THE LOOKING GLASS WAR by John LeCarré

A note from Registry lay in his in-tray. They had put up the files he had asked for, but some were Subscription Only; he would have to read them in the library.

He went downstairs, opened the combination lock on the steel door of General Registry, groped vainly for the light switch. Finally he made his way in the dark between the shelves to the small, windowless room at the back of the building where documents of special interest or secrecy were kept. It was pitch-dark. He struck a match, put on the light. On the table were two sets of files: mayfly, heavily restricted, now in its third volume, with a subscription list pasted on the cover, and DECEPTION (Soviet and East Germany), an immaculately kept collection of papers and photographs in hard folders.

After glancing briefly at the Mayfly files he turned his attention to the folders, thumbing his way through the depressing miscellany of rogues, double agents and lunatics who in every conceivable corner of the earth, under every conceivable pretext, had attempted, sometimes successfully, to delude the Western intelligence agencies. There was the boring similarity of technique: the grain of truth carefully reconstructed, culled from newspaper reports and bazaar gossip; the follow-up, less carefully done, betraying the deceiver’s contempt for the deceived; and finally the flight of fancy, the stroke of artistic impertinence which wantonly terminated a relationship already under sentence.

On one report he found a flag with Gladstone’s initials; written above them in his cautious, rounded hand were the words: Could be of interest to you.

It was a refugee report of Soviet tank trials near Gustweiler. It was marked: Should not issue. Fabrication. There followed a long justification citing passages in the report which had been abstracted almost verbatim from a 1949 Soviet military manual. The originator appeared to have enlarged every dimension by a third, and added some ingenious flavoring of his own. Attached were six photographs, very blurred, purporting to have been taken from a train with a telephoto lens. On the back of the photographs was written in McCulloch’s careful hand: Claims to have used Exa-two camera, East German manufacture. Cheap housing, Exakta range lens. Low shutter speed. Negatives very blurred owing to camera shake from train. Fishy. It was all very inconclusive. The same make of camera, that was all. He locked up the registry and went home. Not his duty, Leclerc had said, to prove that Christ was born on Christmas Day; any more, Haldane reflected, than it was his business to prove that Taylor had been murdered.

Woodford’s wife added a little soda to her Scotch, a splash: it was habit rather than taste.

“Sleep in the office my foot,” she said. “Do you get operational subsistence?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, it isn’t a conference then, is it? A conference isn’t operational. Not unless,” she added with a giggle, “you’re having it in the Kremlin.”

“All right, it’s not a conference. It’s an operation. That’s why I’m getting subsistence.”

She looked at him cruelly. She was a thin, childless woman, her eyes half shut from the smoke of the cigarette in her mouth.

“There’s nothing going on at all. You’re making it up.” She began laughing, a hard, false laugh. “You poor sod,” she said and laughed again, derisively. “How’s little Clarkie? You’re all scared of him, aren’t you? Why don’t you ever say anything against him? Jimmy Gorton used to: he saw through him.”

“Don’t mention Jimmy Gorton to me!”

“Jimmy’s lovely.”

“Babs, I warn you!”

“Poor Clarkie. Do you remember,” his wife asked reflectively, “that nice little dinner he gave us in his club? The time he remembered it was our turn for welfare? Steak and kidney and frozen peas.” She sipped her whisky. “And warm gin.” Something struck her. “I wonder if he’s ever had a woman,” she said. “Christ, I wonder why I never thought of that before.”

Woodford returned to safer ground.

“All right, so nothing’s going on.” He got up, a silly grin on his face, collected some matches from the desk.

“You’re not smoking that damn pipe in here,” she said automatically.

“So nothing’s going on,” he repeated smugly, and lit his pipe, sucking noisily.

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