Smiley saw the tartan walls of the hotel again, and the dreadful hunting prints of Jorrocks in full cry; he saw the two blackcoated figures, the giant and the midget, and the General’s huge mottled hand resting on the tiny shoulder of his protégé. Max, here is my good friend Otto. I have brought him to tell his own story. He heard the steady thunder of the planes landing and taking off at Heathrow Airport.
‘Vaguely,’ Smiley replied equably. ‘Yes, vaguely I do remember an Otto Leipzig. Tell me about him. I seem to remember he had rather a lot of names. But then so do we all, don’t we?’
‘About two hundred, but Leipzig he ended up with. Know why? Leipzig in East Germany : he liked the jail there. He was that kind of crazy joker. Remember the stuff he peddled, by any chance?’ Believing he had the initiative, Toby stepped boldly forward and stood over the passive Smiley while he talked down at him : ‘George, do you not even remember the incredible and total bilge which year after year that creep would push out under fifteen different source names to our West European stations, mainly German? Our expert on the new Estonian order? Our top source on Soviet arms shipments out of Leningrad? Our inside ear at Moscow Centre, our principal Karla-watcher, even?’ Smiley did not stir. ‘How he took our Berlin resident alone for two thousand Deutschmarks for a rewrite from Stern magazine? How he foxed that old General, worked on him like a sucking-leech, time and again – “us fellow Balts” – that line? “General, I just got the Crown jewels for you – only trouble, I don’t have the air fare”? Jesus!’
‘It wasn’t all fabrication, though, was it, Toby?’ Smileyobjected mildly. ‘Some of it, I seem to remember – in certain areas, at least – turned out to be rather good stuff.’
‘Count it on one finger.’
‘His Moscow Centre material, for instance. I don’t remember that we faulted him on that, ever?’
‘Okay! So Centre gave him some decent chicken-feed occasionally, so he could pass us the other crap! How else does anyone play a double, for God’s sake?’
Smiley seemed about to argue this point, then changed his mind.
‘I see,’ he said finally, as if overruled. ‘Yes, I see what you mean. A plant.’
‘Not a plant, a creep. A little of this, a little of that. A dealer. No principles. No standards. Work for anyone who sweetens his pie.’
‘I take the point,’ said Smiley gravely, in the same diminished tone. ‘And of course he settled in North Germany, too, didn’t he? Up towards Travemünde somewhere.’
‘Otto Leipzig never settled anywhere in his life,’ said Toby with contempt. ‘George, that guy’s a drifter, a total bum. Dresses like he was a Rothschild, owns a cat and bicycle. Know what his last job was, this great spy? Night-watchman in some lousy Hamburg cargo house somewhere! Forget him.’
‘And he had a partner,’ Smiley said, in the same tone of innocent reminiscence. ‘Yes, that comes back to me too. An immigrant, an East German.’
‘Worse than East German : Saxon. Name of Kretzschmar, first name was Claus. Claus with a ‘C’, don’t ask me why. I mean these guys have got no logic at all. Claus was also a creep. They stole together, pimped together, faked reports together.’
‘But that was long ago, Toby,’ Smiley put in gently.
‘Who cares? It was a perfect marriage.’
‘Then I expect it didn’t last,’ said Smiley, in an aside to himself.
But perhaps Smiley had for once overdone his meekness; or perhaps Toby simply knew him too well. For a warning light had come up in his swift, Hungarian eye, and a tuck of suspicion formed on his bland brow. He stood back and, contemplating Smiley, passed one hand thoughtfully over his immaculate white hair.
‘George,’ he said. ‘Listen, who are you fooling, okay?’
Smiley did not speak, but lifted the Degas, and turned it round, then put it down.
‘George, listen to me once. Please! Okay, George? Maybe I give you once a lecture.’
Smiley glanced at him, then looked away.
‘George, I owe you. You got to hear me. So you pulled me from the gutter once in Vienna when I was a stinking kid. I was a Leipzig. A bum. So you got me my job with the Circus. So we had a lot of times together, stole some horses. You remember the first rule of retirement, George? “No moonlighting. No fooling with loose ends? No private enterprise ever?” You remember who preached this rule? At Sarratt? In the corridors? George Smiley did. “When it’s over, it’s over. Pull down the shutters, go home!” So now what do you want to do, suddenly? Play kiss-kiss with an old crazy General who’s dead but won’t lie down and a five-sided comedian like Otto Leipzig! What is this? The last cavalry charge on the Kremlin suddenly? We’re over, George. We got no licence. They don’t want us any more. Forget it.’ He hesitated, suddenly embarrassed. ‘So okay, Ann gave you a bad time with Bill Haydon. So there’s Karla, and Karla was Bill’s big daddy in Moscow. George, I mean this gets very crude, know what I mean?’