Smiley’s People by John le Carré

‘As of today he’s sitting pretty,’ Collins said, through his all weather grin.

‘Then moving the bank account would hardly be a logical step,’ Smiley remarked. And he added : ‘Even for a madman.’ And it was strange – as Collins and Enderby afterwards privately agreed – how everything that Smiley said seemed to pass through the room like a chill; how in some way that they failed to understand, they had removed themselves to a higher order of human conduct for which they were unfit.

‘So who’s his dark lady?’ Enderby demanded. ‘Who’s worth ten grand a month and his whole damn career? Forcing him to use boobies instead of his own regular cut-throats? Must be quite a gal.’

Again there is mystery about Smiley’s decision not to reply to this question. Perhaps only his wilful inaccessibility can explain it; or perhaps we are staring at the stubborn refusal of the born caseman to reveal anything to his controller that is not essential to their collaboration. Certainly there was philosophy in his decision. In his mind already, Smiley was accountable to nobody but himself : why should he act as if things were otherwise? ‘The threads lead all of them into my own life,’ he may have reasoned. ‘Why pass the ends to my adversary merely so that he can manipulate me?’ Again, he may well have assumed – and probably with justice – that Enderby was as familiar as Smiley was with the complexities of Karla’s background; and that even if he was not, he had had his Soviet Research Section burrowing all night until they found the answers he required.

In any case, the fact is that Smiley kept his counsel.

‘George?’ said Enderby, finally.

An aeroplane flew over quite low.

‘It’s simply a question of whether you want the product,’ Smiley said at last. ‘I can’t see that anything else is ultimately of very much importance.’

‘Can’t you, by God!’ said Enderby, and pulled his hand from his mouth and the matchstick with it. ‘Oh I want him all right,’ he went on, as if that were only half the point. ‘I want the Mona Lisa, and the Chairman of the Chinese People’s Republic, and next year’s winner of the Irish Sweep. I want Karla sitting in the hot seat at Sarratt, coughing out his life story to the inquisitors. I want the American Cousins to eat out of my hand for years to come. I want the whole ball game, of course I do. Sstill doesn’t get me off the hook.’

But Smiley seemed curiously unconcerned by Enderby’s dilemma.

‘Brother Lacon told you the facts of life, I suppose? The stalemate and all?’ Enderby asked. ‘Young, idealistic Cabinet, mustard for détente, preaching open government, all that balls? Ending the conditioned reflexes of the cold war? Sniffing Tory conspiracies under every Whitehall bed, ours specially? Did he? Did he ten you they’re proposing to launch a damn great Anglo-Bolshie peace initiative, yet another, which will duly fall on its arse around Christmas next?’

‘No. No, he didn’t tell me that part.’

‘Well, they are. And we’re not to jeopardize it, tra-la. Mind you, the very chaps who go hammering the peace-drums are the ones who scream like hell when we don’t deliver the goods. I suppose that stands to reason. They’re already asking what the Soviet posture will be, even now. Was it always like that?’

Smiley took so long to answer that he might have been passing the Judgment of Ages. ‘Yes. I suppose it was. I suppose that in one form or another it always was like that,’ he said at last, as if the answer mattered to him deeply.

‘Wish you’d warned me.’

Enderby sauntered back towards the centre of the room and poured himself some plain soda from the sideboard; he stared at Smiley with what seemed to be honest indecision. He stared at him, he shifted his head and stared again, showing all the signs of being faced with an insoluble problem.

‘It’s a tough one, Chief, it really is,’ said Sam Collins, unremarked by either man.

‘And it’s not all a wicked Bolshie plot, George, to lure us to our ultimate destruction – you’re sure of that?’

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