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    A Most Wanted Man
    A Most Wanted Man
    A Most Wanted Man
    Ebook413 pages7 hours

    A Most Wanted Man

    By John le Carré

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    About this ebook

    Now a major film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, and Robin Wright—the acclaimed bestselling novel about spies in “The War on Terror.”

    A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.

    Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client’s survival becomes more important to her than her own career—or safety. In pursuit of Issa’s mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.

    Annabel, Issa, and Brue form an unlikely alliance—and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, sensing a sure kill in the “War on Terror,” the rival spies of Germany, England, and America converge upon the innocents.

    Thrilling, compassionate, with characters you’ll never forget, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateOct 7, 2008
    ISBN9781439123218
    Author

    John le Carré

    John le Carré (1931 – 2020), born David John Moore Cornwell, was a British-Irish author. He spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld; at sixteen, he found refuge first at the University of Bern, then Oxford. After graduating with honors, he taught at Eton for two years before he was recruited into British Intelligence. In 1961, while still an MI6 agent, he published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, which introduced the world to George Smiley. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, spent 32 weeks atop the New York Times bestseller list and earned him a reputation as one of the world’s preeminent spy novelists. Though he declined all British-based honors and prizes, he accepted the Premio Malaparte (Italy) in 1988, the title of Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 2005, and the Goethe Medal (Germany) in 2011. Over the course of sixty years, he published over two dozen novels that would come to define an age; his final novel, Silverview, was published posthumously in 2021.

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    Reviews for A Most Wanted Man

