Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

by John le Carré

  “Now I’ll tell you a damn odd thing about this stage of the game. At the start, I worked Thomas the Aussie to death. I fed her a lot of smoke about a sheep station outside Adelaide and a big property in the high street with a glass front and ‘Thomas’ in lights. She didn’t believe me. She nodded and fooled around and waited till I’d said my piece; then she said, ‘Yes, Thomas,’ ‘No, Thomas,’ and changed the subject.”

  On the fourth evening, he drove her into the hills overlooking North Shore, and Irina told Tarr that she had fallen in love with him and that she was employed by Moscow Centre, she and her husband both, and that she knew Tarr was in the trade, too; she could tell by his alertness and the way he listened with his eyes.

  “She’d decided I was an English colonel of intelligence,” said Tarr with no smile at all. “She was crying one minute and laughing the next, and in my opinion she was three-quarters of the way to being a basket case. Half, she talked like a pocket-book loony heroine, half like a nice up-and-down suburban kid. The English were her favourite people. Gentlemen, she kept saying. I’d brought her a bottle of vodka and she drank half of it in about fifteen seconds flat. Hooray for English gentlemen. Boris was the lead and Irina was the backup girl. It was a his-and-hers act, and one day she’d talk to Percy Alleline and tell him a great secret all for himself. Boris was on a trawl for Hong Kong businessmen and had a post-box job on the side for the local Soviet residency. Irina ran courier, boiled down the microdots, and played radio for him on a high-speed squirt to beat the listeners. That was how it read on paper, see? The two nightclubs were rendezvous and fallback for his local connect, in that order. But all Boris really wanted to do was drink and chase the dancing girls and have depressions. Or else go for five-hour walks because he couldn’t stand being in the same room with his wife. All Irina did was wait around crying and getting plastered, and fancy herself sitting alone at Percy’s fireside, telling him all she knew. I kept her there talking, up on the hill, sitting in the car. I didn’t move because I didn’t want to break the spell. We watched the dusk fall on the harbour and the lovely moon come up there, and the peasants slipping by with their long poles and kerosene lamps. All we needed was Humphrey Bogart in a tuxedo. I kept my foot on the vodka bottle and let her talk. I didn’t move a muscle. Fact, Mr. Smiley. Fact,” he declared, with the defence-lessness of a man longing to be believed, but Smiley’s eyes were closed and he was deaf to all appeal.

  “She just completely let go,” Tarr explained, as if it were suddenly an accident, a thing he had had no part in. “She told me her whole life story, from birth to Colonel Thomas; that’s me. Mummy, Daddy, early loves, recruitment, training, her lousy half-marriage, the lot. How her and Boris were teamed at training and had been together ever since: one of the great unbreakable relationships. She told me her real name, her work-name, and the cover names she’d travelled and transmitted by; then she hauled out her handbag and started showing me her conjuring set: recessed fountain pen, signal plan folded up inside; concealed camera—the works. ‘Wait till Percy sees that,’ I tell her—playing her along, like. It was production-line stuff, mind, nothing coach-built, but grade-one material all the same. To round it off, she starts barking the dirt about the Soviet Hong Kong set-up: legmen, safe houses, letter-boxes, the lot. I was going crazy trying to remember it all.”

  “But you did,” said Guillam shortly.

  Yes, Tarr agreed; near on, he did. He knew she hadn’t told him the whole truth, but he knew truth came hard to a girl who’d been a hood since puberty, and he reckoned that for a beginner she was doing pretty nice.

  “I kind of felt for her,” he said with another flash of that false confessiveness. “I felt we were on the same wave-length, no messing.”

  “Quite so,” said Lacon in a rare interjection. He was very pale, but whether that was anger or the effect of the grey light of early morning creeping through the shutters, there was no way to tell.

