The Looking Glass War Part 10

Haldane put his hand in his inside pocket and held something to the window-a card in a cellophane wrapper like a season ticket. The grocer stared at it. Slowly he turned the key.

"I want a word with you in private," Haldane said, stepping inside.

"I've never seen one of those," the grocer observed uneasily. "I suppose it's all right."

"It's quite all right. A security inquiry. Someone called Leiser, a Pole. I understand he worked here long ago."

"I'll have to call my dad," the grocer said. "I was only a kid then."

"I see," said Haldane, as if he disliked the youth.

It was nearly midnight when Avery rang LeClerc. He answered straight away Avery could imagine him sitting up in the steel bed, the Air Force blankets thrown back, his small, alert face anxious for the news.

"It's John," he said cautiously.

"Yes, yes, I know who you are." He sounded cross that Avery had mentioned his name.

"The deal's off, I'm afraid. They're not interested ... negative. You'd better tell the man I saw; the little, fat man ... tell him we shan't need the service of his friend here."

"I see. Never mind." He sounded utterly uninterested.

Avery didn't know what to say; he just didn't know. He needed desperately to go on talking to LeClerc. He wanted to tell him about Sutherland's contempt and the pa.s.sport that wasn't right. "The people here, the people I'm negotiating with, are rather worried about the whole deal."

He waited.

He wanted to call him by his name but he had no name for him. They did not use "Mister" in the Department; the elder men addressed one another by their surnames and called the juniors by their Christian names. There was no established style of addressing one's superior. So he said, "Are you still there?" and LeClerc replied, "Of course. Who's worried? What's gone wrong?" Avery thought: I could have called him "Director," but that would have been insecure.

"The representative here, the man who looks after our interests ... he's found out about the deal," he said. "He seems to have guessed."

"You stressed it was highly confidential?"

"Yes, of course." How could he ever explain about Sutherland?

"Good. We don't want any trouble with the Foreign Office just now." In an altered tone LeClerc continued, "Things are going very well over here, John, very well. When do you get back?"

"I've got to cope with the ... with bringing our friend home. There are a lot of formalities. It's not as easy as you'd think."

"Never mind. When will you be finished?"

"Tomorrow."

"I'll send a car to meet you at Heathrow. A lot's happened in the last few hours; a lot of improvements. We need you badly." LeClerc added, throwing him a coin, "And well done, John, well done indeed."

"All right."

He expected to sleep heavily that night, but after what might have been an hour he woke, alert and watchful. He looked at his watch; it was ten past one. Getting out of bed he went to the window and looked on to the snow-covered landscape, marked by the darker lines of the road which led to the airport; he thought he could discern the little rise where Taylor had died.

He was desolate and afraid. His mind was obsessed by confused visions: Taylor's dreadful face, the face he so nearly saw, drained of blood, wide-eyed as if communicating a crucial discovery; LeClerc's voice, filled with vulnerable optimism; the fat policeman, staring at him in envy, as if he were something he could not afford to buy. He realized he was a person who did not take easily to solitude. Solitude saddened him, made him sentimental. He found himself thinking, for the first time since he had left the flat that morning, of Sarah and Anthony. Tears came suddenly to his tired eyes when he recalled his boy, the steel-rimmed spectacles like tiny irons; he wanted to hear his voice, he wanted Sarah, and the familiarity of his home. Perhaps he could telephone the flat, speak to her mother, ask after her. But what if she were ill? He had suffered enough pain that day, he had given enough of his energy, fear and invention. He had lived a nightmare: he could not be expected to ring her now. He went back to bed.

Try as he might, he could not sleep. His eyelids were hot and heavy, his body deeply tired, but still he could not sleep. A wind rose, rattling the double windows; now he was too hot, now too cold. Once he dozed, only to be wakened violently from his uneasy rest by the sound of crying, it might have been in the next room, it might have been Anthony, or it might have been-since he did not hear it properly, but only half knew in waking what kind of a sound it had been-the metallic sobbing of a child's doll.

