‘I have to speak to your husband,’ Smiley said. It was the first time he had spoken since he bought his ticket, and his voice was thick and unnatural.
‘But Cläuschen does no business in the daytime,’ she said firmly, still smiling. ‘In the daytime by family decree the profit motive has its sleep. Shall I put handcuffs on him to prove to you he is our prisoner till sunset?’
Her bathing-dress was in two parts and her smooth, full belly was oily with lotion. She wore a gold chain round her waist, presumably as a further sign of naturalness. And gold sandals with very high heels.
‘Kindly tell your husband that this is not business,’ Smiley said. ‘This is friendship.’
Frau Kretzschmar took a sip of her champagne, then removed her dark glasses and beak, as if she were declaring herself at the bal masqué. She had a snub nose. Her face, though kindly, was a good deal older than her body.
‘But how can it be friendship when I don’t know your name?’ she demanded, no longer sure whether to be winsome or discouraging.
But by then Herr Kretzschmar himself had walked down the path after her, and stopped before them, staring from his wife to Smiley, then at Smiley again. And perhaps the sight of Smiley’s set face and manner, and the fixity of his gaze, warned Herr Kretzschmar of the reason for his coming.
‘Go and take care of the cooking,’ he said curtly.
Guiding Smiley by the arm, Herr Kretzschmar led him to a drawing-room with brass chandeliers and a picture window full of jungle cacti.
‘Otto Leipzig is dead,’ Smiley said without preliminary as soon as the door was closed. ‘Two men killed him at the water camp.’
Herr Kretzschmar’s eyes opened very wide; then unashamedly he swung his back to Smiley and covered his face with his hands.
‘You made a tape-recording,’ Smiley said, ignoring this display entirely. ‘There was the photograph which I showed you, and somewhere there is also a tape-recording which you are keeping for him.’ Herr Kretzschmar’s back showed no sign that he had heard. ‘You talked about it to me yourself last night,’ Smiley went on, in the same sentinel tone. ‘You said they discussed God and the world. You said Otto was laughing like an executioner, speaking three languages at once, singing, telling jokes. You took the photographs for Otto, but you also recorded their conversation for him. I suspect you also have the letter which you received on his behalf from London.’
Herr Kretzschmar had swung round and he was staring at Smiley in outrage.
‘Who killed him?’ he asked. ‘Herr Max, I ask you as a soldier!’
Smiley had taken the torn piece of picture postcard from his pocket.
‘Who killed him?’ Herr Kretzschmar repeated. ‘I insist!’
‘This is what you expected me to bring last night,’ said Smiley ignoring the question. ‘Whoever brings it to you may have the tapes and whatever else you were keeping for him. That was the way he worked it out with you.’
Kretzschmar took the card.
‘He called it his Moscow Rules,’ Kretzschmar said. ‘Both Otto and the General insisted on it, though it struck one personally as ridiculous.’
‘You have the other half of the card?’ Smiley asked.
‘Yes,’ said Kretzschmar.
‘Then make the match and give me the material. I shall use it exactly as Otto would have wished.’
He had to say this twice in different ways before Kretzschmar answered. ‘You promise this?’ Kretzschmar demanded.
‘Yes.’
‘And the killers? What will you do with them?’
‘Most likely they are already safe across the water,’ Smiley said. ‘They have only a few kilometres to drive.’
‘Then what good is the material?’
‘The material is an embarrassment to the man who sent the killers,’ Smiley said, and perhaps at this moment the iron quietness of Smiley’s demeanour advised Herr Kretzschmar that his visitor was as distressed as he was – perhaps, in his own very private fashion, more so.
‘Will it kill him also?’ Herr Kretzschmar asked.
Smiley took quite a time to answer this question. ‘It will do worse than kill him,’ he said.
For a moment Herr Kretzschmar seemed disposed to ask what was worse than being killed; but he didn’t. Holding the half postcard lifelessly in his hand, he left the room. Smiley waited patiently. A perpetual brass clock laboured on its captive course, red fish gazed at him from an aquarium. Kretzschmar returned. He held a white cardboard box. Inside it, padded in hygienic tissue, lay a folded wad of photocopy paper covered with a now familiar handwriting, and six miniature cassettes, blue plastic, of a type favoured by men of modern habits.