“What’s the trouble?”
“He’s worried about the gun,” Haldane explained.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do. It’s out of our hands. You know how we feel about it, Fred. Surely you know that. It’s an order, that’s all. Have you forgotten how it used to be?” He added stiffly, a man of duty and decision, “I can’t question my orders: what do you want me to say?”
Leiser shook his head. His hands fell to his sides. The discipline had gone out of his body.
“Never mind.” He was looking at Avery.
“A knife’s better in some ways, Fred,” Leclerc added consolingly. “Quieter.”
“Yes.”
Haldane picked up Leiser’s spare clothes. “I must put these into the rucksack,” he said and, with a sideways glance at Avery, walked quickly from the room, taking Leclerc with him. Leiser and Avery looked at one another in silence. Avery was embarrassed to see him so ugly. At last Leiser spoke.
“It was we three. The Captain, you and me. It was all right, then. Don’t worry about the others, John. They don’t matter.”
“That’s right, Fred.”
Leiser smiled. “It was the best ever, that week, John. It’s funny, isn’t it: we spend all our time chasing girls, and it’s the men that matter; just the men.”
“You’re one of us, Fred. You always were; all the time your card was there, you were one of us. We don’t forget.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s two pinned together. One for then, one for now. It’s in the index . .. live agents, we call it. Yours is the first name. You’re the best man we’ve got.” He could imagine it now: the index was something they had built together. He could believe in it, like love.
“You said it was alphabetical order,” Leiser said sharply. “You said it was a special index for the best.”
“Big cases go to the front.”
“And men all over the world?”
“Everywhere.”
Leiser frowned as if it were a private matter, a decision to be privately taken. He stared slowly around the bare room, then at the cuffs of his coarse jacket, then at Avery, interminably at Avery, until, taking him by the wrist, but lightly, more to touch than to lead, he said under his breath, “Give us something. Give me something to take. From you. Anything.”
Avery felt in his pockets, pulling out a handkerchief, some loose change and a twist of thin cardboard, which he opened. It was the photograph of Taylor’s little girl.
“Is that your kid?” Leiser looked over the other’s shoulder at the small, bespectacled face; his hand closed on Avery’s. “I’d like that.” Avery nodded. Leiser put it in his wallet, then picked up his watch from the bed. It was gold with a black dial for the phases of the moon. “You have it,” he said. “Keep it. I’ve been trying to remember,” he continued, “at home. There was this school. A big courtyard like a barracks with nothing but windows and drainpipes. We used to bang a ball around after lunch. Then a gate, and a path to the church, and the river on the other side …” He was laying out the town with his hands, placing bricks. “We went Sunday, through the side door, the kids last, see?” A smile of success. “That church was facing north,” he declared. “Not east at all.” Suddenly he asked: “How long; how long have you been in, John?”
“In the outfit?”
“Yes.”
“Four years.”
“How old were you then?”
“Twenty-eight. It’s the youngest they take you.”
“You told me you were thirty-four.”
“They’re waiting for us,” Avery said.
In the hall they had the rucksack and the suitcase, green canvas with leather corners. He tried the rucksack on, adjusting the straps until it sat high on his back like a German schoolboy’s satchel. He lifted the suitcase and felt the weight of the two things together.
“Not too bad,” he muttered.
“It’s the minimum,” Leclerc said. They had begun to whisper, though no one could hear. One by one they got into the car.
A hurried handshake and he walked away toward the hill. There were no fine words; not even from Leclerc. It was as if they had all taken leave of Leiser long ago. The last they saw of him was the rucksack gently bobbing as he disappeared into the darkness. There had always been a rhythm about the way he walked.