Smiley's People

by John le Carré

  “Oh, George, darling, take me with you! That’s what you’re after, I’ve got it! Who killed Vladimir, and why! I saw it in your ugly face the moment you walked in. I couldn’t place it, now I can. You’ve got your Karla look! Vladi had opened up the vein again, so Karla had him killed! That’s your banner, George. I can see you marching. Take me with you, George, for God’s sake! I’ll leave Hils, I’ll leave anything, no more of the juice, I swear. Get me up to London and I’ll find his hag for you, even if she doesn’t exist, if it’s the last thing I do!”

  “Why did Vladimir call him the Sandman?” Smiley asked, knowing the answer already.

  “It was his joke. A German fairy tale Vladi picked up in Estonia from one of his Kraut forebears. ‘Karla is our Sandman. Anyone who comes too close to him has a way of falling asleep.’ We never knew, darling, how could we? In the Lubianka, someone had met a man who’d met a woman who’d met her. Someone else knew someone who’d helped to bury her. That hag was Karla’s shrine, George. And she betrayed him. Twin cities, we used to say you were, you and Karla, two halves of the same apple. George, darling, don’t! Please!”

  She had stopped, and he realised that she was staring up at him in fear, that her face was somehow beneath his own; he was standing, glaring down at her. Hilary was against the wall, calling “Stop, stop!” He was standing over her, incensed by her cheap and unjust comparison, knowing that neither Karla’s methods nor Karla’s absolutism were his own. He heard himself say “No, Connie!” and discovered that he had lifted his hands to the level of his chest, palms downward and rigid, as if he were pressing something into the ground. And he realised that his passion had scared her; that he had never betrayed so much conviction to her—or so much feeling—before.

  “I’m getting old,” he muttered, and gave a sheepish smile.

  He relaxed, and as he did so, slowly Connie’s own body became limp also, and the dream died in her. The hands that had clutched him seconds earlier lay on her lap like bodies in a trench.

  “It was all bilge,” she said sullenly. A deep and terminal listlessness descended over her. “Bored émigrés crying into their vodka. Drop it, George. Karla’s beaten you all ends up. He foxed you, he made a fool of your time. Our time.” She drank, no longer caring what she said. Her head flopped forward again and for a moment he thought she really was asleep. “He foxed you, he foxed me, and when you smelt a rat he got Bloody Bill Haydon to fox Ann and put you off the scent.” With difficulty she lifted her head to stare at him one more time. “Go home, George. Karla won’t give you back your past. Be like the old fool here. Get yourself a bit of love and wait for Armageddon.”

  She began coughing, hopelessly, one hacking retch after another.

  The rain had stopped. Gazing out of the French windows, Smiley saw again the moonlight on the cages, touching the frost on the wire; he saw the frosted crowns of the fir trees climbing the hill into a black sky; he saw a world reversed, with the light things darkened into shadow, and the dark things picked out like beacons on the white ground. He saw a sudden moon, stepping clear before the clouds, beckoning him into seething crevices. He saw one black figure in Wellington boots and a headscarf running up the lane, and realised it was Hilary; she must have slipped out without his noticing. He remembered he had heard a door slam. He went back to Connie and sat on the sofa beside her. Connie wept and drifted, talking about love. Love was a positive power, she said vaguely—ask Hils. But Hilary was not there to ask. Love was a stone thrown into the water, and if there were enough stones and we all loved together, the ripples would eventually be strong enough to reach across the sea and overwhelm the haters and the cynics—“even beastly Karla, darling,” she assured him. “That’s what Hils says. Bilge, isn’t it? It’s bilge, Hils!” she yelled.

  Then Connie closed her eyes again, and after a while, by her breathing, appeared to doze off. Or perhaps she was only pretending in order to avoid the pain of saying goodbye to him. He tiptoed into the cold evening. The car’s engine, by a miracle, started; he began climbing the lane, keeping a look-out for Hilary. He rounded a bend and saw her in the headlights. She was cowering among the trees, waiting for him to leave before she went back to Connie. She had her hands to her face again and he thought he saw blood; perhaps she had scratched herself with her finger-nails. He passed her and saw her in the mirror, staring after him in the glow of his rear lights, and for a moment she resembled for him all those muddy ghosts who are the real victims of conflict: who lurch out of the smoke of war, battered and starved and deprived of all they ever had or loved. He waited until he saw her start down the hill again, towards the lights of the dacha.