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    • 4/5
      A Most Wanted Man by John Le CarreA young Russian man is smuggled into Germany (Hamburg). He claims to be Issa a Muslim. He has a large amount of cash, drawing some suspicions of his true identity. Annabel, a lawyer is trying to help him from being deported. But the mystery surrounding Issa compels her to dig deed, as danger closes in.The story moves at a steady pace, with well rounded characters, rich dialog and vivid details. Set in Europe with spies, secrets and danger I was drawn into the story. Overall I enjoyed A Most Wanted Man and feel others will as well.
    • 4/5
      First Le Carre novel read. Well written w not a lot of action. Spoke directly to our current time of giving cart blanche to security forces and not recognizing shades of gray.
    • 4/5
      Le Carre tackles the territoriality and ethics of modern terror investigations with this story, set in Hamburg. He creates an intricate investigation and espionage operation that comes to a jarring end -- making a mockery of one spymaster's promise to a source: "We won't tell you all the truth, dear, we can't. But whatever we do tell you will be true."
    • 3/5
      A Most Wanted Man is a present-day spy thriller set in Hamburg, Germany. The titular man is a Chechen, possibly a terrorist, certainly once a tortured prisoner, who has entered Germany illegally, revealed himself as the heir of a large amount of dirty money, and is thus wanted by the intelligence agents of three countries: Germany, Britain and the U.S.This was my first le Carre, an author who I am certainly familiar with, and I don't think this was the best one to start out with, to be honest. Le Carre's writing is clear, precise, and very readable, but this story was lacking in excitement and genuine characters. The only character who I could truly empathize with was the banker, who was having some sort of midlife crisis and seemed to only muddle through the intrigue he found himself caught up in. I couldn't understand the fascination that Issa, the wanted man, held for all the people he met, and the female lawyer who inexplicably falls in love with him seems two-dimensional in her flatness. Most frustrating of all, the main character, the disillusioned German spy, was a cipher to me, and I felt like understanding him was the key to understanding the book. On top of that frustration, I thought that the overall tone of the book was anti-American and way too black-and-white. I would have appreciated more nuance when dealing with the modern-day war on terror.I'm not sure if I'll try another of le Carre's books. This one seemed so promising, but ultimately disappoints. I will probably see the movie adaptation, anyway, since it is Philip Seymour Hoffman's last film.Book club pick (2014).
    • 5/5
      A page-turner, as most of his books.
    • 4/5
      John le Carre bases A Most Wanted Man on a most unlikely premise. To depict the extent of Western xenophobia and scapegoating spawned by 9/11, he chooses to set this spy novel not in the country that was struck by the terrorists, or in the nations targeted by the ensuing War on Terror, but in the country that served as a way station for several key 9/11 terrorists. Hamburg, Germany, a city known for its openness to foreigners, is infiltrated by a fractured young man from Chechnya who may (or may not) pose the next grave threat to Western civilization. Young Issa's improbable entry into Germany, tenuous connection to Islamic radicals, and inherited right to a large secret bank account held by British-owned Brue Freres, place him in the crosshairs of German, British and United States intelligence agencies, each with its own mysterious agenda. When young civil rights attorney Annabel petitions bank owner Tommy Brue to release the secret funds and help protect Issa from deportation, Annabel and Tommy find themselves caught up in a multi-layered plot that tests their willingness to sacrifice their reputations and livelihoods for the benefit of this enigmatic young man. A Most Wanted Man succeeds not only as a sophisticated spy thriller, but also as a nuanced character study, provocative political commentary, and thoughtful examination of what it really means to be a moral human being. The writing is fluid throughout, and the well-constructed plot builds suspense even in the absence of violent action. The ending, though, left me with the impression that le Carre wound this tale so tightly that it jammed up at the climax and could not release properly. When this gets made into a movie, as seems to be the case with most of le Carre's books, the screen writer's challenge will be to devise a more fitting resolution to this fantastic build-up.
    • 4/5
      I found this a little bit confusing at first, I couldn't work out who each character was or how they were connected. As the book went on, though, I got caught up in the story. It's about a Chechen man who is smuggled into Germany. The man, Issa, is a rebel and a "known" terrorist who has been tortured. He makes contact with a lawyer, Annabel Richter, and a wealthy British banker, Tommy Brue. He needs their help in order to stay in Germany and become a doctor. As the story unfolds, we see that Frau Richter desperately wants to help Issa, and Mr Brue's bank has a past which means that Issa has claim to millions held in its vaults. Enter German, British and US Intelligence!
    • 4/5
      Not one of Le Carre's best. It's a simplified reworking of several themes that he's covered before. Unfortunately they don't benefit from the simplified treatment. We have the usual innocent (ish) runaway, pursued by the world's security forces; the naive bystanders eager to help the poor waif; and the corrupted agents trying to do the best they can in the world - holding off the combined forces of evil represented by their competing Agencies and the bad terrorists. There's a pretty girl and an attracted man, and a small town in Germany. (well OK it's set in Hamburg, but it is such a generic Hamburg that it could be anywhere.) You can guess all the rest quite clearly. It is again another screed bemoaning the overreaching US led anti-terror security forces. It's a short book (fro LeCarre) The characters are thin for Le Carre, the action also repressed, and the descriptions terse. None of this plays to his strengths. The slow plot meanders it way to the inevitable conclusions, without any of the twists, turns, mis-directions, or sheer personalities that Le Carre has inspired in his more memorable works. Skip this, and read Night Manager or Our Game, which cover the same themes in much better style.
    • 3/5
      There's a fine line between 'meticulous detail' and 'ponderous' which le Carre (at least for me) has always straddled. This novel of 'war-on-terror' spycraft is no exception, building tension very slowly, while examining the multiple shades of grey in a black-and-white world. It's great strength is the examination of cultural differences between nations trying to right wrongs. Interesting, studied and methodical - if not wildly entertaining.
    • 4/5
      I've always been interested in why Le Carre is so popular. That's not to denigrate his writing, but rather to suggest that his books seem too slow, too serious, too English to consistently feature in best-seller lists. I'm also interested in what seems to be his shift to the left in recent novels. Here he offers a critique of the current 'war on terror', showing how the innocent are victimised, how the vaguely threatening are turned into global pariahs and the ethical are marginalised. I'm not sure he's offering a genuinely leftist critique of current US-British policy so much as a lament for the passing of old-style liberal espionage, but its good to see such a popular author challenging what's going on.As for the slowness I mentioned, there really isn't much that happens in this novel. It's satisfying nonetheless, heavily character based and moving towards a rather inevitable but still satisfying conclusion.
    • 5/5
      This troubling story deals with the limits of modern spy craft as it applies to finding and bringing terrorists to justice. Innocent people are falsely accused and the cascade of frightening events sweep others into a snare set by a multi-national anti-terrorist team.
    • 2/5
      Spy novels aren't my thing. I really had to force myself to get through this book. Lots of characters, many with multiple names. The characters seemed stereotyped to me--the misunderstood, but fiercely Islamic victim; the beautiful, stiff-upper-lip woman lawyer who everyone falls in love with, the slightly bumbling banker coasting to retirement. Blah, blah, blah. And of course, the Americans come along in the last 5 pages and screw up the best-laid plans of the Brits and Germans spies.
    • 4/5
      When the Berlin Wall came down and the Warsaw Pact crumbled I wondered how traditional espionage writers such as John le Carre would cope with the bedrock of their genre so completely excised. Le Carre seemed entirely unfazed and moved seamlessly to address issues arising from the emergence of the former Soviet republics and stresses in sub-Saharan Africa.With 'A Most Wanted Man' he moves on to the 'war against terror' and the depredations wreaked by the international banking world. The novel is set in Hamburg several years into the war on terror. The principal protagonists here are Tommy Brue, an expatriate British banker running the family bank, Annabel Richter, a human rights lawyers striving to exorcise her guilt over being born into a welathy and prominent family, Issa Karpov, a Chechen Muslim emigre , and Gunther Bachman, world-weary intelligence officer in the German homeland security forces. Bachman has to contend almost as fiercely with his rival German security forces as he does with terrorist suspects because of the additional sensitivity about Islamist extremism in Hamburg as that was where the 9/11 terrorists trained. Although a pillar of rectitude himself, Brue knows that his father was less innocent having established a series of very dubious accounts known as Lipizzaners. The mysterious Issa, who has made his way to Hamburg from Russia via Sweden claims to be the son of one of the Lipizzaner clients. Annabel Richter and Gunther Bachman are both drawn to investigate further.Le Carre manages the plot very deftly, particularly the tensions between the competing Germans security organisations. Richter is also very plausible - it might have been easy to fall into cliches with her liberal stance, but le Carre never makes that error.My one slight cavil with the book was that it seemed to have been drawn out just a little bit too far.
    • 4/5
      A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre; (4*)A top notch thrilling story from a spy-master. Intricate plot, fascinating characters, all the twists and turns to keep you guessing and then hoping until the end. I loved it!
    • 4/5
      I read A Most Wanted Man when it was first published, saw the movie last week, and decided to re-read it. I'm glad I did. Although it's not a spy novel starring George Smiley by any means, LeCarre's trademark dialogue, exceptional writing, and intricate plotting are all present. It's not a book that screamed 'you have to make a movie out of this' (which is why I re-read it, to see if I missed something the first time), but the interaction among the characters and the ambiguity of the situations throughout the story end up being the basis for a good book and a pretty fair movie.

