John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels

by John le Carré

  “Why? That’s what I ask myself, sir, but perhaps you people know the answer. Why? Did he hear something again? Remember something? Why—when you’re running for your life—why pause, do a duck-shuffle, change hands, and then run on again? Straight into the arms of whoever shot him? Unless of course whatever was behind him overtook him there, came round through the trees perhaps, made an arc as it were? Any explanation from your side of the street, Mr. Smiley?”

  And with that question still ringing in Smiley’s ears they had arrived at last at the body, floating like an embryo under its plastic film.

  But Smiley, on this morning after, stopped short of the dip. Instead, by placing his sodden shoes as best he could upon each spot exactly, he set about trying to imitate the movements the old man might have made. And since Smiley did all this in slow motion, and with every appearance of concentration, under the eye of two trousered ladies walking their Alsatians, he was taken for an adherent of the new fad in Chinese martial exercises, and accounted mad accordingly.

  First he put his feet side by side and pointed them down the hill. Then he put his left foot forward, and moved his right foot round until the toe pointed directly towards a spinney of young saplings. As he did so, his right shoulder followed naturally, and his instinct told him that this would be the likely moment for Vladimir to transfer the stick to his left hand. But why? As the Superintendent had also asked, why transfer the stick at all? Why, in this most extreme moment of his life, why solemnly move a walking-stick from the right hand to the left? Certainly not to defend himself—since, as Smiley remembered, he was right-handed. To defend himself, he would only have seized the stick more firmly. Or clasped it with both his hands, like a club.

  Was it in order to leave his right hand free? But free for what?

  Aware this time of being observed, Smiley peered sharply behind him and saw two small boys in blazers who had paused to watch this round little man in spectacles performing strange antics with his feet. He glowered at them in his most school-masterly manner, and they moved hastily on.

  To leave his right hand free for what? Smiley repeated to himself. And why start running again a moment later?

  Vladimir turned to the right, thought Smiley, once again matching his action to the thought. Vladimir turned to the right. He faced the spinney, he put his stick in his left hand. For a moment, according to the Superintendent, he stood still. Then he ran on.

  Moscow Rules, Smiley thought, staring at his own right hand. Slowly he lowered it into his raincoat pocket. Which was empty, as Vladimir’s right-hand coat pocket was also empty.

  Had he meant to write a message perhaps? Smiley was teasing himself with the theory he was determined to hold at bay. To write a message with the chalk, for instance? Had he recognised his pursuer, and wished to chalk a name somewhere, or a sign? But what on? Not on these wet tree trunks for sure. Not on the clay, the dead leaves, the gravel! Looking round him, Smiley became aware of a peculiar feature of his location. Here, almost between two trees, at the very edge of the avenue, at the point where the fog was approaching its thickest, he was as good as out of sight. The avenue descended, yes, and lifted ahead of him. But it also curved, and from where he stood the upward line of sight in both directions was masked by tree trunks and a dense thicket of saplings. Along the whole path of Vladimir’s last frantic journey—a path he knew well, remember, had used for similar meetings—this was the one point, Smiley realised with increasing satisfaction, where the fleeing man was out of sight from both ahead of him and behind him.

  And had stopped.

  Had freed his right hand.

  Had put it—let us say—in his pocket.

  For his heart tablets? No. Like the yellow chalk and the matches, they were in his left pocket, not his right.

  For something—let us say—that was no longer in the pocket when he was found dead.

  For what then?

  Tell him I have two proofs and can bring them with me. . . . Then perhaps he will see me. . . . This is Gregory asking for Max. I have something for him, please. . . .

  Proofs. Proofs too precious to post. He was bringing something. Two somethings. Not just in his head—in his pocket. And was playing Moscow Rules. Rules that had been drummed into the General from the very day of his recruitment as a defector in place. By Smiley himself, no less, as well as his case officer on the spot. Rules that had been invented for his survival; and the survival of his network. Smiley felt the excitement seize his stomach like a nausea. Moscow Rules decree that if you physically carry a message, you must also carry the means to discard it! That, however it is disguised or concealed—microdot, secret writing, undeveloped film, any one of the hundred risky, finicky ways—still as an object it must be the first and lightest thing that comes to hand, the least conspicuous when jettisoned!

