A Legacy of Spies

by John le Carré

  ‘So, Peter.’ His voice for the hard of hearing, despite my assurances: ‘Setting the issue of Operation Windfall aside for a moment, would you mind awfully if Laura and I asked you a few background questions regarding the more general issue?’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Individual accountability. The old problem of where obedience to superior orders stops, and responsibility for one’s individual actions begins. Follow me?’

  ‘Barely.’

  ‘You’re in the field. Head Office has given you the green light, but not everything goes to plan. Innocent blood is shed. You, or a colleague close to you, are perceived to have exceeded orders. Have you ever thought of a situation like that?’

  ‘No.’

  Either he’s forgotten I can’t hear, or he’s decided that I can.

  ‘And you can’t think, you personally, purely in the abstract, of how such a stressful situation might arise? Looking back over the many tight corners you must have found yourself in during a long operational career?’

  ‘No. I can’t. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Not one single moment where you felt you’d exceeded Head Office orders, started something you couldn’t stop? Put your own feelings, needs – appetites even – above the call of duty, perhaps? With dire consequences that you might not have intended or foreseen?’

  ‘Well, that would get me a reprimand from Head Office, wouldn’t it? Or a recall to London. Or in a really severe case, the door,’ I suggest, giving him my disciplinary frown.

  ‘Try going a bit wider than that, Peter. I’m suggesting there could be aggrieved third parties out there. Ordinary people from the outside world who – in consequence of something you’ve done – in error, in the heat of the moment or when the flesh is a bit weak, let’s say – suffered collateral damage. People who might decide, years later, maybe a generation later, that they’ve got a pretty juicy legal case against this Service. Either by way of damages or, if that doesn’t stick, a private prosecution for manslaughter or worse. Against the Service at large, or’ – eyebrows shooting up in fake surprise – ‘a named former member of it. You’ve never considered that as a possibility?’ – sounding less like a lawyer than a doctor softening you up for really bad news.

  Give it time. Scratch the old head. No good.

  ‘Too busy making trouble for the opposition, I suppose’ – with a veteran’s weary smile. ‘Enemy out in front of you, Head Office on your tail, not a great deal of time for philosophizing.’

  ‘Their easiest course being to kick off with a parliamentary procedure, and pave the way for legal proceedings by way of a letter before action, but not go the whole hog.’

  Still thinking, I’m afraid, Bunny.

  ‘Then of course once legal proceedings are initiated, any parliamentary inquiry would step aside. Leaving the courts a free hand.’ He waits, in vain, comes in harder:

  ‘And Windfall still no bells whatever? A covert operation spread over two years in which you played a considerable – some would say heroic – role? And it doesn’t ring a single bell?’

  And Laura asking me the same question with her nun’s unblinking brown eyes, while I affect yet again to delve in my old man’s memory and – drat it – come up with absolutely nothing, but that’s anno Domini for you, I suppose – ruefully shaking my white head in frustration.

  ‘Wasn’t some sort of training exercise, was it?’ I ask gamely.

  ‘Laura just told you what it was,’ Bunny retorts, and I do an ‘ah, yes, of course she did,’ and try to look embarrassed.

  *

  We have put Windfall aside, and are back instead to considering the spectre of an ordinary person from the outside world, first hounding a named former member of the Service through Parliament, then having a second bite of them in the law courts. But we haven’t yet said whose name, or which former member, we might be talking about. I say we because, if you’ve ever done a stint of interrogating and find yourself in the hot seat, there’s a complicity that puts you and your inquisitors together on one side of the table, and the issues to be thrashed out on the other.

  ‘I mean, just take your own personal file, what’s left of it, Peter,’ Laura complains. ‘It’s not that it’s just been weeded. It’s been filleted. All right, it contained sensitive annexes deemed too secret for the General Archive. Nobody can complain about that, far as it goes. It’s what secret annexes are for. But when we go to the Restricted Archive, what do we find? A great big blank.’

