The Little Drummer Girl: A Novel by le Carré John

Author:le Carré, John
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

The hotel in Thessalonika was an antique Edwardian pile with floodlit domes and an air of circumstance. Their suite was on the top floor, with a children’s alcove, a twenty-foot bathroom, and scratched twenties furniture like home. She had put on the light but he ordered her to switch it off. He had had food sent up, but neither of them had touched it. There was a bay window and he stood in it with his back to her, gazing down into the green square and the moonlit waterfront beyond it. Charlie sat on the bed. The room was filled with stray Greek music from the street.

“So, Charlie.”

“So, Charlie,” she echoed quietly, waiting for the explanation that was owed to her.

“You have pledged yourself to my battle. But what battle? How is it fought? Where? I have talked of the cause, I have talked of action: we believe, therefore we do. I have told you that terror is theatre, and that sometimes the world has to be lifted up by its ears before it will listen to justice.”

She shifted restlessly.

“Repeatedly, in my letters, in our long discussions, I have promised to bring you to the point of action. But I have prevaricated. I have delayed. Until tonight. Perhaps I do not trust you. Or perhaps I have learned to love you too much and do not wish to put you in the front line. You do not know which of these is true, but sometimes you have felt hurt by my secrecy. As your letters reveal.”

The letters, she thought again; always the letters.

“So how, in practical terms, do you become my little soldier? That is what we are discussing tonight. Here. In that bed you are sitting on. On the last night of our Greek honeymoon. Maybe our last night ever, for you can never be sure that you will see me again.”

He turned to face her, nothing rushed. It was as if he had bound his body in the same careful bonds that held his voice. “You weep a lot,” he remarked. “I think you are weeping tonight. As you hold me. Pledging yourself to me for all eternity. Yes? You weep, and while you weep, I tell you: ‘It is time.’ Tomorrow you shall have your chance. Tomorrow, in the morning, you shall fulfil the vow you swore to me by the great Khalil’s gun. I am ordering you—asking you”—carefully, almost majestically, he went back to the window—“to drive that Mercedes car across the Yugoslav border, northward and into Austria. Where it will be collected from you. Alone. Will you do that? What do you say?”

On the surface, she felt nothing beyond a concern to match his apparent barrenness of feeling. No fear, no sense of danger, no surprise: she shut them all out with a bang. It’s now, she thought. Charlie, you’re on. A driving job. Away you go. She was staring straight at him, hard-jawed, the way she stared at people when she lied.

“Well—how do you respond to him?” he enquired, jollying her slightly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.