'Why the dickens should it be too much for the Governor?' Colonial Wilbraham demanded, genuinely perplexed. 'Experienced administrator, shrewd negotiator. Find his way through anything. Why's it too much?'
This time, it was Smiley who made the pause. 'He would have to encode and decode his own telegrams of course,' he mused, as if he were even now working his way obliviously through all the implications. 'We couldn't have him cutting his staff in on the secret, naturally. That's asking too much of anyone. Personal code books — well we can fix him up with those, no doubt. Brush up his coding if he needs it. There is also the problem, I suppose, of the Governor being forced into the position of agent provocateur if he continues to receive Ko socially — which he obviously must. We can't frighten the game at this stage. Would he mind that? Perhaps not. Some people take to it quite naturally.' He glanced at Enderby.
Wilbraham was already expostulating. 'But good heavens, man — if Ko's a Russian spy, which we say he isn't anyway — if the Governor has him to dinner, and perfectly naturally, in confidence, commits some minor indiscretion — well, it's damned unfair. It could ruin the man's career. Let alone what it could do to the Colony! He must be told!'
Smiley looked sleepier than ever.
'Well of course if he's given to being indiscreet,' he murmured meekly, 'I suppose one might argue that he's not a suitable person to be informed anyway.'
In the icy silence Enderby once more languidly took the matchstick from his mouth.
'Bloody odd it would be, wouldn't it, Chris,' he called cheerfully down the table to Wilbraham, 'if Peking woke up one morning to the glad news that the Governor of Hong Kong, Queen's representative and what have you, head of the troops and so forth, made a point of entertaining Moscow's ace spy at his dinner table once a month. And gave him a medal for his trouble. What's he got so far? Not a K is it?'
'An OBE,' said somebody sotto voce.
'Poor chap. Still, he's on his way, I suppose, He'll work his way up, same as we all do.'
Enderby, as it happened, had his knighthood already, whereas Wilbraham was stuck in the bulge, owing to the growing shortage of colonies.
'There is no case,' said Wilbraham stoutly, and laid a hairy hand flat over the lurid folder before him.
A free-for-all followed, to Guillam's ear an intermezzo, in which by tacit understanding the minor parts were allowed to chime in with irrelevant questions in order to get themselves a mention in the minutes. The Welsh Hammer wished to establish here and now what would happen to Moscow Centre's half million dollars of reptile money if by any chance they fell into British hands. There could be no question of their simply being recycled through the Circus, he warned. Treasury would have sole rights. Was that clear?
It was clear, Smiley said.
Guillam began to discern a gulf. There were those who assumed, even if reluctantly, that the investigation was a fait accompli; and those who continued to fight a rearguard action against its taking place. Hammer, he noticed to his surprise, seemed reconciled to an investigation.
A string of questions on 'legal' and 'illegal' residencies, though wearisome, served to entrench the fear of a red peril. Luff, the parliamentarian, wanted the difference spelt out to him. Smiley patiently obliged. A 'legal' or 'above-the-line' resident, he said, was an intelligence officer living under official or semiofficial protection. Since the Hong Kong Government, out of deference to Peking's sensitivities about Russia, had seen fit to banish all forms of Soviet representation from the Colony- embassy, consular, Tass, Radio Moscow, Novosti, Aeroflot, Intourist and the other flags of convenience which legals traditionally sailed under... then by definition it followed that any Soviet activity on the Colony had to be carried out by an illegal or below-the-line apparatus.
It was this presumption which had directed the efforts of the Circus's researchers toward discovering the replacement money-route, he said, avoiding the jargon 'goldseam'.
'Ah well, then, we've forced the Russians into it,' said Luff with satisfaction. 'We've only ourselves to thank. We victimise the Russians, they bite back. Well, who's surprised by that? It's the last government's hash we're settling. Not ours at all. Go in for Russian-baiting, you get what you deserve, Natural. We're just reaping the whirlwind as usual.'
'What have the Russians got up to in Hong Kong before this?' asked a clever backroom-boy from the Home Office.
The Colonialists at once sprang to life. Wilbraham began feverishly leafing through a folder, but seeing his red-headed assistant straining at the leash he muttered: 'You'll do that one then, John, will you? Good,' and sat back looking ferocious. The brown-clad lady smiled wistfully at the torn baize cloth, as if she remembered it when it was whole. The sixth-former made his second disastrous sally:
'We consider the precedents here very enlightening indeed,' he began aggressively. 'Moscow Centre's previous attempts to gain a toehold on the Colony have been one and all, without exception, abortive and completely low grade.' He reeled off a bunch of boring instances.
Five years ago, he said, a bogus Russian Orthodox archimandrite flew in from Paris in an effort to make links with remnants of the White Russian community:
'This gentleman tried to press-gang an elderly restaurateur into Moscow Centre's service and was promptly arrested. More recently, we have had cases of ship's crew coming ashore from Russian freighters which have put in to Hong Kong for repair. They have made ham-fisted attempts to suborn longshoremen and dock workers whom they consider to be leftist oriented. They have been arrested, questioned, made complete fools of by the press, and duly confined to their ship for the rest of its stay.' He gave other equally milk-and-water examples and everyone grew sleepy, waiting for the last lap: 'Our policy has been exactly the same each time. As soon as they're caught, right away, culprits are put on public show. Press photographs? As many as you like, gentlemen. Television? Set up your cameras; Result? Peking hands us a nice pat on the back for containing Soviet imperialist expansionism.' Thoroughly over-excited, he found the nerve to address himself directly to Smiley. 'So you see, as to your networks of illegals, to be frank, we discount them. Legal, illegal, above-the-line, below it: our view is, the Circus is doing a bit of special pleading in order to get its nose back under the wire!'
Opening his mouth to deliver a suitable rebuke, Guillam felt a restraining touch on his elbow and closed it again. There was a long silence, in which Wilbraham looked more embarrassed than anybody.
'Sounds more like smoke to me, Chris,' said Enderby drily.
'What's he driving at?' Wilbraham demanded nervously.
'Just answering the point your bully-boy made for you, Chris. Smoke. Deception. Russians are waving their sabres where you can watch 'em, and while your heads are all turned the wrong way, they get on with the dirty work t'other side of the Island. To wit, Brother Ko. Right, George?'
'Well, that is our view, yes,' Smiley conceded. ' And I suppose I should remind you — it's in the submission actually — that Haydon himself was always very keen to argue that the Russians had nothing going in Hong Kong.'
'Lunch,' Martindale announced without much optimism. They ate it upstairs, glumly, off plastic catering trays delivered by van. The partitions were too low, and Guillam's custard flowed into his meat.
Thus refreshed, Smiley availed himself of the after-luncheon torpor to raise what Lacon had called the panic factor. More accurately he sought to entrench in the meeting a sense of logic behind a Soviet presence in Hong Kong, even if, as he put it, Ko did not supply the example:
How Hong Kong, as Mainland China's largest port, handled forty per cent of her foreign trade.