Smiley's People (29 page)

At which point, of course, said Connie, the fifth floor decided Kirov was off his head, and ordered the case abandoned immediately.

“And I returned from the Far East,” said Smiley.

“Like poor King Richard from the Crusades, you did, darling!” Connie agreed. “
And
found the peasants in uproar and your nasty brother on the throne. Serves you right.” She gave a gigantic yawn. “Case dustbinned,” she declared. “The Kraut police wanted Leipzig extradited from France; we could perfectly well have begged them off but we didn’t. No honey-trap, no dividend, no bugger-all. Fixture cancelled.”

“And how did Vladimir take all that?” Smiley asked, as if he really didn’t know.

Connie opened her eyes with difficulty. “Take what?”

“Cancelling the fixture.”

“Oh,
roared,
what do you expect? Roar, roar. Said we’d spoilt the kill of the century. Swore to continue the war by other means.”

“What
kind
of kill?”

She missed his question. “It’s not a
shooting
war any more, George,” she said as her eyes closed again. “That’s the trouble. It’s grey. Half-angels fighting half-devils. No one knows where the lines are. No bang-bangs.”

Once again, Smiley in his memory saw the tartan hotel bedroom and the two black overcoats side by side as Vladimir appealed desperately to have the case reopened: “Max, hear us one more time, hear what has happened since you ordered us to stop!” They had flown from Paris at their own expense to tell him, because Finance Section on Enderby’s orders had closed the case account. “Max, hear us, please,” Vladimir had begged. “Kirov summoned Otto to his apartment late last night. They had another meeting, Otto and Kirov. Kirov got drunk and said amazing things!”

He saw himself back in his old room at the Circus, Enderby already installed at his desk. It was the same day, just a few hours later.

“Sounds like little Otto’s last-ditch effort at keeping out of the hands of the Huns,” Enderby said when he had heard Smiley out. “What do they want him for over there, theft or rape?”

“Fraud,” Smiley had replied hopelessly, which was the wretched truth.

 

Connie was humming something. She tried to make a song of it, then a limerick. She wanted more drink but Hilary had taken away her glass.

“I want you to go,” Hilary said, straight into Smiley’s face.

Leaning forward on the wicker sofa, Smiley asked his last question. He asked it, one might have thought, reluctantly; almost with distaste. His soft face had hardened with determination, but not enough to conceal the marks of disapproval. “Do you remember a story old Vladimir used to tell, Con? One we never shared with anyone? Stored away, as a piece of private treasure? That Karla had a mistress, someone he loved?”

“His Ann,” she said dully.

“That in all the world, she was his one thing, that she made him act like a crazy man?”

Slowly her head came up, and he saw her face clear, and his voice quickened and gathered strength.

“How that was the rumour they passed around in Moscow Centre—those in the know? Karla’s invention—his creation, Con? How he found her when she was a child, wandering in a burnt-out village in the war? Adopted her, brought her up, fell in love with her?”

He watched her and despite the whisky, despite her deathly weariness, he saw the last excitement, like the last drop in the bottle, slowly rekindle her features.

“He was behind the German lines,” she said. “It was the forties. There was a team of them, raising the Balts. Building networks, stay-behind groups. It was a big operation. Karla was boss. She became their mascot. They carted her from pillar to post. A kid. Oh, George!”

He was holding his breath to catch her words. The din on the roof grew louder, he heard the rising growl of the forest as the rain came down on it. His face was near to hers, very; its animation matched her own.

“And then what?” he said.

“Then he bumped her off, darling. That’s what.”

“Why?” He drew still closer, as if he feared her words might fail her at the crucial moment. “
Why,
Connie? Why kill her when he loved her?”

“He’d done everything for her. Found foster-parents for her. Educated her. Had her all got up to be his ideal hag. Played Daddy, played lover, played God. She was his toy. Then one day she ups and gets ideas above her station.”

“What sort of ideas?”

“Soft on revolution. Mixing with bloody intellectuals. Wanting the State to wither away. Asking the big ‘Why?’ and the big ‘Why not?’ He told her to shut up. She wouldn’t. She had a devil in her. He had her shoved in the slammer. Made her worse.”

