Chapter seven

‘Now I was in a queer situation. I saw her next day and the day after and I reckoned that if she wasn’t already schizoid she was going to be that way damn soon. One minute talking about Percy giving her a top job in the Circus working for Colonel Thomas, and arguing the hell with me about whether she should be a lieutenant or a major. Next minute saying she wouldn’t spy for anybody ever again and she was going to grow flowers and rut in the hay with Thomas. Then she had a convent kick: Baptist nuns were going to wash her soul. I nearly died. Who the hell ever heard of Baptist nuns, I ask her? Never mind, she says, Baptists are the greatest, her mother was a peasant and knew. That was the second biggest secret she would ever tell me. “What’s the biggest, then?” I ask. No dice. All she’s saying is, we’re in mortal danger, bigger than I could possibly know: there’s no hope for either of us unless she has that special chat with Brother Percy. “What danger, for Christ’s sake? What do you know that I don’t?” She was vain as a cat but when I pressed her she clammed up and I was frightened to death she’d belt home and sing the lot to Boris. I was running out of time too. Then it was Wednesday already and the delegation was due to fly home to Moscow Friday. Her tradecraft wasn’t all lousy but how could I trust a nut like that? You know how women are when they are in love, Mr Smiley. They can’t hardly-‘

Guillam had already cut him off. ‘You just keep your head down, right?’ he ordered, and Tarr sulked for a space.

‘All I knew was, Irina wanted to defect – talk to Percy as she called it.

She had three days left and the sooner she jumped the better for everybody. If I waited much longer she was going to talk herself out of it. So I took the plunge and walked in on Thesinger, first thing while he was opening up the shop.’

‘Wednesday the eleventh,’ Smiley murmured. ‘In London the early hours of the morning.’

‘I guess Thesinger thought I was a ghost. “I’m talking to London, personal for head of London Station,” I said. He argued like hell but he let me do it. I sat at his desk and coded up the message myself from a one-time pad while Thesinger watched me like a sick dog. We had to top and tail it like trade code because Thesinger has export cover. That took me an extra half hour. I was nervy, I really was. Then I burnt the whole damn pad and typed the message on the ticker machine. At that point there wasn’t a soul on earth but me who knew what the numbers meant on that sheet of paper, not Thesinger, nobody but me. I applied for full defector treatment for Irina on emergency procedure. I held out for all the goodies she’d never even talked about: cash, nationality, a new identity, no limelight and a place to live. After all, I was her business representative in a manner of speaking, wasn’t I, Mr Smiley?’

Smiley glanced up as if surprised to be addressed. ‘Yes,’ he said quite kindly. ‘Yes, I suppose in a manner of speaking that’s what you were.’

‘He also had a piece of the action, if I know him,’ said Guillam under his breath.

Catching this or guessing the meaning of it, Tarr was furious. ‘That’s a damn lie!’ he shouted, colouring deeply. ‘That’s a-‘ After glaring at Guillam a moment longer, he went back to his story.

‘I outlined her career to date and her access, including jobs she’d had at Centre. I asked for inquisitors and an Air Force plane. She thought I was asking for a personal meeting with Percy Alleline on neutral ground but I reckoned we’d cross that bridge when we were past it. I suggested they should send out a couple of Esterhase’s lamplighters to take charge of her, maybe a tame doctor as well.’

‘Why lamplighters?’ Smiley asked sharply. ‘They’re not allowed to handle defectors.’

The lamplighters were Toby Esterhase’s pack, based not in Brixton but in Acton. Their job was to provide the support services for mainline operations: watching, listening, transport and safe houses.

‘Ah well, Toby’s come up in the world since your day, Mr Smiley,’ Tarr explained. ‘They tell me even his pavement artists ride around in Cadillacs. Steal the scalphunters’ bread out of their mouths too, if they get the chance, right, Mr Guillam?’

‘They’ve become the general footpads for London Station,’ Guillam said shortly. ‘Part of lateralism.’

‘I reckoned it would take half a year for the inquisitors to clean her out, and for some reason she was crazy about Scotland. She had a great wish to spend the rest of her life there in fact. With Thomas.

Raising our babies in the heather. I gave it the London Station address group, I graded it flash and by hand of officer only.’

Guillam put in: ‘That’s the new formula for maximum limit. It’s supposed to cut out handling in the coding rooms.’

‘But not in London Station?’ said Smiley.

‘That’s their affair.’

‘You heard Bill Haydon got that job, I suppose?’ said Lacon, jerking round on Smiley. ‘Head of London Station? He’s effectively their chief of operations, just as Percy used to be when Control was there.

They’ve changed all the names, that’s the thing. You know how your old buddies are about names. You ought to fill him in, Guillam, bring him up to date.’

‘Oh I think I have the picture, thank you,’ Smiley said politely. Of Tarr, with a deceptive dreaminess, he asked: ‘She spoke of a great secret, you said?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did you give any hint of this in your cable to London?’

