A Legacy of Spies

by John le Carré

  I have submitted my abject apologies to Aflon personally and to his H/Station, Milton Berger. This is the most recent of a series of regrettable incidents involving Leamas.

  While I acknowledge that recent losses to the Mayflower network have placed the Station and Leamas personally under considerable strain, this in no way justifies the damage he has done to our relations with our most important ally. Leamas’s anti-Americanism has long been apparent. It has now become totally unacceptable. Either he goes or I do.

  And after Control’s green scrawl, Smiley’s lapidary reply: I have already ordered Alec back to London.

  *

  ‘So, Peter,’ Tabitha is saying. ‘Simulated? Not simulated? Are we looking at the official beginning of his downhill slide?’

  And when, in genuine doubt, I prevaricate, she offers her own answer:

  ‘Control certainly thought it was the beginning’ – indicating the handwritten green scrawl at the bottom of the page. ‘Look at his footnote to your Uncle George. A very promising start, signed C. You can’t get clearer than that, can you, even in your murky world?’

  No, Tabitha, you can’t. And murky it is, no question.

  *

  It’s a funeral. It’s a wake. It’s a thieves’ conference held in desperation at dead of night in this very room, with Josef Fiedler and Hans-Dieter Mundt staring down on us with the same lugubrious intensity. We are the six Windfalls, as Connie Sachs, our latest recruit, has dubbed us: Control, Smiley, Jim Prideaux, Connie, myself and Millie our near-silent partner. Jim Prideaux is just returned from yet another undercover run, this time to Budapest, where he has brought off a rare treff with our most precious asset Windfall. Connie Sachs, in her early twenties already the unchallenged wunderkind of research into Soviet and Satellite intelligence agencies, has recently flounced out of Joint Steering in a huff, straight into George’s waiting arms. She is a brisk, chubby little body, bluestocking, born into the clover, and impatient of lesser minds like mine.

  Stately, remote, raven-haired Millie McCraig moves among us like a ministering nurse in a field hospital, handing out coffee and Scotch to the needy. Control wants his usual foul green tea, takes one peck at it, leaves the rest. Jim Prideaux chain-smokes his usual foul Russian cigarettes.

  And George? Looks so withdrawn, so unapproachable, has an air of introspection so forbidding, that it would take a brave man to interrupt his reverie.

  When Control speaks, he trails his tobacco-stained fingertips across his lips as if he is checking them for sores. He is silvery, dapper, ageless and reportedly friendless. He has a wife somewhere but, according to the gossip, she thinks her husband’s in the Coal Board. When he stands, his stooped shoulders come as a surprise. You wait for them to straighten, but they never do. He has been in the job since the mists of time, but I have spoken to him precisely twice and heard him lecture once, and that was on my pass-out day at Sarratt. The voice is knife-thin like the man – nasal, monotonous and irritable as a spoilt child’s. And it doesn’t warm naturally to questions, not even his own.

  ‘So do we or do we not believe,’ he demands through his fluttering fingertips, ‘that we’re still getting the best material out of Herr bloody Mundt? Is it second pickings? Is it chickenfeed? Is it smoke? And is he leading us up the garden path? George?’

  With Control, nobody uses cover names, house rule. Doesn’t care for them. Says they glorify too much. Better to call a spade a bloody shovel than a holy relic.

  ‘Mundt’s product seems to be as good as it ever was, Control,’ Smiley replies.

  ‘Pity he didn’t tip us off about the bloody Wall then. Or did he forget? Jim?’

  Jim Prideaux, after reluctantly taking the cigarette from his lips: ‘Mundt says Moscow cut him out of the loop. They told Fiedler. They didn’t tell Mundt. And Fiedler kept it to himself.’

  ‘The swine killed Riemeck, didn’t he? That wasn’t friendly. What made him do that?’

  ‘He says he just happened to get there an hour or two ahead of Fiedler,’ Prideaux replies in his habitually gruff monotone. And again we wait for Control, who in return lets us wait for him.

