'Right,' said Sol.
If they don't go to bed together soon, thought Guillam, they just may claw each other's eyes out instead. He glanced at Smiley and saw that he too was conscious of the strained atmosphere. He sat like his own effigy, a hand on each knee, eyes almost closed as usual, and he seemed to be willing himself into invisibility while the explanation was acted out for him.
'Maybe we should all just get ourselves up to date on the latest details, first,' Martello now suggested, as if he were inviting everyone to wash.
First before what? Guillam wondered.
One of the quiet men used the workname Murphy. Murphy was so fair he was nearly albino. Taking a folder from the rosewood table Murphy began reading from it aloud with great respect in his voice. He held each page singly between his clean fingers.
'Sir, Monday subject flew to Bangkok with Cathay Pacific Airlines, flight details given, and was picked up at the airport by Tan Lee, our reference given, in his personal limousine. They proceeded directly to the Airsea permanent suite at the Hotel Erawan.' He glanced at Sol. 'Tan is managing director of Asian Rice and General, sir, that's Airsea's Bangkok subsidiary, file references appended. They spent three hours in the suite and '
'Ah, Murphy,' said Martello, interrupting.
'Sir?' 'All that reference given , reference appended .
Leave that out, will you? We all know we have files on these guys. Right?' 'Right, sir.' 'Ko alone?' Sol demanded.
'Sir, Ko took his manager Tiu along with him. Tiu goes with him most everywhere.'
Here chancing to look at Smiley again, Guillam intercepted an enquiring glance from him directed at Martello. Guillam had a notion he was thinking of the girl - had she gone too? - but Martello's indulgent smile didn't waver, and after a moment Smiley seemed to accept this, and resumed his attentive pose.
Sol meanwhile had turned to his assistant and the two of them had a brief private exchange:
'Why the hell doesn't somebody bug the damn hotel suite, Cy? What's holding everyone up?'
'We already suggested that to Bangkok, Sol, but they've got problems with the party walls, they got no proper cavities or something.'
'Those Bangkok clowns are drowsy with too much ass. That the same Tan we tried to nail last year for heroin?'
'Now, that was Tan Ha, Sol. This one's Tan Lee. They have a great 1ot of Tans out there. Tan Lee's just a front man. He plays link to Fatty Hong in Chiang Mai. It's Hong who has the connections to the growers and the big brokers.'
'Somebody ought to go out and shoot that bastard,' Sol said. Which bastard wasn't quite clear.
Martello nodded at pale Murphy to go on.
'Sir, the three men then drove down to Bangkok port - that's Ko and Tan Lee and Tiu, sir - and they looked at twenty or thirty small coasters tied up along the bank. Then they drove back to Bangkok airport and subject flew to Manila, Philippines, for a cement conference at the Hotel Eden and Bali.'
'Tiu didn't go to Manila?' Martello asked, buying
time.
'No, sir. Flew home,' Murphy replied, and once more Smiley glanced at Martello.
'Cement my ass,' Sol exclaimed. 'Those the boats that do the run up to Hong Kong, Murphy?'
'Yes, sir.'
'We know those boats,' expostulated Sol. 'We been going for these boats for years. Right, Cy?'
'Right.'
Sol had rounded on Martello, as if he were personally to blame. 'They leave harbour clean. They don't take the stuff aboard till they're at sea. Nobody knows which boat will carry, not even the captain of the selected vessel, until the launch pulls alongside, gives them the dope. When they hit Hong Kong waters, they drop the dope overboard with markers and the junks scoop it in.'
He spoke slowly, as if speaking hurt him, forcing each word out hoarsely. 'We been screaming at the Brits for years to shake those junks out, but the bastards are all on the take.'
'That's all we have, sir,' said Murphy, and put down his report.
They were back to the awkward pauses. A pretty girl, armed with a tray of coffee and biscuits, provided a temporary reprieve, but when she left the silence was worse.
'Why don't you just tell him?' Sol snapped finally. 'Otherwise maybe I will.'
Which was when, as Martello would have said, they finally got down to the nitty-gritty.
Martello's manner became both grave and confiding: a family solicitor reading a will to the heirs. 'George, ah, at our request Enforcement here took a kind of a second look at the background and the record of the missing pilot Ricardo, and as we half surmised, they've dug up a fair quantity of material which till now has not come to light as it should have done, owing to various factors. There's no profit, in my view, to pointing the finger at anyone and besides Ed Ristow is a sick man. Let's just agree that, however it happened, the Ricardo thing fell into a small gap between Enforcement and ourselves. That gap has since closed and we'd like to rectify the information for you.'
'Thank you, Marty,' said Smiley patiently.
'Seems Ricardo's alive after all,' Sol declared. 'Seems like it's a prime snafu.'
'A what?' Smiley asked sharply, perhaps before the full significance of Sol's statement had sunk in.
