A Legacy of Spies

by John le Carré

‘Out in any stated direction? Or just out for its own sake?’

  Her best thing would be a library, I say. Maybe a Marxist library. There’s one in Highgate she wrote to, but they didn’t answer. She’s already a volunteer at her local public library, I tell him. And she reads stories in English to immigrant kids who are still learning the language. But George probably knows that too.

  ‘Then we must see what we can do for her, mustn’t we? It would be helpful if you could remain alongside her for a little longer before you vanish to French shores. Are you comfortable with that?’

  ‘Not very.’

  I don’t think George is comfortable with it either.

  *

  It’s five days and two canal walks later. And night again at the Stables.

  ‘You might see if this appeals to her,’ George suggests, handing me a page ripped from a quarterly journal called Paranormal Gazette. ‘You happened on it by chance in a doctor’s waiting room while you were doing your pharmaceutical rounds. The pay is dismal, but I suspect she won’t mind that too much.’

  The Bayswater Library for Psychical Research is seeking an assistant librarian. Apply with photograph and handwritten curriculum vitae to Miss Eleanora Crail.

  *

  ‘Marcel, I got it, Marcel!’ Liz is saying, laughing and weeping as she waves the letter at me in the sports club canteen. ‘I got it, I got it! Dad says I should be ashamed of myself, it’s bourgeois superstition gone mad and sure to be anti-Semitic. Mum says go for it, it’s the first step on the ladder. So I’ve gone for it. Starting first Monday of next month!’

  And when she has put down the letter, she jumps up and hugs me and tells me I’m the best pal she’s ever had. And not for the first time I wish I hadn’t invented that steady girlfriend waiting for me in France. And I think she’s wishing it too.

  *

  It wasn’t taking much to annoy me, as Tabitha was beginning to find out.

  ‘So as soon as you’d thrown your magic dust in her eyes, you ran off and told your friend Alec what a dear, nice Communist girl you’d found for him, and all he had to do was get himself a job at the same kooky library, and the two of them would be in bed in no time. Is that how it worked?’

  ‘There was no question of telling Alec anything. I had made contact with Liz Gold as part of Windfall. Alec wasn’t Windfall cleared. Whatever happened between Alec and Liz once she’d got the job at the library was nothing to do with me, and I wasn’t informed.’

  ‘So your orders from Smiley regarding Alec Leamas in his simulated decline into drink, dissolution and betrayal were what exactly?’

  ‘To remain his friend and do whatever came naturally as things developed. Bearing in mind that, as the operation advanced, my actions would be as liable to scrutiny by the opposition as Alec’s were.’

  ‘So Control’s instruction to Leamas, meanwhile, would have been broadly this, correct me: we know you hate Americans, Alec, so go out there and hate them a bit more. We know you drink like a fish, so double the dose. And we know you like a fight when the drink’s on you, so don’t feel you’ve got to hold back, and while you’re about it, just generally go to hell in a handcart. Does that about sum it up?’

  ‘Alec was to trail his coat any way he thought best. That’s all he told me.’

  ‘All Control told you?’

  What’s she driving at? Who does she belong to, one minute coming within touching distance of the truth, then veering away as if it’s about to burn her?

  ‘All Smiley told me.’

  *

  I’m having a lunchtime drink with Alec in a pub a few minutes’ walk from the Circus. Control has given him one last chance to behave himself, and put him in Banking Section on the ground floor, with instructions to pilfer whatever he can get his hands on, although Alec doesn’t tell me this, and I’m not sure he knows how much I know. It’s half past two and we met at one, and if you’re on the ground floor you get an hour for lunch and no excuses.

  After a couple of pints, he’s into the Scotch, and all he’s had for lunch is a bag of crisps sprinkled with Tabasco. He has grumbled loudly about what a shitload of weirdos the Circus is these days, and where are all the good guys from the war, and how the only thing the top floor cares about is kissing the American arse.

