Call for the Dead (6 page)

XI

THE UNRESPECTABLE CLUB

Mendel found Smiley sitting in an armchair fully dressed. Peter Guillam was stretched luxuriously on the bed, a pale green folder held casually in hisiiand. Outside, the sky was black and menacing. "Enter the third murderer," said Guillam as Mendel walked in. Mendel sat down at the end of the bed and nodded happily to Smiley, who looked pale and depressed. "Congratulations. Nice to see you on your feet." "Thank you. I'm afraid if you did see me on my feet you wouldn't congratulate me. I feel as weak as a kitten." "When are they letting you go?" "I don't know when they expect me to go--" "Haven't you asked?" "No." "Well, you'd better. I've got news for you. I don't know what it means but it means something." "Well, well," said Guillam; "everyone's got news for everyone else. Isn't that exciting. George has been looking at my family snaps"--he raised the green folder a fraction of an inch--"and recognises all his old chums." Membership of the club to which Smiley belonged is not quoted among the respectable acquisitions of those who adorn the pages of "Who's Who." It was formed by a young renegade of the Junior Carlton named Steed-Asprey, who had been warned off by the Secretary for blaspheming within the hearing of a South African bishop. He persuaded his former Oxford landlady to leave her quiet house in Hollywell and take over two rooms and a cellar in Manchester Square which a mon-ied relative put at his disposal. It had once had forty members who each paid fifty guineas a year. There were thirty-one left. There were no women and no rules, no secretary and no bishops. You could take sandwiches and buy a bottle of beer, you could take sandwiches and buy nothing at all. As long as you were reasonably sober and minded your own business, no one gave twopence what you wore, did or said, or whom you brought with you. Mrs. Sturgeon no longer devilled at the bar, or brought you your chop in front of the fire in the cellar, but presided in genial comfort over the ministrations of two retired sergeants from a small border regiment. Naturally enough, most of the members were approximate contemporaries of Smiley at Oxford. It had always been agreed that the club was to serve one generation only, that it would grow old and die with its members. The war had taken its toll of Jebedee and others, but no one had ever suggested they should elect new members. Besides, the premises were now their own, Mrs. Sturgeon's future had been taken care of and the club was solvent. "To make sense of what I have to tell you," began Smiley at last, addressing himself principally to Mendel, "I shall have to talk at length about myself. I'm an intelligence officer by trade as you know--I've been in the Service since the Flood, long before we were mixed up in power politics with Whitehall. In those days we were understaffed and underpaid. After the usual training and probation in South America and Central Europe, I took a job lecturing at a German University, talent spotting for young Germans with an agent potential." He paused, smiled at Mendel and said: "Forgive the jargon." Mendel nodded solemnly and Smiley went on. He knew he was being pompous, and didn't know how to prevent himself. "It was shortly before the last war, a terrible time in Germany then, intolerance run mad. I would have been a lunatic to approach anyone myself. My only chance was to be as nondescript as I could, politically and socially colourless, and to put forward candidates for recruitment by someone else. I tried to bring some back to England for short periods on students' tours. I made a point of having no contact at all with the Department when I came over because we hadn't any idea in those days of the efficiency of German Counter Intelligence. I never knew who was approached, and of course it was much better that way. In case I was blown, I mean. "My story really begins in 1938. I was alone in my rooms one summer evening. It had been a beautiful day, warm and peaceful. Fascism might never have been heard of. I was working in my shirt sleeves at a desk by my window, not working very hard because it was such a wonderful evening." "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 leaned 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 lionised them practically from the cradle. But you couldn't lionise Dieter. There was a fierce independence, a ruthlessness about him which scared off the most determinded 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 didnt 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. "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 criticise 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 rough-cast wall behind them. The port decanter was three parts empty; Smiley gave himself a little and passed it on. "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. "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 memorise 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. "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 to a man so notoriously outspoken as Dieter. "Well, in 1943 I was recalled. My trade cover was rather thin by then I think, and I was getting a bit shop-soiled." 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 runnirig 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--bit 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 recognised him at once as the nice man who collected Eisa 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 recognised him too. Well, George did. It's the same nasty fellow who tried to lure him into his own 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 Eisa 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."

