"You"re d.a.m.n right I won"t."

Smiley offered a dyspeptic grunt of sympathy: "These meetings you had with Irina: the dead letter boxes, the safety signals and fallbacks. Who proposed the tradecraft: you or she?"

"She did."

"What were the safety signals?"

"Body talk. If I wore my collar open she knew I"d had a look around and I reckoned the coast was clear. If I wore it closed, scrub the meeting till the fallback."

"And Irina?"

"Handbag. Left hand, right hand. I got there first and waited up somewhere she could see me. That gave her the choice: whether to go ahead or split."

"All this happened more than six months ago. What have you been doing since?"

"Resting," said Tarr rudely.

Guillam said: "He panicked and went native. He bolted to Kuala Lumpur, then lay up in one of the hill villages. That"s his story. He has a daughter called Danny."

"Danny"s my little kid."

"He shacked up with Danny and her mother," said Guillam, talking, as was his habit, clean across anything Tarr said. "He"s got wives scattered across the globe but she seems to lead the pack just now."

"Why did you choose this particular moment to come to us?"

Tarr said nothing.

"Don"t you want to spend Christmas with Danny?"

"Sure."

"So what happened? Did something scare you?"

"There was rumours," said Tarr sullenly.

"What sort of rumours?"

"Some Frenchman turned up in KL telling them all I owed him money. Wanted to get some lawyer hounding me. I don"t owe anybody money."

Smiley returned to Guillam. "At the Circus he"s still posted as a defector?"

"Presumed."

"What have they done about it so far?"

"It"s out of my hands. I heard on the grapevine that London Station held a couple of war parties over him a while back but they didn"t invite me and I don"t know what came of them. Nothing, I should think, as usual."

"What pa.s.sport"s he been using?"

Tarr had his answer ready: "I threw away Thomas the day I hit Malaya. I reckoned Thomas wasn"t exactly the flavour of the month in Moscow and I"d do better to kill him off right there. In KL I had them run me up a British pa.s.sport, name of Poole." He handed it to Smiley. "It"s not bad for the money."

"Why didn"t you use one of your Swiss escapes?"

Another wary pause.

"Or did you lose them when your hotel room was searched?"

Guillam said: "He cached them as soon as he arrived in Hong Kong. Standard practice."

"So why didn"t you use them?"

"They were numbered, Mr Smiley. They may have been blank but they were numbered. I was feeling a mite windy, frankly. If London had the numbers, maybe Moscow did too, if you take my meaning."

"So what did you do with your Swiss escapes?" Smiley repeated pleasantly.

"He says he threw them away," said Guillam. "He sold them more likely. Or swapped them for that one."

"How? Threw them away how? Did you burn them?"

"That"s right, I burned them," said Tarr, with a nervy ring to his voice, half a threat, half fear.

"So when you say this Frenchman was enquiring for you-"

"He was looking for Poole."

"But who else ever heard of Poole, except the man who faked this pa.s.sport?" Smiley asked, turning the pages. Tarr said nothing. "Tell me how you travelled to England," Smiley suggested.

"Soft route from Dublin. No problem." Tarr lied badly under pressure. Perhaps his parents were to blame. He was too fast when he had no answer ready, too aggressive when he had one up his sleeve.

"How did you get to Dublin?" Smiley asked, checking the border stamps on the middle page.

"Roses." He had recovered his confidence. "Roses all the way. I"ve got a girl who"s an air hostess with South African. A pal of mine flew me cargo to the Cape, at the Cape my girl took care of me then hitched me a free ride to Dublin with one of the pilots. As far as anyone back East knows I never left the peninsula."

"I"m doing what I can to check," said Guillam to the ceiling.

"Well you be d.a.m.n careful, baby," Tarr snapped down the line to Guillam. "Because I don"t want the wrong people on my back."

