John le Carré: The Russia House

'The letter you gave to Landau went astray,' he said. 'It ended up in the hands of our officials. It was the officials who sent me to you. I'm sorry about that.'

But there was no more time for either of them to be shocked by anything. He had told her little of his plan and he told her no more now. It was understood between them that she knew too much already. And besides, they had more important matters to discuss, for it was on this night also that Katya told Barley the things that afterwards constituted the rest of his knowledge of her. And she confessed her love for him in terms simple enough to sustain him through the separation they both knew lay ahead of them.

Nevertheless Barley did not outstay his welcome. He did not give the men in the field or the men in London cause to be anxious for him. He was back at the Mezh by midnight, in good time for a last one with the boys.

'Oh Jack, Alik Zapadny's summoned me to his traditional farewell snoot for old hands tomorrow afternoon,' he confided to Henzigcr over a nightcap in the first-floor bar.

'Want me to come along?' asked Henziger. For like the Russians themselves, Henziger harboured no illusions about Zapadny's regrettable connections.

Barley smiled regretfully. 'Your knees aren't brown enough, Jack. It's for us golden oldies from the days when there was no hope.'

'What time?' asked Wicklow, ever practical.

'Four o'clock, I think he said. Seems a damned odd time for a drink. Yes, I'm sure he did. Four.'

Then he wished them all an affectionate goodnight and rode to Heaven in the lift, which in the Mezh is a glass cage that slides up and down the outside of a steel rod, to the private worry of many honest souls below.

It was lunchtime and after all our sleepless nights and wakeful dawns there was something indecent about a sensation that occurred at lunchtime. But a sensation it was. A hand-carried sensation. A sensation inside a yellow envelope inside a locked steel briefcase. GauntJohnny from their London station ran into the situation room with it, having brought it under guard from the Embassy across the square. He ran right through the lower level and up the little staircase to the command area before he realised we had moved to Sheriton's rosewood parlour for our sandwiches and coffee.

He handed it to Sheriton and stood over him like a stage messenger while Shcriton read first the covering letter, which he stuffed into his pocket, then the message itself.

Then he stood over Ned while Ned read the message too. It wasn't till Ned passed it back to me that Johnny seemed to decide he had read it enough times: a signals intercept, transmitted by the Soviet Military out of Leningrad, intercepted in Finland by the Americans and decrypted in Virginia by a bank of computers powerful enough to light London for a year.

Leningrad to Moscow, copy to Saratov.

Professor Yakov Savelyev is authorized to take a recreational weekend in Moscow following his lecture to the military academy in Saratov this Friday. Please arrange transport and facilities.

'Well thank you, Mr. Administration Officer, Leningrad,' Sheriton murmured.

Ned had taken back the signal and was re-reading it. Of all of us, he seemed to be the only one who was not impressed.

'Is this all they broke?' he asked.

'I don't know, Ned,' said Johnny, not bothering to conceal his hostility.

'It says here "one over one". What's that supposed to mean? Find out whether it's the only one in the batch. If it isn't, perhaps you'd be good enough to find out what else they picked up on the same trawl that was worth a damn.' He waited till Johnny had left the room. 'Perfect,' he said acidly. 'Copybook. My God, you'd think we were dealing with the Germans.'

We stood about, nibbling distractedly at our food. Sheriton had shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his back to us while he stared out of the smoked-glass window at the silent traffic. He was wearing a long-haired black cardigan. Through the interior window the rest of us could watch Johnny talking on one of the supposedly safe telephones. He rang off and we watched him come back across the room to us.

'Zero,' he announced.

'What's zero?' Ned said.

"'One over one" means one over one. It's a solo. Nothing either side.'

'A fluke then?' Ned suggested.

'A solo,' Johnny repeated stubbornly.

Ned swung round to Sheriton, who still had his back to us. 'Russell. Read the signs. That intercept is completely on its own. There's nothing anywhere near it and it stinks. They're tossing us a piece of bait.'