      The story itself, which begins in a fairly lighthearted manner, quickly becomes complicated by strange behavior on the part of the illegal immigrant, German rules and regulations, a liberal female lawyer that everyone ends up falling in love with, the War on Terror, a bank that may have played too nicely with bad people in the past, international competition between spy agencies, and many other complexities. In typical fashion, LeCarre does a nice job and takes his time developing the characters, so throughout the cat and mouse scenarios I was able to keep the players straight. The end wasn't exactly a scenario that was expected, but in retrospect it should have been.
    • 5/5
      John Le Carre turns his still considerable literary and story-telling talents to the `war on terror' in his latest work. Set in Germany, a middle-aged ex-pat English private banker and a young idealistic left-wing lawyer form an unlikely alliance to help a somewhat mysterious illegal Chechen Muslim refugee when he turns up in ill-fated Hamburg. The Chechen has come to claim `black' bank account from the British banker with the aid of the lawyer. Their efforts quickly come under the eye of various counter-intelligence agencies: German, British, and US. Each agency has its own agenda in dealing with the trio. Le Carre does a nice job describing the nuances of the agencies' various modes, motivations, and interactions. One group of German agents, the good cops, wants to use the banker, the lawyer, and the Chechen (and the Chechen's money) to compromise and turn a prominent Muslim doctor with suspicious ties. The others, especially the Americans, have other ideas. Le Carre also creates an intriguing ambiguity as to who or what the Chechen really is. Is he a terrorist? A hapless victim? Likewise, with regard to Dr. Abdullah - is he a legitimate conduit for channeling money to leading Muslim charities or is he knowingly directing part of the funds to nefarious ends? I found the story less than compelling at times - in a word, put-down-able (if that is a word). The motivations of the banker and to a lesser extent, the lawyer to take huge risks are not entirely convincing. But then LeCarre has never really produced page-turners. The interplay of the anti-terror cops with one another and their victims (no other word for it, really) leading to the sudden and the powerfully disturbing denouement - a sickening kick to the stomach made all the more distressing by its realism - compensate for any shortcomings. Not on a level with Smiley's People, but much better than many of his post-Cold War offerings. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.
    • 3/5
      A quick read. Not much happens in this book -- probably intended to be more of a character development piece. I've read a couple le Carre books and now that I think about it most of them are character driven -- but this one particularly so. He was pretty heavy handed with his political commentary in 'Absolute Friends' which I found distracting since it appeared throughout the book; here it is a bit more constrained. I'm between 2 and 3 stars, but giving le Carre the benefit of the doubt.
    • 2/5
      Solid spy thriller with a nice mix of mysterious characters from Chechens and Russians to a number of agents with the usual inter-agencies' rivalries. In the end though, the real villains turn out to be much more familiar. Good writing and pacing; lousy politics.
    • 3/5
      Issa arrived in Germany with no past and access to large money. He didn't want the money as it was gained immorally according the the laws of Islam. The story unravels his past, and who he is, without providing a lot of definite answers. Issa is studied by several teams, oftenwith different interpretations of the past. This book is set in Germany, near the current time. It involves current issues, and feels typical for Le Carre's work. The story moves slowly at first, in Le Carre's style, there is little action, as subtlety and knowledge are key. The suspense builds well, but slowly. Not all of the questions are answered, but the events are clear.
    • 4/5
      A Most Wanted Man is a spy novel extraordaire with themes more relevant to today's issues then most other thrillers I've read. Highlighting the war on terror and they way it has altered rationality, this is a book that should hit close to home for anyone. Issa, a young Russian with horrific scars, comes mysteriously to be in Hamberg. A devout Muslim, he is quickly under suspcion from all sides. Annabel, a young German lawyer is determind to prevent the government from deporting him and she drags a wealthy British banker into her cause. It's a game of cat and mouse as the rival spies try to find proof of Issa's terrorist connections. I listened to this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. John le Carre reads the book himself, and he does a good job of it. I found the plot to be frighteningly plausible. I liked the main characters and especially enjoyed the relationships between Issa, Annabelle, and Tommy Brue. This is a book peopled with realistic people caught in unimaginably terrifying circumstances!
    • 3/5
      Audiobook. Interesting that LeCarre is moving into the post 9-11 world of terrorism. As always, it was a good read. In the end this one seemed to have a political point for the ending. That did disappoint me. I am interested in LeCarre because he engages political issues and writes complex psychological narratives. This book just didn't quite work for me and so disappointed.
    • 3/5
      A good thriller, with a surprisingly accessible beginning that combines just the right amount of menace, malice, suspicion & suspense to get you hooked. Interesting but ultimately shallowly drawn characters then spend the middle third of the book getting bogged down in intelligence protocol & process. This isn't excitement, but with the proper pacing could have been very gripping. Instead it was interesting but not involving. Worth a read, but not a reread, & certainly not a book I'll be keeping.
    • 2/5
      This book was tough for me to get through, and the end was unrewarding. The story starts slow, introducing many characters, including intelligence workers from multiple governments, most of whom are trying to deceive each other. Around the halfway point, my interest engaged and took hold in the developing plot. Although I gave up on tracking the many peripheral characters, I was invested in finding out what happened to the central three characters. I was disappointed, then, that the ending came very abruptly, literally leaving some of the protaganists out on the street. There was no epilogue following up on these characters, so I was left still wanting to know what was going to happen to these people. This is the only book by Le Carre that I have read; I have heard others are better. I recommend skipping this one.
    • 4/5
      Le Carre takes us into the squalid realms of the anti-terrorism intelligence in the 21st century. Issa, a Chechneyan refugee from Turkish and Russian prisons, has made his way into Germany. His late father was a notorious corrupt Russian military officer who looted Soviet finances at the waning days of the USSR and deposited millions in a Hamburg-based British private bank led by Tommy Brue. Issa is heir to this illicit fortune but wants to avoid claiming it because of its nefarious origins. He is being aided with his immigrant status by Annabel Richter, a public interest lawyer, who wants him to file a claim as she thinks this will aid his asylum seeking. Issa appears to be naive and somewhat ethereal and genuinely devoted to Islam. He says that all he wants is support for medical training so he can return to Chechnya to aid his people. Annabel falls in love with Issa and he with her, but a romance doesn't ensue due to his Islam beliefs.The German, British and American intelligence agencies have been following this young man and seek his capture as he is alleged to be a violent Muslim terrorist. Whether he really is a jihadist is murky but the intelligence crowd is anxious to nab him. There is a rift in intentions among his pursuers. One faction headed by Gunther Bachmann wants to use him for counter-intelligence, particularly to co-opt a prominent Muslim leader in Hamburg who purports to be a moderate but whom they suspect is funneling money to terrorist groups. The other authorities want to make showy arrests that will advance the public's attention to their competence in combating the War on Terror.Our British banker has been troubled by the dirty Russian money accepted by his late father. His marriage is failing and he becomes infatuated with the much younger lawyer. Both he and the lawyer are "turned" by the intelligence agents as they think by cooperating they can protect Issa from deportation back to Russia or Turkey where he will be tortured again. They agree to arrange a meeting between Issa and Dr. Abdullah, the imam who is a money launderer for the terrorists, where Issa will turn over funds to Abdullah for charities that are really a front for terrorists groups. Bachmann's intent for the meeting is to confront Abdullah in his crimes and use him to dig deeper into the finances of terrorists.In Le Carre's sly style the German, British and American operatives are working at deceiving each other as well as Brue and Annabel. The dramatic ending reveals a heavy-handed snatch by the Americans, Brits and some Germans that betrays Bachmann, Brue, Annabel and Issa. Manipulation, falsity and treachery are themes that Le Carre extracts from the real world of intelligence work.
    • 3/5
      Plus some more of a star. There are quite a lot of characters in the book but they are all well drawn individuals so no trouble keeping track. And most of them are pretty interesting and pretty nice - which makes for some tension as John le Carre is not known for his happy-ever-after endings. I thought it was well written and enjoyed the intelligent exploration of such current issues as migration, refugees and security services.
    • 5/5
      Le Carre is masterful in his use of English; he almost seems to be using an evolved form of the language with the rest of us languishing behind. He sprinkles the work with phrases that could only be his--such as, "Life is a botch," rather than the more vulgar usage that everyone else makes do with. The author's complex plotting is legendary, and one does not find out who the baddies are until the last few pages. There are gradations of evil as well, the worst being what Le Carre, in another work, termed the "espinonacracy"; the administrative chiefs who fight for turf and budget and never have to experience, as the author puts it, "warm blood." Victims too endure different levels of suffering, from a person who has virtually lived in the torture-filled Guantanamos of the world to the street spies who are merely seeking to do their jobs (rather than their supervisors who don't care about right and wrong or promises made as long as they augment their power). Everyone is controlled by factors out of their control, and seeks to muddle through without losing too much self-respect. Some people, in fact, take advantage of a crisis to achieve a new perspective on life; others are painfully scarred by events and will never be the same. My one quibble is that Le Carre's oeuvre is so intellectualized, such a brilliant game of chess, that readers find it difficult to establish emotional bonds with characters--as some characters wonder around entire works trapped in an emotional void that is impossible to escape. The characters and the resolution of their crises are unforgettable, but rather than provoking an emotional response, the reader is left numb. Can people really be this horrible? That may be the way of the world, but it's certainly not escapist literature.
    • 2/5
      Can't believe anyone gave this 5 star rating! Obviously not familiar with Le Carre's earlier works: Tinker, Tailor, Honourable Schoolboy, Night Manager etc. all FIVE STAR quality thriller-fiction. Sadly, Most Wanted was MOST definitely not so! Being polite this was mediocre Le Carre. The reader is short-changed from start to finish. Poor characterisation with the 3 mains hardly more than light-weight efforts, lacking description, vigour, emotion and wholly unbelievable for the "wanted Chechen" to have a relationship of any sort with the female lead - - she seemed to drift in and out of pages without reference to any reality of a life - - and the banker was never convicingly explained. As for the ending: Suddenly some Americans who barely got a mention for hundreds of pages are there in abundance and kidnap the wanted lad running roughshod over the principle German character in his own backyard! Sorry Mr Le Carre, but where've you been the last decade or so? Aside from their aggressive over-reaching military muscle, the Yanks don't get to play spy games in everybody's hometown anymore without permission. The ending bordered on risible and more or less confirmed my overall impression of the novel, the author was as unconvinced by the narrative as me.
    • 5/5
      The only thing that stops people from realizing that le Carre is in the same breath as any other great writer alive today is that he writes in a 'genre'... He writes so well, constructs sentences so perfectly, that it makes my head hurt sometimes. The guy just hasn't lost a step.I'm giving this five stars despite the over the top cartoony kind of anti-American ending he slapped on kinda out of nowhere. The rest of the book is that good. Really hope he's got a few more of these left up his sleeve.
    • 4/5
      Tightly written novel that slowly weaves illegal immigration, private banking, the legal system, and terrorism together. Reminded me a bit of Lorraine Adams' Harbor, as it shows how a character's circumstances can be entirely misunderstood, or purposely seen as hostile, because of our "war on terror" policies in Western nations. I still prefer the Le Carre's Smiley novels but this is definitely worth a read.
    • 4/5
      le Carre always shows the darkest side of the espionage business. No different in this work exploring the intelligence agencies activities in the so-called war on terror.

