Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (40 page)

“Sure,” said Esterhase, with absolute confidence.

“So this, in my thesis, is what Gerald says to Percy next. ‘We—that is, myself and those like-minded souls who are associated with this project—would like you to act as our father figure, Percy. We’re not political men, we’re operators. We don’t understand the Whitehall jungle. But you do. You handle the committees, we’ll handle Merlin. If you act as our cut-out, and protect us from the rot that’s set in, which means in effect limiting knowledge of the operation to the absolute minimum, we’ll supply the goods.’ They talk over ways and means in which this might be done; then Gerald leaves Percy to fret for a bit. A week, a month, I don’t know. Long enough for Percy to have done his thinking. One day Gerald produces the first sample. And of course it’s very good. Very, very good. Naval stuff, as it happens, which couldn’t suit Percy better, because he’s very well in at the Admiralty; it’s his supporters’ club. So Percy gives his naval friends a sneak preview and they water at the mouth. ‘Where does it come from? Will there be more?’ There’s plenty more. As to the identity of the source—well, that’s a big big mystery at this stage, but so it should be. Forgive me if I’m a little wide of the mark here and there, but I’ve only the file to go by.”

The mention of a file, the first indication that Smiley might be acting in some official capacity, produced in Esterhase a discernible response. The habitual licking of the lips was accompanied by a forward movement of the head and an expression of shrewd familiarity, as if Toby by all these signals was trying to indicate that he, too, had read the file, whatever file it was, and entirely shared Smiley’s conclusions. Smiley had broken off to drink some tea.

“More for you, Toby?” he asked over his cup.

“I’ll get it,” said Guillam with more firmness than hospitality.

“Tea, Fawn,” he called through the door. It opened at once and Fawn appeared on the threshold, cup in hand.

Smiley was back at the window. He had parted the curtain an inch, and was staring into the square.

“Toby?”

“Yes, George?”

“Did you bring a baby-sitter?”

“No.”

“No one?”

“George, why should I bring baby-sitters if I am just going to meet Peter and a poor Pole?”

Smiley returned to his chair. “Merlin as a source,” he resumed. “Where was I? Yes, well, conveniently Merlin wasn’t just one source, was he, as little by little Gerald explained to Percy and the two others he had by now drawn into the magic circle. Merlin was a Soviet agent, all right, but, rather like Alleline, he was also the spokesman of a dissident group. We love to see ourselves in other people’s situations, and I’m sure Percy warmed to Merlin from the start. This group, this caucus of which Merlin was the leader, was made up of, say, half a dozen like-minded Soviet officials, each in his way well-placed. With time, I suspect, Gerald gave his lieutenants, and Percy, a pretty close picture of these sub-sources, but I don’t know. Merlin’s job was to collate their intelligence and get it to the West, and over the next few months he showed remarkable versatility in doing just that. He used all manner of methods, and the Circus was only too willing to feed him the equipment. Secret writing, microdots stuck over full stops on innocent-looking letters, dead letter-boxes in Western capitals, filled by God knows what brave Russian, and dutifully cleared by Toby Esterhase’s brave lamplighters. Live meetings, even, arranged and watched over by Toby’s baby-sitters”—a minute pause as Smiley glanced again towards the window—“a couple of drops in Moscow that had to be fielded by the local residency, though they were never allowed to know their benefactor. But no clandestine radio; Merlin doesn’t care for it. There was a proposal once—it even got as far as the Treasury—to set up a permanent long-arm radio station in Finland, just to service him, but it all foundered when Merlin said, ‘Not on your nelly.’ He must have been taking lessons from Karla, mustn’t he? You know how Karla hates radio. The great thing is, Merlin has mobility: that’s his biggest talent. Perhaps he’s in the Moscow Trade Ministry and can use the travelling salesmen. Anyway, he has the resources and he has the leads out of Russia. And that’s why his fellow conspirators look to him to deal with Gerald and agree to the terms, the financial terms. Because they do want money. Lots of money. I should have mentioned that. In that respect, secret services and their customers are like anyone else, I’m afraid. They value most what costs most, and Merlin costs a fortune. Ever bought a fake picture?”

“I sold a couple once,” said Toby with a flashy, nervous smile, but no one laughed.