XII

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 realised that she had almost lost the power of self-defence. "You must have been terribly lonely," he said; "No one can stand it for ever. It takes courage, too, and it's so 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?" "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 them?" 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 dreamed of long golden hair and they shaved my head, I dreamed 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 judgments, 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. "I understand," said Smiley. "That girl--what did you say about that girl?" "She's alive. Don't worry. Go on." "Fennan liked you, you know. Freitag tried to kill you... why?" "Because I came back, I suppose, and asked you about the 8.30 call. You told Freitag that, didn't you?" "Oh, God," she said, her fingers at her mouth. "You rang him up, didn't you? As soon as I'd gone?" "Yes, yes. I was frightened. I wanted to warn him to go, him and Dieter, to go away and never come back, because I knew you'd find out. If not today than one day, but I knew you'd find out in the end. Why would they never leave me alone? They were frightened of me because they knew I had no dreams, that I only wanted Samuel, wanted him safe to love and care for. They relied on that." Smiley felt his head throbbing erratically. "So you rang him straight away," he said. "You tried the Primrose number first and couldn't get through." "Yes," she said vaguely. "Yes, that's right. But they're both Primrose numbers." "So you rang the other number, the alternative..." She drifted back to the window, suddenly exhausted and limp; she seemed happier now--the storm had left her reflective and, in a way, content. "Yes. Freitag was a great one for alternative plans." "What was the other number?" Smiley insisted. He watched her anxiously as she stared out of the window into the dark garden. "Why do you want to know?" He came and stood beside her at the window, watching her profile. His voice was suddenly harsh and energetic. "I said the girl was all right. You and I are alive, too. But don't think that's going to last." She turned to him with fear in her eyes, looked at him for a moment, then nodded. Smiley took her by the arm and guided her to a chair. He ought to make her a hot drink or something. She sat down quite mechanically, almost with the detachment of incipient madness. "The other number was 9747." "Any address--did you have an address?" "No, no address. Only the telephone. Tricks on the telephone. No address," she repeated, with unnatural emphasis, so that Smiley looked at her and wondered. A thought suddenly struck him--a memory of Dieter's skill in communication. "Freitag didn't meet you the night Fennan died, did he? He didn't come to the theatre?" "No." "That was the first time he had missed, wasn't it? You panicked and left early." "No... yes, yes, I panicked." "No you didn't! You left early because you had to, it was the arrangement. Why did you leave early? Why?" Her hands bid her face. "Are you still mad?" Smiley shouted. "Do you still think you can control what you have made? Freitag will kill you, kill the girl, kill, kill, kill. Who are you trying to protect, a girl or a murderer?" She wept and said nothing. Smiley crouched beside her, still shouting. "I'll tell you why you left early, shall I? I'll tell you what I think. It was to catch the last post that night from Weybridge. He hadn't come, you hadn't exchanged cloakroom tickets, had you, so you obeyed the instructions, you posted your ticket to him and you have got an address, not written down but remembered, remembered forever: 'If there is a crisis, if I do not come, this is the address': is that what he said? An address never to be used or spoken of, an address forgotten and remembered for ever? Is that right? Tell me!" He took the paper from her, folded it carefully across the middle and put it in his wallet. Now he would make her some tea. She looked like a child rescued from the sea. She sat on the edge of the sofa holding the cup tightly in her frail hands, nursing it against her body. Her thin shoulders were hunched forward, her feet and ankles pressed tightly together. Smiley, looking at her, felt he had broken something he should never have touched because it was so fragile. He felt an obscene, coarse bully, his offerings of tea a futile recompense for his clumsiness. He could think of nothing to say. After a while, she said: "He liked you, you know. He really liked you... he said you were a clever little man. It was quite a surprise when Samuel called anyone clever." She shook her head slowly. Perhaps it was the reaction that made her smile: "He used to say there were two forces in the world, the positive and the negative. 