THE LOOKING GLASS WAR by John LeCarré

“What do you mean, sticky?”

“You will remember we sent poor Taylor out under another name. The Office revoked his operational passport a matter of hours before he left London. I fear the Circus made an administrative blunder. The passport which accompanied the body was therefore challenged on arrival in the United Kingdom. It gave us a lot of trouble. I had to send one of my best men to sort it out,” he lied. “I’m sure that if the Minister insisted, Control would be quite agreeable to a new arrangement.”

The Under Secretary jabbed a pencil at the door which led to his Private Office. “Talk to them in there. Work something out. It sounds very stupid. Who do you deal with at the Office?”

“De Lisle,” said Leclerc with satisfaction, “in General Department. He’s the Assistant. And Guillam at the Circus.”

The Under Secretary wrote it down. “One never knows who to talk to in that place; they’re so top-heavy.”

“Then I may have to approach the Circus for technical resources. Wireless and that kind of thing. I propose to use a cover story for security reasons: a pretended training scheme is the most appropriate.”

“Cover story? Ah yes: a lie. You mentioned it.”

“It’s a precaution, no more.”

“You must do as you think fit.”

“I imagined you would prefer the Circus not to know. You said yourself: no monolith. I have proceeded on that assumption.”

The Under Secretary glanced again at the clock above the door. “He’s been in a rather difficult mood: a dreary day with the Yemen. I think it’s partly the Woodbridge by-election: he gets so upset about the marginals. How’s this thing going, by the way? It’s been very worrying for him, you know. I mean, what’s he to believe?” He paused. “It’s these Germans who terrify me. . . . You mentioned you’d found a fellow who fitted the bill.” They moved to the corridor.

“We’re onto him now. We’ve got him in play. We shall know tonight.”

The Under Secretary wrinkled his nose very slightly, his hand on the Minister’s door. He was a churchman and disliked irregular things.

“What makes a man take on a job like that? Not you; him, I mean.”

Leclerc shook his head in silence, as if the two of them were in close sympathy. “Heaven knows. It’s something we don’t even understand ourselves.”

“What kind of person is he? What sort of class? Only generally, you appreciate.”

“Intelligent. Self-educated. Polish extraction.”

“Oh, I see.” He seemed relieved. “We’ll keep it gentle, shall we? Don’t paint it too black. He loathes drama. I mean, any fool can see what the dangers are.”

They went in.

Haldane and Leiser took their places at a corner table, like early lovers in a coffee bar. It was one of those restaurants which rely on empty Chianti bottles for their charm and on very little else for their custom. It would be gone tomorrow, or the next day, and scarcely anyone would notice, but while it was there and new and full of hope, it was not at all bad. Leiser had steak, it seemed to be habit, and sat primly while he ate it, his elbows firmly at his sides.

At first Haldane pretended to ignore the purpose of his visit. He talked badly about the war and the Department; about operations he had half forgotten until that afternoon, when he had refreshed his memory from the files. He spoke—no doubt it seemed desirable—mainly of those who had survived.

He referred to the courses Leiser had attended; had he kept up his interest in radio at all? Well, no, as a matter of fact. How about unarmed combat? There hadn’t been the opportunity, really.

“You had one or two rough moments in the war, I remember,” Haldane prompted. “Didn’t you have some trouble in Holland?” They were back to vanity and old times’ sake.

A stiff nod. “I had a spot of trouble,” he conceded. “I was younger then.”

“What happened exactly?”

Leiser looked at Haldane, blinking, as if the other had waked him, then began to talk. It was one of those wartime stories which have been told with variations since war began, as remote from the neat little restaurant as hunger or poverty, less credible for being articulate. He seemed to tell it at second hand. It might have been a big fight he had heard on the wireless. He had been caught, he had escaped, he had lived for days without food, he had killed, been taken into refuge and smuggled back to England. He told it well; perhaps it was what the war meant to him now, perhaps it was true, but as with a Latin widow relating the manner of her husband’s death, the passion had gone out of his heart and into the telling. He seemed to speak because he had been told to; his affectations, unlike Leclerc’s, were designed less to impress others than to protect himself. He seemed a very private man whose speech was exploratory; a man who had been a long time alone and had not reckoned with society; poised, not settled. His accent was good but exclusively foreign, lacking the slur and the elision which escapes even gifted imitators; a voice familiar with its environment, but not at home there.

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