The Looking Glass War

by John le Carré

  Outside they could hear the sound of cars moving through the rain like the rustling of paper in the wind. The fire had gone out; only the smoke remained, hanging like a shroud over the table.

  Sandford had raised his hand. What kind of missile was this supposed to be?

  ‘A Sandal, Medium Range. I am told by Research that it was first shown in Red Square in November ’sixty-two. It has achieved a certain notoriety since then. It was the Sandal which the Russians installed in Cuba. The Sandal is also’ – a glance at Woodford – ‘the linear descendant of the wartime German V2.’

  He fetched other photographs from the desk and laid them on the table.

  ‘Here is a Research Section photograph of the Sandal missile. They tell me it is distinguished by what is called a flared skirt’ – he pointed to the formation at the base – ‘and by small fins. It is about forty foot long from base to cone. If you look carefully you will see tucks near the clamp – just here – which hold the protective cloth cover in position. There is, ironically, no extant picture of the Sandal in protective covers. Possibly the Americans have one, but I don’t feel able to approach them at this stage.’

  Woodford reacted quickly. ‘Of course not,’ he said.

  ‘The Minister was anxious that we shouldn’t alarm them prematurely. One only has to suggest rockets to the Americans to get the most drastic reaction. Before we know where we are they’ll be flying U2s over Rostock.’ Encouraged by their laughter, Leclerc continued: ‘The Minister made another point which I think I might pass on to you. The country which comes under maximum threat from these rockets – they have a range of around eight hundred miles – might well be our own. It is certainly not the United States. Politically, this would be a bad moment to go hiding our faces in the Americans’ skirts. After all, as the Minister put it, we still have one or two teeth of our own.’

  Haldane said sarcastically, ‘That is a charming notion,’ and Avery turned on him with all the anger he had fought away.

  ‘I think you might do better than that,’ he said. He nearly added: have a little mercy.

  Haldane’s cold gaze held Avery for a moment, then released him, his case not forgiven but suspended.

  Someone asked what they would do next: suppose Avery did not find Taylor’s film? Suppose it just wasn’t there? Could they mount another overflight?

  ‘No,’ Leclerc replied. ‘Another overflight is out of the question. Far too dangerous. We shall have to try something else.’ He seemed disinclined to go further, but Haldane said, ‘What, for instance?’

  ‘We may have to put a man in. It seems to be the only way.’

  ‘This Department?’ Haldane asked incredulously. ‘Put a man in? The Ministry would never tolerate such a thing. You mean, surely, you’ll ask the Circus to do it?’

  ‘I have already told you the position. Heaven knows, Adrian, you’re not going to tell me we can’t do it?’ He looked appealingly round the table. ‘Every one of us here except young Avery has been in the business twenty years or more. You yourself have forgotten more about agents than half those people in the Circus ever knew.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ Woodford cried.

  ‘Look at your own section, Adrian; look at Research. There must have been half a dozen occasions in the last five years when the Circus actually came to you, asked you for advice, used your facilities and skills. The time may come when they do the same with agents! The Ministry granted us an overflight. Why not an agent too?’

  ‘You mentioned a third indicator. I don’t follow you. What was that?’

  ‘Taylor’s death,’ said Leclerc.

  Avery got up, nodded goodbye and tiptoed to the door. Haldane watched him go.

  5

  There was a note on his desk from Carol: ‘Your wife rang.’

  He walked into her office and found her sitting at her typewriter but not typing. ‘You wouldn’t talk about poor Wilf Taylor like that,’ she said, ‘if you’d known him better.’

  ‘Like what? I haven’t talked about him at all.’

  He thought he should comfort her, because sometimes they touched one another; he thought she might expect that now.