“And there was a child,” Smiley prompted, taking her mittened hand in both of his. “He gave her a child, remember?” Her hand was between them, between their faces. “You researched it, didn’t you, Con. One silly season, I gave you your head. ‘Track it down, Con,’ I said to you. ‘Take it wherever it leads.’ Remember?”

Under Smiley’s intense encouragement, her story had acquired the fervour of a last love. She was speaking fast, eyes streaming. She was backtracking, zigzagging everywhere in her memory. Karla had this hag . . . yes, darling, that was the story, do you hear me?—Yes, Connie, go on, I hear you.—Then listen. He brought her up, made her his mistress, there was a brat, and the quarrels were about the brat. George, darling, do you love me like the old days?—Come on, Con, give me the rest, yes of course I do.—He accused her of warping its precious mind with dangerous ideas, like freedom, for instance. Or love. A girl, her mother’s image, said to be a beauty. In the end the old despot’s love turned to hatred and he had his ideal carted off and spavined: end of story. We had it from Vladimir first, then a few scraps, never the hard base. Name unknown, darling, because he destroyed all records of her, killed whoever might have heard, which is Karla’s way, bless him, isn’t it, darling, always was. Others said she wasn’t dead at all, the story of her murder was disinformation to end the trail. There, she did it, didn’t she? The old fool remembered!

“And the child?” Smiley asked. “The girl in her mother’s image? There was a defector report—what was
that
about?” She didn’t pause. She had remembered that as well, her mind was galloping ahead of her, just as her voice was outrunning her breath.

A don of some sort from Leningrad University, said Connie. Claimed he’d been ordered to take on a weird girl for special political instruction in the evenings, a sort of private patient who was showing anti-social tendencies, the daughter of a high official. Tatiana, he was only allowed to know her as Tatiana. She’d been raising hell all over town, but her father was a big beef in Moscow and she couldn’t be touched. The girl tried to seduce him, probably did, then told him some story about how Daddy had had Mummy killed for showing insufficient faith in the historical process. Next day his professor called him in and said if he ever repeated a word of what had happened at that interview, he would find himself tripping on a very big banana skin. . . .

Connie ran on wildly, describing clues that led nowhere, the sources that vanished at the moment of discovery. It seemed impossible that her racked and drink-sodden body could have once more summoned so much strength.

“Oh, George, darling, take me with you! That’s what you’re after, I’ve got it! Who killed Vladimir, and why! I saw it in your ugly face the moment you walked in. I couldn’t place it, now I can. You’ve got your Karla look! Vladi had opened up the vein again, so Karla had him killed! That’s your banner, George. I can see you marching. Take me with you, George, for God’s sake! I’ll leave Hils, I’ll leave anything, no more of the juice, I swear. Get me up to London and I’ll find his hag for you, even if she doesn’t exist, if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Why did Vladimir call him the Sandman?” Smiley asked, knowing the answer already.

“It was his joke. A German fairy tale Vladi picked up in Estonia from one of his Kraut forebears. ‘Karla is our Sandman. Anyone who comes too close to him has a way of falling asleep.’ We never knew, darling, how could we? In the Lubianka, someone had met a man who’d met a woman who’d met her. Someone else knew someone who’d helped to bury her. That hag was Karla’s shrine, George. And she betrayed him. Twin cities, we used to say you were, you and Karla, two halves of the same apple. George, darling, don’t! Please!”

She had stopped, and he realised that she was staring up at him in fear, that her face was somehow beneath his own; he was standing, glaring down at her. Hilary was against the wall, calling “Stop, stop!” He was standing over her, incensed by her cheap and unjust comparison, knowing that neither Karla’s methods nor Karla’s absolutism were his own. He heard himself say “
No, Connie!
” and discovered that he had lifted his hands to the level of his chest, palms downward and rigid, as if he were pressing something into the ground. And he realised that his passion had scared her; that he had never betrayed so much conviction to her—or so much feeling—before.

“I’m getting old,” he muttered, and gave a sheepish smile.

He relaxed, and as he did so, slowly Connie’s own body became limp also, and the dream died in her. The hands that had clutched him seconds earlier lay on her lap like bodies in a trench.

