Karla Trilogy Digital Collection Featuring George Smiley : Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley###s People (9781101570852)

by Le Carre, John

  Partly it was something to do. “Partly, I guess, I couldn’t bear to think of a letter of hers kicking around in a hole in a wall while she sweated it out in the hot seat,” he added, the ever-redeemable boy.

  They had two places where they dropped mail for one another. The first was not far from the hotel on a building site.

  “Ever seen that bamboo scaffolding they use? Fantastic. I’ve seen it twenty storeys high and the coolies swarming over it with slabs of precast concrete.” A bit of discarded piping, he said, handy at shoulder height. It seemed most likely, if Irina was in a hurry, that the piping was the letter-box she would use, but when Tarr went there it was empty. The second was back by the church, “in under where they stow the pamphlets,” as he put it. “This stand was part of an old wardrobe, see. If you kneel in the back pew and grope around, there’s a loose board. Behind the board there’s a recess full of rubbish and rat’s mess. I tell you, it made a real lovely drop, the best ever.”

  There was a short pause, illuminated by the vision of Ricki Tarr and his Moscow Centre mistress kneeling side by side in the rear pew of a Baptist church in Hong Kong.

  In this dead letter-box, Tarr said, he found not a letter but a whole damn diary. The writing was fine and done on both sides of the paper, so that quite often the black ink came through. It was fast urgent writing with no erasures. He knew at a glance that she had maintained it in her lucid periods.

  “This isn’t it, mind. This is only my copy.”

  Slipping a long hand inside his shirt, he had drawn out a leather purse attached to a broad thong of hide. From it he took a grimy wad of paper.

  “I guess she dropped the diary just before they hit her,” he said. “Maybe she was having a last pray at the same time. I made the translation myself.”

  “I didn’t know you spoke Russian,” said Smiley—a comment lost to everyone but Tarr, who at once grinned.

  “Ah, now, a man needs a qualification in this profession, Mr. Smiley,” he explained as he separated the pages. “I may not have been too great at law but a further language can be decisive. You know what the poets say, I expect?” He looked up from his labours and his grin widened. “ ‘To possess another language is to possess another soul.’ A great king wrote that, sir, Charles the Fifth. My father never forgot a quotation, I’ll say that for him, though the funny thing is he couldn’t speak a damn thing but English. I’ll read the diary aloud to you, if you don’t mind.”

  “He hasn’t a word of Russian to his name,” said Guillam.

  “They spoke English all the time. Irina had done a three-year English course.”

  Guillam had chosen the ceiling to look at, Lacon his hands. Only Smiley was watching Tarr, who was laughing quietly at his own little joke.

  “All set?” he enquired. “Right, then, I’ll begin. ‘Thomas, listen, I am talking to you.’ She called me by my surname,” he explained. “I told her I was Tony, but it was always Thomas, right? ‘This diary is my gift for you in case they take me away before I speak to Alleline. I would prefer to give you my life, Thomas, and naturally my body, but I think it more likely that this wretched secret will be all I have to make you happy. Use it well!’ ” Tarr glanced up. “It’s marked Monday. She wrote the diary over the four days.” His voice had become flat, almost bored. “ ‘In Moscow Centre there is more gossip than our superiors would wish. Especially the little fellows like to make themselves grand by appearing to be in the know. For two years before I was attached to the Trade Ministry, I worked as a supervisor in the filing department of our headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square. The work was so dull, Thomas, the atmosphere was not happy, and I was unmarried. We were encouraged to be suspicious of one another; it is such a strain never to give your heart, not once. Under me was a clerk named Ivlov. Though Ivlov was not socially or in rank my equal, the oppressive atmosphere brought out a mutuality in our temperaments. Forgive me, sometimes only the body can speak for us—you should have appeared earlier, Thomas! Several times Ivlov and I worked night shifts together, and eventually we agreed to defy regulations and meet outside the building. He was blond, Thomas, like you, and I wanted him. We met in a café in a poor district of Moscow. In Russia we are taught that Moscow has no poor districts, but this is a lie. Ivlov told me that his real name was Brod but he was not a Jew. He brought me some coffee sent to him illicitly by a comrade in Teheran—he was very sweet—also some stockings. Ivlov told me that he admired me greatly and that he had once worked in a section responsible for recording the particulars of all the foreign agents employed by Centre. I laughed and told him that no such record existed; it was an idea of dreamers to suppose so many secrets would be in one place. Well, we were both dreamers I suppose.’ ”

