The Honorable Schoolboy

by John le Carré

  On the morning following his “pass” at Lizzie Worth or Worthington—the jargon has no sexual connotation—Craw debriefed Jerry for more than three hours on a car pick-up, and his report describes Jerry as being, quite reasonably, in a state of “anti-climactic gloom.” He appeared, said Craw, to be afraid that Tiu, or even Ko, might blame the girl for her “guilty knowledge” and even lay hands on her. Jerry referred more than once to Tiu’s patent contempt for the girl—and for himself, and, he suspected, for all Europeans—and repeated his comment about travelling from Kowloon-side to Hong Kong-side for her and no further. Craw countered by pointing out that Tiu could at any time have shut her up; and that her knowledge, on Jerry’s own testimony, did not extend even as far as the Russian gold seam, let alone to brother Nelson.

  Jerry, in short, was producing the standard post-operational manifestations of a fieldman. A sense of guilt, coupled with foreboding, an involuntary movement of affiliation toward the target person—these are as predictable as a burst of tears in an athlete after the big race.

  At their next contact—an extended limbo call on the second day, at which, to buoy him up, Craw passed on Smiley’s warm personal congratulations somewhat ahead of receiving them from the Circus—Jerry sounded in altogether better case, but he was worried about his daughter Cat. He had forgotten her birthday—he said it was tomorrow—and wished the Circus to send her at once a Japanese cassette player with a bunch of cassettes to start off her collection. Craw’s telegram to Smiley named the cassettes, asked for immediate action by housekeepers, and requested that Shoemaker Section—the Circus forgers, in other words—run up an accompanying card in Jerry’s handwriting, text given: “Darling Cat. Asked a friend of mine to post this in London. Look after yourself, my dearest, love to you now and ever, Pa.”

  Smiley authorised the purchase, instructing housekeepers to dock the cost from Jerry’s pay at source. He personally checked the parcel before it was sent, and approved the forged card. He also verified what he and Craw already suspected: that it was not Cat’s birthday, or anywhere near. Jerry simply had a strong urge to make a gesture of affection: once more, a normal symptom of temporary field fatigue. Smiley cabled Craw to stay close to him but the initiative was with Jerry, and Jerry made no further contact till the night of the fifth day, when he demanded— and got—a crash meeting within the hour. This took place at their standing after-dark emergency rendezvous, an all-night roadside café in the New Territories, under the guise of a casual encounter between old colleagues. Craw’s letter, marked “Personal to Smiley only,” was a follow-up to his telegram. It arrived at the Circus by hand of the Cousins’ courier two days after the episode it describes: on day seven therefore. Writing on the assumption that the Cousins would contrive to read the text despite the seal and other devices, Craw crammed it with evasions, work names, and cryptograph, which are here restored to their real meaning:

  Westerby was very angry. He demanded to know what the hell Sam Collins was doing in Hong Kong and in what way Collins was involved in the Ko case. I have not seen him so disturbed before. I asked him what made him think Collins was around. He replied that he had seen him that very night—eleven-fifteen exactly—sitting in a parked car in the Midlevels, on a terrace just below Star Heights, under a streetlamp, reading a newspaper. The position Collins had taken up, said Westerby, gave him a clear view to Lizzie Worthington’s windows on the eighth floor, and it was Westerby’s assumption that he was engaged in some sort of surveillance. Westerby, who was on foot at the time, insists that he “damn nearly went up to Sam and asked him outright.” But Sarratt discipline held firm, and he kept going down the hill on his own side of the road. But he does claim that as soon as Collins saw him, he started the car and drove up the hill at speed. Westerby has the licence number, and of course it is the correct one. Collins confirms the rest.

  In accordance with our agreed position in this contingency (your signal of Feb. 15th), I gave Westerby the following answers:

  1. Even if it was Collins, the Circus had no control over his movements. Collins had left the Circus under a cloud, before the fall, he was a known gambler, drifter, wheelerdealer, etc., and the East was his natural stomping-ground. I told Westerby he was being a fat-headed idiot to assume that Collins was still on the payroll, or, worse, had any part in the Ko case.

