Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

With his left hand Jerry rubbed the side of his head, like a schoolboy pretending to think. ‘ “Okie dokie,” I said, “forget it. I’ll write it up for the rag. Not the part about the Russians getting there first. The other part. Dirty work in the forest, that sort of tripe.” I said to him: “If it isn’t good enough for the Circus, it’ll do for the rag.” Then he went up the wall again. Next day some owl rings the old man. Keep that baboon Westerby off the Ellis story. Rub his nose in the D notice: formal warning. “All further references to Jim Ellis alias Hajek against the national interest, so put ’em on the spike.” Back to women’s ping-pong. Cheers.’

‘But by then you’d written to me,’ Smiley reminded him.

Jerry Westerby blushed terribly. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Got all xenophobe and suspicious. Comes from being on the outside: you don’t trust your best friends. Trust them, well, less than strangers.’ He tried again: ‘Just that I thought old Tobe was going a bit haywire. Shouldn’t have done it, should I? Against the rules.’ Through his embarrassment he managed a painful grin. ‘Then I heard on the grapevine that the firm had given you the heaveho, so I felt an even bigger damn fool. Not hunting alone, are you, old boy? Not…’ He left the question unasked; but not, perhaps, unanswered.

As they parted, Smiley took him gently by the arm.

‘If Toby should get in touch with you, I think it better if you don’t tell him we met today. He’s a good fellow but he does tend to think people are ganging up on him.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it, old boy.’

‘And if he does get in touch in the next few days,’ Smiley went on – in that remote contingency, his tone suggested – ‘you could even warn me, actually. Then I can back you up. Don’t ring me, come to think of it, ring this number.’

Suddenly Jerry Westerby was in a hurry; that story about the West Brom striker couldn’t wait. But as he accepted Smiley’s card he did ask with a queer, embarrassed glance away from him: ‘Nothing untoward going on is there, old boy? No dirty work at the crossroads?’ The grin was quite terrible. ‘Tribe hasn’t gone on the rampage or anything?’

Smiley laughed and lightly laid a hand on Jerry’s enormous, slightly hunched shoulder.

‘Any time,’ said Westerby.

‘I’ll remember.’

‘I thought it was you, you see: you who telephoned the old man.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘Maybe it was Alleline.’

‘I expect so.’

‘Any time,’ said Westerby again. ‘Sorry, you know. Love to Ann.’ He hesitated.

‘Come on, Jerry, out with it,’ said Smiley.

‘Toby had some story about her. I told him to stuff it up his shirt front. Nothing to it, is there?’

‘Thanks, Jerry. So long. How.’

‘I knew there wasn’t,’ said Jerry, very pleased, and lifting his finger to denote the feather, padded off into his own reserves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Waiting that night, alone in bed at the Islay but not yet able to sleep, Smiley took up once more the file which Lacon had given him in Mendel’s house. It dated from the late Fifties, when like other Whitehall departments the Circus was being pressed by the competition to take a hard look at the loyalty of its staff. Most of the entries were routine: telephone intercepts, surveillance reports, endless interviews with dons, friends and nominated referees. But one document held Smiley like a magnet; he could not get enough of it. It was a letter, entered baldly on the index as ‘Haydon to Fanshawe, February 3rd, 1937’. More precisely it was a handwritten letter, from the undergraduate Bill Haydon to his tutor Fanshawe, a Circus talent-spotter, introducing the young Jim Prideaux as a suitable candidate for recruitment to British intelligence. It was prefaced by a wry explication de texte. The Optimates were ‘an upper-class Christ Church club, mainly old Etonian,’ wrote the unknown author. Fanshawe (P. R. de T. Fanshawe, Légion d’Honneur, OBE, Personal File so and so) was its founder, Haydon (countless cross-references) was in that year its leading light. The political complexion of the Optimates, to whom Haydon’s father had also in his day belonged, was unashamedly conservative. Fanshawe, long dead, was a passionate Empire man and ‘the Optimates were his private selection tank for The Great Game’, ran the preface. Curiously enough, Smiley dimly remembered Fanshawe from his own day: a thin eager man with rimless spectacles, a Neville Chamberlain umbrella and an unnatural flush to his cheeks as if he were still teething. Steed-Asprey called him the fairy godfather.

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