Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

‘I realise that now. I didn’t at the time. It’s a little difficult to know when to trust you people and when not. You do live by rather different standards, don’t you? I mean you have to. I accept that. I’m not being judgmental. Our aims are the same after all, even if our methods are different’ – bounding over a cattle ditch – ‘I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn’t. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one’s aims are, that’s the trouble, specially if you’re British. We can’t expect you people to determine our policy for us, can we? We can only ask you to further it. Correct? Tricky one, that.’

Rather than chase after him, Smiley sat on a rusted swing seat and huddled himself more tightly in his coat, till finally Lacon stalked back and perched beside him. For a while they rocked together to the rhythm of the groaning springs.

‘Why the devil did she choose Tarr?’ Lacon muttered at last, fiddling his long fingers. ‘Of all the people in the world to choose for a confessor, I can imagine none more miserably unsuitable.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to ask a woman that question, not us,’ said Smiley, wondering again where Immingham was.

‘Oh indeed,’ Lacon agreed lavishly. ‘All that’s a complete mystery. I’m seeing the Minister at eleven,’ he confided in a lower tone, ‘I have to put him in the picture. Your parliamentary cousin,’ he added, forcing an intimate joke.

‘Ann’s cousin actually,’ Smiley corrected him, in the same absent tone. ‘Far removed I may add, but cousin for all that.’

‘And Bill Haydon is also Ann’s cousin? Our distinguished Head of London station.’ They had played this game before as well.

‘By a different route, yes, Bill is also her cousin.’ He added quite uselessly: ‘She comes from an old family with a strong political tradition. With time it’s rather spread.’

‘The tradition?’ – Lacon loved to nail an ambiguity.

‘The family.’

Beyond the trees, Smiley thought, cars are passing. Beyond the trees lies a whole world, but Lacon had this red castle and a sense of Christian ethic that promises him no reward except a knighthood, the respect of his peers, a fat pension and a couple of charitable directorships in the City.

‘Anyway I’m seeing him at eleven.’ Lacon had jerked to his feet and they were walking again. Smiley caught the name ‘Ellis’ floating backward to him on the leafy morning air. For a moment, as in the car with Guillam, an odd nervousness overcame him.

‘After all,’ Lacon was saying, ‘we both held perfectly honourable positions. You felt that Ellis had been betrayed and you wanted a witch-hunt. My Minister and I felt there had been gross incompetence on the part of Control – a view which to put it mildly the Foreign Office shared – and we wanted a new broom.’

‘Oh I quite understand your dilemma,’ said Smiley, more to himself than to Lacon.

‘I’m glad. And don’t forget, George: you were Control’s man. Control preferred you to Haydon and when he lost his grip towards the end and launched that whole extraordinary adventure it was you who fronted for him. No one but you, George. It’s not every day that the head of one’s secret service embarks on a private war against the Czechs.’ It was clear that the memory still smarted. ‘In other circumstances I suppose Haydon might have gone to the wall, but you were in the hot seat and-‘

‘And Percy Alleline was the Minister’s man,’ said Smiley, mildly enough for Lacon to slow himself and listen.

‘It wasn’t as if you had a suspect, you know! You didn’t point the finger at anyone! A directionless enquiry can be extraordinarily destructive!’

‘Whereas a new broom sweeps cleaner.’

‘Percy Alleline? All in all he has done extremely well. He has produced intelligence instead of scandal, he has stuck to the letter of his charter and won the trust of his customers. He has not yet, to my knowledge, invaded Czechoslovak territory.’

‘With Bill Haydon to field for him, who wouldn’t?’

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