  ‘Fuck all,’ Bunny puts in by way of clarification. ‘Your entire Service career, according to your file, is a shitload of destruction certificates.’

  ‘If that,’ Laura comments, evidently quite unbothered by this unlawyerly display of foul language.

  ‘Ah, but to be fair, Laura’ – Bunny now assuming the spurious mantle of prisoner’s friend – ‘what we might be looking at here could very well be the handiwork of Bill Haydon of evil memory, could it not?’ – and then to me: ‘But perhaps you’ve forgotten who Haydon is too.’

  Haydon? Bill Haydon. Got the fellow: Soviet-owned double agent who, as Head of the Circus’s omnipotent Joint Steering Committee, commonly known as Joint, had for three decades diligently betrayed its secrets to Moscow Centre. He’s also the man whose name goes through my head most hours of the day, but I am not about to leap into the air and cry ‘that bastard, I could break his neck for him’ – which in the event was what somebody else I happen to know did for him anyway, to the general satisfaction of the home side.

  Laura, meanwhile, is pursuing her conversation with Bunny:

  ‘Oh, I’ve no doubt of that at all, Bunny. That entire Restricted Archive has the marks of Bill Haydon all over it. And Peter here was one of the very early ones to sniff him out, right, Pete? In your role as George Smiley’s personal assistant. His gatekeeper and trusted disciple, were you not?’

  Bunny shakes his head in awe. ‘George Smiley. The best operator we ever had. The conscience of the Circus. Its Hamlet, as some called him, perhaps not entirely fairly. What a man. All the same, you don’t think that in the case of Operation Windfall,’ he goes on, still addressing Laura as if I’m not in the room, ‘it might not have been Bill Haydon who was plundering the Restricted Archive, but George Smiley, for whatever reason? There are some pretty odd signatures on those destruction certificates. Names you and I have never heard of. I’m not saying Smiley personally. He’d have used a willing proxy, of course he would. Someone who would blindly obey his orders, whatever their legality. Never one to get his own hands dirty, our George, great man as he was.’

  ‘Got a view about that, Pete?’ Laura enquires.

  I have indeed got a view, and a vigorous one. I hate Pete, and this conversation is getting seriously out of hand:

  ‘Why on earth, Laura, would George Smiley, of all the people in the world, need to go stealing Circus files? Bill Haydon, I grant you. Bill would have stolen a widow’s mite and had a bloody good laugh about it.’

  And a chuckle, and a shake of the old head to indicate that you young people these days can’t possibly know how it really was.

  ‘Oh, I think George could have a reason for stealing them, all right,’ Bunny replies, on Laura’s behalf. ‘He was Head of Covert for the ten coldest years of the Cold War. Waged a bare-knuckle turf war with Joint. No holds barred, whether it was poaching one another’s agents or busting into one another’s safes. Masterminded the blackest ops this Service put its hand to. Overcame his conscience whenever the greater need dictated. Which it seems to have done pretty often. I think I could see your George sweeping a few files under the carpet quite easily.’ To me now, straight into my face: ‘And I could see you helping him, too, without a qualm. Some of those funny signatures look remarkably like your handwriting. You didn’t even have to steal them. Just sign them out under somebody else’s name and bingo. As to the much lamented Alec Leamas who died
so tragically at the Berlin Wall – his personal file’s not even filleted. It’s gone AWOL. Not so much as a dog-eared card in the general index. You seem strangely unmoved.’

  ‘I’m shocked if you want to know. And moved, too. Deeply.’

  ‘Why? Simply because I’m suggesting you nicked the Leamas file out of the secret archive and hid it in a hollow tree? You’ve nicked a few files in your day for your Uncle George. Why not Leamas’s? Something to remember him by after he got himself mown down alongside – what was his girl’s name again?’

  ‘Gold. Elizabeth Gold.’