  He bent forward, advancing until the sharp ends of her hair touched his cheek. Inclining his head inwards so that their temples met, he felt her skin travel slightly across the flat bone of her skull. For a moment they remained thus, Carol sitting upright, looking straight ahead of her, her hands either side of the typewriter, Avery awkwardly stooping. He thought of putting his hand beneath her arm and touching her breast, but did not; both gently recoiling, they separated and were alone again. Avery stood up.

  ‘Your wife telephoned,’ she said. ‘I told her you were at the meeting. She wants to talk to you urgently.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m on my way.’

  ‘John, what is going on? What’s all this about the Circus? What’s Leclerc up to?’

  ‘I thought you knew. He said he’d put you on the list.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. Why’s he lying to them again? He’s dictated a memorandum to Control about some training scheme and you going abroad. Pine took it round by hand. He’s gone mad about her pension; Mrs Taylor’s; looking up precedents and Heaven knows what. Even the application is Top Secret. He’s building one of his card houses, John, I know he is. Who’s Leiser, for instance?’

  ‘You’re not supposed to know. He’s an agent; a Pole.’

  ‘Does he work for the Circus?’ She changed her tack. ‘Well, why are you going? That’s another thing I don’t understand. For that matter, why did Taylor have to go? If the Circus has couriers in Finland, why couldn’t we have used them in the first place? Why send poor Taylor? Even now the FO could iron it out. I’m sure they could. He just won’t give them a chance: he wants to send you.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Avery said shortly.

  ‘Another thing,’ she demanded as he was going, ‘why does Adrian Haldane hate you so?’

  He visited the accountant then took a taxi to the Circus. Leclerc had said he could claim for it. He was cross that Sarah had tried to reach him at such a moment. He had told her never to ring him at the Department. Leclerc said it was insecure.

  ‘What did you read at Oxford? It was Oxford, wasn’t it?’ Smiley asked, and gave him a cigarette, rather a muddled one from a packet of ten.

  ‘Languages.’ Avery patted his pockets for a match. ‘German and Italian.’ When Smiley said nothing he added, ‘German principally.’

  Smiley was a small, distracted man with plump fingers and a shadowy, blinking way with him which suggested discomfort. Whatever Avery had expected, it was not this.

  ‘Well, well.’ Smiley nodded to himself, a very private comment. ‘It’s a question of a courier, I believe, in Helsinki. You want to give him a film. A training scheme.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a most unusual request. You’re sure … do you know the size of the film?’

  ‘No.’

  A long pause.

  ‘You should try to find out that kind of thing,’ Smiley said kindly. ‘I mean, the courier may want to conceal it, you see.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

  Avery was reminded of Oxford, and reading essays to his tutor.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Smiley thoughtfully, ‘I might say one thing. I’m sure Leclerc has already had it from Control. We want to give you all the help we can – all the help. There used to be a time,’ he mused, with that curious air of indirection which seemed to characterise all his utterances, ‘when our departments competed. I always found that very painful. But I wondered whether you could tell me a little, just a little … Control was so anxious to help. We should hate to do the wrong thing out of ignorance.’

  ‘It’s a training exercise. Full dress. I don’t know much about it myself.’

  ‘We want to help,’ Smiley repeated simply. ‘What is your target country, your putative target?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m
only playing a small part. It’s training.’

  ‘But if it’s training, why so much secrecy?’

  ‘Well, Germany,’ Avery said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Smiley seemed embarrassed. He looked at his hands folded lightly on the desk before him. He asked Avery whether it was still raining. Avery said he was afraid so.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about Taylor,’ he said. Avery said yes he was a good man.

  ‘Do you know what time you’ll have your film? Tonight? Tomorrow? Leclerc rather thought tonight, I gather.’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends how it goes. I just can’t tell at the moment.’

  ‘No.’ There followed a long, unexplained silence. He’s like an old man, thought Avery, he forgets he’s not alone. ‘No, there are so many imponderables. Have you done this kind of thing before?’

  ‘Once or twice.’ Again Smiley said nothing and did not seem to notice the gap.