"Why did you come to Mr Guillam?" Smiley enquired, still deep in Poole"s pa.s.sport. It had a used, well-thumbed look, neither too full nor too empty. "Apart from the fact that you were frightened, of course."

"Mr Guillam"s my boss," said Tarr virtuously.

"Did it cross your mind he might just turn you straight over to Alleline? After all, you"re something of a wanted man as far as the Circus top bra.s.s is concerned, aren"t you?"

"Sure. But I don"t figure Mr Guillam"s any fonder of the new arrangement than you are, Mr Smiley."

"He also loves England," Guillam explained with mordant sarcasm.

"Sure. I got homesick."

"Did you ever consider going to anyone else but Mr Guillam? Why not one of the overseas residencies, for instance, where you were in less danger? Is Mackelvore still head man in Paris?" Guillam nodded. "There you are, then: you could have gone to Mr Mackelvore. He recruited you, you can trust him: he"s old Circus. You could have sat safely in Paris instead of risking your neck over here. Oh dear G.o.d. Lacon, quick!"

Smiley had risen to his feet, the back of one hand pressed to his mouth as he stared out of the window. In the paddock Jackie Lacon was lying on her stomach screaming while a riderless pony careered between the trees. They were still watching as Lacon"s wife, a pretty woman with long hair and thick winter stockings, bounded over the fence and gathered the child up.

"They"re often taking tumbles," Lacon remarked, quite cross. "They don"t hurt themselves at that age." And scarcely more graciously: "You"re not responsible for everyone, you know, George."

Slowly they settled again.

"And if you had been making for Paris," Smiley resumed, "which route would you have taken?"

"The same till Ireland then Dublin-Orly I guess. What do you expect me to do: walk on the d.a.m.n water?"

At this Lacon coloured and Guillam with an angry exclamation rose to his feet. But Smiley seemed quite unbothered. Taking up the pa.s.sport again he turned slowly back to the beginning.

"And how did you get in touch with Mr Guillam?"

Guillam answered for him, speaking fast: "He knew where I garage my car. He left a note on it saying he wanted to buy it and signed it with his workname, Trench. He suggested a place to meet and put in a veiled plea for privacy before I took my trade elsewhere. I brought Fawn along to babysit-"

Smiley interrupted: "That was Fawn at the door just now?"

"He watched my back while we talked," Guillam said. "I"ve kept him with us ever since. As soon as I"d heard Tarr"s story, I rang Lacon from a callbox and asked for an interview. George, why don"t we talk this over among ourselves?"

"Rang Lacon down here or in London?"

"Down here," said Lacon.

There was a pause till Guillam explained: "I happened to remember the name of a girl in Lacon"s office. I mentioned her name and said she had asked me to speak to him urgently on an intimate matter. It wasn"t perfect but it was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment." He added, filling the silence, "Well d.a.m.n it, there was no reason to suppose the phone was tapped."

"There was every reason."

Smiley had closed the pa.s.sport and was examining the binding by the light of a tattered reading lamp at his side. "This is rather good, isn"t it?" he remarked lightly. "Really very good indeed. I"d say that was a professional product. I can"t find a blemish."

"Don"t worry, Mr Smiley," Tarr retorted, taking it back, "it"s not made in Russia." By the time he reached the door his smile had returned. "You know something?" he said, addressing all three of them down the aisle of the long room. "If Irina is right, you boys are going to need a whole new Circus. So if we all stick together I guess we could be in on the ground floor." He gave the door a playful tap. "Come on, darling, it"s me. Ricki."

"Thank you! It"s all right now! Open up, please," Lacon shouted and a moment later the key was turned, the dark figure of Fawn the babysitter flitted into view and the four footsteps faded into the big hollows of the house, to the distant accompaniment of Jackie Lacon"s crying.

CHAPTER TEN.

