Part 5 (1/2)

”Well,” he said. ”Enter the third murderer.”

This time neither, of us laughed.

She must have sensed our approach and removed herself. I heard music playing in another part of the house. When we reached the hall, Ben headed for the stairs but I grabbed his arm.

”You've got to tell me,” I said. ”There's never going to be anyone better to tell. I broke ranks to come here. You've got to tell me what happened to the network.”

There was a long drawing room beyond the hall, with shuttered windows and more dustsheets over the sofas. It was cold, but Ben still had his jacket on and I my greatcoat. I opened the shutters and let the moonlight in. I had an instinct that anything brighter would disturb him. The music was not far away from us. I thought it was Grieg. I wasn't sure. Ben spoke without remorse and without catharsis. He had confessed enough to himself, all day and night, I knew. He talked in the dead tone of somebody describing a disaster he knows that n.o.body can understand who was not part of it, and the music kept playing below his voice. He had no use for himself. The glamorous hero had given up as one of life's contenders. Perhaps he was a little tired of his guilt. He spoke tersely. I think he wanted me to go.

”Haggarty's a s.h.i.+t,” he said. ”World cla.s.s. He's a thief, he drinks, he rapes a bit. His one justification was the Seidl network. Head Office were trying to wheedle him away from it and give Seidl to new people. I was the first new person. Haggarty decided to punish me for taking away his network.”

He described the studied insults, the successive night duties and weekends, the hostile reports pa.s.sed back to Haggarty's supporters' club in Head Office.

”At first he wouldn't tell me anything about the network. Then Head Office bawled him out, so he told me everything. Fifteen years of it. Every tiny detail of their lives, even the joes who'd died on the job. He'd send files to me in pyramids, all flagged and cross-referred. Read this, remember that. Who's she? Who's he? Note this address, this name, these covernames, those symbols. Escape procedures. Fallbacks. The recognition codes and safety procedures for the radio. Then he'd test me. Take me to the safe room, sit me across the table, grill me. 'You're not up to it. We can't send you in till you know your stuff. You'd better stay in over the weekend and mug it up. I'll test you again on Monday.'

The network was his life. He wanted me to feel inadequate. I did and I was.”

But Head Office did not give in to Haggarty's bullying, neither did Ben. ”I put myself on an exam footing,” he said.

As the day of his first meeting with Seidl approached, Ben a.s.sembled for himself a system of mnemonics and acronyms that would enable him to encompa.s.s the network's fifteen years of history. Seated night and day in his office at Station Headquarters, he drew up consciousness charts and communications charts and devised systems for memorising the aliases, covernames, home addresses and places of employment of its agents, sub-agents, couriers and collaborators. Then he transferred his data to plain postcards, writing on one side only. On the other, in one line, he wrote the subject: ”dead-letter boxes,” ”salaries,” ”safe houses.”

Each night, before going back to his flat or stretching out in the Station sickroom, he would play a game of memory with himself, first putting the cards face downward on his desk, then comparing what he had remembered with the data on the reverse side.

”I didn't sleep a lot but that's not unusual,” he said. ”As the day came up, I didn't sleep at all. I spent the whole night mugging up my stuff, then I lay on the couch staring at the ceiling. When I got up I couldn't remember any of it. Sort of paralysis. I went to my room, sat down at the desk, put my head in my hands and started to ask myself questions. 'If cover name Margaret stroke-two thinks he's under surveillance, whom does he contact how, and what does the contact then do?'

The answer was a total blank.

”Haggarty wandered in and asked how I was feeling and I said 'fine.'

To do him justice, he wished me luck and I think he meant it. I thought he'd shoot some trick question at me and I was going to tell him to go to h.e.l.l. But he just said, 'Komm gut Heim,' and patted my shoulder. I put the cards in my pocket. Don't ask me why. I was scared of failure. That's why we do everything, isn't it? I was scared of failure and I hated Haggarty and Haggarty had put me to the torture. I've got about two hundred other reasons why I took the cards, but none of them help a great deal. Perhaps it was my way of committing suicide. I quite like that idea. I took them and I went across. We used a limousine, specially converted. I sat in the back with my double hidden under the seat. The Vopos weren't allowed to search us, of course. All the same, switching with a double as you turn a sharp corner is a b.l.o.o.d.y hairy game. You've got to sort of roll out of the car. Seidl had provided a bike for me. He believes in bicycles. His guards used to lend him one when he was a prisoner of war in England.”

Smiley had told me the story already, but I let Ben tell it to me again.

