Le Carre, John - The Looking Glass War (v1.0)

by The Looking-Glass War [lit]

  "Not too bad," he muttered.

  "It's the minimum," Leclerc said. They had begun to whisper, though no one could hear. One by one they got into the car.

  A hurried handshake and he walked away toward the hill. There were no fine words; not even from Leclerc. It was as if they had all taken leave of Leiser long ago. The last they saw of him was the rucksack gently bobbing as he disappeared into the darkness. There had always been a rhythm about the way he walked.

  Eighteen

  Leiser lay in the bracken on the spur of the hill, stared at the luminous dial of his watch. Ten minutes to wait. The key chain was swinging from his belt. He put the keys back in his pocket, and as he drew his hand away he felt the links slip between his thumb and finger like the beads of a rosary. For a moment he let them linger there; there was comfort in their touch; they were where his childhood was. St. Christopher and all his angels, please preserve us from road accidents.

  Ahead of him the ground descended sharply, then evened out. He had seen it; he knew. But now, as he looked down, he could make out nothing in the darkness below him. Suppose it was marshland down there? There had been rain; the water had drained into the valley. He saw himself struggling through mud to his waist, carrying the suitcase above his head, the bullets splashing around him.

  He tried to discern the tower on the opposite hill, but if it was there it was lost against the blackness of the trees.

  Seven minutes. Don't worry about the noise, they said, the wind will carry it south. They'll hear nothing in a wind like this. Run beside the path, on the south side, that means to the right, keep on the new trail through the bracken, it's narrow but clear. If you meet anyone, use your knife, but for the love of heaven don't go near the path.

  His rucksack was heavy. Too heavy. So was the case. He'd quarreled about it with Jack. He didn't care for Jack. "Better be on the safe side, Fred," Jack had explained. "These little sets are sensitive as virgins: all right for fifty miles, dead as mutton on sixty. Better to have the margin, Fred, then we know where we are. They're experts, real experts where this one comes from."

  One minute to go. They'd set his watch by Avery's clock.

  He was frightened. Suddenly he couldn't keep his mind from it anymore. Perhaps he was too old, too tired, perhaps he'd done enough. Perhaps the training had worn him out. He felt his heart pounding his chest. His body wouldn't stand anymore; he hadn't the strength. He lay there, talking to Haldane: Christ, Captain, can't you see I'm past it? The old body's cracking up. That's what he'd tell them; he would stay there when the minute hand came up, he would stay there too heavy to move. "It's my heart, it's packed in," he'd tell them, "I've had a heart attack, Skipper, didn't tell you about my dickie heart, did I? It just came over me as I lay here in the bracken."

  He stood up. Let the dog see the rabbit.

  Run down the hill, they'd said; in this wind they won't hear a thing; run down the hill, because that's where they may spot you, they'll be looking at that hillside hoping for a silhouette. Run fast through the moving bracken, keep low and you'll be safe. When you reach level ground, lie up and get your breath back, then begin to crawl.

  He was running like a madman. He tripped and the rucksack brought him down, he felt his knee against his chin and the pain as he bit his tongue, then he was up again and the suitcase swung him around. He half fell into the path and waited for the flash of a bursting mine. He was running down the slope, the ground gave way beneath his heels, the suitcase rattling like an old car. Why wouldn't they let him take the gun? The pain rose in his chest like fire, spreading under the bone, burning the lungs: he counted each step, he could feel the thump of each footfall and the slowing drag of the case and rucksack. Avery had lied. Lied all the way. Better watch that cough, Captain; better see a doctor, it's like barbed wire in your guts. The ground leveled out; he fell again and lay still, panting like an animal, feeling nothing but fear and the sweat that drenched his woolen shirt.

  He pressed his face to the ground. Arching his body, he slid his hand beneath his belly and tightened the belt of his rucksack.

