The Honorable Schoolboy

by John le Carré

  He drove on, lumbering through remnants of fishing villages to a lake-side where the rushes were threaded far out into the water, and doubled by their own straight reflection. Bullfrogs bellowed and light pleasure yachts switched in and out of the heat haze. The sky was dead white and reached right into the water. He got out. As he did so, an old Citroën van hobbled down the road, several Chinese aboard: Coca-Cola hats, fishing tackle, kids; but two men, no women, and the men ignored him. He made for a row of clapboard balcony houses, very run-down and fronted with concrete lattice walls like houses on an English sea front, but the paint on them paler because of the sun. Their names were done in heavy poker-work on bits of ship’s timber: “Driftwood,” “Susy May,” “Dun-romin.” There was a marina at the end of the track, but it was closed down and the yachts now harboured somewhere else.

  Approaching the houses, Jerry glanced casually at the upper windows. In the second from the left stood a lurid vase of dried flowers, their stems wrapped in silver paper. All clear, it said. Pushing open the little gate, he pressed the bell. The Citroën had stopped at the lake-side. He heard the doors slam at the same time that he heard the misused electronics over the entry-phone loudspeaker.

  “What bastard’s that?” a gravel voice demanded, its rich Australian tones thundering through the atmospherics, but the catch on the door was already buzzing, and when Jerry shoved it he saw the gross figure of old Craw in his kimono planted at the top of the staircase, hugely pleased, calling him “Monsignor” and “you thieving pommy dog,” and exhorting him to haul his ugly, upper-class backside up here and put a bloody drink under his belt.

  * * *

  The house reeked of burning joss. From the shadows of a ground-floor doorway a toothless amah grinned at him, the same strange little creature whom Luke had questioned while Craw was absent in London. The drawing-room was on the first floor, the grimy panelling strewn with curling photographs of Craw’s old pals, journalists he’d worked with for all of fifty years of crazy Oriental history. At the centre stood a table with a battered Remington where Craw was supposed to be composing his life’s memoirs. The rest of the room was sparse. Craw, like Jerry, had kids and wives left over from half a dozen existences, and after meeting the immediate needs there wasn’t much money for furniture.

  The bathroom had no window.

  Beside the hand-basin, a developing tank and brown bottles of fixer and developer. Also a small editor with a ground-glass screen for reading negatives. Craw switched off the light, and for numberless years in space laboured in the total darkness, grunting and cursing and appealing to the Pope. Beside him, Jerry sweated and tried to chart the old man’s actions by his swearing. Now, he guessed, Craw was feeding the narrow ribbon from the cassette onto the spool. Jerry imagined him holding it too lightly for fear of marking the emulsion. In a moment he’ll be doubting whether he’s holding it at all, thought Jerry. He’ll be having to will his fingertips into continuing the movement. He felt sick. In the darkness old Craw’s cursing grew much louder, but not loud enough to drown the scream of water birds from the lake. He’s deft, thought Jerry, reassured. He can do it in his sleep. He heard the grinding of bakelite as Craw screwed down the lid, and a muttered “Go to bed, you little heathen bastard,” then the strangely dry rattle as he cautiously shook the air bubbles out of the developer. Then the safety light went on with a snap as loud as a pistol-shot, and there was old Craw himself once more, red as a parrot from the glow, stooped over the sealed tank, quickly pouring in the hypo, then confidently overturning the tank and setting it right again while he watched the old kitchen timer stammer through the seconds.

  Half stifled with nerves and heat, Jerry returned alone to the drawing-room, poured himself a beer, and slumped into a cane chair, looking nowhere while he listened to the steady running of the tap. From the window came the bubbling of Chinese voices. At the lake’s edge the two fishermen had set up their tackle. The children were watching them, sitting in the dust. From the bathroom came the scratching of the lid again, and Jerry leapt to his feet, but Craw must have heard him, for he growled “Wait” and closed the door.

  Airline pilots, journalists, spies, the Sarratt doctrine warned, it’s the same drag. Bloody inertia interspersed with bouts of bloody frenzy.

  He’s taking first look, thought Jerry; in case it’s fumble. In the pecking order, it was Craw, not Jerry, who had to make his peace with London. Craw who, in the worst contingency, would order him to take a second bite of Frost.

