Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (35 page)

But Roach had run out of words. He had no memory any more, no sense of size or perspective; his faculty of selection in the adult world had gone. Big men, small men, old, young, crooked, straight—they were a single army of indistinguishable dangers. To say no to Jim was more than he could bear; to say yes was to shoulder the whole awful responsibility of disappointing him. He saw Jim’s eyes on him; he saw the smile go out and he felt the merciful touch of a big hand upon his arm.

“Attaboy, Jumbo. Nobody ever watched like you, did they?”

Laying his head hopelessly against Bradbury’s shoulder, Bill Roach closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw through his tears that Jim was already halfway up the staircase.

Jim felt calm; almost easy. For days he had known there was someone. That also was part of his routine: to watch the places where the watchers asked. The church, where the ebb and flow of the local population is a ready topic; county hall, register of electors; tradesmen, if they kept customer accounts; pubs, if the quarry didn’t use them. In England, he knew these were the natural traps that watchers automatically patrolled before they closed on you. And, sure enough, in Taunton two days ago, chatting pleasantly with the assistant librarian, Jim had come across the footprint he was looking for. A stranger, apparently down from London, had been interested in village wards; yes, a political gentleman—well, more in the line of political research, he was—professional, you could tell—and one of the things he had wanted—fancy that, now—was the up-to-date record of Jim’s very village—yes, the voters’ list—as they were thinking of making a door-to-door survey of a really out-of-the-way community, specially new immigrants . . . Yes, fancy that, Jim agreed, and, from then on, made his dispositions. He bought railway tickets to places—Taunton to Exeter, Taunton to London, Taunton to Swindon, valid one month—because he knew that if he were on the run again, tickets would be hard to come by. He had uncached his old identities and his gun, and hid them handily above ground; he dumped a suitcase full of clothes in the boot of the Alvis, and kept the tank full. These precautions eased his fears a little, made sleep a possibility; or would have done, before his back.

“Sir, who won, sir?”

Prebble, a new boy, in dressing gown and toothpaste, on his way to surgery. Sometimes boys spoke to Jim for no reason; his size and crookedness were a challenge.

“Sir, the match, sir, versus Saint Ermin’s.”

“Saint
Vermin’s,”
another boy piped. “Yes, sir, who won, actually?”

“Sir,
they
did, sir,” Jim barked. “As you’d have known,
sir,
if you’d been watching,
sir,”
and swinging an enormous fist at them in a slow feinted punch, he propelled both boys across the corridor to Matron’s dispensary.

“Night, sir.”

“Night, you toads,” Jim sang, and stepped the other way into the sick-bay for a view of the church and the cemetery. The sick-bay was unlit; it had a look and a stink he hated. Twelve boys lay in the gloom, dozing between supper and temperatures.

“Who’s that?” asked a hoarse voice.

“Rhino,” said another. “Hey, Rhino, who won against Saint Vermin’s?”

To call Jim by his nickname was insubordinate, but boys in sick-bay feel free from discipline.

“Rhino? Who the hell’s
Rhino?
Don’t know him. Not a name to me,” Jim snorted, squeezing between two beds. “Put that torch away—not allowed. Damn walk-over, that’s who won. Eighteen to nothing for Vermin’s.” That window went down almost to the floor. An old fireguard protected it from boys. “Too much damn fumble in the three-quarter line,” he muttered, peering down.

“I hate rugger,” said a boy called Stephen.

The blue Ford was parked in the shadow of the church, close in under the elms. From the ground floor it would have been out of sight but it didn’t look hidden. Jim stood very still, a little back from the window, studying it for telltale signs. The light was fading fast, but his eyesight was good and he knew what to look for: discreet aerial, second inside mirror for the legman, burn marks under the exhaust. Sensing the tension in him, the boys became facetious.

“Sir, is it a bird, sir? Is she any good, sir?”

“Sir, are we on fire?”

“Sir, what are her legs like?”

“Gosh, sir, don’t say it’s Miss
Aaronson?”
At this everyone started giggling, because Miss Aaronson was old and ugly.

“Shut up,” Jim snapped, quite angry. “Rude pigs, shut up.” Downstairs in assembly, Thursgood was calling senior roll before prep.

Abercrombie? Sir. Astor? Sir. Blakeney? Sick, sir.

Still watching, Jim saw the car door open and George Smiley climb cautiously out, wearing a heavy overcoat.

Matron’s footsteps sounded in the corridor. He heard the squeak of her rubber heels and the rattle of thermometers in a paste pot.

