The Looking Glass War
The Looking Glass War
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
THE LOOKING GLASS WAR
John le Carré was born in 1931. His third novel,
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
,
The Honourable Schoolboy
and
Smiley’s People
. His later novels include
The Constant Gardener
,
Absolute Friends
,
The Mission Song
and
A Most Wanted Man
.
Our Kind of Traitor
is his most recent novel.
To James Kennaway
‘I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join’
Alice
None of the characters, clubs, institutions nor intelligence organisations I have described here or elsewhere exists, or has existed to my knowledge in real life. I wish to make that very clear.
My thanks are due to the Radio Society of Great Britain and to Mr R. E. Molland, to the editors and staff of
Aviation Week and Space Technology
and Mr Ronald Coles, all of whom provided me with valuable technical advice; and to Miss Elizabeth Tollinton for her secretarial help.
I must thank above all my wife for her untiring cooperation.
John le Carré,
Agios Nikolaos,
Crete
May, 1964
‘The carrying of a very heavy weight such as a large suitcase or trunk, immediately before sending practice, renders the muscles of the forearm, wrist and fingers too insensitive to produce good Morse’
F. Tait’s
Complete Morse Instructor
, Pitman.
Taylor’s Run
‘A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East’
Kipling
Snow covered the airfield.
It had come from the north, in the mist, driven by the night wind, smelling of the sea. There it would stay all Winter, threadbare on the grey earth, an icy, sharp dust; not thawing and freezing, but static like a year without seasons. The changing mist, like the smoke of war, would hang over it, swallow up now a hangar, now the radar hut, now the machines; release them piece by piece, drained of colour, black carrion on a white desert.
It was a scene of no depth, no recession and no shadows. The land was one with the sky; figures and buildings locked in the cold like bodies in an icefloe.
Beyond the airfield there was nothing; no house, no hill, no road; not even a fence, a tree; only the sky pressing on the dunes, the running fog that lifted on the muddy Baltic shore. Somewhere inland were the mountains.
A group of children in school caps had gathered at the long observation window, chatting in German. Some wore ski clothes. Taylor gazed dully past them, holding a glass in his gloved hand. A boy turned round and stared at him, blushed and whispered to the other children. They fell silent.
He looked at his watch, making a wide arc with his arm, partly to free the sleeve of his overcoat and partly because it was his style; a military man, he wished you to say, decent regiment, decent club, knocked around in the war.
Ten to four. The plane was an hour late. They would have to announce the reason soon over the loudspeaker. He wondered what they would say: delayed by fog, perhaps; delayed take-off. They probably didn’t even know – and they certainly would not admit – that she was two hundred miles off course, and south of Rostock. He finished his drink, turned to get rid of the empty glass. He had to admit that some of these foreign hooches, drunk in their own country, weren’t at all bad. On the spot, with a couple of hours to kill and ten degrees of frost the other side of the window, you could do a lot worse than Steinhäger. He’d make them order it at the Alias Club when he got back. Cause quite a stir.
The loudspeaker was humming; it blared suddenly, faded out and began again, properly tuned. The children stared expectantly at it. First, the announcement in Finnish, then in Swedish, now in English. Northern Air Services regretted the delay to their charter flight two-nine-zero from Düsseldorf. No hint of how long, no hint of why. They probably didn’t know themselves.
But Taylor knew. He wondered what would happen if he sauntered over to that pert little hostess in the glass box and told her: two-nine-zero will be a bit of time yet, my dear, she’s been blown off course by heavy northerly gales over the Baltic, bearings all to Hades. The girl wouldn’t believe him, of course, she’d think he was a crank. Later she’d know better. She’d realise he was something rather unusual, something rather special.
Outside it was already growing dark. Now the ground was lighter than the sky; the swept runways stood out against the snow like dykes, stained with the amber glow of marking lights. In the nearest hangars neon tubes shed a weary pallor over men and aeroplanes; the foreground beneath him sprang briefly to life as a beam from the control tower flicked across it. A fire engine had pulled away from the workshops on the left and joined the three ambulances already parked short of the centre runway. Simultaneously they switched on their blue rotating lights, and stood in line patiently flashing out their warning. The children pointed at them, chattering excitedly.
The girl’s voice began again on the loudspeaker, it could only have been a few minutes since the last announcement. Once more the children stopped talking and listened. The arrival of flight two-nine-zero would be delayed at least another hour. Further information would be given as soon as it became available. There was something in the girl’s voice, midway between surprise and anxiety, which seemed to communicate itself to the half-dozen people sitting at the other end of the waiting-room. An old woman said something to her husband, stood up, took her handbag and joined the group of children. For a time she peered stupidly into the twilight. Finding no comfort there, she turned to Taylor and said in English, ‘What is become of the Düsseldorf plane?’ Her voice had the throaty, indignant lilt of a Dutchwoman. Taylor shook his head. ‘Probably the snow,’ he replied. He was a brisk man; it went with his military way.
Pushing open the swing door, Taylor made his way downstairs to the reception hall. Near to the main entrance he recognised the yellow pennant of the Northern Air Services. The girl at the desk was very pretty.
‘What’s happened to the Düsseldorf flight?’ His style was confiding; they said he had a knack with little girls. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
‘I expect it is the snow. We are often having delays in Autumn.’
