The aftermath of that encounter is described by Guillam somewhat hazily; he had, of course, no forewarning of Smiley’s coming, and Smiley – perhaps out of fear of microphones – said little inside the flat to enlighten him. Marie-Claire was in the bedroom, but neither bound nor gagged; it was Ostrakova who, at Marie-Claire’s insistence, was lying on the bed, still in her old black dress, and Marie-Claire was ministering to her in any way she could think of – jellied breast of chicken, mint tea, all the invalid foods she had diligently laid in for the wonderful day alas not yet at hand, when Guillam would a also fall ill on her. Ostrakova, Guillam noticed (though he had yet to learn her name) seemed to have been beaten up. She had broad green bruises round the eyes and lips, and her fingers were cut to bits where she had apparently tried to defend herself. Having briefly admitted Guillam to this scene – the battered lady tended by the anxious child bride – Smiley conducted Guillam to his own drawing-room and, with all the authority of Guillam’s old chief, which he indeed had been, rapidly set out his requirements. Only now, it developed, was Guillam’s earlier haste warranted. Ostrakova – Smiley referred to her only as ‘our guest’ – should leave Paris tonight, he said. The station’s safe house outside Orléans – he called it ‘our country mansion’ – was not safe enough; she needed somewhere that provided care and protection. Guillam remembered a French couple in Arras, a retired agent and his wife, who in the past had provided shelter for the Circus’s occasional birds of passage. It was agreed he would telephone them, but not from the apartment : Smiley sent him off to find a public call box. By the time Guillam had made the necessary arrangements and returned, Smiley had written out a brief signal on a sheet of Marie-Claire’s awful notepaper with its grazing bunnies, which he wished Guillam to have transmitted immediately to the Circus, ‘Personal for Saul Enderby, decipher yourself.’ The text, which Smiley insisted that Guillam should read (but not aloud), politely asked Enderby – ‘in view of a second death no doubt by now reported to you’ – for a meeting at Ben’s Place forty-eight hours hence. Guillam had no idea where Ben’s Place was.
‘And, Peter.’
‘Yes, George,’ said Guillam, still dazed.
‘I imagine there exists an official directory of locally accredited diplomats. Do you happen to have such a thing in the house by any chance?’
Guillam did. Indeed, Marie-Claire lived by it. She had no memory for names at all, so it lay beside the bedroom telephone for every time a member of a foreign embassy telephoned her with yet another invitation to drinks, to dinner, or, most ghastly of all, to a National Day festivity. Guillam fetched it, and a moment later was peering over Smiley’s shoulder. ‘Kirov,’ he read – but not, once more, aloud – as he followed the line of Smiley’s thumb-nail – ‘Kirov, Oleg, Second Secretary (Commercial), Unmarried.’ Followed by an address in the Soviet Embassy ghetto in the 7th district.
‘Ever bumped into him?’ Smiley asked.
Guillam shook his head. ‘We took a look at him a few years back. He’s marked “hands off”,’ he replied.
‘When was this list compiled?’ Smiley asked. The answer was printed on the cover : December of the previous year.
Smiley said, ‘Well, when you get to the office-‘
‘I’ll take a look at the file,’ Guillam promised.
‘There is also this,’ said Smiley sharply, and handed Guillam a plain carrier-bag containing, when he looked later, several micro-cassettes and a fat brown envelope.
‘By first bag tomorrow, please,’ Smiley said. ‘The same grading and the same addressee as the telegram.’
Leaving Smiley still poring over the list, and the two women cloistered in the bedroom, Guillam hastened back to the Embassy and, having released the bemused Anstruther from his vigil at the telephones, consigned the carrier-bag to him, together with Smiley’s instructions. The tension in Smiley had affected Guillam considerably, and he was sweating. In all the years he had known George, he said later, he had never known him so inward, so intent, so elliptical, so desperate. Re-opening the strong-room, he personally encoded and despatched the telegram, waiting only as long as it took him to receive the Head Office acknowledgement before drawing the file on Soviet Embassy movements and browsing through back numbers of old watch lists. He had not far to look. The third serial, copied to London, told him all that he needed to know. Kirov, Oleg, Second Secretary (Commercial), described this time as ‘married but wife not en poste’, had returned to Moscow two weeks ago. In the panel reserved for miscellaneous comments, the French liaison service added that, according to informed Soviet sources, Kirov had been ‘recalled to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs at short notice in order to take up a senior appointment which had become vacant unexpectedly.’ The customary farewell parties had therefore not been feasible.