Martello was quick to translate. 'Error, George. Human error. Happens to all of us. Snafu. Even you, okay?'
Guillam was studying Cy's shoes, which had a rubbery gloss and thick welts. Smiley's eyes had lifted to the side wall, where the benevolent features of President Nixon gazed down encouragingly on the triangular union. Nixon had resigned a good six months ago, but Martello seemed rather touchingly determined to tend his lamp. Murphy and his mute companion sat still as confirmands in the presence of the bishop. Only Sol was for ever on the move, alternately scratching at his crimped scalp or sucking on his cigarette like an athletic version of di Salis. He never smiles, thought Guillam extraneously: he's forgotten how.
Martello continued. 'Ricardo's death is formally recorded in our files as on or round August twenty-one, George, correct?'
'Correct,' said Smiley.
Martello drew a breath and tilted his head the other way as he read his notes. 'However, on September, ah, two couple of weeks after his death, right? - it, ah, seems Ricardo made personal contact with one of the narcotics bureaux in the Asian theatre, then known as BNDD but primarily the same house, okay? Sol would, ah, prefer not to mention which bureau, and I respect that.' The mannerism ah, Guillam decided, was Martello's way of keeping talking while he thought. 'Ricardo offered the bureau his services on a sell-and-tell basis regarding an, ah, opium mission he claimed to have received to fly right over the border into, ah, Red China.'
A cold hand seemed to seize hold of Guillam's stomach at this moment and stay there. His sense of occasion was all the greater following the slow lead-in through so much unrelated detail. He told Molly afterwards that it was as if 'all the threads of the case had suddenly wound themselves together in a single skein' for him. But that was hindsight and he was boasting a little. Nevertheless the shock - after all the tiptoeing and the speculation and the paperchases - the plain shock of being almost physically projected into the Chinese Mainland: that certainly was real, and required no exaggeration.
Martello was doing his worthy solicitor act again.
'George, I have to fill you in on, ah, a little more of the family background here. During the Laos thing, the Company used a few of the northern hilltribes for combat purposes, maybe you knew that. Right up there in Burma, know those parts, the Shans? Volunteers, follow me? Lot of those tribes were one-crop communities, ah, opium communities, and in the interests of the war there, the Company had to, ah, well turn a blind eye to what we couldn't change, follow me? These good people have to live and many knew no better and saw nothing wrong in, ah, growing that crop. Follow me?'
'Jesus Christ,' said Sol under his breath. 'Hear that, Cy?'
'I heard, Sol.'
Smiley said he followed.
'This policy, conducted, ah, by the Company, caused a very brief and very temporary rift between the Company on the one side and the, ah, Enforcement people here, formerly the Bureau of Narcotics. Because, well, while Sol's boys were out to, well, ah, suppress the abuse of drugs, and quite rightly, and, ah, ride down the shipments, which is their job, George, and their duty, it was in the Company's best interest - in the best interest of the war, that is - at this point in time, you follow, George to, well, ah, turn a blind eye.'
'Company played godfather to the hilltribes,' Sol growled. 'Menfolk were all out fighting the war, Company people flew up to the villages, pushed their poppy crops, screwed their women and flew their dope.'
Martello was not so easily thrown. 'Well we think that's overstating things a little, Sol, but the, ah, rift was there and that's the point as far as our friend George is concerned. Ricardo, well he's a tough cookie. He flew a lot of missions for the Company in Laos, and when the war ended, the Company resettled him and kissed him off and pulled up the ladder. Nobody messes around with those boys when there's no war for them any more. So, ah, maybe at that, the, ah, gamekeeper Ricardo turned into the, ah, poacher Ricardo, if you follow me -'
'Well not absolutely,' Smiley confessed mildly.
Sol had no such scruples about unpalatable truths. 'Long as the war was on, Ricardo carried dope for the Company to keep the home fires burning up in the hill villages. War ended, he carried it for himself. He had the connects and he knew where the bodies were buried. He went independent, that's all.'
'Thank you,' said Smiley, and Sol went back to scratching his crew cut.
For the second time, Martello backed toward the story of Ricardo's embarrassing resurrection.
They must have done a deal between them, thought Guillam. Martello does the talking. 'Smiley's our contact,' Martello would have said. 'We play him our way.'
On the second of September seventy-three, said, Martello, an un-named narcotics agent in the South East Asian theatre, as he insisted on describing him, 'a young man quite new to the field, George', received a nocturnal telephone call at his home from a self-styled Captain Tiny Ricardo, hitherto believed dead, formerly a Laos mercenary with Captain Rocky. Ricardo offered a sizeable quantity of raw opium at standard buy-in rates. In addition to the opium, however, he was offering hot information at what he called a bargain-basement price for a quick sale. That is to say fifty thousand US dollars in small notes, and a West German passport for a one-time journey out. The un-named narcotics agent met Ricardo later that night at a parking lot and they quickly agreed on the sale of the opium.