The Looking Glass War Part 23

"Ah. Good night. Or good morning, I suppose." A little laugh. "How quickly one loses one's sense of time." Then he commented, as if to himself: "And the Circus helped us all the way. It's most strange. I wonder why."

Very carefully Leiser rinsed the knife. The knife was dirty and must be washed. In the boathouse, he ate the food and drank the brandy in the flask. "After that," Haldane had. said, "you live off the land; you can't run around with tinned meat and French brandy." He opened the door and stepped outside to wash his hands and face in the lake.

The water was quite still in the darkness. Its unruffled surface was like a perfect skin shrouded with floating veils of grey mist. He could see the reeds along the bank; the wind, subdued by the approach of dawn, touched them as it moved across the water. Beyond the lake hung the shadow of low hills. He felt rested and at peace. Until the memory of the boy pa.s.sed over him like a shudder.

He threw the empty meat can and the brandy bottle far out, and as they hit the water a heron rose languidly from the reeds. Stooping, he picked up a stone and sent it skimming across the lake. He heard it bounce three times before it sank. He threw another but he couldn't beat three. Returning to the hut, he fetched his rucksack and suitcase. His right arm was aching painfully, it must have been from the weight of the case. From somewhere came the bellow of cattle.

He began walking east, along the track which skirted the lake. He wanted to get as far as he could before morning came.

He must have walked through half a dozen villages. Each was empty of life, quieter than the open road because they gave a moment's shelter from the rising wind. There were no signposts and no new buildings, it suddenly occurred to him. That was where the peace came from, it was the peace of no innovation-it might have been fifty years ago, a hundred. There were no streetlights, no gaudy signs on the pubs or shops. It was the darkness of indifference, and it comforted him. He walked into it like a tired man breasting the sea, it cooled and revived him like the wind; until he remembered the boy. He pa.s.sed a farmhouse. A long drive led to it from the road. He stopped. Halfway up the drive stood a motorbike, an old mackintosh thrown over the saddle. There was no one in sight.

The oven smoked gently.

"When did you say his first schedule was?" Avery asked. He had asked already.

"Johnson said twenty-two twenty. We start scanning an hour before."

"I thought he was on a fixed frequency," LeClerc muttered, but without much interest.

"He may start with the wrong crystal. It's the kind of thing that happens under strain. It's safer for base to scan with so many crystals."

"He must be on the road by now."

"Where's Haldane?"

"Asleep."

"How can anyone sleep at a time like this?"

"It'll be daylight soon."

"Can't you do something about that fire?" LeClerc asked. "It shouldn't smoke like that, I'm sure." He shook his head suddenly, as if shaking off water, and said, "John, there's a most interesting report from Fielden. Troop movements in Budapest. Perhaps when you get back to London ..." He lost the thread of his sentence and frowned.

"You mentioned it," Avery said softly.

"Yes. Well, you must take a look at it."

"I'd like to. It sounds very interesting."

"It does, doesn't it?"

"Very."

"You know," he said-he seemed to be reminiscing-"they still won't give that wretched woman her pension."

He sat very straight on the motorbike, elbows in as if he were at table. It made a terrible noise; it seemed to fill the dawn with sound, echoing across the frosted fields and stirring the roosting poultry. The mackintosh had leather pieces on the shoulders; as he bounced along the unmade road its skirts fluttered behind, rattling against the spokes of the rear wheel. Daylight came.

Soon he would have to eat. He couldn't understand why he was so hungry. Perhaps it was the exercise. Yes, it must be the exercise. He would eat, but not in a town, not yet. Not in a cafe where strangers came. Not in a cafe where the boy had been.

He drove on. His hunger taunted him. He could think of nothing else. His hand held down the throttle and drove his ravening body forward. He turned onto a farm track and stopped.

The house was old, falling with neglect; the drive overgrown with gra.s.s, pitted with cart tracks. The fences were broken. There was a terraced garden once partly under plow, now left as if it were beyond all use.

A light burned in the kitchen window. Leiser knocked at the door. His hand was trembling from the motorbike. No one came; he knocked again, and the sound of his knocking frightened him. He thought he saw a face, it might have been the shadow of the boy sinking across the window as he fell, or the reflection of a swaying branch.

He returned quickly to his motorbike, realizing with terror that his hunger was not hunger at all but loneliness. He must lie up somewhere and rest. He thought: I've forgotten how it takes you. He drove on until he came to the wood, where he lay down. His face was hot against the bracken.

It was evening; the fields were still light but the wood in which he lay gave itself swiftly to the darkness, so that in a moment the red pines had turned to columns of black.

He picked the leaves from his jacket and laced up his shoes. They pinched badly at the instep. He never had a chance to break them in. He caught himself thinking, It's all right for them; and he remembered that nothing ever bridged the gulf between the man who went and the man who stayed behind, between the living and the dying.

He struggled into the harness of his rucksack and once again felt gratefully the hot, raw pain in his shoulders as the straps found the old bruises. Picking up the suitcase he walked across the field to the road where the motorbike was waiting; five kilometres to Langdorn. He guessed it lay beyond the hill: the first of the three towns. Soon he would meet the roadblock; soon he would have to eat.

