'Be quiet,' said Bradfield. 'Be quiet.'
'You rotten bastard,' Turner hissed. 'You'll kill him. He told you he'd found the proof; he told you what it was and he asked you to help him, and you put Siebkron on to him for his trouble. You were his friend and you did that.'
'He's crazy,' Praschko whispered. 'Don't you realise he's crazy? You didn't see him back in those days. You never saw him back with Karfeld in the cellar. You think those boys worked you over? Karfeld couldn't even speak: "Talk! Talk!", Praschko's eyes were screwed up very tight. 'After we saw those bodies in the field... They were tied together. They'd been tied together before they were gassed. He went crazy. I said to him: "Listen, it's not your fault. It's not your fault you survived!" Did he show you the buttons, maybe? The money from the camp? You never saw that either, did you? You never went out with him and a couple of girls to have a drink? You never saw him play with the wooden buttons to start a fight? He's crazy I tell you.' The recollection moved him to despair. 'I said to him, sitting here: "Come on, let's go. Who the hell ever built Jerusalem in Germany? Don't eat your heart out, come and screw some girls!" I said, "Listen! We got to get hold of our minds and press them in or we all go crazy." He's a monk. A crazy monk that won't forget. What do you think the world is? A damn playground for a lot of crazy moralists? Sure I told Siebkron. You're a clever boy. But you got to learn to forget as well. Christ, if the British can't who can?'
There was shouting as they entered the lobby. Two students in leather coats had broken the cordon at the door and were standing on the stairs, fighting with the janitors. An elderly deputy was holding a handkerchief to his mouth and the blood was running over his wrist. 'Nazis!' someone was shouting. 'Nazis!' But he was pointing to a student on the balcony and the student was waving a red flag.
'Back to the restaurant,' Bradfield said. 'We can get out the other side.'
The restaurant was suddenly empty. Drawn or repelled by the fuss in the lobby, deputies and visitors had vanished in their chosen directions. Bradfield was not running, but striding at a long military pace. They were in the arcade. A leather shop offered black attaché cases in fine box calf. In the next window a barber was working up a lather on the face of an invisible customer.
'Bradfield, you must hear me: my God, can't I even warn you what they are saying?'
Saab was dreadfully out of breath. His portly body was heaving under his greasy jacket; tears of sweat lay in the pouches under his yellow eyes. Allerton, his face crimson under his black mane, peered over his shoulder. They drew back into a doorway. At the end of the corridor, calm had descended on the lobby.
'What who is saying?'
Allerton answered for him: 'All Bonn, old boy. The whole bloody paper mill.'
'Listen. There are whispers. Listen. Fantastic what they are saying. You know what happened at Hanover? You know why they rioted? They are whispering it in all the cafes: the delegates; Karfeld's men are telling it. Already the rumours are all over Bonn. They have been instructed to say nothing; it is all a fantastic secret.'
He glanced quickly up and down the arcade.
'It's the best for years,' said Allerton. 'Even for this doorp.'
'Why they broke the line at the front and ran like mad dogs for the Library? Those boys who came on the grey buses? Somebody shot at Karfeld. In the middle of the music: shot at him from the window of the Library. Some friend of the woman, the librarian: Eich. She worked for the British in Berlin. She was an émigrée, she changed her name to Eich. She let him in to shoot from the window. Afterwards she told it all to Siebkron before she died. Eich. The bodyguard saw him fire, Karfeld's bodyguard. In the middle of the music! They saw the fellow shooting from the window and ran to catch him. The bodyguard, Bradfield, that came in the grey buses! Listen, Bradfield! Listen what they say! They found the bullet, a pistol bullet from an English pistol. You see now? The English are assassinating Karfeld: that is the fantastic rumour. You must stop them saying it; talk to Siebkron. Karfeld is terrified; he is a great coward. Listen: that is why he is so careful, that is why he is building everywhere such a damn Schaffott. How do I say Schaffott, for God's sake?'
'Scaffold,' said Turner.
The crowd from the lobby swept them outwards into the fresh air.
'Scaffold! An absolute secret, Bradfield! For your own information!' They heard him cry, 'You must not quote me, for God's sake. Siebkron would be fantastically angry!'