  Again Tarr broke off. “We get a new day,” he announced. “She kicks off with a lot of ‘good morning Thomas’s,’ prayers, and a bit of love-talk. A woman can’t write to the air, she says, so she’s writing to Thomas. Her old man’s gone out early; she’s got an hour to herself. Okay?”

  Smiley grunted.

  “ ‘On the second occasion with Ivlov, I met him in the room of a cousin of Ivlov’s wife, a teacher at Moscow State University. No one else was present. The meeting, which was extremely secret, involved what in a report we would call an incriminating act. I think, Thomas, you yourself once or twice committed such an act! Also at this meeting Ivlov told me the following story to bind us in even closer friendship. Thomas, you must take care. Have you heard of Karla? He is an old fox, the most cunning in the Centre, the most secret; even his name is not a name that Russians understand. Ivlov was extremely frightened to tell me this story, which according to Ivlov concerned a great conspiracy, perhaps the greatest we have. The story of Ivlov is as follows. You should tell it only to most trustworthy people, Thomas, because of its extremely conspiratorial nature. You must tell no one in the Circus, for no one can be trusted until the riddle is solved. Ivlov said it was not true that he once worked on agent records. He had invented this story only to show me the great depth of his knowledge concerning the Centre’s affairs and to assure me that I was not in love with a nobody. The truth was he had worked for Karla as a helper in one of Karla’s great conspiracies and he had actually been stationed in England in a conspiratorial capacity, under the cover of being a driver and assistant coding clerk at the Embassy. For this task he was provided with the workname Lapin. Thus Brod became Ivlov and Ivlov became Lapin: of this poor Ivlov was extremely proud. (I did not tell him what Lapin means in French.) That a man’s wealth should be counted by the number of his names! Ivlov’s task was to service a mole. A mole is a deep-penetration agent so called because he burrows deep into the fabric of Western imperialism, in this case an Englishman. Moles are very precious to the Centre because of the many years it takes to place them, often fifteen or twenty. Most of the English moles were recruited by Karla before the war and came from the higher bourgeoisie, even aristocrats and nobles who were disgusted with their origins, and became secretly fanatic, much more fanatic than their working-class English comrades, who are slothful. Several were applying to join the Party when Karla stopped them in time and directed them to special work. Some fought in Spain against Franco Fascism, and Karla’s talent-spotters found them there and turned them over to Karla for recruitment. Others were recruited in the war during the alliance of expediency between Soviet Russia and Britain. Others afterwards, disappointed that the war did not bring Socialism to the West. . .’ It kind of dries up here,” Tarr announced without looking anywhere but at his own manuscript. “I wrote down, ‘dries up.’ I guess her old man came back earlier than she expected. The ink’s all blotted. God knows where she stowed the damn thing. Under the mattress maybe.”

  If this was meant as a joke, it failed.

  “‘The mole whom Lapin serviced in London was known by the code name Gerald. He had been recruited by Karla and was the object of extreme conspiracy. The servicing of moles is performed only by comrades with a very high standard of ability, said Iv
lov. Thus while in appearance Ivlov-Lapin was at the Embassy a mere nobody, subjected to many humiliations on account of his apparent insignificance, such as standing with women behind the bar at functions, by right he was a great man, the secret assistant to Colonel Gregor Viktorov, whose workname at the Embassy is Polyakov.’ ”

  Here Smiley made his one interjection, asking for the spelling. Like an actor disturbed in midflow, Tarr answered rudely, “P-o-l-y-a-k-o-v, got it?”

  “Thank you,” said Smiley with unshakeable courtesy, in a manner which conveyed conclusively that the name had no significance for him whatever. Tarr resumed.

