And then he had it.

No explosive revelation, no flash of light, no cry of "Eureka", phone calls to Guillam, Lacon, "Smiley is a world champion". Merely that here before him, in the records he had examined and the notes he had compiled, was the corroboration of a theory which Smiley and Guillam and Ricki Tarr had that day from their separate points of view seen demonstrated: that between the mole Gerald and the Source Merlin there was an interplay that could no longer be denied; that Merlin"s proverbial versatility allowed him to function as Karla"s instrument as well as Alleline"s. Or should he rather say, Smiley reflected - tossing a towel over his shoulder and hopping blithely into the corridor for a celebratory bath - as Karla"s agent? And that at the heart of this plot lay a device so simple that it left him genuinely elated by its symmetry. It had even a physical presence: here in London, a house, paid for by the Treasury, all sixty thousand pounds of it; and often coveted, no doubt, by the many luckless taxpayers who daily pa.s.sed it by, confident they could never afford it and not knowing that they had already paid for it. It was with a lighter heart than he had known for many months that he took up the stolen file on Operation Testify.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

To her credit, Matron had been worried about Roach all week, ever since she had spotted him alone in the washroom, ten minutes after the rest of his dormitory had gone down to breakfast, still in his pyjama trousers, hunched over a basin while he doggedly cleaned his teeth. When she questioned him, he avoided her eye. "It"s that wretched father of his," she told Thursgood. "He"s getting him down again." And by the Friday: "You must write to the mother and tell her he"s having a spell."

But not even Matron, for all her motherly perception, would have hit on plain terror as the diagnosis.

Whatever could he do, he a child? That was his guilt. That was the thread that led directly back to the misfortune of his parents. That was the predicament that threw upon his hunched shoulders the responsibility night and day for preserving the world"s peace. Roach the watcher - "best watcher in the whole d.a.m.n unit", to use Jim Prideaux"s treasured words - had finally watched too well. He would have sacrificed everything he possessed, his money, his leather photograph case of his parents, whatever gave him value in the world, if it would buy him release from the knowledge which had consumed him since Sunday evening.

He had put out signals. On Sunday night, an hour after lights out, he had gone noisily to the lavatory, probed his throat, gagged and finally vomited. But the dormitory monitor, who was supposed to wake and raise the alarm - "Matron, Roach"s been sick" - slept stubbornly through the whole charade. Roach clambered miserably back into bed. From the callbox outside the staffroom next afternoon, he had dialled the menu for the day and whispered strangely into the mouthpiece, hoping to be overheard by a master, and taken for mad. No one paid him any attention. He had tried mixing up reality with dreams, in the hope that the event would be converted into something he had imagined; but each morning as he pa.s.sed the Dip he saw again Jim"s crooked figure stooping over the spade in the moonlight; he saw the black shadow of his face under the brim of his old hat, and heard the grunt of effort as he dug.

Roach should never have been there. That also was his guilt: that the knowledge was acquired by sin. After a "cello lesson on the far side of the village, he had returned to school with deliberate slowness in order to be too late for Evensong, and Mrs Thursgood"s disapproving eye. The whole school was worshipping, all but himself and Jim: he heard them sing the Magnificat as he pa.s.sed the church, taking the long route so that he could skirt the Dip, where Jim"s light was glowing. Standing in his usual place, Roach watched Jim"s shadow move slowly across the curtained window. He"s turning in early, he decided with approval, as the light suddenly went out; for Jim had recently been too absent for his taste, driving off in the Alvis after rugger and not returning till Roach was asleep. Then the caravan door opened and closed and Jim was standing at the vegetable patch with a spade in his hand and Roach in great perplexity was wondering what on earth he should be wanting to dig for in the dark. Vegetables for his supper? For a moment Jim stood stock still, listening to the Magnificat, then glared slowly round and straight at Roach, though he was out of sight against the blackness of the hummocks. Roach even thought of calling to him; but felt too sinful on account of missing chapel.

Finally Jim began measuring. That at least was how it seemed to Roach. Instead of digging he had knelt at one corner of the patch and laid the spade on the earth, as if aligning it with something which was out of sight to Roach: for instance the church spire. This done. Jim strode quickly to where the blade lay, marked the spot with a thud of his heel, took up the spade and dug fast, Roach counted twelve times; then stood back, taking stock again. From the church, silence; then prayers. Quickly stooping, Jim drew a package from the ground, which he at once smothered in the folds of his duffel coat. Seconds later, and much faster than seemed possible, the caravan door slammed, the light went on again, and in the boldest moment of his life Bill Roach tiptoed down the Dip to within three feet of the poorly curtained window, using the slope to give himself the height he needed to look in.