  He began crawling up the hill, dragging himself forward with his elbows and his hands, pushing the suitcase in front of him, conscious all the time of the hump on his back rising above the undergrowth. The water was seeping through his clothes; soon it ran freely over his thighs and knees. The stink of leaf-mold filled his nostrils; twigs tugged at his hair. It was as if all nature conspired to hold him back. He looked up the slope and caught sight of the observation tower against the line of black trees on the horizon. There was no light on the tower.

  He lay still. It was too far: he could never crawl so far. It was quarter to three by his watch. The relief guard would be coming from the north. He unbuckled his rucksack, stood up, holding it under his arm like a child. Taking the suitcase in his other hand he began walking cautiously up the rise, keeping the trodden path to his left, his eyes fixed upon the skeleton outline of the tower. Suddenly it rose before him like the dark bones of a monster.

  The wind clattered over the brow of the hill. From directly above him he could hear the slats of old timber banging, and the long creak of a casement. It was not a single apron but double; when he pulled, it came away from the staves. He stepped across, reattached the wire and stared into the forest ahead. He felt even in that moment of unspeakable terror, while the sweat blinded him and the throbbing of his temples drowned the rustling of the wind, a full, confiding gratitude toward Avery and Haldane, as if he knew they had deceived him for his own good.

  Then he saw the sentry, like the silhouette in the range, not ten yards from him, back turned, standing on the old path, his rifle slung over his shoulder, his bulky body swaying from left to right as he stamped his feet on the sodden ground to keep them from freezing. Leiser could smell tobacco—it was past him in a second—and coffee warm like a blanket. He put down the rucksack and suitcase and moved instinctively toward him; he might have been in the gymnasium at Headington. He felt the haft sharp in his hand, crosshatched to prevent slip. The sentry was quite a young boy under his greatcoat; Leiser was surprised how young. He killed him hurriedly, one blow, as a fleeing man might shoot into a crowd; shortly; not to destroy but to preserve; impatiently, for he had to get along; indifferently because it was a fixture.

  "Can you see anything?" Haldane repeated.

  "No." Avery handed him the glasses. "He just went into the dark."

  "Can you see a light from the watch tower? They'd shine a light if they heard him."

  "No, I was looking for Leiser," Avery answered.

  "You should have called him Mayfly," Leclerc objected from behind. "Johnson knows his name now."

  "I'll forget it, sir."

  "He's over, anyway," Leclerc said and walked back to the car.

  They drove home in silence.

  As they entered the house Avery felt a friendly touch upon his shoulder and turned, expecting to see Johnson; instead he found himself looking into the hollow face of Haldane, but so altered, so manifestly at peace, that it seemed to possess the youthful calm of a man who has survived a long illness; the last pain had gone out of him.

  "I am not given to eulogies," Haldane said.

  "Do you think he's safely over?"

  "You did well." He was smiling.

  "We'd have heard, wouldn't we? Heard the shots or seen the lights?"

  "He's out of our care. Well done." He yawned. "I propose we go early to bed. There is nothing more for us to do. Until tomorrow night, of course." At the door he stopped, and without turning his head he remarked, "You know, it doesn't seem real. In the war, there was no question. They went or they refused. Why did he go, Avery? Jane Austen said money or love, those were the only two things in the world. Leiser didn't go for money."

  "You said one could never know. You said so the night he telephoned."

  "He told me it was hate. Hatred for the Germans; and I didn't believe him."

  "He went anyway. I thought that was all th
at mattered to you, you said you didn't trust motive."

  "He wouldn't do it for hatred, we know that. What is he then? We never knew him, did we? He's near the mark, you know; he's on his deathbed. What does he think of? If he dies now, tonight, what will be in his mind?"

  "You shouldn't speak like that."

  "Ah." At last he turned and looked at Avery and the peace had not left his face. "When we met him, he was a man without love. Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray. We ourselves live without it in our profession. We don't force people to do things for us. We let them discover love. And of course, Leiser did, didn't he? He married us for money, so to speak, and left us for love. He took his second vow. I wonder when."

  Avery said quickly, "What do you mean, for money?"

  "I mean whatever we gave to him. Love is what he gave to us. I see you have his watch, incidentally."

