Control was sitting at his desk, Alleline was standing at the window, between them lay a plain folder, bright yellow and closed.
‘Sit over there and take a look at this nonsense.’
Smiley sat in the easy chair and Alleline stayed at the window resting his big elbows on the sill, staring over the rooftops to Nelson’s Column and the spires of Whitehall beyond.
Inside the folder was a photograph of what purported to be a high-level Soviet naval despatch fifteen pages long.
‘Who made the translation?’ Smiley asked, thinking that it looked good enough to be Roy Bland’s work.
‘God,’ Control replied. ‘God made it, didn’t he, Percy? Don’t ask him anything, George, he won’t tell you.’
It was Control’s time for looking exceptionally youthful. Smiley remembered how he had lost weight, how his cheeks were pink, and how those who knew him little tended to congratulate him on his good appearance. Only Smiley, perhaps, ever noticed the tiny beads of sweat which even in those days habitually followed his hairline.
Precisely, the document was an appreciation, allegedly prepared for the Soviet High Command, of a recent Soviet naval exercise in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. In Lacon’s file it was entered simply as Report No. 1, under the tide: ‘Naval’. For months the Admiralty had been screaming at the Circus for anything relating to this exercise. It therefore had an impressive topicality which at once, in Smiley’s eyes, made it suspect. It was detailed but it dealt with matters which Smiley did not understand even at a distance: shore-to-sea strike power, radio activation of enemy alert procedures, the higher mathematics of the balance of terror. If it was genuine it was gold dust but there was no earthily reason to suppose it was genuine. Every week the Circus processed dozens of unsolicited so-called Soviet documents. Most were straight pedlar material. A few were deliberate plants by allies with an axe to grind, a few more were Russian chickenfeed. Very rarely one or other turned out to be sound, but usually after it had been rejected.
‘Whose initials are these?’ Smiley asked, referring to some annotations pencilled in Russian in the margin. ‘Does anyone know?’
Control tilted his head at Alleline. ‘Ask the authority. Don’t ask me.’
‘Zharov,’ said Alleline. ‘Admiral, Black Sea Fleet.’
‘It’s not dated,’ Smiley objected.
‘It’s a draft,’ Alleline replied complacently, his brogue richer than usual. ‘Zharov signed it Thursday. The finished despatch with those amendments went out on circulation Monday, dated accordingly.’
Today was Tuesday.
‘Where does it come from?’ Smiley asked, still lost.
‘Percy doesn’t feel able to tell,’ said Control.
‘What do our own evaluators say?’
‘They’ve not seen it,’ said Alleline, ‘and what’s more they’re not going to.’
Control said icily: ‘My brother in Christ, Lilley, of naval intelligence, has passed a preliminary opinion, however, has he not, Percy? Percy showed it to him last night – over a pink gin, was it, Percy, at the Travellers’?’
‘At the Admiralty.’
‘Brother Lilley, being a fellow Caledonian of Percy’s, is as a rule sparing in his praise. However when he telephoned me half an hour ago he was positively fulsome. He even congratulated me. He regards the documents as genuine and is seeking our permission – Percy’s, I suppose I should say – to apprise his fellow sealords of its conclusions.’
‘Quite impossible,’ said Alleline. ‘It’s for his eyes only, at least for a couple more weeks.’
‘The stuff is so hot,’ Control explained, ‘that it has to be cooled off before it can be distributed.’
‘But where does it come from?’ Smiley insisted.
‘Oh Percy’s dreamed up a covername, don’t you worry. Never been slow on covernames, have we, Percy?’
‘But what’s the access? Who’s the case officer?’
‘You’ll enjoy this,’ Control promised, aside. He was extraordinarily angry. In their long association Smiley could not remember him so angry. His slim, freckled hands were shaking and his normally lifeless eyes were sparkling with fury.
‘Source Merlin,’ Alleline said, prefacing the announcement with a slight but very Scottish sucking of the teeth, ‘is a highly placed source with access to the most sensitive levels of Soviet policy-making.’ And as if he were royalty: ‘We have dubbed his product Witchcraft.’