'Rest assured, Karl-Heinz,' the even voice replied, absurdly formal in the turmoil, 'your confidence will be respected.'
'Old boy,' Allerton put his head close to Turner's ear. He had not shaved, the black locks were tipped with sweat. 'What's happened to Leo these days? Seems to have faded all away. They say old Eich was quite a swinger in her day... used to work with the scalphunters up in Hamburg. What have they done to your face, old boy? Close her legs too soon, did she?'
'There's no story,' Bradfield said.
'Not yet there isn't,' said Allerton, 'old boy.'
'There never will be.'
'They say he bloody nearly got him in Bonn the night before the Hanover rally. Just wasn't quite sure enough of his man. Karfeld was walking away from a secret conference; walking to the pick-up point and Leo damn nearly got him then. Siebkron's chicks turned up just in time.'
Along the embankment the motionless columns waited in patient echelons. Their black flags barely lifted in the poor breeze. Across the river, behind a line of blue trees, distant factory chimneys puffed their smoke lazily into the drab morning light. Small boats, dabs of brilliance, lay marooned on the grey grass bank. To Turner's left stood an old boathouse which no one had yet pulled down. A notice on it proclaimed it the property of the Institute of Physical Exercise of the University of Bonn.
They stood on the bank, side by side. The palest mist, like breath upon a glass, drew in the brown horizons and filled the near bridge. There were no sounds but the echoes of absent things, the cry of lost gulls and the moan of the lost barges, the inevitable whine of unseen drills. There were no people but the grey shadows along the waterfront and the unrelated tread of feet; it was not raining, but sometimes they felt the moisture in the mist, like the prickling of blood upon a heated skin. There were no ships, but funeral hulks drifting towards the Gods of the North; and there was no smell but the inland smell of coal and industries which were not present.
'Karfeld is hidden until tonight,' Bradfield said. 'Siebkron has seen to that. They'll expect him to try again this evening. And he will.' He went over it again, rehearsing it as if it were a formula.
'Until the demonstration, Karfeld is hidden. After the demonstration, Karfeld will again be hidden. Harting's own resources are severely limited; he cannot reckon to be at large much longer. He will try tonight.'
'Aickman's dead,' said Turner. 'They killed her.'
'Yes. He will want to try tonight.'
'Make Siebkron cancel the rally.'
'If it were in my power I would. If it were in Siebkron's power, he would.' He indicated the columns. 'It's too late.'
Turner stared at him.
'No, I cannot see Karfeld cancelling the rally, however frightened he is,' Bradfield continued, as if a moment's doubt had crossed his mind. 'The rally is the culmination of his campaign in the provinces. He has organised it to coincide with the most critical moment in Brussels. He is already halfway to success.'
He turned and walked slowly along the footpath towards the car park. The grey columns watched him silently.
'Go back to the Embassy. Take a taxi. From now on there's to be a total ban on movement. No one is to leave the Embassy perimeter on pain of dismissal. Tell de Lisle. And tell him what has happened and put aside the Karfeld papers for my return. Anything that incriminates him: the investigation report, the thesis... anything from the Glory Hole that tells the tale. I shall be back by early afternoon.'
He opened the car door.
'What's the bargain with Siebkron?' Turner said. 'What's the small print?'
'There is no bargain. Either they destroy Harting, or he will destroy Karfeld. In either case I have to disown him. That is the only thing that matters. Is there something you would prefer me to do? Do you see a way out? I shall inform Siebkron that order must be restored. I shall give him my oath that we had no part in Harting's work, and no knowledge of it. Can you suggest an alternative solution? I would be grateful.'
He started the engine. The grey columns stirred with interest, pleased by the white Jaguar.
'Bradfield!'
'Well.'
'I beg you. Five minutes. I've got a card to play as well. Something we've never mentioned. Bradfield!'
Without a word, Bradfield opened the door and got out. 'You say we have no part in it. We have. He's our product, you know that, we made him what he was, crushed him between all those worlds... we ground him down into himself, made him see things no one should ever see, hear things that... we sent him on that private journey... you don't know what it's like down there. I do! Bradfield, listen! We owe him. He knew that.'
'All of us are owed. Very few of us are paid.'
