Call for the Dead

by John le Carré

  ‘To resume,’ he said, and felt an ass. ‘I’m sorry, I feel a little inarticulate … Anyway, as I sat there, there was a knock on the door and a young student came in. He was nineteen, in fact, but he looked younger. His name was Dieter Frey. He was a pupil of mine, an intelligent boy and remarkable to look at.’ Smiley paused again, staring before him. Perhaps it was his illness, his weakness, which brought the memory so vividly before him.

  ‘Dieter was a very handsome boy, with a high forehead and a lot of unruly black hair. The lower part of his body was deformed, I think by infantile paralysis. He carried a stick and leant heavily upon it when he walked. Naturally he cut a rather romantic figure at a small university; they thought him Byronic and so on. In fact I could never find him romantic myself. The Germans have a passion for discovering young genius, you know, from Herder to Stefan George – somebody lionized them practically from the cradle. But you couldn’t lionize Dieter. There was a fierce independence, a ruthlessness about him which scared off the most determined patron. This defensiveness in Dieter derived not only from his deformity, but his race, which was Jewish. How on earth he kept his place at university I could never understand. It was possible that they didn’t know he was a Jew – his beauty might have been southern, I suppose, Italian, but I don’t really see how. To me he was obviously Jewish.

  ‘Dieter was a socialist. He made no secret of his views even in those days. I once considered him for recruitment, but it seemed futile to take on anyone who was so obviously earmarked for concentration camp. Besides he was too volatile, too swift to react, too brightly painted, too vain. He led all the societies at the university – debating, political, poetry and so on. In all the athletic guilds he held honorary positions. He had the nerve not to drink in a university where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year.

  ‘That was Dieter, then: a tall, handsome, commanding cripple, the idol of his generation; a Jew. And that was the man who came to see me that hot summer evening.

  ‘I sat him down and offered him a drink, which he refused. I made some coffee, I think, on a gas ring. We spoke in a desultory way about my last lecture on Keats. I had complained about the application of German critical methods to English poetry, and this had led to some discussion – as usual – on the Nazi interpretation of “decadence” in art. Dieter dragged it all up again and became more and more outspoken in his condemnation of modern Germany and finally of Nazism itself. Naturally, I was guarded – I think I was less of a fool in those days than I am now. In the end he asked me point blank what I thought of the Nazis. I replied rather pointedly that I was disinclined to criticize my hosts, and that anyway I didn’t think politics were much fun. I shall never forget his reply. He was furious, struggled to his feet and shouted at me: “Von Freude ist nicht die Rede!” – “We’re not talking about fun!”’Smiley broke off and looked across the table to Guillam: ‘I’m sorry, Peter, I’m being rather long-winded.’

  ‘Nonsense, old dear. You tell the story in your own way.’ Mendel grunted his approval; he was sitting rather stiffly with both hands on the table before him. There was no light in the room now except the bright glow of the fire, which threw tall shadows on the roughcast wall behind them. The port decanter was three parts empty; Smiley gave himself a little and passed it on.

  ‘He raved at me. He simply did not understand how I could apply an independent standard of criticism to art and remain so insensitive to politics, how I could bleat about artistic freedom when a third of Europe was in chains. Did it mean nothing to me that contemporary civilization was being bled to death? What was so sacred about the eighteenth century that I could throw the twentieth away? He had come to me because he enjoyed my seminars and thought me an enlightened man, but he now realized that I was worse than all of them.

  ‘I let him go. What else could I do? On paper he was suspect anyway – a rebellious Jew with a university place still mysteriously free. But I watched him. The term was nearly over and the long vacation soon to begin. In the closing debate of the term three days later he was dreadfully outspoken. He really frightened people, you know, and they grew silent and apprehensive. The end of the term came and Dieter departed without a word of farewell to me. I never expected to see him again.

