The Honorable Schoolboy

by John le Carré

“Well, no point in crying in the old booze, is there, sport? Can’t leave the ship to the rats. Soldier on, that’s the thing.”

  To which Smiley agreed; yes, that was the thing, to soldier on, grateful for the chance to pay. Jerry had even found a sort of rum comfort in the fact that Bill was one of the clan. He had never seriously doubted, in his vague way, that his country was in a state of irreversible decline, or that his own class was to blame for the mess. “We made Bill,” ran his argument, “so it’s right we should carry the brunt of his betrayal.” Pay, in fact. Pay. What old George was on about.

  Pottering beside the river again, breathing the free warm air, Jerry chucked flat stones to make them bounce.

  Lizzie, he thought. Lizzie Worthington, suburban bolter. Ricardo’s pupil and punch-ball. Charlie Marshall’s big sister and earth mother and unattainable whore. Drake Ko’s cage-bird. My dinner companion for all of four hours. And to Sam Collins—to repeat the question—what had she been to him? For Mr. Mellon, Charlie’s “creepy English trader” of eighteen months ago, she was a courier working the Hong Kong heroin trail. But she was more than that. Somewhere along the line, Sam had shown her a bit of ankle and told her she was working for Queen and country. Which glad news Lizzie had promptly shared with her admiring circle of friends. To Sam’s fury, and he dropped her like a hot brick. So Sam had set her up as a patsy of some kind. A coattrailer on probation. In one way this thought amused Jerry very much, for Sam had a reputation as an ace operator, whereas Lizzie Worthington might well star at Sarratt as the archetypal Woman Never to Be Recruited as Long as She Can Speak or Breathe.

  Less funny was the question of what she meant to Sam now. What kept him skulking in her shadow like a patient murderer, smiling his grim iron smile? That question worried Jerry very much. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was obsessed by it. He definitely did not wish to see Lizzie taking another of her dives. If she went anywhere from Ko’s bed, it was going to be into Jerry’s. For some while, off and on—ever since he had met her, in fact—he had been thinking how much Lizzie would benefit from the bracing Tuscan air. And while he didn’t know how or why Sam Collins came to be in Hong Kong, or even what the Circus at large intended for Drake Ko, he had the strongest possible impression—and here was the nub of the thing—that by pushing off to London at this moment, far from carting Lizzie away on his white charger, Jerry was leaving her sitting on a very large bomb.

  Which struck him as unacceptable. In other times, he might have been prepared to leave that problem to the owls, as he had left so many other problems in his day. But these were not other times. This time, as he now realised, it was the Cousins who were paying the piper, and while Jerry had no particular quarrel with the Cousins, their presence made it a much rougher ball game. So that whatever vague notions he had about George’s humanity did not apply.

  Also he cared about Lizzie. Urgently. There was nothing imprecise in his feelings at all. He ached for her, warts and all. She was his kind of loser, and he loved her. He had worked it out and drawn the line, and that, after several days of counting on beads, was his net unalterable solution. He was a little awed, but very pleased by it.

  Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.

  Taking a bus up-river a few miles, he walked again, rode on cyclos, sat in bars, made love to the girls, thinking only of Lizzie. The inn where he stayed was full of children and one morning he woke to find two of them sitting on his bed, marvelling at the enormous length of the farang’s legs and giggling at the way his bare feet hung over the end. Maybe I’ll just stay here, he thought. But by then he was fooling, because he knew that he had to go back and ask her, even if the answer was a custard pie. From the balcony he launched paper aeroplanes for the children, and they clapped and danced, watching them float away.

  He found a boatman and, when evening came, crossed the river to Vientiane, avoiding the formalities of immigration. Next morning, also without formality, he wangled himself aboard an unscheduled Royal Air Lao DC-8, and by afternoon he was airborne and in possession of a delicious warm whisky and chatting merrily to a couple of friendly opium dealers. As they landed, black rain was falling and the windows of the airport bus were foul with dust. Jerry didn’t mind at all. For the first time in his life, returning to Hong Kong was quite like coming home after all.

