Otto’s story figured, she had insisted. This far, it couldn’t be faulted. She had shown her workings:
Her own Soviet Research Section had confirmed from printed sources that one Oleg Kursky, a law student, was at Tallinn Polytechnic during the relevant period, she said.
Foreign Office contemporary archives spoke of unrest in the docks.
A defector report from the American Cousins gave a Kursky query Karsky, lawyer, first name Oleg, as graduating from a Moscow Centre training course at Kiev in 1971.
The same source, though suspect, suggested Kursky had later changed his name on the advice of his superiors. ‘owing to his previous field experience’.
Routine French liaison reports, though notoriously unreliable, indicated that for a Second Secretary, Commercial, in Paris, Kirov did indeed enjoy unusual freedoms, such as shopping alone and attending Third World receptions without the customary fifteen companions.
All of which, in short – Connie had ended, far too vigorously for the fifth-floor taste – all of which confirmed the Leipzig story, and the suspicion that Kirov had an intelligence role. Then she had slapped the file on the table and passed round her photographs – the very stills, picked up as a matter of routine by French surveillance teams, that had caused the original uproar in the Riga Group headquarters in Paris. Kirov enters an Embassy car. Kirov emerges from the Moscow Narodny carrying a brief-case. Kirov pauses at the window of a saucy bookshop in order to scowl at the magazine covers.
But none, Smiley reflected – returning to the present – none showing Oleg Kirov and his erstwhile victim Otto Leipzig disporting themselves with a pair of ladies.
‘So that was the case, darling,’ Connie announced, when she had taken a long pull at her drink. ‘We had the evidence of little Otto with plenty on his file to prove him right. We had a spot of collateral from other sources, not oodles, I grant you, but a start. Kirov was a hood, he was newly appointed, but what sort of hood was anybody’s guess. And that made him interesting, didn’t it darling?’
‘Yes,’ Smiley said distractedly. ‘Yes, Connie, I remember that it did.’
‘He wasn’t residency mainstream, we knew that from day one. He didn’t ride about in residency cars, do night-shifts or twin up with identified fellow hoods, or use their cipher room or attend their weekly prayer-meetings or feed the residency cat or whatever. On the other hand, Kirov wasn’t Karla’s man, was he, heart? That was the rum thing.’
‘Why not?’ Smiley asked, without looking at her.
But Connie looked at Smiley all right. Connie made one of her long pauses in order to consider him at her leisure, while outside in the dying elms, the rooks wiself chose the sudden lull to sound a Shakespearean omen of screams. ‘Because Karla already had his man in Paris, darling,’ she explained patiently. ‘As you are very well aware. That old stickler Pudin, the assistant military attaché. You remember how Karla always loved a soldier. Still does, for all I know.’ She broke off, in order once more to study his impassive face. He had put his chin in his hands. His eyes half closed, were turned towards the floor. ‘Besides, Kirov was an idiot, and the one thing Karla never did like was idiots, did he? You weren’t too kindly towards them either, come to think of it. Oleg Kirov was foul-mannered, stank, sweated, and stuck out like a fish in a tree wherever he went. Karla would have run a mile before hiring an oaf like that.’ Again she paused. ‘So would you,’ she added.
Lifting a palm, Smiley placed it against his brow, fingers upwards, like a child at an exam. ‘Unless,’ he said.
‘Unless what? Unless he’d gone off his turnip, I suppose! That’ll be the day, I must say.’
‘It was the time of the rumours,’ Smiley said from far inside his thoughts.
‘What rumours? There were always rumours, you dunderhead.’
‘Oh, just defector reports,’ he said disparagingly. ‘Stories of strange happenings in Karla’s court. Secondary sources, of course. But didn’t they-‘
‘Didn’t they what?’
‘Well, didn’t they suggest that he was taking rather strange people onto his pay-roll? Holding interviews with them at dead of night? It was all low-grade stuff, I know. I only mention it in passing.’