  At Heathrow Airport he bought his air ticket for the next morning, then lay on his bed in the hotel, for all he knew the same one, though the walls were not tartan. All night long the hotel stayed awake, and Smiley with it. He heard the clank of plumbing and the ringing of phones and the thud of lovers who would not or could not sleep.

  Max, hear us one more time, he rehearsed; it was the Sandman himself who sent Kirov to the émigrés to find the legend.

  16

  Smiley arrived in Hamburg in mid-morning and took the airport bus to the city centre. Fog lingered and the day was very cold. In the Station Square, after repeated rejections, he found an old, thin terminus hotel with a lift licensed for three persons at a time. He signed in as Standfast, then walked as far as a car-rental agency, where he hired a small Opel, which he parked in an underground garage that played softened Beethoven out of loudspeakers. The car was his back door. He didn’t know whether he would need it, but he knew it needed to be there. He walked again, heading for the Alster, sensing everything with a particular sharpness: the manic traffic, the toy-shops for millionaire children. The din of the city hit him like a fire-storm, causing him to forget the cold. Germany was his second nature, even his second soul. In his youth, her literature had been his passion and his discipline. He could put on her language like a uniform and speak with its boldness. Yet he sensed danger in every step he took, for Smiley as a young man had spent half the war here in the lonely terror of the spy, and the awareness of being on enemy territory was lodged in him for good. In boyhood he had known Hamburg as a rich and graceful shipping town, which hid its volatile soul behind a cloak of Englishness; in manhood as a city smashed into medieval darkness by thousand-bomber air raids. He had seen it in the first years of peace, one endless smouldering bombsite and the survivors tilling the rubble like fields. And he saw it today, hurtling into the anonymity of canned music, high-rise concrete, and smoked glass.

  Reaching the sanctuary of the Alster, he walked the pleasant footpath to the jetty where Villem had boarded the steamer. On weekdays, he recorded, the first ferry was at 7:10, the last at 20:15, and Villem had been here on a weekday. There was a steamer due in fifteen minutes. Waiting for it, he watched the sculls and the red squirrels much as Villem had done, and when the steamer arrived he sat in the stern where Villem had sat, in the open air under the canopy. His companions consisted of a crowd of schoolchildren and three nuns. He sat with his eyes almost closed by the dazzle, listening to their chatter. Half-way across he stood, walked through the cabins to the forward window, looked out, apparently to confirm something, glanced at his watch, then returned to his seat until the Jungfernstieg, where he landed.

  Villem’s story tallied. Smiley had not expected otherwise, but in a world of perpetual doubt, reassurance never came amiss.

  He lunched, then went to the main Post Office and studied old telephone directories for an hour, much as Ostrakova had done in Paris, though for different reasons. His researches complete, he settled himself gratefully in the lounge of the Four Seasons Hotel and read newspapers till dusk.

  In a Hamburg guide to houses of pleasure, The Blue Diamond was not listed under night-clubs but under “amour” and earned three stars for exclusivity and cost. It was situated in St. Pauli, but discreetly apart from the main beat, in a cobbled alley that was tilted and dark and smel
t of fish. Smiley rang the doorbell and it opened on an electric switch. He stepped inside and stood at once in a trim ante-room filled with grey machinery manned by a smart young man in a grey suit. On the wall grey reels of tape turned slowly, though the music they played was mostly somewhere else. On the desk an elaborate telephone system, also grey, flickered and ticked.

  “I should like to pass some time here,” Smiley said.

  This is where they answered my phone call, he thought, when I telephoned Vladimir’s Hamburg correspondent.