    Book preview

    A Most Wanted Man - John le Carré

    1

    A Turkish heavyweight boxing champion sauntering down a Hamburg street with his mother on his arm can scarcely be blamed for failing to notice that he is being shadowed by a skinny boy in a black coat.

    Big Melik, as he was known to his admiring neighborhood, was a giant of a fellow, shaggy, unkempt and genial, with a broad natural grin and black hair bound back in a ponytail and a rolling, free-and-easy gait that, even without his mother, took up half the pavement. At the age of twenty he was in his own small world a celebrity, and not only for his prowess in the boxing ring: elected youth representative of his Islamic sports club, three times runner-up in the North German Championship hundred-meter butterfly stroke and, as if all that weren’t enough, star goalkeeper of his Saturday soccer team.

    Like most very large people, he was also more accustomed to being looked at than looking, which is another reason why the skinny boy got away with shadowing him for three successive days and nights.

    The two men first made eye contact as Melik and his mother, Leyla, emerged from the al-Umma Travel Shop, fresh from buying air tickets for Melik’s sister’s wedding in their home village outside Ankara. Melik felt someone’s gaze fixed on him, glanced round and came face-to-face with a tall, desperately thin boy of his own height with a straggly beard, eyes reddened and deep-set, and a long black coat that could have held three magicians. He had a black-and-white kaffiyeh round his neck and a tourist’s camel-skin saddlebag slung over his shoulder. He stared at Melik, then at Leyla. Then he came back to Melik, never blinking, but appealing to him with his fiery, sunken eyes.

