John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels

by John le Carré

  “It’s about Jim Prideaux,” Smiley said.

  “Sure,” said Max.

  They drove up to Hampstead and sat in the shiny Rover, watching the kids breaking the ice on the pond. Real rain had held off, after all; perhaps because it was so cold.

  Above ground Max wore a blue suit and a blue shirt. His tie was blue but carefully differentiated from the other blues: he had taken a lot of trouble to get the shade. He wore several rings and flying boots with zips at the side.

  “I’m not in it any more. Did they tell you?” Smiley asked. Max shrugged. “I thought they would have told you,” Smiley said.

  Max was sitting straight; he didn’t use the seat to lean on; he was too proud. He did not look at Smiley. His eyes were turned fixedly to the pool and the kids fooling and skidding in the reeds.

  “They don’t tell me nothing,” he said.

  “I was sacked,” said Smiley. “I guess at about the same time as you.”

  Max seemed to stretch slightly, then settle again. “Too bad, George. What you do, steal money?”

  “I don’t want them to know, Max.”

  “You private—I private, too,” said Max, and from a gold case offered Smiley a cigarette, which he declined.

  “I want to hear what happened,” Smiley went on. “I wanted to find out before they sacked me but there wasn’t time.”

  “That why they sack you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t know so much, huh?” said Max, his gaze nonchalantly on the kids.

  Smiley spoke very simply, watching all the while in case Max didn’t understand. They could have spoken German but Max wouldn’t have that, he knew. So he spoke English and watched Max’s face.

  “I don’t know anything, Max. I had no part in it at all. I was in Berlin when it happened; I knew nothing of the planning or the background. They cabled me, but when I arrived in London it was too late.”

  “Planning,” Max repeated. “That was some planning.” His jaw and cheeks became suddenly a mass of lines and his eyes turned narrow, making a grimace or a smile. “So now you got plenty time, eh, George? Jesus, that was some planning.”

  “Jim had a special job to do. He asked for you.”

  “Sure. Jim ask for Max to baby-sit.”

  “How did he get you? Did he turn up in Acton and speak to Toby Esterhase, and say, ‘Toby, I want Max’? How did he get you?”

  Max’s hands were resting on his knees. They were groomed and slender—all but the knuckles, which were very broad. Now, at the mention of Esterhase, he turned the palms slightly inwards and made a light cage of them as if he had caught a butterfly.

  “What the hell?” Max asked.

  “So what did happen?”

  “Was private,” said Max. “Jim private, I private. Like now.”

  “Come,” said Smiley. “Please.”

  Max spoke as if it were any mess: family or business or love. It was a Monday evening in mid-October—yes, the sixteenth. It was a slack time, he hadn’t been abroad for weeks, and he was fed up. He had spent all day making a reconnaissance of a house in Bloomsbury where a pair of Chinese students was supposed to live; the lamplighters were thinking of mounting a burglary against their rooms. He was on the point of returning to the Laundry in Acton to write his report when Jim picked him up in the street with a chance-encounter routine and drove him up to Crystal Palace, where they sat in the car and talked, like now, except they spoke Czech. Jim said there was a special job going, something so big, so secret that no one else in the Circus, not even Toby Esterhase, was allowed to know that it was taking place. It came from the very top of the tree and it was hairy. Was Max interested?

  “I say, ‘Sure, Jim. Max interested.’ Then he ask me: ‘Take leave. You go to Toby, you say, Toby, my mother sick, I got to take some leave.’ I don’t got no mother. ‘Sure,’ I say, ‘I take leave. How long for, please, Jim?’”

  The whole job shouldn’t last more than the weekend, said Jim. They should be in on Saturday and out on Sunday. Then he asked Max whether he had any current identities running for him: best would be Austrian, small trade, with driving licence to match. If Max had none handy at Acton, Jim would get something put together in Brixton.

