In the world of a secret agent, the wall between safety and extreme hazard is almost nothing, a membrane that can be burst in a second. He may court a man for years, fattening him for the pass. But the pass itself - the 'will you, won't you?' - is a leap from which there is either ruin or victory, and for a moment Toby thought he was looking ruin in the face. Grigoriev had finally stopped dead and turned round to stare at him. He was pale as an invalid. His chin lifted, he opened his mouth to protest a monstrous insult. He tugged at his captive arm in order to free himself but Toby held it firm. Skordeno and de Silsky were hovering, but the distance to the car was still fifteen metres, which was a long way, in Toby's book, to drag one stocky Russian. Meanwhile, Toby kept talking; all his instinct urged him to.
'There are irregularities, Counsellor. Grave irregularities. We have a dossier upon your good self which makes lamentable reading. If I placed it before the Swiss police, not all the diplomatic protests in the world would protect you from the most acute public embarrassment, I need hardly mention the consequence to your professional career. Please. I said please.'
Grigoriev had still not budged. He seemed transfixed with indecision. Toby pushed at his arm, but Grigoriev stood rock solid and seemed unaware of the physical pressure on him. Toby shoved harder, Skordeno and de Silsky drew closer, but Grigoriev had the stubborn strength of the demented. His mouth opened, he swallowed, his gaze fixed stupidly on Toby.
'What irregularities?' he said at last. Only the shock and the quietness in his voice gave cause for hope. His thick body remained rigidly set against further movement. 'Who is this Glaser you speak of?' he demanded huskily, in the same stunned tone. 'I am not Glaser. I am a diplomat. Grigoriev. The account you speak of has been conducted with total propriety. As Commercial Counsellor I have immunity. I also have the right to own foreign bank accounts.'
Toby fired his only other shot. The money and the girl, Smiley had said. The money and the girl are all you have to play with.
'There is also the delicate matter of your marriage, sir,' Toby resumed with a show of reluctance. 'I must advise you that your philanderings in the Embassy have put your domestic arrangements in grave danger.' Grigoriev started, and was heard to mutter 'banker' - whether in disbelief or derision will never be sure. His eyes closed and he was heard to repeat the word, this time - according to Skordeno - with a particularly vile obscenity. But he started walking again. The rear door of the car stood open. The back-up car waited behind it. Toby was talking some nonsense about the withholding tax payable on the interest accruing from Swiss bank accounts, but he knew that Grigoriev was not really listening. Slipping ahead, de Silsky jumped into the back of the car and Skordeno threw Grigoriev straight in after him, then sat down beside him and slammed the door. Toby took the passenger seat; the driver was one of the Meinertzhagen girls. Speaking German, Toby told her to go easy and for God's sake remember it was a Bernese Sunday. No English in his hearing, Smiley had said.
Somewhere near the station Grigoriev must have had second thoughts, because there was a short scuffle and when Toby looked in the mirror Grigoriev's face was contorted with pain and he had both hands over his groin. They drove to the Länggass-strasse, a long dull road behind the university. The door of the apartment house opened as they pulled up outside it. A thin housekeeper waited on the doorstep. She was Millie McCraig, an old Circus trooper. At the sight of her smile, Grigpriev bridled and now it was speed, not cover, that mattered. Skordeno jumped on to the pavement, seized one of Grigoriev's arms and nearly pulled it out of its socket; de Silsky must have hit him again, though he swore afterwards it was an accident, for Grigoriev came out doubled up, and between them they carried him over the threshold like a bride, and burst into the drawing-room in a bunch. Smiley was seated in a corner waiting for them. It was a room of brown chintzes and lace. The door closed, the abductors allowed themselves a brief show of festivity. Skordeno and de Silsky burst out laughing in relief. Toby took off his fur coat and wiped the sweat away.
'Ruhe,' he said softly, ordering quiet. They obeyed him instantly.
