John Le Carré - Call For The Dead

"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 Murren. 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 Elsa, 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?"

"He was all I had. He was my life. I protected myself, I suppose. And gradually I became a part of it, and then it was too late to stop .... And then you know," she said, in a whisper; "there were times when I was glad, times when the world seemed to applaud what Samuel was doing. It was not a pretty sight for us, the new Germany. Old names had come back, names that had frightened us as children. The dreadful, plump pride returned, you could see it even in the photographs in the papers, they. marched with the old rhythm. Fennan felt that too, but then thank God he hadn't seen what I saw.

"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.

They arrived at Mitcham at lunch time. Peter Guillam was waiting for them patiently in his car.

"Well, children; what's the news?"

Smiley handed him the piece of paper from his wallet. "There was an emergency number, too — Primrose 9747. You'd better check it but

I'm not hopeful of that either."

Peter disappeared into the hall and began telephoning. Mendel busied himself in the kitchen and returned ten minutes later with beer, bread and cheese on a tray. Guillam came back and sat down without saying anything. He looked worried. "Well," he said at last; "what did she say, George?"

Mendel cleared away as Smiley finished the account of his interview that morning.

"I see," said Guillam. "How very worrying. Well, that's it, George, I shall have to put this on paper today, and I'll have to go to Maston at once. Catching dead spies is a poor game really — and causes a lot of unhappiness:'

"What access did he have at the F.O.?" asked Smiley.

"Recently a lot. That's why they felt he should be interviewed, as you know."

"What kind of stuff, mainly?"

"I don't know yet. He was on an Asian desk until a few months ago but his new job was different:"

"American, I seem to remember," said Smiley. "Peter?"

"Yes:"

"Peter, have you thought at all why they wanted to kill Fennan so much. I mean, supposing he had betrayed them, as they thought, why kill him? They had nothing to gain:"

"No; no, I suppose they hadn't. That does need some explaining, come to think of it ... or does it? Suppose Fuchs or Maclean had betrayed them, 1 wonder what would have happened. Suppose they had reason to fear a chain reaction — not just here but in America — all over the world? Wouldn't they kill him to prevent that? There's so much we shall just never know."

"Like the 8.30 call?" said Smiley.

"Cheerio. Hang on here till I ring you, will you? Maston's bound to want to see you. They'll be running down the corridors when I tell them the glad news. I shall have to wear that special grin I reserve for bearing really disastrous tidings."

Mendel saw him out and then returned to the drawing-room. "Best thing you can do is put your feet up," he said. "You look a ruddy mess, you do."

"Either Mundt's here or he's no," thought Smiley as he lay on the bed in his waistcoat, his hands linked under his head. "If he's not, we're finished. It will be for Maston to decide what to do with Elsa Fennan, and my guess is he'll do nothing.