  And I’ve listened and not said a lot because I’m not entirely sure how much is real Alec, and how much he’s living the part, and I’m not sure he is, which is exactly as it should be. It’s only when we’re out on the pavement with the traffic rolling by that he grabs my arm. For a moment I think he’s going to punch me. Instead, he flings his arms wide and hugs me to him like the emotional Irish drunk he’s pretending to be, while tears roll down his stubbly cheeks.

  ‘I love you, hear me, Pierrot?’

  ‘And I love you, Alec’ – dutifully.

  And before he shoves me away: ‘Tell us. Just for information. What the fuck’s Windfall?’

  ‘Just a Covert source we run. Why?’

  ‘Something that ponce Haydon said to me in his cups the other day. Covert’s got this great new source out there, and why’s nobody cutting Joint in on the action? Know what I told him?’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘If I was running Covert, I said, and somebody from Joint came up to me and said, who’s your big source? – I’d kick him in the balls.’

  ‘And what did Bill say to you?’

  ‘Told me to go fuck myself. You know something else I told him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Keep your poofy little hands off George’s wife.’

  *

  It’s late at night in the Stables. It always is. The Stables is a house that lives by night, in unpredictable surges. One minute we’re all bored stiff with waiting, the next there’s a scuffle at the front door and a yell of Shop! and in strolls Jim Prideaux with Windfall’s latest batch of crown jewels. They’ve flown in by microdot or carbon; Jim’s hand-lifted them from a dead letter box in denied territory; they’ve been passed to him personally by Windfall in a one-minute treff in a Prague back alley. Suddenly I’m dashing up and down stairs with telegrams, I’m crouching at my desk alerting Whitehall customers by green phone, the Windfall sisters’ manual typewriters are rattling away, and Ben’s cypher machine is burping through the floorboards. For the next twelve hours we will be breaking up Mundt’s raw material, spreading it across a range of fictitious sources – a bit of signals intelligence here, a telephone or microphone intercept there – and only rarely, to keep the mix alive, the odd highly placed and reliable informant, but all of it under the one magic name of Windfall, for indoctrinated readers only. Tonight it’s a lull between the storms. For once George is all on his own in the Middle Room.

  ‘I bumped into Alec a couple of days ago,’ I begin.

  ‘I thought we had agreed you would allow your relationship with your friend Alec to cool, Peter.’

  ‘There’s something about the Windfall operation I don’t understand and feel I should,’ I say, moving into my prepared speech.

  ‘Should? By what authority? My goodness me, Peter.’

  ‘It’s just a simple question, George.’

  ‘I didn’t know we dealt in simple questions.’

  ‘What’s Alec’s remit, that’s all?’

  ‘To do what he’s doing, as you well know. To become one of life’s angry failures. A Service reject. To appear resentful, vengeful, seducible, buyable.’

  ‘With what intent though, George? To what end?’

  His impatience was getting the better of him. He started to answer, drew a breath and started again.

  ‘Your friend Alec Leamas is under orders to parade his well-attested character defects in all their glory. To make sure they catch the eye of the opposition’s talent-spotters – with a little help from the traitor or traitors in our midst – and place his
considerable fund of secret intelligence on the market, for us then to add a few misleading items of our own.’

  ‘So a standard double-agent disinformation operation.’

  ‘With embellishments, yes. A standard operation.’

  ‘Only he seems to think he’s on a mission to kill Mundt.’

  ‘Well, he’s quite right, isn’t he?’ he retorts, with no delay, no alteration to his tone.

  He was peering furiously up at me through his rounded spectacles. I had expected we would be sitting down by now, but we were still standing, and I am substantially taller than George. But what struck me was the aridity of his voice, which reminded me of our meeting in the police house just hours after he had struck his devil’s pact with Mundt.

  ‘Alec Leamas is a professional, as you are, Peter, and as I am. If Control hasn’t invited him to read the fine print of his mission, so much the better for Alec and for us. He can’t misstep and he can’t betray. If his mission succeeds in ways he has not anticipated, he will not feel deceived. He will feel he has accomplished what was required of him.’

