Smiley’s People by John le Carré

From the sofa, Lauder Strickland threw in his own pronouncement on that body : ‘Wise, my Aunt Fanny. Bunch of left-wing flannel merchants. Rule our lives for us. Tell us how to run the shop. Smack our wrists when we don’t do our sums right.’

Lacon shot Strickland a glance of rebuke but did not contradict him.

‘One of the less controversial exercises of the Wise Men, George – one of their first duties – conferred upon them specifically by our masters – enshrined in a jointly drafted charter was stocktaking. To review the Circus’s resources world-wide and set them beside legitimate present-day targets. Don’t ask me what constitutes a legitimate present-day target in their sight. That is a very moot point. However, I must not be disloyal.’ He returned to his text. ‘Suffice it to say that over a period of six months a review was conducted, and an axe duly laid.’ He broke off, staring at Smiley. ‘Are you with me, George?’ he asked in a puzzled voice.

But it was hardly possible at that moment to tell whether Smiley was with anybody at all. His heavy lids had almost closed, and what remained visible of his eyes was clouded by the thick lenses of his spectacles. He was sitting upright but his head had fallen forward till his plump chins rested on his chest.

Lacon hesitated a moment longer, then continued : ‘Now as a result of this axe-laying – this stocktaking, if you prefer – on the part of our Wise Men – certain categories of clandestine operation have been ruled ipso facto out of bounds. Verboten. Right?’

Prone on his sofa, Strickland incanted the unsayable : ‘No coat-trailing. No honey-traps. No doubles. No stimulated defections. No émigrés. No bugger all.’

‘What’s that?’ said Smiley, as if sharply waking from a deep sleep. But such straight talk was not to Lacon’s liking and he overrode it.

‘Let us not be simplistic please, Lauder. Let us reach things organically. Conceptual thinking is essential here. So the Wise Men composed a codex, George,’ he resumed to Smiley. ‘A catalogue of proscribed practices. Right?’ But Smiley was waiting rather than listening. ‘Ranged the whole field – on the uses and abuses of agents, on our fishing rights in Commonwealth countries – or lack of them – all sorts. Listeners, surveillance overseas, false-flag operations – a mammoth task, bravely tackled.’ To the astonishment of everyone but himself, Lacon locked his fingers together, turned down the palms, and cracked the joints in a defiant staccato.

He continued : ‘Also included in their forbidden list – and it is a crude instrument, George, no respecter of tradition – are such matters as the classic use of double agents. Obsession, our new masters were pleased to call it in their findings. The old games of coat-trailing – turning and playing back our enemies’ spies – in your day the very meat and drink of counter-intelligence – today, George, in the collective opinion of the Wise Men – today they are ruled obsolete. Uneconomic. Throw them out.’

Another lorry thundered giddily down the hill, or up it. They heard the bump of its wheels on the kerb.

‘Christ,’ Strickland muttered.

‘Or – for example – I strike another blow at random – the over-emphasis on exile groups.’

This time there was no lorry at all : only the deep, accusing silence that had followed in its wake. Smiley sat as before, receiving not judging, his concentration only on Lacon, hearing hint with the sharpness of the blind.

‘Exile groups, you will want to know,’ Lacon went on – ‘or more properly the Circus’s time-honoured connections with them – the Wise Men prefer to call it dependence, but I think that a trifle strong – I took issue with them, but was overruled – are today ruled provocative, anti-détente, inflammatory. An expensive indulgence. Those who tamper with them do so on pain of excommunication. I mean it, George. We have got thus far. This is the extent of their mastery. Imagine.’

With a gesture of baring his breast for Smiley’s onslaught, Lacon opened his arms, and remained standing, peering down at hint as he had done before, while in the background Strickland’s Scottish echo once again told the same truth more brutally.

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