“The more you pay for it, the less inclined you are to doubt it. Silly, but there we are. It’s also comforting for everyone to know that Merlin is venal. That’s a motive we all understand—right, Toby? Specially in the Treasury. Twenty thousand francs a month into a Swiss bank: well, there’s no knowing who wouldn’t bend a few egalitarian principles for money like that. So Whitehall pays him a fortune, and calls his intelligence priceless. And some of it
is
good,” Smiley conceded. “Very good, I do think, and so it should be. Then, one day, Gerald admits Percy to the greatest secret of all. The Merlin caucus has a London end. It’s the start, I should tell you now, of a very, very clever knot.”

Toby put down his cup and with his handkerchief primly dabbed the corners of his mouth.

“According to Gerald, a member of the Soviet Embassy here in London is actually ready and able to act as Merlin’s London representative. He is even in the extraordinary position of being able to use, on rare occasions, the Embassy facilities to talk to Merlin in Moscow, to send and receive messages. And if every imaginable precaution is taken, it is even possible now and then for Gerald to arrange clandestine meetings with this wonder-man, to brief and debrief him, to put follow-up questions and receive answers from Merlin almost by return of post. We’ll call this Soviet official Aleksey Aleksandrovich Polyakov, and we’ll pretend he’s a member of the cultural section of the Soviet Embassy. Are you with me?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Esterhase. “I gone deaf.”

“The story is, he’s been a member of the London Embassy quite a while—nine years, to be precise—but Merlin’s only recently added him to the flock. While Polyakov was on leave in Moscow, perhaps?”

“I’m not hearing nothing.”

“Very quickly Polyakov becomes important, because before long Gerald appoints him linchpin of the Witchcraft operation and a lot more besides. The dead drops in Amsterdam and Paris, the secret inks, the microdots—they all go on, all right, but at less of a pitch. The convenience of having Polyakov right on the doorstep is too good to miss. Some of Merlin’s best material is smuggled to London by diplomatic bag; all Polyakov has to do is slit open the envelopes and pass them to his counterpart in the Circus—Gerald or whomever Gerald nominates. But we must never forget that this part of the Merlin operation is deathly, deathly secret. The Witchcraft committee itself is, of course, secret, too, but large. That’s inevitable. The operation is large, the take is large; processing and distribution alone require a mass of clerical supervision—transcribers, translators, codists, typists, evaluators, and God knows what. None of that worries Gerald at all, of course: he likes it, in fact, because the art of being Gerald is to be one of a crowd. Is the Witchcraft committee led from below? From the middle or from the top? I rather like Karla’s description of committees, don’t you? Is it Chinese? A committee is an animal with four back legs.

“But the London end—Polyakov’s leg—that part is confined to the original magic circle. Skordeno, de Silsky, all the pack: they can tear off abroad and devil like mad for Merlin away from home. But here in London, the operation involving Brother Polyakov, the way that knot is tied—that’s a very special secret, for very special reasons. You, Percy, Bill Haydon, and Roy Bland. You four are the magic circle. Right? Now let’s just speculate about how it works, in detail. There’s a house, we know that. All the same, meetings there are very elaborately arranged; we can be sure of that, can’t we? Who meets him, Toby? Who has the handling of Polyakov? You? Roy? Bill?”

Taking the fat end of his tie, Smiley turned the silk lining outwards and polished his glasses. “Everyone does,” he said, answering his own question. “How’s that? Sometimes Percy meets him. I would guess Percy represents the authoritarian side with him: ‘Isn’t it time you took a holiday? Have you heard from your wife this week?’ Percy would be good at that. But the Witchcraft committee uses Percy sparingly. Percy’s the big gun and he must have rarity value. Then there’s Bill Haydon; Bill meets him. That would happen more often, I think. Bill’s impressive on Russia and he has entertainment value. I have a feeling that he and Polyakov would hit it off pretty well. I would think Bill shone when it came to the briefing and the follow-up questions, wouldn’t you? Making certain that the right messages went to Moscow? Sometimes he takes Roy Bland with him, sometimes he sends Roy on his own. I expect that’s something they work out between themselves. And Roy, of course, is an economic expert, as well as top man on satellites, so there’ll be lots to talk about in that department also. And sometimes—I imagine birthdays, Toby, or a Christmas, or special presentations of thanks and money—there’s a small fortune written down to entertainment, I notice, let alone bounties. Sometimes, to make the party go, you all four trot along, and raise your glasses to the king across the water: to Merlin, through his envoy, Polyakov. Finally, I suppose, Toby himself has things to talk to friend Polyakov about. There’s tradecraft to discuss; there are the useful snippets about goings on inside the Embassy, which are so handy to the lamplighters in their bread-and-butter surveillance operations against the residency. So Toby also has his solo sessions. After all, we shouldn’t overlook Polyakov’s local potential, quite apart from his role as Merlin’s London representative. It’s not every day we have a tame Soviet diplomat in London eating out of our hands. A little training with a camera and Polyakov could be very useful just at the straight domestic level. Provided we all remember our priorities.”