  ‘But Mundt’s ours, George! He’s our joe – he’s Windfall!’

  ‘Thank you. Hans-Dieter Mundt is an agent of this Service. And as such he must be protected at all costs from those who correctly suspect him of being what he is, and dream only of putting him against a wall and taking over his job.’

  ‘What about Liz?’

  ‘Elizabeth Gold?’ – as if he’s forgotten the name, or I have mispronounced it. ‘Elizabeth Gold will be invited to do precisely what comes naturally to her: speak the truth and nothing but the truth. Do you now have all the information you require?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I envy you.’

  12

  It’s another morning, a grey one for a change, and a fine rain is falling over Dolphin Square as I board my bus. As it happens, I arrive early at the Stables, but Tabitha is already sitting waiting for me, very pleased with herself for having acquired a sheaf of Special Branch surveillance reports which she claims landed on her doorstep. She doesn’t know whether they’re authentic, of course, or whether she could ever make use of them down the line, but I mustn’t on any account bubble to anyone that she’s got them. All of which tells me she has a friend in Special Branch, and the reports are exactly what they say they are.

  ‘So let’s kick off with the first day of live action, this one. No hint of who actually asked Special Branch to put its dogs on to Alec. Just, at the request of Box – Box, I gather, being police-speak for the Circus in those days. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who in Box might have placed the request to Special Branch?’

  ‘Joint, probably.’

  ‘Who particularly in Joint?’

  ‘Could have been any one of them. Bland, Alleline, Esterhase. Even Haydon himself. More likely he delegated it to one of his underlings so that he didn’t get his feet wet.’

  ‘And Special Branch to conduct the surveillance, and not your dear friends in the Security Service? Is that normal procedure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because the two Services didn’t like each other.’

  ‘And our splendid police?’

  ‘Disliked the Security Service for meddling and the Circus because we were a bunch of stuck-up pansies whose mission in life was to break the law.’

  She thought about this, then about me, frankly studying me with her sad blue eyes.

  ‘You’re very assured sometimes. Anyone might think you had superior knowledge. We’re going to have to watch out for that. A junior official caught up in the slipstream of historic events is what we’re after. Not somebody with a big secret to hide.’

  *

  Commander Special Branch to Box. Top Secret & Guard.

  Subject: OPERATION GALAXY.

  Prior to taking up their positions my officers made discreet background enquiries regarding the known activities of subject couple, as per their mode of employment, lifestyle and cohabitation.

  Both parties are currently employed full time at the Bayswater Library for Psychical Research, a privately funded institute managed by Miss Eleanora Crail, a single woman aged fifty-eight of eccentric manner and appearance, not previously known to police. Unaware that she was confiding in one of my officers, Miss Crail freely volunteered the following background information regarding the pair.

  VENUS, whom she refers to as her ‘darling Lizzie’, has been in her full employment as an assistant librarian for the last six months and in the view of Miss Crail is without blemish, being punctual, respectful, intelligent, clean in her habits, a fast and conscientious learner with good handwriting, and is ‘well spoken considering her class’. Miss Crail has no objection to her Communist views, of which she makes no secret, ‘provided she doesn’t bring them into my library’.

  MARS, whom she calls her ‘nasty Mr L’, has been in her full employment as second assistant librarian pending the redesign of the library, and is not in her opinion ‘at all satisfactory’. She has twice complained to the Bayswater Labour Exchange regarding his behaviour, without result. She describes him as slovenly, discourteous, overstays his lunch hours, and frequently ‘smells of alcoholic beverage’. She resents his habit of affecting a thick Irish accent when rebuked, and she would have dismissed him after one week had not her darling Lizzie (Venus) interceded on his behalf, there being an ‘unhealthy’ mutual attraction between the two, despite their differences in age and outlook, which in Miss Crail’s opinion may already have flowered into full-on intimacy. Why else, after a mere two weeks of acquaintance, would they arrive simultaneously in the morning, plus on more than one occasion she has observed them holding hands, and not just because they are passing books.

