A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

imposter. But then as they sat down to face each other at Leyla’s table, Brue saw the film of sweat on Issa’s forehead, and when he looked lower he saw that his hands had remet each other, wrist-to-wrist on the table, as though waiting to be chained. He saw the fine gold chain round his wrist, and the talismanic golden Koran hanging from it to protect him. And he knew that he was looking at a destroyed child.
    But he remained master of his feelings. Should he count himself inferior to somebody merely because that somebody has been tortured? Must he suspend judgment for the same reason? A point of principle was involved here.
    “Well now, and welcome,” he began brightly, in a carefully well-learned Russian, curiously comparable with Issa’s own. “I gather we have little time. So we must be brief but we must be effective. I may call you Issa?”
    “Agreed, sir.” The smile again, followed by a glance for Melik at his window and a dropping of the eyes away from Annabel, who had taken up a place in the far corner of the room, where she sat sideways, with a folder set chastely on her averted knees.
    “And you will call me nothing,” said Brue. “I believe that is agreed. Yes?”
    “It is agreed, sir,” Issa responded with alacrity. “All your wishes are agreed! You permit me to make a statement, please?”
    “Of course.”
    “It will be short!”
    “Please.”
    “I wish only to be a medical student. I wish to live a life of order and assist all mankind for the glory of Allah.”
    “Yes, well, that’s very admirable and I’m sure we shall come to that,” said Brue and, as a sign of his businesslike intentions, drew a leather-backed notepad from one inside pocket, and a gold roller-ball pen from another. “But meanwhile, let’s get down a few elementary facts, if you don’t mind. Starting with your full names.”
    But this evidently wasn’t what Issa wanted to hear.
    “Sir!”
    “Yes, Issa.”
    “You have read the work of the great French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre, sir?”
    “I can’t say I have.”
    “Like Sartre, I have a nostalgia for the future. When I have a future, I shall have no past. I shall have only God and my future.”
    Brue felt Annabel’s eyes on him. When he couldn’t see them, he still felt them. Or thought he did.
    “However, tonight we are obliged to address the present,” he countered glossily. “So why don’t you just let me have your full names?”—pen poised to receive them.
    “Salim,” Issa answered after a moment’s indecision.
    “Any others?”
    “Mahmoud.”
    “So Issa Salim Mahmoud.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And are those your given names or names that you have chosen for yourself?”
    “They are chosen of God, sir.”
    “Quite so.” Brue smiled to himself deliberately, partly to ease the tension, partly to show he was in command. “Then let me ask you this one, may I? We are talking Russian. You are Russian. Before God chose your present names, did you have a Russian name? And a Russian patronymic to go with it? What names, for example, might one find on your birth certificate, I wonder?”
    Having consulted Annabel with lowered eyes, Issa plunged a skeletal hand inside his overcoat, then his shirtfront, and drew out a grimy purse of chamois leather. And from it two faded press cuttings, which he passed across the table.
    “Karpov,” Brue ruminated aloud when he had read them. “Karpov is who? Karpov is your family name? Why do you give me these pieces of newspaper?”
    “It is not material, sir. Please. I cannot,” Issa muttered, shaking his sweated head. His hands had rejoined each other. His long thin fingers were fondling the gold Koran at his wrist.
    “Well, for me I’m afraid it is material,” Brue said, as kindly as he was able without relinquishing the upper hand. “I’m afraid it’s very material indeed. Are you telling me that Colonel Grigori Borisovich Karpov is, or was, a relative of yours? Is that what you are telling me?” He