of Single’s biggest clients. Or has that changed?”

  Oliver’s tone had not altered. All the same, Brock noticed that it cost him a certain effort to come out with the Orlov name.

  “No, Oliver, I don’t think it has. There are strains, but formally speaking I would suspect that your good friends the Orlov brothers still rate as Single’s number one.”

  “And Alix Hoban is still their man?”

  “Yes, Hoban is still the Orlovs’ man.”

  “He’s still family.”

  “He’s still family, that hasn’t changed either. He’s on their payroll, he does their bidding, whatever else he does on the side.”

  “So why did Hoban kill Winser?” Lost to his own dogged line of reasoning, Oliver frowned into his enormous palms, reading from them. “Why did the Orlovs’ man kill Tiger’s man? Yevgeny loved Tiger. More or less. As long as they were making a fortune. So did Mikhail. Tiger returned the compliment. What’s changed, Nat? What’s going on?”

  Brock had not planned to arrive here half so soon. He had wishfully imagined a gradual process where the truth emerged. But with Oliver you never presumed and you were never surprised. You let him pace you and you followed in his trail, rewriting your march route as you went along.

  “Well, I’m afraid it’s one of those cases of love turning to gall, Oliver,” he explained cautiously. “A full swing of the pendulum, as you might say. One of those weather changes that occur even in the best-conducted households, I’m afraid.” Oliver offered him no helping hand, so he continued. “The brothers’ luck went sour.”

  “In what way?”

  “Some of their operations came unstuck.” Brock was tiptoeing on hot coals and Oliver knew i
t. Brock was putting names to Oliver’s worst apprehensions, raising unsleeping ghosts from his past, adding new fears to old ones. “A sizable chunk of hot money belonging to Yevgeny and Mikhail got blocked before it could be recycled by Single’s.”

  “You mean before it reached First Flag?”

  “I mean while it was still in the holding pattern.”

  “Where?”

  “All round the globe. Not every country cooperated. Most did.” “All those little bank accounts we opened?”

  “Not so little anymore. The smallest was around nine million sterling. The Spain accounts were up to eighty-five million. My view is the Orlovs were getting a bit careless, frankly. Staying liquid with sums like that! You’d think they could at least have gone for short-term bonds while they were waiting, but no.”

  Oliver’s hands had returned to his face, enclosing it in a private prison.

  “Plus one of the brothers’ ships got boarded while it was carrying an embarrassing cargo,” Brock added.

  “Bound for where?”

  “Europe. Wherever. What does it matter?”

  “Liverpool?”

  “All right, Liverpool. Directly or indirectly, it was Liverpool bound—will you come out of there, please, Oliver?—you know how those Russian crooks are. If they love you, you can do no wrong. If they think you’ve double-crossed them, they’ll firebomb your offices, put a missile through your bedroom window and gun down your wife in the fish queue. That’s who they are.”

  “Which ship was it?”

  “The Free Tallinn.”

  “Out of Odessa.”

  “Correct.”

  “Who boarded it?”

  “Only Russians, Oliver. Their own people. Russian special forces, in Russian waters. It was Russians boarding Russians, all the way.”

  “But you tipped them off.”

  “No, that’s exactly what we didn’t do. Someone else did. Maybe the Orlovs thought Alfie had tipped them off. It’s guesswork on all sides.”

  Oliver’s face sank deeper into his hands as he continued to consult his internal demons. “Winser didn’t double-cross the Orlovs. I did,” he said in a voice from the grave. “At Heathrow. Hoban shot the wrong messenger.”

  Brock’s anger, when he released it, was a little frightening. It came from nowhere, without warning, and clamped itself across his face like a death mask. “Nobody bloody double-crossed them,” he growled. “You don’t double-cross crooks. You catch them. Yevgeny Orlov’s a lowlife Georgian thug. So’s his moronic brother.”

  “They’re not Georgian. They just want to be,” Oliver mumbled. “And Mikhail’s not moronic. He’s different, that’s all.” He was thinking of Sammy Watmore.

  “Tiger laundered the Orlovs’ money for them and Winser was a one hundred percent willing accomplice. It’s not betrayal, Oliver. It’s justice. That was what you wanted, if you remember. You wanted to put the world to rights. That’s what we’re doing. Nothing’s changed. I never promised you we’d do it with fairy dust. That’s not what justice is.”

  “You promised you’d wait”—still from inside his hands.

  “I did wait. I promised you a year, it took me four. One to get you clear. Another to run the paper trails to earth. Another to persuade the ladies and gentlemen of Whitehall to get their thumbs out of their arses and a fourth to make them realize that not all British policemen are wonderful and not all British officials are angels. You could have gone anywhere in the world in that time. It had to be England. That was your choice, not mine. Your choice to cut and run, your marriage, your daughter, her trust fund, your country. For those four years Yevgeny Orlov and his brother Mikhail have been flooding what we used to call the free world with every dirty product they can lay their hands on, from Afghan heroin for teenagers to Czech Semtex for Irish peace lovers and Russian nuclear triggers for Middle Eastern democrats. And Tiger, your father, has been bankrolling them, laundering their profits and making their beds for them. Not to mention what he’s been coining himself. You’ll forgive me if after four years we grew a tad impatient.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him.”

  “I didn’t bloody hurt him. I’m not hurting him now. The Orlovs are. And if a bunch of villains want to start blowing each other’s brains out, and informing on one another’s shipments to Liverpool, all they’ll hear from me is applause. I don’t love your father, Oliver. That’s your job. I’m who I am. I’ve not changed. Nor’s Tiger.”

  “Where is he?”

