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Authors: John le Carré
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different sort of legend entirely, to say the least,’ said Martindale, all aquiver. ‘It seems we’ve a real vendetta on our hands. How puerile can you get, I wonder?’
Even Lacon was a mite bothered by that picture.
‘Now seriously, why do you hang him there, George?’ he demanded, in his bold, head-prefect’s voice, dropping in on Smiley one evening on his way home from the Cabinet Office. ‘What does he mean to you, I wonder? Have you thought about that one? It isn’t a little macabre, you don’t think? The victorious enemy? I’d have thought he would get you down, gloating over you all up there?’
‘Well, Bill’s dead,’ said Smiley, in that elliptical way he had sometimes of giving a clue to an argument, rather than the argument itself.
‘And Karla’s alive, you mean?’ Lacon prompted. ‘And you’d rather have a live enemy than a dead one? Is that what you mean?’
But questions of George Smiley at a certain point had a habit of passing him by; even, said his colleagues, of appearing to be in bad taste.
An incident which provided more substantial fare around the Whitehall bazaars concerned the ‘ferrets’, or electronic sweepers. A worse case of favouritism could not be remembered anywhere. My God those hoods had a nerve sometimes! Martindale, who had been waiting a year to have his room done, sent a complaint to his Under-Secretary. By hand. To be opened personally by. So did his Brother-in-Christ at Defence and so, nearly, did Hammer of Treasury, but Hammer either forgot to post his, or thought better of it at the last moment. It wasn’t just a question of priorities, not at all. Not even of principle. Money was involved. Public money. Treasury had already had half the Circus rewired on George’s insistence. His paranoia about eavesdropping knew no limits, apparently. Add to that, the ferrets were short-staffed, there had been industrial disputes about unsocial hours - oh, any number of angles! Dynamite, the whole subject.
Yet what had happened in the event? Martinale had the details at his manicured fingertips. George went to Lacon on a Thursday - the day of the freak heatwave, you remember, when everyone practically expired, even at the Garrick - and by the Saturday - a Saturday, - imagine the overtime! - the brutes were swarming over the Circus, enraging the neighbours with their din, and tearing the place apart. A more gross case of blind preference had not been met with since - since, well, they allowed Smiley to have back that mangy old Russian researcher of his, Sachs, Connie Sachs, the don woman from Oxford, against all reason, calling her a mother when she wasn’t.
Discreetly, or as discreetly as he could manage, Martindale went to quite some lengths to find our whether the ferrets had actually discovered anything, but met a blank wall. In the secret world, information is money, and by that standard at least, though he might not know it, Roddy Martindale was a pauper, for the inside to this inside-story was known only to the smallest few. It was true that Smiley called on Lacon in his panelled room overlooking St James’s Park on the Thursday: and that the day was uncommonly hot for autumn. Rich shafts of sunlight poured on to the representational carpet, and the dust-specks played in them like tiny tropical fish. Lacon had even removed his jacket, though of course not his tie.
‘Connie Sachs has been doing some arithmetic on Karla’s handwriting in analogous cases,’ Smiley announced.
‘Handwriting?’ Lacon echoed, as if handwriting were against the regulations.
‘Tradecraft. Karla’s habits of technique. It seems that where it was operable, he ran moles and sound-thieves in tandem.’
‘Once more now in English, George, do you mind?’
Where circumstances allowed, said Smiley, Karla had liked to back up his agent operations with microphones. Though Smiley was satisfied that nothing had been said within the building which could compromise any ‘present plans’
Even Lacon was a mite bothered by that picture.
‘Now seriously, why do you hang him there, George?’ he demanded, in his bold, head-prefect’s voice, dropping in on Smiley one evening on his way home from the Cabinet Office. ‘What does he mean to you, I wonder? Have you thought about that one? It isn’t a little macabre, you don’t think? The victorious enemy? I’d have thought he would get you down, gloating over you all up there?’
‘Well, Bill’s dead,’ said Smiley, in that elliptical way he had sometimes of giving a clue to an argument, rather than the argument itself.
‘And Karla’s alive, you mean?’ Lacon prompted. ‘And you’d rather have a live enemy than a dead one? Is that what you mean?’
But questions of George Smiley at a certain point had a habit of passing him by; even, said his colleagues, of appearing to be in bad taste.
An incident which provided more substantial fare around the Whitehall bazaars concerned the ‘ferrets’, or electronic sweepers. A worse case of favouritism could not be remembered anywhere. My God those hoods had a nerve sometimes! Martindale, who had been waiting a year to have his room done, sent a complaint to his Under-Secretary. By hand. To be opened personally by. So did his Brother-in-Christ at Defence and so, nearly, did Hammer of Treasury, but Hammer either forgot to post his, or thought better of it at the last moment. It wasn’t just a question of priorities, not at all. Not even of principle. Money was involved. Public money. Treasury had already had half the Circus rewired on George’s insistence. His paranoia about eavesdropping knew no limits, apparently. Add to that, the ferrets were short-staffed, there had been industrial disputes about unsocial hours - oh, any number of angles! Dynamite, the whole subject.
Yet what had happened in the event? Martinale had the details at his manicured fingertips. George went to Lacon on a Thursday - the day of the freak heatwave, you remember, when everyone practically expired, even at the Garrick - and by the Saturday - a Saturday, - imagine the overtime! - the brutes were swarming over the Circus, enraging the neighbours with their din, and tearing the place apart. A more gross case of blind preference had not been met with since - since, well, they allowed Smiley to have back that mangy old Russian researcher of his, Sachs, Connie Sachs, the don woman from Oxford, against all reason, calling her a mother when she wasn’t.
Discreetly, or as discreetly as he could manage, Martindale went to quite some lengths to find our whether the ferrets had actually discovered anything, but met a blank wall. In the secret world, information is money, and by that standard at least, though he might not know it, Roddy Martindale was a pauper, for the inside to this inside-story was known only to the smallest few. It was true that Smiley called on Lacon in his panelled room overlooking St James’s Park on the Thursday: and that the day was uncommonly hot for autumn. Rich shafts of sunlight poured on to the representational carpet, and the dust-specks played in them like tiny tropical fish. Lacon had even removed his jacket, though of course not his tie.
‘Connie Sachs has been doing some arithmetic on Karla’s handwriting in analogous cases,’ Smiley announced.
‘Handwriting?’ Lacon echoed, as if handwriting were against the regulations.
‘Tradecraft. Karla’s habits of technique. It seems that where it was operable, he ran moles and sound-thieves in tandem.’
‘Once more now in English, George, do you mind?’
Where circumstances allowed, said Smiley, Karla had liked to back up his agent operations with microphones. Though Smiley was satisfied that nothing had been said within the building which could compromise any ‘present plans’
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