A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY by John le Carré

‘I can manage the little words,’ Turner said. A Kodachrome portrait of the Queen hung directly behind Bradfield’s head. Her crest was everywhere: on the blue leather chairs, the silver cigarette box, even the jotting pads set out on the long confer­ence table. It was as if the monarchy had flown here first class and left its free gifts behind.

‘That is why I am asking you to move with the greatest possible circumspection. Bonn is a village,’ Bradfield con­tinued. ‘It has the manners, vision and dimensions of the parish pump, and yet it is a State within a village. Nothing matters for us more than the confidence of our hosts. There are already indications that we have caused them offence. I do not even know how we have done that. Their manner, even in the last forty-eight hours, has become noticeably cool. We are under surveillance; our telephone calls are interrup­ted; and we have the greatest difficulty in reaching even our official ministerial contacts.’

‘All right,’ Turner said. He had had enough. ‘I’ve got the message. I’m warned off. We’re on tender ground. Now what?’

‘Now this,’ Bradfield snapped. ‘We both know what Harting may be, or may have been. God knows, there are precedents. The greater his treachery here, the greater the potential embarrassment, the greater the shock to German confidence. Let us take the worst contingency. If it were possible to prove – I am not yet saying that it is, but there are indications – if it were possible to prove that by virtue of Harting’s activities in this Embassy, our inmost secrets had been betrayed to the Russians over many years – secrets which to a great extent we share with the Germans – then that shock, trivial as it may be in the long term, could sever the last thread by which our credit here hangs. Wait.’ He was sitting very straight at his desk, with an expression of controlled distaste upon his hand­some face. ‘Hear me out. There is something here that does not exist in England. It is called the anti-Soviet alliance. The Germans take it very seriously, and we deride it at our peril: it is still our ticket to Brussels. For twenty years or more, we have dressed ourselves in the shining armour of the defender. We may be bankrupt, we may beg for loans, currency and trade; we may occasionally… reinterpret… our Nato commit­ments; when the guns sound, we may even bury our heads under the blankets; our leaders may be as futile as theirs.’

What was it Turner discerned in Bradfield’s voice at that moment? Self-disgust? A ruthless sense of his own decline? He spoke like a man who had tried all remedies, and would have no more of doctors. For a moment the gap between them had closed, and Turner heard his own voice speaking through the Bonn mist.

‘For all that, in terms of popular psychology, it is the one great unspoken strength we have: that when the Barbarians come from the East, the Germans may count on our support. That Rhine Army will hastily gather on the Kentish hills and the British independent nuclear deterrent will be hustled into service. Now do you see what Harting could mean in the hands of a man like Karfeld?’

Turner had taken the black notebook from his inside pocket. It crackled sharply as he opened it. ‘No. I don’t. Not yet. You don’t want him found, you want him lost. If you had your way you wouldn’t have sent for me.’ He nodded his large head in reluctant admiration. ‘Well, I’ll say this for you: no one’s ever warned me off this early. Christ, I’ve hardly sat down. I hardly know his full names. We’ve not heard of him in London, did you know that? He’s not even had any access, not in our book. Not even one bloody military manual. He may have been abducted. He may have gone under a bus, run off with a bird for all we know. But you; Christ! You’ve really gone the bank, haven’t you? He’s all the spies we’ve ever had rolled into one. So what has he pinched? What do you know that I don’t?’ Bradfield tried to interrupt but Turner rode him down implacably. ‘Or maybe I shouldn’t ask? I mean I don’t want to upset anyone.’

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