    Yet the boy’s air of desperation need not have troubled Melik all that much since the travel shop was situated at the edge of the main railway station concourse, where every variety of lost soul—German vagrants, Asians, Arabs, Africans, and Turkish like himself but less fortunate—hung around all day long, not to mention legless men on electric carts, drug sellers and their customers, beggars and their dogs, and a seventy-year-old cowboy in a Stetson and silver-studded leather riding breeches. Few had work, and a sprinkling had no business standing on German soil at all, but were at best tolerated under a deliberate policy of destitution, pending their summary deportation, usually at dawn. Only new arrivals or the willfully foolhardy took the risk. Cannier illegals gave the station a wide berth.

    A further good reason to ignore the boy was the classical music that the station authorities boom at full blast over this section of the concourse from a battery of well-aimed loudspeakers. Its purpose, far from spreading feelings of peace and well-being among its listeners, is to send them packing.

    Despite these impediments the skinny boy’s face imprinted itself on Melik’s consciousness and for a fleeting moment he felt embarrassed by his own happiness. Why on earth should he? Something splendid had just occurred, and he couldn’t wait to phone his sister and tell her that their mother, Leyla, after six months of tending her dying husband, and a year of mourning her heart out for him, was bubbling over with pleasure at the prospect of attending her daughter’s wedding, and fussing about what to wear, and whether the dowry was big enough, and the groom as handsome as everybody, including Melik’s sister, said he was.

    So why shouldn’t Melik chatter along with his own mother? Which he did, enthusiastically, all the way home. It was the skinny boy’s stillness, he decided later. Those lines of age in a face as young as mine. His look of winter on a lovely spring day.

    *  *  *

    That was the Thursday.

    And on the Friday evening, when Melik and Leyla came out of mosque together, there he was again, the same boy, the same kaffiyeh and outsized overcoat, huddled in the shadow of a grimy doorway. This time Melik noticed that there was a sideways list to his skinny body, as if he’d been knocked off true and remained at that angle until somebody told him he could straighten up. And the fiery stare burning even more brightly than on the previous day. Melik met his gaze head-on, wished he hadn’t and looked away.

    And this second encounter was all the less probable because Leyla and Melik scarcely ever went to mosque, not even a moderate Turkish-language one. Since 9/11, Hamburg’s mosques had become dangerous places. Go to the wrong one, or the right one and get the wrong imam, and you could find yourself and your family on a police watch list for the rest of your life. Nobody doubted that practically every prayer row contained an informant who was earning his way with the authorities. Nobody was likely to forget, be he Muslim, police spy or both, that the city-state of Hamburg had been unwitting host to three of the 9/11 hijackers, not to mention their fellow cell-members and plotters; or that Mohammed Atta, who steered the first plane into the Twin Towers, had worshiped his wrathful god in a humble Hamburg mosque.

    It was also a fact that since her husband’s death Leyla and her son had become less observant of their faith. Yes, of course the old man had been a Muslim, and a laic too. But he was a militant supporter of workers’ rights, which was why he had been driven out of his homeland. The only reason they had gone to mosque at all was that Leyla in her impulsive way had felt a sudden need. She was happy. The weight of her grief was lifting. Yet the first anniversary of her husband’s death was approaching. She needed to have a dialogue with him and share the good news. They had already missed the main Friday prayer, and could just as well have prayed at home. But Leyla’s whim was law. Arguing correctly that personal invocations stand a better chance of being heard if they are offered in the evening, she had insisted on attending the last prayer hour of the day, which incidentally meant that the mosque was as good as empty.

    So clearly Melik’s second encounter with the skinny boy, like the first, was mere chance. For what else could it be? Or so, in his plain way, the good-hearted Melik reasoned.

    *  *  *

    The next day being a Saturday, Melik took a bus across town to visit his affluent paternal uncle at the family candle factory. Relationships between his uncle and his father had at times been strained, but since his father’s death he had learned to respect his uncle’s friendship. Jumping aboard the bus, whom should he see but the skinny boy sitting below him in the glass shelter, watching him depart? And six hours later, when he returned to the same bus stop, the boy was still there, wrapped in his kaffiyeh and magician’s overcoat, crouched in the same corner of the shelter, waiting.

    At the sight of him Melik, who as a rule of life was pledged to love all mankind equally, was seized by an uncharitable aversion. He felt that the skinny boy was accusing him of something and he resented it. Worse, there was an air of superiority about him, despite his miserable condition. What did he think he was achieving with that ridiculous black coat, anyway? That it made him invisible or something? Or was he trying to imply that he was so unfamiliar with our Western ways that he had no idea of the image he created?

    Either way, Melik determined to shake him off. So instead of going up to him and asking him whether he needed help, or was ill, which in other circumstances he might have done, he struck out for home at full stride, confident that the skinny boy stood no chance of keeping up with him.

    The day was unseasonably hot for spring, and the sun was beating off the crowded pavement. Yet the skinny boy contrived by some kind of miracle to keep pace with Melik, limping and panting, wheezing and sweating, and now and then jumping in the air as if in pain, but still managing to draw up alongside him at pedestrian crossings.

    And when Melik let himself into the tiny brick house that, after decades of family scrimping, his mother now owned almost free of debt, he had only to wait a few breaths before the front doorbell chimed its carillon. And when he returned downstairs, there stood the skinny boy on the doorstep with his saddlebag over his shoulder and his eyes blazing from the effort of the walk, and sweat pouring down his face like summer rain, and in his trembling hand he held a piece of brown cardboard on which was written in Turkish: I am a Muslim medical student. I am tired and I wish to stay in your house. Issa. And as if to ram the message home, round his wrist a bracelet of fine gold, and dangling from it, a tiny gold replica of the Koran.

    But Melik by now had a full head of outrage. All right, he wasn’t the greatest intellect his school had ever seen but he objected to feeling guilty and inferior, and being followed and preyed upon by a beggar with attitude. When his father died Melik had proudly assumed the role of master of the house and his mother’s protector and, as a further assertion of his authority, done what his father had not succeeded in doing before his death: as a second-generation Turkish resident, he had launched himself and his mother on the long, stony road to German citizenship, where every aspect of a family’s lifestyle was taken under the microscope, and eight years of unblemished behavior were the first prerequisite. The last thing he or his mother needed was some deranged vagrant claiming to be a medical student and begging on their doorstep.

