Smiley's People

by John le Carré

  This time there was no lorry at all: only the deep, accusing silence that had followed in its wake. Smiley sat as before, receiving not judging, his concentration only on Lacon, hearing him with the sharpness of the blind.

  “Exile groups, you will want to know,” Lacon went on, “or more properly the Circus’s time-honoured connections with them—the Wise Men prefer to call it dependence, but I think that a trifle strong—I took issue with them, but was overruled—are today ruled provocative, anti-détente, inflammatory. An expensive indulgence. Those who tamper with them do so on pain of excommunication. I mean it, George. We have got thus far. This is the extent of their mastery. Imagine.”

  With a gesture of baring his breast for Smiley’s onslaught, Lacon opened his arms and remained standing, peering down at him as he had done before, while in the background Strickland’s Scottish echo once again told the same truth more brutally.

  “The groups have been dustbinned, George,” Strickland said. “The lot of them. Orders from on high. No contact, not even arm’s length. The late Vladimir’s death-and-glory artists included. Special two-key archive for ’em on the fifth floor. No officer access without consent in writing from the Chief. Copy to the weekly float for the Wise Men’s inspection. Troubled times, George, I tell you true, troubled times.”

  “George, now steady,” Lacon warned uneasily, catching something the others had not heard.

  “What utter nonsense,” Smiley repeated deliberately.

  His head had lifted and his eyes had turned full on Lacon, as if emphasising the bluntness of his contradiction. “Vladimir wasn’t expensive. He wasn’t an indulgence either. Least of all was he uneconomic. You know perfectly well he loathed taking our money. We had to force it on him or he’d have starved. As to inflammatory—anti-détente, whatever those words mean—well, we had to hold him in check once in a while as one does with most good agents, but when it came down to it he took our orders like a lamb. You were a fan of his, Oliver. You know as well as I do what he was worth.”

  The quietness of Smiley’s voice did not conceal its tautness. Nor had Lacon failed to notice the dangerous points of colour in his cheeks.

  Sharply, Lacon turned upon the weakest member present: “Mostyn, I expect you to forget all this. Do you hear? Strickland, tell him.”

  Strickland obliged with alacrity: “Mostyn, you will present yourself to Housekeepers this morning at ten-thirty precisely and sign an indoctrination certificate which I personally shall compose and witness!”

  “Yes, sir,” Mostyn said, after a slightly eerie delay.

  Only now did Lacon respond to Smiley’s point: “George, I admired the man. Never his Group. There is an absolute distinction here. The man, yes. In many ways, a heroic figure, if you will. But not the company he kept: the fantasists, the down-at-heel princelings. Nor the Moscow Centre infiltrators they enfolded so warmly to their breasts. Never. The Wise Men have a point and you can’t deny it.”

  Smiley had taken off his spectacles and was polishing them with the thick end of his tie. By the pale light now breaking through the curtains, his plump face looked moist and undefended.

  “Vladimir was one of the best agents we ever had,” Smiley said baldly.

  “Because he was yours, you mean?” Strickland sneered, behind Smiley’s back.

  “Because he was good!” Smiley snapped, and there was a startled silence everywhere while he recovered himself. “Vladimir’s father was an Estonian and a passionate Bolshevik, Oliver,” he resumed in a calmer voice. “A professional man, a lawyer. Stalin rewarded his loyalty by murdering him in the purges. Vladimir was born Voldemar but he even changed his name to Vladimir out of allegiance to Moscow and the Revolution. He still wanted to believe, despite what they had done to his father. He joined the Red Army and by God’s grace missed being purged as well. The war prompted him, he fought like a lion, and when it was over, he waited for the great Russian liberalisation that he had been dreaming of, and the freeing of his own people. It never came. Instead, he witnessed the ruthless repression of his homeland by the government he had served. Scores of thousands of his fellow Estonians went to the camps, several of his own relatives among them.” Lacon opened his mouth to interrupt, but wisely closed it. “The lucky ones escaped to Sweden and Germany. We’re talking of a population of a million sober, hard-working people, cut to bits. One night, in despair, he offered us his services. Us, the British. In Moscow. For three years after that he spied for us from the very heart of the capital. Risked everything for us, every day.”