“My good Rhino, whatever are you doing in my sick-bay? And close that curtain, you bad boy—you’ll have the whole lot of them dying of pneumonia. William Merridew, sit up at once.”

Smiley was locking the car door. He was alone and he carried nothing, not even a briefcase.

“They’re screaming for you in Grenville, Rhino.”

“Going, gone,” Jim retorted briskly and with a jerky “Night, all,” he humped his way to Grenville dormitory, where he was pledged to finish a story by John Buchan. Reading aloud, he noticed that there were certain sounds he had trouble pronouncing; they caught somewhere in his throat. He knew he was sweating, he guessed his back was seeping, and by the time he had finished there was a stiffness round his jaw that was not just from reading aloud. But all these things were small symptoms beside the rage that was mounting in him as he plunged into the freezing night air. For a moment, on the overgrown terrace, he hesitated, staring at the church. It would take him three minutes, less, to untape the gun from underneath the pew, shove it into the waistband of his trousers, left side, butt inward to the groin . . .

But instinct advised him “no,” so he set course directly for the trailer, singing “Hey, diddle-diddle” as loud as his tuneless voice would carry.

31

I
nside the motel room, the state of restlessness was constant. Even when the traffic outside went through one of its rare lulls, the windows continued vibrating. In the bathroom the tooth glasses also vibrated, while from either wall and above them they could hear music, thumps, and bits of conversation or laughter. When a car arrived in the forecourt, the slam of the door seemed to happen inside the room, and the footsteps too. Of the furnishings, everything matched. The yellow chairs matched the yellow pictures and the yellow carpet. The candlewick bedspreads matched the orange paintwork on the doors, and by coincidence the label on the vodka bottle. Smiley had arranged things properly. He had spaced the chairs and put the vodka on the low table, and now as Jim sat glaring at him he extracted a plate of smoked salmon from the tiny refrigerator, and brown bread already buttered. His mood in contrast to Jim’s was noticeably bright, his movements swift and purposeful.

“I thought we should at least be comfortable,” he said, with a short smile, setting things busily on the table. “When do you have to be at school again? Is there a particular time?” Receiving no answer, he sat down. “How do you like teaching? I seem to remember you had a spell of it after the war—is that right? Before they hauled you back? Was that also a prep school? I don’t think I knew.”

“Look at the file,” Jim barked. “Don’t you come here playing cat-and-mouse with me, George Smiley. If you want to know things, read my file.”

Reaching across the table, Smiley poured two drinks and handed one to Jim.

“Your personal file at the Circus?”

“Get it from housekeepers. Get it from Control.”

“I suppose I should,” said Smiley doubtfully. “The trouble is Control’s dead and I was thrown out long before you came back. Didn’t anyone bother to tell you that when they got you home?”

A softening came over Jim’s face at this, and he made in slow motion one of those gestures which so amused the boys at Thursgood’s. “Dear God,” he muttered, “so Control’s gone,” and passed his left hand over the fangs of his moustache, then upward to his moth-eaten hair. “Poor old devil,” he muttered. “What did he die of, George? Heart? Heart kill him?”

“They didn’t even tell you this at the debriefing?” Smiley asked.

At the mention of a debriefing, Jim stiffened and his glare returned.

“Yes,” said Smiley. “It was his heart.”

“Who got the job?”

Smiley laughed. “My goodness, Jim, what
did
you all talk about at Sarratt, if they didn’t even tell you that?”

“God damn it, who got the job? Wasn’t you, was it—threw you out! Who got the job, George?”

“Alleline got it,” said Smiley, watching Jim very carefully, noting how the right forearm rested motionless across the knees. “Who did you want to get it? Have a candidate, did you, Jim?” And after a long pause: “And they didn’t tell you what happened to the Aggravate network, by any chance? To Pribyl, to his wife, and brother-in-law? Or the Plato network? Landkron, Eva Krieglova, Hanka Bilova? You recruited some of those, didn’t you, in the old days before Roy Bland? Old Landkron even worked for you in the war.”

There was something terrible just then about the way Jim would not move forward and could not move back. His red face was twisted with the strain of indecision and the sweat had gathered in studs over his shaggy ginger eyebrows.

“God damn you, George, what the devil do you want? I’ve drawn a line. That’s what they told me to do. Draw a line, make a new life, forget the whole thing.”

