‘I think the vital thing, Peter’ – Smiley speaking – ‘is not to leave a gap. So what I suggest is, you requisition a comparable file, physically comparable I mean, and pop it into the gap which is left by-‘
‘I get you,’ Guillam said.
Holding the Testify file casually in his right hand, title inward to his body, Guillam returned to the reading room and again sat at his desk. Sal raised her eyebrows and mouthed something. Guillam nodded that all was well, thinking that was what she was asking, but she beckoned him over. Momentary panic. Take the file with me or leave it? What do I usually do? He left it on the desk.
‘Juliet’s going for coffee,’ Sal whispered. ‘Want some?’
Guillam laid a shilling on the counter.
He glanced at the clock, then at his watch. Christ, stop looking at your damn watch! Think of Camilla, think of her starting her lesson, think of those aunts you didn’t spend the weekend with, think of Alwyn not looking in your bag. Think of anything but the time. Eighteen minutes to wait. ‘Peter, if you have the smallest reservation, you really mustn’t go ahead with it. Nothing is as important as that.’ Great, so how do you spot a reservation, when thirty teenage butterflies are mating in your stomach, and the sweat is like a secret rain inside your shirt? Never, he swore, never had he had it this bad.
Opening the Testify file he tried to read it.
It wasn’t all that thin, but it wasn’t fat either. It looked pretty much like a token volume, as Smiley had said: the first serial was taken up with a description of what wasn’t there. ‘Annexes 1 to 8 held London Station, cross refer to PFs ELLIS Jim, PRIDEAUX Jim, HAJEK Vladimir, COLLINS Sam, HABOLT Max…’ and Uncle Tom Cobley and All. ‘For these files, consult H/London Station or CC,’ standing for Chief of Circus and his appointed mothers. Don’t look at your watch, look at the clock and do the arithmetic, you idiot. Eight minutes. Odd to be pinching files about one’s predecessor. Odd to have Jim as a predecessor, come to think of it, and a secretary who held a wake over him without ever mentioning his name. The only living trace Guillam had ever found of him, apart from his workname on the files, was his squash racquet jammed behind the safe in his room, with J.P. hand-done in poker work on the handle. He showed it to Ellen, a tough old biddy who could make Cy Vanhofer quail like a schoolboy, and she broke into floods of tears, wrapped it and sent it to the housekeepers by the next shuttle with a personal note to the Dolphin insisting that it be returned to him ‘if humanly possible’. How’s your game these days, Jim, with a couple of Czech bullets in your shoulder bone?
Still eight minutes.
‘Now if you could contrive,’ said Smiley, ‘I mean if it wouldn’t be too much bother, to take your car in for a service at your local garage. Using your home phone to make the appointment, of course, in the hope that Toby is listening…’
In the hope. Mother of pearl. And all his cosy chats with Camilla? Still eight minutes.
The rest of the file seemed to be Foreign Office telegrams, Czech press cuttings, monitoring reports on Prague radio, extracts from a policy file on the resettlement and rehabilitation of blown agents, draft submissions to the Treasury and a post-mortem by Alleline which blamed Control for the fiasco. Sooner you than me, George.
In his mind, Guillam began measuring the distance from his desk to the rear door where Alwyn dozed at the reception counter. He reckoned it was five paces and he decided to make a tactical staging post. Two paces from the door stood a chart chest like a big yellow piano. It was filled with oddments of reference: large-scale maps, back copies of Who’s Who, old Baedekers. Putting a pencil between his teeth he picked up the Testify file, wandered to the chest, selected a telephone directory of Warsaw and began writing names on a sheet of paper. My hand! a voice screamed inside him: my hand is shaking all over the page, look at those figures, I might be drunk! Why has no one noticed? The girl Juliet came in with a tray and put a cup on his desk. He blew her a distracted kiss. He selected another directory, he thought for Poznan, and laid it beside the first. When Alwyn came through the door he didn’t even look up.