  The smart young man drew a printed form from his desk and in a confiding murmur explained the procedure, much as a lawyer would, which possibly was his daytime profession anyway. Membership cost one hundred and seventy-five marks, he said softly. This was a one-time annual subscription entitling Smiley to enter free for a full year, as many times as he wished. The first drink would cost him a further twenty-five marks and thereafter prices were high but not unreasonable. A first drink was obligatory and, like the membership fee, payable before entry. All other forms of entertainment came without charge, though the girls received gifts appreciatively. Smiley should complete the form in whatever name he wished. It would be filed here by the young man personally. All he had to do on his next visit was remember the name under which he had joined and he would be admitted without formalities.

  Smiley put down his money and added one more false name to the dozens he had used in his lifetime. He descended a staircase to a second door, which once more opened electronically, revealing a narrow passage giving on to a row of cubicles, still empty because in that world the night was only now beginning. At the end of the passage stood a third door and, once through it, he entered total darkness filled with the full blast of the music from the smart young man’s tape-recorders. A male voice spoke to him, a pin-light led him to a table. He was handed a list of drinks. “Proprietor C. Kretzschmar,” he read at the foot of the page in small print. He ordered whisky.

  “I wish to remain alone. No company.”

  “I shall advise the house, sir,” the waiter said with confiding dignity, and accepted his tip.

  “Concerning Herr Kretzschmar. He is from Saxony, by any chance?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Worse than East German, Toby Esterhase had said. Saxon. They stole together, pimped together, faked reports together. It was a perfect marriage.

  He sipped his whisky, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the light. From somewhere a blue glow shone, picking out cuffs and collars eerily. He saw white faces and white bodies. There were two levels. The lower, where he sat, was furnished with tables and armchairs. The upper consisted of six chambres séparées, like boxes at the theatre, each with its own blue glow. It was in one of these, he decided, that, knowingly or not, the quartet had posed for its photograph. He recalled the angle from which the picture had been taken. It was from above—from well above. But “well above” meant somewhere in the blackness of the upper walls where no eye could penetrate, not even Smiley’s.

  The music died and over the same speakers a cabaret was announced. The title, said the compère, was Old Berlin, and the compère’s voice was also Old Berlin: hectoring, nasal, and suggestive. The smart young man has changed the tape, thought Smiley. A curtain lifted revealing a small stage. By the light it released, he peered quickly upward again and this time saw what he was looking for: a small observation window of smoked glass set very high in the wall. The photographer used special cameras, he thought vaguely; these days, he had been told, darkness was no longer a hindrance. I should have asked Toby, he thought; Toby knows those gadgets by heart. On the stage, a demonstration of love making had begun, mechanical, pointless, dispiriting. Smiley turned his attention to his fellow members scattered round the room. The girls were beautiful and naked and young, in the way the girls in the photograph were young. Those who had partners sat entwined with them, seemingly delighted by their senility and ugliness. Those who had none sat in a silent group like American footballers waiting to be called. The noise from the speakers grew very loud, a mixture of music and hysterical narrative. And in Berlin they are playing Old Hamburg, Smiley thought. On the stage the couple increased their efforts, but to little account. Smiley wondered whether he would recognise the girls in the photograph if they should appear. He decided he would not. The curtain closed. He ordered another whisky in relief.

  “Is Herr Kretzschmar in the house tonight?” he asked the waiter.

  Herr Kretzschmar was a man of commitments, the waiter explained. Herr Kretzschmar was obliged to divide his time between several establishments.

  “If he comes, have the goodness to let me know.”

  “He will be here at eleven exactly, sir.”

  At the bar, naked couples had begun dancing. He endured another half-hour of this before returning to the front office by way of the cubicles, some of which were now occupied. The smart young man asked whom he might announce.

  “Tell him it’s a special request,” Smiley said.

  The smart young man pressed a button and spoke extremely quietly, much as he had spoken to Smiley.

