Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

expression on his immature but aging face, as they sat in their half-circle round the meagre fire, called him a lot worse than that.
    “Well, I guess I’d better make my pitch,” Tarr said pleasantly as he settled his easy body into the chair.

5
    “I t happened around six months ago,” Tarr began.
    “April,” Guillam snapped. “Just keep it precise, shall we, all the way along?”
    “April, then,” Tarr said equably. “Things were pretty quiet in Brixton. I guess there must have been half a dozen of us on standby. Pete Sembrini, he was in from Rome; Cy Vanhofer had just made a hit in Budapest”—he gave a mischievous smile—“Ping-Pong and snooker in the Brixton waiting room. Right, Mr. Guillam?”
    “It was the silly season.”
    When out of the blue, said Tarr, came a flash requisition from Hong Kong residency.
    “They had a low-grade Soviet trade delegation in town, chasing up electrical goods for the Moscow market. One of the delegates was stepping wide in the nightclubs. Name of Boris; Mr. Guillam has the details. No previous record. They’d had the tabs on him for five days, and the delegation was booked in for fourteen more. Politically it was too hot for the local boys to handle but they reckoned a crash approach might do the trick. The yield didn’t look that special, but so what? Maybe we’d just buy him for stock—right, Mr. Guillam?”
    Stock meant sale or exchange with another intelligence service: a commerce in small-time defectors handled by the scalp-hunters.
    Ignoring Tarr, Guillam said, “South East Asia was Tarr’s parish. He was sitting around with nothing to do, so I ordered him to make a site inspection and report back by cable.”
    Each time someone else spoke, Tarr sank into a dream. His gaze settled upon the speaker, a mistiness entered his eyes, and there was a pause like a coming back before he began again.
    “So I did what Mr. Guillam ordered,” he said. “I always do, don’t I, Mr. Guillam? I’m a good boy really, even if I am impulsive.”
    He flew the next night—Saturday, March 31st—with an Australian passport describing him as a car salesman and with two virgin Swiss escape passports hidden in the lining of his suitcase. These were contingency documents to be filled in as circumstances demanded: one for Boris, one for himself. He made a car rendezvous with the Hong Kong resident not far from his hotel, the Golden Gate on Kowloon.
    Here Guillam leaned over to Smiley and murmured, “Tufty Thesinger, buffoon. Ex-major, King’s African Rifles. Percy Alleline’s appointment.”
    Thesinger produced a report on Boris’s movements based on one week’s surveillance.
    “Boris was a real oddball,” Tarr said. “I couldn’t make him out. He’d been boozing every night without a break. He hadn’t slept for a week and Thesinger’s watchers were folding at the knees. All day he trailed round after the delegation, inspecting factories, chiming in at discussions, and being the bright young Soviet official.”
    “How young?” Smiley asked.
    Guillam threw in: “His visa application gave him born Minsk 1946.”
    “Evening time, he’d go back to the Alexandra Lodge, an old shanty house out on North Point where the delegation had holed out. He’d eat with the crew; then around nine he’d ease out the side entrance, grab a taxi, and belt down to the mainline night spots around Pedder Street. His favourite haunt was the Cat’s Cradle in Queen’s Road, where he bought drinks for local businessmen and acted like Mr. Personality. He might stay there till midnight. From the Cradle he cut right down to Aberdeen Harbour, a place called Angelika’s, where the drink was cheaper. Alone. It’s mainly floating restaurants and the big spenders down there, but Angelika’s is a landbound café with a hellhole in the basement. He’d have three or four drinks and keep the receipts. Mainly he drank brandy but now and then he’d have a vodka to vary his diet. He’d had one