Smiley's People

by John le Carré

  After the Vienna meeting, said Connie, the two men had agreed to meet again in Paris, and Otto wisely played a long hand. In Vienna, Otto had not asked a single question to which the Ginger Pig could take exception; Otto was a pro, said Connie. Was Kirov married? he had asked. Kirov had flung up his hands and roared with laughter at the question, indicating that he was prepared not to be at any time. Married but wife in Moscow, Otto had reported—which would make a honey-trap that much more effective. Kirov had asked Leipzig what his job was these days, and Leipzig had replied magnanimously “import-export,” proposing himself as a bit of a wheeler-dealer, Vienna one day, Hamburg the next. In the event, Otto waited a whole month—after twenty-five years, said Connie, he could afford to take his time—and during that one month, Kirov was observed by the French to make three separate passes at elderly Paris-based Russian émigrés: one a taxi-driver, one a shopkeeper, one a restaurateur, all three with dependents in the Soviet Union. He offered to take letters, messages, addresses; he even offered to take money and, if they were not too bulky, gifts. And to operate a two-way service next time he returned. Nobody took him up. In the fifth week Otto rang Kirov at his flat, said he had just flown in from Hamburg, and suggested they have some fun. Over dinner, picking his moment, Otto said the night was on him; he had just made a big killing on a certain shipment to a certain country, and had money to burn.

  “This was the bait we had worked out for him, darling,” Connie explained, addressing Smiley directly at last. “And the Ginger Pig rose to it, didn’t he, as they all do, don’t they, bless them, salmon to the fly every time.”

  What sort of shipment? Kirov had asked Otto. What sort of country? For reply, Leipzig had drawn in the air a hooked nose on the end of his own, and broken out laughing. Kirov laughed too, but he was clearly very interested. To Israel? he said; then what sort of shipment? Leipzig pointed his same forefinger at Kirov and pretended to pull a trigger. Arms to Israel? Kirov asked in amazement, but Leipzig was a pro and would say no more. They drank, went to a strip club, and talked old times. Kirov even referred to their shared girl-friend, asking whether Leipzig knew what had become of her. Leipzig said he didn’t. In the early morning, Leipzig had proposed they pick up some company and take it to his flat, but Kirov, to his disappointment, refused: not in Paris, too dangerous. In Vienna or Hamburg, sure. But not in Paris. They parted, drunk, at breakfast-time, and the Circus was a hundred pounds poorer.

  “Then the bloody infighting started,” said Connie, suddenly changing track completely. “The Great Head Office Debate. Debate, my arse. You were away, Saul Enderby put one manicured hoof in, and the rest of them promptly got the vapours—that’s what happened.” Her baron’s voice again: “‘Otto Leipzig’s taking us for a ride. . . . We haven’t cleared the operation with the Frogs. . . . Foreign Office worried about implications. . . . Kirov is a plant . . . the Riga Group a totally unsound base from which to make a ploy of this scale.’ Where were you, anyway? Beastly Berlin, wasn’t it?”

  “Hong Kong.”

  “Oh, there,” she said vaguely, and slumped in her chair while her eyelids drooped.

  Smiley had sent Hilary to make tea, and she was clanking dishes at the other end of the room. He glanced at her, wondering whether he should call her, and saw her standing exactly as he had last seen her in the Circus the night they sent for him—her knuckles backed against her mouth, suppressing a silent scream. He had been working late—it was about that time; yes, he was preparing his departure to Hong Kong—when suddenly his internal phone rang and he heard a man’s voice, very strained, asking him to come immediately to the cipher room, Mr. Smiley, sir, it’s urgent. Moments later he was hurrying down a bare corridor, flanked by two worried janitors. They pushed open the door for him, he stepped inside, they hung back. He saw the smashed machinery, the files and card indices and telegrams flung around the room like rubbish at a football ground, he saw the filthy graffiti daubed in lipstick on the wall. And at the centre of it all, he saw Hilary herself, the culprit—exactly as she was now—staring through the thick net curtains at the free white sky outside: Hilary our Vestal, so well bred; Hilary our Circus bride.

  “Hell are you up to, Hils?” Connie demanded roughly from her rocking-chair.