Jim stood at the table. On the bunk behind him lay a heap of exercise books, a vodka bottle and an empty gla.s.s. He must have dumped them there to make s.p.a.ce. He had a penknife ready but he wasn"t using it. Jim would never have cut string if he could avoid it. The package was a foot long and made of yellowy stuff like a tobacco pouch. Pulling it open, he drew out what seemed to be a monkey wrench wrapped in sacking. But who would bury a monkey wrench, even for the best car England ever made? The screws or bolts were in a separate yellow envelope; he spilled them on to the table and examined each in turn. Not screws: pen tops. Not pen tops either; but they had sunk out of sight.

And not a monkey wrench, not a spanner, nothing but absolutely nothing for the car.

Roach had blundered wildly to the brow. He was running between the hummocks, making for the drive, but running slower than he had ever run before; running through sand and deep water and dragging gra.s.s, gulping the night air, sobbing it out again, running lopsidedly like Jim, pushing now with this leg, now with the other, flailing with his head for extra speed. He had no thought for where he was heading. All his awareness was behind him; fixed on the black revolver and the bands of chamois leather; on the pen tops that turned to bullets as Jim threaded them methodically into the chamber, his lined face tipped towards the lamplight, pale and slightly squinting in the dazzle.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

"I won"t be quoted, George," the Minister warned in his lounging drawl. "No minutes, no packdrill. I got voters to deal with. You don"t. Nor does Oliver Lacon, do you, Oliver?"

He had also, thought Smiley, the American violence with auxiliary verbs: "Yes, I"m sorry about that," he said.

"You"d be sorrier still if you had my const.i.tuency," the Minister retorted.

Predictably, the mere question of where they should meet had sparked a silly quarrel. Smiley had pointed out to Lacon that it would be unwise to meet at his room in Whitehall since it was under constant attack by Circus personnel, whether janitors delivering despatch boxes or Percy Alleline dropping in to discuss Ireland. Whereas the Minister declined both the Islay Hotel and Bywater Street on the arbitrary grounds that they were insecure. He had recently appeared on television and was proud of being recognised. After several more calls back and forth they settled for Mendel"s semi-detached Tudor residence in Mitcham where the Minister and his shiny car stuck out like a sore thumb. There they now sat, Lacon, Smiley and the Minister, in the trim front room with net curtains and fresh salmon sandwiches, while their host stood upstairs watching the approaches. In the lane, children tried to make the chauffeur tell them who he worked for.

Behind the Minister"s head ran a row of books on bees. They were Mendel"s pa.s.sion, Smiley remembered: he used the word "exotic" for bees that did not come from Surrey. The Minister was a young man still, with a dark jowl that looked as though it had been knocked off-true in some unseemly fracas. His head was bald on top, which gave him an unwarranted air of maturity, and a terrible Eton drawl. "All right, so what are the decisions?" He also had the bully"s art of dialogue.

"Well first, I suppose, you should damp down whatever recent negotiations you"ve been having with the Americans. I was thinking of the unt.i.tled secret annexe which you keep in your safe," said Smiley, "the one that discusses the further exploitation of Witchcraft material."

"Never heard of it," said the Minister.

"I quite understand the incentives, of course; it"s always tempting to get one"s hands on the cream of that enormous American service, and I can see the argument for trading them Witchcraft in return."

"So what are the arguments against?" the Minister enquired as if he was talking to his stockbroker.

"If the mole Gerald exists," Smiley began. Of all her cousins, Ann had once said proudly, only Miles Sercombe was without a single redeeming feature. For the first time, Smiley really believed she was right. He felt not only idiotic but incoherent. "If the mole exists, which I a.s.sume is common ground among us." He waited, but no one said it wasn"t. "If the mole exists," he repeated, "it"s not only the Circus which will double its profits by the American deal. Moscow Centre will too, because they"ll get from the mole whatever you buy from the Americans."

In a gesture of frustration the Minister slapped his hand on Mendel"s table, leaving a moist imprint on the polish.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it I do not understand," he declared. "That Witchcraft stuff is b.l.o.o.d.y marvellous! A month ago it was buying us the moon. Now we"re disappearing up our orifices and saying the Russians are cooking it for us. What the h.e.l.l"s happening?"