  ‘So we don’t believe the opposition has turned Mundt back on us,’ Control drones on irritably. ‘He’s still ours. Well, he bloody well should be. We can toss him to the wolves any time we feel like it. He’s power mad. He wants to be Moscow Centre’s golden boy. Well, we want him to be Moscow’s golden boy. And our golden boy too. So our interests are mutual. But Herr Josef bloody Fiedler is blocking his way. And our way. Fiedler suspects Mundt is ours, and he is. So Fiedler’s out to expose him and claim the credit. That about the sum of it, George?’

  ‘It would seem to be, Control.’

  ‘Seems to be. Everything seems. Nothing is. I thought we dealt in facts in this job. Yes or no: Herr Josef Fiedler – a saintly man, we are told, by Stasi standards, a true believer in the cause and a Jew to boot – thinks that his esteemed colleague Hans-Dieter Mundt, unreformed Nazi, is the running dog of British Intelligence. And he’s not all wrong, is he?’

  George glances at Jim Prideaux. Jim rubs his jaw and glares at the worn carpet. Control again:

  ‘So do we believe Herr Mundt? Another question. Or is he talking up a storm, same as a lot of other agents we know? Is he spinning you along, Jim? You agent-runners are a soft lot where your joes are concerned. Even a Class A shit like Mundt gets the benefit of the doubt.’

  But Jim Prideaux, as Control well knows, is about as soft as flint.

  ‘Mundt’s got people inside Fiedler’s camp. He’s told me who they are. He’s listened to them. He knows Fiedler’s out to get him. Fiedler has as good as told him so to his face. Fiedler has his own friends in Moscow Centre too. Mundt thinks they could make a move pretty soon.’

  Again we wait for Control, who decides after all that he needs to take a sip of cold green tea; and needs us to watch him do it too.

  ‘Which begs the question, doesn’t it, George?’ he complains wearily. ‘If Josef Fiedler was out of the way – means to be discussed – might Moscow love Mundt more? And if they do love him more, might we finally discover who the bugger is who is betraying our agents to Moscow Centre?’ – and receiving no answer from the company: ‘How about you, Guillam? Does youth have an answer to that question? I am being relative.’

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t, sir.’

  ‘Pity. George and I think we may have found an answer, you see. But George can’t stomach it. Well, I can. I’ve arranged to see your friend Alec Leamas tomorrow. Test the water with him. See what he feels about it all, now he’s lost his network to the Mundt–Fiedler shooting club. A fellow in his position might welcome a chance to finish his career on an up-note. Don’t you agree?’

  *

  Tabitha is provoking me, I suspect deliberately:

  ‘The trouble with you spies, nothing personal, is that none of you know the truth from your elbows. Which does make it awfully hard to defend you. I’ll give it my best endeavours, mind you, I always do.’ And when I return her sweet smile, but otherwise fail to respond: ‘Elizabeth Gold kept a diary, that’s the trouble. And Doris Gamp told all to poor Lotte, her sister. Women do these things – gossip with each other, keep diaries, write silly letters. Bunny’s lot are making hay with it all. They’re comparing you with our modern undercover police informants who go about stealing the hearts of their women victims and giving them babies. I did take a peek at the dates to see if you could have given Elizabeth her Karen, but you’re absolutely in the clear, which was a bit of a relief, frankly. And Gustav, thank God, is too old even to have been a twinkle in your eye.’

  *

  It’s a balmy autumn afternoon on Hampstead Heath, and one week after Control’s announcement that he would be testing the water with Alec. I’m sitting with George Smiley at an outdoor table in the gardens of Kenwood House. It’s a weekday, hardly a soul about. We could
just as well have met in the Stables, but George has managed to imply that our conversation is so private that we need the open air. He’s wearing a Panama hat that blacks out his eyes, with the result that, just as I’m getting only part of the secret, I’m getting only part of George.

  We have done the small talk, or I assume we have. Am I happy in my work? I am, thank you. Have I got over the Tulip thing? I have, thank you. Nice of Oliver Lacon to bury my draft; there was always a danger Joint would make too much of that mystery Swiss intruder at Camp 4. I say I’m glad too, although I sweated blood and tears over it.

