'There's lots of routines,' Turner replied at last. He was leaning against the radiator, looking round the room. 'In a country like this it should be dead simple. Call in the police. Check hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, Salvation Army hostels. Circulate his photograph and personal description and square the local press. Then I'd look for him myself.'
'Look for him? Where?'
'In other people. In his background. Motive, political associations, boy friends, girl friends, contacts. Who else was involved; who knew; who half-knew; who quarter-knew; who ran him; who did he meet and where; how did he communicate; safe houses, pick-up points; how long's it been going on. Who's protected him, may be. That's what I call looking. Then I'd write a report: point the blame, make new enemies.' He continued to examine the room, and it seemed that nothing was innocent under his clear, inscrutable eye. 'That'sone routine. That's for a friendly country, of course.'
'Most of what you suggest is quite unacceptable here.'
'Oh sure. I've had all that from Lumlev.'
'Perhaps before we go any further, you had better have it from me as well.'
'Please yourself,' said Turner, in a manner which might have been deliberately chosen to annoy.
'I imagine that in your world, secrets are an absolute standard. They matter more than anything. Those who preserve them are your allies; those who betray them are your quarry. Here that is simply not the case. As of now, the local political considerations far exceed those of security.'
Suddenly, Turner was grinning.
'They always do,' he said. 'It'samazing.'
'Here in Bonn we have at present one contribution to make: to maintain at all costs the trust and good will of the Federal Government. To stiffen their resolve against mounting criticism from their own electorate. The Coalition is sick; the most casual virus could kill it. Our job is to pamper the invalid. To console, encourage and occasionally threaten him, and pray to God he survives long enough to see us in to the Common Market.'
'What a lovely picture.' He was looking out of the window again.
'The only ally we've got, and he's on crutches. The two sick men of Europe propping one another up.'
'Like it or not, it happens to be the truth. We are playing a poker game here. With open cards and nothing in our hand. Our credit is exhausted, our resources are nil. Yet in return for no more than a smile, our partners bid and play. That smile is all we have. The whole relationship between HMG and the Federal Coalition rests upon that smile. Our situation is as delicate as that; and as mysterious. And as critical. Our whole future with Europe could be decided in ten days from now.' He paused, apparently expecting Turner to speak. 'It is no coincidence that Karfeld has chosen next Friday for his rally in Bonn. By Friday, our friends in the German Cabinet will be forced to decide whether to bow to French pressure or honour their promises to ourselves and their partners in the Six. Karfeld detests the Market and favours an opening to the East. In the short term he inclines to Paris; in the long term, to Moscow. By marching on Bonn and increasing the tempo of his campaign, he is deliberately placing pressure on the Coalition at the most critical moment. Do you follow me?'
'I can manage the little words,' Turner said. A Kodachrome portrait of the Queen hung directly behind Bradfield's head. Her crest was everywhere: on the blue leather chairs, the silver cigarette box, even the jotting pads set out on the long conference table. It was as if the monarchy had flown here first class and left its free gifts behind.
'That is why I am asking you to move with the greatest possible circumspection. Bonn is a village,' Bradfield continued. 'It has the manners, vision and dimensions of the parish pump, and yet it is a State within a village. Nothing matters for us more than the confidence of our hosts. There are already indications that we have caused them offence. I do not even know how we have done that. Their manner, even in the last forty-eight hours, has become noticeably cool. We are under surveillance; our telephone calls are interrupted; and we have the greatest difficulty in reaching even our official ministerial contacts.'
'All right,' Turner said. He had had enough. 'I've got the message. I'm warned off. We're on tender ground. Now what?'
'Now this,' Bradfield snapped.
