Smiley’s People by John le Carré

Smiley looked at his watch. To Toby’s secret ecstasy, Grigoriev did the same.

‘But perhaps she will be late?’ Smiley objected.

‘She is never late,’ Grigoriev retorted moodily.

‘Then kindly begin by telling me of your relationship with the girl Ostrakova,’ said Smiley, stepping right into the blue – says Toby – yet contriving to imply that his question was the most natural sequel to the issue of Madame Grigorieva’s punctuality. Then he held his pen ready, and in such a way, says Toby, that a man like Grigoriev would feel positively obliged to give him something to write down.

For all this, Grigoriev’s resistance was not quite evaporated. His amour propre demanded at least one further outing. Opening his hands, therefore, he appealed to Toby : ‘Ostrakova!’ he repeated with exaggerated scorn. ‘He asks me about some woman called Ostrakova? I know no such person. Perhaps he does, but I do not. I am a diplomat. Release me immediately, I have important engagements.’

But the steam, as well as the logic, was fast going out of his protests. Grigoriev knew this as well as anyone.

‘Alexandra Borisovna Ostrakova,’ Smiley intoned, while he polished his spectacles on the fat end of his tie. ‘A Russian girl, but has a French passport.’ He replaced his spectacles. ‘Just as you are Russian, Counsellor, but have a Swiss passport. Under a false name. Now how did you come to get involved with her, I wonder?’

‘Involved? Now he tells me I was involved with her! You think I am so base I sleep with mad girls? I was blackmailed. As you blackmail me now, so I was blackmailed. Pressure! Always pressure, always Grigoriev!’

‘Then tell me how they blackmailed you,’ Smiley suggested, with barely a glance at him.

Grigoriev peered into his hands, lifted them, but let them drop back on to his knees again, for once unused. He dabbed his lips with his handkerchief. He shook his head at the world’s iniquity.

‘I was in Moscow,’ he said, and in Toby’s ears, as he, afterwards declares, angel choirs sang their hallelujahs. George had turned the trick, and Grigoriev’s confession had begun.

Smiley, on the other hand, betrayed no such jubilation at his achievement. To the contrary, a frown of irritation puckered his plump face.

‘The date, please, Counsellor,’ he said, as if the place were not the issue. ‘Give the date when you were in Moscow. Henceforth, please give dates at all points.’

This too is classic, Toby likes to explain : the wise inquisitor will always light a few false fires.

‘September,’ said Grigoriev, mystified.

‘Of which year?’ said Smiley, writing.

Grigoriev looked plaintively to Toby again. ‘Which year! I say September, he asks me which September. He is a historian? I think he is a historian. This September,’ he said sulkily to Smiley. ‘I was recalled to Moscow for an urgent commercial conference. I am an expert in certain highly specialized economic fields. Such a conference would have been meaningless without my presence.’

‘Did your wife accompany you on this journey?’

Grigoriev let out a hollow laugh. ‘Now he thinks we are capitalists!’ he commented to Toby. ‘He thinks we go flying our wives around for two-week conferences, first class Swissair.’

‘ “In September of this year, I was ordered to fly alone to Moscow in order to attend a two-week economic conference,” ‘ Smiley proposed, as if he were reading Grigoriev’s statement aloud. ‘ “My wife remained in Berne.” Please describe the purpose of the conference.’

‘The subject of our high-level discussions was extremely secret,’ Grigoriev replied with resignation. ‘My Ministry wished to consider ways of giving teeth to the official Soviet attitude towards nations who were selling arms to China. We were to discuss what sanctions could be used against the offenders.’

Smiley’s faceless style, his manner of regretful bureaucratic necessity, were by now not merely established, says Toby, they were perfected : Grigoriev had adopted them wholesale, with philosophic, and very Russian, pessimism. As to the rest of those present, they could hardly believe, afterwards, that he had not been brought to the flat already in a mood to talk.

‘Where was the conference held?’ Smiley asked, as if secret matters concerned him less than formal details.

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