He drove slowly, the case across his knees, peering ahead all the time along the wet road, straining his eyes for a line of red lights or a cl.u.s.ter of men and vehicles. He rounded a bend and saw to his left a house with a beer sign propped in the window. He entered the forecourt; the noise of the engine brought an old man to the door. Leiser lifted the bike onto its stand.

"I want a beer," he said, "and some sausage. Have you got that here?"

The old man showed him inside, sat him at a table in the front room from which Leiser could see his motorbike parked in the yard. He brought him a bottle of beer, some sliced sausage and a piece of black bread; then stood at the table watching him eat.

"Where are you making for?" His thin face was shaded with beard.

"North." Leiser knew this game.

"Where are you from?"

Leiser did not reply but asked, "What's the next town?"

"Langdorn."

"Far?"

"Five kilometres"

"Somewhere to stay?"

The old man shrugged. It was a gesture not of indifference nor of refusal, but of negation, as if he rejected everything and everything rejected him.

"What's the road like?" Leiser asked.

"It's all right."

"I heard there was a diversion."

"No diversion," the old man said, as if a diversion were hope, or comfort, or companions.h.i.+p; anything that might warm the damp air or lighten the corners of the room.

"You're from the east," the man declared. "One hears it in the voice."

"My parents," he said. "Any coffee?"

The old man brought him coffee, very black and sour, tasting of nothing.

"You're from Wilmsdorf," the old man said. "You've got a Wilmsdorf registration."

"Much business?" Leiser asked, glancing at the door.

The old man shook his head.

"Not a busy road, eh?" Still the old man said nothing. "I've got a friend near Kalkstadt. Is that far?"

"Not far. Forty kilometres They killed a boy near Wilmsdorf."

"He runs a cafe On the northern side. The Tom Cat. Know it at all?"

"No."

Leiser lowered his voice. "They had trouble there. A fight. Some soldiers from the town. Russians."

"Go away," the old man said.

He tried to pay him but he only had a fifty-mark note.

"Go away," the old man repeated.

Leiser picked up the suitcase and rucksack. "You old fool," he said roughly, "what do you think I am?"

"You are either good or bad, and both are dangerous. Go away."

There was no roadblock. Without warning he was in the centre of Langdorn; it was already dark; the only lights in the main street stole from the shuttered windows, barely reaching the wet cobbles. There was no traffic. He was alarmed by the din of his motorbike; it sounded like a trumpet blast across the market square. In the war, Leiser thought, they went to bed early to keep warm; perhaps they still did.

It was time to get rid of the motorbike. He drove through the town, found a disused church and left it by the vestry door. Walking back into the town he made for the railway station. The official wore a uniform.

"Kalkstadt. Single."

The official held out his hand. Leiser took a bank note from his wallet and gave it to him. The official shook it impatiently. For a moment Leiser's mind went blank while he looked stupidly at the flicking fingers in front of him and the suspicious, angry face behind the grille.

Suddenly the official shouted, "Ident.i.ty card!"

Leiser smiled apologetically. "One forgets," he said, and opened his wallet to show the card in the cellophane window.

"Take it out of the wallet," the official said. Leiser watched him examine it under the light on his desk.

"Travel authority?"

"Yes, of course." Leiser handed him the paper.

"Why do you want to go to Kalkstadt if you are travelling to Rostock?"

"Our cooperative in Magdeburg sent some machinery by rail to Kalkstadt. Heavy turbines and some tooling equipment. It has to be installed."

"How did you come this far?"

"I got a lift."

"The granting of lifts is forbidden."

"One must do what one can these days."

"These days?"

The man pressed his face against the gla.s.s, looking down at Leiser's hands.

"What's that you're fiddling with down there?" he demanded roughly.

"A chain; a key chain."

"So the equipment has to be installed. Well? Go on!"

"I can do the job on the way. The people in Kalkstadt have been waiting six weeks already. The consignment was delayed."

"So?"

"We made inquiries ... of the railway people."

"And?"

"They didn't reply."

"You've got an hour's wait. It leaves at six thirty." A pause. "You heard the news? They've killed a boy at Wilmsdorf," he said. "Swine." He handed him his change.

He had nowhere to go; he dared not deposit his luggage. There was nothing else to do. He walked for half an hour, then returned to the station. The train was late.

"You both deserve great credit," LeClerc said, nodding gratefully at Haldane and Avery. "You too, Johnson. From now on there's nothing any of us can do: it's up to Mayfly." A special smile for Avery: "How about you, John; you've been keeping very quiet. Do you think you've profited from the experience?" He added with a laugh, appealing to the other two, "I do hope we shan't have a divorce on our hands; we must get you home to your wife."

He was sitting at the edge of the table, his small hands folded tidily on his knees. When Avery said nothing he declared brightly, "I had a ticking off from Carol, you know, Adrian; breaking up the young home."

Haldane smiled as if it were an amusing notion. "I'm sure there's no danger of that," he said.

"He made a great hit with Smiley, too: we must see they don't poach him away!"

Nineteen.

When the train reached Kalkstadt, Leiser waited until the other pa.s.sengers had left the platform. An elderly guard collected the tickets. He seemed a kindly man.