  ‘How is everyone in Blackfriars Road? Do you know Haldane at all?’ Smiley asked. He didn’t care about the reply.

  ‘He’s Research now.’

  ‘Of course. A good brain. Your Research people enjoy quite a reputation, you know. We have consulted them ourselves more than once. Haldane and I were contemporaries at Oxford. Then in the war we worked together for a while. A Greats man. We’d have taken him here after the war; I think the medical people were worried about his chest.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard.’

  ‘Hadn’t you?’ The eyebrows rose comically. ‘There’s a hotel in Helsinki called the Prince of Denmark. Opposite the main station. Do you know it by any chance?’

  ‘No. I’ve never been to Helsinki.’

  ‘Haven’t you, now?’ Smiley peered at him anxiously. ‘It’s a very strange story. This Taylor: was he training too?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’ll find the hotel,’ Avery said with a touch of impatience.

  ‘They sell magazines and postcards just inside the door. There’s only the one entrance.’ He might have been talking about the house next door. ‘And flowers. I think the best arrangement would be for you to go there once you have the film. Ask the people at the flower stall to send a dozen red roses to Mrs Avery at the Imperial Hotel at Torquay. Or half a dozen would be enough, we don’t want to waste money, do we? Flowers are so expensive up there. Are you travelling under your own name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any particular reason? I don’t mean to be curious,’ he added hastily, ‘but one has such a short life anyway … I mean before one’s blown.’

  ‘I gather it takes a bit of time to get a fake passport. The Foreign Office …’ He shouldn’t have answered. He should have told him to mind his own business.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Smiley, and frowned as if he had made an error of tact. ‘You can always come to us, you know. For passports, I mean.’ It was meant as a kindness. ‘Just send the flowers. As you leave the hotel, check your watch by the hall clock. Half an hour later return to the main entrance. A taxi driver will recognize you and open the door of his car. Get in, drive around, give him the film. Oh, and pay him, please. Just the ordinary fare. It’s so easy to forget the little things. What kind of training precisely?’

  ‘What if I don’t get the film?’

  ‘In that case do nothing. Don’t go near the hotel. Don’t go to Helsinki. Forget about it.’ It occurred to Avery that his instructions had been remarkably clear.

  ‘When you were reading German, did you touch on the seventeenth century by any chance?’ Smiley inquired hopefully as Avery rose to go. ‘Gryphius, Lohenstein; those people?’

  ‘It was a special subject. I’m afraid I didn’t.’

  ‘Special,’ muttered Smiley. ‘What a silly word. I suppose they mean extrinsic; it’s a very impertinent notion.’

  As they reached the door he said, ‘Have you a briefcase or anything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you have that film, put it in your pocket,’ he suggested, ‘and carry the briefcase in your hand. If you are followed, they tend to watch the briefcase. It’s natural, really. If you just drop the briefcase somewhere, they may go looking for that instead. I don’t think the Finns are very sophisticated people. It’s only a training hint, of course. But don’t worry. It’s such a mistake, I always feel, to put one’s trust in technique.’ He saw Avery to the door, then made his way ponderously along the corridor to Control’s room.

  Avery walked upstairs to the flat, guessing how Sarah would react. He wished he had telephoned after all because he hated to find her in the kitchen, and Anthony’s toys all over the drawing-room carpet. It never worked, turning up without warning. She took fright as if she expected him to have done something dreadful.

  He did not carry a key; Sarah was always in. She had no friends of her own as far as he knew; she never went to coffee parties or took herself shopping. She seemed to have no talent for independent pleasure.

  He pressed the bell, heard Anthony calling Mummy, Mummy, and waited to hear her step. The kitchen was at the end of the passage, but this time she came from the bedroom, softly as though she were barefooted.

  She opened the door without looking at him. She was wearing a cotton nightdress and a cardigan.