  2. Collins is facially a type, I said: regular-featured, moustached, etc., looked like half the pimps in London. I doubted whether, from across a road at eleven-fifteen at night, Westerby could be certain of his identification. Westerby retorted that he had A-1 vision and that Sam had his newspaper open at the racing page.

  3. Anyway, what was Westerby himself doing, I enquired, round Star Heights at eleven-fifteen at night? Answer, returning from drinking with the U.P.I. mob and hoping for a cab. At this I pretended to explode, and said that nobody who had been on a U.P.I. thrash could see an elephant at five yards, let alone Sam Collins at twenty-five, in a car, at dead of night. Over and out—I hope.

  That Smiley was seriously concerned about this incident goes without saying. Only four people knew of the Collins ploy: Smiley, Connie Sachs, Craw, and Sam himself. That Jerry should have stumbled on him provided an added anxiety in an operation already loaded with imponderables.

  But Craw was deft, and Craw believed he had talked Jerry down, and Craw was the man on the spot. Just possibly in a perfect world, Craw might have made it his business to find out whether there had really been a U.P.I. party in the Midlevels that night—and on learning that there had not, he might have challenged Jerry again to explain his presence in the region of Star Heights, and in that case Jerry would probably have thrown a tantrum and produced some other story that was not checkable: that he had been with a woman, for instance, and Craw could mind his bloody business. Of which the net result would have been needless bad blood and the same take-it-or-leave-it situation as before.

  It is also tempting, but unreasonable, to expect of Smiley that with so many other pressures upon him—the continued and unabating quest for Nelson, daily sessions with the Cousins, rear-guard actions round the Whitehall corridors—he should have drawn the inference closest to his own lonely experience: namely, that Jerry, having no taste for sleep or company that evening, had wandered the night pavements till he found himself standing outside the building where Lizzie lived, and hung about, as Smiley did, without exactly knowing what he wanted, beyond the off chance of a sight of her. The rush of events which carried Smiley along was far too powerful to permit of such fanciful abstractions. Not only did the eighth day, when it came, put the Circus effectively on a war footing; it is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.

  14

  THE EIGHTH DAY

  The jolly mood of the fifth floor was a great relief after the depression of the previous gathering. “A burrowers’ honeymoon,” Guillam called it, and tonight was its highest point, its attenuated star-burst of a consummation, and it came exactly eight days, in the chronology which historians afterwards impose on things, after Jerry and Lizzie and Tiu had had their full and frank exchange of views on the subject of Tiny Ricardo and the Russian gold seam—to the great delight of the Circus planners. Guillam had wangled Molly along specially.

  They had run in all directions, these shady night animals, down old paths and new paths and old paths grown over till they were rediscovered; and now at last, behind their twin leaders— Connie Sachs alias Mother Russia, and di Salis alias the Doc— they crammed themselves, all twelve of them, into the very throne-room itself, under Karla’s portrait, in an obedient halfcircle round their chief, Bolshies and yellow perils together. A plenary session, then: for people unused to such drama, a monument of history indeed. And Molly primly at Guillam’s side, her hair brushed long to hide the bite marks on her neck.

  Di Salis does most of the talking. The other ranks feel this to be appropriate. After all, Nelson Ko is the Doc’s patch entirely: Chinese to the sleeve-end
s of his tunic. Reining himself right in—his spiky wet hair, his knees and feet and fussing fingers all but still for once—he keeps things in a low and almost deprecating key of which the inexorable climax is accordingly more thrilling. The climax even has a name. It is Ko Sheng-hsiu—alias Ko, Nelson—later known also as Yao Kai-sheng, under which name he was still later disgraced in the Cultural Revolution.

  “But within these walls, gentlemen,” pipes the Doc, whose awareness of the female sex is inconsistent, “we shall continue to call him Nelson.” Born 1928 of humble proletarian stock, in Swatow—to quote the official sources, says the Doc—and soon afterwards removed to Shanghai. No mention, in either official or unofficial handouts, of Mr. Hibbert’s Lord’s Life Mission school, but a sad reference to “exploitation at the hands of Western Imperialists in childhood,” who poisoned him with religion. When the Japanese reached Shanghai, Nelson joined the refugee trail to Chungking, all as Mr. Hibbert has described.