His gaze had not left Toby’s face. “I can imagine that Polyakov might run to quite a few reels of film, can’t you? And that one of the jobs of whoever was seeing him might be to replenish his stock: take him little sealed packets. Packets of film. Unexposed film, of course, since it came from the Circus. Tell me, Toby—could you, please—is the name Lapin familiar to you?”

A lick, a frown, a smile, a forward movement of the head: “Sure, George, I know Lapin.”

“Who ordered the lamplighter reports on Lapin destroyed?”

“I did, George.”

“On your own initiative?”

The smile broadened a fraction. “Listen, George, I made some rungs up the ladder these days.”

“Who said Connie Sachs had to be pushed downhill?”

“Look, I think it was Percy—okay? Say it was Percy, maybe Bill. You know how it is in a big operation. Shoes to mend, pots to clean, always a thing going.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was Roy, huh?”

“So you take orders from all of them,” said Smiley lightly. “That’s very indiscriminate of you, Toby. You should know better.”

Esterhase didn’t like that at all.

“Who told you to cool off Max, Toby? Was it the same three people? Only I have to report all this to Lacon, you see. He’s being awfully pressing just at the moment. He seems to have the Minister on his back. Who was it?”

“George, you been talking to the wrong guys.”

“One of us has,” Smiley agreed pleasantly. “That’s for sure. They also want to know about Westerby: just who put the muzzle on him. Was it the same person who sent you down to Sarratt with a thousand quid in cash and a brief to put Jim Prideaux’s mind at rest? It’s only facts I’m after, Toby, not scalps. You know me—I’m not the vindictive sort. Anyway, what’s to say you’re not a very loyal fellow? It’s just a question of who to.” He added, “Only they do badly want to know, you see. There’s even some ugly talk of calling in the competition. Nobody wants that, do they? It’s like going to solicitors when you’ve had a row with your wife: an irrevocable step. Who gave you the message for Jim about Tinker, Tailor? Did you know what it meant? Did you have it straight from Polyakov, was that it?”

“For God’s sake,” Guillam whispered, “let me sweat the bastard.”

Smiley ignored him. “Let’s keep talking about Lapin. What was his job over here?”

“He worked for Polyakov.”

“His secretary in the cultural department?”

“His legman.”

“But, my dear Toby, what on earth is a cultural attaché doing with his own legman?”

Esterhase’s eyes were on Smiley all the time. He’s like a dog, thought Guillam; he doesn’t know whether to expect a kick or a bone. They flickered from Smiley’s face to his hands, then back to his face, constantly checking the telltale places.

“Don’t be damn silly, George,” Toby said carelessly. “Polyakov is working for Moscow Centre. You know that as well as I do.” He crossed his little legs and, with a resurgence of all his former insolence, sat back in his chair and took a sip of cold tea.

Whereas Smiley, to Guillam’s eye, appeared momentarily set back; from which Guillam in his confusion dryly inferred that he was doubtless very pleased with himself. Perhaps because Toby was at last doing the talking.

“Come on, George,” Toby said. “You’re not a child. Think how many operations we ran this way. We buy Polyakov, okay? Polyakov’s a Moscow hood but he’s our Joe. But he’s got to pretend to his own people that he’s spying on us. How else does he get away with it? How does he walk in and out of that house all day, no gorillas, no baby-sitters, everything so easy? He comes down to our shop, so he got to take home the goodies. So we give him goodies. Chicken-feed, so he can pass it home and everyone in Moscow claps him on the back and tells him he’s a big guy—happens every day.”

If Guillam’s head by now was reeling with a kind of furious awe, Smiley’s seemed remarkably clear.

“And that’s pretty much the standard story, is it, among the four initiated?”