We need someone from his past, George. Someone who knew his little ways, can identify him, damp down potential scandal. We need you, George. Now. George, wake up.
He had been trying to. Just as he had been trying to transfer the receiver to his better ear, and sit upright in a bed too large for him. He was sprawling in the cold space deserted by his wife, because that was the side where the telephone was.
You mean he’s been shot? Smiley had repeated.
George, why can’t you listen? Shot dead. This evening. George, for Heaven’s sake wake up, we need you!
Lacon loped off again, plucking at his signet ring as if it were too tight. I need you, thought Smiley, watching him gyrate. I love you, I hate you, I need you. Such apocalyptic statements reminded him of Ann when she had run out of money or love. The heart of the sentence is the subject, he thought. It is not the verb, least of all the object. It is the ego, demanding its feed.
Need me what for? he thought again. To console them? Give them absolution? What have they done that they need my past to redress their future?
Down the room, Lauder Strickland was holding up an arm in Fascist salute while he addressed Authority.
‘Yes, Chief, he’s with us at this moment, sir… I shall tell him that, sir… Indeed, sir… I shall convey to him that message… Yes, sir…’
Why are Scots so attracted to the secret world? Smiley wondered, not for the first time in his career. Ships’ engineers, Colonial administrators, spies… Their heretical Scottish history drew them to distant churches, he decided.
‘George! ‘ Strickland, suddenly much louder, calling Smiley’s name like an order. ‘Sir Saul sends you his warmest personal salutations, George! ‘ He had swung round, still with his arm up. ‘At a quieter moment he will express his gratitude to you more fittingly.’ Back to the phone : ‘Yes, Chief, Oliver Lacon is also with me and his opposite number at the Home Office is at this instant in parley with the Commissioner of Police regarding our former interest in the dead man and the preparation of the D-Notice for the press.’
Former interest, Smiley recorded. A former interest with his face shot off and no cigarettes in his pocket. Yellow chalk. Smiley studied Strickland frankly : the awful green suit, the shoes of brushed pigskin got up as suede leather. The only change he could observe in him was a russet moustache not half as military as Vladimir’s when he had still had one.
‘Yes, sir, “an extinct case of purely historic concern”, sir,’ Strickland went on, into the telephone. Extinct is right, thought Smiley. Extinct, extinguished, put out. ‘That is precisely the terminology,’ Strickland continued. ‘And Oliver Lacon proposes to have it included word for word in the D-Notice. Am I on target there, Oliver?’
‘Historical,’ Lacon corrected him irritably. ‘Not historic concern. That’s the last thing we want! Historical.’ He stalked across the room, ostensibly to peer through the window at the coming day.
‘It is still Enderby in charge, is it, Oliver?’ Smiley asked, of Lacon’s back.
‘Yes, yes, it is still Saul Enderby, your old adversary, and he is doing marvels,’ Lacon retorted impatiently. Pulling at the curtain, he unseated it from its Tunners. ‘Not your style, I grant you – why should he be? He’s an Atlantic man.’ He was trying to force the casement. ‘Not an easy thing to be under a government like this one, I can tell you.’ He gave the handle another savage shove. A freezing draught raced round Smiley’s knees. ‘Takes a lot of footwork. Mostyn, where’s tea? We seem to have been waiting for ever.’
All our lives, thought Smiley.
Over the sound of a lorry grinding up the hill, he heard Strickland again, interminably talking to Saul Enderby. ‘I think the point with the press is not to play him down too far, Chief. Dullness is all, in a case like this. Even the private-life angle is a dangerous one, here. What we want is absolute lack of contemporary relevance of any sort. Oh true, true, indeed, Chief, right -‘ On he droned, sycophantic but alert.