  Asked casually by my officer what previous employment Mars had claimed, she replied that according to the Employment Exchange he had been ‘some kind of insignificant clerk in a banking house’ to which she could only say that no wonder the banks were what they were coming to these days.

  Surveillance.

  For their first day of observation my officers selected the second Friday of the month, this being the day on which the Goldhawk Road Branch of the British Communist Party sponsors its Open Day to all shades of left-wing opinion at the Oddfellows’ Hall, Goldhawk Road, Venus having recently transferred her Party affiliations from Cable Street to Goldhawk Road on taking up residence in Bayswater. Regular attendees include members of the Socialist Workers’ Party, ‘Militant’, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, plus two undercover officers from my own Force – one male, one female – thereby providing cover for toilets.

  On departing the library at 1730 hours, the target couple paused at the Queen’s Arms in Bayswater Street, where Mars drank a large whisky and Venus a Babycham, arriving as anticipated at the Oddfellows’ Hall at 1912 hours, the theme of the evening being ‘Peace at What Price?’ and the hall, which accommodates 508, containing on this occasion an estimated 130 persons of varying skin colours and stations in life. Mars and Venus duly seated themselves side by side at the rear, close to the exit, with Venus, a popular figure among the comrades, receiving smiles and nods.

  After a short opening address by R. Palme Dutt, Communist activist and journalist, who then immediately left the hall, lesser speakers took the stand, the last being Bert Arthur Lownes, owner of Lownes the People’s Grocer, Bayswater Road, self-styled Trotskyist and well known to the police for incitement to violence, affray, and other acts calculated to cause a breach of the peace in a public place.

  Until Lownes took to the microphone, Mars had behaved in a sullen and bored manner, yawning, nodding off and periodically refreshing himself from a flask, contents unknown. The hectoring manner of Lownes, however, roused him from his slumbers, to quote my officer, prompting him unexpectedly to raise his arm in order to catc
h the eye of the Chairman conducting the meeting, also treasurer of the Goldhawk Road Branch, Bill Flint, who duly invited Mars to state his name then put his question to the speaker in accordance with Open Day rules. My officers’ records of the exchange, taken during and after the meeting, are uniform and read as follows:

  Mars [Irish accent. States name]: Librarian. Here’s a question for you, Comrade. You’re telling us we should lay off arming ourselves to the teeth against the Soviet threat because the Sovs aren’t threatening anybody. Am I right there? Get out of the arms race now, and spend the money on beer?

  [Laughter.]

  Lownes: Well, that’s an over-simplification, if ever I heard one, Comrade. But all right. If you want to put it like that. Yes.

  Mars: Whereas, according to you, the real enemy we should be worrying about is America. American imperialism. American capitalism. American aggression. Or is that another over-simplification I’m making?

  Lownes: What’s your question, Comrade?

  Mars: Well it’s this, you see, Comrade. Should we not be arming ourselves to the teeth against the American threat, if they’re the boys to be afraid of?

  Lownes’s reply drowned by laughter, angry jeers and scattered applause. Mars and Venus exit through rear door. On the pavement, they at first appear to engage in a lively altercation. However, their differences are short-lived, and they walk arm in arm to the bus stop, pausing only to embrace.

  Addendum.

  On comparing notebooks, two of my officers separately recorded the presence of the same well-dressed thirty-year-old man of medium height, wavy fair hair and effeminate appearance who, having left the meeting directly after the pair, followed them to the bus stop and boarded the same bus, thereupon seating himself on the lower deck while the pair favoured the upper deck, enabling Mars to smoke. When the pair alighted, the same individual also alighted, and having seen them as far as their apartment building and waited until a light appeared on the third floor, he repaired forthwith to a phone box. My officers not being under instruction to pursue ancillary targets, no attempt was made to identify or house this individual.