    Get the hell out of here, he ordered the skinny boy roughly in Turkish, shaping up to him in the doorway. Get out of here, stop following us and don’t come back.

    Meeting no reaction from the haggard face except a wince as if it had been struck, Melik repeated his instruction in German. But when he made to slam the door, he discovered Leyla standing on the stair behind him, looking over his shoulder at the boy and at the cardboard notice shaking uncontrollably in his hand.

    And he saw that she already had tears of pity in her eyes.

    *  *  *

    Sunday passed and on the Monday morning Melik found excuses not to show up at his cousin’s greengrocery business in Wellingsbüttel. He must stay home and train for the Amateur Open Boxing Championship, he told his mother. He must work out in the gym and in the Olympic pool. But in reality he had decided she was not safe to be left alone with an elongated psycho with delusions of grandeur who, when he wasn’t praying or staring at the wall, prowled about the house, fondly touching everything as if he remembered it from long ago. Leyla was a peerless woman, in her son’s judgment, but since her husband’s death volatile and guided solely by her feelings. Those whom she chose to love could do no wrong. Issa’s softness of manner, his timidity and sudden rushes of dawning happiness, made him an instant member of that select company.

    On the Monday and again on the Tuesday, Issa did little except sleep, pray and bathe himself. To communicate he spoke broken Turkish with a peculiar, guttural accent, furtively, in bursts, as though talking were forbidden, and yet still in some unfathomable way, to Melik’s ear, didactic. Otherwise he ate. Where on earth did he put all that food? At any hour of the day, Melik would walk into the kitchen and there he was, head bowed over a bowl of lamb and rice and vegetables, spoon never still, eyes slipping from side to side lest somebody snatch his food away. When he’d finished, he’d wipe the bowl clean with a piece of bread, eat the bread and, with a muttered Thanks be to God and a faint smirk on his face as if he had a secret that was too good to share with them, take the bowl to the sink and wash it under the tap, a thing Leyla would never in a month of Sundays have allowed her own son or husband to do. The kitchen was her domain. Men keep out.

    So when are you reckoning to start your medical studies, Issa? Melik asked him casually, in his mother’s hearing.

    God willing, it will be soon. I must be strong. I must not be beggar.

    "You’ll need a residence permit, you know. And a student’s ID. Not to mention like a hundred thousand euros for board and lodging. And a neat little two-seater to take your girlfriends out."

    God is all-merciful. When I am not beggar, He will provide.

    Such self-assurance went beyond mere piety in Melik’s view.

    He’s costing us real money, Mother, he declared, barging into the kitchen while Issa was safely in the attic. The way he eats. All those baths.

    No more than you, Melik.

    No, but he’s not me, is he? We don’t know who he is.

    Issa is our guest. When he is restored to health, with Allah’s help we shall consider his future, his mother replied loftily.

    Issa’s implausible efforts at self-effacement only made him more conspicuous in Melik’s eyes. Sidling his way down the cramped corridor, or preparing to climb the stepladder to the attic where Leyla had made up a bed for him, he employed what Melik regarded as exaggerated circumspection, seeking permission with his doe eyes, and flattening himself against the wall when Melik or Leyla needed to pass.

    Issa has been in prison, Leyla announced complacently one morning.

    Melik was appalled. "Do you know that for a fact? We’re harboring a jailbird? Do the police know that for a fact? Did he tell you?"

    He said that in prison in Istanbul they give only one piece of bread and a bowl of rice a day, said Leyla, and before Melik could protest any more, added one of her late husband’s favorite nostrums: We honor the guest and go to the assistance of those in distress. No work of charity will go unrewarded in Paradise, she intoned. Wasn’t your own father in prison in Turkey, Melik? Not everyone who goes to prison is a criminal. For people like Issa and your father, prison is a badge of honor.

    But Melik knew she had other thoughts up her sleeve that she was less inclined to reveal. Allah had answered her prayers. He had sent her a second son to make up for the husband she had lost. The fact that he was an illegal half-crazed jailbird with delusions about himself was of no apparent interest to her.

    *  *  *

    He was from Chechnya.

    That much they established on the third evening when Leyla astonished them both by trilling out a couple of sentences of Chechen, a thing Melik never in his life had heard her do. Issa’s haggard face lit up with a sudden amazed smile that vanished equally quickly, and thereafter he seemed to be struck mute. Yet Leyla’s explanation of her linguistic skills turned out to be simple. As a young girl in Turkey she had played with Chechen children in her village and picked up snippets of their language. She guessed Issa was Chechen from the moment she set eyes on him but kept her counsel because with Chechens you never knew.

    He was from Chechnya, and his mother was dead and all he had to remember her by was the golden bracelet with the Koran attached to it that she had placed round his wrist before she died. But when she died and how she died, and how old he was when he inherited her bracelet were questions he either failed to understand or didn’t wish to.

    Chechens are hated everywhere, Leyla explained to Melik, while Issa kept his head down and went on eating. But not by us. Do you hear me, Melik?

    Of course I hear you, Mother.

    Everyone persecutes Chechens except us, she continued. It is normal all over Russia and the world. Not only Chechens, but Russian Muslims everywhere. Putin persecutes them and Mr. Bush encourages him. As long as Putin calls it his war on terror, he can do with the Chechens whatever he wishes, and nobody will stop him. Is that not so, Issa?

    But Issa’s brief moment of pleasure had long passed. The shadows had returned to his wracked face, the spark of suffering to his doe eyes, and a haggard hand closed protectively over the bracelet. Speak, damn you, Melik urged him indignantly but not aloud. If somebody surprises me by talking Turkish at me, I speak Turkish back, it’s only polite! So why don’t you answer my mother with a few obliging words of Chechen, or are you too busy knocking back her free food?

