The Honourable Schoolboy

by John le Carré

  'Yes, yes he does.'

  'But he doesn't visit the Mainland himself?'

  'No, never. His assistant goes, but not Ko, we gather.'

  'Assistant?'

  'He has a manager body named Tiu. They've been together for twenty years. Longer. They share the same background, Hakka, Shanghai and so forth. Tiu's his front man on several companies.'

  'And Tiu goes to the Mainland regularly?'

  'Once a year at least.'

  'All over?'

  'Canton, Peking, Shanghai are on record. But the record is not necessarily complete.'

  'But Ko stays home. Queer.'

  There being no further questions or comments on that score, Smiley resumed his Cook's tour of the charms of Hong Kong as a spy base. Hong Kong was unique, he stated simply. Nowhere on earth offered a tenth of the facilities for getting a toehold on China.

  'Facilities!' Wilbraham echoed. 'Temptations more like.'

  Smiley shrugged. 'If you like, temptations,' he agreed. 'The Soviet service is not famous for resisting them. ' And amid some knowing laughter, he went on to recount what was known of Centre's attempts till now against the China target as a whole: a joint précis by Connie and di Salis. He described Centre's efforts to attack from the north, by means of the wholesale recruitment and infiltration of her own ethnic Chinese. Abortive, he said. He described a huge network of listening posts all along the four-and-a-halfthousand-mile Sino-Soviet land border: unproductive, he said, since the yield was military whereas the threat was political. He recounted the rumours of Soviet approaches to Taiwan, proposing common cause against the China threat through joint operations and profit-sharing: rejected; he said, and probably designed for mischief, to annoy Peking, rather than to be taken at face value. He gave instances of the Russian use of talent-spotters among overseas Chinese communities in London, Amsterdam, Vancouver, and San Francisco; and touched on Centre's veiled proposals to the Cousins some years ago for the establishment of an 'intelligence pool' available to China's common enemies. Fruitless, he said. The Cousins wouldn't play. Lastly he referred to Centre's long history of savage burning and bribery operations against Peking officials in overseas posts: product indeterminate, he said.

  When he had done all this, he sat back, and restated the thesis which was causing all the trouble.

  'Sooner or later,' he repeated, 'Moscow Centre has to come to Hong Kong.'

  Which brought them to Ko once more, and to Roddy Martindale, who, under Enderby's eagle eye, made the next real passage of arms.

  'Well what do you think the money's for, George? I mean we've heard all the things it isn't for, and we've heard it's not being spent. But we're no fowarder, are we, bless us? We don't seem to know anything. It's the same old question: how's the money being earned, how's it being spent, what should we do?'

  'That's three questions,' said Enderby cruelly under his breath.

  'It is because we don't know,' said Smiley woodenly, 'that we are asking permission to find out.'

  Someone from the Treasury benches said: 'Is half a million a lot?'

  'In my experience unprecedented,' said Smiley.

  'Moscow Centre' — dutifully he avoided Karla -'detests having to buy loyalty at any time. For them to buy it on this scale is unheard of.'

  'But whose loyalty are they buying?' someone complained.

  Martindale the gladiator, back to the charge: 'You're selling us short, George. I know you are. You have an inkling, of course you have. Now cut us in on it. Don't be so coy.'

  'Yes, can't you kick a few ideas around for us?' said Lacon, equally plaintively.

  'Surely you can go down the line a little,' Hammer pleaded.

  Even under this three-pronged attack Smiley still did not waver. The panic factor was finally paying off. Smiley himself had triggered it. Like scared patients they were appealing to him for a diagnosis. And Smiley was declining to provide one, on the grounds that he lacked the data. 'Really, I cannot do more than give you the facts as they stand. For me to speculate aloud at this stage would not be useful.'

  For the first time since the meeting had begun, the Colonial lady in brown opened her mouth and asked a question. Her voice was melodious and intelligent.

  'On the matter of precedents, then, Mr Smiley?' — Smiley ducked his head in a quaint little bow — 'Are there precedents for secret Russian moneys being paid to a stake-holder? In other theatres, for instance?'

  Smiley did not immediately answer. Seated only a few inches from him, Guillam swore he sensed a sudden tension, like a surge of energy, passing through his neighbour. But when he glanced at the impassive profile, he saw only a deepening somnolence in his master, and a slight lowering of the weary eyelids.

