THE LOOKING GLASS WAR by John LeCarré

As they drove back to the farmhouse the rain came bursting against the windshield, thundering on the roof of the car. Avery, sitting next to Leiser, was sunk in his own thoughts.

He realized with what he took to be utter detachment that while his own mission had unfolded as comedy, Leiser was to play the same part as tragedy; that he was witnessing an insane relay race in which each contestant ran faster and longer than the last, arriving nowhere but at his own destruction.

“Incidentally,” he said suddenly, addressing himself to Leiser, “hadn’t you better do something about your hair? I don’t imagine they have much in the way of lotions over there. A thing like that could be insecure.”

“He needn’t cut it,” Haldane observed. “The Germans go in for long hair. Just wash it, that’s all that’s needed. Get the oil out. A nice point, John, I congratulate you.”

Seventeen

The rain had stopped. The night came slowly, struggling with the wind. They sat at the table in the farmhouse, waiting; Leiser was in his bedroom. Johnson made tea and attended to his equipment. No one talked. The pretending was over. Not even Leclerc, master of the public school catchword, bothered anymore. He seemed to resent being made to wait, that was all, at the tardy wedding of an unloved friend. They had relapsed into a state of somnolent fear, like men in a submarine, while the lamp over their heads rocked gently. Now and then Johnson would be sent to the door to look for the moon, and each time he announced that there was none.

“The met reports were pretty good,” Leclerc observed, and drifted away to the attic to watch Johnson check his equipment.

Avery, alone with Haldane, said quickly, “He says the Ministry’s ruled against the gun. He’s not to take it.”

“And what bloody fool told him to consult the Ministry in the first place?” Haldane demanded, beside himself with anger. Then: “You’ll have to tell him. It depends on you.”

“Tell Leclerc?”

“No, you idiot; Leiser.”

They had some food and afterward, Avery and Haldane took Leiser to his bedroom.

“We must dress you up,” they said.

They made him strip, taking from him piece by piece his warm, expensive clothes: jacket and trousers of matching gray, cream silk shirt, black shoes without toecaps, socks of dark blue nylon. As he loosened the knot of his tartan tie his fingers discovered the gold pin with the horse’s head. He undipped it carefully and held it out to Haldane.

“What about this?”

Haldane had provided envelopes for valuables. Into one of these he slipped the tie-pin, sealed it, wrote on the back, tossed it on the bed.

“You washed your hair?”

“Yes.”

“We had difficulty in obtaining East German soap. I’m afraid you’ll have to try to get some when you’re over there. I understand it’s in short supply.”

“All right.”

He sat on the bed naked except for his watch, crouched forward, his broad arms folded across his hairless thighs, his white skin mottled from the cold. Haldane opened a trunk and extracted a bundle of clothes and half a dozen pairs of shoes.

As Leiser put on each unfamiliar thing—the cheap, baggy trousers of coarse serge, broad at the foot and gathered at the waist; the gray, threadbare jacket with arched pleats; the shoes, brown with a bright, unhealthy finish—he seemed to shrink before their eyes, returning to some former estate which they had only guessed at. His brown hair, free from oil, was streaked with gray and fell undisciplined upon his head. He glanced shyly at them, as if he had revealed a secret; a peasant in the company of his masters.

“How do I look?”

“Fine,” Avery said. “You look marvelous, Fred.”

“What about a tie?”

“A tie would spoil it.”

He tried the shoes one after another, pulling them with difficulty over the coarse woolen socks.

“They’re Polish,” Haldane said, giving him a second pair. “The Poles export them to East Germany. You’d better take these as well—you don’t know how much walking you’ll have to do.”

Haldane fetched from his own bedroom a heavy cashbox and unlocked it.

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