  Such as a medicine bottle full of tablets, he thought, calming a little. Such as a box of matches.

  One box Swan Vesta matches partly used, overcoat left, he remembered. A smoker’s match, note well.overcoat he remembered. A smoker’s match, note well.

  And in the safe flat, he thought relentlessly—tantalising himself, staving off the final insight—there on the table waiting for him, one packet of cigarettes, Vladimir’s favourite brand. And in Westbourne Terrace on the food-store, nine packets of Gauloises Caporal. Out of ten.

  But no cigarettes in his pockets. None, as the good Superintendent would have said, on his person. Or not when they found him, that is to say.

  So the premise, George? Smiley asked himself, mimicking Lacon—brandishing Lacon’s prefectorial finger accusingly in his own intact face—the premise? The premise is thus far, Oliver, that a smoker, a habitual smoker, in a state of high nervousness, sets off on a crucial clandestine meeting equipped with matches but not even so much as an empty packet of cigarettes, though he possesses quite demonstrably a whole stock of them. So that either the assassins found it, and removed it—the proof, or proofs, that Vladimir was speaking of, or—or what? Or Vladimir changed his stick from his right hand to his left in time. And put his right hand in his pocket in time. And took it out again, also in time, at the very spot where he could not be seen. And got rid of it, or them, according to Moscow Rules.

  Having satisfied his own insistence upon a logical succession, George Smiley stepped cautiously into the long grass that led to the spinney, soaking his trousers from the knees down. For half an hour or more he searched, groping in the grass and among the foliage, retreading his tracks, cursing his own blundering, giving up, beginning again, answering the fatuous enquiries of passersby, which ranged from the obscene to the excessively attentive. There were even two Buddhist monks from a local seminary, complete with saffron robes and lace-up boots and knitted woollen caps, who offered their assistance. Smiley courteously declined it. He found two broken kites, a quantity of Coca-Cola tins. He found scraps of the female body, some in colour, some in black-and-white, ripped from magazines. He found an old running shoe, black, and shreds of an old burnt blanket. He found four beer bottles, empty, and four empty cigarette packets so sodden and old that after one glance he discounted them. And in a branch, slipped into the fork just where it joined its parent trunk, the fifth packet—or better perhaps, the tenth—that was not even empty: a relatively dry packet of Gauloises Caporal, Filtre and Duty Free, high up. Smiley reached for it as if it were forbidden fruit, but like forbidden fruit it stayed outside his grasp. He jumped for it and felt his back rip: a distinct and unnerving parting of tissue that smarted and dug at him for days afterwards. He said “damn” out loud and rubbed the spot, much as Ostrakova might have done. Two typists, on their way to work, consoled him with their giggles. He found a stick, poked the packet free, opened it. Four cigarettes remained.

  And behind those four cigarettes, half concealed, and protected by its own skin of cellophane, something he recognised but dared not even disturb with his wet and trembling fingers. Something he dared not even contemplate until he was free of this appa
lling place, where giggling typists and Buddhist monks innocently trampled the spot where Vladimir had died.

  They have one, I have the other, he thought. I have shared the old man’s legacy with his murderers.

  Braving the traffic, he followed the narrow pavement down the hill till he came to South End Green, where he hoped for a café that would give him tea. Finding none open so early, he sat on a bench across from a cinema instead, contemplating an old marble fountain and a pair of red telephone-boxes, one filthier than the other. A warm drizzle was falling; a few shopkeepers had started lowering their awnings; a delicatessen store was taking delivery of bread. He sat with hunched shoulders, and the damp points of his mackintosh collar stabbed his unshaven cheeks whenever he turned his head. “For God’s sake, mourn!” Ann had flung at Smiley once, infuriated by his apparent composure after yet another friend had died. “If you won’t grieve for the dead, how can you love the living?” Sitting on his bench, pondering his next step, Smiley now transmitted to her the answer he had failed to find at the time. “You are wrong,” he told her distractedly. “I mourn the dead sincerely, and Vladimir, at this moment, deeply. It’s loving the living which is sometimes a bit of a problem.”