  “ ‘ Viktorov is himself an old professional of great cunning, said Ivlov. His cover job is cultural attaché and that is how he speaks to Karla. As Cultural Attaché Polyakov, he organises lectures to British universities and societies concerning cultural matters in the Soviet Union, but his nightwork as Colonel Gregor Viktorov is briefing and debriefing the mole Gerald on instruction from Karla at Centre. For this purpose, Colonel Viktorov-Polyakov uses legmen and poor Ivlov was for a while one. Nevertheless it is Karla in Moscow who is the real controller of the mole Gerald.’ ”

  “Now it really changes,” said Tarr. “She’s writing at night and she’s either plastered or scared out of her pants, because she’s going all over the damn page. There’s talk about footsteps in the corridor and the dirty looks she’s getting from the gorillas. Not transcribed—right, Mr. Smiley?” And, receiving a small nod, he went on: “ ‘The measures for the mole’s security were remarkable. Written reports from London to Karla at Moscow Centre even after coding were cut in two and sent by separate couriers, others in secret inks underneath orthodox Embassy correspondence. Ivlov told me that the mole Gerald produced at times more conspiratorial material than Viktorov-Polyakov could conveniently handle. Much was on undeveloped film, often thirty reels in a week. Anyone opening the container in the wrong fashion at once exposed the film. Other material was given by the mole in speeches, at extremely conspiratorial meetings, and recorded on special tape that could only be played through complicated machines. This tape was also wiped clean by exposure to light or to the wrong machine. The meetings were of the crash type, always different, always sudden, that is all I know except that it was the time when the Fascist aggression in Vietnam was at its worst; in England the extreme reactionaries had again taken the power. Also that according to Ivlov-Lapin, the mole Gerald was a high functionary in the Circus. Thomas, I tell you this because, since I love you, I have decided to admire all English, you most of all. I do not wish to think of an English gentleman behaving as a traitor, though naturally I believe he was right to join the workers’ cause. Also I fear for the safety of anyone employed by the Circus in a conspiracy. Thomas, I love you; take care with this knowledge—it could hurt you also. Ivlov was a man like you, even if they called him Lapin . . .’ ” Tarr paused diffidently. “There’s a bit at the end which . . .”

  “Read it,” Guillam murmured.

  Lifting the wad of paper slightly sideways, Tarr read in the same flat drawl: “ ‘Thomas, I am telling you this also because I am afraid. This morning when I woke, he was sitting on the bed, staring at me like a madman. When I went downstairs for coffee, the guards Trepov and Novikov watched me like animals, eating very carelessly. I am sure they had been there hours; also from the Residency, Avilov sat with them, a boy. Have you been indiscreet, Thomas? Did you tell more than you let me think? Now you see why only Alleline would do. You need not blame yourself; I can guess what you have told them. In my heart I am free. You have seen only the bad things in me—the drink, the fear, the lies we live. But deep inside me burns a new and blessed light. I used to think that the secret world was a separate place and that I was banished for ever to an island of half-people. But, Thomas, it is not separate. God has shown me that it is here, right in the middle of the real world, all round us, and we have only to open the door and step outside to be free. Thomas, you must always long for the light which I have found. It is called love. Now I shall take this to our secret place and leave it there while there is still time.

  Dear God, I hope there is. God give me sanctuary in His Church. Remember it: I loved you there also.’ ” Tarr was extremely pale, and his hands, as he pulled open his shirt to return the diary to its purse, were trembling and moist. “There’s a last bit,” he said. “It goes: ‘Thomas, why could you remember so few prayers from your boyhood? Your father was a great and good man.’ Like I told you,” he explained, “she was crazy.”

  Lacon had opened the blinds and now the full white light of day was pouring into the room. The windows looked onto a small paddock where Jackie Lacon, a fat little girl in plaits and a riding hat, was cautiously cantering her pony.

  9

  Before Tarr left, Smiley asked a number of questions of him. He was gazing not at Tarr but myopically into the middle distance, his pouchy face despondent from the tragedy.

  “Where is the original of that diary?”

