The main problem was that Grigoriev was under double guard. Not only did the Embassy security staff keep check on him as a matter of routine; so did his wife. The watchers had no doubt that she suspected him of a tenderness for little Natasha. Their fears were confirmed when Toby’s listeners contrived to tamper with the junction box at the corner of the road. In one day’s watch, Grigorieva telephoned her husband no less than three times, to no apparent purpose other than to establish that he was indeed at the Embassy.
‘George, I mean that woman is a total monster,’ Toby stormed when he heard this. ‘Love – I mean, all right. But possession, for its own sake, this I absolutely condemn. It’s a matter of principle for me.’
The one chink was Grigoriev’s Thursday-afternoon drives to the garage, when he took the Mercedes to have it checked. If a practised car coper such as Canada Bill could introduce an engine fault during the Wednesday night – one that kept the car mobile, but only just – then might not Grigoriev be snatched from the garage while he was waiting for the mechanic to trace it? The plan bristled with imponderables. Even if everything worked, how long would they have Grigoriev to themselves? Then again, on Thursdays Grigoriev must be back home in time to receive his weekly visit from the courier Krassky. Nevertheless, it remained the only plan they had – their worst except for the others, said Toby – and accordingly they settled to an apprehensive wait of five days while Toby and his team leaden plotted fallbacks for the many unpleasant contingencies should the plot abore everyone to be signed out of his hotel and packed; escape papers and money to be carried at all times; radio equipment to be boxed and cached under American identity in the vaults of one of the major banks, so that any clues left behind would point to the Cousins rather than themselves; no forms of assembly other than walk-and-talk encounters on the pavement; wavelengths to be changed every four hours. Toby knew his Swiss police, he said. He had hunted here before. If the balloon went up, be said, then the fewer of his boys and girls around to answer questions, the better. ‘I mean, thank God the Swiss are only neutral, know what I mean?’
As a somewhat forlorn consolation, and as a boost to the delicate morale of the watchers, Smiley and Toby decreed that the surveillance of Grigoriev should be kept at full pitch throughout the expected days of waiting. The observation post in the Brunnadernrain would be manned round the clock; car and cycle patrols would be increased; everyone should be on his toes for the remote chance that God, in an uncharacteristic moment, would favour the just.
What God did, in fact, was send idyllic Sunday weather, and it proved decisive. By ten o’clock that Sunday it was as if the Alpine sun had come down from the Oberland to brighten the lives of the fog-ridden lowlanders. In the Bellevue Palace, which on Sundays has a quite overwhelming calm, a waiter had just spread a napkin on Smiley’s lap for him. He was drinking a leisurely coffee, trying to concentrate on the weekend edition of the Herald Tribune, when, looking up, be saw the gentle figure of Franz the head porter standing before him.
‘Mr Barraclough, sir, the telephone, I am sorry. A Mr Anselm.’
The cabins were in the main hall, the voice was Toby’s and the name Anselm signified urgency : ‘The Geneva bureau has just advised us that the managing director is on his way to Berne at this very moment.’
The Geneva bureau was word code for the Brunnadernain observation post.
‘Is he bringing his wife?’ said Smiley.
‘Unfortunately, Madame is obliged to make an excursion with the children,’ Toby replied. ‘Perhaps if you could come down to the office, Mr Barraclough?’
Toby’s office was a sun pavilion situated in an ornamental garden next to the Bundeshaus. Smiley was there in five minutes. Below them lay the ravine of the green river. In the distance, under a blue sky, the peaks of the Bernese Oberland lifted splendidly in the sunlight.