‘Why don’t you ask the boss?’ he suggested, indicating with a nod the telephone in front of her.
‘They will tell it on the loudspeaker,’ she said, ‘as soon as they know.’
‘Who’s the skipper, dear?’
‘Please?’
‘Who’s the skipper, the captain?’
‘Captain Lansen.’
‘Is he any good?’
The girl was shocked. ‘Captain Lansen is a very experienced pilot.’
Taylor looked her over, grinned and said, ‘He’s a very
lucky
pilot anyway, my dear.’ They said he knew a thing or two, old Taylor did. They said it at the Alias on Friday nights.
Lansen. It was odd to hear a name spoken out like that. In the outfit they simply never did it. They favoured circumlocution, cover names, anything but the original: Archie boy, our flying friend, our friend up north, the chappie who takes the snapshots; they would even use the tortuous collection of figures and letters by which he was known on paper; but never in any circumstances the name.
Lansen. Leclerc had shown him a photograph in London: a boyish thirty-five, fair and good-looking. He’d bet those hostesses went mad about him; that’s all they were, anyway, cannon-fodder for the pilots. No one else got a look in. Taylor ran his right hand quickly over the outside of his overcoat pocket just to make sure the envelope was still there. He’d never carried this sort of money before. Five thousand dollars for one flight; seventeen hundred pounds, tax free, to lose your way over the Baltic. Mind you, Lansen didn’t do that every day. This was special, Leclerc had said so. He wondered what she would do if he leant across the counter and told her who he was; showed her the money in that envelope. He’d never had a girl like that, a real girl, tall and young.
He went upstairs again to the bar. The barman was getting to know him. Taylor pointed to the bottle of Steinhäger on the centre shelf and said, ‘Give me another of those, d’you mind? That’s it, the fellow just behind you; some of your local poison.’
‘It’s German,’ the barman said.
He opened his wallet and took out a banknote. In the Cellophane compartment there was a photograph of a girl, perhaps nine years old, wearing glasses and holding a doll. ‘My daughter,’ he explained to the barman, and the barman gave a watery smile.
His voice varied a lot, like the voice of a commercial traveller. His phoney drawl was more extravagant when he addressed his own class, when it was a matter of emphasising a distinction which did not exist; or as now, when he was nervous.
He had to admit: he was windy. It was an eerie situation for a man of his experience and age, going over from routine courier work to operational stuff. This was a job for those swine in the Circus, not for his outfit at all. A different kettle of fish altogether, this was, from the ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff he was used to; stuck out on a limb, miles from nowhere. It beat him how they ever came to put an airport in a place like this. He quite liked the foreign trips as a rule: a visit to old Jimmy Gorton in Hamburg, for instance, or a night on the tiles in Madrid. It did him good to get away from Joanie. He’d done the Turkish run a couple of times, though he didn’t care for wogs. But even that was a piece of cake compared to this: first-class travel and the bags on the seat beside him, a Nato pass in his pocket; a man had status, doing a job like that; good as the diplomatic boys, or nearly. But this was different, and he didn’t like it.
Leclerc had said it was big, and Taylor believed him. They had got him a passport with another name. Malherbe. Pronounced Mallaby, they said. Christ alone knew who’d chosen it. Taylor couldn’t even spell it; made a botch of the hotel register when he signed in that morning. The subsistence was fantastic, of course: fifteen quid a day operational expenses, no vouchers asked for. He’d heard the Circus gave seventeen. He could make a good bit on that, buy something for Joanie. She’d probably rather have the money.
He’d told her, of course: he wasn’t supposed to, but Leclerc didn’t know Joanie. He lit a cigarette, drew from it and held it in the palm of his hand like a sentry smoking on duty. How the hell was he supposed to push off to Scandinavia without telling his wife?
He wondered what those kids were doing, glued to the window all this time. Amazing the way they managed the foreign language. He looked at his watch again, scarcely noticing the time, touched the envelope in his pocket. Better not have another drink; he must keep a clear head. He tried to guess what Joanie was doing now. Probably having a sit-down with a gin and something. A pity she had to work all day.
He suddenly realised that everything had gone silent. The barman was standing still, listening. The old people at the table were listening too, their silly faces turned towards the observation window. Then he heard it quite distinctly, the sound of an aircraft, still far away, but approaching the airfield. He made quickly for the window, was halfway there when the loudspeaker began; after the first few words of German the children, like a flock of pigeons, fluttered away to the reception lounge. The party at the table had stood up; the women were reaching for their gloves, the men for their coats and briefcases. At last the announcer gave the English. Lansen was coming in to land.
Taylor stared into the night. There was no sign of the plane. He waited, his anxiety mounting. It’s like the end of the world, he thought, the end of the bloody world out there. Supposing Lansen crashed; supposing they found the cameras. He wished someone else were handling it. Woodford, why hadn’t Woodford taken it over, or sent that clever college boy Avery? The wind was stronger; he could swear it was far stronger; he could tell from the way it stirred the snow, flinging it over the runway; the way it tore at the flares; the way it made white columns on the horizon, dashing them vehemently away like a hated creation. A gust struck suddenly at the windows in front of him, making him recoil, and there followed the rattle of ice grains and the short grunt of the wooden frame. Again he looked at his watch; it had become a habit with Taylor. It seemed to help, knowing the time.