  “What are you doing in there, for Christ’s sake?” Jerry yelled. “What goes on?”

  Perhaps he’s having a pee, he thought absurdly.

  Slowly the door opened. Craw’s gravity was awesome.

  “They haven’t come out,” said Jerry.

  He had the feeling of not reaching Craw at all. He was going to repeat himself, in fact, loudly. He was going to dance about and make a damn scene. So that Craw’s answer, when it finally came, came just in time.

  “To the contrary, my son.” The old boy took a step forward, and Jerry could see the films now, hanging behind him like black wet worms from Craw’s little clothes-line, pink pegs holding them in place. “To the contrary, sir,” he said, “every frame is a bold and disturbing masterpiece.”

  7

  MORE ABOUT HORSES

  In the Circus, the first scraps of news on Jerry’s progress arrived in the early morning, in a deadly quiet, and thereafter set the weekend upside down. Knowing what to expect, Guillam had taken himself to bed at ten and slumbered fitfully between bouts of anxiety for Jerry, and frankly lustful visions of Molly Meakin with and without her sedate swimming-suit. Jerry was due to present himself to Frost just after 4 a.m. London time, and by three-thirty Guillam was clattering in his old Porsche through the foggy streets toward Cambridge Circus. It could have been dawn or dusk. He arrived at the rumpus room to find Connie completing the Times crossword and Doc di Salis reading the meditations of Thomas Traherne, plucking his ear, and jiggling his foot all at the same time, like a one-man percussion band. Restless as ever, Fawn flitted between them, dusting and tidying, a headwaiter impatient for the next sitting. Now and then he sucked his teeth and let out a breathy “tah,” in barely controlled frustration. A pall of tobacco smoke hung like a rain cloud across the room and there was the usual stink of rank tea from the samovar.

  Smiley’s door was closed and Guillam saw no cause to disturb him. He opened a copy of Country Life. Like waiting at the bloody dentist, he thought, and sat staring mindlessly at photographs of great houses till Connie softly put down her crossword, sat bolt upright, and said “Listen.” Then he heard a quick snarl from the Cousins’ green telephone before Smiley picked it up. Through the open doorway to his own room Guillam glanced at the row of electronic boxes. On one, a green caution-light burned for as long as the conversation lasted. Then the pax rang in the rumpus room—“pax” being jargon for internal phone—and this time Guillam reached it before Fawn.

  “He’s entered the bank,” Smiley announced cryptically. Guillam relayed the message to the gathering. “He’s gone into the bank,” he said, but he might have been talking to the dead: nobody gave the slightest sign of hearing.

  By five, Jerry had come out of the bank. Nervously contemplating the options, Guillam felt physically sick. Burning was a dangerous game, and like most pros Guillam hated it, though not for reasons of scruple. First there was the quarry or, worse, the local security angels. Second there was the burn itself, and not everybody responded logically to blackmail. You got heroes, you got liars, you got hysterical virgins who put their heads back and screamed blue murder even if they were enjoying it. But the real danger came now, when the burn was over and Jerry had to turn his back on the smoking bomb and run. Which way would Frost jump? Would he telephone the police? His mother? His boss? His wife? “Darling, I’ll confess all. Save me and we’ll turn over a new leaf.” Guillam did not even rule out the ghastly possibility that Frost might go directly to his client. “S
ir, I have come to purge myself of a gross breach of bank confidence.”

  In the fusty eeriness of early morning Guillam shuddered, and fixed his mind resolutely on Molly.

  On the next occasion the green phone sounded, Guillam didn’t hear it. George must have been sitting right over the thing; suddenly the pin-light in Guillam’s room was glowing, and it continued glowing for fifteen minutes. It went out and they waited, all eyes fixed on Smiley’s door, willing him from his seclusion. Fawn was frozen in mid-movement, holding a plate of brown marmalade sandwiches, which nobody would ever eat.

  Then the handle tipped and Smiley appeared with a common-or-garden search-request form in his hand, already completed in his own neat script and flagged “Stripe,” which meant “Urgent for Chief ” and was the top priority. He gave it to Guillam and asked him to take it straight to the Queen Bee in Registry and stand over her while she looked up the name. Receiving it, Guillam recalled an earlier moment when he had been presented with a similar form, made out in the name of Worthington Elizabeth, alias Lizzie, and ending “high-class tart.” And as he departed, he heard Smiley quietly inviting Connie and di Salis to accompany him to the throne-room, while Fawn was packed off to the unclassified library in search of the current edition of Who’s Who in Hong Kong.