  ‘Ah. You remember. And Liz, for short. Her file’s vanished too. One could wax romantic about the notion of Alec Leamas’s and Liz Gold’s files fading into the far yonder together. How come you and Leamas became quite such firm buddies, by the way? Brothers-in-arms to the end, from all one hears.’

  ‘We did stuff together.’

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Alec was older than I was. And wiser. If he had an op running and needed a sidekick, he’d ask for me. If Personnel and George agreed, we’d be paired.’

  Laura is back: ‘So give us a couple of examples of this pairing’ – in a voice that clearly disapproves of pairing, but I am only too happy to digress.

  ‘Oh, Alec and I must have kicked off in Afghanistan in the mid-fifties, I suppose. Our first spell together was infiltrating small groups into the Caucasus, up into Russia. Probably sounds a bit old hat to you.’ Another chuckle. A shake of the head. ‘Wasn’t a roaring success, I have to admit. Nine months later they moved him to the Baltic, running joes in and out of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He asked for me again, so up I went as his help.’ And for her enlightenment: ‘The Baltic States being part of the Soviet bloc in those days, Laura, as I’m sure you know.’

  ‘And joes being agents. We say asset these days. And Leamas officially based in Travemünde, correct? North Germany?’

  ‘Correct indeed, Laura. Under cover as a member of the International Maritime Survey Group. Fishery protection by day, fast-boat landings by night.’

  Bunny interrupts our tête-à-tête: ‘Did these night landings have a name at all?’

  ‘Jackknife, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘So not Windfall?’

  Ignore him.

  ‘Jackknife. Ran for a couple of years, then got packed in.’

  ‘Ran how?’

  ‘First, rustle up your volunteers. Get ’em trained in Scotland, the Black Forest or wherever. Estonians, Latvians. Then set about putting ’em back where they came from. Wait for no moon. Rubber boat. Softly-softly outboard. Night vision. Reception party on the beach signals the all-clear. In you go. Or your joes do.’

  ‘And when your joes have gone in, you and Leamas do what? Apart from open a bottle, obviously, which in Leamas’s case was par for the course, one gathers.’

  ‘Well, we’re not going to sit around, are we?’ I reply, again refusing to rise. ‘Get the hell out fast is the message. Leave them to it. Why are you asking me all this, actually?’

  ‘Partly to get the feel of you. Partly because I’m wondering why you remember Jackknife so vividly when you don’t remember a damn thing about Windfall.’

  Laura again: ‘By leaving them to it, I presume you mean leave the agents to their fate?’

  ‘If you want to put it that way, Laura.’

  ‘Which was what? Their fate. Or have you forgotten?’

  ‘They died on us.’

  ‘Died literally?’

  ‘Some were grabbed as soon as they landed. Others a couple of days later. Some got turned and played back at us and were only executed later,’ I retort, hearing the anger rising in my voice and not particularly wanting to stop it.

  ‘So who do we blame for that, Pete?’ Laura still.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For the deaths.’

  A little explosion does no harm. ‘Bloody Bill Haydon, our in-house traitor, who d’you think? The poor devils were blown before we ever left the German coast. By our own dear Head of Joint Steering, the same outfit that had planned the op in the first place!’

  Bunny dips his head, consults something below the parapet. Laura looks first at me, then at her hands, which she prefers. Short fingernails like a boy’s, scrubbed clean.

  ‘Peter’ – Bunny’s turn, firing in groups now, rather than single shots. ‘I am rather concerned, as the Service’s chief lawyer – not your lawyer, I repeat – by certain aspects of your past. That is to say, an impression could be created around you by skilful counsel down the line – if ever Parliament were to step aside and leave the field open to the courts, secret or other, which heaven forfend – that, in the course of your career, you were associated with a quite exorbitant number of deaths, and were callous about them. That you were assigned – let us say by the impeccable George Smiley – to covert operations where the death of innocent people was considered an acceptable, even necessary outcome. Even, who knows, a desired one.’

  ‘Desired outcome? Death? What are you blabbering about?’

  ‘Windfall,’ says Bunny patiently.

