‘Just keep moving,’ Guillam was murmuring. ‘Just keep moving, let nothing stop you.’
Approaching the blackness of the sentry tower, Karla took a couple of shorter steps and for a moment Smiley really thought he might change his mind and give himself up to the East Germans. Then he saw a cat’s tongue of flame as Karla lit a fresh cigarette. With a match or a lighter? he wondered. To George from Ann with all my love.
‘Christ, he’s cool!’ said Guillam.
The little figure set off again, but at a slower pace, as if he had grown weary. He is stroking up his courage for the last step, thought Smiley, or he is trying to damp his courage down. He thought of Vladimir and Otto Leipzig and the dead Kirov; he thought of Haydon and his own life’s work ruined; he thought of Ann, permanently stained for him by Karla’s cunning, and Haydon’s scheming embrace. He recited in his dispair a whole list of crimes – the tortures, the killings, the endless ring of corruption – to lay upon the frail shoulders of this one pedestrian on the bridge, but they would not stay there : he did not want these spoils, won by these methods. Like a chasm, the jagged skyline beckoned to him yet again, the swirling snow made it an inferno. For a second longer, Smiley stood on the brink at the smouldering river’s edge.
They had started walking along the tow-path, Guillam leading, Smiley reluctantly following. The halo burned ahead of them, growing as they approached it. Like two ordinary pedestrians, Toby had said. Just walk to the bridge and wait, it’s normal. From the darkness around them, Smiley heard whispered voices and the swift, damped sounds of hasty movement under tension. ‘George,’ someone whispered. ‘George.’ From a yellow phone box, an unknown figure lifted a hand in discreet salute, and he heard the words ‘triumph’ smuggled to him on the wet freezing air. The snow was blurring his glasses, he found it hard to see. The observation post stood to their right, not a light burning in the windows. He made out a van parked at the entrance, and realized it was a Berlin mail van, one of Toby’s favourites. Guillam was hanging back. Smiley heard something about ‘claiming the prize’.
They had reached the edge of the halo. An orange rampart blocked the bridge and the chicane from sight. They were out of the eye-line of the sentry-box. Perched above the Christmas tree, Toby Esterhase was standing on the observation scaffold with a pair of binoculars, calmly playing the cold-war tourist. A plump female watcher stood at his side. An old notice warned them they were there at their own risk. On the smashed brick viaduct behind them Smiley picked out a forgotten armorial crest. Toby made a tiny motion with his hand : thumbs up, it’s our man now. From beyond the rampart, Smiley heard light footsteps and the vibration of an iron fence. He caught the smell of an American cigarette as the icy wind wafted it ahead of the smoker. There’s still the electric gateway, he thought; he waited for the clang as it slammed shut, but none came. He realized he had no real name by which to address his enemy : only a codename and a woman’s at that. Even his military rank was a mystery. And still Smiley hung back, like a man refusing to go on stage.
Guillam had drawn alongside him and seemed to be trying to edge him forward. He heard soft footsteps as Toby’s watchers one by one gathered to the edge of the halo, safe from view in the shelter of the rampart, waiting with bated breath for a sight of the catch. And suddenly, there he stood, like a man slipping into a crowded hall unnoticed. His small right hand hung flat and naked at his side, his left held the cigarette timidly across his chest. One little man, hatless, with a satchel. He took a step forward and in the halo Smiley saw his face, aged and weary and travelled, the short hair turned to white by a sprinkling of snow. He wore a grimy shirt and a black tie : he looked like a poor man going to the funeral of a friend. The cold had nipped his cheeks low down, adding to his age.