  “Making tea, Con. George wants a cup of tea.”

  “To hell with what George wants,” she retorted, flaring.

  “George is fifth floor. George put the kibosh on the Kirov case and now he’s trying to get it right, flying solo in his old age. Right, George? Right? Even lied to me about that old devil Vladimir, who walked into a bullet on Hampstead Heath, according to the newspapers, which he apparently doesn’t read, any more than my reports!”

  They drank the tea. A rainstorm was getting up. The first hard drops were hammering on the wood roof.

  Smiley had charmed her, Smiley had flattered her, Smiley had willed her to go on. She had drawn the thread halfway out for him. He was determined that she should draw it all the way.

  “I’ve got to have it all, Con,” he repeated. “I’ve got to hear everything, just as you remember it, even if the end is painful.”

  “The end bloody well is painful,” she retorted.

  But already her voice, her face, the very lustre of her memory were flagging, and he knew it was a race against time.

  Now it was Kirov’s turn to play the classic card, she said wearily. At their next meeting, which was in Brussels a month later, Kirov referred to the Israeli arms shipment thing and said he had happened to mention their conversation to a friend of his in the Commercial Section of the Embassy who was contributing to a special study of the Israeli military economy, and even had funds available for researching it. Would Leipzig consider—no, but seriously, Otto!—talking to the fellow or, better still, giving the story to his old buddy Oleg here and now, who might even get a little credit for it on his own account? Otto said, “Provided it pays and doesn’t hurt anyone.” Then he solemnly fed Kirov a bag of chicken-feed prepared by Connie and the Middle Eastern people—all of it true, of course, and eminently checkable, even if it wasn’t a lot of use to anyone—and Kirov solemnly wrote it all down, though both of them, as Connie put it, knew perfectly well that neither Kirov nor his master, whoever that was, had the smallest interest in Israel, or arms, or shipments, or her military economy—not in this case, anyway. What Kirov was aiming to do was create a conspiratorial relationship, as their next meeting back in Paris showed. Kirov evinced huge enthusiasm for the report, insisted that Otto accept five hundred dollars for it, against the minor formality of signing a receipt. And when Otto had done this, and was squarely hooked, Kirov sailed straight in with all the crudity he could command—which was a lot, said Connie—and asked Otto how well placed he was with the local Russian émigrés.

  “Please, Con,” he whispered. “We’re almost there!” She was so near but he could feel her drifting farther and farther away.

  Hilary was sitting on the floor with her head against Connie’s knees. Absently, Connie’s mittened hands had taken hold of her hair for comfort, and her eyes had fallen almost shut.

  “Connie!” he repeated.

  Opening her eyes, Connie gave a tired smile.

  “It was only the fan dance, darling,” she said. “The heknows-I-know-you-know. The usual fan dance,” she repeated indulgently, and her eyes closed again.

  “So how did Leipzig answer him? Connie!”

  “He did what we’d do, darling,” she murmured. “Stalled. Admitted he was well in with the émigré groups, and huggermugger with the General. Then stalled. Said he didn’t visit Paris that much. ‘Why not hire someone local?’ he said. He was teasing, Hils, darling, you see. Asked again: Would it hurt anyone? Asked what the job was, anyway. What did it pay? Get me some booze, Hils.”

  “No,” said Hilary.

  “Get it.”

  Smiley poured her two fingers of whisky and watched her sip.

  “What did Kirov want Otto to do with the émigrés?” he said.r />
  “Kirov wanted a legend,” she replied. “He wanted a legend for a girl.”

  Nothing in Smiley’s manner suggested he had heard the phrase from Toby Esterhase only a few hours ago. Four years before, Oleg Kirov wanted a legend, Connie repeated. Just as the Sandman, according to Toby and the General—thought Smiley—wanted one today. Kirov wanted a cover story for a female agent who could be infiltrated into France. That was the nub of it, Connie said. Kirov didn’t say this, of course; he put it quite differently, in fact. He told Otto that Moscow had issued a secret instruction to all embassies announcing that split Russian families might in certain circumstances be reunited abroad. If enough families could be found who wished it, said the instruction, then Moscow would go public with the idea and thus enhance the Soviet Union’s image in the field of human rights. Ideally, they wanted cases with a compassionate ring: daughters in Russia, say, cut off from their families in the West, single girls, perhaps of marriageable age. Secrecy was essential, said Kirov, until a list of suitable cases had been assembled—think of the outcry there would be, Kirov said, if the story leaked ahead of time!

