Proceed to the rendezvous, it said, no danger sighted.
Moscow Rules, thought Smiley yet again. Moscow, where it could take a fieldman three days to post a letter to a safe address. Moscow, where all minorities are punk.
Tell him I have two proofs and can bring them with me…
Vladimir’s chalked acknowledgement ran close beside the pin, a wavering yellow worm of a message scrawled all down the post. Perhaps the old man was worried about rain, thought Smiley. Perhaps he was afraid it could wash his mark away. Or perhaps in his emotional state he leaned too heavily on the chalk, just as he had left his Norfolk jacket lying on the floor. A meeting or nothing… he had told Mostyn… Tonight or nothing… Tell him I have two proofs and can bring them with me… Nevertheless only the vigilant would ever have noticed that mark, heavy though it was, or the shiny drawing-pin either, and not even the vigilant would have found them odd, for on Hampstead Heath people post bills and messages to each other ceaselessly, and not all of them are spies. Some are children, some are tramps, some are believers in God and organizers of charitable walks, some have lost pets, and some are looking for variations of love and having to proclaim their needs from a hilltop. And not all of them, by any means, get their faces blown off at point-blank range by a Moscow Centre assassination weapon.
And the purpose of this acknowledgement? In Moscow, when Smiley from his desk in London had had the ultimate responsibility for Vladimir’s case – in Moscow these signs were devised for agents who might disappear from hour to hour; they were the broken twigs along a path that could always be their last. I see no danger and am proceeding as instructed to the agreed rendezvous, read Vladimir’s last – and fatally mistaken – message to the living world.
Leaving the hut, Smiley moved a short distance back along the route he had just come. And as he walked, he meticulously called to mind the Superintendent’s reconstruction of Vladimil’s last journey, drawing up his memory like an archive.
Those rubber overshoes are a Godsend, Mr Smiley, the Superintendent had declared piously : North British Century, diamond-pattern soles, sir, and barely walked on – why, you could follow him through a football crowd if you had to!
‘I’ll give you the authorized version,’ the Superintendent had said, speaking fast because they were short of time. ‘Ready, Mr Smiley?’
Ready, Smiley had said.
The Superintendent changed his tone of voice. Conversation was one thing, evidence another. As he spoke, he shone his torch in phases onto the wet gravel of the roped-off area. A lecture with magic lantern, Smiley had thought; at Sarratt I’d have taken notes : ‘Here he is, coming down the hill now, sir. See him there? Normal pace, nice heel and toe movement, normal progress, everything above board. See, Mr Smiley?’
Mr Smiley had seen.
‘And the stick mark there, do you, in his right hand, sir?’ Smiley had seen that too, how the rubber-ferruled walking stick had left a deep round rip with every second footprint. ‘Whereas of course he had the stick in his left when he was shot, correct? You saw that, too, sir, I noticed. Happen to know which side his bad leg was at all, sir, if he had one?’
‘The right,’ Smiley had said.
‘Ah. Then most likely the right was the side he normally held the stick, as well. Down here, please, sir, that’s the way! Walking normal still, please note,’ the Superintendent had added, making a rare slip of grammar in his distraction.
For five more paces the regular diamond imprint, heel and toe, had continued undisturbed in the beam of the Superintendent’s torch. Now, by daylight, Smiley saw only the ghost of them. The rain, other feet, and the tyre tracks of illicit cyclists had caused large parts to disappear. But by night, at the Superintendent’s lantern show, he had seen them vividly, as vividly as he saw the plastic-covered corpse in the dip below them, where the trail had ended.
‘Now,’ the Superintendent had declared with satisfaction, and halted, the cone of his torchbeam resting on a single scuffed area of ground.