  Inside the reception area nevertheless, Jerry played a cautious hand. No trumpets, he told himself: definitely. The few days’ rest had done wonders for his presence of mind. Having taken a good look round, he made for the men’s room instead of the immigration desks and lay up there till a big load of Japanese tourists arrived, then barged over to them and asked who spoke English. Having cut out four of them, he showed them his Hong Kong press card, and while they stood in line waiting for their passport check he besieged them with questions about why they were here and what they proposed to do, and with whom, and wrote wildly on his pad before choosing four more and repeating the process. Meanwhile he waited for the police on duty to change watch. At four o’clock they did, and he at once made for a door marked “No Entry,” which he had noted earlier. He banged on it till it was opened, and started to walk through to the other side.

  “Where the hell are you going?” asked an outraged Scottish police inspector.

  “Home to the comic, sport. Got to file the dirt on our friendly Japanese visitors.”

  He showed his press card.

  “Well go through the damn gates, like everyone else.”

  “Don’t be bloody silly. I haven’t got my passport. That’s why your distinguished colleague brought me through this way in the first place.”

  Bulk, a ranking voice, a patently British appearance, an affecting grin, won him a space in a city-bound bus five minutes later. Outside his apartment block he dawdled but saw no one suspicious, but this was China and who could tell?

  The lift as usual emptied for him. Riding in it, he hummed Deathwish the Hun’s one record in anticipation of a hot bath and change of clothes. At his front door he had a moment’s anxiety when he noticed the tiny wedges he had left in place lying on the floor, till he belatedly remembered Luke and smiled at the prospect of their reunion. He unlocked the burglar door, and as he did so he heard the sound of humming from inside, a droning monotone, which could have been an air-conditioner but not Deathwish’s. Bloody idiot Luke has left the gramophone on, he thought, and it’s about to brew up. Then he thought, I’m doing him an injustice; it’s that fridge.

  Then he opened the door and saw Luke’s dead body strewn across the floor with half his head shot to pieces, and half the flies in Hong Kong swarming over it and round it; and all he could think of to do, as he quickly closed the door behind him and jammed his handkerchief over his mouth, was run into the kitchen in case there was still someone there. Returning to the living-room, he pushed Luke’s feet aside and dug up the parquet brick where he had cached his forbidden side-arm and his escape kit, and put them in his pocket before he vomited.

  Of course, he thought. That’s why Ricardo was so certain the horse-writer was dead.

  Join the club, he thought, as he stood out in the street again, with rage and grief pounding in his ears and eyes: Nelson Ko’s dead, but he’s running China. Ricardo’s dead, but Drake Ko says he can stay alive as long as he sticks to the shady side of the street. Jerry Westerby the horse-writer is also completely dead, except that Ko’s stupid pagan vicious bastard of a henchman, Mr. Tiu, was so thick he shot the wrong round-eye.

  19

  GOLDEN THREAD

  The inside of the American Consulate in Hong Kong could have been the inside of the Annexe, right down to the ever-present fake rosewood and the bland courtesy and the airport chairs and the heartening portrait of the President, even if this time it was Ford. Welc
ome to your Howard Johnson spookhouse, Guillam thought. The section they worked in was called the isolation ward and had its own doorway to the street, guarded by two Marines. They had passes in false names—Guillam’s was Gordon—and for the duration of their stay there, except on the telephone, they never spoke to a soul inside the building except one another. “We’re not just deniable, gentlemen,” Martello had told them proudly in the briefing, “we’re also invisible.” That was how it was going to be played, he said. The U.S. Consul General could put his hand on the Bible and swear to the Governor they weren’t there and his staff were not involved, said Martello; “Blind eye right down the line.” After that, he handed over to George, because “George, this is your show from soup to nuts.”

