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When you are back in dear old Blighty, old faded imperial home, you will put a photograph of Karla on your wall, neatly framed and given pride of place because he is your rival and your equal, perfectly balanced, and because you are his rival and equal and so on as well. You will be reminded of your limits when you look in that mirror, and you need that even more than you need Karla.
You have met Karla only once. You met him early on, before he ran Moscow in his own image, which means that you really, truly, have seen Karla. It means that you know what he looks like, underneath.
Not many people still remember Karla. They might meet him in his office, talk to him there and take orders from him, but they couldn't tell you whether he is a [REDACTED] man or a [REDACTED] one, whether his hair is [REDACTED] or if he is [REDACTED]. They forget, you see. They forget what you have seen.
You will hold this particular card closest to your chest, pressed against it, and put up a photograph of Karla in your office.
By then there will be no confirmed photographs of Karla, aside - possibly - from one old grey portrait of the enemy posed proudly in his uniform. Doubt whirls even around this last remaining reminder, but you remember Karla from almost as long ago and the face in the photograph fits neatly to the one in your - probably - untouched memory, so this must be Karla. The real Karla, the face of the inexplicably faceless man.
You will look up from your desk each day, more than once, and look up at Karla staring back at you from the wall, opposite and opposed and imposing. He will gaze down from his frame, day in and day out, always there, always pushing his way into your thoughts.
Love and hate, war and peace, pairs of things defined by the absence of the other: you and Karla, what an odd couple, as you will joke and as others will joke with less mirth and more menace.
By this time only three people in all of England will know that Karla has no memorable features, that his face is so easy to forget, and one of those people will be you. So, two others, and both of them will know not to reveal the secret – people in your profession are very good at keeping secrets, or else they are trusted with none and quietly removed from the game.
It will occur to you more than once that you might be wrong about the man you saw, there being no other pictures of Karla and with everyone who might have spoken to him unable to give a description of the [REDACTED] man himself.
What is the source of this memory censorship? you will wonder, unable to consult either the brightest or the best to get your answer. The question will vex you even more because you remember Karla with an almost painful clarity - how can other people possibly forget what Karla looks like when you never have and never will? The image will be forever vivid: [REDACTED] eyes like [REDACTED], a confidence that fills the room, a [REDACTED] man to be hated and admired.
It is a strange thing, to be the only one who remembers. You will wonder if you are the only one. You will wonder, some nights, if Karla would know his own face and if he would still recognise yours.
When he walks across a bridge in Berlin, giving in to your combined threat/offer, you will look. Of course you must look, to see him again in the flesh after all this time spent with him in dreams and nightmares. How could you not?
When you stand before Karla, face-to-face once more at last, you will not see the man who haunts the photograph that used to hang on your office wall. This will be a greater shock than the girl, and the madness, and that Karla has crossed the border at all, even with all of that pushing him over it into your country’s waiting arms.
This is not Karla.
This is Karla.
This is Karla as you met him, because he must be, and yet he doesn’t match your memories at all.
You will have so many questions and all of them will have to wait, and the wait will be unbearable.
When you look away you will of course forget the face that told you, without saying a word, that your memory has been lying. You will hear feet moving on the cobbled street and a car door clicking shut, and you will think I can’t have forgotten. You can’t forget someone you never stop thinking about, and with no evidence to the contrary staring back at you, you tell yourself that you didn’t forget. You remember Karla perfectly: he is [REDACTED], and [REDACTED], and so strikingly [REDACTED].