  “I put it straight back in the dead letter-box. Figure it this way, Mr. Smiley: by the time I found the diary, Irina had been in Moscow twenty-four hours. I guessed she wouldn’t have a lot of breath when it came to the interrogation. Most likely they’d sweated her on the plane, then a second going over when she touched down, then question one as soon as the big boys had finished their breakfast. That’s the way they do it to the timid ones: the arm first and the questions after, right? So it might be only a matter of a day or two before Centre sent along a footpad to take a peek round the back of the church, okay?” Primly again: “Also I had my own welfare to consider.”

  “He means that Moscow Centre would be less interested in cutting his throat if they thought he hadn’t read the diary,” said Guillam.

  “Did you photograph it?”

  “I don’t carry a camera. I bought a dollar notebook. I copied the diary into the notebook. The original I put back. The whole job took me four hours flat.” He glanced at Guillam, then away from him. In the fresh daylight, a deep inner fear was suddenly apparent in Tarr’s face. “When I got back to the hotel, my room was a wreck; they’d even stripped the paper off the walls. The manager told me, ‘Get the hell out.’ He didn’t want to know.”

  “He’s carrying a gun,” said Guillam. “He won’t part with it.”

  “You’re damn right I won’t.”

  Smiley offered a dyspeptic grunt of sympathy. “These meetings you had with Irina: the dead letter-boxes, the safety signals, and fallbacks. Who proposed the tradecraft, you or she?”

  “She did.”

  “What were the safety signals?”

  “Body-talk. If I wore my collar open, she knew I’d had a look around and I reckoned the coast was clear. If I wore it closed, scrub the meeting till the fallback.”

  “And Irina?”

  “Handbag. Left hand, right hand. I got there first and waited up somewhere she could see me. That gave her the choice: whether to go ahead or split.”

  “All this happened more than six months ago. What have you been doing since?”

  “Resting,” said Tarr rudely.

  Guillam said, “He panicked and went native. He bolted to Kuala Lumpur, then lay up in one of the hill villages. That’s his story. He has a daughter called Danny.”

  “Danny’s my little kid.”

  “He shacked up with Danny and her mother,” said Guillam, talking, as was his habit, clean across anything Tarr said. “He’s got wives scattered across the globe, but she seems to lead the pack just now.”

  “Why did you choose this particular moment to come to us?”

  Tarr said nothing.

  “Don’t you want to spend Christmas with Danny?”

  “Sure.”

  “So what happened? Did something scare you?”

  “There was rumours,” said Tarr sullenly.

  “What sort of rumours?”

  “Some Frenchman turned up in K.L. telling them all I owed him money. Wanted to get some lawyer hounding me.
I don’t owe anybody money.”

  Smiley returned to Guillam. “At the Circus he’s still posted as a defector?”

  “Presumed.”

  “What have they done about it so far?”

  “It’s out of my hands. I heard on the grapevine that London Station held a couple of war parties over him a while back, but they didn’t invite me and I don’t know what came of them. Nothing, I should think, as usual.”

  “What passport’s he been using?”

  Tarr had his answer ready: “I threw away Thomas the day I hit Malaya. I reckoned Thomas wasn’t exactly the flavour of the month in Moscow and I’d do better to kill him off right there. In K.L. I had them run me up a British.” He handed it to Smiley. “Name of Poole. It’s not bad for the money.”

  “Why didn’t you use one of your Swiss escapes?”

  Another wary pause.

  “Or did you lose them when your hotel room was searched?”

  Guillam said, “He cached them as soon as he arrived in Hong Kong. Standard practice.”

  “So why didn’t you use them?”

  “They were numbered, Mr. Smiley. They may have been blank but they were numbered. I was feeling a mite windy, frankly. If London had the numbers, maybe Moscow did, too, if you take my meaning.”

  “So what did you do with your Swiss escapes?” Smiley repeated pleasantly.

  “He says he threw them away,” said Guillam. “He sold them, more likely. Or swapped them for that one.”

  “How? Threw them away how? Did you burn them?”

  “That’s right, I burned them,” said Tarr with a nervy ring to his voice, half a threat, half fear.

  “So when you say this Frenchman was enquiring for you—”