The outburst had woken Smiley like a douche of water. He was sitting forward on the edge of his chair, the narcotics agent's report crumpled in his hand, and he was staring appalled, first at Sol, finally at Martello.
'Marty,' he muttered. 'Oh my Lord. No.'
Guillam showed greater presence of mind. At least he threw in an objection:
'You'd have to spread half a ton awfully thin, wouldn't you, Sol, to hook eight hundred million Chinese?'
But Sol had no use for humour, or objections either, least of all from some pretty-faced Brit.
'And do we go for his jugular?' he demanded, keeping straight on course. 'Do we hell. We pussyfoot. We stand on the sidelines. Play it delicate. It's a British ball game. Their territory, their joe, their party. So we weave, we dance around. We float like a butterfly and sting like one. Jesus, if we'd been handling this thing, we'd have had that bastard trussed over a barrel months ago.' Slapping the table with his palm, he used the rhetorical trick of repeating his point in different language. 'For the first time ever we have gotten ourselves a sabre-toothed Soviet Communist corrupter in our sights, pushing dope and screwing up the area and taking Russian money and we can prove it!' It was all addressed to Martello. Smiley and Guillam might not have been there at all. 'And you just remember another thing,' he advised Martello in conclusion. 'We got big people wanting mileage out of this. Impatient people. Influential. People very angry with the dubious part your Company has indirectly played in the supply and merchandising of narcotics to our boys in Vietnam, which is why you cut us in on this in the first place. So maybe you better tell some of those limousine liberals back in Langley Virginia it's time for them to shit or get off the pot. Pot in both senses,' he ended in a humourless pun.
Smiley had turned so pale that Guillam was genuinely afraid for him. He wondered whether he had had a heart attack, or was going to faint. From where Guillam sat, his cheeks and complexion were suddenly an old man's and his eyes, as he too addressed Martello only, had an old man's fire:
'However, there is an agreement. And so long as it stands, I trust that you will stick to it. We have your general declaration that you will abstain from operations in British areas unless our permission has been granted. We have your particular promise that you will leave to us the entire development of this case, outside surveillance and communication, regardless of where the development leads. That was the contract. A complete hands-off in exchange for a complete sight of the product. I take that to mean this: no action by Langley and no action by any other American agency. I take that to be your absolute word. And I take your word to be still good, and I regard that understanding as irreducible.'
'Tell him,' said Sol, and walked out, followed by Cy, his sallow Mormon sidekick. At the door he turned, and jabbed a finger in Smiley's direction.
'You ride our wagon, we tell you where to get off and where to stay topsides,' he said.
The Mormon nodded: 'Sure do,' he said and smiled at Guillam as if in invitation. On Martello's nod, Murphy and his fellow quiet man followed them out of the room.
Martello was pouring drinks. In his office, the walls were also rosewood — a fake laminate, Guillam noticed, not the real thing — and when Martello pulled a handle he revealed an ice machine that vomited a steady flow of pellets in the shape of rugby balls. He poured three whiskies without asking the others what they wanted. Smiley looked all in. His plump hands were still cupped over the ends of his airline chair, but he was leaning back like a spent boxer between rounds, staring at the ceiling, which was perforated by twinkling lights. Martello set the glasses on the table.
'Thank you, sir,' Guillam said. Martello liked a 'sir'.
'You bet,' said Martello.
'Who else have your headquarters told?' Smiley said, to the stars. 'The Revenue Service? The Customs Service? The Mayor of Chicago? Their twelve best friends? Do you realise that not even my masters know we are in collaboration with you? God in heaven.'
'Ah, come on now, George. We have politics, same as you. We have promises to keep. Mouths to buy. Enforcement's out for our blood. That dope story's gotten a lot of airtime on the Hill. Senators, the House Subcommittees, the whole garbage. Kid comes back from the war a screaming junkie, first thing his Pa does is write to his Congressman. Company doesn't care for all those bad rumours. It likes to have its friends on its own side. That's showbiz, George.'
'Could I please just know what the deal is?' Smiley asked. 'Could I have it in plain words, at least?'
'Oh now, there's no deal, George. Langley can't deal with what she doesn't own, and this is your case, your property, your... We fish for him — you do, with a little help from us maybe — we do our best and then if, ah, we don't come up with anything, why, Enforcement will get in on the act a little and, on a very friendly and controllable basis, try their skill.'
'At which point it's open season,' Smiley said. 'My goodness, what a way to run a case.'
When it came to pacification, Martello was a very old hand indeed:
'George. George. Suppose they nail Ko. Suppose they fall on him out of the trees next time he leaves the Colony. If Ko's going to languish in Sing-Sing on a ten-to-thirty rap, why, we can pick him clean at will. Is that so very terrible suddenly?'
Yes it bloody well is, thought Guillam. Till it suddenly dawned on him, with a quite malignant glee, that Martello himself was not witting on the subject of Brother Nelson, and that George had kept his best card to his chest.
Smiley was still sitting forward. The ice in his whisky had put a damp frost round the outside of the glass, and for a time he stared at it, watching the tears slide on to the rosewood table.
'So how long have we got on our own?' Smiley asked. 'What's our head start before the narcotics people come barging in?'
'It's not rigid, George. It's not like that! It's parameters, like Cy said.'
'Three months?'
'That's generous, a little generous.'
'Less than three months?'
'Three months, inside of three months, ten to twelve weeks — in that area, George. It's fluid. It's between friends. Three months outside. I would say.'
Smiley breathed out in a long slow sigh. 'Yesterday we had all the time in the world.'
Martello dropped the veil an inch or two. 'Sol is not that conscious, George,' he said, careful to use Circus jargon rather than his own. 'Ah, Sol has blank areas,' he said, half by way of admission. 'We don't just throw him the whole carcass, know what I mean?'
Martello paused, then said, 'Sol goes to first echelon. No further. Believe me.'