  ‘I want you to befriend a girl for me, Peter,’ Smiley confides, puckering his brow for greater earnestness. Then, realizing I might be misinterpreting this request: ‘Oh my goodness, not to accommodate any needs on my part, I assure you! Strictly for operational purposes. Might you be willing to do that? In principle? For the good of the cause? Acquire her trust?’

  ‘The cause being Windfall,’ I suggest guardedly.

  ‘Yes. Entirely. Solely. For the continued successful outcome of Operation Windfall. Its preservation. As a necessary and urgent adjunct,’ he replies, and we sip our apple juice and watch the people come and go in the sunshine. ‘Also at the specific request of Control, I may add,’ he goes on, either as a further inducement or to pass the buck. ‘He actually proposed your name: that young Guillam fellow. Singled you out.’

  Am I supposed to take this as a compliment – or a veiled warning? George, I suspected, had never much liked Control, and Control didn’t like anybody.

  ‘I’m sure there are lots of ways of bumping into her,’ he goes on, looking on the bright side. ‘She’s a member of her local branch of the Communist Party, for one. Sells the Daily Worker at weekends. But I don’t really see you buying a copy from her, do you?’

  ‘If you mean, do I think I come over as a natural Daily Worker reader? – no, I don’t think I do.’

  ‘No, no, and you mustn’t try. Please don’t on any account try to be someone who doesn’t add up. Much better your usual genial middle-class self. She runs,’ he adds as an afterthought.

  ‘Runs?’

  ‘Every morning early, she runs. I find it charming. Don’t you? Fitness runs. Wellbeing runs. Round and round the local sports track. Alone. Then off to work in a book store in Fulham. Not a book shop, a store. But books, for all that. Dispatching them to wholesalers in bulk. It may sound tedious to us, but she sees it as a cause. We must all have books, the huddled masses especially. And of course she marches too.’

  ‘As well as runs?’

  ‘For Peace, Peter. For peace with a capital P. From Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square, then on to Hyde Park Corner for more of the same. If only Peace were so easy.’

  Is he expecting me to smile? I try to.

  ‘But I don’t see you assisting her with a banner, either, of course I don’t. You’re a decent bourgeois fellow, making his way in the world, a species quite unknown to her, and therefore all the more interesting. A good pair of running shoes and your puckish smile, you’ll be friends in no time. And if you put on your French persona, you’ll be able to make a graceful exit when the time comes. Then it will be all done and dusted. You can forget about her. And she about you. Yes.’

  ‘It might be a help if I knew her name,’ I suggest.

  He thinks about this too – painfully, problematically: ‘Yes, well, they’re immigrants. The family are. The parents are first generation, she’s second. And they have settled, after some deliberation, on the name of Gold,’ he concedes, as if I have dragged the name out of him. ‘First name Elizabeth. Liz to her friends.’

  I too take my time. I’m drinking apple juice on a sunny afternoon with a tubby gentleman in a Panama hat. Nobody is hurrying.

  ‘And when I’ve acquired her trust, as you put it, what do I do then?’

  ‘Why, you come and tell me, of course,’ he snaps, as if suddenly all the hesitation in him has been replaced by anger.

  *

  I am a young French commercial traveller named Marcel Lafontaine, presently based in an Indian-owned boarding house in Hackney, East London, and I have the documents to prove it. It’s day five. Each morning at crack of dawn, I take a bus to the memorial park and run. Most mornings there are six or seven of us. We run, we stand panting on the sports hall steps, we check our times, we compare. We exchange a couple of words, divide to the shower rooms, say cheers and see you tomorrow maybe. My companions are vaguely amused by my French name, but disappointed that I have no French accent. I explain that I had an English mother, now dead.

  In a cover story, kill off any loose thread before it gets out of hand.

  Of our three regular female runners, Liz (we have no surnames) is the tallest, but by no means the fastest. In truth, she’s not much of a natural runner at all. She runs as an act of will, or self-discipline, or liberation. She is reserved and apparently unaware that she is beautiful, if in a tomboy sort of way. She’s leggy, has dark hair cropped short, a wide brow and big, brown, vulnerable eyes. Yesterday, we traded our first smiles.