Grigoriev was rubbing his shoulder, seemingly unaware of anything but the pain. Studying him, Smiley took comfort from this gesture of self-concern : subconsciously, Grigoriev was declaring himself to be one of life's losers. Smiley remembered Kirov, his botched pass at Ostrakova and his laborious recruitment of Otto Leipzig. He looked at Grigoriev and read the same incurable mediocrity in everything he saw : in the new but ill-chosen striped suit that emphasized his portliness; in the treasured grey shoes, punctured for ventilation but too tight for comfort; in the prinked, waved hair. All these tiny, useless acts of vanity communicated to Smiley an aspiration to greatness which he knew - as Grigoriev seemed to know - would never be fulfilled.
A former academic, he remembered, from the document Enderby had handed him at Ben's place. Appears to have abandoned university teaching for the larger privileges of officialdom.
A pincher, Ann would have said, weighing his sexuality at a single glance. Dismiss him.
But Smiley could not dismiss him. Grigoriev was a hooked fish : Smiley had only moments in which to decide how best to land him. He wore rimless spectacles and was running to fat round the chin. His hair oil, warmed by the heat of his body, gave out a lemon vapour. Still kneading his shoulder, he started peering round at his captors. Sweat was falling from his face like raindrops.
'Where am I?' he demanded truculently, ignoring Smiley and selecting Toby as the leader. His voice was hoarse and high pitched. He was speaking German, with a Slav sibilance.
Three years as First Secretary (Commercial), Soviet Mission to Potsdam, Smiley remembered. No apparent intelligence connection.
'I demand to know where I am. I am a senior Soviet diplomat. I demand to speak to my Ambassador immediately.'
The continuing action of his hand upon his injured shoulder took the edge off his indignation.
'I have been kidnapped! I am here against my will! If you do not immediately return me to my Ambassador there will be a grave international incident!'
Grigoriev had the stage to himself, and he could not quite fill it. Only George will ask questions, Toby had told his team. Only George will answer them. But Smiley sat still as an undertaker; nothing, it seemed, could rouse him.
'You want ransom?' Grigoriev called, to all of them. An awful thought appeared to strike him. 'You are terrorists?' he whispered. 'But if you are terrorists, why do you not bind my eyes? Why do you let me see your faces?' He stared round at de Silsky, then at Skordeno. 'You must cover your faces. Cover them! I want no knowledge of you!'
Goaded by the continuing silence, Grigoriev drove a plump fist into his open palm and shouted 'I demand' twice. At which point Smiley, with an air of official regret, opened a notebook on his lap, much as Kirov might have done, and gave a small, very official sigh : 'You are Counsellor Grigoriev of the Soviet Embassy in Berne?' he asked in the dullest possible voice. 'Grigoriev! I am Grigoriev! Yes, well done, I am Grigoriev! Who are you, please? Al Capone? Who are you? Why do you rumble at me like a commissar?'
Commissar could not have described Smiley's manner better; it was leaden to the point of indifference.
'Then, Counsellor, since we cannot afford to delay, I must ask you to study the incriminating photographs on the table behind you,' Smiley said, with the same studied dullness.
'Photographs? What photographs? How can you incriminate a diplomat? I demand to telephone my Ambassador immediately!'
'I would advise the Counsellor to look at the photographs first,' said Smiley, in a glum, regionless German. 'When he has looked at the photographs, he is free to telephone whomever he wants. Kindly start at the left,' he advised. 'The photographs are arranged from left to right.'
A blackmailed man has the dignity of all our weaknesses, Smiley thought, covertly watching Grigoriev shuffling along the table as if he were inspecting one more diplomatic buffet. A blackmailed man is anyone of us caught in the door as we try to escape the
trap. Smiley had arranged the layout of the pictures himself; he had imagined, in Grigoriev's mind, an orchestrated succession of disasters. The Grigorievs parking their Mercedes outside the bank. Grigorieva, with her perpetual scowl of discontent, waiting alone in the driving seat, clutching the wheel in case anyone tried to take it from her. Grigoriev and little Natasha in long shot, sitting very close to each other on a bench. Grigoriev inside the bank, several pictures, culminating in a superb over-the-shoulder shot of Grigoriev signing a cashier's receipt, the full name Adolf Glaser clearly typed on the line above his signature. There was Grigoriev looking uncomfortable on his bicycle, about to enter the sanatorium; there was Grigorieva roosting crossly in the car again, this time beside Gertsch's barn, her own bicycle still strapped to the roof. But the photograph that held Grigoriev longest, Smiley noticed, was the muddy long shot stolen by the Meinertzhagen girls. The quality was not good but the two heads in the car, though they were locked mouth to mouth, were recognizable enough. One was Grigoriev's. The other, pressed down on him as if she would eat him alive, was little Natasha's.