  7

  “Now I was in a queer situation. I saw her next day and the day after, and I reckoned that if she wasn’t already schizoid she was going to be that way damn soon. One minute talking about Percy giving her a top job in the Circus working for Colonel Thomas, and arguing the hell with me about whether she should be a lieutenant or a major. Next minute saying she wouldn’t spy for anybody ever again and she was going to grow flowers and rut in the hay with Thomas. Then she had a convent kick: Baptist nuns were going to wash her soul. I nearly died. Who the hell ever heard of Baptist nuns, I ask her. Never mind, she says, Baptists are the greatest; her mother was a peasant and knew. That was the second biggest secret she would ever tell me. ‘What’s the biggest, then?’ I ask. No dice. All she’s saying is, we’re in mortal danger, bigger than I could possibly know: there’s no hope for either of us unless she has that special chat with Brother Percy. ‘What danger, for Christ’s sake? What do you know that I don’t?’ She was vain as a cat but when I pressed her she clammed up, and I was frightened to death she’d belt home and sing the lot to Boris. I was running out of time, too. Then it was Wednesday already and the delegation was due to fly home to Moscow Friday. Her tradecraft wasn’t all lousy but how could I trust a nut like her? You know how women are when they fall in love, Mr. Smiley. They can’t hardly—”

  Guillam had already cut him off. “You just keep your head down, right?” he ordered, and Tarr sulked for a space.

  “All I knew was Irina wanted to defect—talk to Percy, as she called it. She had three days left, and the sooner she jumped the better for everybody. If I waited much longer, she was going to talk herself out of it. So I took the plunge and walked in on Thesinger, first thing while he was opening up the shop.”

  “Wednesday, the eleventh,” Smiley murmured. “In London the early hours of the morning.”

  “I guess Thesinger thought I was a ghost,” Tarr said. “ ‘I’m talking to London, personal for Head of London Station,’ I said. He argued like hell but he let me do it. I sat at his desk and coded up the message myself from a one-time pad while Thesinger watched me like a sick dog. We had to top and tail it like trade code because Thesinger has export cover. That took me an extra half hour. I was nervy, I really was. Then I burnt the whole damn pad and typed out the message on the ticker machine. At that point, there wasn’t a soul on earth but me who knew what the numbers meant on that sheet of paper—not Thesinger, nobody but me. I applied for full defector treatment for Irina on emergency procedure. I held out for all the goodies she’d never even talked about: cash, nationality, a new identity, no limelight, and a place to live. After all, I was her business representative in a manner of speaking, wasn’t I, Mr. Smiley?”

  Smiley glanced up as if surprised to be addressed. “Yes,” he said quite kindly. “Yes, I suppose in a manner of speaking that’s what you were.”

  “He also had a piece of the action, if I know him,” said Guillam under his breath.

  Catching this or guessing the meaning of it, Tarr was furious.

  “That’s a damn lie!” he shouted, colouring deeply. “That’s a—” After glaring at Guillam a moment longer, he went back to his story.

  “I outlined her career to date and her access, including jobs she’d had at Centre. I asked for inquisitors and an Air Force plane. She thought I was asking for a personal meeting with Percy Alleline on neutral ground, but I reckoned we’d cross that bridge when we were past it. I suggested they should send out a couple of Esterhase’s lamplighters to take charge of her, maybe a tame doctor as well.”

  “Why lamplighters?” Smiley asked sharply. “They’re not allowed to handle defectors.”

  The lamplighters were Toby Esterhase’s pack, based not in Brixton but in Acton. Their job was to provide the support services for mainline operations: watching, listening, transport, and safe houses.

  “Ah, well, Toby’s come up in the world since your day, Mr. Smiley,” Tarr explained. “They tell me even his pavement artists ride around in Cadillacs. Steal the scalp-hunters’ bread out of their m
ouths, too, if they get the chance—right, Mr. Guillam?”

  “They’ve become the general footpads for London Station,” Guillam said shortly. “Part of lateralism.”

  “I reckoned it would take half a year for the inquisitors to clean her out, and for some reason she was crazy about Scotland. She had a great wish to spend the rest of her life there, in fact. With Thomas. Raising our babies in the heather. I gave it the London Station address group; I graded it flash and by hand of officer only.”