And once, it was shortly before dawn, he heard a footfall outside his room, a single tread in the corridor, not imagined but real, and he lay in chill terror waiting for the handle of his door to turn or the peremptory knocking of Inspector Peersen's men. As he strained his ears he swore he detected the faintest rustle of clothing, the subdued intake of human breath, like a tiny sigh; then silence. Though he listened for minutes on end, he heard nothing more.

Putting on the light, he went to the chair, felt in his jacket for his fountain pen. It was by the basin. From his briefcase he took a leather holdall which Sarah had given him.

Settling himself at the flimsy table in front of the window, he began writing a love letter to a girl, it might have been to Carol, he did not know. When at last morning came he destroyed it, tearing it into small pieces and flus.h.i.+ng them down the lavatory. As he did so he caught sight of something white on the floor. It was a photograph of Taylor's child carrying a doll; she was wearing gla.s.ses, the kind Anthony wore. It must have been among his papers. He thought of destroying it but somehow he couldn't. He slipped it into his pocket.

Nine.

Homecoming LeClerc was waiting at Heathrow as Avery knew he would be, standing on tiptoe, peering anxiously between the heads of the waiting crowd. He had squared the customs somehow, he must have got the Ministry to do it, and when he saw Avery he came forward into the hall and guided him in a managing way as if he were used to being spared formalities. This is the life we lead, Avery thought; the same airport with different names; the same hurried, guilty meetings; we live outside the walls of the town, blackfriars from a dark house in Lambeth. He was desperately tired. He wanted Sarah. He wanted to say I'm sorry, make it up with her, get a new job, try again; play with Anthony more. He felt ashamed.

"I'll just make a telephone call. Sarah wasn't too well when I left."

"Do it from the Office," LeClerc said. "Do you mind? I have a meeting with Haldane in an hour." Thinking he detected a false note in LeClerc's voice, Avery looked at him suspiciously, but the other's eyes were turned away toward the black Humber standing in the privilege car park. LeClerc let the driver open the door for him; a silly muddle took place until Avery sat on his left as protocol apparently demanded. The driver seemed tired of waiting. There was no part.i.tion between him and themselves.

"This is a change," Avery said, indicating the car.

LeClerc nodded in a familiar way as if the acquisition were no longer new. "How are things?" he asked, his mind elsewhere.

"All right. There's nothing the matter, is there? With Sarah, I mean."

"Why should there be?"

"Blackfriars Road?" the driver inquired without turning his head, as a sense of respect might have indicated.

"Headquarters, yes please."

"There was a h.e.l.l of a mess in Finland," Avery observed brutally. "Our friend's papers ... Malherbe's . .. weren't in order. The Foreign Office had cancelled his pa.s.sport."

"Malherbe? Ah yes. You mean Taylor. We know all about that. It's all right now. Just the usual jealousy. Control is rather upset about it, as a matter of fact. He sent round to apologize. We've a lot of people on our side now, John, you've no idea. You're going to be very useful, John; you're the only one who's seen it on the ground." Seen what? Avery wondered. They were together again. The same intensity, the same physical unease, the same absences. As LeClerc turned to him Avery thought for one sickening moment he was going to put a hand on his knee. "You're tired, John, I can tell. I know how it feels. Never mind-you're back with us now. Listen, I've good news for you. The Ministry's waked up to us in a big way. We're to form a special operational unit to mount the next phase."

"Next phase?"

"Of course. The man I mentioned to you. We can't leave things as they are. We're clarifiers, John, not simply collators. I've revived Special Section; do you know what that is?"

"Haldane ran it during the war; training-"

LeClerc interrupted quickly for the driver's sake: "-training the travelling salesmen. And he's going to run it again now. I've decided you're to work with him. You're the two best brains I've got." A sideways glance.

LeClerc had altered. There was a new quality to his bearing, something more than optimism or hope. When Avery had seen him last he had seemed to be living against adversity; now he had a freshness about him, a purpose, which was either new or very old.

"And Haldane accepted?"

"I told you. He's working night and day. You forget, Adrian's a professional. A real technician. Old heads are the best for a job like this. With one or two young heads among them."

Avery said, "I want to talk to you about the whole operation ... about Finland. I'll come to your office after I've rung Sarah."