  The upstairs office was clean as a doctor’s surgery with a polished plastic desk and a lot more machinery. A closed-circuit television supplied a daylight version of the scene downstairs. The same observation window that Smiley had already noticed looked down into the séparées. Herr Kretzschmar was what the Germans call a serious person. He was fiftyish, groomed, and thickset, with a dark suit and a pale tie. His hair was straw blond like a good Saxon’s, his bland face neither welcomed nor rejected. He shook Smiley’s hand briskly and motioned him to a chair. He seemed well accustomed to dealing with special requests.

  “Please,” Herr Kretzschmar said, and the preliminaries were over.

  There was nowhere to go but forward.

  “I understand you were once business partner to an acquaintance of mine named Otto Leipzig,” Smiley said, sounding a little too loud to himself. “I happen to be visiting Hamburg and I wondered whether you could tell me where he is. His address does not appear to be listed anywhere.”

  Herr Kretzschmar’s coffee was in a silver pot with a paper napkin round the handle to protect his fingers when he poured. He drank and put his cup down carefully, to avoid collision.

  “Who are you, please?” Herr Kretzschmar asked. The Saxon twang made his voice flat. A small frown enhanced his air of respectability.

  “Otto called me Max,” Smiley said.

  Herr Kretzschmar did not respond to this information but he took his time before putting his next question. His gaze, Smiley noticed again, was strangely innocent. Otto never had a house in his life, Toby had said. For crash meetings, Kretzschmar played key-holder.

  “And your business with Herr Leipzig, if I may ask?”

  “I represent a large company,” Smiley said. “Among other interests, we own a literary and photographic agency for freelance reporters.”

  “So?”

  “In the distant past, my parent company has been pleased to accept occasional offerings from Herr Leipzig—through intermediaries—and pass them out to our customers for processing and syndication.”

  “So?” Herr Kretzschmar repeated. His head had lifted slightly, but his expression had not altered.

  “Recently the business relationship between my parent company and Herr Leipzig was revived.” He paused slightly. “Initially by means of the telephone,” he said, but Herr Kretzschmar might never have heard of the telephone. “Through intermediaries again, he sent us a sample of his work, which we were pleased to place for him. I came here to discuss terms and to commission further work. Assuming, of course, that Herr Leipzig is in a position to provide it.”

  “Of what nature was this work, please—that Herr Leipzig sent you—please, Herr Max?”

  “It was a negative photograph of erotic content. My firm always insists on negatives. Herr Leipzig knew this, naturally.” Smiley pointed carefully across the room. “I rather think it must have been taken fr
om that window. A peculiarity of the photograph is that Herr Leipzig himself was modelling in it. One therefore assumes that a friend or business partner may have operated the camera.”

  Herr Kretzschmar’s blue gaze remained as direct and innocent as before. His face, though strangely unmarked, struck Smiley as courageous, but he didn’t know why.

  You’re messing around with a creep like Leipzig, then you better have a creep like me look after you, Toby had said.

  “There is another aspect,” Smiley said.

  “Yes?”

  “Unhappily the gentleman who was acting as intermediary on this occasion met with a serious accident shortly after the negative was put into our care. The usual line of communication with Herr Leipzig was therefore severed.”

  Herr Kretzschmar did not conceal his anxiety. A frown of what seemed to be genuine concern clouded his smooth face and he spoke quite sharply.

  “How so an accident? What sort of accident?”

  “A fatal one. I came to warn Otto and talk to him.”

  Herr Kretzschmar owned a fine gold pencil. Taking it deliberately from an inside pocket, he popped out the point and, still frowning, drew a pure circle on the pad before him. Then he set a cross on top, then he drew a line through his creation, then he tutted and said “Pity,” and when he had done all this he straightened up, and spoke tersely into a machine.

  “No disturbances,” he said. In a murmur, the voice of the grey receptionist acknowledged the instruction.

  “You said Herr Leipzig was an old acquaintance of your parent company?” Herr Kretzschmar resumed.

  “As I believe you yourself were, long ago, Herr Kretzschmar.”

  “Please explain this more closely,” Herr Kretzschmar said, turning the pencil slowly in both hands as if studying the quality of the gold.