  "I'm keeping it for him."

  "Ah. Good night. Or good morning, I suppose." A little laugh. "How quickly one loses one's sense of time." Then he commented, as if to himself: "And the Circus helped us all the way. It's most strange. I wonder why."

  Very carefully Leiser rinsed the knife. The knife was dirty and must be washed. In the boathouse, he ate the food and drank the brandy in the flask. "After that," Haldane had. said, "you live off the land; you can't run around with tinned meat and French brandy." He opened the door and stepped outside to wash his hands and face in the lake.

  The water was quite still in the darkness. Its unruffled surface was like a perfect skin shrouded with floating veils of gray mist. He could see the reeds along the bank; the wind, subdued by the approach of dawn, touched them as it moved across the water. Beyond the lake hung the shadow of low hills. He felt rested and at peace. Until the memory of the boy passed over him like a shudder.

  He threw the empty meat can and the brandy bottle far out, and as they hit the water a heron rose languidly from the reeds. Stooping, he picked up a stone and sent it skimming across the lake. He heard it bounce three times before it sank. He threw another but he couldn't beat three. Returning to the hut, he fetched his rucksack and suitcase. His right arm was aching painfully, it must have been from the weight of the case. From somewhere came the bellow of cattle.

  He began walking east, along the track which skirted the lake. He wanted to get as far as he could before morning came.

  He must have walked through half a dozen villages. Each was empty of life, quieter than the open road because they gave a moment's shelter from the rising wind. There were no signposts and no new buildings, it suddenly occurred to him. That was where the peace came from, it was the peace of no innovation—it might have been fifty years ago, a hundred. There were no streetlights, no gaudy signs on the pubs or shops. It was the darkness of indifference, and it comforted him. He walked into it like a tired man breasting the sea, it cooled and revived him like the wind; until he remembered the boy. He passed a farmhouse. A long drive led to it from the road. He stopped. Halfway up the drive stood a motorbike, an old mackintosh thrown over the saddle. There was no one in sight.

  The oven smoked gently.

  "When did you say his first schedule was?" Avery asked. He had asked already.

  "Johnson said twenty-two twenty. We start scanning an hour before."

  "I thought he was on a fixed frequency," Leclerc muttered, but without much interest.

  "He may start with the wrong crystal. It's the kind of thing that happens under strain. It's safer for base to scan with so many crystals."

  "He must be on the road by now."

  "Where's Haldane?"

  "Asleep."

  "How can anyone sleep at a time like this?"

  "It'll be daylight soon."

  "Can't you do something about that fire?" Leclerc asked. "It shouldn't smoke like that, I'm sure." He shook his head suddenly, as if shaking off water, and said, "John, there's a most interesting report from Fielden. Troop movements in Budapest. Perhaps when you get back to London …" He lost the thread of his sentence and frowned.

  "You mentioned it," Avery said softly.

  "Yes. Well, you must take a look at it."

  "I'd like to. It sounds very interesting."

  "It does, doesn't it?"

  "Very."

  "You know," he said—he seemed to be reminiscing—"they still won't give that wretched woman her pension."

  He sat very straight on the motorbike, elbows in as if he were at table. It made a terrible noise; it seemed to fill the dawn with sound, echoing across the frosted fields and stirring the roosting poultry. The mackintosh had leather pieces on the shoulders; as he bounced along the unmade road its skirts fluttered behind, rattling against the spokes of the rear wheel. Daylight came.

  Soon he would have to eat. He couldn't understand why he was so hungry. Perhaps it was the exercise. Yes, it must be the exercise. He would eat, but not in a town, not yet. Not in a cafe where strangers came. Not in a cafe where the boy had been.

  He drove on. His hunger taunted him. He could think of nothing else. His hand held down the throttle and drove his ravening body forward. He turned onto a farm track and stopped.

  The house was old, falling with neglect; the drive overgrown with grass, pitted with cart tracks. The fences were broken. There was a terraced garden once partly under plow, now left as if it were beyond all use.