  The Ginger Pig made his pitch so badly, said Connie, that Otto had at first to deride the proposal simply for the sake of verisimilitude; it was too crazy, too hole-in-corner, he said—secret lists, what nonsense! Why didn’t Kirov approach the émigré organisations themselves and swear them to secrecy? Why employ a total outsider to do his dirty work? As Leipzig teased, Kirov grew more heated. It was not Leipzig’s job to make fun of Moscow’s secret edicts, said Kirov. He began shouting at him, and somehow Connie discovered the energy to shout too, or at least to lift her voice above its weary level, and to give it the guttural Russian ring she thought Kirov ought to have: “‘Where is your compassion?’ he says. ‘Don’t you want to help people? Why do you sneer at a human gesture merely because it comes from Russia!’” Kirov said he had approached some families himself, but found no trust, and made no headway. He began to put pressure on Leipzig, first of a personal kind—“Don’t you want to help me in my career?”—and when this failed, he suggested to Leipzig that since he had already supplied secret information to the Embassy for money, he might consider it prudent to continue, lest the West German authorities somehow get to hear of this connection and throw him out of Hamburg—maybe out of Germany altogether. How would Otto like that? And finally, said Connie, Kirov offered money, and that was where the wonder lay. “For each successful reunion effected, ten thousand U.S. dollars,” she announced. “For each suitable candidate, whether a reunion takes place or not, one thousand U.S. on the nail. Cash-cash.”

  At which point, of course, said Connie, the fifth floor decided Kirov was off his head, and ordered the case abandoned immediately.

  “And I returned from the Far East,” said Smiley.

  “Like poor King Richard from the Crusades, you did, darling!” Connie agreed. “And found the peasants in uproar and your nasty brother on the throne. Serves you right.” She gave a gigantic yawn. “Case dustbinned,” she declared. “The Kraut police wanted Leipzig extradited from France; we could perfectly well have begged them off but we didn’t. No honey-trap, no dividend, no bugger-all. Fixture cancelled.”

  “And how did Vladimir take all that?” Smiley asked, as if he really didn’t know.

  Connie opened her eyes with difficulty. “Take what?”

  “Cancelling the fixture.”

  “Oh, roared, what do you expect? Roar, roar. Said we’d spoilt the kill of the century. Swore to continue the war by other means.”

  “What kind of kill?”

  She missed his question. “It’s not a shooting war any more, George,” she said as her eyes closed again. “That’s the trouble. It’s grey. Half-angels fighting half-devils. No one knows where the lines are. No bang-bangs.”

  Once again, Smiley in his memory saw the tartan hotel bedroom and the two black overcoats side by side as Vladimir appealed desperately to have the case reopened: “Max, hear us one more time, hear what has happened since you ordered us to stop!” They had flown from Paris at their own expense to tell him, because Finance Section on Enderby’s orders had closed the case account. “Max, hear us, please,” Vladimir had begged. “Kirov summoned Otto to his apartment late last night. They had another meeting, Otto and Kirov. Kirov got drunk and said amazing things!”

  He saw himself back in his old room at the Circus, Enderby already installed at his desk. It was the same day, just a few hours later.

  “Sounds like little Otto’s last-ditch effort at keeping out of the hands of the Huns,” Enderby said when he had heard Smiley out. “What do they want him for over there, theft or rape?”

  “Fraud,” Smiley had replied hopelessly, which was the wretched truth.

  Connie was humming something. She tried to make a song of it, then a limerick. She wanted more drink but Hilary had taken away her glass.

  “I want you to go,” Hilary said, straight into Smiley’s face.

  Leaning forward on the wicker sofa, Smiley asked his last question. He asked it, one might have thought, reluctantly; almost with distaste. His soft face had hardened with determination, but not enough to conceal the marks of disapproval. “Do you remember a story old Vladimir used to tell, Con? One we never shared with anyone? Stored away, as a piece of private treasure? That Karla had a mistress, someone he loved?”

