‘Well you can Mikhel, if anyone can. Surely he confided in you. You were his right-hand man for twenty years or more. First Paris, then here. Don’t tell me he didn’t trust you,’ said Smiley ingenuously.
‘Our leader was a secretive man, Max. This was his strength. He had to be. It was a military necessity.’
‘But not towards you, surely?’ Smiley insisted, in his most flattering tone. ‘His Paris adjutant. His aide-de-camp. His confidential secretary? Come, you do yourself an injustice!’
Leaning forward in his throne Mikhel placed a small hand stricdy across his heart. His brown voice took on an even deeper tone.
‘Max. Even towards me. At the end, even towards Mikhel. It was to shield me. To spare me dangerous knowledge. He said to me even : “Mikhel, it is better that you – even you – do not know what the past has thrown up.” I implored him. In vain. He came to me one evening. Here. I was asleep upstairs. He gave the special ring on the bell : “Mikhel, I need fifty pounds.” ‘
Elvira returned, this time with an empty ashtray, and as she put it on the table Smiley felt a surge of tension like the sudden working of a drug. He experienced it driving sometimes, waiting for a crash that didn’t happen. And he experienced it with Ann, watching her return from some supposedly innocuous engagement and knowing – simply knowing – it was not.
‘When was this?’ he asked when she had left again.
‘Twelve days ago. One week last Monday. From his manner I am able to discern immediately that this is an official affair. He has never before asked me for money. “General,” I say to him. “You are making a conspiracy. Tell me what it is.” But he shakes his head. “Listen,” I tell him, “if this is a conspiracy, take my advice, go to Max.” He refused. “Mikhel,” he tells me. “Max is a good man, but he does not have confidence any more in our Group. He wishes, even, that we end our struggle. But when I have landed the big fish I am hoping for, then I shall go to Max and claim our expenses and perhaps many things besides. But this I do afterwards, not before. Meanwhile I cannot conduct my business in a dirty shirt. Please Mikhel. Lend me fifty pounds. In all my life this is my most important mission. It reaches far into our past.” His words exactly. In my wallet I had fifty pounds – fortunately I had that day made a successful investment – I give them to him. “General,” I said. “Take all I have. My possessions are yours. Please,” ‘ said Mikhel and to punctuate this gesture – or to authenticate it – drew heavily at his yellow cigarette.
In the grimy window above them Smiley had glimpsed the reflection of Elvira standing half-way down the room, listening to their conversation. Mikhel had also seen her and had even shot her an evil frown, but he seemed unwilling, and perhaps unable, to order her away.
‘That was very good of you,’ Smiley said after a suitable pause.
‘Max, it was my duty. From the heart. I know no other law.’
She despises me for not helping the old man, thought Smiley. She was in on it, she knew, and now she despises me for not helping him in his hour of need. He was a brother to her, he remembered. He instructed her.
‘And this approach to you – this request for operational funds,’ said Smiley. ‘It came out of the blue? There’d been nothing before, to tell you he was up to something big?’
Again Mikhel frowned, taking his time, and it was clear that Mikhel did not care too much for questions.
‘Some months ago, perhaps two, he received a letter,’ he said cautiously. ‘Here, to this address.’
‘Did he receive so few?’
‘This letter was special,’ said Mikhel, with the same air of caution, and suddenly Smiley realized that Mikhel was in what the Sarratt inquisitors called the loser’s corner, because he did not know – he could only guess – how much or how little Smiley knew already. Therefore Mikhel would give up his information jealously, hoping to read the strength of Smiley’s hand while he did so.