  Guillam put in: “That’s the new formula for maximum limit. It’s supposed to cut out handling in the coding rooms.”

  “But not in London Station?” said Smiley.

  “That’s their affair.”

  “You heard Bill Haydon got that job, I suppose?” said Lacon, jerking round on Smiley. “Head of London Station? He’s effectively their chief of operations, just as Percy used to be when Control was there. They’ve changed all the names, that’s the thing. You know how your old buddies are about names. You ought to fill him in, Guillam, bring him up to date.”

  “Oh, I think I have the picture, thank you,” Smiley said politely. Of Tarr, with a deceptive dreaminess, he asked, “She spoke of a great secret, you said?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you give any hint of this in your cable to London?”

  He had touched something, there was no doubt of it; he had found a spot where touching hurt, for Tarr winced, and darted a suspicious glance at Lacon, then at Guillam.

  Guessing his meaning, Lacon at once sang out a disclaimer: “Smiley knows nothing beyond what you have so far told him in this room,” he said. “Correct, Guillam?” Guillam nodded yes, watching Smiley.

  “I told London the same as she’d told me,” Tarr conceded grumpily, like someone who has been robbed of a good story.

  “What form of words, precisely?” Smiley asked. “I wonder whether you remember that.”

  “ ‘Claims to have further information crucial to the well-being of the Circus, but not yet disclosed.’ Near enough, anyhow.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  They waited for Tarr to continue.

  “I also requested Head of London Station to inform Mr. Guillam here that I’d landed on my feet and wasn’t playing hookey for the hell of it.”

  “Did that happen?” Smiley asked.

  “Nobody said anything to me,” said Guillam dryly.

  “I hung around all day for an answer, but by evening it still hadn’t come. Irina was doing a normal day’s work. I insisted on that, you see. She wanted to stage a light dose of fever to keep her in bed but I wouldn’t hear of it. The delegation had factories to visit on Kowloon and I told her to tag along and look intelligent. I made her swear to keep off the bottle. I didn’t want her involved in amateur dramatics at the last moment. I wanted it normal right up to when she jumped. I waited till evening, then cabled a flash follow-up.”

  Smiley’s shrouded gaze fixed upon the pale face before him. “You had an acknowledgement, of course?” he asked.

  “ ‘We read you.’ That’s all. I sweated out the whole damn night. By dawn I still didn’t have an answer. I thought, Maybe that R.A.F. plane is already on its way. London’s playing it long, I thought, tying all the knots before they bring me in. I mean when you’re that far away from them you have to believe they’re good. Whatever you think of them, you have to believe that. And I mean now and then they are—right, Mr. Guillam?”

  No one helped him.

  “I was worried about Irina, see? I was damn certain that if she had to wait another day she would crack. Finally the answer did come. It wasn’t an answer at all. It was a stall: ‘Tell us what sections she worked in, names of former contacts and acquaintances inside Moscow Centre, name of her present boss, date of intake into Centre.’ Jesus, I don’t know what else. I drafted a reply fast because I had a three o’clock date with her down by the church—”

  “What church?” Smiley again.

  “English Baptist.” To everyone’s astonishment, Tarr was once again blushing. “She liked to visit there. Not for services, just to sniff around. I hung around the entrance looking natural but she didn’t show. It was the first time she’d broken a date. Our fallback was for three hours later on the hilltop, then a one-minute-fifty descending scale back at the church till we met up. If she was in trouble, she was going to leave her bathing suit on her window-sill. She was a swimming nut, swam every day. I shot round to the Alexandra: no bathing suit. I had two and a half hours to kill. There was nothing I could do any more except wait.”

  Smiley said, “What was the priority of London Station’s telegram to you?”

  “Immediate.”

  “But yours was flash?”

  “Both of mine were flash.”

  “Was London’s telegram signed?”

  Guillam put in: “They’re not any more. Outsiders deal with London Station as a unit.”

  “Was it decypher yourself?”

  “No,” said Guillam.

  They waited for Tarr to go on.

