Single & Single

by John le Carré

  “Bloody brilliant. You’ve Derek across the corridor and Pat and Mike between our bedroom and the lift. Have you thought of that?”

  “I thought they’d be asleep.”

  “And you think the hotel will be happy, do you, with you sneaking past reception with a suitcase in your hand at this hour of night?”

  “Well, they’ll still have you to pay the bill, won’t they?”

  “What do you think you’re going to use for money?” And before he could answer, “Don’t tell me. You drew some from the bank. That’s what you hid in the bathroom.”

  Oliver scratched the top of his head. “I’m going anyway.” He had his hand on the door handle still, and he was standing his full height, and he hoped he looked as determined as he felt because he knew that if she made an attempt to stop him—by raising Derek and the girls, for instance—he was going to prevent her somehow. Turning her back to him she slipped off her robe and, for a moment splendidly naked, began dressing. And it dawned on Oliver, too late as ever, that a girl who is proposing to spend a chaste night on two armchairs would take her pajamas or nightdress to the bathroom in order to emerge decent, but Aggie hadn’t done that.

  “What are you doing?” he asked her, gawping at her like an idiot.

  “Coming with you. What d’you think I’m doing? You’re not safe crossing the fucking road.”

  “What about Brock?”

  “I’m not married to Brock. Put that bag on the bed and let me pack it properly.”

  He watched her pack it properly. He watched her add things of her own, not everything, so that they had one suitcase between them. He watched her put the rest of her stuff into a second bag so that it would be “all ready for Derek in the morning when he wakes up”—under her breath—and he noted that causing Derek embarrassment was not going to upset her unduly. He padded uselessly round the tiny room while she returned to the bathroom, and he heard her through the paper-thin wall ordering a cab in a low voice on the bathroom telephone, and at the same time asking the desk to have the room bill ready because they had to check out immediately. She came back and murmured to him that he was to follow her and bring the suitcase and not thump about. She turned the door handle and lifted it and it opened silently, which it hadn’t done for him. There was a door marked Service straight across the passage. She opened it and beckoned to him and he followed her down an evil stone staircase that reminded him of the back staircase in Curzon Street. He watched her pay the bill at the desk, and she did that unconscious thing with her hips that he’d seen her do in the garden in Camden, weight on one leg and cocking the other somehow. He noticed that she still had her hair down, and that even under the awful overhead lighting he could imagine her riding horses and climbing glens and looking like an advertisement for rainwear while she fly-fished for the salmon.

  “Is the cab out there, Mark?” she asked over her shoulder while she signed. And Oliver, because he was still dreaming, looked round helpfully for Mark before remembering who he was.

  They rode in silence to the station. When they got there, he stood guard over the suitcase and checked their platform number several times because he kept forgetting it while she bought the tickets. And suddenly, there they were, just another Mr. and Mrs. West, pushing their his-and-hers suitcase down the platform, looking for their berth.

  16

  Until that evening Brock had relied on the long game to keep Massingham at the table, dropping in on him unannounced at any odd moment of day or night, firing off a few cryptic questions and leaving others pregnantly unasked while he kept his promises on the boil—yes sir, your immunity is in the pipeline—no sir, we will not be hounding William—and meanwhile can you help us with the following little problem? Anything to keep him talking, he told Aiden Bell, anything to keep the chemistry working in him while the information comes in.

  “Why don’t you have him walk into a door and save yourself the time?” Bell argued.

  Because he’s afraid of bigger things than us, Brock replied. Because he loves William and knows where the bomb is hidden. Because he’s a turncoat with loyalties, and they’re the worst. Because I don’t understand why he came to us, or what he’s hiding from. Or why the pragmatic Orlovs have taken up ritual killing in their old age.