  “ ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I have Hartmann, Rudi, from Linz, Sudeten émigré.’ ”

  So Max gave Toby a story about girl trouble up in Bradford and Toby gave Max a ten-minute lecture on the sexual mores of the English; and on the Thursday, Jim and Max met in a safe house that the scalp-hunters ran in those days, a rackety old place in Lambeth. Jim had brought the keys. A three-day hit, Jim repeated; a clandestine conference outside Brno. Jim had a big map and they studied it. Jim would travel Czech, Max would go Austrian. They would make their separate ways as far as Brno. Jim would fly from Paris to Prague, then train from Prague. He didn’t say what papers he would be carrying himself, but Max presumed Czech because Czech was Jim’s other side; Max had seen him use it before. Max was Hartmann Rudi, trading in glass and ovenware. He was to cross the Austrian border by van near Mikulov, then head north to Brno, giving himself plenty of time to make a six-thirty rendezvous on Saturday evening in a side street near the football ground. There was a big match that evening starting at seven. Jim would walk with the crowd as far as the side street, then climb into the van. They agreed times, fallbacks, and the usual contingencies; and besides, said Max, they knew each other’s handwriting by heart.

  Once out of Brno, they were to drive together along the Bilovice road as far as Krtiny, then turn east towards Racice. Somewhere along the Racice road they would pass on the left side a parked black car, most likely a Fiat. The first two figures of the registration would be 99. The driver would be reading a newspaper. They would pull up; Max would go over and ask whether he was all right. The man would reply that his doctor had forbidden him to drive more than three hours at a stretch. Max would say it was true that long journeys were a strain on the heart. The driver would then show them where to park the van and take them to the rendezvous in his own car.

  “Who were you meeting, Max? Did Jim tell you that as well?”

  No, that was all Jim told him.

  As far as Brno, said Max, things went pretty much as planned. Driving from Mikulov, he was followed for a while by a couple of civilian motorcyclists who interchanged every ten minutes, but he put that down to his Austrian number plates and it didn’t bother him. He made Brno comfortably by mid-afternoon, and to keep things shipshape he booked into the hotel and drank a couple of coffees in the restaurant. Some stooge picked him up and Max talked to him about the vicissitudes of the glass trade and about his girl in Linz who’d gone off with an American. Jim missed the first rendezvous but he made the fallback an hour later. Max supposed at first the train was late, but Jim just said, “Drive slowly,” and he knew then that there was trouble.

  This was how it was going to work, said Jim. There’d been a change of plan. Max was to stay right out of it. He should drop Jim short of the rendezvous, then lie up in Brno till Monday morning. He was not to make contact with any of the Circus’s trade routes: no one from Aggravate, no one from Plato, least of all with the Prague residency. If Jim didn’t surface at the hotel by eight on Monday morning, Max should get out any way he could. If Jim did surface, Max’s job would be to carry Jim’s message to Control: the message could be very simple; it might be no more than one word. When he got to London, he should go to Control personally, make an appointment through old MacFadean, and give him the message—was that clear? If Jim didn’t show up, Max should take up life where he left off and deny everything, inside the Circus as well as out.

  “Did Jim say why the plan had changed?”

  “Jim worried.”

  “So something had happened to him on his way to meet you?”

  “Maybe. I say Jim: ‘Listen, Jim, I come with. You worried, I be baby-sitter. I drive for you, shoot for you, what the hell?’ Jim get damn angry, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Smiley.

>   They drove to the Racice road and found the car parked without lights facing a track over a field, a Fiat, 99 on the number plates, black. Max stopped the van and let Jim out. As Jim walked towards the Fiat, the driver opened the door an inch in order to work the courtesy light. He had a newspaper opened over the steering wheel.

  “Could you see his face?”

  “Was in shadow.”

  Max waited; presumably they exchanged word codes, Jim got in, and the car drove away over the track, still without lights. Max returned to Brno. He was sitting over a schnapps in the restaurant when the whole town started rumbling. He thought at first the sound came from the football stadium; then he realised it was lorries, a convoy racing down the road. He asked the waitress what was going on, and she said there had been a shooting in the woods—counter-revolutionaries were responsible. He went out to the van, turned on the radio, and caught the bulletin from Prague. That was the first he had heard of a general. He guessed there were cordons everywhere, and anyway he had Jim’s instructions to lie up in the hotel till Monday morning.

  “Maybe Jim send me message. Maybe some guy from resistance come to me.”

