‘You saw Vladimir and you spoke to him. What happened?’ Smiley asked, quite undeflected by this challenge. ‘You tell me that, and I’ll tell you who is speaking here.’
In the farthest corner of the ceiling there was a yellowed patch of glass about a metre square and the shadows that played over it were the feet of passers-by in the street. For some reason Toby’s eyes had fixed on this strange spot and he seemed to read his decision there, like an instruction flashed on a screen.
‘Vladimir put up a distress rocket,’ Toby said in exactly the same tone as before, of neither conceding nor confiding. Indeed, by some trick of tone or inflection, he even managed to bring a note of warning to his voice.
‘Through the Circus?’
‘Through friends of mine,’ said Toby.
‘When?’
Toby gave a date. Two weeks ago. A crash meeting. Smiley asked where it took place.
‘In the Science Museum,’ Toby replied with new-found confidence. ‘The café on the top floor, George. We drank coffee, admired the old aeroplanes hanging from the roof. You going to report all this to Lacon, George? Feel free, okay? Be my guest. I got nothing to hide.’
‘And he put the proposition?’
‘Sure. He put me a proposition. He wanted me to do a lamplighter job. To be his camel. That was our joke, back in the old Moscow days, remember? To collect, carry across the desert, to deliver. “Toby, I got no passport. Aidez-moi. Mon ami, aidez-moi.” You know how he talked. Like de Gaulle. We used to call him that – “The other General.” Remember?’
‘Carry what?’
‘He was not precise. It was documentary, it was small, no concealment was needed. This much he tells me.’
‘For somebody putting out feelers, he seems to have told you a lot.’
‘He was asking a hell of a lot too,’ said Toby calmly, and waited for Smiley’s next question.
‘And the where?’ Smiley asked. ‘Did Vladimir tell you that too?’
‘Germany.’
‘Which one?’
‘Ours. The north of it.’
‘Casual encounter? Dead-letter-boxes? Live? What sort of meeting?’
‘On the fly. I should take a train ride. From Hamburg north. The hand-over to be made on the train, details on acceptance.’
‘And it was to be a private arrangement. No Circus, no Max?’
‘For the time being very private, George.’
Smiley picked his words with tact. ‘And the compensation for your labours?’
A distinct scepticism marked Toby’s answer : ‘If we get the document – that’s what he called it, okay? Document. If we get the document, and the document is genuine, which he swore it was, we win immediately a place in Heaven. We take first the document to Max, tell Max the story. Max would know its meaning, Max would know the crucial importance – of the document. Max would reward us. Gifts, promotion, medals, Max will put us in the House of Lords. Sure. Only problem was, Vladimir didn’t know Max was on the shelf and the Circus has joined the Boy Scouts.’
‘Did he know that Hector was on the shelf?’
‘Fifty-fifty, George.’
‘What does that mean?’ Then with a ‘never mind’, Smiley cancelled his own question and again lapsed into prolonged thought.
‘George, you want to drop this line of enquiry.’ Toby said earnestly. ‘That is my strong advice to you. abandon it,’ he said, and waited.
Smiley might not have heard. Momentarily shocked, he seemed to be pondering the scale of Toby’s error.
‘The point is, you sent him packing,’ he muttered and remained staring into space. ‘He appealed to you and you slammed the door in his face. How could you do that, Toby? You of all people?’
The reproach brought Toby furiously to his feet, which was perhaps what it was meant to do. His eyes lit up, his cheeks coloured, the sleeping Hungarian in him was wide awake.
‘And you want to hear why, maybe? You want to know why I told him, “Go to hell, Vladimir. Leave my sight, please, you make me sick.”? You want to know who his connect is out there – this magic guy in North Germany with the crock of gold that’s going to make millionaires of us overnight. George – you want to know his full identity? Remember the name Otto Leipzig, by any chance? Holder many times of our Creep of the Year award? Fabricator, intelligence pedlar, confidence man, sex maniac, pimp, also various sorts of criminal? Remember that great hero?’