A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY by John le Carré

‘Has he?’

She seemed to have put him out of her mind. ‘Let’s go, for God’s sake,’ she said shortly, as if Turner had been keeping her waiting.

He had to push the car quite a distance along the track before it started. As they careered down the hill, he saw the Opel pull out from the lay-by and hurriedly take up its position thirty yards behind them. She drove to Remagen, to one of the big hotels along the waterfront run by an old lady who patted her arm as she sat down. Where was the little man? she asked, der nette kleine Herr who was always so jolly and smoked cigars and spoke such excellent German.

‘He talked it with an accent,’ she explained to Turner. ‘A slight English accent. It was something he’d taught himself.’ The sun room was quite empty except for a young couple in the corner. The girl had long, blonde hair. They stared at him oddly because of the cuts on his face. From their window table Turner saw the Opel park in the esplanade below them. The number plate had changed but the moons were just the same. His head was aching terribly. He had not taken more than half his whisky before he wanted to vomit. He asked for water. The old lady brought a bottle of local health water and told him all about it. They had used it in both wars, she explained, when the hotel was a first-aid post for those who were wounded while trying to cross the river.

‘He was going to meet me here last Friday,’ she said.’And take me home to dinner. Rawley was leaving for Hanover. Leo cried off at the last minute.’

‘On the Thursday afternoon he was late. I didn’t bother. Sometimes he didn’t turn up at all. Sometimes he worked. It was different. Just the last month or so. He’d changed. I thought at first he’d got another woman. He was always slip­ping off to places -‘

‘What places?’

‘Berlin once. Hamburg. Hanover. Stuttgart. Rather like Rawley. So he said anyway; I was never sure. He wasn’t strong on truth. Not your kind.’

‘He arrived late. Last Thursday. Come on!’

‘He’d had lunch with Praschko.’

‘At the Maternus,’ Turner breathed.

‘They’d had a discussion. That was another Leo-ism. It didn’t commit you. Like the Passive Voice, that was another favourite. A discussion had taken place. He didn’t say what about. He was preoccupied. Broody. I knew him better than to try and jerk him out of it so we just walked around. With them watching us. And I knew this was it.’

‘This was what?’

‘This was the year he’d wanted. He’d found it, whatever it was, and now he didn’t know what to do with it.’ She shrugged. ‘And by then, I’d found it too. He never realised. If he’d lifted a finger I’d have packed and gone with him.’ She was looking at the river. ‘Not children, husbands or any bloody thing would have stopped me. Not that he would have wanted me.’

‘What’s he found?’ Turner whispered.

‘I don’t know. He found it and he talked to Praschko and Praschko was no good. Leo knew he wouldn’t be any good; but he had to go back and find out. He had to make sure he was on his own.’

‘How do you know that? How much did he tell you?’

‘Less than he thought, perhaps. He assumed I was part of him and that was that.’ She shrugged. ‘I was a friend and friends don’t ask questions. Do they?’

‘Go on.'[]

‘Rawley was going to Hanover, he said; Friday night Rawley would go to Hanover. So Leo would give me dinner at Königswinter. A special dinner. I said, “To celebrate?” “No. No, Hazel, not a celebration.” But everything was special now, he said, and there wasn’t much time any more. He wouldn’t be getting another contract. No more years after December. So why not have a good dinner once in a while? And he looked at me in a frightfully shifty way and we plodded round the course again, him leading. We’d meet in Remagen, he said; we’d meet here. And then: “I say, Hazel, what the devil is Rawley up to, look here, in Hanover? I mean, two days before the rally?” ‘

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