  From an early age, the Doc continues, once more according to official records, Nelson secretly devoted himself to seminal revolutionary reading and took an active part in clandestine Communist groups, despite the oppression of the loathsome Chiang Kai-shek rabble. On the refugee trail he also attempted “on many occasions” to escape to Mao, but his extreme youth held him back. Returning to Shanghai, he became, already as a student, a leading cadre member of the outlawed Communist movement and undertook special assignments in and around the Kiangnan shipyards to subvert the pernicious influence of K.M.T. Fascist elements. At the University of Communications he appealed publicly for a united front of students and peasants. Graduated with conspicuous excellence in 1951. . . .

  Di Salis interrupts himself, and in a sharp release of tension throws up one arm and clenches the hair at the back of his head.

  “The usual unctuous portrait, Chief, of a student hero who sees the light before his time,” he sings.

  “What about Leningrad?” Smiley asks, from his desk, while he jots the occasional note.

  “Nineteen fifty-three to six.”

  “Yes, Connie?”

  Connie is in her wheelchair again. She blames the freezing month and that toad Karla, jointly.

  “We have a Brother Bretlev, darling. Bretlev, Ivan Ivanovitch, Academician, Leningrad faculty of shipbuilding, old-time China hand, devilled in Shanghai for Centre’s China hounds. Revolu-tionary war-horse, latter-day Karla-trained university talentspotter trawling the overseas students for likely lads and lasses.”

  For the burrowers on the Chinese side—the yellow perils— this intelligence is new and thrilling, and produces an excited crackle of chairs and papers till at a sign from Smiley, di Salis lets go his head and takes up his narrative once more.

  “Nineteen fifty-seven returned to Shanghai and was put in charge of a railway workshop—”

  Smiley again: “But his dates at Leningrad were ’fifty-three to ’fifty-six?”

  “Correct,” says di Salis.

  “Then there seems to be a missing year.”

  Now no papers crackle and no chairs, either.

  “A tour of Soviet shipyards is the official explanation,” says di Salis, with a smirk at Connie and a mysterious, knowing writhe of the neck.

  “Thank you,” says Smiley and makes another note. “’Fiftyseven,” he repeats. “Was that before or after the Sino-Soviet split, Doc?”

  “Before. The split started in earnest in ’fifty-nine.”

  Smiley asks here whether Nelson’s brother receives a mention anywhere; or is Drake as much disowned in Nelson’s China as Nelson is in Drake’s?

  “In one of the earliest biographies, Drake is referred to, but not by name. In the later ones, a brother is said to have died during the Communist take-over of ’forty-nine.”

  Smiley makes a rare joke, which is followed by dense, relieved laughter. “This case is littered with people pretending to be dead,” he complains. “It will be a positive relief to me to find a real corpse somewhere.”

  Only hours later, this mot was remembered with a shudder.

  “We also have a note that Nelson was a model student at Leningrad,” di Salis goes on. “At least in Russian eyes. They sent him back with the highest references.”

  Connie from her iron chair allows herself another interjection. She has brought Trot, her mangy mongrel, with her. He lies misshapenly across her vast lap, stinking and occasionally sighing, but not even Guillam, who is a dog-hater, has the nerve to banish him.

  “Oh, and so they would, dear, wouldn’t they?” she cries. “The Russians would praise Nelson’s talents to the skies, ’course they would, specially if Brother Ivan Ivanovitch Bretlev has snapped him up at university, and Karla’s lovelies have spirited him off to training school and all! Bright little mole like Nelson, give him a decent start in life for when he gets home to China! Didn’t do him much good later though, did it, Doc? Not when the Great Beastly Cultural Revolution got him in the neck! The generous admiration of Soviet imperialist running dogs wasn’t at all the thing to be wearing in your cap then, was it?”

  Of Nelson’s fall, few details are available, the Doc proclaims, speaking louder in response to Connie’s outburst. “One must assume that it was violent, and as Connie has pointed out, those who were highest in Russian favour fell the hardest.”