  He tried the two telephone-boxes and the second worked. By a miracle, even the S–Z directory was intact, and more amazing still, the Straight and Steady Minicab Service of Islington North had paid for the privilege of heavy type. He dialled the number and while it rang out he had a panic that he had forgotten the name of the signatory on the receipt in Vladimir’s pocket. He rang off, recovering his twopence. Lane? Lang? He dialled again.

  A female voice answered him in a bored singsong: “Straight-and-Stead-ee! Name-when-and-where-to-please?”

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. J. Lamb, please, one of your drivers,” Smiley said politely.

  “Sorr-ee, no personal calls on this line,” she sang and rang off.

  He dialled a third time. It wasn’t personal at all, he said huffily, now surer of his ground. He wanted Mr. Lamb to drive for him, and nobody but Mr. Lamb would do. “Tell him it’s a long journey. Stratford-on-Avon”—choosing a city at random—“tell him I want to go to Stratford.” Sampson, he replied, when she insisted on a name. Sampson with a “p.”

  He returned to his bench to wait again.

  To ring Lacon? For what purpose? Rush home, open the cigarette packet, find out its precious contents? It was the first thing Vladimir threw away, he thought: in the spy trade we abandon first what we love the most. I got the better end of the bargain after all. An elderly couple had settled opposite him. The man wore a stiff Homburg hat and was playing war tunes on a tin whistle. His wife grinned inanely at the passers-by. To avoid her gaze, Smiley remembered the brown envelope from Paris, and tore it open, expecting what? A bill probably, some hangover from the old boy’s life there. Or one of those cyclo-styled battle-cries that émigrés send each other like Christmas cards. But this was neither a bill nor a circular but a personal letter: an appeal, but of a very special sort. Unsigned, no address for the sender. In French, handwritten very fast. Smiley read it once and he was reading it a second time when an overpainted Ford Cortina, driven by a boy in a polo-neck pullover, skidded to a giddy halt outside the cinema. Returning the letter to his pocket, he crossed the road to the car.

  “Sampson with a ‘p’?” the boy yelled impertinently through the window, then shoved open the back door from inside. Smiley climbed in. A smell of aftershave mingled with stale cigarette smoke. He held a ten-pound note in his hand and he let it show.

  “Will you please switch off the engine?” Smiley asked.

  The boy obeyed, watching him all the time in the mirror. He had brown Afro hair. White hands, carefully manicured.

  “I’m a private detective,” Smiley explained. “I’m sure you get a lot of us and we’re a nuisance but I would be happy to pay for a little bit of information. You signed a receipt yesterday for thirteen pounds. Do you remember who your fare was?”

  “Tall party. Foreign. White moustache and a limp.”

  “Old?”

  “Very. Walking-stick and all.”

  “Where did you pick him up?” Smiley asked.

  “Cosmo Restaurant, Praed Street, ten-thirty, morning,” the boy said, gabbling deliberately.

  Praed Street was five minutes’ walk from Westbourne Terrace.

  “And where did you take him, please?”

  “Charlton.”

  “Charlton in South-East London?”

  “Saint Somebody’s Church off of Battle-of-the-Nile Street. Ask for a pub called The Defeated Frog.”

  “Frog?”

  “Frenchman.”

  “Did you leave him there?”

  “One hour wait, then back to Praed Street.”

  “Did you make any other stops?”

  “Once at a toy-shop going, once at a phone-box coming back. Party bought a wooden duck on wheels.” He turned and, resting his chin on the back of the seat, insolently held his hands apart, indicating size. “Yellow job,” he said. “The phone call was local.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I lent him twopence, didn’t I? Then he come back and borrows himself two ten p’s, for in-case.”

  I asked him where he was calling from but he just said he had plenty of change, Mostyn had said.

  Passing the boy the ten-pound note, Smiley reached for the door handle.

  “You can tell your firm I didn’t turn up,” he said.

  “Tell ’em what I bloody like, can’t I?”

  Smiley climbed quickly out, just managing to close the door before the boy drove away at the same frightful speed. Standing on the pavement, he completed his second reading of the letter, and by then he had it in his memory for good. A woman, he thought, trusting his first instinct. And she thinks she’s going to die. Well, so do we all, and we’re right. He was feigning lightheadedness to himself, indifference. Each man has only a quantum of compassion, he argued, and mine is used up for the day. But the letter scared him all the same, and recharged his sense of urgency.