  'There have been a few cases of what we call alimony,' he conceded finally.

  'Alimony, Mr Smiley?' the Colonial lady echoed, while her red-haired companion scowled more terribly, as if divorce were something else he disapproved of.

  Smiley picked his way with extreme care. 'Clearly there are agents, working in hostile countries — hostile from the Soviet point of view — who for reasons of cover cannot enjoy their pay while they are in the field.' The brown-clad lady delicately nodded her understanding. 'The normal practice in such cases is to bank the money in Moscow and make it available to the agent when he is free to spend it. Or to his dependants if -'

  'If he gets the chop,' said Martindale with relish.

  'But Hong Kong is not Moscow,' the Colonial lady reminded him with a smile.

  Smiley had all but come to a halt. 'In rare cases where the incentive is money, and the agent perhaps has no stomach for eventual resettlement in Russia, Moscow Centre has been known, under duress, to make a comparable arrangement in, say, Switzerland.'

  'But not in Hong Kong?' she persisted.

  'No. Not. And it is unimaginable, on past showing, that Moscow would contemplate parting with alimony on such a scale. For one thing, it would be an inducement to the agent to retire from the field.'

  There was laughter, but when it died, the brown-clad lady had her next question ready.

  'But the payments began modestly,' she persisted pleasantly. 'The inducement is only of relatively recent date?'

  'Correct,' said Smiley.

  Too damn correct, thought Guillam, starting to get alarmed.

  'Mr Smiley, if the dividend were of sufficient value to them, do you think the Russians would be prepared to swallow their objections and pay such a price? After all, in absolute terms the money is entirely trivial beside the value of a great intelligence advantage.'

  Smiley had simply stopped. He made no particular gesture. He remained courteous, he even managed a small smile, but he was plainly finished with conjecture. It took Enderby, with his blasé drawl, to blow the question away.

  'Look, children, we'll be doing the theoreticals all day if we're not careful,' he cried, looking at his watch. 'Chris, do we wheel the Americans in here? If we're not telling the Governor, where do we stand on telling the gallant allies?'

  George saved by the bell, thought Guillam.

  At the mention of the Cousins, Colonial Wilbraham came in like an angry bull. Guillam guessed he had sensed the issue looming, and determined to kill it immediately it showed its head.

  'Vetoed, I'm afraid,' he snapped, without any of his customary delay. 'Absolutely. Whole host of grounds. Demarcation for one. Hong Kong's our patch. Americans have no fishing rights there. None. Ko's a British subject, for another, and entitled to some protection from us. I suppose that's old fashioned. Don't care too much, to be frank. Americans would go clean overboard. Seen it before. God knows where it would end. Three: small point of protocol.' He meant this ironically. He was appealing to the instincts of an ex-ambassador, trying to rouse his sympathy. 'Just a small point, Enderby. Telling the Americans and not telling the Governor — if I was the Governor, put in that position, I'd turn in my badge. That's all I can say. You would too. Know you would. You do, I do.'

  'Assuming you found
out,' Enderby corrected him.

  'Don't worry. I'd find out. I'd have 'em ten deep crawling over his house with microphones for a start. One or two places in Africa where we let them in. Disaster. Total.' Plonking his forearms on the table, one over the other, he stared at them furiously.

  A vehement chugging as if from an outboard motor announced a fault in one of the electronic bafflers. It choked, recovered and zoomed out of hearing again.

  'Be a brave man who diddled you on that one, Chris,' Enderby murmured with a long admiring smile, into the strained silence.

  'Endorsed,' Lacon blurted out of the blue.

  They know, thought Guillam simply. George has squared them. They know he's done a deal with Martello and they know he won't say so because he's determined to lie dead. But Guillam saw nothing clearly that day. While the Treasury and Defence factions cautiously concurred on what seemed to be a straight issue -'keep the Americans out of it' — Smiley himself appeared mysteriously unwilling to toe the line.

  'But there does remain the headache of what to do with the raw intelligence,' he said. 'Should you decide that my service may not proceed, I mean,' he added doubtfully, to the general confusion.

  Guillam was relieved to find Enderby equally bewildered: 'Hell's that mean?' he demanded; running with the hounds for a moment.