  ‘It was about six months before I did. I had been visiting friends near Dresden, Dieter’s home town, and I arrived half an hour early at the station. Rather than hang around on the platform I decided to go for a stroll. A couple of hundred metres from the station was a tall, rather grim seventeenth-century house. There was a small courtyard in front of it with tall iron railings and a wrought-iron gate. It had apparently been converted into a temporary prison: a group of shaven prisoners, men and women, were being exercised in the yard, walking round the perimeter. Two guards stood in the centre with tommy guns. As I watched I caught sight of a familiar figure, taller than the rest, limping, struggling to keep up with them. It was Dieter. They had taken his stick away.

  ‘When I thought about it afterwards, of course, I realized that the Gestapo would scarcely arrest the most popular member of the university while he was still up. I forgot about my train, went back into the town and looked for his parents in the telephone book. I knew his father had been a doctor so it wasn’t difficult. I went to the address and only his mother was there. The father had died already in a concentration camp. She wasn’t inclined to talk about Dieter, but it appeared that he had not gone to a Jewish prison but to a general one, and ostensibly for “a period of correction” only. She expected him back in about three months. I left him a message to say I still had some books of his and would be pleased to return them if he would call on me.

  ‘I’m afraid the events of 1939 must have got the better of me, because I don’t believe I gave Dieter another thought that year. Soon after I returned from Dresden my Department ordered me back to England. I packed and left within forty-eight hours, to find London in a turmoil. I was given a new assignment which required intensive preparation, briefing and training. I was to go back to Europe at once and activate almost untried agents in Germany who had been recruited against such an emergency. I began to memorize the dozen-odd names and addresses. You can imagine my reaction when I discovered Dieter Frey among them.

  ‘When I read his file I found he had more or less recruited himself by bursting in on the consulate in Dresden and demanding to know why no one lifted a finger to stop the persecution of the Jews.’ Smiley paused and laughed to himself; ‘Dieter was a great one for getting people to do things.’ He glanced quickly at Mendel and Guillam. Both had their eyes fixed on him.

  ‘I suppose my first reaction was pique. The boy had been right under my nose and I hadn’t considered him suitable – what was some ass in Dresden up to? And then I was alarmed to have this firebrand on my hands, whose impulsive temperament could cost me and others our lives. Despite the slight changes in my appearance and the new cover under which I was operating, I should obviously have to declare myself to Dieter as plain George Smiley from the university, so he could blow me sky high. It seemed a most unfortunate beginning, and I was half resolved to set up my network without Dieter. In the event I was wrong. He was a magnificent agent.

  ‘He didn’t curb his flamboyance, but used it skilfully as a kind of double bluff. His deformity kept him out of the Services and he found himself a clerical job on the railways. In no time he worked his way to a position of real responsibility and the quantity of information he obtained was fantastic. Details of troop and ammunition transports, their destination and date of transit. Later he reported on the effectiveness of our bombing, pinpointed key targets. He was a brilliant organizer and I think that was what saved him. He did a wonderful job on the railways, made himself indispensable, worked all hours of the night and day; became almost inviolate. They even gave him a civilian decoration for exceptional merit and I suppose the Gestapo conveniently lost his file.

  ‘Dieter had a theory that was pure Faust. Thought alone was valueless. You
must act for thought to become effective. He used to say that the greatest mistake man ever made was to distinguish between the mind and the body: an order does not exist if it is not obeyed. He used to quote Kleist a great deal: “if all eyes were made of green glass, and if all that seems white was really green, who would be the wiser?” Something like that.

  ‘As I say, Dieter was a magnificent agent. He even went so far as to arrange for certain freights to be transported on good flying nights for the convenience of our bombers. He had tricks all his own – a natural genius for the nuts and bolts of espionage. It seemed absurd to suppose it could last, but the effect of our bombing was often so widespread that it would have been childish to attribute it to one person’s betrayal – let alone a man so notoriously outspoken as Dieter.