  “With this one word,” said Smiley quietly.

  “Sure.”

  “He didn’t say what sort of word it was?”

  “You crazy,” said Max. It was either a statement or a question.

  “A Czech word or an English word or a German word?”

  No one came, said Max, not bothering to answer craziness.

  On Monday he burned his entry passport, changed the plates on his van, and used his West German escape. Rather than head south he drove south west, ditched the van, and crossed the border by bus to Freistadt, which was the softest route he knew. In Freistadt he had a drink and spent the night with a girl because he felt puzzled and angry and he needed to catch his breath. He got to London on Tuesday night, and despite Jim’s orders he thought he’d better try and contact Control. “That was quite damn difficult,” he commented.

  He tried to telephone but only got as far as the mothers. MacFadean wasn’t around. He thought of writing but he remembered Jim, and how no one else in the Circus was allowed to know. He decided that writing was too dangerous. The rumour at the Acton Laundry said that Control was ill. He tried to find out what hospital, but couldn’t.

  “Did people at the Laundry seem to know where you’d been?”

  “I wonder.”

  He was still wondering when the housekeepers sent for him and asked to look at his Rudi Hartmann passport. Max said he had lost it, which was after all pretty near true. Why hadn’t he reported the loss? He didn’t know. When had the loss occurred? He didn’t know. When did he last see Jim Prideaux? He couldn’t remember. He was sent down to the Nursery at Sarratt but Max felt fit and angry, and after two or three days the inquisitors got tired of him or somebody called them off.

  “I go back Acton Laundry; Toby Esterhase give me hundred pound, tell me go to hell.”

  A scream of applause went up round the pond. Two boys had sunk a great slab of ice and now the water was bubbling through the hole.

  “Max, what happened to Jim?”

  “What the hell?”

  “You hear these things. It gets around among the émigrés. What happened to him? Who mended him, how did Bill Haydon buy him back?”

  “Emigrés don’t speak Max no more.”

  “But you have heard, haven’t you?”

  This time it was the white hands that told him. Smiley saw the spread of fingers, five on one hand, four on the other and already he felt the sickness before Max spoke.

  “So they shoot Jim from behind. Maybe Jim was running away, what the hell? They put Jim in prison. That’s not so good for Jim. For my friends also. Not good.” He started counting: “Pribyl,” he began, touching his thumb. “Bukova Mirek, from Pribyl’s wife the brother,” he took a finger. “Also Pribyl’s wife,” a second finger. A third: “Kolin Jiri. Also his sister, mainly dead. This was network Aggravate.” He changed hands. “After network Aggravate come network Plato. Come lawyer Rapotin, come Colonel Landkron, and typists Eva Krieglova and Hanka Bilova. Also mainly dead. That’s damn big price, George”—holding the clean fingers close to Smiley’s face—“that’s damn big price for one Englishman with bullet-hole.” He was losing his temper. “Why you bother, George? Circus don’t be no good for Czecho. Allies don’t be no good for Czecho. No rich guy don’t get no poor guy out of prison! You want know some history? How you say ‘Märchen,’ please, George?”

  “Fairy tale,” said Smiley.

  “Okay, so don’t tell me no more damn fairy tale how English got to save Czecho no more!”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t Jim,” said Smiley after a long silence. “Perhaps it was someone else who blew the networks. Not Jim.”

  Max was already opening the door. “What the hell?” he asked.

  “Max,” said Smiley.

  “Don’t worry, George. I don’t got no one to sell you to. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Sitting in the car still, Smiley watched him hail a taxi. He did it with a flick of the hand, as if he were summoning a waiter. He gave the address without bothering to look at the driver. Then rode off sitting very upright again, staring straight ahead of him, like royalty ignoring the crowd.

  As the taxi disappeared, Inspector Mendel rose slowly from a bench, folded together his newspaper, walked over to the Rover.

  “You’re clean,” he said. “Nothing on your back, nothing on your conscience.”

  Not so sure of that, Smiley handed him the keys to the car, then walked to the bus stop, first crossing the road in order to head west.