  'Ko has financial interests all over South East Asia,' Smiley reminded them, 'Page one of my submission.' Business; clatter of papers. 'We have information, for example, that he controls through intermediaries and strawmen such oddities as a string of Saigon nightclubs, a Vientiane-based aviation company, a piece of a tanker fleet in Thailand... several of these enterprises could well be seen to have political overtones which are far within the American sphere of influence. I would have to have your written instruction, naturally, if I were to ignore our side of the existing bi-lateral agreements.'

  'Keep talking,' Enderby ordered, and pulled a fresh match from the box in front of him.

  'Oh, I think my point is made, thank you,' said Smiley politely. 'Really it's a very simple one.

  Assuming we don't proceed, which Lacon tells me is the balance of probability today, what am I to do? Throw the intelligence on the scrap-heap? Or pass it to our allies under the existing barter arrangements?'

  'Allies,' Wilbraham exclaimed bitterly. 'Allies? You're putting a pistol at our heads, man!'

  Smiley's iron reply was all the more startling for the passivity which had preceded it.

  'I have a standing instruction from this committee to repair our American liaison. It is written into my charter, by yourselves, that I am to do everything possible to nurture the special relationship and revive the spirit of mutual confidence which existed before — Haydon. To get us back to the top table, you said...' He was looking directly at Enderby.

  'Top table,' someone echoed — a quite new voice.

  'Sacrificial altar if you ask me. We already burned the Middle East and half Africa on it. All for the special relationship.' But Smiley seemed not to hear. He had relapsed once, more into his posture of mournful reluctance. Sometimes, his sad face said, the burdens of his office were simply too much for him to bear.

  A fresh bout of post-luncheon sulkiness set in. Someone complained of the tobacco smoke. A messenger was summoned.

  'Devil's happened to the extractors?' Enderby demanded crossly. 'We're stifling.'

  'It's the parts,' the messenger said. 'We put in for them months ago, sir. Before Christmas it was, sir, nearly a year come to think of it. Still you can't blame delay, can you, sir?'

  'Christ,' said Enderby.

  Tea was sent for. It came in paper cups which leaked on to the baize. Guillam gave his thoughts to Molly Meakin's peerless figure.

  It was almost four o'clock when Lacon rode disdainfully in front of the armies and invited Smiley to state 'just exactly what it is you're asking for in practical terms, George. Let's have it all on the table and try to hack out an answer.'

  Enthusiasm would have been fatal. Smiley seemed to understand that.

  'One, we need rights and permissions to operate in the South East Asian theatre — deniably. So that the Governor can wash his hands of us' — a glance at the Parliamentary Under-Secretary — 'and so can our own masters here. Two, to conduct certain domestic enquiries.'

  Heads shot up. The Home Office at once grew fidgety. Why? Who? How? What enquiries? If it's domestic it should go to the competition.

  Pretorius of the Security Service was already in a ferment.

  'Ko read law in London,' Smiley insisted. 'He has connections here, social and business. We should naturally have to investigate them.' He glanced at Pretorius. 'We would show the competition all our findings,' he promised. He resumed his bid.

  'As regards money, my submission contains a full breakdown of what we need at once, as well as supplementary estimates for various contingencies. Finally we are asking permission, at local as well as Whitehall level, to reopen our Hong Kong residency as a forward base for the operation.'

  A stunned silence greeted this last item, to which Guillam's own amazement contributed. Nowhere, in any of the preparatory discussions at the Circus, or with Lacon, had anybody, not even Smiley himself, to Guillam's knowledge, raised the slightest question of reopening High Haven or establishing its successor. A fresh clamour started.

  'Failing that,' he ended, overriding the protests, 'if we cannot have our residency, we request, at the very least, blindeye approval to run our own below-the-line agents on the Colony. No local awareness, but approval and protection by London. Any existing sources to be retrospectively legitimised. In writing,' he ended, with a hard glance at Lacon, and stood up.

  Glumly, Guillam and Smiley sat themselves once more in the waiting room on the same salmon bench where they had begun, side by side, like passengers travelling in the same direction.

  'Why?' Guillam muttered once, but asking questions of George Smiley was not merely in bad taste that day: it was a pastime expressly forbidden by the cautionary notice which hung above them on the wall.

