He bumped over a railway track and headed for the cargo ships. Beams of morning sun had broken through the mist, making their white paintwork dazzle. He entered an alley comprised of control rooms for the cranes, each like a modern signal box, each with green levers and big windows. And there at the end of the alley, exactly as Herr Kretzschmar had promised, stood the old tin house with a high tin gable cut like fretwork and crowned with a peeling flag-post. The electric wires that led into it seemed to hold it up; there was an old water pump beside it, dripping, with a tin mug chained to its pedestal. On the wooden door, in faded Gothic lettering, stood the one word 'BUREAU' , in the French spelling, not the German, above a newer notice saying, 'P. K. BERGEN, IMPORT-EXPORT'. He works there as the night clerk, Herr Kretzschmar had said. What he does by day only God and the Devil know.
He rang the bell, then stood well back from the door, very visible. He was keeping his hands clear of his pockets and they were very visible too. He had buttoned his overcoat to the neck. He wore no hat. He had parked the car sideways to the house so that anyone indoors could see the car was empty. I am alone and unarmed, he was trying to say. I am not their man, but yours. He rang the bell again and called 'Herr Leipzig!' An upper window opened, and a pretty woman looked out blearily, holding a blanket round her shoulders.
'I'm sorry,' Smiley called up to her politely. 'I was looking for Herr Leipzig. It's rather important.'
'Not here,' she replied, and smiled.
A man joined her. He was young and unshaven with tattoo marks on his arms and chest. They spoke together a moment, Smiley guessed in Polish.
'Nix hier,' the man confirmed guardedly. 'Otto nix hier.'
'We're just the temporary tenants,' the girl called down. 'When Otto's broke he moves to his country villa and rents us the apartment.'
She repeated this to her man, who this time laughed.
'Nix hier,' he repeated. 'No money. Nobody has money.'
They were enjoying the crisp morning, and the company.
'How long since you saw him?' Smiley asked.
More conference. Was it this day or that day? Smiley had the impression they had lost track of time.
'Thursday,' the girl announced, smiling again.
'Thursday,' her man repeated.
'I've got good news for him,' Smiley explained cheerfully, catching her mood. He patted his side pocket. 'Money, Pinka-pinka. All for Otto. He's earned it in commission. I promised to bring it to him yesterday.'
The girl interpreted all this and the man argued with her, and the girl laughed again.
'My friend says don't give it to him or Otto will come back and move us out and we'll have nowhere to make love!'
Try the water camp, she suggested, pointing with her bare arm. Two kilometres along the main road, over the railway and past the windmill, then right - she looked at her hands, then curved one prettily towards her lover - yes, right; right towards the lake, though you don't see the lake till you get to it.
'What is the place called?' Smiley asked.
'It has no name,' she said. 'It's just a place. Ask for holiday houses to let, then drive on towards the boats. Ask for Walther. If Otto is around, Walther will know where to find him.'
'Thank you.'
'Walther knows everything!' she called. 'He is like a professor!'
She translated this also, but this time her man looked angry.
'Bad professor!' he called down. 'Walther bad man!'
'Are you a professor too?' the girl asked Smiley.
'No. No, unfortunately not.' He laughed and thanked them, and they watched him get into his car as if they were children at a celebration. The day, the spreading sunshine, his visit - everything was fun for them. He lowered the window to say goodbye and heard her say something he couldn't catch.
'What was that?' he called up to her, still smiling.
'I said, "Then Otto is twice lucky for a change!" ' the girl repeated.
'Why?' asked Smiley, and stopped the engine. 'Why is he twice lucky?'
The girl shrugged. The blanket was slipping from her shoulders and the blanket was all she wore. Her man put an arm round her and pulled it up again for decency.
'Last week the unexpected visit from the East,' she said, 'And today the money.' She opened her hands. 'Otto is Sunday's child for once. That's all.'
Then she saw Smiley's face, and the laughter went clean out of her voice.
'Visitor?' Smiley repeated. 'Who was the visitor?'
'From the East,' she said.
Seeing her dismay, terrified she might disappear altogether, Smiley with difficulty resurrected his appearance of good humour.
'Not his brother, was it?' he asked gaily, all enthusiasm. He held out one hand, cupping it over the mythical brother's head. 'A small chap? Spectacles like mine?'
'No, no! A big fellow. With a chauffeur. Rich.'
Smiley shook his head, affecting light-hearted disappointment. 'Then I don't know him,' he said. 'Otto's brother was certainly never rich.' He succeeded in laughing outright. 'Unless he was the chauffeur, of course,' he added.
He followed her directions exactly, with the secret calmness of emergency. To be conveyed. To have no will of his own. To be conveyed, to pray, to make deals with your Maker. Oh God, don't make it happen, not another Vladimir. In the sunlight the brown fields had turned to gold, but the sweat on Smiley's back was like a cold hand stinging his skin. He followed her directions seeing everything as if it were his last day, knowing the big fellow with the chauffeur had gone ahead of him. He saw the farmhouse with the old horse-plough in the barn, the faulty beer sign with its neon blinking, the window-boxes of geraniums like blood. He saw the windmill like a giant pepper-mill and the field full of white geese all running with the gusty wind. He saw the herons skimming like sails over the fens. He was driving too fast. I should drive more often, he thought; I'm out of practice, out of control. The road changed from tarmac to gravel, gravel to dust and the dust blew up round the car like a sandstorm. He entered some pine trees and on the other side of them saw a sign saying 'HOLIDAY HOUSES TO LET', and a row of shuttered asbestos bungalows waiting for their summer paint. He kept going and in the distance saw a coppice of masts, and brown water low in its basin. He headed for the masts, bumped over a pot-hole and heard a frightful crack from under the car. He supposed it was the exhaust, because the noise of his engine was suddenly much louder, and half the water birds in Schleswig-Holstein had taken fright at his arrival.
He passed a farm and entered the protective darkness of trees, then emerged in a stark and brilliant frame of whiteness of which a broken jetty and a few faint olive-coloured reeds made up the foreground, and an enormous sky the rest. The boats lay to his right, beside an inlet. Shabby caravans were parked along the track that led to them, grubby washing hung between the television aerials. He passed a tent in its own vegetable patch and a couple of broken huts that had once been military. On one, a psychedelic sunrise had been painted, and it was peeling. Three old cars and some heaped rubbish stood beside it. He parked and followed a mud path through the reeds to the shore. In the grass harbour lay a cluster of improvised houseboats, some of them converted landing-craft from the war. It was colder here, and for some reason darker. The boats he had seen were day boats, moored in a huddle apart, mostly under tarpaulins. A couple of radios played, but at first he saw nobody. Then he noticed a backwater and a blue dinghy made fast in it. And, in the dinghy, one gnarled old man in a sailcloth jacket and a black peaked cap, massaging his neck as if he had just woken up.