“It was all bilge,” she said sullenly. A deep and terminal listlessness descended over her. “Bored émigrés crying into their vodka. Drop it, George. Karla’s beaten you all ends up. He foxed you, he made a fool of your time.
Our
time.” She drank, no longer caring what she said. Her head flopped forward again and for a moment he thought she really was asleep. “He foxed
you,
he foxed
me,
and when you smelt a rat he got Bloody Bill Haydon to fox Ann and put you off the scent.” With difficulty she lifted her head to stare at him one more time. “Go home, George. Karla won’t give you back your past. Be like the old fool here. Get yourself a bit of love and wait for Armageddon.”

She began coughing, hopelessly, one hacking retch after another.

 

The rain had stopped. Gazing out of the French windows, Smiley saw again the moonlight on the cages, touching the frost on the wire; he saw the frosted crowns of the fir trees climbing the hill into a black sky; he saw a world reversed, with the light things darkened into shadow, and the dark things picked out like beacons on the white ground. He saw a sudden moon, stepping clear before the clouds, beckoning him into seething crevices. He saw one black figure in Wellington boots and a headscarf running up the lane, and realised it was Hilary; she must have slipped out without his noticing. He remembered he had heard a door slam. He went back to Connie and sat on the sofa beside her. Connie wept and drifted, talking about love. Love was a positive power, she said vaguely—ask Hils. But Hilary was not there to ask. Love was a stone thrown into the water, and if there were enough stones and we all loved together, the ripples would eventually be strong enough to reach across the sea and overwhelm the haters and the cynics—“even beastly Karla, darling,” she assured him. “That’s what Hils says. Bilge, isn’t it? It’s bilge, Hils!” she yelled.

Then Connie closed her eyes again, and after a while, by her breathing, appeared to doze off. Or perhaps she was only pretending in order to avoid the pain of saying goodbye to him. He tiptoed into the cold evening. The car’s engine, by a miracle, started; he began climbing the lane, keeping a look-out for Hilary. He rounded a bend and saw her in the headlights. She was cowering among the trees, waiting for him to leave before she went back to Connie. She had her hands to her face again and he thought he saw blood; perhaps she had scratched herself with her finger-nails. He passed her and saw her in the mirror, staring after him in the glow of his rear lights, and for a moment she resembled for him all those muddy ghosts who are the real victims of conflict: who lurch out of the smoke of war, battered and starved and deprived of all they ever had or loved. He waited until he saw her start down the hill again, towards the lights of the
dacha.

At Heathrow Airport he bought his air ticket for the next morning, then lay on his bed in the hotel, for all he knew the same one, though the walls were not tartan. All night long the hotel stayed awake, and Smiley with it. He heard the clank of plumbing and the ringing of phones and the thud of lovers who would not or could not sleep.

Max, hear us one more time,
he rehearsed;
it was the Sandman himself who sent Kirov to the émigrés to find the legend.

S
miley arrived in Hamburg in mid-morning and took the airport bus to the city centre. Fog lingered and the day was very cold. In the Station Square, after repeated rejections, he found an old, thin terminus hotel with a lift licensed for three persons at a time. He signed in as Standfast, then walked as far as a car-rental agency, where he hired a small Opel, which he parked in an underground garage that played softened Beethoven out of loudspeakers. The car was his back door. He didn’t know whether he would need it, but he knew it needed to be there. He walked again, heading for the Alster, sensing everything with a particular sharpness: the manic traffic, the toy-shops for millionaire children. The din of the city hit him like a fire-storm, causing him to forget the cold. Germany was his second nature, even his second soul. In his youth, her literature had been his passion and his discipline. He could put on her language like a uniform and speak with its boldness. Yet he sensed danger in every step he took, for Smiley as a young man had spent half the war here in the lonely terror of the spy, and the awareness of being on enemy territory was lodged in him for good. In boyhood he had known Hamburg as a rich and graceful shipping town, which hid its volatile soul behind a cloak of Englishness; in manhood as a city smashed into medieval darkness by thousand-bomber air raids. He had seen it in the first years of peace, one endless smouldering bombsite and the survivors tilling the rubble like fields. And he saw it today, hurtling into the anonymity of canned music, high-rise concrete, and smoked glass.