This is how crises always were, he thought; ragtag conversations with no centre. One man on the telephone, another dead, a third prowling. The nervous idleness of slow motion.
He peered around, trying to fix his mind on the decaying things outside himself. Chipped fire extinguishers, Ministry of Works issue. Prickly brown sofas – the stains a little worse. But safe flats, unlike old generals, never die. he thought. They don’t even fade away.
On the table before him lay the cumbersome apparatus of agent hospitality, there to revive the unrevivable guest. Smiley took the inventory. In a bucket of melted ice, one bottle of Stolichnaya vodka, Vladimir’s recorded favourite brand. Salted herrings, still in their tin. Pickled cucumber, bought loose and already drying. One mandatory loaf of black bread. Like every Russian Smiley had known, the old boy could scarcely drink his vodka without it. Two Marks & Spencer vodka glasses, could be cleaner. One packet of Russian cigarettes, unopened : if he had come, he would have smoked the lot; he had none with him when he died.
Vladimir had none with him when he died, he repeated to himself, and made a little mental stammer of it, a knot in his handkerchief.
A clatter interrupted Smiley’s reverie. In the kitchen, Mostyn the boy had dropped a plate. At the telephone Lauder Strickland wheeled round. demanding quiet. But he already had it again. What was Mostyn preparing anyway? Dinner? Breakfast? Seed-cake for the funeral? And what was Mostyn? Who was Mostyn? Smiley had shaken his damp and trembling hand, then promptly forgotten what he looked like except that he was so young. And yet for some reason Mostyn was known to him, if only as a type. Mostyn is our grief, Smiley decided arbitrarily. Lacon, in the middle of his prowling, came to a sudden halt.
‘George! You look worried. Don’t be. We’re all in the clear on this. All of us!’
‘I’m not worried, Oliver.’
‘You look as though you’re reproaching yourself. I can tell!’
‘When agents die-‘ said Smiley, but left the sentence incomplete, and anyway Lacon couldn’t wait for him. He strode off again, a hiker with miles to go. Lacon, Strickland, Mostyn, thought Smiley as Strickland’s Aberdonian brogue hammered on. One Cabinet Office factotum, one Circus fixer, one scared boy. Why not real people? Why not Vladimir’s case officer, whoever he is? Why not Saul Enderby, their Chief?
A couplet of Auden’s rang in his mind from the days when he was Mostyn’s age : let us honour if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one. Or something.
And why Smiley? he thought. Above all, why me? Of all people, when as far as they’re concerned I’m deader than old Vladimir.
‘Will you have tea, Mr Smiley, or something stronger?’ called Mostyn through the open kitchen doorway. Smiley wondered whether he was naturally so pale.
‘He’ll have tea only, thank you, Mostyn!’ Lacon blurted, making a sharp about-turn. ‘After shock, tea is a deal safer. With sugar, right, George? Sugar replaces lost energy. Was it gruesome, George? How perfectly awful for you.’
No, it wasn’t awful, it was the truth, thought Smiley. He was shot and I saw him dead. Perhaps you should do that too.
Apparently unable to leave Smiley alone, Lacon had come back down the room and was peering at him with clever, uncomprehending eyes. He was a mawkish creature, sudden but without spring, with youthful features cruelly aged and a raw unhealthy rash around his neck where his shirt had scuffed the skin. In the religious light between dawn and morning his black waistcoat and white collar had the glint of the soutane.
‘I’ve hardly said hullo,’ Lacon complained, as if it were Smiley’s fault. ‘George. Old friend. My goodness.’
‘Hullo, Oliver,’ said Smiley.
Still Lacon remained there, gazing down at him, his long head to one side, like a child studying an insect. In his memory Smiley replayed Lacon’s fervid phone call of two hours before.
It’s an emergency, George. You remember Vladimir? George, are you awake? You remember the old General, George? Used to live in Paris?
Yes, I remember the General, he had replied. Yes, Oliver, I remember Vladimir.