‘And of Viktorov who sank without trace?’ Still, it might have been any name. ‘No pretty pictures of him, either?’ Smiley asked, going down the room to fetch more drink.
‘Viktorov, Colonel Gregor,’ Connie repeated with a fond distracted smile. ‘Fought like a terrier at Stalingrad. No, we never had a photograph. Pity. They said he was yards the best.’ She perked up: ‘Though of course we don’t know about the others. Five huts and a two-year course: well my dear, that adds up to a sight more than three graduates after all these years!’
With a tiny sigh of disappointment, as if to say there was nothing so far in that whole narrative, let alone in the person of Colonel Gregor Viktorov, to advance him in his laborious quest, Smiley suggested they should pass to the wholly unrelated phenomenon of Polyakov, Aleksey Aleksandrovich, of the Soviet Embassy in London, better known to Connie as dear Aleks Polyakov, and establish just where he fitted in to Karla’s scheme of things and why it was that she had been forbidden to investigate him further.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She was much more animated now. Polyakov was not a fairytale hero, he was her lover Aleks, though she had never spoken to him, probably never seen him in the flesh. She had moved to another seat closer to the reading lamp, a rocking chair that relieved certain pains: she could sit nowhere for long. She had tilted her head back so that Smiley was looking at the white billows of her neck and she dangled one stiff hand coquettishly, recalling indiscretions she did not regret; while to Smiley’s tidy mind her speculations, in terms of the acceptable arithmetic of intelligence, seemed even wilder than before.
‘Oh he was so good,’ she said. ‘Seven long years Aleks had been here before we even had an inkling. Seven years, my dear, and not so much as a tickle! Imagine!’
She quoted his original visa application those nine years ago: Polyakov, Aleksey Aleksandrovich, graduate of Leningrad State University, Cultural Attaché with second secretary rank, married but not accompanied by wife, born third of March nineteen twenty-two in the Ukraine, son of a transporter, early education not supplied. She ran straight on, a smile in her voice as she gave the lamplighters’ first routine description: ‘Height five foot eleven, heavy build, colour of eyes green, colour of hair black, no other visible distinguishing marks. Jolly giant of a bloke,’ she declared with a laugh. ‘Tremendous joker. Black quiff, here, over the right eye. I’m sure he was a bottom pincher though we never caught him at it. I’d have offered him one or two bottoms of our own if Toby had played ball, which he wouldn’t. Not that Aleksey Aleksandrovich would have fallen for that, mind. Aleks was far too fly,’ she said proudly. ‘Lovely voice. Mellow like yours. I often used to play the tapes twice, just to listen to him speaking. Is he really still around, George? I don’t even like to ask, you see. I’m afraid they’ll all change and I won’t know them any more.’
He was still there, Smiley assured her. The same cover, the same rank.
‘And still occupying that dreadful little suburban house in Highgate that Toby’s watchers hated so? Forty, Meadow Close, top floor. Oh it was a pest of a place. I love a man who really lives his cover, and Aleks did. He was the busiest culture vulture that Embassy ever had. If you wanted something done fast, lecturer, musician, you name it, Aleks cut through the red tape faster than any man.’
‘How did he manage that, Connie?’
‘Not how you think, George Smiley,’ she sang as the blood shot to her face. ‘Oh no. Aleksey Aleksandrovich was nothing but what he said he was, so there, you ask Toby Esterhase or Percy Alleline. Pure as the driven snow, he was. Unbesmirched in any shape or form, Toby will put you right on that!’
‘Hey,’ Smiley murmured, filling her glass. ‘Hey, steady, Connie. Come down.’
‘Fooey,’ she shouted, quite unmollified. ‘Sheer unadulterated fooey. Aleksey Aleksandrovich Polyakov was a six-cylinder Karla-trained hood if ever I saw one, and they wouldn’t even listen to me! “You’re seeing spies under the bed,” says Toby. “Lamplighters are fully extended,” says Percy,’ – her Scottish brogue – ‘ “We’ve no place for luxuries here.” Luxuries my foot!’ She was crying again. ‘Poor George,’ she kept saying. ‘Poor George. You tried to help but what could you do? You were on the down staircase yourself. Oh George, don’t go hunting with the Lacons. Please don’t.’