"Well, I don"t think that"s quite as illogical as it sounds as a matter of fact. After all, we"ve run the odd Russian network from time to time, and though I say it myself we ran them rather well. We gave them the best material we could afford. Rocketry, war planning. You were in on that yourself - this to Lacon, who threw a jerky nod of agreement. "We tossed them agents we could do without, we gave them good communications, safed their courier links, cleared the air for their signals so that we could listen to them. That was the price we paid for running the opposition - what was your expression? - "for knowing how they briefed their commissars". I"m sure Karla would do as much for us if he was running our networks. He"d do more, wouldn"t he, if he had his eye on the American market too?" He broke off and glanced at Lacon. "Much, much more. An American connection, a big American dividend I mean, would put the mole Gerald right at the top table. The Circus too by proxy of course. As a Russian, one would give almost anything to the English if... well, if one could buy the Americans in return."

"Thank you," said Lacon quickly.

The Minister left, taking a couple of sandwiches with him to eat in the car and failing to say goodbye to Mendel, presumably because he was not a const.i.tuent.

Lacon stayed behind.

"You asked me to look out for anything on Prideaux," he announced at last. "Well I find that we do have a few papers on him after all."

He had happened to be going through some files on the internal security of the Circus, he explained, "Simply to clear my decks." Doing so, he had stumbled on some old positive vetting reports. One of them related to Prideaux.

"He was cleared absolutely, you understand. Not a shadow. However," - an odd inflexion of his voice caused Smiley to glance at him - "I think it might interest you all the same. Some tiny murmur about his time at Oxford. We"re all ent.i.tled to be a bit pink at that age."

"Indeed yes."

The silence returned, broken only by the soft tread of Mendel upstairs.

"Prideaux and Haydon were really very close indeed, you know," Lacon confessed. "I hadn"t realised."

He was suddenly in a great hurry to leave. Delving in his briefcase, he hauled out a large plain envelope, thrust it into Smiley"s hand and went off to the prouder world of Whitehall; and Mr Barraclough to the Islay Hotel, where he returned to his reading of Operation Testify.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

It was lunchtime next day. Smiley had read and slept a little, read again and bathed and as he climbed the steps to that pretty London house he felt pleased because he liked Sam.

The house was brown brick and Georgian, just off Grosvenor Square. There were five steps and a bra.s.s doorbell in a scalloped recess. The door was black with pillars either side. He pushed the bell and he might as well have pushed the door, it opened at once. He entered a circular hallway with another door the other end, and two large men in black suits who might have been ushers at Westminster Abbey. Over a marble chimney piece horses pranced and they might have been Stubbs. One man stood close while he took off his coat; the second led him to a bible desk to sign the book.

"Hebden," Smiley murmured as he wrote, giving a workname Sam could remember. "Adrian Hebden."

The man who had his coat repeated the name into a house telephone: "Mr Hebden, Mr Adrian Hebden."

"If you wouldn"t mind waiting one second, sir," said the man by the bible desk. There was no music and Smiley had the feeling there should have been; also a fountain.

"I"m a friend of Mr Collins as a matter of fact," said Smiley. "If Mr Collins is available. I think he may even be expecting me."

The man at the telephone murmured Thank you" and hung it on the hook. He led Smiley to the inner door and pushed it open. It made no sound at all, not even a rustle on the silk carpet.

"Mr Collins is over there, sir," he murmured respectfully. "Drinks are with the courtesy of the house."

The three reception rooms had been run together, with pillars and arches to divide them optically, and mahogany panelling. In each room was one table, the third was sixty feet away. The lights shone on meaningless pictures of fruit in colossal gold frames, and on the green baize tablecloths. The curtains were drawn, the tables about one third occupied, four or five players to each, all men, but the only sound was the click of the ball in the wheel, and the click of chips as they were redistributed, and the very low murmur of the croupiers.

"Adrian Hebden," said Sam Collins, with a twinkle in his voice. "Long time no see."

"Hullo, Sam," said Smiley and they shook hands.

"Come to my lair," said Sam and nodded to the only other man in the room who was standing, a very big man with blood pressure and a chipped face. The big man nodded too.

"Care for it?" Sam enquired as they crossed a corridor draped in red silk.

"It"s very impressive," said Smiley politely.

