A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY by John le Carré

‘Yes. That alone should be enough to condemn him.’ He had forgotten Turner now. ‘There’s no room for his kind any more. That’s the one thing we have learnt, thank God.’ He stared at the river. ‘We’ve learnt that even nothing is a pretty tender flower. You speak as if there were those who contribute and those who do not. As if we were all working for the day when we are no longer needed; when the world could pack up and cultivate its allotment. There is no product. There is no final day. This is the life we work for. Now. At this moment. Every night, as I go to sleep, I say to myself: another day achieved. Another day added to the unnatural life of a world on its deathbed. And if I never relax if I never lift my eye, we may run on for another hundred years. Yes.’ He was talking to the river. ‘Our policy is that tide, taken at its three-inch flood. Three inches of freedom up and down the bank. That’s the limit of our action. Beyond it is anarchy, and all the roman­tic clap-trap of protest and conscience. We are all looking for the wider freedom, every one of us. It doesn’t exist. As long as we accept that, we can dream at will. Harting should never have gone down there in the first place. And you should have returned to London when I told you. The Statute has made a law of forgetting. He broke it. Praschko is quite right: Hart­ing has broken the law of moderation.’

‘We’re not automatons! We’re born free, I believe that! We can’t control the processes of our own minds!’

‘Good Lord, whoever told you that?’ He faced Turner now and the small tears showed. ‘I have controlled the processes of my own mind for eighteen years of marriage and twenty years of diplomacy. I have spent half of my life learning not to look, and the other half learning not to feel. Do you think I cannot also learn to forget? God, sometimes I am bowed down by the things I do not know! So why the devil couldn’t he forget as well? Do you think I take pleasure in what I have to do? Do you think he does not challenge me to do it? He set all this in motion, not I! His damned immodesty-‘

‘Bradfield! What about Karfeld? Hasn’t Karfeld stepped over the line as well?’

‘There are quite different ways of dealing with his case.’ The shell had closed again around his voice.

‘Leo found one.’

‘The wrong one as it happens.’

‘Why?’

‘Never mind why.’

He began walking slowly back to the car, but Turner was calling to him.

‘What made Leo run? Something he read. Something he stole. What was in that Green File? What were those Formal and Informal Conversations with German Politicians? Brad­field! Who was talking to who?’

‘Lower your voice, they’ll overhear.’

‘Tell me! Have you been having conversations with Karfeld? Is that what sent Leo on his night walk? Is that what it was all about?’

Bradfield did not reply.

‘Holy God,’ Turner whispered. ‘We’re like the rest of them, after all. Like Siebkron and Praschko; we’re trying to make our number with tomorrow’s lucky winner!’

‘Take care!’ Bradfield warned.

‘Allerton… what Allerton said -‘

‘Allerton? He knows nothing!’

‘Karfeld came in from Hanover that Friday night. Secretly to Bonn. For a confidence. He even arrived and left on foot, it was so secret. You didn’t go to Hanover after all, did you, that Friday night? You changed your plans, cancelled your ticket. Leo found that out from the Travel Clerks -‘

‘You’re talking utter nonsense.’

‘You met Karfeld in Bonn. Siebkron laid it on, and Leo followed you because he knew what you were up to!’

‘You’re out of your mind.’

‘No, I’m not. But Leo is, isn’t he? Because Leo suspected. All the time, in the back of his mind, he knew that you were secretly reinsuring against the Brussels failure. Until he saw that file, until he actually saw and knew, he thought he might still act within the law. But when he saw the Green File he knew: it really was happening again. He knew. That’s why he was in a hurry. He had to stop you, he had to stop Karfeld before it was too late!’

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