'And what does first echelon mean?'
'He knows Ko is in funds from Moscow. Knows he pushes opium. That's all.'
'Does he know of the girl?'
'Now she's a case in point, George. The girl. That girl went with him on the trip to Bangkok. Remember Murphy describing the Bangkok trip? She stayed in the hotel suite with him. She flew on with him to Manila. I saw you read me there. I caught your eye. But we had Murphy delete that section of the report. Just for Sol's benefit.' Very slightly, Smiley seemed to revive. 'Deal stands, George,' Martello assured him munificently. 'Nothing's added, nothing's subtracted. You play the fish, we'll help you eat it. Any help along the way, you just have to pick up that green line and holler.' He went so far as to lay a consoling hand on Smiley's shoulder, but sensing that he disliked the gesture, abandoned it rather quickly. 'However, if you ever do want to pass us the oars, why, we would merely reverse that arrangement and -'
'Steal our thunder and get yourselves thrown off the Colony into the bargain,' said Smiley, completing the sentence for him. 'I want one more thing made clear. I want it written down. I want it to be the subject of an exchange of letters between us.'
'Your party, you choose the games,' said Martello expansively.
'My service will play the fish,' Smiley insisted, in the same direct tone. 'We will also land it, if that is the angling expression. I'm not a sportsman, I'm afraid.'
'Land it, beach it, hook it, sure.'
Martello's good will, to Guillam's suspicious eye, was tiring a little at the edges.
'I insist on it being our operation. Our man. I insist on first rights. To have him and to hold him, until we see fit to pass him on.'
'No problem, George, no problem at all. You take him aboard, he's yours. Soon as you want to share him, call us. It's as simple as that.'
'I'll send round a written confirmation in the morning.'
'Oh don't bother to do that, George. We have people. We'll have them collect it for you.'
'I'll send it round,' said Smiley.
Martello stood up. 'George, you just got yourself a deal.'
'I had a deal already,' Smiley said. 'Langley broke it.'
They shook hands.
The case history has no other moment like this. In the trade it goes under various smart phrases. 'The day George reversed the controls' is one — though it took him a good week, and brought Martello's deadline that much nearer. But to Guillam the process had something far more stately about it, far more beautiful than a mere technical retooling. As his understanding of Smiley's intention slowly grew, as he looked on fascinated while Smiley laid down each meticulous line, summoned this or that collaborator, put out a hook here, and took in a cleat there, Guillam had the sensation of watching the turn-round of some large ocean-going vessel as it is coaxed and nosed and gentled into facing back along its own course.
Which entailed — yes — turning the entire case upside down, or reversing the controls.
They arrived back at the Circus without a word spoken. Smiley took the last flight of stairs slowly enough to revive Guillam's fears for his health, so that as soon as he was able he rang the Circus doctor and gave him a rundown of the symptoms as he saw them, only to be told that Smiley had been round to see him a couple of days ago on an unrelated matter and showed every sign of being indestructible. The throne-room door closed, and Fawn the babysitter once more had his beloved chief to himself. Smiley's needs, where they filtered through, had the smack of alchemy. Beechcraft aeroplanes: he wished for plans and catalogues, and also — provided they could be obtained unattributably — any details of owners, sales and purchases in the South East Asian region. Toby Esterhase duly disappeared into the murky thickets of the aircraft-sales industry, and soon afterwards Fawn handed to Molly Meakin a daunting heap of back-numbers of a journal called Transport World with handwritten instructions from Smiley in the traditional green ink of his office to mark down any advertisements for Beechcraft planes which might have caught the eye of a potential buyer during the six-month period before the pilot Ricardo's abortive opium mission into Red China.
Again on Smiley's written orders, Guillam discreetly visited several of di Salis's burrowers and, without the knowledge of their temperamental superior, established that they were still far from putting the finger on Nelson Ko. One old fellow went so far as to suggest that Drake Ko had spoken no less than the truth in his last meeting with old Hibbert, and that Brother Nelson was dead indeed. But when Guillam took this news to Smiley he shook his head impatiently, and handed him a signal for transmission to Craw, telling him to obtain from his local police source, preferably on a pretext, all recorded details of the travel movements of Ko's manager Tiu in and out of Mainland China.
Craw's long answer was on Smiley's desk forty-eight hours later, and it appeared to give him a rare moment of pleasure. He ordered out the duty driver, and had himself taken to Hampstead, where he walked alone over the Heath for an hour, through sunlit frost, and according to Fawn stood gawping at the ruddy squirrels before returning to the throne-room.
'But don't you see?' he protested to Guillam, in an equally rare fit of excitement that evening — 'Don't you understand, Peter?' — shoving Craw's dates under his nose, actually stubbing his finger on one entry — 'Tiu went to Shanghai six weeks before Ricardo's mission. How long did he stay there? Forty-eight hours. Oh you are a dunce!'
'I'm nothing of the kind,' Guillam retorted. 'I just don't happen to have a direct line to God, that's all.'
In the cellars, cloistered with Millie McCraig the head listener, Smiley replayed old Hibbert's monologues, scowling occasionally — said Millie - at di Salis's clumsy bullying. Otherwise, he read and prowled, and talked to Sam Collins in short, intensive bursts. These encounters, Guillam noticed, cost Smiley a lot of spirit, and his bouts of ill-temper — which Lord knows were few enough for a man with Smiley's burdens — always occurred after Sam's departure. And even when they had blown over, he looked more strained and lonely than ever, till he had taken one of his long night walks.
Then on about the fourth day, which in Guillam's life was a crisis day for some reason — probably the argument with Treasury, who resented paying Craw a bonus — Toby Esterhase somehow slipped through the net of both Fawn and Guillam, and gained the throne-room undetected, where he presented Smiley with a bunch of Xeroxed contracts of sale for one brand new four-seater Beechcraft to the Bangkok firm of Aerosuis and Co, registered in Zurich, details pending. Smiley was particularly jubilant about the fact that there were four seats. The two at the rear were removable, but the pilot's and co-pilot's were fixed. As to the actual sale of the plane, it had been completed on the twentieth of July: a scant month, therefore, before the crazy Ricardo set off to infringe Red China's airspace, and then changed his mind.
'Even Peter can make that connection,' Smiley declared, with heavy skittishness. 'Sequence, Peter, sequence, come on!'
'The plane was sold two weeks after Tiu returned from Shanghai,' Guillam replied, reluctantly.
'And so?' Smiley demanded. 'And so? What do we look at next?'
'We ask ourselves who owns the firm of Aerosuis,' Guillam snapped, really quite irritated.
'Precisely. Thank you,' said Smiley in mock relief. 'You restore my faith in you, Peter. Now then. Whom do we discover at the helm of Aerosuis, do you think? The Bangkok representative, no less.'
Guillam glanced at the notes on Smiley's desk, but Smiley was too quick and clapped his hands over them.
'Tiu,' Guillam said, actually blushing.
'Hoorah. Yes. Tiu. Well done.'
But by the time Smiley sent again for Sam Collins that evening, the shadows had returned to his pendulous face.