“Which
they
is this, Jim? Roy? Bill, Percy?” He waited. “Did they tell you what happened to Max, whoever they were? Max is all right, by the way.” Rising, he briskly refreshed Jim’s drink, then sat again.

“All right, come on, so what’s happened to the networks?”

“They’re blown. The story is you blew them to save your own skin. I don’t believe it. But I have to know what happened.” He went on, “I know Control made you promise by all that’s holy, but that’s finished. I know you’ve been questioned to death and I know you’ve pushed some things so far down you can hardly find them any more or tell the difference between truth and cover. I know you’ve tried to draw a line under it and say it didn’t happen. I’ve tried that, too. Well, after tonight you can draw your line. I’ve brought a letter from Lacon and if you want to ring him he’s standing by. I don’t want to silence you. I’d rather you talked. Why didn’t you come and see me at home when you got back? You could have done. You tried to see me before you left, so why not when you got back? Wasn’t just the rules that kept you away.”

“Didn’t anyone get out?” Jim said.

“No. They seem to have been shot.”

They had telephoned Lacon and now Smiley sat alone sipping his drink. From the bathroom he could hear the sound of running taps and grunts as Jim sluiced water in his face.

“For God’s sake, let’s get somewhere we can breathe,” Jim whispered when he came back, as if it were a condition of his talking. Smiley picked up the bottle and walked beside him as they crossed the tarmac to the car.

They drove for twenty minutes, Jim at the wheel. When they parked, they were on the plateau, this morning’s hilltop free of fog, and a long view down the valley. Scattered lights reached into the distance. Jim sat as still as iron, right shoulder high and hands hung down, gazing through the misted windscreen at the shadow of the hills. The sky was light and Jim’s face was cut sharp against it. Smiley kept his first questions short. The anger had left Jim’s voice and little by little he spoke with greater ease. Once, discussing Control’s tradecraft, he even laughed, but Smiley never relaxed; he was as cautious as if he were leading a child across the street. When Jim ran on, or bridled, or showed a flash of temper, Smiley gently drew him back until they were level again, moving at the same pace and in the same direction. When Jim hesitated, Smiley coaxed him forward over the obstacle. At first, by a mixture of instinct and deduction, Smiley actually fed Jim his own story.

For Jim’s first briefing by Control, Smiley suggested, they had made a rendezvous outside the Circus? They had. Where? At a service flat in St. James’s, a place proposed by Control. Was anyone else present? No one. And to get in touch with Jim in the first place, Control had used MacFadean, his personal janitor? Yes, old Mac came over on the Brixton shuttle with a note asking Jim for a meeting that night. Jim was to tell Mac yes or no and give him back the note. He was on no account to use the telephone, even the internal line, to discuss the arrangement. Jim had told Mac yes and arrived at seven.

“First, I suppose, Control cautioned you?”

“Told me not to trust anyone.”

“Did he name particular people?”

“Later,” said Jim. “Not at first. At first, he just said trust nobody. Specially nobody in the mainstream. George?”

“Yes.”

“They were shot all right, were they? Landkron, Krieglova, Bilova, the Pribyls? Straight shooting?”

“The secret police rolled up both networks the same night. After that no one knows, but next of kin were told they were dead. That usually means they are.”

To their left, a line of pine trees like a motionless army climbed out of the valley.

“And then, I suppose, Control asked you what Czech identities you had running for you,” Smiley resumed. “Is that right?”

He had to repeat the question.

“I told him Hajek,” said Jim finally. “Vladimir Hajek, Czech journalist based on Paris. Control asked me how much longer the papers were good for. ‘You never know,’ I said. ‘Sometimes they’re blown after one trip.’ ” His voice went suddenly louder, as if he had lost his hold on it. “Deaf as an adder, Control was, when he wanted to be.”

“So then he told you what he wanted you to do,” Smiley suggested.

“First, we discussed deniability. He said if I was caught, I should keep Control out of it. A scalp-hunter ploy, bit of private enterprise. Even at the time I thought, Who the hell will ever believe that? Every word he spoke was letting blood,” said Jim. “All through the briefing, I could feel his resistance to telling me anything. He didn’t want me to know but he wanted me well briefed. ‘I’ve had an offer of service,’ Control says. ‘Highly placed official, cover name Testify.’ ‘Czech official?’ I ask. ‘On the military side,’ he says. ‘You’re a military minded man, Jim, you two should hit it off pretty well.’ That’s how it went, the whole damn way. I thought, If you don’t want to tell me, don’t, but stop dithering.”