He had touched something, there was no doubt of it; he had found a spot where touching hurt, for Tarr winced, and darted a suspicious glance at Lacon, then at Guillam.

Guessing his meaning, Lacon at once sang out a disclaimer: ‘Smiley knows nothing beyond what you have so far told him in this room,’ he said. ‘Correct, Guillam?’ Guillam nodded yes, watching Smiley.

‘I told London the same as she’d told me,’ Tarr conceded grumpily, like someone who has been robbed of a good story.

‘What form of words, precisely?’ Smiley asked. ‘I wonder whether you remember that?’

‘ “Claims to have further information crucial to the well-being of the Circus, but not yet disclosed.” Near enough, anyhow.’

‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

They waited for Tarr to continue.

‘I also requested Head of London Station to inform Mr Guillam here that I’d landed on my feet and wasn’t playing hookey for the hell of it.’

‘Did that happen?’ Smiley asked.

‘Nobody said anything to me,’ said Guillam drily.

‘I hung around all day for an answer but by evening it still hadn’t come. Irina was doing a normal day’s work. I insisted on that, you see. She wanted to stage a light dose of fever to keep her in bed but I wouldn’t hear of it. The delegation had factories to visit on Kowloon and I told her to tag along and look intelligent. I made her swear to keep off the bottle. I didn’t want her involved in amateur dramatics at the last moment. I wanted it normal right up to when she jumped. I waited till evening then cabled a flash follow-up.’

Smiley’s shrouded gaze fixed upon the pale face before him. ‘You had an acknowledgment, of course?’ he asked.

‘ “We read you.” That’s all. I sweated out the whole damn night. By dawn I still didn’t have an answer. I thought: maybe that RAF plane is already on its way. London’s playing it long, I thought, tying all the knots before they bring me in. I mean when you’re that far away from them you have to believe they’re good. Whatever you think of them, you have to believe that. And I mean now and then they are, right, Mr Guillam?’

No one helped him.

‘I was worried about Irina, see? I was damn certain that if she had to wait another day she would crack. Finally the answer did come. It wasn’t an answer at all. It was a stall:’ ‘Tell us what sections she worked in, names of former contacts and acquaintances inside Moscow Centre, name of her present boss, date of intake into Centre.” Jesus I don’t know what else. I drafted a reply fast because I had a three o’clock date with her down by the church-‘

‘What church?’ Smiley again.

‘English Baptist.’ To everyone’s astonishment, Tarr was once again blushing. ‘She liked to visit there. Not for services, just to sniff around.

I hung around the entrance looking natural but she didn’t show. It was the first time she’d broken a date. Our fallback was for three hours later on the hilltop, then a one minute fifty descending scale back at the church till we met up. If she was in trouble she was going to leave her bathing suit on her window-sill. She was a swimming nut, swam every day. I shot round to the Alexandra: no bathing suit. I had two and a half hours to kill. There was nothing I could do any more except wait.’

Smiley said: ‘What was the priority of London Station’s telegram to you?’

‘Immediate.’

‘But yours was flash?’

‘Both of mine were flash.’

‘Was London’s telegram signed?’

Guillam put in: ‘They’re not any more. Outsiders deal with London Station as a unit.’

‘Was it decipher yourself?’

‘No,’ said Guillam.

They waited for Tarr to go on.

‘I kicked around Thesinger’s office but I wasn’t too popular there, he doesn’t approve of scalphunters and he has a big thing going on the Chinese mainland which he seemed to think I was going to blow for him. So I sat in a cafe and I had this idea I just might go down to the airport. It was an idea: like you might say, “Maybe I’ll go to a movie.”

I told the cab driver to go like hell. I didn’t even argue the price. It got like a panic. I barged the Information queue and asked for all departures to Russia or connections in. I went nearly mad going through the flight lists, yelling at the Chinese clerks, but there wasn’t a plane since yesterday and none till six tonight. But now I had this hunch. I had to know. What about charters, what about the unscheduled flights, freight, casual transit? Had nothing, but really nothing, been routed for Moscow since yesterday morning? Then this little girl comes through with the answer, one of the Chinese hostesses. She fancies me, see. She’s doing me a favour. An unscheduled Soviet plane had taken off two hours ago. Only four passengers boarded. The centre of attraction was a woman invalid. A lady. In a coma. They had to cart her to the plane on a stretcher and her face was wrapped in bandages. Two male nurses went with her and one doctor, that was the party. I called the Alexandra as a last hope. Neither Irina nor her fake husband had checked out of their room but there was no reply. The lousy hotel didn’t even know they’d left.’

Perhaps the music had been going on a long time and Smiley only noticed it now. He heard it in imperfect fragments from different parts of the house: a scale on a flute, a child’s tune on a recorder, a violin piece more confidently played. The many Lacon daughters were waking up.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14