  “And needless to say, our George here ran him,” Strickland growled, still somehow trying to suggest that this very fact put Smiley out of court. But Smiley would not be stopped. At his feet, young Mostyn was listening in a kind of trance.

  “We even gave him a medal, if you remember, Oliver. Not to wear or possess, of course. But somewhere, on a bit of parchment that he was occasionally allowed to look at, there was a signature very much like the Monarch’s.”

  “George, this is history,” Lacon protested weakly. “This is not today.”

  “For three long years, Vladimir was the best source we ever had on Soviet capabilities and intentions—and at the height of the cold war. He was close to their intelligence community and reported on that too. Then one day on a service visit to Paris, he took his chance and jumped, and thank God he did, because otherwise he’d have been shot a great deal sooner.”

  Lacon was suddenly quite lost. “What do you mean?” he asked. “How sooner? What are you saying now?”

  “I mean that in those days the Circus was largely run by a Moscow Centre agent,” Smiley replied with deadly patience. “It was the sheerest luck that Bill Haydon happened to be stationed abroad while Vladimir was working for us. Another three months and Bill would have been blown sky high.”

  Lacon found nothing to say at all, so Strickland filled in for him.

  “Bill Haydon this, Bill Haydon that,” he sneered. “Just because you had that extra involvement with him—” He was going to continue but thought better of it. “Haydon’s dead, dammit,” he ended sullenly, “so’s that whole era.”

  “And so is Vladimir,” said Smiley quietly, and once again there was a halt in the proceedings.

  “George,” Lacon intoned gravely, as if he had belatedly found his place in the prayer book. “We are pragmatists, George. We adapt. We are not keepers of some sacred flame. I ask you, I commend you, to remember this!”

  Quiet but resolute, Smiley had not quite finished the old man’s obituary, and perhaps he sensed already that it was the only one he was ever going to get.

  “And when he did come out, all right, he was a declining asset, as all ex-agents are,” he continued.

  “I’ll say,” said Strickland sotto voce.

  “He stayed on in Paris and threw himself whole-heartedly into the Baltic independence movement. All right, it was a lost cause. It so happens that to this very day, the British have refused de jure recognition to the Soviet annexation of the three Baltic States—but never mind that either. Estonia, you may not know, Oliver, maintains a perfectly respectable Legation and Consulate General in Queen’s Gate. We don’t mind supporting lost causes once they’re fully lost, apparently. Not before.” He drew a sharp breath. “And all right, in Paris he formed a Baltic Group, and the Group went downhill, as émigré groups and lost causes always will—let me go on Oliver, I’m not often long!”

  “My dear fellow,” said Lacon, and blushed. “Be as long as you like,” he said, quelling another groan from Strickland.

  “His Group split up, there were quarrels. Vladimir was in a hurry and wanted to bring all the factions under one hat. The factions had their vested interests and didn’t agree. There was a pitched battle, some heads got broken, and the French threw him out. We moved him to London with a couple of his lieutenants. Vladimir in his old age returned to the Lutheran religion of his forefathers, exchanging the Marxist Saviour for the Christian Messiah. We’re supposed to encour
age that too, I believe. Or perhaps that is not policy any more. He has now been murdered. Since we are talking background, that is Vladimir’s. Now why am I here?”

  The ringing of the bell could not have been more timely. Lacon was still quite pink, and Smiley, breathing heavily, was once more polishing his spectacles. Reverently Mostyn the acolyte unchained the door and admitted a tall motor-cycle messenger dangling a bunch of keys in his gloved hand. Reverently, Mostyn bore the keys to Strickland, who signed for them and made an entry in his log. The messenger, after a long and even doting glance at Smiley, departed, leaving Smiley with the guilty feeling that he should have recognised him, even under all his paraphernalia. But Smiley had more pressing insights to concern him. With no reverence at all, Stickland dumped the keys into Lacon’s open palm.

  “All right, Mostyn, tell him!” Lacon boomed suddenly. “Tell him in your own words.”

  5

  Mostyn sat with a quite particular stillness. He spoke softly. To hear him, Lacon had withdrawn to a corner and bunched his hands judicially under his nose. But Strickland had sat himself bolt upright and seemed, like Mostyn himself, to be patrolling the boy’s words for lapses.