  “His Ann,” she said dully.

  “That in all the world, she was his one thing, that she made him act like a crazy man?”

  Slowly her head came up, and he saw her face clear, and his voice quickened and gathered strength.

  “How that was the rumour they passed around in Moscow Centre—those in the know? Karla’s invention—his creation, Con? How he found her when she was a child, wandering in a burnt-out village in the war? Adopted her, brought her up, fell in love with her?”

  He watched her and despite the whisky, despite her deathly weariness, he saw the last excitement, like the last drop in the bottle, slowly rekindle her features.

  “He was behind the German lines,” she said. “It was the forties. There was a team of them, raising the Balts. Building networks, stay-behind groups. It was a big operation. Karla was boss. She became their mascot. They carted her from pillar to post. A kid. Oh, George!”

  He was holding his breath to catch her words. The din on the roof grew louder, he heard the rising growl of the forest as the rain came down on it. His face was near to hers, very; its animation matched her own.

  “And then what?” he said.

  “Then he bumped her off, darling. That’s what.”

  “Why?” He drew still closer, as if he feared her words might fail her at the crucial moment. “Why, Connie? Why kill her when he loved her?”

  “He’d done everything for her. Found foster-parents for her. Educated her. Had her all got up to be his ideal hag. Played Daddy, played lover, played God. She was his toy. Then one day she ups and gets ideas above her station.”

  “What sort of ideas?”

  “Soft on revolution. Mixing with bloody intellectuals. Wanting the State to wither away. Asking the big ‘Why?’ and the big ‘Why not?’ He told her to shut up. She wouldn’t. She had a devil in her. He had her shoved in the slammer. Made her worse.”

  “And there was a child,” Smiley prompted, taking her mittened hand in both of his. “He gave her a child, remember?” Her hand was between them, between their faces. “You researched it, didn’t you, Con. One silly season, I gave you your head. ‘Track it down, Con,’ I said to you. ‘Take it wherever it leads.’ Remember?”

  Under Smiley’s intense encouragement, her story had acquired the fervour of a last love. She was speaking fast, eyes streaming. She was backtracking, zigzagging everywhere in her memory. Karla had this hag . . . yes, darling, that was the story, do you hear me?—Yes, Connie, go on, I hear you.—Then listen. He brought her up, made her his mistress, there was a brat, and the quarrels were about the brat. George, darling, do you love me li
ke the old days?—Come on, Con, give me the rest, yes of course I do.—He accused her of warping its precious mind with dangerous ideas, like freedom, for instance. Or love. A girl, her mother’s image, said to be a beauty. In the end the old despot’s love turned to hatred and he had his ideal carted off and spavined: end of story. We had it from Vladimir first, then a few scraps, never the hard base. Name unknown, darling, because he destroyed all records of her, killed whoever might have heard, which is Karla’s way, bless him, isn’t it, darling, always was. Others said she wasn’t dead at all, the story of her murder was disinformation to end the trail. There, she did it, didn’t she? The old fool remembered!

  “And the child?” Smiley asked. “The girl in her mother’s image? There was a defector report—what was that about?” She didn’t pause. She had remembered that as well, her mind was galloping ahead of her, just as her voice was outrunning her breath.

  A don of some sort from Leningrad University, said Connie. Claimed he’d been ordered to take on a weird girl for special political instruction in the evenings, a sort of private patient who was showing anti-social tendencies, the daughter of a high official. Tatiana, he was only allowed to know her as Tatiana. She’d been raising hell all over town, but her father was a big beef in Moscow and she couldn’t be touched. The girl tried to seduce him, probably did, then told him some story about how Daddy had had Mummy killed for showing insufficient faith in the historical process. Next day his professor called him in and said if he ever repeated a word of what had happened at that interview, he would find himself tripping on a very big banana skin. . . .

  Connie ran on wildly, describing clues that led nowhere, the sources that vanished at the moment of discovery. It seemed impossible that her racked and drink-sodden body could have once more summoned so much strength.