On another side of the house, away from the pony paddock, a gra.s.s tennis court was hidden among the trees. It was not a good tennis court; it was mown seldom. In spring the gra.s.s was sodden from the winter and no sun got in to dry it, in summer the b.a.l.l.s disappeared into the foliage and this morning it was ankle deep in frosted leaves that had collected here from all over the garden. But round the outside, roughly following the wire rectangle, a footpath wandered between some beech trees and here Smiley and Lacon wandered also. Smiley had fetched his travelling coat but Lacon wore only his threadbare suit. For this reason perhaps he chose a brisk, if uncoordinated, pace which with each stride took him well ahead of Smiley so that he had constantly to hover, shoulders and elbows lifted, waiting till the shorter man caught up. Then he promptly bounded off again, gaining ground. They completed two laps in this way before Lacon broke the silence.

"When you came to me a year ago with a similar suggestion, I"m afraid I threw you out. I suppose I should apologise. I was remiss." There was a suitable silence while he pondered his dereliction. "I instructed you to abandon your enquiries."

"You told me they were unconst.i.tutional," Smiley said mournfully, as if he were recalling the same sad error.

"Was that the word I used? Good Lord, how very pompous of me!"

From the direction of the house came the sound of Jackie"s continued crying.

"You never had any, did you?" Lacon piped at once, his head lifted to the sound.

"I"m sorry?"

"Children. You and Ann."

"No."

"Nephews, nieces?"

"One nephew."

"On your side?"

"Hers."

Perhaps I never left the place, he thought, peering around him at the tangled roses, the broken swings and sodden sandpits, the raw, red house so shrill in the morning light. Perhaps we"re still here from last time.

Lacon was apologising again: "Dare I say I didn"t absolutely trust your motives? It rather crossed my mind that Control had put you up to it, you see. As a way of hanging on to power and keeping Percy Alleline out" - swirling away again, long strides, wrists outward.

"Oh no, I a.s.sure you Control knew nothing about it at all."

"I realise that now. I didn"t at the time. It"s a little difficult to know when to trust you people and when not. You do live by rather different standards, don"t you? I mean you have to. I accept that. I"m not being judgmental. Our aims are the same after all, even if our methods are different" - bounding over a cattle ditch - "I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn"t. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one"s aims are, that"s the trouble, specially if you"re British. We can"t expect you people to determine our policy for us, can we? We can only ask you to further it. Correct? Tricky one, that."

Rather than chase after him, Smiley sat on a rusted swing seat and huddled himself more tightly in his coat, till finally Lacon stalked back and perched beside him. For a while they rocked together to the rhythm of the groaning springs.

"Why the devil did she choose Tarr?" Lacon muttered at last, fiddling his long fingers. "Of all the people in the world to choose for a confessor, I can imagine none more miserably unsuitable."

"I"m afraid you"ll have to ask a woman that question, not us," said Smiley, wondering again where Immingham was.

"Oh indeed," Lacon agreed lavishly. "All that"s a complete mystery. I"m seeing the Minister at eleven," he confided in a lower tone, "I have to put him in the picture. Your parliamentary cousin," he added, forcing an intimate joke.

"Ann"s cousin actually," Smiley corrected him, in the same absent tone. "Far removed I may add, but cousin for all that."

"And Bill Haydon is also Ann"s cousin? Our distinguished Head of London station." They had played this game before as well.

"By a different route, yes, Bill is also her cousin." He added quite uselessly: "She comes from an old family with a strong political tradition. With time it"s rather spread."

"The tradition?" - Lacon loved to nail an ambiguity.

"The family."

Beyond the trees, Smiley thought, cars are pa.s.sing. Beyond the trees lies a whole world, but Lacon had this red castle and a sense of Christian ethic that promises him no reward except a knighthood, the respect of his peers, a fat pension and a couple of charitable directorships in the City.

"Anyway I"m seeing him at eleven." Lacon had jerked to his feet and they were walking again. Smiley caught the name "Ellis" floating backward to him on the leafy morning air. For a moment, as in the car with Guillam, an odd nervousness overcame him.