Now it was Sheriton's turn to make a second study of the sheet. When he finally spoke, he affected a deep weariness and it was clear he was reaching the limits of his tolerance.

'Ned, I am confidently assured by the cryptographers that the intercept came from lowgrade military crap put out on an army squeezebox vintage 1921. Nobody plants deception that way any more. Nobody does those things. It's not the Bluebird that's going off course. it's you.'

'Maybe that's why they planted it that way! Isn't that what you and I might do? Come in on the blind side?'

'Well, maybe we would at that,' Sheriton conceded, as if it scarcely mattered to him. 'Once you start thinking that way, it's pretty hard to think any other way.'

Clive at his worst. 'We can hardly ask Sheriton to break off the operation on the grounds that everything is going well , Ned,' he said silkily.

'On the grounds of pixie voices,' Sheriton corrected him, his temper gathering as he wandered moodily back into the room. 'On the grounds that anything going our way is a Kremlin plot, and everything we fuck up is evidence of our integrity. Ned, my Agency damn nearly died of that ailment. So did you guys. We're not going that route today. It's my operation and my ass.'

'And my joe,' said Ned. 'We've blown him. And we've blown the Bluebird.'

'Sure, sure,' said Sheriton with icy affability. 'No question.'

He glanced unlovingly at Clive. 'Mr. Deputy?'

Clive had his own ways of sitting on the fence, and they were all of them well tried. 'Russell – if I may say so – Ned. I think you are bo th being slightly egotistical. We are a service. We live corporate lives. It is our masters, not we ourselves alone, who have given the Bluebird their blessing. There is a corporate will here that is bigger than any of us.'

Wrong again, I thought. It is smaller than all of us. It is an insult to the powers of each of us, except perhaps of Clive who therefore needs it.

Sheriton turned back to Ned, but still did not raise his voice. 'Ned, do you have any idea what will happen in Washington and Langley if I abort now ? Can you imagine the peals of hyena laughter that will resound across the Atlantic from Defense, the Pentagon and the neanderthals? Can you guess what view might be taken of the Bluebird material until now?' He pointed without apparent rancour at Johnny, who sat skull-eyed, watching each of them in turn. 'Can you see this guy's report? This Judas? We were sowing a little moderation around town, remember? Now you tell me I've got to throw Bluebird to the jackals.'

'I'm telling you not to give him the shopping list.'

Sheriton inclined his ear as if he were a little deaf. ' Barley the shopping list? Or Bluebird the shopping list?'

'Neither of them. Abort.'

Finally Sheriton became very angry indeed. He had been winding himself up for this moment, and now it had arrived. He stood himself before Ned and not two foot from him, and when he flung up his palms in remonstration he wrenched half his fluffy cardigan with him so that he resembled an overweight bat in a fury.

'So okay! Here's our worst-case situation. Cooked Nedstyle. Okay? We show Bluebird the shopping list and he turns out to be their asset, not ours. Have I considered that possibility? Ned, night and day I have considered little else. If Bluebird is their guy and not ours, if Barley is, if the girl is, if all or any of the players is less than strictly kosher, the shopping list will shine a very bright light up the anal orifice of the United States of America.' He began pacing. 'It will show the Sovs what has been given away by their own man. So they'll know what we know. Already bad. It will show the Sovs what we don't know, and how we don't know it. More bad, but there's worse to come. Cleverly analysed, the shopping list can show them the gaps in our intelligence-gathering machinery and if they're cleverer still, in our own grotesque, fucking ridiculous, incompetent, ludicrously overstocked arsenal. Why? Because in the end we concentrate on what scares us, which is what we can't do and they can. That's the down side. Ned, I have looked at the bank balance. I know the stakes. I know what we can cam ourselves from Bluebird and what he stands to cost us if we screw up. Losing disenchants me. I've seen it done. I am not impressed. If we're wrong, it's shit city. We knew that back on Nowhere Island and we know it a little better now because it's live-ammunition time. But this is not the moment to start looking over our shoulders unless we have a cast-iron reason!'