The Mission Song by John le Carré Read Free Book Online Page A

series of ‘test-interviews’ conducted above ground by an enigmatic body calling itself the Linguistic Audit Committee, that he had unveiled to me the full majesty of the Official Secrets Act plus its many threatened punishments, first by reading me a homily which he must have delivered a hundred times already, then by presenting me with a printed form with my name and date and place of birth electronically pre-entered, and addressing me over his reading spectacles while I signed it.
    ‘Now you won’t go getting big ideas, will you, son?’ he said, in a tone which irresistibly recalled Brother Michael’s. ‘You’re a bright lad, the sharpest pencil in the box if all they tell me is true. You’ve a cluster of funny languages up your sleeve and a Grade A professional reputation that no fine Service such as this one can ignore.’
    I wasn’t sure which fine Service he was alluding to but he had already informed me that he was a Senior Servant of the Crown, and this should be sufficient for me. Neither did I ask him which of my languages he considered funny, although I might have done if I hadn’t been on such a cloud, because sometimes my respect for people flies out of the window of its own accord.
    ‘That doesn’t make you the centre of the universe, however, so kindly don’t think it does,’ he went on, still on the subject of my qualifications. ‘You’ll be a PTA, that’s a Part-time Assistant, and you can’t get lower than that. You’re secret but you’re fringe, and fringe is what you’ll remain unless you’re offered tenure. I’m not saying some of the best shows aren’t fringe, because they are. Better plays and better actors in my wife Mary’s view. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Salvo?’
    ‘I think so, sir.’
    I use ‘sir’ too much and am aware of it, just as I said
Mzee
too much when I was a child. But in the Sanctuary everyone who wasn’t a Brother was a sir.
    ‘Then repeat to me what I’ve just told you, please, so that we can both be clear in our minds,’ he suggested, availing himself of a technique later employed by Hannah to break the bad news to Jean-Pierre.
    ‘That I shouldn’t be carried away. I shouldn’t get too—’ I was going to say ‘excited’ but checked myself in time. ‘Enthusiastic.’
    ‘I’m telling you to douse that eager gleam in your eye, son. Henceforth and for evermore. Because if I see it again, I’ll worry about you. We’re believers but we’re not zealots. Your unusual talents aside, what we’re offering you here is normal meat-and-potatoes drudgery, the same as you’d be doing for any client on any wet afternoon, except you’re doing it with Queen and country in mind, which is what you and I both like.’
    I assured him—while careful not to appear over-enthusiastic—that love of country ranked high on my list of personal favourites.
    ‘There’s a couple of other differences, I’ll grant you,’ he went on, contradicting an objection I hadn’t made. ‘One difference is, we’ll not be giving you much in the way of a background briefing before you put on your headphones. You’ll not know who’s talking to who or where, or what they’re talking about, or how we came by it. Or not if we can help it, you won’t, because that wouldn’t be secure. And if you
do
come up with any little suppositions of your own, I advise you to keep them to yourself. That’s what you’ve signed up to, Salvo, that’s what secret means, and if we catch you breaking the rules you’ll be out on your ear with a black mark. And our black marks don’t wash out like other people’s,’ he added with satisfaction, although I couldn’t help wondering whether he was making an unconscious allusion to my skin. ‘Do you want to tear up that piece of paper and forget you came here?—because this is your last chance.’
    Upon which I swallowed and said, ‘No, sir. I’m
in
—really,’ with as much cool as I could muster, and he shook my hand