  The Queen Bee had been specially summoned for the dawn shift, and when Guillam walked in on her, her lair looked like a tableau of “The Night London Burned,” complete with an iron bunk and a small primus stove, though there was a coffee machine in the corridor. All she needs is a boiler suit and a portrait of Winston Churchill, he thought. The details on the trace read “Ko forename Drake other names unknown, date of birth 1925 Shanghai, present address Seven Gates, Headland Road, Hong Kong, occupation Chairman and Managing Director of China Airsea Ltd., Hong Kong.” The Queen Bee launched herself on an impressive paper-chase, but all she finally came up with was the information that Ko had been appointed to the Order of the British Empire under the Hong Kong list in 1966 for “social and charitable services to the Colony,” and that the Circus had responded “Nothing recorded against” to a vetting enquiry from the Governor’s office before the award was passed up for approval.

  Hurrying upstairs with this glad intelligence, Guillam was awake enough to remember that China Airsea Ltd., Hong Kong, had been described by Sam Collins as the ultimate owner of that mickey-mouse airline in Vientiane, which had been the beneficiary of Commercial Boris’s bounty. This struck Guillam as a most orderly connection. Pleased with himself, he returned to the throne-room to be greeted by funereal silence. Strewn over the floor lay not just the current edition of Who’s Who but several back numbers as well; Fawn, as usual, had overreached himself. Smiley sat at his desk and he was staring at a sheet of notes in his own handwriting, Connie and di Salis were staring at Smiley, but Fawn was absent again, presumably on another errand. Guillam handed Smiley the trace form with the Queen Bee’s findings written along the middle in her best Kensington copperplate. At the same moment, the green phone crackled again. Lifting the receiver, Smiley began jotting on the sheet before him.

  “Yes. Thanks, I have that. Go on, please. Yes, I have that also.” And so on for ten minutes, till he said, “Good. Till this evening, then,” and rang off.

  Outside in the street, an Irish milkman was enthusiastically proclaiming that he never would be the wild rover no more.

  “Westerby’s landed the complete file,” Smiley said finally— though, like everyone else, he referred to him by his cryptonym. “All the figures.” He nodded as if agreeing with himself, still studying the paper. “The film won’t be here till tonight but the shape is already clear. Everything that was originally paid through Vientiane has found its way to the account in Hong Kong. Right from the very beginning. Hong Kong was the final destination of the gold seam. All of it. Down to the last cent. No deductions, not even for bank commission. It was at first a humble figure, then rose steeply—why, we may only guess. All as Collins described. Till it stopped at twenty-five thousand a month and stayed there. When the Vientiane arrangement ended, Centre didn’t miss a single month. They switched to the alternative route immediately. You’re right, Con. Karla never does anything without a fall-back.”

  “He’s a professional, darling,” Connie Sachs murmured. “Like you.”

  “Not like me.” He continued studying his jottings. “It’s a lockaway account,” he declared, in the same matter-of-fact tone. “Only one name is given and that’s the founder of the trust. Ko. ‘Beneficiary unknown,’ they say. Perhaps we shall see why tonight. Not a penny has been drawn,” he said, singling out Connie Sachs. He repeated that: “Since the payments started over two years ago, not a single penny has been drawn from the account. The balance stands in the order of half a million American dollars. With compound interest, it’s naturally rising fast.”

  To Guillam, this last piece of intelligence was daylight madness. What the hell was the point to a million-dollar gold seam if the money was not even used when it reached the other end? To Connie Sachs and di Salis, on the other hand, it was patently of enormous significance. A crocodile smile spread slowly across Connie’s face and her baby eyes fixed on Smiley in silent ecstasy.

