Toby had parked near the Thunplatz. A modern clock tower was striking eleven. Fine snow was falling but the fog had not dispersed. For a moment neither man spoke.
‘Today was a model of last week, last week was a model of the week before, George,’ said Toby. ‘Every Thursday it’s the same. After work he takes the Mercedes to the garage, fills it with petrol and oil, checks the batteries, asks for a receipt. He goes home. Six o’clock, a little after, an Embassy car arrives at his front door and out gets Krassky, the regular Thursday courier from Moscow. Alone. That’s a very itchy fellow, a professional. In all other situations, Krassky don’t go anywhere without his companion, Bogdanov. Fly together, carry together, eat together. But to visit Grigoriev, Krassky breaks ranks and goes alone. Stays half an hour, leaves again. Why? That’s very irregular in a courier, George. Very dangerous, if he hasn’t got the backing, believe me.’
‘So what do you make of Grigoriev, Toby?’ Smiley asked. ‘What is he?’
Toby made his tilting gesture with his outstretched palm. ‘A trained hood Grigoriev isn’t, George. No tradecraft, actually a complete catastrophe. But he’s not straight either. A half-breed, George.’
So was Kirov, Smiley thought.
‘Do you think we’ve got enough on him?’ Smiley asked.
‘Technically no problem. The bank, the false identity, little Natasha even : technically we got a hand of aces.’
‘And you think he’ll burn,’ said Smiley, more as confirmation than a question.
In the darkness, Toby’s palm once more tilted, this way, that way.
‘Burning, George, that’s always a hazard, know what I mean? Some guys get heroic and want to die for their countries suddenly. Other guys rollover and lie still the moment you put the arm on them. Burning, that touches the stubbornness in certain people. Know what I mean?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think I do,’ said Smiley. And he remembered Delhi again, and the silent face watching him through the haze of cigarette smoke.
‘Go easy. George. Okay? You got to put your feet up now and then.’
‘Good night,’ said Smiley.
He caught the last tram back to the town centre. By the time he had reached the Bellevue, the snow was falling heavily : big flakes, milling in the yellow light, too wet to settle. He set his alarm for seven.
TWENTY-TWO
The young woman they called Alexandra had been awake one hour exactly when the morning bell sounded for assembly, but when she heard it she immediately drew up her knees inside her calico night-suit, crammed her eyelids together, and swore to herself she was still asleep, a child who needed rest. The assembly bell, like Smiley’s alarm clock, went off at seven, but already at six she had heard the chiming of the valley clocks. first the Catholics, then the Protestants, then the Town Hall, and she didn’t believe in any of them. Not this God, not that God, and least of all the burghers with their butchers’ faces, who at the annual festival had stood to attention with their stomachs stuck out while the fire-brigade choir moaned patriotic songs in dialect.
She knew about the annual festival because it was one of the few Permitted Expeditions, and she had recently been allowed to attend it as a privilege, her first, and to her huge amusement it was devoted to the celebration of the common onion. She had stood between Sister Ursula and Sister Beatitude and she knew they were both alert in case she tried to run away or snap inside and start a fit, and she had watched an hour of the most boring speechifying ever, then an hour’s singing to the accompaniment of boring martial music by the brass band. Then a march past of people dressed in village costume and carrying strings of onions on long sticks, headed by the village flag-swinger, who on other days brought the milk to the lodge and – if he could slip by right up to the hostel door, in the hope of getting a sight of a girl through the window, or perhaps it was just Alexandra trying to get a sight of him.
After the village. clocks had chimed the six, Alexandra from deep, deep in her bed had decided to count the minutes till eternity. In her self-imposed role as child, she had done this by counting each second in a whisper : ‘One-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two.’ At twelve minutes past, by her childish reckoning, she heard Mother Felicity’s pompous Moped snorting down the drive on her way back from Mass, telling everyone that Felicity-Felicity – pop-pop – and no one else – pop-pop was our Superintendent and Official Starter of the Day; nobody else – pop-pop – would do. Which was funny because her real name was not Felicity at all; Felicity was what she had chosen for the other nuns. Her real name, she had told Alexandra as a secret, was Nadezhda, meaning ‘Hope’. So Alexandra had told Felicity that her real name was Tatiana, not Alexandra at all. Alexandra was a new name, she explained, put on to wear in Switzerland specially. But Felicity-Felicity had told her sharply not to be a silly girl.