‘Network?’ he echoed incredulously at last. ‘Did I hear network, George?’ Laughter in the normal run played little part in Toby’s repertoire but now he did manage a small if tense outburst. ‘You call that crazy Group a network? Twenty cuckoo Balts, leaky like a barn, and they make a network already?’
‘Well we have to call them something,’ Smiley objected equably.
‘Something, sure. Just not network, okay?’
‘So what’s the answer?’
‘What answer?’
‘When did you last have dealings with the Group?’
‘Years ago. Before they sacked me. Years ago.’
‘How many years?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Three?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Two?’
‘You trying to pin me down, George?’
‘I suppose I am. Yes.’
Toby nodded gravely as if he had suspected as much all along : ‘And have you forgotten, George, how it was with us in lamplighters? How overworked we were? How my boys and I played postman to half the networks in the Circus? Remember? In one week how many meetings, pick-ups? Twenty, thirty? In the high season once – forty? Go to Registry, George. If you’ve got Lacon behind you, go to Registry, draw the file, check the encounter sheets. That way you see exactly. Don’t come here trying to trip me up, know what I mean? Degas, Vladimir – I don’t like these questions. A friend, an old boss, my own house – it upsets me, okay?’
His speech having run for a deal longer than either of them apparently expected, Toby paused, as if waiting for Smiley to provide the explanation for his loquacity. Then he took a step forward, and turned up his palms in appeal.
‘George,’ he said reproachfully. ‘George, my name is Benati, okay?’
Smiley seemed to have lapsed into dejection. He was peering gloomily at the stacks of grimy art catalogues strewn over the carpet.
‘I’m not called Hector, definitely not Esterhase,’ Toby insisted. ‘I got an alibi for every day of the year – hiding from my bank manager. You think I want trouble round my neck? Émigrés, police even. This an interrogation, George?’
‘You know me, Toby.’
‘Sure. I know you, George. You want matches so you can burn my feet?’
Smiley’s gaze remained fixed upon the catalogues. ‘Before Vladimir died – hours before – he rang the Circus,’ he said. ‘He said he wanted to give us information.’
‘But this Vladimir was an old man, George!’ Toby insisted protesting, at least to Smiley’s ear, altogether too much. ‘Listen, there’s a lot of guys like him. Big background, been on the payroll too long; they get old, soft in the head, start writing crazy memoirs, seeing world plots everywhere, know what I mean?’
On and on, Smiley contemplated the catalogues, his round head supported on his clenched fists.
‘Now why do you say that exactly, Toby?’ he asked critically. ‘I don’t follow your reasoning.’
‘What do you mean, why I say it? Old defectors, old spies, they get a bit cuckoo. They hear voices, talk to the dicky-birds. It’s normal.’
‘Did Vladimir hear voices?’
‘How should I know?’
‘That’s what I was asking you, Toby,’ Smiley explained reasonably, to the catalogues. ‘I told you Vladimir claimed to have news for us, and you replied to me that he was going soft in the head. I wondered how you knew. About the softness of Vladimir’s head. I wondered how recent was your information about his state of mind. And why you pooh-poohed whatever he might have had to say. That’s all.’
‘George, these are very old games you are playing. Don’t twist my words. Okay? You want to ask me, ask me. Please. But don’t twist my words.’
‘It wasn’t suicide, Toby,’ Smiley said, still without a glance at him. ‘It definitely wasn’t suicide. I saw the body, believe me. It wasn’t a jealous husband either – not unless he was equipped with a Moscow Centre murder weapon. What used we to call them, those gun things? “Inhumane killers”, wasn’t it? Well, that’s what Moscow used. An inhumane killer.’
Smiley once more pondered, but this time – even if it was too late – Toby had the wit to wait in silence.
‘You see, Toby, when Vladimir made that phone call to the Circus he demanded Max. Myself, in other words. Not his postman, which would have been you. Not Hector. He demanded his vicar, which for better or worse was me. Against all protocol, against all training, and against all precedent. Never done it before. I wasn’t there of course, so they offered him a substitute, a silly little boy called Mostyn. It didn’t matter because in the event they never met anyway. But can you tell me why he didn’t ask for Hector?’