  Brock laughed contemptuously. “In deep shock, where else? Inconsolable, crying his heart out. Read all about it in the press releases. Alfie Winser was his lifelong friend and comrade in arms, you’ll be pleased to learn. They trudged the same hard road, shared the same ideals. Amen.” Oliver was still waiting. “He’s bolted,” Brock said, abandoning sarcasm. “Vanished from our screens. There’s not a bell rung anywhere and we’re watching and listening for him round the clock. Half an hour after he heard the news of Winser’s death he walked out of the office, dropped by his flat, walked out again and hasn’t been seen or heard of since. It’s the sixth day now that he hasn’t called or faxed or E-mailed or sent a postcard. In Tiger’s life that’s unprecedented. One day without a phone call from him, it’s a national emergency. Six, it’s the apocalypse. The staff are fronting for him all ends up, casually phoning his known watering holes, plus anyone he might have gone to earth with, and doing their damnedest not to raise a storm.”

  “Where’s Massingham?”—Massingham, Tiger’s chief of staff.

  Brock’s expression didn’t alter, neither did his voice. His tone remained deprecatory, dismissive.

  “Mending fences. Roaming the globe. Soothing customers’ feathers.”

  “All because of Winser?”

  Brock ignored this. “Massingham phones in from time to time, mostly to ask if anybody’s heard anything. He doesn’t say a lot apart from that. Not on the telephone. Being Massingham. Being any of them, come to think of it.” They ruminated together in silence until Brock spoke aloud the fear that was taking root in Oliver’s mind. “Tiger could be dead, of course, which would be nice—for society, if not for you”—hoping at least to wake Oliver from his daydream. But Oliver refused to be stirred. “The honorable way out would make quite a change for Tiger, I must say. Except I don’t think he’d know where to find the door.” Nothing. “Plus all of a sudden he turns round and has his Swiss banker transfer five million quid to Carmen’s trust. Dead men don’t do that as a rule, I’m told.”

  “And thirty.”

  “I beg your pardon? I’m a tiny bit hard of hearing these days, Oliver.”

  “Five million and thirty,” Oliver corrected him in a louder, angrier voice. So which hell have you gone to now? Brock wanted to ask, as Oliver continued to stare sightlessly ahead of him. And if I succeed in getting you out of this one, which hell will you go to next? “He sent them flowers,” Oliver explained.

  “Sent who? What are you talking about?”

  “Tiger sent flowers to Carmen and Heather. Last week, by chauffeur-driven Mercedes from London. He knows where they live and who they are. He phoned the order from somewhere, dictated a funny card signing himself an admirer. One of the smart West End florists.” Groping around his jacket, slamming pockets, Oliver eventually found a slip of paper and handed it to Brock. “Here. Marshall & Bernsteen. Thirty bloody roses. Pink. Five million and thirty pounds. Thirty pieces of silver. He’s saying thanks for ratting on me. He’s saying he knows where to find her anytime he feels like it. He’s saying he owns her. Carmen. He’s saying Oliver can run but he can’t hide. I want her protected, Nat. I want Heather spoken to. I want her told. I don’t want them contaminated. I don’t want him ever to set eyes on her.”

  If Brock’s unexpected silences drove Oliver mad, he was also reluctantly impressed by them. Brock gave you no warning. He didn’t say, “Wait a moment.” He just stopped talking until he had thought the thing through and was ready to pass judgm
ent on it.

  “He could be saying that,” Brock agreed at last. “He could be saying something different, couldn’t he?”

  “Like what?” Oliver demanded aggressively.

  Brock again let him wait. “Well, Oliver. Like he’s a bit short of company in his old age.”

  Oliver watched from the shades of his anorak collar as Brock strolled across the garden, tapped on the French windows and shouted, “Tanby!” He saw a stalky girl appear, tall as himself but fit. High cheekbones, long blondish ponytail and that thing that tall girls have of putting all their weight on one leg while they cock the other hip. He heard her say, “Tanby’s up the road, Nat,” in a Scottish brogue. He watched Brock hand her the slip of paper with the florist’s name on it. The girl listening while she read the name. He heard Brock’s mumble and set it to words from his informed imagination: I want whoever took the order for thirty roses to Abbots Quay last week, name of Hawthorne, and the chauffeur-driven Mercedes to deliver them—the girl nodding in time to Brock’s undertone—I want how the car and flowers were paid for, I want origin, time, date, duration of the call and a description of the caller’s voice if they didn’t record him, which they may have done because lots of firms do. He thought he caught the girl’s eye over Brock’s shoulder and flapped a hand at her but she was already on her way indoors.

  “So what have you done with them, Oliver?” Brock inquired cozily when he had sat down again.

  “The flowers?”

  “Don’t be bloody silly.”

  “Sent them to Northampton to her best friend. If they go. Norah. Unmarried dyke.”

  “You want her told what, exactly?”

  “That I was on the right side. I may be a traitor but I’m not a criminal. It was all right to have my child.”

  Brock heard the detachment in Oliver’s voice, watched him stand up, scratch his head, then his shoulder, then look round him while he appeared to take fresh stock of where he was: the little garden, apple blossom just beginning, the rumble of traffic from the other side of the wall, the Victorian backs, each in its rectangle of garden, greenhouses, washing on the line. Watched him sit down again. Waited as a priest might for his penitent’s return. “Must be hard for a man like Tiger, running and hiding, at his age,” he mused provocatively, reckoning it was time to interrupt Oliver’s reverie. “If that’s what he’s doing.” No answer. “One minute he’s eating nice food, riding round in his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, all his systems of self-deception nicely in place, nothing rude, nothing bare-knuckle. Then all of a sudden Alfie gets his head blown off and Tiger wonders if he’s next in the queue. Bit chilly out there, I should imagine. Bit lonely for a man in his sixties. I don’t think I’d like to have his dreams very much, would you?”