‘And the mother is by now where, Counsellor, according to your priest?’ he asked.
‘Dead,’ Grigoriev replied. ‘She died in the province. The province to which she had been sent. She was buried under another name, naturally. According to the story as he told it to me, she died of a broken heart. This also placed a great burden on the priest’s heroic agent in Paris,’ he added. ‘And upon the authorities in Russia.’
‘Naturally,’ said Smiley, and his solemnity was shared by the four motionless figures stationed round the room.
At last, said Grigoriev, the priest came to the precise reason why Grigoriev had been summoned. Ostrakova’s death, coupled with the dreadful fate of Alexandra, had produced a grave crisis in the life of Moscow’s heroic foreign agent. He was even for a short time tempted to give up his vital work in order to return to Russia and take care of his deranged and motherless child. Eventually, however, a solution was agreed upon. Since Ostrakov could not come to Russia, his daughter must come to the West, and be cared for in a private clinic where she was accessible to her father whenever he cared to visit her. France was too dangerous for this purpose, but in Switzerland across the border, treatment could take place far from the suspicious eye of Ostrakov’s counter-revolutionary companions. As a French citizen, the father would claim the girl and obtain the necessary papers. A suitable clinic had already been located and it was a short drive from Berne. What Grigoriev must now do was take over the welfare of this child, from the moment she arrived there. He must visit her, pay the clinic, and report weekly to Moscow on her progress, so that the information could at once be relayed to her father. This was the purpose of the bank account, and of what the priest referred to as Grigoriev’s Swiss identity.
‘And you agreed,’ said Smiley, as Grigoriev paused, and they heard his pen scratching busily over the paper.
‘Not immediately. I asked him first two questions,’ said Grigoriev, with a queer flush of vanity. ‘We academics are not deceived so easily, you understand. First, I naturally asked him why this task could not be undertaken by one of the many Swiss-based representatives of our State Security.’
‘An excellent question,’ Smiley said, in a rare mood of congratulation. ‘How did he reply to it?’
‘It was too secret. Secrecy, he said, was a matter of compartments. He did not wish the name of Ostrakov to be associated with the people of the Moscow Centre mainstream. As things were now, he said, he would know that if ever there was a leak, Grigoriev alone was personally responsible. I was not grateful for this distinction,’ said Grigoriev, and smirked somewhat wanly at Nick de Silsky.
‘And what was your second question, Counsellor?’
‘Concerning the father in Paris : how often he would visit. If the father was visiting frequently, then surely my own position as a substitute father was redundant. Arrangements could be made to pay the clinic directly, the father could visit from Paris every month and concern himself with his own daughter’s welfare. To this the priest replied that the father could come only very seldom and should never be spoken of in discussions with the girl Alexandra. He added, without consistency, that the topic of the daughter was also acutely painful to the father and that conceivably he would never visit her at all. He told me I should feel honoured to be performing an important service on behalf of a secret hero of the Soviet Union. He grew stern. He told me it was not my place to apply the logic of an amateur to the craft of professionals. I apologized. I told him I indeed felt honoured. I was proud to assist however I could in the anti-imperialist struggle.’
‘Yet you spoke without inner conviction?’ Smiley suggested looking up again and pausing in his writing.
‘That is so.’
‘Why?’
At first, Grigoriev seemed unsure why. Perhaps he had never before been invited to speak the truth about his feelings.
‘Did you perhaps not believe the priest?’ Smiley suggested.