  28

  His destination was in Fleet Street, a ground-floor cellar full of wine barrels. In other areas, three-thirty might be considered a little late for a pre-luncheon apéritif, but as Smiley gently pushed open the door a dozen shadowy figures turned to eye him from the bar. And at a corner table, as unremarked as the plastic prison arches or the fake muskets on the wall, sat Jerry Westerby with a very large pink gin.

  “Old boy,” said Jerry Westerby shyly, in a voice that seemed to come out of the ground. “Well, I’ll be damned. Hey, Jimmy!” His hand, which he laid on Smiley’s arm while he signalled for refreshment with the other, was enormous and cushioned with muscle, for Jerry had once been wicketkeeper for a county cricket team. In contrast to other wicketkeepers he was a big man, but his shoulders were still hunched from keeping his hands low. He had a mop of sandy grey hair and a red face and he wore a famous sporting tie over a cream silk shirt. The sight of Smiley clearly gave him great joy, for he was beaming with pleasure.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he repeated. “Of all the amazing things. Hey, what are you doing these days,” dragging him forcibly into the seat beside him. “Sunning your fanny, spitting at the ceiling? Hey”—a most urgent question—“what’ll it be?”

  Smiley ordered a Bloody Mary.

  “It isn’t complete coincidence, Jerry,” Smiley confessed. There was a slight pause between them, which Jerry was suddenly concerned to fill.

  “Listen, how’s the demon wife? All well? That’s the stuff.One of the great marriages, that one—always said so.”

  Jerry Westerby himself had made several marriages but few that had given him pleasure.

  “Do a deal with you, George,” he proposed, rolling one great shoulder towards him. “I’ll shack up with Ann and spit at the ceiling, you take my job and write up the women’s Ping-Pong. How’s that? God bless.”

  “Cheers,” said Smiley good-humouredly.

  “Haven’t seen many of the boys and girls for a while, matter of fact,” Jerry confessed awkwardly with an unaccountable blush. “Christmas card from old Toby last year, that’s about my lot. Guess they’ve put me on the shelf as well. Can’t blame them.” He flicked the rim of his glass. “Too much of this stuff, that’s what it is. They think I’ll blab. Crack up.”

  “I’m sure they don’t,” said Smiley, an
d the silence reclaimed them both.

  “Too much firewater not good for braves,” Jerry intoned solemnly. For years they had had this Red Indian joke running, Smiley remembered with a sinking heart.

  “How,” said Smiley.

  “How,” said Jerry, and they drank.

  “I burnt your letter as soon as I’d read it,” Smiley went on in a quiet, unbothered voice. “In case you wondered. I didn’t tell anyone about it at all. It came too late, anyway. It was all over.”

  At this, Jerry’s lively complexion turned a deep scarlet.

  “So it wasn’t the letter you wrote me that put them off you,” Smiley continued in the same very gentle voice, “if that’s what you were thinking. And, after all, you did drop it in to me by hand.”

  “Very decent of you,” Jerry muttered. “Thanks. Shouldn’t have written it. Talking out of school.”

  “Nonsense,” said Smiley as he ordered two more. “You did it for the good of the service.”

  To himself, saying this, Smiley sounded like Lacon. But the only way to talk to Jerry was to talk like Jerry’s newspaper: short sentences; facile opinions.

  Jerry expelled some breath and a lot of cigarette smoke. “Last job—oh, year ago,” he recalled with a new airiness. “More. Dumping some little packet in Budapest. Nothing to it, really. Phone box. Ledge at the top. Put my hand up. Left it there. Kid’s play. Don’t think I muffed it or anything. Did my sums first—all that. Safety signals. ‘Box ready for emptying. Help yourself.’ The way they taught us, you know. Still, you lads know best, don’t you? You’re the owls. Do one’s bit, that’s the thing. Can’t do more. All part of a pattern. Design.”

  “They’ll be beating the doors down for you soon,” said Smiley consolingly. “I expect they’re resting you up for a season. They do that, you know.”

  “Hope so,” said Jerry with a loyal, very diffident smile. His glass shook slightly as he drank.

  “Was that the trip you made just before you wrote to me?” Smiley asked.

  “Sure. Same trip, actually; Budapest, then Prague.”