  Of all the damn-fool ways of overplaying one's hand, thought Guillam dismally. You've thrown it, he thought. Poor old sod: finally past it. The one operation which could put us back in the game. Greed, that's what it was. The greed of an old spy in a hurry. I'll stick with him, thought Guillam. I'll go down with the ship. We'll open a chicken farm together. Molly can keep the accounts and Ann can have bucolic tangles with the labourers.

  'How do you feel?' he asked.

  'It's not a matter of feeling,' Smiley replied.

  Thanks very much, thought Guillam.

  The minutes turned to twenty. Smiley had not stirred. His chin had fallen on to his chest, his eyes had closed, he might have been at prayer.

  'Perhaps you should take an evening off,' said Guillam.

  Smiley only frowned.

  A messenger appeared, inviting them to return. Lacon was now at the head of the table, and his manner was prefectorial. Enderby sat two away from him, conversing in murmurs with the Welsh Hammer. Pretorius glowered like a storm cloud, and his nameless lady pursed her lips in an unconscious kiss of disapproval. Lacon rustled his notes for silence and like a teasing judge began reading off the committee's detailed findings before he delivered the verdict. The Treasury had entered a serious protest, on the record, regarding the misuse of Smiley's management account. Smiley should also bear in mind that any requirement for domestic rights and permissions should be cleared with the Security Service in advance and not 'sprung on them like a rabbit out of a hat in the middle of a full-dress meeting of the committee'. There could be no earthly question of reopening the Hong Kong residency. Simply on the issue of time alone, such a step was impossible. It was really a quite shameful proposal, he implied. Principle was involved, consultation would have to be at the highest level, and since Smiley had already moved specifically against advising the Governor of his findings — Lacon's doff of the cap to Wilbraham here — it was going to be very hard to make a case for
re-establishing a residency in the foreseeable future, particularly bearing in mind the unhappy publicity attaching to the evacuation of High Haven.

  'I must accept that view with great reluctance,' said Smiley gravely.

  Oh for God's sake, thought Guillam: let's at least go down fighting!

  'Accept it how you like,' said Enderby — and Guillam could have sworn he saw in the eyes of both Enderby and the Welsh Hammer a gleam of victory.

  Bastards, he thought simply. No free chickens for you. In his mind he was taking leave of the whole pack of them.

  'Everything else,' said Lacon, putting down a sheet of paper and taking up another; 'with certain limiting conditions and safeguards regarding desirability, money and the duration of the licence, is granted.'

  The park was empty. The lesser commuters had left the field to the professionals. A few lovers lay on the damp grass like soldiers after the battle. A few flamingos dozed. At Guillam's side, as he sauntered euphorically in Smiley's wake, Roddy Martindale was singing Smiley's praises: 'I think George is simply marvellous. Indestructible. And grip. I adore grip. Grip is my favourite human quality. George has it in spades. One takes quite a different view of these things when one's translated. One grows to the scale of them, I admit. Your father was an Arabist, I recall?'

  'Yes,' said Guillam, his mind yet again on Molly, wondering whether dinner was still possible.

  'And frightfully Almanach de Gotha. Now was he an A.D. man or a B.C. man?'

  About to give a thoroughly obscene reply, Guillam realised just in time that Martindale was enquiring after nothing more harmful than his father's scholarly preferences.

  'Oh B.C.! — B.C. All the way,' he said. 'He'd have gone back to Eden if he could have done.'

  'Come to dinner.'

  'Thanks.'

  'We'll fix a date. Who's fun for a change? Who do you like?'

  Ahead of them, floating on the dewy air, they heard the drawling voice of Enderby applauding Smiley's victory.

  'Nice little meeting. Lot achieved. Nothing given away. Nicely played hand. Land this one and you can just about build an extension, I should think. And the Cousins will play ball, will they?' he bellowed as if they were still inside the safe room. 'You've tested the water there? They'll carry your bags for you and not hog the match? Bit of a cliffhanger that one, I'd have thought, but I suppose you're up to it. You tell Martello to wear his crêpe soles, if he's got any, or we'll be in deep trouble with the Colonials in no time. Pity about old Wilbraham. He'd have run India rather well.'