'I'm afraid we're no longer worth the candle, Saul,' Smiley said, with an apologetic smile.
Enderby did not care to be reminded of the limitations of British grandeur, and for a moment his mouth set into a sour grimace.
'All right, Maud,' he said finally. 'Let's go into the garden.'
They walked side by side. Collins, on Enderby's nod, had stayed indoors. Slow rain puckered the surface of the pool and made the marble angel glisten in the dusk. Sometimes a breeze passed and a chain of water slopped from the hanging branches onto the lawn, soaking one or the other of them. But Enderby was an English gentleman, and while God's rain might be falling on the rest of mankind, he was damned if it was going to fall on him. The light came at them in bits. From Ben's French windows, yellow rectangles fell across the pond. From over the brick wall, they had the sickly green glow of a modem street lamp. They completed a round in silence before Enderby spoke.
'Led us a proper dance, you did, George, I'll tell you that for nothing. Villem, Mikhel, Toby, Connie. Poor old Ferguson hardly had time to fill in his expense claims before you were off again. "Doesn't he ever sleep?" he asked me. "Doesn't he ever drink?" '
'I'm sorry,' said Smiley, for something to say.
'Oh, no, you're not,' said Enderby, and came to a sudden halt. 'Bloody laces,' he muttered, stooping over his boot, 'they always do this with suede. Too few eyeholes, that's the problem. You wouldn't think even the bloody Brits would manage to be mean with holes, would you?'
Enderby replaced one foot and lifted the other.
'I want his body, George, hear me? Hand me a live, talking Karla and I'll accept him and make my excuses later. Karla asks for asylum? Well, um, yes, most reluctantly he can have it. By the time the Wise Men are loading their shot-guns for me I'll have enough out of him to shut them up for good. His body or nothing, you got me?'
They were strolling again, Smiley trailing behind, but Enderby, though he was speaking, did not turn his head.
'Don't you ever go thinking they'll go away, either,' he warned. 'When you and Karla are stuck on your ledge on the Reichebach Falls and you've got your hands round Karla's throat, Brother Lacon will be right there behind you holding your coattails and telling you not to be beastly to the Russians. Did you get that?'
Smily said yes, he had got it.
'What have you got on him so far? Misuse of the facilities of his office, I suppose. Fraud. Peculation of public funds, the very thing he topped that Lisbon fellow for. Unlawful operations abroad, including a couple of assassination jobs. I suppose there's a whole bloody boxful when you work it out. Plus all those jealous beavers at Centre longing for an excuse to knife him. He's right : blackmail's a bloody sight better than bribery.'
Smiley said, yes, it seemed so.
'You'll need people. Baby-sitters, lamplighters, all the forbidden toys. Don't talk to me about it, find your own. Money's another matter. I can lose you in the accounts for years the way these clowns in Treasury work. Just tell me when and how much and where, and I'll do a Karla for you and fiddle the accounts. How about passports and stuff? Need some addresses?'
'I think I can manage, thank you.'
'I'll watch you day and night. If the ploy aborts and there's a scandal, I'm not going to have people telling me I should have staked you out. I'll say I suspected you might be slipping the leash on the Vladimir thing and I decided to have you checked in case. I'll say the whole catastrophe was a ludicrous piece of private enterprise by a senile spy who's lost his marbles.'
Smiley said he thought that was a good idea.
'I may not have much to put on the street, but I can still tap your phone, steam open your mail, and if I want to, I'll bug your bedroom too. We've been listening in since Saturday as it is. Nothing of course, but what do you expect?'
Smiley gave a small nod of sympathy.
'If your departure abroad strikes me as hasty or mysterious, I shall report it. I also need a cover story for your visits to the Circus Registry. You'll go at night but you may be recognized and I'm not having that catch up with me, either.'
'There was a project once to commission an in-house history of the service,' Smiley said helpfully. 'Nothing for publication, obviously, but some sort of continuing record which could be available to new entrants and certain liaison services.'
'I'll send you a formal letter,' Enderby said. 'I'll bloody well backdate it too. If you happen to misuse your licence while you're inside the building, it's no fault of mine. That chap in Berne whom Kirov mentioned. Grigoriev, Commercial Counsellor. The chap who's been getting the cash?'
Smiley seemed lost in thought. 'Yes, yes, of course,' he said. 'Grigoriev?'
'I suppose he's your next stop, is he?'
A shooting star ran across the sky and for a second they both watched it.
Enderby pulled a plain piece of folded paper from his inside pocket. 'Well, that's Grigoriev's pedigree, far as we know it. He's clean as a whistle. One of the very rare ones. Used to be an economics don at some Bolshie university. Wife's a harridan.'
'Thank you,' said Smiley politely. 'Thank you very much.'
'Meanwhile, you have my totally deniable blessing,' said Enderby as they started back towards the house.
'Thank you,' said Smiley again.
'Sorry you've become an instrument of the imperial hypocrisy, but there's rather a lot of it about.'
'Not at all,' said Smiley.
Enderby stopped to let Smiley draw up beside him.
'How's Ann?'
'Well, thank you.'
'How much-' He was sufficiently off his stroke. 'Put it this way, George,' he suggested, when he had savoured the night air for a moment. 'You travelling on business, or for pleasure in this thing? Which is it?'
Smiley's reply was also slow in coming, and as indirect : 'I was never conscious of pleasure,' he said. 'Or perhaps I mean : of the distinction.'
'Karla still got that cigarette-lighter she gave you? It's true, isn't it? That time you interviewed him in Delhi - tried to get him to defect - they say he pinched your cigarette-lighter. Still got it, has he? Still using it? Pretty grating, I'd find that, if it was mine.'
'It was just an ordinary Ronson,' Smiley said. 'Still, they're made to last, aren't they?'
They parted without saying goodbye.
TWENTY
In the weeks that followed this encounter with Enderby, George Smiley found himself in a complex and variable mood to accompany his many tasks of preparation. He was not at peace; he was not, in a single phrase, definable as a single person, beyond the one constant thrust of his determination. Hunter, recluse, lover, solitary man in search of completion, shrewd player of the Great Game, avenger, doubter in search of reassurance - Smiley was by turns each one of them, and sometimes more than one. Among those who remembered him later - old Mendel, the retired policeman, one of his few confidants; a Mrs Gray, the landlady of the humble bed-and-breakfast house for gentlemen only, in Pimlico, which for security reasons he made his temporary headquarters; or Toby Esterhase, alias Benati, the distinguished dealer in Arab art - most, in their various ways, spoke of an ominous going in, a quietness, an economy of word and glance, and they described it according to their knowledge of him, and their station in life.
Mendel, a loping, dourly observant man with a taste for keeping bees, said outright that George was pacing himself before his big fight. Mendel had been in the amateur ring in his time, he had boxed middleweight for the Division, and he claimed to recognize the eve-of-match signs : a sobriety, a clarifying loneliness, and what he called a staring sort of look, which showed that Smiley was 'thinking about his hands'. Mendel seems to have taken him in occasionally, and fed him meals. But Mendel was too perceptive not to observe the other sides of him also : the perplexity, often cloaked as social inhibition; his habit of slipping away, on a frail excuse, as if the sitting-still had suddenly become too long for him; as if he needed movement in order to escape himself.