"That"s the word," said Sam. "Impressive. That"s what it is." He was wearing a dinner jacket. His office was done in Edwardian plush, his desk had a marble top and ball-and-claw feet, but the room itself was very small and not at all well ventilated, more like the back room of a theatre, Smiley thought, furnished with left-over props.

"They might even let me put in a few pennies of my own later, give it another year. They"re toughish boys, but very go-ahead, you know."

"I"m sure," said Smiley.

"Like we were in the old days."

That"s right."

He was trim and light-hearted in his manner and he had a trim black moustache. Smiley couldn"t imagine him without it. He was probably fifty. He had spent a lot of time out East, where they had once worked together on a catch-and-carry job against a Chinese radio operator. His complexion and hair were greying but he still looked thirty-five. His smile was warm and he had a confiding, messroom friendliness. He kept both hands on the table as if he were at cards and he looked at Smiley with a possessive fondness that was paternal or filial or both.

"If chummy goes over five," he said, still smiling, "give me a buzz, Harry, will you. Otherwise keep your big mouth shut, I"m chatting up an oil king." He was talking into a box on his desk. "Where is he now?"

"Three up," said a gravel voice. Smiley guessed it belonged to the chipped man with blood pressure.

"Then he"s got eight to lose," said Sam blandly. "Keep him at the table, that"s all. Make a hero of him." He switched off and grinned. Smiley grinned back.

"Really, it"s a great life," Sam a.s.sured him. "Better than selling washing machines, anyway. Bit odd, of course, putting on the dinner jacket at ten in the morning. Reminds me of diplomatic cover." Smiley laughed. "Straight, too, believe it or not," Sam added with no change to his expression. "We get all the help we need from the arithmetic."

"I"m sure you do," said Smiley, once more with great politeness.

"Care for some music?"

It was canned and came out of the ceiling. Sam turned it up as loud as they could bear.

"So what can I do for you?" Sam asked, the smile broadening.

"I want to talk to you about the night Jim Prideaux was shot. You were duty officer."

Sam smoked brown cigarettes that smelt of cigar. Lighting one, he let the end catch fire, then watched it die to an ember. "Writing your memoirs, old boy?" he enquired.

"We"re reopening the case."

"What"s this we, old boy?"

"I, myself and me, with Lacon pushing and the Minister pulling."

"All power corrupts but some must govern and in that case Brother Lacon will reluctantly scramble to the top of the heap."

"It hasn"t changed," said Smiley.

Sam drew ruminatively on his cigarette. The music switched to phrases of Noel Coward.

"It"s a dream of mine, actually," said Sam Collins through the noise. "One of these days Percy Alleline walks through that door with a shabby brown suitcase and asks for a flutter. He puts the whole of the secret vote on red and loses."

"The record"s been filleted," said Smiley. "It"s a matter of going to people and asking what they remember. There"s almost nothing on the file at all."

"I"m not surprised," said Sam. Over the phone he ordered sandwiches. "Live on them," he explained. "Sandwiches and canapes. One of the perks."

He was pouring coffee when the red pinlight glowed between them on the desk.

"Chummy"s even," said the gravel voice.

"Then start counting," said Sam and closed the switch.

He told it plainly but precisely, the way a good soldier recalls a battle, not to win or lose any more, but simply to remember. He had just come back from abroad, he said, a three-year stint in Vientiane. He"d checked in with personnel and cleared himself with the Dolphin; no one seemed to have any plans for him so he was thinking of taking off for the South of France for a month"s leave when MacFadean, that old janitor who was practically Control"s valet, scooped him up in the corridor and marched him to Control"s room.

"This was which day exactly?" said Smiley.

"October 19th."

"The Thursday."

"The Thursday. I was thinking of flying to Nice on Monday. You were in Berlin. I wanted to buy you a drink but the mothers said you were occupe and when I checked with Movements they told me you"d gone to Berlin."

"Yes, that"s true," Smiley said simply. "Control sent me there."

To get me out of the way, he might have added; it was a feeling he had had even at the time.

"I hunted round for Bill but Bill was also in baulk. Control had packed him up-country somewhere," said Sam, avoiding Smiley"s eye.

"On a wild goose chase," Smiley murmured. "But he came back."

Here Sam tipped a sharp, quizzical glance in Smiley"s direction, but he added nothing on the subject of Bill Haydon"s journey.

"The whole place seemed dead. d.a.m.n nearly caught the first plane back to Vientiane."

"It pretty much was dead," Smiley confessed, and thought: except for Witchcraft.