  Tonight, however, Brock knew he was a step ahead of Massingham and made his dispositions accordingly, though still with that mysterious lack of confidence that had bedeviled their previous encounters: something was out of joint, something was missing. He had listened to Oliver’s interview with Dr. Conrad, digitally encrypted by the British consulate in Zurich that same afternoon. He had cut a grateful path through Oliver’s notes from the bank and, though he knew it would be months before the analysts had squeezed the last drop out of them, he had seen with Oliver’s eyes the living proof, if he had ever doubted it, that Single’s were paying huge retainers to the Hydra and that Porlock was its treasurer and comptroller of the purse. Under his arm he was carrying Dr. Mirsky’s sixty-eight-page ultimatum, spirited back to London on the last plane of the day and now residing in a brown official envelope sealed in HM Customs tape. He led off briskly, as he had planned to do, firing his first question before he had sat down.

  “Where did you spend last Christmas, sir?” he demanded, wielding the word sir like a meat cleaver.

  “Skiing in the Rockies.”

  “With William?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Where was Hoban?”

  “What’s he got to do with it? With his family, I should imagine.” “Which family?”

  “His in-laws, probably. I’m not sure he’s got parents of his own. I rather think of him as an orphan child, don’t you?” Massingham responded lethargically, in deliberate counterpoint to Brock’s haste.

  “So Hoban was in Istanbul. With the Orlovs. Hoban was in Istanbul for Christmas. Yes?”

  “I assume so. One never quite knows for certain with Alix. He’s a bit of still water, if that’s the expression. Runs deep.”

  “Dr. Mirsky was also in Istanbul over Christmas,” Brock suggested.

  “What an amazing coincidence. Population twice the size of London, they must have been falling over one another’s feet.”

  “Does it surprise you to learn that Dr. Mirsky and Alix Hoban are old buddies from way back?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “What do you think was the nature of their relationship—way back?”

  “Well, they weren’t lovers, darling, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “I’m not. I’m suggesting they were bonded by other factors, and I’m asking you what those factors were.”

  Doesn’t like it, Brock recorded, his spirits rising. Buying time. Eyes to the envelope on the table. Back again. Moistens lips. Wondering how much the little bastard knows, and how much do I need to tell him?

  “Hoban was a high-flying Soviet apparatchik,” Massingham conceded, after deliberation. “Mirsky was the same sort of creature in Poland. They did business together.”

  “When you say apparatchik, what type of apparatus are you referring to?”

  Massingham gave a disdainful shrug. “A little of this and that. I’m just wondering whether you’ve been cleared for this stuff,” he added insolently.

  “So intelligence. They were in their countries’ respective intelligence services. One Soviet, one Polish.”

  “Let’s just call them gumshoes,” Massingham proposed, attempting once again to put Brock in his place.

  “During your tour in Moscow with the British embassy, weren’t you one of the people who had side-door dealings with Soviet intelligence?”

  “We took a few soundings. It was very informal and rather romantic and terribly secret. We were looking for common ground. Targets of potential interest. How we might go forward, hand in hand. That’s all I’m allowed to tell you, I’m afraid.”

  “What sort of targets?”

  “Terror. Where the Russians weren’t financing it, of course.” M
assingham was enjoying himself.

  “Crime?”

  “Where they weren’t involved in it.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Isn’t that a crime?”

  “You tell me,” Brock shot back, and to his pleasure fancied he had scored a hit, for Massingham had set his fingers to his lips to hide his mouth, and his gaze had slipped away to the bookshelves. “And wasn’t Alix Hoban one of the people on the Soviet side you took soundings from?” he asked.

  “This really isn’t your business at all. I shall have to clear this with my former masters, I’m afraid. I’m sorry. I can’t go on.”

  “Your former masters wouldn’t speak to you if you paid them. Ask Aiden Bell. Was Hoban on the Soviet team or wasn’t he?”

  “You know bloody well he was.”

  “What was his expertise?”

  “Crime.”

  “Organized crime?”

  “Oxymoron, darling. It’s disorganized by definition.”

  “And he was involved with Soviet criminal gangs?”

  “He was covering them.”

  “You mean he was on their payroll.”

  “Don’t be such a prude. You know very well how that game is played. It’s give-and-take between poacher and gamekeeper. Everybody has to get something or there’s no deal.”

  “Was Mirsky round at that time?”

  “Round what?”

