‘He was always an excessive smoker,’ Smiley said.
‘Was he, by God? Was he?’
Enderby turned another page. ‘Now Kirov’s brief,’ he said. ‘Karla spells it out for him. “For my daywork I should have the post of a Commercial officer of the Embassy, and for my special work I would be responsible for the control and conduct of financial accounts in all outstations of the Thirteenth Directorate in the following countries…’ Kirov goes on to list them. They include Bonn, but not Hamburg. With me, Sam?’
‘All the way, Chief.’
‘Not losing you in the labyrinth?’
‘Not a bit, Chief:
‘Clever blokes, these Russkies.’
‘Devilish.’
‘Kirov again : “He impressed upon me the extreme importance of my task – blah, blah – reminded me of my excellent performance in the Orlov case, and advised me that in view of the great delicacy of the matters I was handling, I would be reporting directly to Karla’s private office and would have a separate set of ciphers…’ Turn to page fifteen.’
‘Page fifteen it is, Chief,’ Collins said.
Smiley had already found it.
‘ “In addition to my work as West European auditor to the Thirteenth Directorate outstations, however, Karla also warned me that I would be required to perform certain clandestine activities with a view to finding cover backgrounds, or legends for future agents. All members of his Directorate took a hand in this, he said, but legend work was extremely secret nevertheless, and I should not under any circumstances discuss it with anybody at all. Not my Ambassador, nor with Major Pudin who was Karla’s permanent operational representative inside our Embassy in Paris. I naturally accepted the appointment and, having attended a special course in security and communications, took up my post. I had not been in Paris long when a personal signal from Karla advised me that a legend was required urgently for a female agent, age about twenty-one years. Now we’re at the bone,’ Enderby commented with satisfaction. ‘ “Karla’s signal referred me to several émigré families who might be persuaded by pressure to adopt such an agent as their own child, since blackmail is considered by Karla a preferable technique to bribery.” Damn right it is,’ Enderby assented heartily. ‘At the present rate of inflation, blackmail’s about the only bloody thing that keeps its value.’
Sam Collins obliged with a rich laugh of appreciation.
‘Thank you, Sam,’ said Enderby pleasantly. ‘Thanks very much.’
A lesser man than Enderby – or a less thick-skinned one might have skated over the next few pages, for they consisted mainly of a vindication of Connie Sachs’s and Smiley’s pleas of three years ago that the Leipzig-Kirov relationship should be exploited.
‘Kirov dutifully trawls the émigrés, but without result,’ Enderby announced, as if he were reading out subtitles at the cinema. ‘Karla exhorts Kirov to greater efforts, Kirov strives still harder, and goofs again.’
Enderby broke off, and looked at Smiley, this time very straight. ‘Kirov was no bloody good, was he, George?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Smiley.
‘Karla couldn’t trust his own chaps, that’s your point. He had to go out into the sticks and recruit an irregular like Kirov.’
‘Yes.’
‘A clod. Sort of bloke who’d never make Sarratt.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Having set up his apparatus, in other words, trained it to accept his iron rules, you might say, he didn’t dare use it for this particular deal. That your point?’
‘Yes,’ said Smiley. ‘That is my point.’
Thus, when Kirov bumped into Leipzig on the plane to Vienna – Enderby resumed, paraphrasing Kirov’s own account now – Leipzig appeared to him as the answer to all his prayers. Never mind that he was based in Hamburg, never mind that there’d been a bit of nastiness back in Tallinn : Otto was an émigré, in with the groups. Otto the Golden Boy. Kirov signalled urgently to Karla proposing that Leipzig be recruited as an émigré and source talent-spotter. Karla agreed.
‘Which is another rum thing, when you work it out,’ Enderby remarked. ‘Jesus, I mean who’d back a horse with Leipzig’s record when he was sober and of sound mind? Specially for a job like that?’
‘Karla was under stress,’ Smiley said. ‘Kirov said so and we have it from elsewhere also. He was in a hurry. He had to take risks.’