A Small Town in Germany

A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré

A Small Town in Germany opens in Bonn, the provisional West German capital, amid a volatile political climate stirred by Karfeld, a right-wing nationalist agitator whose Movement is staging mass rallies against Britain's entry into the Common Market and against the Bonn government itself. Late one night, a small, dark-eyed man in English tweed pursues a plumper man through the city's streets; the plump man escapes into a waiting car, and the pursuer, questioned by a policeman, gives only evasive answers before the policeman, recalling a secret notice and photograph, realizes the significance of what he has seen. At the British Embassy, the staff grapple with the escalating Karfeld crisis. Arthur Meadowes, the Registrar, and Cork, a cypher clerk, drive through farmers' protests to work. In the Saturday Chancery meeting led by Head of Chancery Rawley Bradfield, with the languid Peter de Lisle and the shambling Mickie Crabbe present, attention turns to an empty chair: Leo Harting, a Second Secretary handling Claims and Consular work, is missing. Bradfield and de Lisle meet with Ludwig Siebkron of the Ministry of the Interior, who unexpectedly imposes a curfew on all Embassy staff, citing security concerns tied to Karfeld's hostility toward Britain. The following day, Harting fails to appear to play the organ at Chapel, and Meadowes discovers that Harting has vanished entirely—uncontacted, his house undisturbed—and that a highly sensitive Green file of "Conversations Formal and Informal" has also disappeared. In London, Alan Turner, a blunt, abrasive security investigator, is pulled off other work and briefed by his superior, Lumley: Harting, an obscure, unvetted temporary official of refugee background with a murky past (an uncle convicted of an offense involving little girls, a broken engagement to a Margaret Aickman, a hushed-up fight in Cologne, and an old friendship with the leftist-turned-politician Harry Praschko), has apparently defected, taking some forty-three classified files and the Green file with him. Turner is sent to Bonn under strict instructions to work quietly, since the Embassy's priority is preserving German goodwill ahead of the Brussels negotiations, not exposing a scandal. In Bonn, Turner clashes with Bradfield, who reveals that Harting, initially sidelined as a minor claims officer after Rhine Army's withdrawal, gradually made himself indispensable—taking over minor Chancery duties, then the Personalities Survey, then the Destruction programme for old files—thereby gaining unsupervised access to Registry's most sensitive material. Bradfield coldly characterizes Harting as trivial and deceitful, careful never to express sympathy. Turner interrogates Chancery Guard John Gaunt, who describes Harting's gentleness, his troubled childhood, his growing preoccupation with Fascism and memory, and his habit of working alone in Registry at night. Meadowes, more sympathetic, recounts how Harting ingratiated himself into the Exiles Motoring Club, befriended Meadowes and his fragile daughter Myra, and became "obsessive"—fixated for weeks on old statute files from the zone-handover years—before abruptly seeming to find peace the Monday before his disappearance, only to be caught improperly handling the Green file's dispatch box days later. Turner lunches with de Lisle, who offers a sympathetic, melancholy portrait of Harting as a lonely, devoted man seeking something real amid Bonn's rootless diplomatic life, while describing the strange, intensifying pressure Siebkron is placing on the British Embassy and the ambiguous, nationalist appeal of Karfeld's Movement. Their conversation is interrupted by the cynical journalist Sam Allerton, who mocks Turner as a security "bloodhound" sent to cover up past scandals and claims, to their skepticism, that West Germany is about to pivot toward Moscow. As Turner presses to see Harting's house—currently sealed off by German police—the investigation points toward Harting having fled with the files under circumstances Turner suspects were provoked by some tip-off, even as the full scope of his motives and whereabouts remains unresolved.

By John le Carré · First published 1968 · Genre: Espionage Thriller, Political Thriller, Literary Fiction · 19 chapters · 109,169 words

First lines

Way over there in a / Small town in Germany / There lived a shoemaker / Schumann was his name / Ich bin ein Musikant / Ich bin für das Vaterland / I have a big bass drum / And this is how I play!

—A drinking song sung in British military messes in Occupied Germany, with obscene variations, to the tune of the ‘Marche Militaire’.

Genres

Tags

spy fiction · espionage · Cold War · West Germany · Bonn · political thriller · mystery · defection · right-wing extremism · fascism · mass rally · political unrest

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A Small Town in Germany is listed on Textopian as a novel by John le Carré, dated 1968 CE.

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