    He had other worries. Carrying out a security inspection of the attic that Issa now treated as his sovereign territory—stealthily, as Issa was in the kitchen, talking as usual to his mother—he had made certain revealing discoveries: hoarded scraps of food as though Issa was planning his escape; a gilt-framed miniature head-and-shoulder photograph of Melik’s betrothed sister at eighteen, purloined from his mother’s treasured collection of family portraits in the living room; and his father’s magnifying glass, lying across a copy of the Hamburg Yellow Pages, open at the section devoted to the city’s many banks.

    God gave your sister a tender smile, Leyla pronounced contentedly, in answer to Melik’s outraged protests that they were harboring a sexual deviant as well as an illegal. Her smile will lighten Issa’s heart.

    *  *  *

    Issa was from Chechnya then, whether or not he spoke the language. Both his parents were dead, but when asked about them he was as puzzled as his hosts were, gazing sweetly into a corner of the room with his eyebrows raised. He was stateless, homeless, an ex-prisoner and illegal, but Allah would provide the means for him to study medicine once he was no longer a beggar.

    Well, Melik too had once dreamed of becoming a doctor and had even extracted from his father and uncles a shared undertaking to finance his training, a thing that would have entailed the family real sacrifice. And if he’d been a bit better at exams and maybe played fewer games, that’s where he’d be today: at medical school, a first-year student working his heart out for the honor of his family. It was therefore understandable that Issa’s airy assumption that Allah would somehow enable him to do what Melik had conspicuously failed to do should have prompted him to throw aside Leyla’s warnings and, as best his generous heart allowed, launch himself on a searching examination of his unwanted guest.

    The house was his. Leyla had gone shopping and would not be back until midafternoon.

    You’ve studied medicine then, have you? he suggested, sitting himself down beside Issa for greater intimacy, and fancying himself the wiliest interrogator in the world. Nice.

    I was in hospitals, sir.

    As a student?

    I was sick, sir.

    Why all these sir’s? Were they from prison too?

    Being a patient’s not like being a doctor, though, is it? A doctor has to know what’s wrong with people. A patient sits there and waits for the doctor to put it right.

    Issa considered this statement in the complicated way that he considered all statements of whatever size, now smirking into space, now scratching at his beard with his spidery fingers, and finally smiling brilliantly without answering.

    How old are you? Melik demanded, becoming more blunt than he had planned. If you don’t mind my asking—sarcastically.

    Twenty-three, sir. But again only after prolonged consideration.

    That’s quite old then, isn’t it? Even if you got your residence tomorrow, you wouldn’t be a qualified doctor till you were thirty-five or something. Plus learning German. You’d have to pay for that too.

    Also God willing I shall marry good wife and have many children, two boys, two girls.

    Not my sister, though. She’s getting married next month, I’m afraid.

    God willing she will have many sons, sir.

    Melik considered his next line of attack and plunged: How did you get to Hamburg in the first place? he asked.

    It is immaterial.

    Immaterial? Where did he get that word from? And in Turkish?

    Didn’t you know that they treat refugees worse in this town than anywhere in Germany?

    Hamburg will be my home, sir. It is where they bring me. It is Allah’s divine command.

    "Who brought you? Who’s they?"

    It was combination, sir.

    Combination of what?

    Maybe Turkish people. Maybe Chechen people. We pay them. They take us to boat. Put us in container. Container had little air.

    Issa was beginning to sweat, but Melik had gone too far to pull back now.

    "We? Who’s we?"

    Was group, sir. From Istanbul. Bad group. Bad men. I do not respect these men. The superior tone again, even in faltering Turkish.

    How many of you?

    Maybe twenty. Container was cold. After few hours, very cold. This ship would go to Denmark. I was happy.

    You mean Copenhagen, right? Copenhagen in Denmark. The capital.

    Yes—brightening as if Copenhagen was a good idea—"to Copenhagen. In Copenhagen, I would be arranged. I would be free from bad men. But this ship did not go immediately Copenhagen. This ship must go first Sweden. To Gothenburg. Yes?"

    There’s a Swedish port called Gothenburg, I believe, Melik conceded.

    In Gothenburg, ship will dock, ship will take cargo, then go Copenhagen. When ship arrive in Gothenburg we are very sick, very hungry. On ship they tell to us: ‘Make no noise. Swedes hard. Swedes kill you.’ We make no noise. But Swedes do not like our container. Swedes have dog. He reflects awhile. ‘What is your name, please?’ he intones, but loud enough to make Melik sit up. ‘What papers, please? You are from prison? What crimes, please? You escape from prison? How, please?’ Doctors are efficient. I admire these doctors. They let us sleep. I am grateful to these doctors. One day I will be such a doctor. But God willing I must escape. To escape to Sweden is no chance. There is NATO wire. Many guards. But there is also toilet. From toilet is window. After window is gate to harbor. My friend can open this gate. My friend is from boat. I go back to boat. Boat takes me to Copenhagen. At last, I say. In Copenhagen was lorry for Hamburg. Sir, I love God. But the West I also love. In West I shall be free to worship Him.

    "A lorry brought you to Hamburg?"

    Was arranged.

    "A Chechen lorry?"

    My friend must first take me to road.

    Your friend from the crew? That friend? The same guy?

    No, sir. Was different friend. To reach road was difficult. Before lorry, we must sleep one night in field. He looked up, and an expression of pure joy momentarily suffused his haggard features. Was stars. God is merciful. Praise be to Him.

    Wrestling with the improbabilities of this story, humbled by its fervor yet infuriated as much by its omissions as his own incapacity to overcome them, Melik felt his frustration spread to his arms and fists, and his fighter’s nerves tighten in his stomach.

    Where did it drop you off then, this magic lorry that showed up out of nowhere? Where did it drop you?

    But Issa was no longer listening, if he had been listening at all. Suddenly—or suddenly to the honest if uncomprehending eyes of Melik—whatever had been building up in him erupted. He rose drunkenly to his feet and with a hand cupped to his mouth hobbled stooping to the door, wrestled it open although it wasn’t locked and lurched down the corridor to the bathroom. Moments later, the house was filled with a howling and retching, the like of which Melik hadn’t heard since his father’s death. Gradually it ceased, to be followed by a slopping of water, an opening and closing of the bathroom door and a creaking of the attic steps as Issa scaled the ladder. After which a deep, troubling silence descended, broken each quarter hour by the chirping of Leyla’s electronic bird clock.