"Come straight away, then I can put you in the picture."

"I'll phone Sarah first."

Again Avery had the unreasonable feeling that LeClerc was trying to keep him from communicating with Sarah.

"She is all right, isn't she?"

"So far as I know. Why do you ask?" LeClerc went on, charming him: "Glad to be back, John?"

"Yes, of course."

He sank back into the cus.h.i.+ons of the car. LeClerc, noticing his hostility, abandoned him for a time; Avery turned his attention to the road and the pink, healthy villas drifting past in the light rain.

LeClerc was talking again, his committee voice. "I want you to start straight away Tomorrow if you can. We've got your room ready. There's a lot to be done. This man: Haldane has him in play. We should hear something when we get home. From now on you're Adrian's creature. I trust that pleases you. Our masters have agreed to provide you with a special Ministry pa.s.s. The same kind of thing that they have in the Circus."

Avery was familiar with LeClerc's habit of speech; there were times when he resorted entirely to oblique allusion, offering a raw material which the consumer, not the purveyor, must refine.

"I want to talk to you about the whole thing. When I've rung Sarah."

"That's right," LeClerc replied nicely, "come and talk to me about it. Why not come now?" He looked at Avery, offering his whole face; a thing without depth, a moon with one side. "You've done well," he said generously. "I hope you'll keep it up." They entered London. "We're getting some help from the Circus," he added. "They seem to be quite willing. They don't know the whole picture of course. The Minister was very firm on that point."

They pa.s.sed down Lambeth Road, where the G.o.d of Battles presides; the Imperial War Museum at one end, schools the other, hospitals in-between; a cemetery wired off like a tennis court. You cannot tell who lives there. The houses are too many for the people, the schools too large for the children. The hospitals may be full, but the blinds are drawn. Dust hangs everywhere, like the dust of war. It hangs over the hollow facades, chokes the gra.s.s in the graveyards; it has driven away the people, save those who loiter in the dark places like the ghosts of soldiers, or wait sleepless behind their yellow-lighted windows. It is a road which people seem to have left often. The few who returned brought something of the living world, according to their voyages. One a piece of field, another a broken Regency terrace, a warehouse or dumping yard; or a pub called the Flowers of the Forest.

It is a road filled with faithful inst.i.tutions. Over one presides our Lady of Consolation, over another, Archbishop Amigo. Whatever is not hospital, school, or pub or seminary is dead, and the dust has got its body. There is a toyshop with a padlocked door. Avery looked into it every day on the way to the office; the toys were rusting on the shelves. The window looked dirtier than ever; the lower part was striped with children's fingermarks. There is a place that mends your teeth while you wait. He glimpsed them now from the car, counting them off as they drove past, wondering whether he would ever see them again as a member of the Department. There are warehouses with barbed wire across their gates, and factories which produce nothing. In one of them a bell rang but no one heard. There is a broken wall with posters on it. You ARE somebody today in the regular army. They rounded Saint George's Circus and entered Blackfriars Road for the home run.

As they approached the building, Avery sensed that things had changed. For a moment he imagined that the very gra.s.s on the wretched bit of lawn had thickened and revived during his brief absence; that the concrete steps leading to the front door, which even in midsummer managed to appear moist and dirty, were now clean and inviting. Somehow he knew, before he entered the building at all, that a new spirit had infected the Department.

It had reached the most humble members of the staff. Pine, impressed no doubt by the black staff car and the sudden pa.s.sage of busy people, looked spruce and alert. For once he said nothing about cricket scores. The staircase was daubed with wax polish.

In the corridor they met Woodford. He was in a hurry. He was carrying a couple of files with red caution notices on the cover.

"Hullo, John! You've landed safely then? Good party?" He really did seem pleased to see him. "Sarah all right now?"

"He's done well," said LeClerc quickly. "He had a very difficult run."

"Ah yes; poor Taylor. We shall need you in the new section. Your wife will have to spare you for a week or two."

