‘Clear a foreign letter box, prime a safe house, watch someone’s back, spike an embassy. Percy’s Director of Operations, after all. You might think he was acting on instructions from the fifth floor. I can see that happening quite reasonably.’
Toby looked carefully at Smiley. He was holding a cigarette, but apart from lighting it he hadn’t smoked it at all. It was a hand-rolled affair, taken from a silver box, but once lit it never went into his mouth. It swung around, along the line or away to the side; sometimes it was poised to take the plunge, but it never did. Meanwhile Toby made his speech: one of Toby’s personal statements, supposedly definitive about where he stood at this point in his life.
Toby liked the service, he said. He would prefer to remain in it. He felt sentimental about it. He had other interests and at any time they could claim him altogether, but he liked the service best. His trouble was, he said, promotion. Not that he wanted it for any greedy reason. He would say his reasons were social.
‘You know, George, I have so many years’ seniority I feel actually quite embarrassed when these young fellows ask me to take orders from them. You know what I mean? Acton, even: just the name of Acton for them is ridiculous.’
‘Oh,’ said Smiley mildly. ‘Which young fellows are these?’
But Esterhase had lost interest. His statement completed, his face settled again into its familiar blank expression, his doll’s eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance.
‘Do you mean Roy Bland?’ Smiley asked. ‘Or Percy? Is Percy young? Who, Toby?’
It was no good, Toby regretted: ‘George, when you are overdue for promotion and working your fingers to the bones, anyone looks young who’s above you on the ladder.’
‘Perhaps Control could move you up a few rungs,’ Smiley suggested, not much caring for himself in this role.
Esterhase’s reply struck a chill. ‘Well actually, you know, George, I am not too sure he is able these days. Look here, I give Ann something’ – opening a drawer – ‘When I heard you were coming I phone a couple of friends of mine, something beautiful I say, something for a faultless woman, you know I never forget her since we met once at Bill Haydon’s cocktail?’
So Smiley carried off the consolation prize – a costly scent smuggled, he assumed, by one of Toby’s homing lamplighters – and took his beggar bowl to Bland, knowing as he did so that he was coming one step nearer to Haydon.
Returning to the major’s table, Smiley searched through Lacon’s files till he came to a slim volume marked ‘Operation Witchcraft, direct subsidies’, which recorded the earliest expenses incurred through the running of Source Merlin. ‘For reasons of security it is proposed,’ wrote Alleline in yet another personal memo to the Minister, this one dated almost two years ago, ‘to keep the Witchcraft financing absolutely separate from all other Circus imprests. Until some proper cover can be found, I am asking you for direct subventions from Treasury funds rather than mere supplementaries to the Secret Vote which in due course are certain to find their way into the mainstream of Circus accounting. I shall then account to you personally.’
‘Approved,’ wrote the Minister a week later, ‘provided always…’
There were no provisions. A glance at the first row of figures showed Smiley all he needed to know: already by May of that year, when that interview at Acton took place, Toby Esterhase had personally made no fewer than eight trips on the Witchcraft budget, two to Paris, two to the Hague, one to Helsinki and three to Berlin. In each case the purpose of the journey was curtly described as ‘Collecting product’. Between May and November, when Control faded from the scene, he made a further nineteen. One of these took him to Sofia, another to Istanbul. None required him to be absent for more than three full days. Most took place at weekends. On several such journeys, he was accompanied by Bland.
Not to put too fine an edge on it, Toby Esterhase, as Smiley had never seriously doubted, had lied in his teeth. It was nice to find the record confirming his impression.