  Downhill they had five minutes’ walk to the Hilton, where Martello had booked them rooms. Uphill, though it would have been hard going, they had ten minutes’ walk to Lizzie Worth’s apartment block. They had been here five days and now it was evening, but they had no way of telling because there were no windows in the operations room; there were maps and sea charts instead, and a couple of telephones manned by Martello’s quiet men, Murphy and his friend. Martello and Smiley had a big desk each; Guillam, Murphy, and his friend shared the table with the telephones, and Fawn sat moodily at the centre of an empty row of cinema chairs along the back wall, like a bored critic at a preview, sometimes picking his teeth and sometimes yawning but refusing to take himself off as Guillam repeatedly advised him. Craw had been spoken to but ordered to keep clear of everything—a total duck-dive. Smiley was frightened for him since Frost’s death and would have preferred him evacuated, but the old boy wouldn’t leave.

  It was also for once the hour of the quiet men: “Our final detailed briefing,” Martello had called it. “Ah, that’s if it’s okay by you, George.” Pale Murphy, wearing a white shirt and blue trousers, was standing on the raised podium before a wall chart, soliloquising from pages of detailed notes. The rest of them sat at his feet and listened mainly in silence, including Smiley and Martello. Murphy could have been describing a vacuum cleaner, and to Guillam that made his monologue the more hypnotic.

  The chart showed largely sea, but at the top and to the left hung a lace-fringe of the South China coast. Behind Hong Kong the spattered outskirts of Canton were just visible below the batten which held the chart in place, and due south of Hong Kong at the very mid-point of the chart stretched the green outline of what looked to be a cloud divided into four sections, marked A, B, C, and D. These, said Murphy reverently, were the fishing beds and the cross at the centre was Centre Point, sir. Murphy spoke only to Martello, whether it was George’s show from soup to nuts or not.

  “Sir, basing on the last occasion Drake exited Red China, sir, and updating our assessment to the situation as of now, we and navy int. between us, sir—”

  “Murphy, Murphy,” put in Martello quite kindly, “ease off a little, will you, friend? This isn’t training school any more, okay? Loosen your girdle, will you, son?”

  “Sir. One. Weather,” Murphy said, quite untouched by this appeal. “April and May are the transitional months, sir, between the north-east monsoons and the beginning of the south-west monsoons. Forecasts day-to-day are unpredictable, sir, but no extreme conditions are foreseen for the trip.” He was using the pointer to show the line from Swatow southward to the fishing beds, then from the fishing beds north-west past Hong Kong up the Pearl River to Canton.

  “Fog?” Martello said.

  “Fog is traditional for the season, and cloud is anticipated at six to seven oktas, sir.”

  “What the hell’s an okta, Murphy?”

  “One okta is one eighth of sky area covered, sir. Oktas have replaced the former tenths. No typhoons have been recorded in April for over fifty years and navy int. calls typhoons unlikely. Wind is easterly, nine to ten knots, but any fleet that runs with it must count on periods of calm—also contrary winds too, sir. Humidity around eighty percent, temperature fifteen to twentyfour centigrade. Sea conditions calm with a small swell. Currents around Swatow tend to run north-east through the Taiwan Strait, at around three sea miles per day. But farther westward—on this side, sir—”

  “That’s one thing I do know, Murphy,” Martello put in sharply. “I know where west is, dammit.” Then he grinned at Smiley as if to say “these young whipper-snappers.”

  Murphy was again unmoved. “We have to be prepared to calculate the speed factor and consequently the progress of the fleet at any one point in its journey, sir.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Moon, sir,” Murphy continued. “Assuming the fleet to have exited Swatow on the night of Friday, April twenty-fifth, the moon would be three days off of full—”

  “Why do we assume that, Murphy?”

  “Because that’s when the fleet exited Swatow, sir. We had confirmation from navy int. one hour ago. Column of junks sighted at the eastern end of fishing bed C and easing westward with the wind, sir. Positive identification of the lead junk confirmed.”

  There was a prickly pause. Martello coloured.

  “You’re a clever boy, Murphy,” Martello said in a warning tone. “But you should have given me that information a little earlier.”

  “Yes, sir. Assuming also that the intention of the junk containing Nelson Ko is to hit Hong Kong waters on the night of May fourth, the moon will be in its last quarter, sir. If we follow precedents right down the line—”

  “We do,” said Smiley firmly. “The escape is to be an exact repetition of Drake’s own journey in ’fifty-one.”