”I had the cards in my jacket pocket,” he went on. ”My inside jacket pocket. It was one of those blazing-hot Berlin days. I think I unb.u.t.toned my jacket while I bicycled. I don't know. When I try to remember, I sometimes unb.u.t.toned it and I sometimes didn't. That's what happens to your memory when you work it to death. It does all the versions for you. I got to the rendezvous early, checked the cars, the usual bulls.h.i.+t, went in. It had all come back to me by then. Taking the cards with me had done the trick. I didn't need them. Seidl was fine. I was fine. We did our business, I briefed him, gave him some money - all just like Sarratt. I rode back to the pickup point, ditched the bike, dived into the car and as we crossed into West Berlin I realised I hadn't got the cards. I was missing the weight of them, or the pressure or something. I was in a panic but I always am. Deep down, I'm in a panic all the time. That's who I am. This was just a bigger panic. I made them drop me at my flat, rang Seidl's emergency number. No one answered. I tried the fallback. No answer. I tried his stand-in, a woman called Lotte. No answer. I took a cab to Tempelhof, made a discreet exit, came here.”

Suddenly there was only Stefanie's music to listen to. Ben had finished his story. I didn't realise at first that this was all there was. I waited, staring at him, expecting him to go on. I had been wanting a kidnapping at least-savage East (German secret police rising from the back of his car, sandbagging him, forcing a chloroformed mask on him while they rifled his pockets. It was only gradually that the appalling ba.n.a.lity of what he had told me got through to me: that you could lose a network as easily as you could lose a bunch of keys or a cheque book or a pocket handkerchief. I was craving for a greater dignity, but he had none to offer me.

”So where did you last have them?” I said stupidly. I could have been talking to a child about his lost schoolbooks, but he didn't mind, he had no pride any more.

”The cards?” he said. ”Maybe on the bicycle. Maybe rolling out of the car. Maybe getting back into it. The bike has a security chain to lock round the wheel. I had to stoop down to put it on and take it off. Maybe then. It's like losing anything. Till you find it, you never know. Afterwards, it's obvious. But there hasn't been an afterwards.”

”Do you think you were followed?”

”I don't know. I just don't know.”

I wanted to ask him when he had written his love letter to me, but I couldn't bring myself to. Besides, I thought I knew. It was in one of his drinking sessions when Haggarty was riding him hardest and he was in despair. What I really wanted him to tell me was that he had never written it. I wanted to put the clock back and make things the way they had been until a week ago. But the simple questions had died with the simple answers. Our childhoods were over for good.

They must have surrounded the house, and certainly they never rang the bell. Monty was probably standing outside the window when I opened the shutters to let the moonlight in, because when he needed to, he just stepped into the room, looking embarra.s.sed but resolute.

”You did ever so nicely, Ned,” he said consolingly. ”It was the public library gave you away. Your nice librarian lady took a real s.h.i.+ne to you. I think she'd have come with us if we'd let her.”

Skordeno followed him, and then Smiley appeared in the other doorway, wearing the apologetic air that frequently accompanied his most ruthless acts. And I recognised with no particular surprise that I had done everything he had wanted me to do. I had put myself in Ben's position and led them to my friend. Ben didn't seem particularly surprised either. Perhaps he was relieved. Monty and Skordeno moved into place either side of him, but Ben remained sitting among the dustsheets, his tweed jacket pulled round him like a rug. Skordeno tapped him on the shoulder; then Monty and Skordeno stooped and, like a pair of furniture removers used to one another's timing, lifted him gently to his feet. When I protested to Ben that I had not knowingly betrayed him, he shook his head to say it didn't matter. Smiley stepped aside to let them by. His myopic gaze was fixed on me enquiringly.

”We've arranged a special sailing,” he said.

”I'm not coming,” I replied.

I looked away from him and when I looked again he was gone. I heard the jeep disappearing down the track. I followed the music across the empty hall into a study crammed with books and magazines and what appeared to be the ma.n.u.script of a novel spread over the floor. She was sitting sideways in a deep chair. She had changed into a housecoat and her pale golden hair hung loose over her shoulders. She was barefoot, and did not lift her head as I entered. She spoke to me as if she had known me all her life, and I suppose in a way she had, in the sense that I was Ben's familiar. She switched off the music.

”Were you his lover?” she asked.

”No. He wanted me to be. I realise that now.”

She smiled. ”And I wanted him to be my lover, but that wasn't possible either, was it?” she said.

”It seems not.”

”Have you had women, Ned?”

”No.”

”Had Ben?”

”I don't know. I think he tried. I suppose it didn't work.”

She was breathing deeply and tears were trickling down her cheeks and neck. She climbed to her feet, eyes pressed shut, and, like a blind woman, stretched out her arms for me to embrace her. Her body squeezed against me as she buried her head in my shoulder and shook and wept. I put my arms round her but she pushed me away and led me to the sofa.

”Who made him become one of you?” she said.

”No one. It was his own choice. He wanted to imitate his father.”

”Is that a choice?”

”Of a sort.”

”And you too, you are a volunteer?”

”Yes.”

”Whom are you imitating?”

”No one.”

”Ben had no capacity for such a life. They had no business to be charmed by him. He was too persuasive.”

”I know.”