“Don’t you be daft,” Johnson said gently, taking his coat and putting it back on the peg. “Anyway, we don’t say hanging, we say condemned.”
Carol put the coffee on the desk in front of Leclerc. He looked up brightly and said thank you, tired but well drilled, like a child at the end of a party.
“Adrian Haldane’s gone home,” Carol observed. Leclerc went back to the map. “I looked in his room. He might have said good night.”
“He never does,” Leclerc said proudly.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I never remember how you turn yards into meters.”
“Neither do I.”
“The Circus says this gully is two hundred meters long. That’s about two hundred and fifty yards, isn’t it?”
“I think so. I’ll get the book.”
She went to her room and took a ready-reckoner from the bookcase.
“One meter is thirty-nine point three seven inches,” she read. “A hundred meters is a hundred and nine yards and thirteen inches.”
Leclerc wrote it down.
“I think we should send a confirmatory telegram to Gorton.
Have your coffee first, then come in with your pad.”
“I don’t want any coffee.” She fetched her pad.
“Routine Priority will do, we don’t want to haul old Jimmy out of bed.” He ran his small hand briskly over his hair. “One: advance party, Haldane, Avery, Jackson and Mayfly arrive BEA flight so and so, such and such a time December nine.” He glanced up. “Get the details from Administration. Two: all will travel under their own names and proceed by train to Lubeck. For security reasons you will not repeat not meet party at airport but you may discreetly contact Avery by telephone at Lubeck base. We can’t put him on to old Adrian,” he observed with a short laugh. “The two of them don’t hit it off at all.” He raised his voice: “Three: party number two consisting of Director only arriving morning flight December ten. You will meet him at airport for short conference before he proceeds to Lubeck. Four: your role is discreetly to provide advice and assistance at all stages in order to bring operation Mayfly to successful conclusion.”
She stood up.
“Does John Avery have to go? His poor wife hasn’t seen him for weeks.”
“Fortunes of war,” Leclerc replied without looking at her. “How long does a man take to crawl two hundred and twenty yards?” he muttered. “Oh, Carol—put another sentence onto that telegram: Five: Good Hunting—Old Jimmy likes a bit of encouragement, stuck out there all on his own.”
He picked up a file from the in-tray and looked critically at the cover, aware perhaps of Carol’s eye on him.
“Ah.” A controlled smile. “This must be the Hungarian report. Did you ever meet Arthur Fielden in Vienna?”
“No.”
“A nice fellow. Rather your type. One of our best chaps … knows his way around. Bruce tells me he’s done a very good report on unit changes in Budapest. I must get Adrian to look at it. Such a lot going on just now.” He opened the file and began reading.
Control said, “Did you speak to Hyde?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what did he say? What have they got down there?”
Smiley handed him a whisky and soda. They were sitting in Smiley’s house in By water Street. Control was in the chair he preferred, nearest the fire.
“He said they’d got first-night nerves.”
“Hyde said that? Hyde used an expression like that? How extraordinary.”
“They’ve taken over a house in North Oxford. There was just this one agent, a Pole of about forty, and they wanted him documented as a mechanic from Magdeburg, a name like Freiser. They wanted travel papers to Rostock.”
“Who else was there?”
“Haldane and that new man, Avery. The one who came to me about the Finnish courier. And a wireless operator, Jack Johnson. We had him in the war. No one else at all. So much for their big team of agents.”
“What are they up to? And whoever gave them all that money just for training! We lent them some equipment, didn’t we?”
“Yes, a B2.”
“What on earth’s that?”
“A wartime set,” Smiley replied with irritation. “You said it was all they could have. That and the crystals. Why on earth did you bother with the crystals?”