  ‘Busy day coming up?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re out on strike,’ she explains breathlessly. ‘Got to be up the gates at eight.’

  ‘What gates are they then?’

  ‘Where I work. Management’s trying to sack our shop steward. Could go on for weeks.’

  Then it’s see you, see you, till next time.

  And next time is tomorrow which is Saturday so apparently there’s no picketing, people need to shop. We do a coffee together in the canteen, she asks me what I do. I explain I’m travelling for this French pharmaceutical company, selling products to local hospitals and GPs. She says that must be really interesting. I say well, not really, because what I’d like to be doing is studying medicine, but my dad doesn’t want me to do that because the company I represent is our family firm and he wants me to learn it from the ground up and take it over. I show her my business card. My firm bears my fictitious father’s name. She studies it with a frown and a smile, but the frown wins:

  ‘You think that’s right, do you? Like socially? The son of the family inheriting the family firm just because he’s the son?’

  And I say no, I don’t think it’s right, it bothers me. And it bothers my fiancée too, which is why I want to be a doctor like her, because I admire my fiancée as well as love her, I think she’s a real blessing to mankind.

  And the reason I’ve given myself a fiancée is because, although I find Liz disturbingly attractive, I’m never going to do another Tulip as long as I live. It’s also thanks to my mythical fiancée that Liz and I are able to walk beside the canal and earnestly swap our aspirations, now that she knows I’m lost in love and admiration for a woman doctor in France.

  When we have traded our hopes and dreams, we talk parents, and how it is to be part foreign, and she asks me whether I’m Jewish, and I say no.

  Over a carafe of red wine at the Greek, she asks me whether I’m a Communist, and instead of saying no again I take the frivolous route and say I just can’t make up my mind whether to be a Bolshevik or a Menshevik, and can she please advise?

  And after that, we get serious, or she does, and we start talking about the Berlin Wall, which is so present in my mind that it never occurred to me that it might be in hers too.

  ‘My dad says it’s a barrier to keep the Fascists out,’ she says.

  And I say, ‘Well, that’s a view, I suppose,’ which annoys her.

  ‘So what do you think it is?’ she demands.

  ‘I just don’t think the Wall’s there to keep people out,’ I say. ‘I think it’s more there to keep people in.’

  To which I get the unanswerable reply, again delivered after earnest thought:

  ‘Dad doesn’t think like that, you see, Marcel. The Fascists killed his family. That’s good enough for Dad.’

  *


  ‘Poor Liz’s diary simply gushes about you, Peter,’ Tabitha is saying, with her pitying, sweet smile. ‘You’re such a gallant French gentleman. Your English is so good she keeps forgetting you’re French at all. If only there were more men like you in the world. You’re a lost cause as far as the Party’s concerned, but you’re a humanist, you know the true meaning of love, and with a bit of work you might see the light one day. She doesn’t say she’d like to put arsenic in your fiancée’s coffee, but she doesn’t have to. She also took a photograph of you, in case you’ve forgotten. This one. She borrowed her father’s Polaroid camera specially.’

  I’m in my running gear, propped against a bit of railing, which was how she posed me. Then told me to be natural, not to smile.

  ‘And I’m afraid it’s in their submission too. Exhibit A, so to speak. You’re the wicked Romeo who stole a poor girl’s heart away and led her to the slaughter. There’s practically a song about you.’

  *

  ‘We’re friends,’ I announce to Smiley, not over an apple juice on sunny Hampstead Heath this time, but back in the Stables to the background putter of the cypher machine upstairs and the Windfall sisters at their manual typewriters.

  I tell him the rest of the operational intelligence. She lives with her parents. No brothers or sisters. Doesn’t go out. Her parents quarrel. The father dickers between Zionism and Communism. Never misses synagogue or shirks a meeting of the comrades. Mother determinedly secular. Dad wants Liz in the garment trade. Mum wants Liz to do teacher training. But I have a feeling that George knows all this already, for why else would he have chosen her in the first place?

  ‘But what does Elizabeth want for herself, we wonder?’ he muses.

  ‘She wants out, George,’ I reply more impatiently than I intend.