'We both know what Harting may be, or may have been. God knows, there are precedents. The greater his treachery here, the greater the potential embarrassment, the greater the shock to German confidence. Let us take the worst contingency. If it were possible to prove - I am not yet saying that it is, but there are indications - if it were possible to prove that by virtue of Harting's activities in this Embassy, our inmost secrets had been betrayed to the Russians over many years - secrets which to a great extent we share with the Germans - then that shock, trivial as it may be in the long term, could sever the last thread by which our credit here hangs. Wait.' He was sitting very straight at his desk, with an expression of controlled distaste upon his handsome face. 'Hear me out. There is something here that does not exist in England. It is called the anti-Soviet alliance. The Germans take it very seriously, and we deride it at our periclass="underline" it is still our ticket to Brussels. For twenty years or more, we have dressed ourselves in the shining armour of the defender. We may be bankrupt, we may beg for loans, currency and trade; we may occasionally... reinterpret... our Nato commitments; when the guns sound, we may even bury our heads under the blankets; our leaders may be as futile as theirs.'
What was it Turner discerned in Bradfield's voice at that moment? Self-disgust? A ruthless sense of his own decline? He spoke like a man who had tried all remedies, and would have no more of doctors. For a moment the gap between them had closed, and Turner heard his own voice speaking through the Bonn mist.
'For all that, in terms of popular psychology, it is the one great unspoken strength we have: that when the Barbarians come from the East, the Germans may count on our support. That Rhine Army will hastily gather on the Kentish hills and the British independent nuclear deterrent will be hustled in to service. Now do you see what Harting could me an in the hands of a man like Karfeld?'
Turner had taken the black notebook from his inside pocket. It crackled sharply as he opened it. 'No. I don't. Not yet. You don't want him found, you want him lost. If you had your way you wouldn't have sent for me.' He nodded his large head in reluctant admiration. 'Well, I'll say this for you: no one's ever warned me off this early. Christ, I've hardly sat down. I hardly know his full names. We've not heard of him in London, did you know that? He's not even had any access, not in our book. Not even one bloody military manual. He may have been abducted. He may have gone under a bus, run off with a bird for all we know. But you; Christ! You've really gone the bank, haven't you? He's all the spies we've ever had rolled in to one. So what has he pinched?
What do you know that I don't?' Bradfield tried to interrupt but Turner rode him down implacably. 'Or may be I shouldn't ask? I me an I don't want to upset anyone.'
They were glaring at one another across centuries of suspicion: Turner clever, predatory and vulgar, with the hard eye of the upstart; Bradfield disadvantaged but not put down, drawn in upon himself, picking his language as if it had been made for him.
'Our most secret file has disappeared. It vanished on the same day that Harting left. It covers the whole spectrum of our most delicate conversations with the Germans, formal and informal, over the last six months. For reasons which do not concern you, its publication would ruin us in Brussels.'
He thought at first that it was the roar of the aeroplane engines still ringing in his ears, but the traffic in Bonn is as constant as the mist. Gazing out of the window he was suddenly assailed by the feeling that from now on he would neither see nor hear with clarity; that his senses were being embraced and submerged by the cloying heat and the disembodied sound. 'Listen.' He indicated his canvas bag. 'I'mthe abortionist. You don't want me but you've got to have me. A neat job with no aftermath, that's what you're paying for. All right; I'll do my best. But before we all go over the wall, let's do a bit of counting on our fingers, shall we?'
The catechism began.
'He was unmarried?' 'Yes.' 'Always has been?' 'Yes.' 'Lived alone?' 'So far as I know.' 'Last seen?' 'On Friday morning, at the Chancery meeting. In here.' 'Not afterwards?' 'I happen to know the pay clerk saw him, but I'm limited in whom I can ask.'
'Anyone else missing at all?'
'No one.'
'Had a full count have you? No little long-legged bird from Registry?'
'People are constantly on leave; no one is unaccountably absent.'
'Then why didn't Harting take leave? They usually do, you know. Defect in comfort, that's my advice.'
'I have no idea.'
'You weren't close to him?'
'Certainly not.'
'What about his friends? What do they say?'
'He has no friends worth speaking of.'
'Any not worth speaking of?'