'The telephone is at your disposal, Counsellor,' Smiley caned to him quietly, when Grigoriev still did not move.
But Grigoriev remained frozen over this last photograph, and to judge by his expression, his desolation was complete. He was not merely a man found out, thought Smiley; he was a man whose very dream of love, till now vested in secrecy, had suddenly become public and ridiculous.
Still using his glum tone of official necessity, Smiley set about explaining what Karla would have called the pressures. Other inquisitors, says Toby, would have offered Grigoriev a choice, thereby inevitably mustering the Russian obstinacy in him, and the Russian penchant for self-destruction : the very impulses, he says, which could have invited catastrophe. Other inquisitors, he insists, would have menaced, raised their voices, resorted to histrionics, even physical abuse. Not George, he says : never. George acted out the low-key official time-server, and Grigoriev, like Grigorievs the world over, accepted him as his unalterable fate. George by-passed choice entirely, says Toby. George calmly made clear to Grigoriev why it was that he had no choice at all : The important thing, Counsellor - said Smiley, as if he were explaining a tax demand - was to consider what impact these photographs would have in the places where they would very soon be studied if nothing was done to prevent their distribution. There were first the Swiss authorities, who would obviously be incensed by the misuse of a Swiss passport on the part of an accredited diplomat, not to mention the grave breach of banking laws, said Smiley. They would register the strongest official protest, and the Grigorievs would be returned to Moscow overnight, all of them, never again to enjoy the fruits of a foreign posting. Back in Moscow, however, Grigoriev would not be well regarded either, Smiley explained. His superiors in the Foreign Ministry would take a dismal view of his behaviour, 'both in the private and professional spheres'. Grigoriev's prospects for an official career would be ended. He would be an exile in his own land, said Smiley, and his family with him. All his family. 'Imagine facing the wrath of Grigorieva twenty-four hours a day in the wastes of outer Siberia,' he was saying in effect.
At which Grigoriev slumped into a chair and clapped his hands on to the top of his head, as if scared it would blow off.
'But finally,' said Smiley, lifting his eyes from his notebook, though only for a moment - and what he read there, said Toby, God knows, the pages were ruled but otherwise blank - 'finally, Counsellor, we have also to consider the effect of these photographs upon certain organs of State security.'
And here Grigoriev released his head and drew the handkerchief from his top pocket and began wiping his brow, but as hard as he wiped, the sweat came back again. It fell as fast as Smiley's own in the interrogation cell in Delhi, when he had sat face to face with Karla.
Totally committed to his part as bureaucratic messenger of the inevitable, Smiley sighed once more and primly turned to another page of his notebook.
'Counsellor, may I ask you what time you expect your wife and family to return from their picnic?'
Still dabbing with the handkerchief, Grigoriev appeared too preoccupied to hear.
'Grigorieva and the children are taking a picnic in the Elfenau woods,' Smiley reminded him. 'We have some questions to ask you, but it would be unfortunate if your absence from home were to cause concern.'
Grigoriev put away the handkerchief. 'You are spies?' he whispered. 'You are Western spies?'
'Counsellor, it is better that you do not know who we are,' said Smiley earnestly. 'Such information is a dangerous burden. When you have done as we ask, you will walk out of here a free man. You have our assurance. Neither your wife, nor even Moscow Centre, will ever be the wiser. Please tell me what time your family returns from Elfenau-' Smiley broke off.
