‘Control, for one,’ said Lacon, with punch.
They had drawn up at an empty swimming pool and now stood staring into the deep end. From its grimy depths Smiley fancied he heard again the insinuating tones of Roddy Martindale: ‘Little reading rooms at the Admiralty, little committees popping up with funny names…’
‘Is that special source of Percy’s still running?’ Smiley enquired. ‘The Witchcraft material or whatever it’s called these days?’
‘I didn’t know you were on the list,’ Lacon said, not at all pleased. ‘Since you ask, yes. Source Merlin’s our mainstay and Witchcraft is still the name of his product. The Circus hasn’t turned in such good material for years. Since I can remember, in fact.’
‘And still subject to all that special handling?’
‘Certainly, and now that this has happened I’ve no doubt that we shall take even more rigorous precautions.’
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Gerald might smell a rat.’
‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’ Lacon observed quickly. His strength was improbable, Smiley reflected. One minute he was like a thin, drooping boxer whose gloves were too big for his wrists; the next he had reached out and rocked you against the ropes, and was surveying you with Christian compassion. ‘We can’t move. We can’t investigate because all the instruments of enquiry are in the Circus’s hands, perhaps in the mole Gerald’s. We can’t watch, or listen, or open mail. To do any one of those things would require the resources of Esterhase’s lamplighters, and Esterhase, like anyone else, must be suspect. We can’t interrogate, we can’t take steps to limit a particular person’s access to delicate secrets. To do any of these things would be to run the risk of alarming the mole. It’s the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies? Who can smell out the fox without running with him?’ He made an awful stab at humour: ‘Mole, rather,’ he said, in a confiding aside.
In a fit of energy Smiley had broken away and was pounding ahead of Lacon down the path that led towards the paddock.
‘Then go to the competition,’ he called. ‘Go to the security people. They’re the experts, they’ll do you a job.’
‘The Minister won’t have that. You know perfectly well how he and Alleline feel about the competition. Rightly too, if I may say so. A lot of ex-colonial administrators ploughing through Circus papers: you might as well bring in the army to investigate the navy!’
‘That’s no comparison at all,’ Smiley objected.
But Lacon as a good civil servant had his second metaphor ready: ‘Very well, the Minister would rather live with a damp roof than see his castle pulled down by outsiders. Does that satisfy you? He has a perfectly good point, George. We do have agents in the field and I wouldn’t give much for their chances once the security gentlemen barge in.’
Now it was Smiley’s turn to slow down.
‘How many?’
‘Six hundred, give or take a few.’
‘And behind the Curtain?’
‘We budget for a hundred and twenty.’ With numbers, with facts of all sorts, Lacon never faltered. They were the gold he worked with, wrested from the grey bureaucratic earth. ‘So far as I can make out from the financial returns, almost all of them are presently active.’ He took a long bound. ‘So I can tell him you’ll do it, can I?’ he sang, quite casually, as if the question were mere formality, tick the appropriate box. ‘You’ll take the job, clean the stables? Go backwards, go forwards, do whatever is necessary? It’s your generation after all. Your legacy.’
Smiley had pushed open the paddock gate and slammed it behind him. They were facing each other over its rickety frame. Lacon, slightly pink, wore a dependent smile.
‘Why do I say Ellis?’ he asked conversationally. ‘Why do I talk about the Ellis affair when the poor man’s name was Prideaux?’
‘Ellis was his workname.’
‘Of course. So many scandals in those days, one forgets the details.’ Hiatus. Swinging of the right forearm. Lunge. ‘And he was Haydon’s friend, not yours?’
‘They were at Oxford together before the war.’
‘And stablemates in the Circus during and after. The famous Haydon-Prideaux partnership. My predecessor spoke of it interminably.’ He repeated: ‘But you were never close to him?’