The Innocent Read Online Free PDF

After long discussion, the proposed route was abandoned. Sooner or later the Russians were going to discover the tunnel. There was no point in handing them a propaganda victory in the story ofAmericans desecrating German graves. And the sergeants would not care for coffins disintegrating above their heads. So the tunnel struck out to the north of the graveyard. But then, in the first month of digging, they had run into water. The engineers said it was a perched water table. The sergants said come down and smell for yourselves. By trying to avoid the graveyard, the planners had routed the tunnel right through the drainage field of the establishment’s own septic tank. It was too late to change course.
    “You wouldn’t believe what we were burrowing through, and it was all our very own. A putrefying corpse would have been light relief. And you should have heard the tempers then.”
    They ate lunch in the canteen, a bright room with rows of Formica tables and indoor plants under the windows. Glass ordered steak and french fries for them both. These were the biggest slabs of meat Leonard had ever seen outside a butcher’s. His overhung the plate, and the following day his jaw still ached. He caused consternation when he asked for tea. A search was about to be mounted for the teabags the cook was certain were in the supplies. Leonard pleaded a change of mind. He had the same as Glass, freezing lemonade, which he drank out of the bottle like his host.
    Afterward, as they were walking to the car, Leonard asked if he could take home circuit diagrams for the Ampex recording machines. He could see himself curled up on the Army issue sofa, reading in the lamplight while the afternoon gloom settled on the city. They were on their way out of the building.
    Glass was genuinely irritated. He stopped to make his point. “Are you crazy? Nothing, nothing to do with this work ever goes home with you. Is that understood? Not diagrams, notes, not even a fucking screwdriver. You got that?”
    Leonard blinked at the obscenity. He took work home in England, even sat with it on his lap, listening to the wireless with his parents. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Yes, of course. Sorry.”
    As they stepped outside, Glass glanced around to make certainno one was close. “This operation is costing the government, the U.S. government, millions of dollars. You guys are making a useful contribution, especially with the vertical tunneling. You’ve also supplied the light bulbs. But you know something?”
    They were standing on either side of the Beetle, looking at each other over its roof. Leonard felt obliged to make his face quizzical. He did not know something.
    Glass had yet to unlock the driver’s door. “I’ll tell you. It’s all political. You think we couldn’t lay those taps ourselves? You think we don’t have amplifiers of our own? It’s for politics that we’re letting you in on this. We’re supposed to have a special relationship with you guys, that’s why.”
    They got in the car. Leonard longed to be alone. The effort of being polite was stifling, and aggression was, for him, emotionally impossible.
    He said, “It’s very kind of you, Bob. Thank you.” The irony fell dead.
    “Don’t thank me,” Glass said as he turned the ignition. “Just don’t screw up on security. Watch what you say, watch who you’re with. Remember your compatriots, Burgess and Maclean.”
    Leonard turned aside to look out of his window. He felt the heat of anger in his face and across his neck. They passed the sentry hut and shuddered out onto the open road. Glass moved on to other topics—good places to eat, the high rate of suicide, the latest kidnapping, the local obsession with the occult. Leonard was sulkily monosyllabic. They passed the refugee shacks, the new buildings, and soon they were back among the devastation and reconstruction. Glass insisted on driving him all the way to Platanenallee. He wanted to learn the route, and he