Somewhat half-heartedly, Grigoriev was affecting to make a dash for it. He stood up, he took a bound towards the door. Paul Skordeno had a languid air for a hard-man, but he caught the fugitive in an armlock even before he had taken a second step, and returned him gently to his chair, careful not to mark him. With another stage groan, Grigoriev flung up his hands in vast despair. His heavy face coloured and became convulsed, his broad shoulders started heaving as he broke into a mournful torrent of self-recrimination. He spoke half in Russian, half in German. He cursed himself with a slow and holy zeal, and after that, he cursed his mother, his wife and his bad luck and his own dreadful frailty as a father. He should have stayed in Moscow, in the Trade Ministry. He should never have been wooed away from academia merely because his fool wife wanted foreign clothes and music and privileges. He should have divorced her long ago but he could not bear to relinquish the children, he was a fool and a clown. He should be in the asylum instead of the girl. When he was sent for in Moscow, he should have said no, he should have resisted the pressure, he should have reported the matter to his Ambassador when he returned.
'Oh, Grigoriev!' he cried. 'Oh, Grigoriev! You are so weak, so weak!'
Next, he delivered himself of a tirade against conspiracy. Conspiracy was anathema to him, several times in the course of his career he had been obliged to collaborate with the hateful 'neighhours' in some crackpot enterprise, every time it was a disaster. Intelligence people were criminals, charlatans and fools, a masonry of monsters. Why were Russians so in love with them? Oh, the fatal flaw of secretiveness in the Russian soul!
'Conspiracy has replaced religion!' Grigoriev moaned to all of them, in German. 'It is our mystical substitute! Its agents are our Jesuits, these swine, they ruin everything!'
Bunching his fists now, he pushed them into his cheeks, pummelling himself in his remorse, till with a movement of the notepad on his lap, Smiley brought him dourly back to the matter in hand : 'Concerning Grigorieva and your children, Counsellor,' he said. 'It really is essential that we know what time they are due to return home.'
In every successful interrogation - as Toby Esterhase likes to pontificate concerning this moment - there is one slip which cannot be recovered; one gesture, tacit or direct, even if it is only a half smile, or the acceptance of a cigarette, which marks the shift away from resistance, towards collaboration. Grigoriev, in Toby's account of the scene, now made his crucial slip. 'She will be home at one o'clock,' he muttered, avoiding both Smiley's eye, and Toby's.
Smiley looked at his watch. To Toby's secret ecstasy, Grigoriev did the same.
'But perhaps she will be late?' Smiley objected.
'She is never late,' Grigoriev retorted moodily.
'Then kindly begin by telling me of your relationship with the girl Ostrakova,' said Smiley, stepping right into the blue - says Toby - yet contriving to imply that his question was the most natural sequel to the issue of Madame Grigorieva's punctuality. Then he held his pen ready, and in such a way, says Toby, that a man like Grigoriev would feel positively obliged to give him something to write down.
For all this, Grigoriev's resistance was not quite evaporated. His amour propre demanded
at least one further outing. Opening his hands, therefore, he appealed to Toby : 'Ostrakova!' he repeated with exaggerated scorn. 'He asks me about some woman called Ostrakova? I know no such person. Perhaps he does, but I do not. I am a diplomat. Release me immediately, I have important engagements.'
But the steam, as well as the logic, was fast going out of his protests. Grigoriev knew this as well as anyone.
'Alexandra Borisovna Ostrakova,' Smiley intoned, while he polished his spectacles on the fat end of his tie. 'A Russian girl, but has a French passport.' He replaced his spectacles. 'Just as you are Russian, Counsellor, but have a Swiss passport. Under a false name. Now how did you come to get involved with her, I wonder?'
'Involved? Now he tells me I was involved with her! You think I am so base I sleep with mad girls? I was blackmailed. As you blackmail me now, so I was blackmailed. Pressure! Always pressure, always Grigoriev!'
'Then tell me how they blackmailed you,' Smiley suggested, with barely a glance at him.
Grigoriev peered into his hands, lifted them, but let them drop back on to his knees again, for once unused. He dabbed his lips with his handkerchief. He shook his head at the world's iniquity.
'I was in Moscow,' he said, and in Toby's ears, as he, afterwards declares, angel choirs sang their hallelujahs. George had turned the trick, and Grigoriev's confession had begun.
Smiley, on the other hand, betrayed no such jubilation at his achievement. To the contrary, a frown of irritation puckered his plump face.
'The date, please, Counsellor,' he said, as if the place were not the issue. 'Give the date when you were in Moscow. Henceforth, please give dates at all points.'
Smiley's People Page 34