The Secret Pilgrim by John le Carré Page A

know.” I was startled by his sudden change of tack. “Jeremy, I suppose.”
    â€œJeremy who?”
    â€œGalt. He was on the course.”
    â€œAnd women?”
    â€œI told you. No one special.”
    â€œHaggarty wanted to take Ben into East Berlin with him, make the introduction himself,” Smiley resumed. “The Fifth Floor wouldn’t wear that. They were trying to wean Haggarty away from his agent, and they don’t hold with sending two men into badland where one will do. So Haggarty took Ben through the rendezvous procedures on a street map, and Ben went into East Berlin alone. On the Wednesday, he did a dry run and reconnoitred the location. On the Thursday he went in again, this time for real. He went in legally, driven in a Control Commission Humber car. He crossed at Checkpoint Charlie at three in the afternoon and slipped out of the car at the agreed spot. His substitute rode in it for three hours, all as planned. Ben rejoined the car successfully at six-ten,and recrossed into West Berlin at six-fifty in the evening. His return was logged by the checkpoint. He had himself dropped at his flat. A faultless run. Willis and Haggarty were waiting for him at Station Headquarters, but he telephoned from his flat instead. He said the rendezvous had gone to plan, but he’d brought nothing back except a high temperature and a ferocious stomach bug. Could they postpone their debriefing till morning? Lamentably they could. They haven’t seen him or heard from him since. He sounded cheerful despite his ailment, which they put down to nerves. Has Ben ever been ill on you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe said their mutual friend had been in great form, real character and so forth. Obviously he could say no more on the open telephone. His bed wasn’t slept in, he took no extra clothes with him. There’s no proof that he was in his flat when he rang, there’s no proof he’s been kidnapped, there’s no proof he hasn’t been. If he was going to defect, why didn’t he stay in East Berlin? They can’t have turned him round and played him back at us or they wouldn’t have arrested his network. And if they wanted to kidnap him, why not do it while he was their side of the Wall? There’s no hard evidence that he left West Berlin by any of the approved corridors— train, autobahn, air. The controls are not efficient, and as you say, he was trained. For all we know, he hasn’t left Berlin at all. On the other hand, we thought he might have come to you. Don’t look so appalled. You’re his friend, aren’t you? His best friend? Closer to him than anyone? Young Galt doesn’t compare. He told us so himself. ‘Ben’s great buddy was Ned,’ he said. ‘If Ben was going to turn to any of us, it would have to be Ned.’ The evidence rather bears that out, I’m afraid.”
    â€œWhat evidence?”
    No pregnant pause, no dramatic change of tone, no warning of any kind: just dear old George Smiley being his apologetic self. “There’s a letter in his flat, addressed to you,” he said. “It’s not dated, just thrown in a drawer. A scrawl rather than a letter. Hewas probably drunk. It’s a love letter, I’m afraid.” And, having handed me a photocopy to read, he fetched us both another whisky.
    Perhaps I do it to help me look away from the discomfort of the moment. But always when I set that scene in my memory I find myself switching to Smiley’s point of view. I imagine how it must have felt to be in his position.
    What he had before him is easy enough to picture. See a striving trainee trying to look older than his years, a pipe-smoker, a sailor, a wise nodder, a boy who could not wait for middle age, and you have the young Ned of the early sixties.
    But what he had behind him was not half so easy, and it was capable of altering his reading of me drastically. The Circus, though I