'You want to destroy him! You want to make him nothing! You want to disown him because he was her lover! Because-'
'My God,' Bradfield said softly, 'if that were the task I had set myself I would have to kill more than thirty-two. Is that all you wanted to tell me?'
'Wait! Brussels... the Market... all this. Next week it's gold, the week after it's the Warsaw pact. We'd join the bloody Salvation Army if it pleased the Americans. What does it matter about the names?... You see it clearer than any of us: the drift. Why do you go on with it like this? Why don't you say stop?'
'What am I to do about Harting? Tell me what else I can do but disown him? You know us here now. Crises are academic. Scandals are not. Haven't you realised that only appearances matter?'
Turner searched frantically about him. 'It's not true! You can't be so tied to the surface of things.'
'What else is there when the underneath is rotten? Break the surface and we sink. That's what Harting has done. I am a hypocrite,' he continued simply. 'I'm a great believer in hypocrisy. It's the nearest we ever get to virtue. It's a statement of what we ought to be. Like religion, like art, like the law, like marriage. I serve the appearance of things. It is the worst of systems; it is better than the others. That is my profession and that is my philosophy. And unlike yourself,' he added, 'I did not contract to serve a powerful nation, least of all a virtuous one. All power corrupts. The loss of power corrupts even more. We thank an American for that advice. It's quite true. We are a corrupt nation, and we need all the help we can get. That is lamentable and, I confess, occasionally humiliating. However, I would rather fail as a power than survive by impotence. I would rather be vanquished than neutral. I would rather be English than Swiss. And unlike you, I expect nothing. I expect no more from institutions than I expect from people. You have no suggestion then? I am disappointed.'
'Bradfield, I know her. I know you, and I know what you feel! You hate him! You hate him more than you dare admit. You hate him for feeling: for loving, even for hating. You hate him for deceiving and for being honest. For waking her. For putting you to shame. You hate him for the time she spent on him... for the thought, the dream she had of him!'
'But you have no suggestion. I imagine your five minutes are over. He has offended,' he added casually, as if passing the topic once more in review. 'Yes. He has. Not as much against myself as you might suppose. But against the order that results from chaos; against the built-in moderation of an aimless society. He had no business to hate Karfeld and none to... He had no business to remember. If you and I have a purpose at all any more, it is to save the world from such presumptions.'
'Of all of you - Listen! - Of all of you he's the only one who's real, the only one who believed, and acted! For you, it's a sterile, rotten game, a family word game, that's all; just play. But Leo's involved! He knows what he wants and he's gone to get it!'
'Yes. That alone should be enough to condemn him.' He had forgotten Turner now. 'There's no room for his kind any more. That's the one thing we have learnt, thank God.' He stared at the river. 'We've learnt that even nothing is a pretty tender flower. You speak as if there were those who contribute and those who do not. As if we were all working for the day when we are no longer needed; when the world could pack up and cultivate its allotment. There is no product. There is no final day. This is the life we work for. Now. At this moment. Every night, as I go to sleep, I say to myself: another day achieved. Another day added to the unnatural life of a world on its deathbed. And if I never relax if I never lift my eye, we may run on for another hundred years. Yes.' He was talking to the river. 'Our policy is that tide, taken at its three-inch flood. Three inches of freedom up and down the bank. That's the limit of our action. Beyond it is anarchy, and all the romantic clap-trap of protest and conscience. We are all looking for the wider freedom, every one of us. It doesn't exist. As long as we accept that, we can dream at will. Harting should never have gone down there in the first place. And you should have returned to London when I told you. The Statute has made a law of forgetting. He broke it. Praschko is quite right: Harting has broken the law of moderation.'
'We're not automatons! We're born free, I believe that! We can't control the processes of our own minds!'
'Good Lord, whoever told you that?' He faced Turner now and the small tears showed. 'I have controlled the processes of my own mind for eighteen years of marriage and twenty years of diplomacy. I have spent half of my life learning not to look, and the other half learning not to feel. Do you think I cannot also learn to forget? God, sometimes I am bowed down by the things I do not know! So why the devil couldn't he forget as well? Do you think I take pleasure in what I have to do? Do you think he does not challenge me to do it? He set all this in motion, not I! His damned immodesty-'