  “Oh, George,” she breathed at last, as the revelation gathered in her. “Darling. Lock-away! Well, that’s quite a different kettle of fish. Well, of course it had to be, didn’t it! It had all the signs. From the very first day. And if fat, stupid Connie hadn’t been so blinkered and old and doddery and idle, she’d have read them off long ago! You leave me alone, Peter Guillam, you lecherous young toad.” She was pulling herself to her feet, her crippled hands clamped over the chair arms. “But who can be worth so much? Would it be a network? No, no, they’d never do it for a network. No precedent. Not a wholesale thing, that’s unheard of. So who can it be? Whatever can he deliver that would be worth so much?” She was hobbling toward the door, tugging the shawl over her shoulders, slipping already from their world to her own. “Karladoesn’t pay out money like that.” They heard her mutterings follow her. She passed the mothers’ lane of covered typewriters, muffled sentinels in the gloom. “Karla’s such a mean prig he thinks his agents should work for him for nothing! ’Course he does. Pennies, that’s what he pays them. Pocket-money. Inflation is all very well, but half a million dollars for one little mole—I never heard such a thing!”

  In his quirkish way, di Salis was no less impressed than Connie. He sat with the top part of his crabbed, uneven body tilted forward, and he was stirring feverishly in the bowl of his pipe with a silver knife as if it were a cook pot which had caught on the flame. His silver hair stood wry as a cockscomb over the dandruffed collar of his crumpled black jacket.

  “Well, well, no wonder Karla wanted the bodies buried,” he blurted suddenly, as if the words had been jerked out of him. “No wonder. Karla’s a China hand, too, you know. It’s attested. I have it from Connie.” He clambered to his feet, holding too many things in his hands: pipe, tobacco tin, his penknife, and his Thomas Traherne. “Not sophisticated, naturally. Well, one doesn’t expect that. Karla’s no scholar, he’s a soldier. But not blind, either—not by a long chalk, she tells me. Ko.” He repeated the name at several different levels: “Ko. Ko. I must see the character. It depends entirely on the character. Height . . . Tree even, yes I can see tree . . . or can I? . . . oh, and several other concepts. ‘Drake’ is mission school, of course. Shanghainese mission boy. Well, well. Shanghai was where it all started, you know. First party cell ever was in Shanghai. Why did I say that? Drake Ko. Wonder what his real names are. We shall find that all out very shortly, no doubt. Yes, good. Well, I think I might go back to my reading, too. Smiley, do you think I might have a coal-scuttle in my room? Without the heating on, one simply freezes up. I’ve asked the housekeepers a dozen times and had nothing but impertinence for my pains. Anno Domini, I’m afraid, but the winter is almost upon us, I suppose. You’ll show us the raw material as soon as it arrives, I trust? One doesn’t like to wor
k too long on potted versions. I shall make a curriculum vitae. That will be my first thing. Ko. Ah, thank you, Guillam.”

  He had dropped his Thomas Traherne. Accepting it, he dropped his tobacco tin, so Guillam picked that up as well. “Drake Ko. Shanghainese doesn’t mean a thing, of course. Shanghai was the real melting-pot. Chiu Chow’s the answer, judging by what we know. Still, mustn’t jump the gun. Baptist. Well, the Chiu Chow Christians mostly are, aren’t they? Swatownese: where did we have that? Yes, the intermediate company in Bangkok. Well, that figures well enough. Or Hakka. They’re not mutually exclusive, not by any means.” He stalked after Connie into the corridor, leaving Guillam alone with Smiley, who rose and, going to an armchair, slumped into it staring sightlessly at the fire.

  “Odd,” he remarked finally. “One has no sense of shock. Why is that, Peter? You know me. Why is it?”

  Guillam had the wisdom to keep quiet.

  “A big fish. In Karla’s pay. Lock-away accounts, the threat of

  Russian spies at the very centre of the Colony’s life. So why no sense of shock?”

  The green telephone was barking again; this time Guillam took the call. As he did so, he was surprised to see a fresh folder of Sam Collins’s Far Eastern reports lying open on the desk.

  That was the weekend. Connie and di Salis sank without trace; Smiley set to work preparing his submission; Guillam smoothed feathers, called in the mothers, and arranged for typing in shifts. On the Monday, carefully briefed by Smiley, he telephoned Lacon’s private secretary. He did it very well. “No drum-beats,” Smiley had warned. “Keep it very idle.” And Guillam did just that. There had been talk over dinner the other evening—he said—of a prima-facie case for convening the Intelligence Steering Group.