His hands fell to his sides. He stared at the still figure before him. Smiley’s eyelids were nearly closed. His head had dropped forward. With the shifting of his cheeks deep crevices had appeared round his mouth and eyes.
‘We never faulted Leipzig’s reports on Moscow Centre : Smiley said, as if he hadn’t heard the last part. ‘I remember distinctly that we never faulted them. Nor on Karla. Vladimir trusted him implicitly. On the Moscow stuff, so did we.’
‘George, whoever faulted a report on Moscow Centre? Please? So okay, once in a while we got a defector, he tells you : “This thing is crap and that thing is maybe true.” So where’s the collateral? Where’s the hard base, you used to say? Some guy feeds you a story : “Karla just built a new spy nursery in Siberia.” So who’s to say they didn’t? Keep it vague, you can’t lose.’
‘That was why we put up with him.’ Smiley went on, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘Where the Soviet Service was involved, he played a straight game.’
‘George,’ said Toby softly, shaking his head. ‘You got to wake up. The crowds have all gone home.’
‘Will you tell me the rest of it now, Toby? Will you tell me exactly what Vladimir said to you? Please?’
So in the end, as a reluctant gift of friendship, Toby told it as Smileyasked, straight out, with a frankness that was like defeat.
The maquette which might have been by Degas portrayed a ballerina with her arms above her head. Her body was curved backward and her lips were parted in what might have been ecstasy and there was no question but that, fake or genuine, she bore an uncomfortable if superficial resemblance to Ann. Smiley had taken her in his hands again and was slowly turning her, gazing at her this way and that with no clear appreciation. Toby was back on his satin stool. In the ceiling window, the shadowed feet walked jauntily.
Toby and Vladimir had met in the café of the Science Museum on the aeronautical floor, Toby repeated. Vladimir was in a state of high excitement and kept clutching Toby’s arm, which Toby didn’t like, it made him conspicuous. Otto Leipzig had managed the impossible, Vladimir kept saying. It was the big one, the chance in a million, Toby; Otto Leipzig had landed the one Max had always dreamed of, ‘the full settlement of all our claims,’ as Vladimir had put it. When Toby asked him somewhat acidly what claims he had in mind, Vladimir either wouldn’t or couldn’t say : ‘Ask Max,’ he insisted. ‘If you do not believe me, ask Max, tell Max it is the big one.’
‘So what’s the deal?’ Toby had asked – knowing, he said, that where Otto Leipzig was concerned the bill came first and the goods a long, long way behind. ‘How much does he want, the great hero?’
Toby confessed to Smiley that he had found it hard to conceal his scepticism – ‘which put a bad mood on the meeting from the start.’ Vladimir outlined the terms. Leipzig had the story, said Vladimir, but he also had certain material proofs that the story was true. There was first a document and the document was what Leipzig called a Vorspeise, or appetizer. There was also a second proof, a letter, held by Vladimir. There was then the story itself, which would be given by other materials which Leipzig had entrusted to safe keeping. The document showed how the story was obtained, the materials themselves were incontrovertible.
‘And the subject?’ Smileyasked.
‘Not revealed,’ Toby replied shortly. ‘To Hector, not revealed. Get Max and okay – then Vladimir reveals the subject. But Hector for the time being got to shut up and run the errands.’
For a moment Toby appeared about to launch upon a second speech of discouragement. ‘George, I mean look here, the old boy was just totally cuckoo,’ he began. ‘Otto Leipzig was taking him a complete ride.’ Then he saw Smiley’s expression, so inward and inaccessible, and contented himself instead with a repetition of Otto Leipzig’s totally outrageous demands.
‘The document to be taken personally to Max by Vladimir, Moscow Rules at all points, no middle men, no correspondence. The preparations they made already on the telephone-‘