A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré Read Free Book Online

would consider normal clients, Mr. Brue.”
    “Really? I’m not at all sure I’ve met a normal client.” A joke that she again refused to share.
    “Our clients are basically more like what Frantz Fanon called the wretched of the earth. You know the book?”
    “Heard of, but not actually read, I’m afraid.”
    “They’re effectively stateless. They’re frequently in trauma. They’re as frightened of us as they are of the world they have entered and the world they have left behind.”
    “I see.” He didn’t.
    “My client believes, rightly or wrongly, that you are his salvation, Mr. Brue. You’re why he came to Hamburg. Thanks to you, he will be able to remain in Germany, obtain legal status and study. Without you he will return to hell.”
    Brue considered an “Oh dear” or a “How very sad” but meeting her unyielding gaze, thought better of it.
    “He believes he has only to mention Mr. Lipizzaner and present you with a certain reference number—referencing who or what I do not know, and perhaps he doesn’t either—and abracadabra, all doors will be open to him.”
    “May I ask how long he has been here?”
    “Call it a couple of weeks.”
    “And he took this long to get in touch with me, although I was the reason for his coming, allegedly? I find that a little hard to understand.”
    “He arrived here in bad shape and terrified, not knowing a single human being. It’s his first time in the West. He speaks no word of German.”
    He started to say “I see” again, but changed his mind.
    “Also, for reasons I cannot begin to unravel, he detests the fact that this approach to you is in any way necessary. Half the time at least, he would prefer to remain in denial and starve. Unfortunately, given his situation here, you’re his only chance.”
     
    It was Brue’s turn, but for what? When you’re in a hole, don’t dig, Tommy, just put up more defenses. His father again.
    “Forgive me, Frau Richter,” he began respectfully, though in no way conceding he had done anything requiring her forgiveness. “Who or what precisely gave your client the information—the impression, I prefer to say—that my bank could perform this miracle for him?”
    “It’s not only the bank, Mr. Brue. It’s you personally.”
    “I’m afraid I’m somewhat puzzled as to how that can be. I was asking you about the source of his information.”
    “Maybe a lawyer told him. Another of us, ” she added self-deprecatingly.
    He selected a different approach. “And in what language, may I ask, did you elicit this information from your client?”
    “About Mr. Lipizzaner?”
    “About other things too. My name, for one.”
    Her young face was hard as rock. “My client would say your question was immaterial.”
    “May I ask whether there were intermediaries present when he instructed you? A qualified interpreter, for instance? Or are you able to communicate with him directly?”
    The hank of hair had once more escaped her beret, but this time she grabbed hold of it and twisted it while she scowled round the room. “Russian,” she said—and with a sudden surge of interest in him: “Do you speak Russian?”
    “Tolerably. Quite well, actually,” he replied.
    The admission seemed to trigger some kind of female self-awareness in her, for she smiled and, for the first time, faced him directly.
    “Where did you learn it?”
    “I? Oh, Paris, I’m afraid. Very decadent.”
    “ Paris! Why Paris?”
    “Sent there by my father. It was something he insisted on. Three years at the Sorbonne and a lot of bearded émigré poets. How about you?”
    The moment of connection had passed. She was delving in her rucksack. “He’s given me a reference,” she said. “Some special number that will chime Mr. Lipizzaner’s bells. Maybe it chimes yours too.”
    She ripped a page off her legal pad and gave it to him. Six digits, handwritten, he assumed by herself. Beginning with 77, which was how Lipizzaners were denoted.
    “Does it