  A light burned in the kitchen window. Leiser knocked at the door. His hand was trembling from the motorbike. No one came; he knocked again, and the sound of his knocking frightened him. He thought he saw a face, it might have been the shadow of the boy sinking across the window as he fell, or the reflection of a swaying branch.

  He returned quickly to his motorbike, realizing with terror that his hunger was not hunger at all but loneliness. He must lie up somewhere and rest. He thought: I've forgotten how it takes you. He drove on until he came to the wood, where he lay down. His face was hot against the bracken.

  It was evening; the fields were still light but the wood in which he lay gave itself swiftly to the darkness, so that in a moment the red pines had turned to columns of black.

  He picked the leaves from his jacket and laced up his shoes. They pinched badly at the instep. He never had a chance to break them in. He caught himself thinking, It's all right for them; and he remembered that nothing ever bridged the gulf between the man who went and the man who stayed behind, between the living and the dying.

  He struggled into the harness of his rucksack and once again felt gratefully the hot, raw pain in his shoulders as the straps found the old bruises. Picking up the suitcase he walked across the field to the road where the motorbike was waiting; five kilometers to Langdorn. He guessed it lay beyond the hill: the first of the three towns. Soon he would meet the roadblock; soon he would have to eat.

  He drove slowly, the case across his knees, peering ahead all the time along the wet road, straining his eyes for a line of red lights or a cluster of men and vehicles. He rounded a bend and saw to his left a house with a beer sign propped in the window. He entered the forecourt; the noise of the engine brought an old man to the door. Leiser lifted the bike onto its stand.

  "I want a beer," he said, "and some sausage. Have you got that here?"

  The old man showed him inside, sat him at a table in the front room from which Leiser could see his motorbike parked in the yard. He brought him a bottle of beer, some sliced sausage and a piece of black bread; then stood at the table watching him eat.

  "Where are you making for?" His thin face was shaded with beard.

  "North." Leiser knew this game.

  "Where are you from?"

  Leiser did not reply but asked, "What's the next town?"

  "Langdorn."

  "Far?"

  "Five kilometers."

  "Somewhere to stay?"

  The old man shrugged. It was a gesture not of indifference nor of refusal, but of negation, as if he rejected everything and everything rejected him.

 
"What's the road like?" Leiser asked.

  "It's all right."

  "I heard there was a diversion."

  "No diversion," the old man said, as if a diversion were hope, or comfort, or companionship; anything that might warm the damp air or lighten the corners of the room.

  "You're from the east," the man declared. "One hears it in the voice."

  "My parents," he said. "Any coffee?"

  The old man brought him coffee, very black and sour, tasting of nothing.

  "You're from Wilmsdorf," the old man said. "You've got a Wilmsdorf registration."

  "Much business?" Leiser asked, glancing at the door.

  The old man shook his head.

  "Not a busy road, eh?" Still the old man said nothing. "I've got a friend near Kalkstadt. Is that far?"

  "Not far. Forty kilometers. They killed a boy near Wilmsdorf."

  "He runs a cafe. On the northern side. The Tom Cat. Know it at all?"

  "No."

  Leiser lowered his voice. "They had trouble there. A fight. Some soldiers from the town. Russians."

  "Go away," the old man said.

  He tried to pay him but he only had a fifty-mark note.

  "Go away," the old man repeated.

  Leiser picked up the suitcase and rucksack. "You old fool," he said roughly, "what do you think I am?"

  "You are either good or bad, and both are dangerous. Go away."

  There was no roadblock. Without warning he was in the center of Langdorn; it was already dark; the only lights in the main street stole from the shuttered windows, barely reaching the wet cobbles. There was no traffic. He was alarmed by the din of his motorbike; it sounded like a trumpet blast across the market square. In the war, Leiser thought, they went to bed early to keep warm; perhaps they still did.

  It was time to get rid of the motorbike. He drove through the town, found a disused church and left it by the vestry door. Walking back into the town he made for the railway station. The official wore a uniform.

  "Kalkstadt. Single."