  “Vladimir telephoned the Circus at lunch-time today, sir,” Mostyn began, leaving some unclarity as to which “sir” he was addressing. “I happened to be Oddbins duty officer and took the call.”

  Strickland corrected him with unpleasant haste: “You mean yesterday. Be precise, can’t you?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Yesterday,” said Mostyn.

  “Well, get it right,” Strickland warned.

  To be Oddbins duty officer, Mostyn explained, meant little more than covering the lunch-hour gap and checking desks and wastebins at closing time. Oddbins personnel were too junior for night duty, so there was just this roster for lunch-times and evenings.

  And Vladimir, he repeated, came through in the lunch-hour, using the lifeline.

  “Lifeline?” Smiley repeated in bewilderment. “I don’t think I quite know what you mean.”

  “It’s the system we have for keeping in touch with dead agents, sir,” said Mostyn, then put his fingers to his temple and muttered, “Oh, my Lord.” He started again: “I mean agents who have run their course but are still on the welfare roll, sir,” said Mostyn unhappily.

  “So he rang and you took the call,” said Smiley kindly. “What time was that?”

  “One-fifteen exactly, sir. Oddbins is like a sort of Fleet Street news-room, you see. There are these twelve desks and there’s the section head’s hen-coop at the end, with a glass partition between us and him. The lifeline’s in a locked box and normally it’s the section head who keeps the key. But in the lunch-hour he gives it to the duty dog. I unlocked the box and heard this foreign voice saying ‘Hullo.’ ”

  “Get on with it, Mostyn,” Strickland growled.

  “I said ‘Hullo’ back, Mr. Smiley. That’s all we do. We don’t give the number. He said, ‘This is Gregory calling for Max. I have something very urgent for him. Please get me Max immediately.’ I asked him where he was calling from, which is routine, but he just said he had plenty of change. We have no brief to trace incoming calls and anyway it takes too long. There’s an electric card selector by the lifeline, it’s got all the worknames on it. I told him to hold on and typed out ‘Gregory.’ That’s the next thing we do after asking where they’re calling from. Up it came on the selector. ‘Gregory equals Vladimir, ex-agent, ex–Soviet General, ex-leader of the Riga Group.’ Then the file reference. I typed out ‘Max’ and found you, sir.” Smiley gave a small nod. “ ‘Max equals Smiley.’ Then I typed out ‘Riga Group’ and realised you were their last vicar, sir.”

  “Their vicar?” said Lacon, as if he had detected heresy. “Smiley their last vicar, Mostyn? What on earth—”

  “I thought you had heard all this, Oliver,” Smiley said, to cut him off.

  “Only the essence,” Lacon retorted. “In a crisis one deals only with essentials.”

  In his pressed-down Scottish, without letting Mostyn from his sight, Strickland provided Lacon with the required explanation: “Organisations such as the Group had by tradition two case officers. The postman, who did the nuts and bolts for them, and the vicar, who stood above the fight. Their father figure,” he said, and nodded perfunctorily towards Smiley.

  “And who was carded as his most recent postman, Mostyn?” Smiley asked, ignoring Strickland entirely.

  “Esterhase, sir. Workname Hector.”

  “And he didn’t ask for him?” said Smiley to Mostyn, speaking straight past Strickland yet again.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Vladimir didn’t ask for Hector? His postman? He asked for me. Max. Only Max. You’re sure of that?”

  “He wanted you and nobody else, sir,” said Mostyn earnestly.

  “Did you make notes?”

  “The lifeline is taped automatically, sir. It’s also linked to a speaking clock, so that we get the exact timing as well.”

  “Damn you, Mostyn, that’s a confidential matter,” Strickland snapped. “Mr. Smiley may be a distinguished ex-member, but he’s no longer family.”

  “So what did you do next, Mostyn?” Smiley asked.

  “Standing instructions gave me very little latitude, sir,” Mostyn replied, showing once again, like Smiley, a studied disregard for Strickland. “Both ‘Smiley’ and ‘Esterhase’ were wait-listed, which meant that they could be contacted only through the fifth floor. My section head was out to lunch and not due back till two-fifteen.” He gave a light shrug. “I stalled. I told him to try again at two-thirty.”