  ‘God, you took your time,’ she said, turned and walked uncertainly back to the bedroom. ‘Something wrong?’ she asked over her shoulder. ‘Someone else been murdered?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Sarah? Aren’t you well?’

  Anthony was running about shouting because his father had come home. Sarah climbed back into bed. ‘I rang the doctor. I don’t know what it is,’ she said, as if illness were not her subject.

  ‘Have you a temperature?’

  She had put a bowl of cold water and the bathroom flannel beside her. He wrung out the flannel and laid it on her head. ‘You’ll have to cope,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid it’s not as exciting as spies. Aren’t you going to ask me what’s wrong?’

  ‘When’s the doctor arriving?’

  ‘He has surgery till twelve. He’ll turn up after that, I suppose.’

  He went to the kitchen, Anthony following. The breakfast things were still on the table. He telephoned her mother in Reigate and asked her to come straight away.

  It was just before one when the doctor arrived. A fever, he said; some germ that was going the rounds.

  He thought she would weep when he told her he was going abroad; she took it in, reflected for a while and then suggested he went and packed.

  ‘Is it important?’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Of course. Terribly.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘You, me. All of us, I suppose.’

  ‘And for Leclerc?’

  ‘I told you. For all of us.’

  He promised Anthony he would bring him something.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Anthony asked.

  ‘In an aeroplane.’

  ‘Where?’

  He was going to tell him it was a great secret when he remembered Taylor’s little girl.

  He kissed her goodbye, took his suitcase to the hall and put it on the mat. There were two locks on the door for Sarah’s sake and they had to be turned simultaneously. He heard her say:

  ‘Is it dangerous too?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only know it’s very big.’

  ‘You’re really sure of that, are you?’

  He called almost in despair, ‘Look, how far am I supposed to think? It isn’t a question of politics, don’t you see? It’s a question of fact. Can’t you believe? Can’t you tell me for once in my life that I’m doing something good?’ He went into the bedroom, reasoning. She held a paperback in front of her and was pretending to read. ‘We all have to, you know, we all have to draw a line round our lives. It’s no good asking me the whole time, “Are you sure?” It’s like asking whether we should have children, whether we should have married. There’s just no point.’

  ‘Poor John,’ she observed, putting down the book and analysing him. ‘Lo
yalty without faith. It’s very hard for you.’ She said this with total dispassion as if she had identified a social evil. The kiss was like a betrayal of her standards.

  Haldane watched the last of them leave the room: he had arrived late, he would leave late, never with the crowd.

  Leclerc said, ‘Why do you do that to me?’ He spoke like an actor tired from the play. The maps and photographs were strewn on the table with the empty cups and ashtrays.

  Haldane didn’t answer.

  ‘What are you trying to prove, Adrian?’

  ‘What was that you said about putting a man in?’

  Leclerc went to the basin and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. ‘You don’t care for Avery, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s young. I’m tired of that cult.’

  ‘I get a sore throat, talking all the time. Have some yourself. Do your cough good.’

  ‘How old is Gorton?’ Haldane accepted the glass, drank, and handed it back.

  ‘Fifty.’

  ‘He’s more. He’s our age. He was our age in the war.’

  ‘One forgets. Yes, he must be fifty-five or six.’

  ‘Established?’ Haldane persisted.

  Leclerc shook his head. ‘He’s not qualified. Broken service. He went to the Control Commission after the war. When that packed up he wanted to stay in Germany. German wife, I think. He came to us and we gave him a contract. We could never afford to keep him there if he were established.’ He took a sip of water, delicately, like a girl. ‘Ten years ago we’d thirty men in the field. Now we’ve nine. We haven’t even got our own couriers, not clandestine ones. They all knew it this morning; why didn’t they say so?’

  ‘How often does he put in a refugee report?’

  Leclerc shrugged. ‘I don’t see all his stuff,’ he said. ‘Your people should know. The market’s dwindling, I suppose, now they’ve closed the Berlin border.’