  “You and Hoban.” It was an inspired gesture on Brock’s part. He hadn’t planned it, hadn’t even thought to do it till that moment. He picked up the envelope and tore it open. He pulled out the redbound document and dumped it back on the packing case. Then he scrumpled up the envelope and tossed it with perfect accuracy into a wastepaper basket on the other side of the attic. And for a while the red book smoldered like a fire in a dark room. “I was asking you whether you made the acquaintance of Dr. Mirsky during your tour in Moscow in the late eighties,” Brock reminded Massingham.

  “I met him a couple of times.”

  “A couple.”

  “You’re being too Gothic. Mirsky went to the conferences. I went to the conferences. That doesn’t mean we played doctors during lunch hour.”

  “And Mirsky was representing Polish intelligence.”

  “If you want to make it sound bigger than it was, yes.”

  “What was Polish intelligence doing at side-door conferences between British and Russian intelligence officers?”

  “Talking about talking about collaboration. Putting the Polish view. We had Czechs and Hungarians and Bulgarians”—appealing to him now—“we encouraged all that, Nat. There was no point in taking our case to the satellites unless the Sovs had given them the green light, was there now? So why not short-circuit the system and have the sats aboard from the start?”

  “How did you meet the Orlov brothers?”

  Massingham let out a silly shriek of derision. “That was bloody years later, you dunce!”

  “Six. You were pimping for Single’s. Tiger wanted the Orlov connection, so you pimped that too. How? Through Mirsky or Hoban?”

  Massingham’s questioning eye again took in the red book on the packing case, then returned to Brock.

  “Hoban.”

  “Was Hoban married to Zoya by then?”

  “He may have been”—sulkily—“who believes in marriage these days? Alix had targeted Yevgeny’s daughters and wasn’t fussy which one he got. The son-in-law also rises,” he added with an uneasy giggle.

  “And it was Hoban who introduced Mirsky to the brothers.”

  “Probably.”

  “Did Tiger object to Mirsky being let into the act?”

  “Why should he? Mirsky’s bright as hell, he was a fat cat Polish lawyer, knew all the angles, had a first-class organization. If the brothers were looking for openings further west, Mirsky was their man. He knew the boys in the port. He was a Gdansk man, a door opener. What more could Yevgeny ask?”

  “You mean Hoban, don’t you?”

  “Why? It was still the Orlovs’ operation.”

  “But Hoban was running it. It was the Hoban–Mirsky show when you got down to it. Yevgeny was the figurehead by then. It was Hoban, Massingham and Mirsky,” Brock ended, stabbing his finger at the red book. “You’re a villain, Mr. Massingham. You’re in it up to your ears. You’re not just a money launderer. You’re a frontline player in the dirtiest game on the planet. Sir.”

  Massingham’s manicured hands were twitching where they lay. For the second time in as many minutes he cleared his throat. “That’s not true at all. That’s an absolute travesty. It was Tiger to Yevgeny on the money and Hoban to Mirsky on the shipments. The whole thing was conducted by hand-delivered letters and I never saw them. Tiger’s eyes only.”

  “Can I ask you something, Randy?”

  “Not if you’re trying to pin the whole business on me.”

  “Did you ever—let’s say at the very start of it all—for example, when Hoban took you up onto the high hill—or Mirsky did—or you took them—and you showed each other the kingdom—and you took Tiger aside and did the same to him—or he took you, I’m not point scoring—did you ever, any of you, once mention, aloud, to one another, just on a one-to-one basis, the word drugs?” Massingham gave a sneering shrug, implying that the question was ridiculous. “Warheads? Nuclear and otherwise? Fissile materials? Also not?” Massingham was shaking his head at each of them. “Heroin?”

  “Good God no!”

  “Cocaine? So how did we get round this tricky problem of vocabulary, may I ask? What figleaf, if I may be so vulgar, disguised our shame, sir?”

  “I’ve told you and I’ve told you. Our job was to bring the Orlov operation from the black side to the white side. We came in after the fact. Not before. That was the deal.”