    *  *  *

    At four the same afternoon, Leyla returned laden with shopping and, interpreting the atmosphere for what it was, berated Melik for transgressing his duties as host and dishonoring his father’s name. She too then withdrew to her room, where she remained in rampant isolation until it was time for her to prepare the evening meal. Soon smells of cooking pervaded the house, but Melik remained on his bed. At eight-thirty she banged the brass dinner gong, a precious wedding gift that to Melik always sounded like a reproach. Knowing she brooked no delay at such moments, he slunk to the kitchen, avoiding her eye.

    Issa, dear, come down, please! Leyla shouted and, receiving no response, grabbed hold of her late husband’s walking stick and thumped the ceiling with its rubber ferrule, her eyes accusingly on Melik, who, under her frosty gaze, braved the climb to the attic.

    Issa was lying on his mattress in his underpants, drenched in sweat and hunched on his side. He had taken his mother’s bracelet from his wrist and was clutching it in his sweated hand. Round his neck he wore a grimy leather purse tied with a thong. His eyes were wide open, yet he seemed unaware of Melik’s presence. Reaching out to touch his shoulder, Melik drew back in dismay. Issa’s upper body was a slough of crisscross blue-and-orange bruises. Some appeared to be whiplashes, others bludgeon marks. On the soles of his feet—the same feet that had pounded the Hamburg pavements—Melik made out suppurating holes the size of cigarette burns. Locking his arms round Issa, and binding a blanket round his waist for propriety, Melik lifted him tenderly and lowered the passive Issa through the attic trap and into Leyla’s waiting arms.

    Put him in my bed, Melik whispered through his tears. I’ll sleep on the floor. I don’t care. I’ll even give him my sister to smile at him, he added, remembering the purloined miniature in the attic, and went back up the ladder to fetch it.

    *  *  *

    Issa’s beaten body lay wrapped in Melik’s bathrobe, his bruised legs jutting out of the end of Melik’s bed, the gold chain still clutched in his hand, his unflinching gaze fixed resolutely on Melik’s wall of fame: press photographs of the champ triumphant, his boxing belts and winning gloves. On the floor beside him squatted Melik himself. He had wanted to call a doctor at his own expense, but Leyla had forbidden him to summon anyone. Too dangerous. For Issa, but for us too. What about our citizenship application? By morning, his temperature will come down and he’ll start to recover.

    But his temperature didn’t come down.

    Muffled in a full scarf and traveling partway by cab to discourage her imagined pursuers, Leyla paid an unannounced visit to a mosque on the other side of town where a new Turkish doctor was said to worship. Three hours later she returned home in a rage. The new young doctor was a fool and a fraud. He knew nothing. He lacked the most elementary qualifications. He had no sense of his religious responsibilities. Very likely, he was not a doctor at all.

    Meanwhile, in her absence, Issa’s temperature had after all come down a little, and she was able to draw upon the rudimentary nursing skills she had acquired in the days before the family could afford a doctor or dared to visit one. If Issa had suffered internal injuries, she pronounced, he would never have been able to gulp down all that food, so she was not afraid to give him aspirin for his subsiding fever, or run up one of her broths made from rice water laced with Turkish herbal potions.

    Knowing that Issa in health or death would never permit her to touch his bare body, she provided Melik with towels, a poultice for his brow and a bowl of cool water to sponge him every hour. To achieve this, the remorse-stricken Melik felt obliged to unfasten the leather purse at Issa’s neck.

    Only after long hesitation, and strictly in the interests of his sick guest—or so he assured himself—and not until Issa had turned his face to the other wall and fallen into a half sleep broken by mutterings in Russian, did he untie the thong and loosen the throat of the purse.

    His first find was a bunch of faded Russian newspaper clippings, rolled up and held together with an elastic band. Removing the band, he spread them out on the floor. Common to each was a photograph of a Red Army officer in uniform. He was brutish, broad-browed, thick-jowled and looked to be in his midsixties. Two cuttings were memorial announcements, decked with Orthodox crosses and regimental insignia.

    Melik’s second find was a wad of U.S. fifty-dollar bills, brand-new, ten of them, held together by a money clip. At the sight of them, all his old suspicions came flooding back. A starving, homeless, penniless, beaten fugitive has five hundred untouched dollars in his purse? Did he steal them? Forge them? Was this why he had been in prison? Was this what was left over after he had paid off the people smugglers of Istanbul, the obliging crew member who had hidden him and the lorry driver who had spirited him from Copenhagen to Hamburg? If he’s got five hundred left now, how ever much did he set out with? Maybe his medical fantasies aren’t so ill-placed after all.

    His third find was a grimy white envelope squeezed into a ball as if somebody had meant to throw it away, then changed his mind: no stamp, no address and the flap ripped open. Flattening the envelope, he fished out a crumpled one-page typed letter in Cyrillic script. It had a printed address, a date and the name of the sender—or so he assumed—in large black print along the top. Below the unreadable text was an unreadable signature in blue ink, followed by a handwritten six-figure number, but written very carefully, each figure inked over several times, as if to say remember this.

    His last find was a key, a small pipestem key, no larger than one knuckle joint of his boxer’s hand. It was machine-turned and had complex teeth on three sides: too small for a prison door, he reckoned, too small for the gate in Gothenburg leading back to the ship. But just right for handcuffs.

    Replacing Issa’s belongings in the purse, Melik slipped it under the sweat-soaked pillow for him to discover when he woke. But by next morning, the guilty feelings that had taken hold of him wouldn’t let him go. All through his night’s vigil, stretched on the floor with Issa one step above him on the bed, he had been tormented by images of his guest’s martyred limbs, and the realization of his own inadequacy.

    As a fighter he knew pain, or thought he did. As a Turkish street kid he had

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