  General, I do not wish to be dramatic but some men are watching my house and I do not think they are your friends or mine. This morning I had an impression that they were trying to kill me. Will you not send me your magic friend once more?

  He had things to hide. To cache, as they insisted on saying at Sarratt. He took busses, changing several times, watching his back, dozing. The black motor cycle with its side-car had not reappeared; he could discern no other surveillance. At a stationer’s shop in Baker Street he bought a large cardboard box, some daily newspapers, some wrapping paper, and a reel of Scotch tape. He hailed a taxi, then crouched in the back making up his parcel. He put Vladimir’s packet of cigarettes into the box, together with Ostrakova’s letter, and he padded out the rest of the space with newspaper. He wrapped the box and got his fingers tangled in the Scotch tape. Scotch tape had always defeated him. He wrote his own name on the lid, “To be called for.” He paid off the cab at the Savoy Hotel, where he consigned the box to the men’s-cloakroom attendant, together with a pound note.

  “Not heavy enough for a bomb, is it, sir?” the attendant asked, and facetiously held the parcel to his ear.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Smiley, and they shared a good laugh together.

  Tell Max that it concerns the Sandman, he thought. Vladimir, he wondered wistfully, what was your other proof?

  9

  The low skyline was filled with cranes and gasometers; lazy chimneys spouted ochre smoke into the rainclouds. If it had not been Saturday, Smiley would have used public transport but on Saturdays he was prepared to drive, though he lived on terms of mutual hatred with the combustion engine. He had crossed the river at Vauxhall Bridge. Greenwich lay behind him. He had entered the flat dismembered hinterland of the docks. While the wiper blades shuddered, large raindrops crept through the bodywork of his unhappy little English car. Glum children, sheltering in a bus-stop, said “Keep straight o
n, guv.” He had shaved and bathed, but he had not slept. He had sent Vladimir’s telephone bill to Lacon, requesting a breakdown of all traceable calls as a matter of urgency. His mind, as he drove, was clear, but prey to anarchic changes of mood. He was wearing a brown tweed overcoat, the one he used for travelling. He navigated a roundabout, mounted a rise, and suddenly a fine Edwardian pub stood before him, under the sign of a red-faced warrior. Battle-of-the-Nile Street rose away from it towards an island of worn grass, and on the island stood St. Saviour’s Church, built of stone and flint, proclaiming God’s message to the crumbling Victorian warehouses. Next Sunday’s preacher, said the poster, was a female major in the Salvation Army, and in front of the poster stood the lorry: a sixty-foot giant trailer, crimson, its side windows fringed with football pennants and a motley of foreign registration stickers covering one door. It was the biggest thing in sight, bigger even than the church. Somewhere in the background he heard a motor-bike engine slow down and then start up again, but he didn’t even bother to look back. The familiar escort had followed him since Chelsea; but fear, as he used to preach at Sarratt, is always a matter of selection.

  Following the footpath, Smiley entered a graveyard with no graves. Lines of headstones made up the perimeter, a climbing frame and three standard-pattern new houses occupied the central ground. The first house was called Zion, the second had no name at all, the third was called Number Three. Each had wide windows but Number Three had lace curtains, and when he pushed the gate all he saw was one shadow upstairs. He saw it stationary, then he saw it sink and vanish as if it had been sucked into the floor, and for a second he wondered, in a quite dreadful way, whether he had just witnessed another murder. He rang the bell and angel chimes exploded inside the house. The door was made of rippled glass. Pressing his eye to it, he made out brown stair carpet and what looked like a perambulator. He rang the bell again and heard a scream. It started low and grew louder and at first he thought it was a child, then a cat, then a whistling kettle. It reached its zenith, held it, then suddenly stopped, either because someone had taken the kettle off the boil or because it had blown its nozzle off. He walked round to the back of the house. It was the same as the front, except for the drain-pipes and a vegetable patch, and a tiny goldfish pond made of pre-cast slab. There was no water in the pond, and consequently no goldfish either; but in the concrete bowl lay a yellow wooden duck on its side. It lay with its beak open and its staring eye turned to Heaven and two of its wheels were still going round.