'What shall I do then?' he would ask me; 'Let them ruin their harvest because they give me bread? Creation, progress, power, the whole future of mankind waits at their door: shall I not let them in?' And I said to him: 'but Samuel, maybe the people are happy without these things?' But you know he didn't think of people like that. "But I couldn't stop him. You know the strangest thing about Fennan? For all that thinking and talking, he had made up his mind long ago what he would do. All the rest was poetry. He wasn't co-ordinated, that's what I used to tell him..." "... and yet you helped him," said Smiley. "Yes, I helped him. He wanted help so I gave it him. He was my life." "I see." "That was a mistake. He was a little boy, you know. He forgot things just like a child. And so vain. He had made up his mind to do it and he did it so badly. He CALL FOtl THE DEAD didn't think of it as you do, or I do. He simply didn't think of it like that. It was his work and that was all. "It began so simply. He brought home a draft telegram one night and showed it to me. He said; 'I think Dieter ought to see that'--that was all. I couldn't believe it to begin with---that he was a spy, I mean. Because he was, wasn't he? And gradually, I realised. They began to ask for special things. The music case I got back from Freitag began to contain orders, and sometimes money. I said to him: 'Look at what they are sending you--do you want this?' We didn't know what to do with the money. In the end we gave it away mostly, I don't know why. Dieter was very angry that winter, when I told him." "What winter was that?" asked Smiley. "The second winter with Dieter--1956 in M'. We met him first in January, 1955. That was when it began. And shall I tell you something? Hungary made no difference to Samuel, not a tiny bit of difference. Dieter was frightened about him then, I know, because Freitag told me. When Fennan gave me the things to take to Weybridge that November I nearly went mad. I shouted at him: 'Can't you see it's the same? The same guns, the same children dying in the streets? Only the dream has changed, the blood is the same colour." Is this what you want?' I asked him: 'Would you do this for Germans, too? It's me who lies in the gutter, will you let them do it to me?' But he just said: 'No Eisa, this is different.' And I went on taking the music case. Do you understand?" "I don't know. I just don't know. I think perhaps I do." "We were in a camp outside Dresden, where we used to live. My father was paralysed. He missed tobacco more than anything and I used to roll cigarettes from any rubbish I could find in the camp--just to pretend with. One day a guard saw him smoking and began laughing. Some others came and they laughed too. My father was holding the cigarette in his paralysed hand and it was burning his fingers. He didn't know, you see. "Yes, when they gave guns to the Germans again, gave them money and uniforms, then sometimes--just for a little while--I was pleased with what Samuel had done. We are Jews, you know, and so..." "Yes, I know, I understand," said Smiley: "I saw it too, a little of it." "Dieter said you had." "Dieter said that?" "Yes. To Freitag. He told Freitag you were a very clever man. You once deceived Dieter before the war, and it was only long afterwards that he found out, that's what Freitag said. He said you were the best he'd ever met." "When did Freitag tell you that?" She looked at him for a long time. He had never seen in any face such hopeless misery. He remembered how she had said to him before; "The children of my grief are dead." He understood that now, and heard it in her voice when at last she spoke: "Why, isn't it obvious? The night he murdered Samuel. "That's the great joke, Mr. Smiley. At the very moment when Samuel could have done so much for them--not just a piece here and a piece there, but all the time--so many music cases--at that moment their own fear destroyed them, turned them into animals and made them kill what they had made. "Samuel always said; 'they will win because they know and the others will perish because they do not: men who work for a dream will work for ever'--that's what he said. But I knew their dream, I knew it would destroy us. What has not destroyed? Even the dream of Christ." "It was Dieter then, who saw me in the park with Fennan?" "Yes." "And thought--" "Yes. Thought that Samuel had betrayed him. Told Freitag to kill Samuel." "And the anonymous letter?" "I don't know. I don't know who wrote it. Someone who knew Samuel I. suppose, someone from the office who watched him and knew. Or from Oxford, from the Party. I don't know. Samuel didn't know either." "But the suicide letter--" She looked at him, and her face crumpled. She was almost weeping again. She bowed her head: "I wrote it. Freitag brought the paper, and I wrote it. The signature was already there. Samuel's signature." Smiley went over to her, sat beside her on the sofa and took her hand. She turned on him in a fury and began screaming at him: "Take your hands off me! Do you think I'm yours because I don't belong to them? Go away! Go away and kill Freitag and Dieter, keep the game alive, Mr. Smiley. But don't think I'm on your side, d'you hear? Because I'm the wandering Jewess, the no-man's land, the battlefield for your toy soldiers. You can kick me and trample on me, see, but never, never touch me, never tell me you're sorry, d'you hear? Now get out! Go away and kill." She sat there, shivering as if from cold. As he reached the door he looked back. There were no tears in her eyes. Mendel was waiting for him in the car.