‘George this is history,’ Lacon protested weakly. ‘This is not today.’
‘For three long years, Vladimir was the best source we ever had on Soviet capabilities and intentions – and at the height of the cold war. He was close to their intelligence community and reported on that too. Then one day on a service visit to Paris, he took his chance and jumped, and thank God he did, because otherwise he’d have been shot a great deal sooner.’
Lacon was suddenly quite lost. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘How sooner? What are you saying now?’
‘I mean that in those days the Circus was largely run by a Moscow Centre agent,’ Smiley replied with deadly patience. ‘It was the sheerest luck that Bill Haydon happened to be stationed abroad while Vladimir was working for us. Another three months and Bill would have blown him sky-high.’
Lacon found nothing to say at all, so Strickland filled in for him.
‘Bill Haydon this, Bill Haydon that,’ he sneered. ‘Just because you had that extra involvement with him-‘ He was going to continue but thought better of it. ‘Haydon’s dead, damn it,’ he ended sullenly, ‘so’s that whole era.’
‘And so is Vladimir,’ said Smiley quietly, and once again there was a halt in the proceedings.
‘George,’ Lacon intoned gravely, as if he had belatedly found his place in the prayer book. ‘We are pragmatists, George. We adapt. We are not keepers of some sacred flame. I ask you, I commend you, to remember this!’
Quiet but resolute, Smiley had not quite finished the old man’s obituary, and he sensed already that it was the only one he was ever going to get.
‘And when he did come out, all right, he was a declining asset, as all ex-agents are,’ he continued.
‘I’ll say,’ said Strickland sotto voce.
‘He stayed on in Paris and threw himself whole-heartedly into the Baltic independence movement. All right, it was a lost cause. It so happens that to this very day, the British have refused de jure recognition to the Soviet annexation of the three Baltic States – but never mind that either. Estonia, you may not know, Oliver, maintains a perfectly respectable Legation and Consulate General in Queen’s Gate. We don’t mind supporting lost causes once they’re fully lost, apparently. Not before.’ He drew a sharp breath. ‘And all right, in Paris he formed a Baltic Group, and the Group went downhill, as émigré groups and lost causes always will – let me go on, Oliver, I’m not often long!’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Lacon, and blushed. ‘Be as long as you like,’ he said, quelling another groan from Strickland.
‘His Group split up, there were quarrels. Vladimir was in a hurry and wanted to bring all the factions under one hat. The factions had their vested interests and didn’t agree. There was a pitched battle, some heads got broken and the French threw him out. We moved him to London with a couple of his lieutenants. Vladimir in his old age returned to the Lutheran religion of his forefathers, exchanging the Marxist Saviour for the Christian Messiah. We’re supposed to encourage that too, I believe. Or perhaps that is not policy any more. He has now been murdered. Since we are talking background, that is Vladimir’s. Now why am I here?’
The ringing of the bell could not have been more timely. Lacon was still quite pink, and Smiley, breathing heavily, was once more polishing his spectacles. Reverently, Mostyn the acolyte unchained the door and admitted a tall motor-cycle messenger dangling a bunch of keys in his gloved hand. Reverently, Mostyn bore the keys to Strickland, who signed for them and made an entry in his log. The messenger, after a long and even doting glance at Smiley, departed, leaving Smiley with the guilty feeling that he should have recognized him even under all his paraphernalia. But Smiley had more pressing insights to concern him. With no reverence at all, Strickland dumped the keys into Lacon’s open palm.
‘All right, Mostyn, tell him! ‘ Lacon boomed suddenly. ‘Tell him in your own words.’
FIVE
Mostyn sat with a quite particular stillness. He spoke softly. To hear him, Lacon had withdrawn to a corner, and bunched his hands judicially under his nose. But Strickland had sat himself bolt upright and seemed, like Mostyn himself, to be patrolling the boy’s words for lapses.