"What was that about Sarah?" Avery asked. Suddenly he was frightened. He hastened down the corridor. LeClerc was calling but he took no notice. He entered his room and stopped dead. There was a second telephone on his desk, and a steel bed like LeClerc's along the side wall. Beside the new telephone was a piece of military board with a list of emergency telephone numbers pinned to it. The numbers for use during the night were printed in red. On the back of the door hung a two-colour poster depicting in profile the head of a man. Across his skull was written keep it here, and across his mouth, don't let it out here. It took him a moment or two to realize that the poster was an exhortation to security, and not some dreadful joke about Taylor. He lifted the receiver and waited. Carol came in with a tray of papers for signature.

"How did it go?" she asked. "The Boss seems pleased." She was standing quite close to him.

"Go? There's no film. It wasn't among his things. I'm going to resign; I've decided. What the h.e.l.l's wrong with this phone?"

"They probably don't know you're back. There's a thing from Accounts about your claim for a taxi. They've queried it."

"Taxi?"

"From your flat to the office. The night Taylor died. They say it's too much."

"Look, go and stir up the exchange, will you, they must be fast asleep."

Sarah answered the telephone herself.

"Oh, thank G.o.d it's you."

Avery said yes, he had got in an hour ago. "Sarah, look, I've had enough, I'm going to tell LeClerc."

But before he could finish she burst out, "John, for G.o.d's sake, what have you been doing? We had the police here, detectives; they want to talk to you about a body that's arrived at London airport; somebody called Malherbe. They say it was sent from Finland on a false pa.s.sport."

He closed his eyes. He wanted to put down the receiver, he held it away from his ear but he still heard her voice, saying John, John. "They say he's your brother; it's addressed to you, John; some London undertaker was supposed to be doing it all for you ... John, John are you still there?"

"Listen," he said, "it's all right. I'll take care of it now."

"I told them about Taylor: I had to."

"Sarah!"

"What else could I do? They thought I was a criminal or something; they didn't believe me, John! They asked how they could get hold of you; I had to say I didn't know; I didn't even know which country or which plane; I was ill, John, I felt awful, I've got this d.a.m.n flu and I'd forgotten to take my pills. They came in the middle of the night, two of them. John, why did they come in the night?"

"What did you tell them? For Christ's sake, Sarah, what else did you say to them?"

"Don't swear at me! I should be swearing at you and your beastly Department! I said you were doing something secret; you'd had to go abroad for the Department-John, I don't even know its name!-that you'd been rung in the night and you'd gone away. I said it was about a courier called Taylor."

"You're mad," Avery shouted, "you're absolutely mad! I told you never to say!"

"But John, they were policemen! There can't be any harm in telling them." She was crying, he could hear the tears in her voice. "John, please come back. I'm so frightened. You've got to get out of this, go back to publis.h.i.+ng; I don't care what you do but-"

"I can't. It's terribly big. More important than you can possibly understand. I'm sorry, Sarah, I just can't leave the office." He added savagely, a useful lie, "You may have wrecked the whole thing."

There was a very long silence.

"Sarah, I'll have to sort this out. I'll ring you later."

When at last she answered he detected in her voice the same flat resignation with which she had sent him to pack his things. "You took the chequebook I've no money."

He told her he would send it around. "We've got a car," he added, "specially for this thing, chauffeur driven." As he rang off he heard her say, "I thought you'd got lots of cars."

He ran into LeClerc's room. Haldane was standing behind the desk; his coat still wet from the rain. They were bent over a file. The pages were faded and torn.

"Taylor's body!" he blurted out. "It's at London Airport. You've messed the whole thing up. They've been on to Sarah! In the middle of the night!"

"Wait!" It was Haldane who spoke. "You have no business to come running in here," he declared furiously. "Just wait." He did not care for Avery.

He returned to the file, ignoring him. "None at all," he muttered, adding to LeClerc: "Woodford has already had some success, I gather. Unarmed combat's all right; he's heard of a wireless operator, one of the best. I remember him. The garage is called the King of Hearts; it is clearly prosperous. We inquired at the bank; they were quite helpful, if not specific. He's unmarried. He has a reputation for women; the usual Polish style. No political interests, no known hobbies, no debts, no complaints. He seems to be something of a nonent.i.ty. They say he's a good mechanic. As for character-" He shrugged. "What do we know about anybody?"