The Mission Song: A Novel by John le Carré

Author:John le Carré [Carré, John le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 0316016748
Amazon: B000MAH6C8
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2006-09-02T05:00:00+00:00

11

Where the hell are they, Sam? I’m getting a loud silence.

I’m checking, dear. Be patient.

I try to be patient. Unintelligible garble while Sam’s voice consults Anton’s, then Philip’s.

We’ve found Franco.

Where?

In the royal apartments. Having a knees-up with the Mwangaza.

Go there? I enquire too eagerly.

On no account thank you, Brian. They’ll do very nicely without you.

Over my headset I pick up Haj’s crocs slapping down the walkway, accompanied by a second pair of footsteps which I tentatively assign to Dieudonné. Sam immediately confirms the identification: watchers report that Haj has grabbed Dieudonné by the elbow and is literally leading him up the garden path. Better still, Haj has put a finger to his lips, commanding Dieudonné’s silence until they are clear of the house. My spirits soar. There is no finer music to your part-time sound-thief’s ear than: ‘Let’s go somewhere where we can’t be overheard,’ or ‘Wait where you are while I get to a public phone box.’

Yet even in my excitement I feel a surge of sympathy for Dieudonné who, having been tugged in one direction by Maxie’s grand design, is now being tugged in the other by the recalcitrant Haj.

The two men have reached the gazebo steps and started climbing. As they climb Haj starts to dance. And as he dances he begins speaking in bursts: a rap of the crocs, a rap of speech. Sound-thieves hear like the blind. But sometimes they also see like the blind, which is what I’m doing now: bright and clear as day in my blind man’s eye. I see Haj’s slime-green crocs skimming the stone steps, slappety-whack, slappety-whack. I see his lacquered forelock bucking, his slender body arched backwards, hands trailing like silk scarves against the clear blue sky while he keeps his voice below the level of his slapping crocs. If his body is a wild man’s, his voice is a steady man’s, and the more quietly he talks, the more din he makes with his feet, and the more he flings his head around in the course of a single sentence as he feeds the mikes, one garbled morsel down each little throat.

What language is he speaking? His native Shi which Dieudonné also happens to speak. So what he’s doing—or thinks he’s doing—with a little improvisation, and a dash of French where he needs it—he’s using a language that nobody overhearing them could possibly understand—except I can.

So I’m coming after him. I’m right in there with them. I’m coming after him so hard that when I press my eyes tight shut I can see him with my virtual eye. When Haj skips away, and Dieudonné trudges after him, spluttering his half cough, Salvo the top interpreter is there beside them with his headphones and his notepad. When Haj skips back, Dieudonné stands motionless—and so do I. Up another step, and Haj leaps onto the grass, and so do I. And Haj knows I’m there. I know he knows. He’s playing Grandmother’s Footsteps with me, and I’m playing them with him.

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