  ‘Where he was concerned my job was easy. Dieter put in a lot of travelling as it was – he had a special pass to get him around. Communication was child’s play by comparison with some agents. Occasionally we would actually meet and talk in a café, or he would pick me up in a Ministry car and drive me sixty or seventy miles along a main road, as if he were giving me a lift. But more often we would take a journey in the same train and swap briefcases in the corridor or go to the theatre with parcels and exchange cloakroom tickets. He seldom gave me actual reports but just carbon copies of transit orders. He got his secretary to do a lot – he made her keep a special float which he “destroyed” every three months by emptying it into his briefcase in the lunch hour.

  ‘Well, in 1943 I was recalled. My trade cover was rather thin by then I think, and I was getting a bit shopsoiled.’ He stopped and took a cigarette from Guillam’s case.

  ‘But don’t let’s get Dieter out of perspective,’ he said. ‘He was my best agent, but he wasn’t my only one. I had a lot of headaches of my own – running him was a picnic by comparison with some. When the war was over I tried to find out from my successor what had become of Dieter and the rest of them. Some were resettled in Australia and Canada, some just drifted away to what was left of their home towns. Dieter hesitated, I gather. The Russians were in Dresden, of course, and he may have had doubts. In the end he went – he had to really, because of his mother. He hated the Americans, anyway. And of course he was a socialist.

  ‘I heard later that he had made his career there. The administrative experience he had picked up during the war got him some Government job in the new republic. I suppose that his reputation as a rebel and the suffering of his family cleared the way for him. He must have done pretty well for himself.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mendel.

  ‘He was over here until a month ago running the Steel Mission.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ said Guillam quickly. ‘In case you think your cup is full, Mendel, I spared you another visit to Weybridge this morning and called on Elizabeth Pidgeon. It was George’s idea.’ He turned to Smiley: ‘She’s a sort of Moby Dick, isn’t she – big white man-eating whale.’

  ‘Well?’ said Mendel.

  ‘I showed her a picture of that young diplomat by the name of Mundt they kept in tow there to pick up the bits. Elizabeth recognized him at once as the nice man who collected Elsa Fennan’s music case. Isn’t that jolly?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I know what you’re going to ask, you clever youth. You want to know whether George recognized him too. Well, George did. It’s the same nasty fellow who tried to lure him into his house in Bywater Street. Doesn’t he get around?’

  Mendel drove to Mitcham. Smiley was dead tired. It was raining again and cold. Smiley hugged his greatcoat round him and, despite his tiredness, watched with quiet pleasure the busy London night go by. He had always loved travelling. Even now, if he had the choice, he would cross France by train rather than fly. He could still respond to the magic noises of a night journey across Europe, the oddly cacophonous chimes and the French voices suddenly waking him from English dreams. Ann had loved it too and they had twice travelled overland to share the dubious joys of that uncomfortable journey.

  When they got back Smiley went straight to bed while Mendel made some tea. They drank it in Smiley’s bedroom.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Mendel.

  ‘I thought I might go to Walliston tomorrow.’

  ‘You ought to spend the day in bed. What do you want to do there?’

  ‘See Elsa Fennan.’

  ‘You’re not safe on your own. You’d better let me come. I’ll sit in the car while you do the talking. She’s a Yid, isn’t she?’

  Smiley nodded.

  ‘My dad was Yid. He never made such a bloody fuss about it.’

  12

  Dream for Sale

  She opened the door and stood looking at him for a moment in silence.

  ‘You could have let me know you were coming,’ she said.

  ‘I thought it safer not to.’

  She was silent again. Finally she said: ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ It seemed to cost her a good deal.

  ‘May I come in?’ said Smiley. ‘We haven’t much time.’

  She looked old and tired, less resilient perhaps. She led him into the drawing-room and with something like resignation indicated a chair.

  Smiley offered her a cigarette and took one himself. She was standing by the window. As he looked at her, watched her quick breathing, her feverish eyes, he realized that she had almost lost the power of self-defence.