  Brock leaned very near to Massingham and, almost as a favor, begged him: “Then what are we doing here, sir? If you’re so legit, why are you so anxious to cut a deal?”

  “You know bloody well why. You’ve seen what they do. They’ll do it to me.”

  “You. Not Tiger. You. Why you? What have you done that Tiger hasn’t? What do you know that Tiger doesn’t know? What’s so bad about you that you’re so afraid?” No answer. Brock waited and still no answer. The anger in him acquired a deadly edge. If Massingham was terrified, let him be more terrified. Let him see his whole life rotting away before his eyes. “I want the black book,” Brock said. “Tiger’s list of people in high places. Not bent Poles in Gdansk or bent Germans in Bremen or bent Dutch in Rotterdam. I like them but they don’t make me horny. I want bent Brits. Home bred, with lots of power to abuse. People like you. The higher they are, the more I want them. And what you’re going to tell me is, Tiger knew about those people and you never did. And what I’m going to tell you is, I don’t believe a word of you. I think you’re being economical with the vérité and hoping I’ll be generous with the immunity. I won’t. That’s not my nature. I’m not taking one more step down Immunity Lane until you give me those names and telephone numbers.”

  In a fresh convulsion of fear and anger, Massingham broke free of Brock’s taunting gaze. “Tiger’s the streetwise one, not me! Tiger’s the defender of crooks, the befriender of police. Where did he cut his milk teeth? In Liverpool, down among the immigrants and druggies. How did he make his first million? In property, bribing council officials. It’s no good shaking your head at me, Nat! It’s the truth!”

  But Brock had already changed his ground.

  “You see, what I keep asking myself is, Mr. Massingham, why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did Mr. Massingham come to me? Who sent him to me? Who’s the puppet master behind his act? And then a little bird leans over his twig and says to me: Tiger is. Tiger wants to know what I know and how I know it. And who from. So he sends his highly impressive chief of staff to me posing as a frightened British subject while he suns himself in some nice tax haven where there’s no extradition. You’re the fall guy, Mr. Massingham. Because if I can
’t have Tiger, I’m having you!” But Massingham had found his balance again. A smile of disbelief had spread across his tight lips. “And if Tiger Single didn’t plant you on me, the brothers did,” Brock went on, trying to sound triumphant. “Those pseudo-Georgian horse traders were never short of a trick or two, that’s for sure.” But the smile on Massingham’s face only widened. “Why did Mirsky move to Istanbul?” Brock demanded, giving the red document an irritable shove so that it slid to the other side of the packing case.

  “For his health, darling. The Berlin Wall was coming down. He didn’t want to be hit by a falling brick.”

  “I heard there was talk of putting him on trial.”

  “Let’s just say the Turkish climate became him.”

  “Do you own shares in Trans-Finanz Istanbul, by any chance?” Brock asked. “You or any company on or offshore that you have an interest in?”

  “I’m pleading the fifth,” Massingham said.

  “We haven’t got one,” Brock replied, and with this exchange there occurred between the interrogator and his subject one of those mysterious truces which are followed minutes later by renewed and intensified combat. “You see, I can understand your two-timing Tiger, Randy, I have no difficulty with that. If I was working for Tiger, I’d two-time him right and left. I can understand your getting into a cabal with a couple of bad men from the ex–Soviet intelligence world. None of that bothers me. I can see it. I can understand Hoban and Mirsky bullying Yevgeny into cutting Tiger out of the loop and you lending a helping hand, to say the least. But when that failed, and there was no Father Christmas after all—what the hell happened next?” He was so warm! He could feel it! It was here in the room. It was across the packing case from him. It was inside Massingham’s skull and begging to come out—till at the very last second it turned and scurried back to safety. “All right, the Free Tallinn was nabbed,” Brock conceded, pressing forward in his mystification. “Tough luck. The Orlovs lost a few tons of dope, and a few men besides. These things happen. And face was lost. There’d been too many Free Tallinn s. Somebody had to be punished. Reparation had to be demanded. But where are you in this, Mr. Massingham? Whose side are you on, apart from your own? And what the hell is keeping you sitting here, putting up with my insults?”