  He glances at the sheet of paper which he holds crookedly before his blotched face. “I won’t give you all his appointments at the time of his disgrace, Chief, because he lost them anyway. But there is no doubt that he did indeed have effective management of most of the shipbuilding in Kiangnan, and consequently of a large part of China’s naval tonnage.”

  “I see,” says Smiley quietly. Jotting, he purses his lips as if in disapproval, while his eyebrows lift very high.

  “His post at Kiangnan also procured him a string of seats on the naval planning committees and in the field of communications and strategic policy. By ’sixty-three his name is beginning to pop up regularly in the Cousins’ Peking watch reports.”

  “Well done, Karla,” Guillam says quietly from his place at Smiley’s side, and Smiley, still writing, actually echoes this sentiment with a “Yes.”

  “The only one, Peter dear!” Connie yells, suddenly unable to contain herself. “The only one of all those toads to see it coming! A voice in the wilderness, wasn’t he, Trot? ‘Look out for the yellow peril,’ he told ’em. ‘One day they’re going to turn round and bite the hand that’s feeding ’em, sure as eggs. And when that happens you’ll have eight hundred million new enemies banging on your own back door. And your guns will all be pointing the wrong way. Mark my words.’

  “Told ’em,” she repeats, hauling at the mongrel’s ear in her emotion. “Put it all in a paper, ‘Threat of Deviation by Emerging Socialist Partner.’ Circulated every little brute in Moscow Centre’s Collegium. Drafted it word for word in his clever little mind while he was doing a spot of time in Siberia for Uncle Joe Stalin, bless him. ‘Spy on your friends today, they’re certain to be your enemies tomorrow,’ he told them. Oldest maxim of the trade, Karla’s favourite. When he was given his job back, he practically nailed it on the door in Dzerzhinski Square. No one paid a blind bit of notice. Not a scrap. Fell on barren ground, my dear. Five years later, he was proved right, and the Collegium didn’t thank him for that, either, I can tell you! He’s been right a sight too often for their liking, the boobies—hasn’t he, Trot! You know, don’t you, darling, you know what the old fool-woman’s on about!” At which she lifts the puling dog a few inches in the air by its forepaws and lets it flop back onto her lap again.

  Connie can’t bear old Doc hogging the limelight, they secretly agree. She sees the logic of it, but the woman in her can’t abide the reality.

  “Very well, he was purged, Doc,” Smiley says quietly, restoring calm. “Let’s go back to ’sixty-seven, shall we?” And puts his chin back in his hand.

  In the gloom, Karla’s portrait peers stodgily down as di Salis resumes. “Well, the usual grim story,
one supposes, Chief,” he chants. “The dunce’s cap, no doubt. Spat on in the street. Wife and children kicked and beaten up. Indoctrination camps, labour education ‘on a scale commensurate with the crime.’ Urged to reconsider the peasant virtues. One report has him sent to a rural commune to test himself. And when he came crawling back to Shanghai they’d have made him start at the bottom again, driving bolts into a railway line or whatever. As far as the Russians were concerned—if that’s what we’re talking about”—he hurries on before Connie can interrupt again—“he was a wash-out. No access, no influence, no friends.”

  “How long did it take him to climb back?” Smiley enquires, with a characteristic lowering of the eyelids.

  “About three years ago he started to be functional again. In the long run he has what they need most: brains, technical know-how, experience. But his formal rehabilitation didn’t really occur till the beginning of ’seventy-three.”

  While di Salis goes on to describe the stages of Nelson’s ritual reinstatement, Smiley quietly draws a folder to him and refers to certain other dates which, for reasons as yet unexplained, are suddenly acutely relevant to him.

  “The payments to Drake have their beginnings in January ’seventy-three,” he murmurs. “They rise steeply in mid-’seventythree.”

  “With Nelson’s access, darling,” Connie whispers after him, like a prompter from the wings. “The more he knows, the more he tells, and the more he tells, the more he gets. Karla only pays for goodies, and even then it hurts like blazes.”

  “By ’seventy-three,” says di Salis, “Nelson, having made all the proper confessions, has been embraced into the Shanghai municipal revolutionary committee, and appointed responsible person in a naval unit of the People’s Liberation Army. Six months later—”

  “Date?” Smiley interrupts.

  “July.”