  Smiley turned to Strickland. “I thought you said that all the émigré files had been consigned to special keeping?”

  “Correct.”

  “Shouldn’t there have been something on the selector card to that effect?”

  “There should and there wasn’t,” Strickland said.

  “That is just the point, sir,” Mostyn agreed, talking only to Smiley. “At that stage there was no suggestion that Vladimir or his Group was out of bounds. From the card, he looked just like any other pensioned-off agent raising a wind. I assumed he wanted a bit of money, or company, or something. We get quite a few of those. Leave him to the section head, I thought.”

  “Who shall remain nameless, Mostyn,” Strickland said. “Remember that.”

  It crossed Smiley’s mind at this point that the reticence in Mostyn—his air of distastefully stepping round some dangerous secret all the time he spoke—might have something to do with protecting a negligent superior. But Mostyn’s next words dispelled this notion, for he went out of his way to imply that his superior was at fault.

  “The trouble was, my section head didn’t get back from lunch till three-fifteen, so that when Vladimir rang in at two-thirty, I had to put him off again. He was furious,” said Mostyn. “Vladimir was, I mean. I asked whether there was anything I could do in the meantime and he said, ‘Find Max. Just find me Max. Tell Max I have been in touch with certain friends, also through friends with neighbours.’ There were a couple of notes on the card about his word code and I saw that ‘neighbour’ meant Soviet Intelligence.”

  A mandarin impassivity had descended over Smiley’s face. The earlier emotion was quite gone.

  “All of which you duly reported to your section head at three-fifteen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you play him the tape?”

  “He hadn’t time to hear it,” said Mostyn mercilessly. “He had to leave straight away for a long week-end.”

  The stubborn brevity of Mostyn’s speech was now so evident that Strickland felt obliged to fill the gaps.

  “Yes, well, there’s no question but that if we’re looking for scapegoats, George, that section head of Mostyn’s made a monumental fool of himself, no question at all,” Strickland declared brightly. “He omitted to send for Vladimir’s papers—which would not, of course, have been forthcoming. He omitted to acquaint himself with standing or
ders on the handling of émigrés. He also appears to have succumbed to a severe dose of week-end fever, leaving no word of his whereabouts should he be required. God help him on Monday morning, says I. Oh, yes. Come, Mostyn, we’re waiting, boy.”

  Mostyn obediently took back the story. Vladimir rang for the third and last time at three-forty-three, sir, he said, speaking even more slowly than before. It should have been quarter to four, but he jumped the gun by two minutes. Mostyn by then had a rudimentary brief from his section head, which he now repeated to Smiley: “He called it a bromide job. I was to find out what, if anything, the old boy really wanted and, if all else failed, make a rendezvous with him to cool him down. I was to give him a drink, sir, pat him on the back, and promise nothing except to pass on whatever message he brought me.”

  “And the ‘neighbours’?” Smiley asked. “They were not an issue to your section head?”

  “He rather thought that was just a bit of agent’s histrionics, sir.”

  “I see. Yes, I see.” Yet his eyes, in contradiction, closed completely for a moment. “So how did the dialogue with Vladimir go this third time?”

  “According to Vladimir, it was to be an immediate meeting or nothing, sir. I tried out the alternatives on him as instructed—‘Write us a letter—is it money you want? Surely it can wait till Monday’—but by then he was shouting at me down the phone. ‘A meeting or nothing. Tonight or nothing. Moscow Rules. I insist Moscow Rules. Tell this to Max—’”

  Interrupting himself, Mostyn lifted his head and with unblinking eyes returned Lauder Strickland’s hostile stare.

  “Tell what to Max?” said Smiley, his gaze moving swiftly from one to the other of them.

  “We were speaking French, sir. The card said French was his preferred second language and I’m only Grade B in Russian.”

  “Irrelevant,” Strickland snapped.

  “Tell what to Max?” Smiley persisted.

  Mostyn’s eyes searched out a spot on the floor a yard or two beyond his own feet. “He meant: Tell Max I insist it’s Moscow Rules.”