  When he spoke, his voice was gentle, concessive. To Elsa Fennan it must have seemed like a voice she had longed for, irresistible, offering all strength, comfort, compassion and safety. She gradually moved away from the window and her right hand, which had been pressed against the sill, trailed wistfully along it, then fell to her side in a gesture of sub-mission. She sat opposite him, her eyes upon him in complete dependence, like the eyes of a lover.

  ‘You must have been terribly lonely,’ he said. ‘No one can stand it for ever. It takes courage, too, and it’s hard to be brave alone. They never understand that, do they? They never know what it costs – the sordid tricks of lying and deceiving, the isolation from ordinary people. They think you can run on their kind of fuel – the flag waving and the music. But you need a different kind of fuel, don’t you, when you’re alone? You’ve got to hate, and it needs strength to hate all the time. And what you must love is so remote, so vague when you’re not part of it.’ He paused. Soon, he thought, soon you’ll break. He prayed desperately that she would accept him, accept his comfort. He looked at her. Soon she would break.

  ‘I said we hadn’t much time. Do you know what I mean?’

  She had folded her hands on her lap and was looking down at them. He saw the dark roots of her yellow hair and wondered why on earth she dyed it. She showed no sign of having heard his question.

  ‘When I left you that morning a month ago I drove to my home in London. A man tried to kill me. That night he nearly succeeded – he hit me on the head three or four times. I’ve just come out of hospital. As it happens I was lucky. Then there was the garage man he hired the car from. The river police recovered his body from the Thames not long ago. There were no signs of violence – he was just full of whisky. They can’t understand it – he hadn’t been near the river for years. But then we’re dealing with a competent man, aren’t we? A trained killer. It seems he’s trying to remove anyone who can connect him with Samuel Fennan. Or his wife, of course. Then there’s that young blonde girl at the Repertory Theatre …’

  ‘What are you saying?’ she whispered. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  Smiley suddenly wanted to hurt her, to break the last of her will, to remove her utterly as an enemy. For so long she had haunted him as he had lain helpless, had been a mystery and a power.

  ‘What games did you think you were playing, you two? Do you think you can flirt with power like theirs, give a little and not give all? Do you think that you can stop the dance – control the strength you give them? What dreams did you cherish, Mrs Fennan, that had so little of the world in the
m?’

  She buried her face in her hands and he watched the tears run between her fingers. Her body shook with great sobs and her words came slowly, wrung from her.

  ‘No, no dreams. I had no dream but him. He had one dream, yes … one great dream.’ She went on crying, helpless, and Smiley, half in triumph, half in shame, waited for her to speak again. Suddenly she raised her head and looked at him, the tears still running down her cheeks. ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘What dream did they leave me? I dreamt of long golden hair and they shaved my head, I dreamt of a beautiful body and they broke it with hunger. I have seen what human beings are, how could I believe in a formula for human beings? I said to him, oh I said to him a thousand times: “Only make no laws, no fine theories, no judgements, and the people may love, but give them one theory, let them invent one slogan, and the game begins again.” I told him that. We talked whole nights away. But no, that little boy must have his dream, and if a new world was to be built, Samuel Fennan must build it. I said to him, “Listen,” I said. “They have given you all you have, a home, money and trust. Why do you do it to them?” And he said to me: “I do it for them. I am the surgeon and one day they will understand.” He was a child, Mr Smiley, they led him like a child.’

  He dared not speak, dared put nothing to the test.

  ‘Five years ago he met that Dieter. In a ski hut near Garmisch. Freitag told us later that Dieter had planned it that way – Dieter couldn’t ski anyway because of his legs. Nothing seemed real then; Freitag wasn’t a real name. Fennan christened him Freitag like Man Friday in Robinson Crusoe. Dieter found that so funny and afterwards we never talked of Dieter but always of Mr Robinson and Freitag.’ She broke off now and looked at him with a very faint smile: ‘I’m sorry,’ she said; ‘I’m not very coherent.’