  Once more, no one doubted him, Guillam noticed. Why not? It was utterly bewildering.

  “—then our junk should hit the southernmost out-island of Po Toi at twenty hundred hours tomorrow, and rejoin the fleet up along the Pearl River in time to make Canton harbour between zero ten-thirty and twelve hundred hours the following day, May fifth, sir.”

  While Murphy droned on, Guillam covertly kept his eye on Smiley, thinking, as he often did, that he knew him no better today than when he first met him back in the dark days of the cold war in Europe. Where did he slip away to at all odd hours? Mooning about Ann? About Karla? What company did he keep that brought him back to the hotel at four in the morning? Don’t tell me George is having a second spring, he thought.

  Last night at eleven there had been a scream from London, so Guillam had trailed up here to unbutton it. Westerby adrift, they said. They were terrified Ko had had him murdered—or, worse, abducted and tortured—and that the operation would abort in consequence. Guillam thought it more likely Jerry was holed up with a couple of air hostesses somewhere en route to London, but with that priority on the signal he had no option but to wake Smiley and tell him. He rang his room and got no answer, so he dressed and banged on Smiley’s door, and finally he was reduced to picking the lock, for now it was Guillam’s turn to panic: he thought Smiley might be ill.

  But Smiley’s room was empty and his bed unslept in, and when Guillam went through his things he was fascinated to see that the old fieldman had gone to the length of sewing false name-tapes in his shirts. That was all he discovered, however. So he settled in Smiley’s chair and dozed and didn’t wake till four, when he heard a tiny flutter and opened his eyes to see Smiley stooped and peering at him from about six inches away; how he got into the room so silently, God alone knew.

  “Gordon?” he asked softly. “What can I do for you?”—for they were on an operational footing of course, and lived with the assumption the rooms were bugged. For the same reason Guillam did not speak but handed Smiley the envelope containing Connie’s message, which he read and reread, then burned. Guillam was impressed how seriously he took the news. Even at that hour he insisted on going straight up to the Consulate to attend to it, so Guillam went along to carry his bags.

  “Instructive evening?” he asked lightly as they plodded the short way up the hill.

  “I? Oh, to a point, thank you, to a point,” Smiley replied, doing his disappearin
g act, and that was all Guillam or anyone could get out of him about his nocturnal or other ambles. Meanwhile, without the smallest explanation of his source, George was bringing in hard operational data in a manner that brooked no enquiry from anyone.

  “Ah, George, we can count on that, can we?” Martello asked in bewilderment, on the first occasion that this happened.

  “What? Oh yes, yes, indeed you may.”

  “Great. Great footwork, George. I admire you,” said Martello heartily after a further puzzled silence, and from then on they had gone along with it. They had no choice. For nobody, not even Martello, quite dared to challenge Smiley’s authority.

  * * *

  “How many days’ fishing is that, Murphy?” Martello was asking.

  “Fleet will have had seven days’ fishing and hopefully make Canton with full holds, sir.”

  “That figure, George?”

  “Yes, oh yes—nothing to add, thank you.”

  Martello asked what time the fleet would have to leave the fishing beds in order for Nelson’s junk to make tomorrow evening’s rendezvous on time.

  “I have put it at eleven tomorrow morning,” Smiley said without looking up from his notes.

  “Me too,” said Murphy.

  “This rogue junk, Murphy,” Martello said, with another deferential glance at Smiley.

  “Yes, sir,” said Murphy.

  “Can it break away from the pack that easy? What would be its cover for entering Hong Kong waters, Murphy?”

  “Happens all the time, sir. Red Chinese junk-fleets operate a collective catch system without profit motivation, sir. Con-sequence of that, you get the single junks that break away at night-time and come in without lights and sell their fish to the out-islanders for money.”

  “Literally moonlighting!” Martello exclaimed, much amused by the felicity of the expression.

  Smiley had turned to the map of Po Toi island on the other wall and was tilting his head in order to intensify the magnification of his spectacles.