  “I kicked around Thesinger’s office but I wasn’t too popular there; he doesn’t approve of scalp-hunters and he has a big thing going on the Chinese mainland that he seemed to think I was going to blow for him. So I sat in a café and I had this idea I just might go down to the airport. It was an idea: like you might say, “Maybe I’ll go to a movie.” I took the Star Ferry, hired a cab, and told the driver to go like hell. It got like a panic. I barged the Information queue and asked for all departures to Russia, or connections in. I nearly went mad going through the flight lists, yelling at the Chinese clerks, but there wasn’t a plane since yesterday and none till six tonight. But now I had this hunch. I had to know. What about charters, what about the unscheduled flights, freight, casual transit? Had nothing, but really nothing, been routed for Moscow since yesterday morning? Then this little girl comes through with the answer, one of the Chinese hostesses. She fancies me, see. She’s doing me a favour. An unscheduled Soviet plane had taken off two hours ago. Only four passengers boarded. The centre of attraction was a woman invalid. A lady. In a coma. They had to cart her to the plane on a stretcher, and her face was wrapped in bandages. Two male nurses went with her and one doctor—that was the party. I called the Alexandra as a last hope. Neither Irina nor her so-called husband had checked out of their room, but there was no reply. The lousy hotel didn’t even know they’d left.”

  Perhaps the music had been going on a long time and Smiley only noticed it now. He heard it in imperfect fragments from different parts of the house: a scale on a flute, a child’s tune on a recorder, a violin piece more confidently played. The many Lacon daughters were waking up.

  8

  “Perhaps she was ill,” said Smiley stolidly, speaking more to Guillam than anyone else. “Perhaps she was in a coma. Perhaps they were real nurses who took her away. By the sound of her, she was a pretty good mess, at best.” He added, with half a glance at Tarr: “After all, only twenty-four hours had elapsed between your first telegram and Irina’s departure. You can hardly lay it at London’s door on that timing.”

  “You can just,” said Guillam, looking at the floor. “It’s extremely fast, but it does just work, if somebody in London—” They were all waiting. “If somebody in London had very good footwork. And in Moscow, too, of course.”

  “Now, that’s exactly what I told myself, sir,” said Tarr proudly, taking up Smiley’s point and ignoring Guillam’s. “My very words, Mr. Smiley. ‘Relax, Ricki,’ I said; ‘you’ll be shooting at shadows if you’re not damn careful.’ ”

  “Or the Russians tumbled to her,” Smiley said. “The security guards found out about your affair and removed her. It would be a wonder if they hadn’t found out, the way you two carried on.”

  “Or she told her husband,” Tarr suggested. “I understand psychology as well as the next man, sir. I know what can happen between a husband and wife when they have fallen out. She wishes to annoy him. To goad him,
to obtain a reaction, I thought. ‘Want to hear what I’ve been doing while you’ve been out boozing and cutting the rug?’—like that. Boris peels off and tells the gorillas; they sandbag her and take her home. I went through all those possibilities, Mr. Smiley, believe me. I really worked on them, truth. Same as any man does whose woman walks out on him.”

  “Let’s just have the story, shall we?” Guillam whispered, furious.

  Well, now, said Tarr, he would agree that for twenty-four hours he went a bit berserk: “Now, I don’t often get that way—right, Mr. Guillam?”

  “Often enough.”

  “I was feeling pretty physical. Frustrated, you could almost say.”

  His conviction that a considerable prize had been brutally snatched away from him drove him to a distracted fury that found expression in a rampage through old haunts. He went to the Cat’s Cradle, then to Angelika’s, and by dawn he had taken in half a dozen other places besides, not to mention a few girls along the way. At some point he crossed town and raised a spot of dust around the Alexandra. He was hoping to have a couple of words with those security gorillas. When he sobered down, he got thinking about Irina and their time together, and he decided before he flew back to London to go round their dead letter-boxes to check whether by any chance she had written to him before she left.

  Partly it was something to do. “Partly, I guess, I couldn’t bear to think of a letter of hers kicking around in a hole in a wall while she sweated it out in the hot seat,” he added, the ever-redeemable boy.