‘Connie,’ he begged her again, but it was not enough either, and perhaps nothing would have been.
First, she said, in search of the Ginger Pig, little Otto trotted along to the various Franco-Soviet friendship societies that Kirov was known to frequent.
‘That poor little Otto must have seen The Battleship Potemkin fifteen times, but the Ginger Pig never showed up once.’
Word came that Kirov was showing a serious interest in émigrés, and even representing himself as their secret sympathizer, enquiring whether, as a junior official, there was anything he could do to help their families in the Soviet Union. With Vladimir’s help Leipzig tried to put himself in Kirov’s path, but once more luck was against him. Then Kirov started travelling – travelling everywhere, my dear, a positive Flying Dutchman – so that Connie and her boys began to wonder whether he was some sort of clerical administrator for Moscow Centre, not on the operational side at all : the accountant-auditor for a group of Western residencies, for instance, with Paris as their centre – Bonn, Madrid, Stockholm, Vienna.
‘For Karla or for the mainstream?’ Smiley asked quietly.
Whisper who dares, said Connie, but for her money, it was for Karla. Even though Pudin was already there. Even though Kirov was an idiot, and not a soldier; it still had to be for Karla, Connie said, perversely doubling back upon her own assertions to the contrary. If Kirov had been visiting the mainstream residencies, he would have been entertained and put up by identified intelligence officers. But instead, he lived his cover, and stayed only with his national counterparts in the Commercial sections, she said.
Anyway, the flying did it, said Connie. Little Otto waited till Kirov had booked himself on a flight to Vienna, made sure he was travelling alone, then boarded the same flight, and they were in business.
‘A straight copybook honey-trap, that’s what we were aiming for,’ Connie sang, very loud indeed. ‘Your real old-fashioned burn. A big operator might laugh it off, but not Brother Kirov, least of all if he was on Karla’s books. Naughty photographs and information with menaces, that was what we were after. And when we’d done with him, and found out what he was up to, and who his nasty friends were, and who was giving him all that heady freedom, we’d either buy him in as a defector or bung him back in the pond, depending on how much was left of him!’
She stopped dead. She opened her mouth, closed it, drew some breath, held out her glass to him.
‘Darling, get the old soak another drinkie, double-quick, will you? Connie’s getting her lurgies. No, don’t. Stay where you are.’
For a fatal second, Smiley was lost.
‘George?’
‘Connie, I’m here! What is it?’
He was fast but not fast enough. He saw the stiffening of her face, he saw her distorted hands fly out in front of her, and her eyes screw up in disgust, as if she had seen a horrible accident.
‘Hils, quick! ‘ she cried. ‘Oh, my hat!’
He embraced her and felt her forearms lock over the back of his neck to hold him tighter. Her skin was cold, she was shaking, but from terror not from chill. He stayed against her, smelling Scotch and medicated powder and old lady, trying to comfort her. Her tears were all over his cheeks, he could feel them and taste their salty sting as she pushed him away from her. He found her handbag and opened it for her, then went quickly back to the veranda and called to Hilary. She ran out of the darkness with her fists half clenched, elbows and hips rotating, in a way that makes men laugh. She hurried past him, grinning with shyness, and he stayed on the veranda, feeling the night cold pricking his cheeks while he stared at the gathering rainclouds and the pine trees silvered by the rising moon. The dogs’ screaming had subsided. Only the wheeling rooks sounded their harsh warnings. Go, he told himself. Get out of here. Bolt. His car waited not a hundred feet from him, frost already forming on the roof. He imagined himself leaping into it and driving up the hill, through the plantation, and away, never to return. But he knew he couldn’t.