  3

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘Bunny.’

  Laura has assumed a disapproving silence.

  ‘Can we just go back for a moment to 1959, when I believe Jackknife was shelved?’

  ‘Not brilliant on dates, I’m afraid, Bunny.’

  ‘Shelved by Head Office on the grounds that the operation had proved unproductive, and expensive of treasure and life. You and Alec Leamas, on the other hand, suspected there was dirty work on the home front.’

  ‘Joint Steering was crying cock-up. Alec was crying conspiracy. Never mind which bit of the coast we landed on, the opposition was there ahead of us every time. Radio links blown. Everything blown. It had to be someone on the inside. That was Alec’s view and from my worm’s-eye view I tended to share it.’

  ‘So you decided, the two of you, that you would make a démarche to Smiley. Presumably you considered Smiley himself out of contention as a potential traitor.’

  ‘Jackknife was Joint’s operation. Under Bill Haydon’s command. Haydon, then Alleline, Bland, Esterhase. Bill’s Boys, we called ’em. George was nowhere near it.’

  ‘And Joint and Covert at daggers drawn?’

  ‘Joint were forever conspiring to get Covert under their wing. George saw that as a power grab, and resisted. Strenuously.’

  ‘Where was our gallant Chief of Service in all this? Control, as we must call him.’

  ‘Playing Covert and Joint off against each other. Dividing and ruling, as usual.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking there were personal issues between Smiley and Haydon?’

  ‘Could have been. There was talk around the bazaars that Bill had had a fling with Ann, George’s wife. It blurred George’s aim. Sort of move you’d expect from Bill. He was a clever shit.’

  ‘Smiley discussed his private life with you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t think of it. Not how you talk to an underling.’

  Bunny thinks about this, doesn’t believe it, seems to want to pursue it, changes his mind.

  ‘So with the demise of Operation Jackknife, you and Leamas took your troubles to Smiley. Face to face. The three of you. You. Despite your junior position.’

  ‘Alec asked me to come along. Didn’t trust himself.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Alec fired up too easily.’

  ‘Where did this meeting à trois take place?’

  ‘Why the hell should that matter?’

  ‘Because I’m picturing a safe haven. A place you haven’t told me about, but you will in due course. I thought this might be a moment to ask.’

  I had lulled myself into believing that with all this tittle-tattle we might be drifting into less perilous waters.

  ‘We could have used
a Circus safe house, but safe houses were bugged as a matter of course by Joint. We could have used George’s place in Bywater Street, but Ann was in residence. There was a sort of understanding around that she shouldn’t be put in the way of stuff she couldn’t handle.’

  ‘She’d go running to Haydon?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. There was a feeling around. Nothing more. Do you want me to go on or not?’

  ‘Very much, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘We picked George up from Bywater Street and walked him along the South Bank for his health. It was a summer’s evening. He was always moaning that he didn’t get enough exercise.’

  ‘And out of this evening stroll beside the river, Operation Windfall was born?’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! Grow up!’

  ‘Oh, I’m grown up, don’t worry. And you’re getting younger by the minute. How did the conversation go? I’m all ears.’

  ‘We talked treachery. In the large, not in detail, there was no point. Anyone who was a present or recent member of Joint was suspect by definition. So fifty, sixty people, all potential traitors within. We talked about who had the right sort of access to blow Jackknife, but we knew that with Bill running Joint, and Percy Alleline eating out of his hand, and Bland and Esterhase getting in on the act any way they could, all that any traitor had to do was show up at Joint’s free-for-all planning sessions, or sit around the senior officers’ bar and listen to Percy Alleline sounding off. Bill always said compartmentation was a bore, let’s have everybody knowing everything. That gave him all the cover he needed.’

  ‘How did Smiley respond to your démarche?’

  ‘He’d do some hard thinking and get back to us. Which was as much as anyone ever got out of George. Look here, I think I’ll take that coffee you offered me, if you don’t mind. Black. No sugar.’