"(COUGHS)" "(DISTANT TELEPHONE RINGS)" "Right...we shall start." " Has he called yet?" " No." "Six minutes to go yet, Control." "(PHONE RINGS)" "(INSERTS MONEY)" "(MAN) Will you speak up, please?" "City Removers here." "I believe you wanted an estimate." "You're always welcome." "You did exactly what I told you?" "Talked to nobody?" "Remember, Jim, trust no one." "No one." "You work to me alone." "I'm sorry, there's no vodka." "I didn't expect any." "(POURS DRINKS)" "I've got a job for you." "Familiar territory." "Czechoslovakia." " Perhaps a bit too familiar." " Which identity do you want to use?" "I'd suggest Vladimir Hajek." " Still a Czech journalist?" " Yes." " Based in Paris?" " Yes." " Has anyone else used him?" " No." "Do you agree?" "(DISTANT SIREN)" "I think it's safe." "(SIRENS BLARE)" "I've had an offer of service, Jim..." "on the military side." "His cover name is Testify." "You're a military-minded chap." "You should hit it off." "He's fond of horses." "Something else you've got in common." "We can chat polo, I suppose, sir." "His real name is Stevcek." "At the moment he's an artillery general." "In the past, he's worked in close liaison with Russian Intelligence...very close." "And now he wants to talk to us." "I have personally interviewed an intermediary in Austria." "Stevcek now wants to...testify... ..to a ranking officer of mine who can speak Czech." "Why?" "There was a girlfriend - a student." "20 years' difference between them." "Such things happen." "She was shot during the uprising in '68." "Stevcek never forgave the Russians." "He's been after their blood ever since." "Lain low, stayed friendly." "All the time, he's been waiting his chance." "Now he's ready." "How sure are you?" "(TRAFFIC DRIVES BY)" "Stevcek." "Rocketry...ballistics." "Fourth man in Czech Army Intelligence." "Secretary to the National Internal Security Committee." "Anglo-American desk in Prague." "He's big, Jim, and he's got treasure for us." "He's worked for Moscow Centre's England section." "He'll give us the name of the agent Moscow planted inside our set-up." "We have a mole, Jim." " In London?" " Very near the top." "In the Circus?" "One of the top five." "Their codename for him is Gerald." "We've a rotten apple, Jim, and the maggots are eating up the Circus." "These people?" "One of these?" "Why not?" "Are the British incapable of deception?" "We've turned members of other outfits." "Russians, Poles, Czechs, Americans." "Why shouldn't there be a mole in the Circus?" "Now..." "look at them." " Control, I know who they are." " We've got to have codenames for them." "Remember the nursery rhyme - "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor"?" "Finish it." "Richman, poorman, beggarman, thief." "Percy Alleline, Director of Operations" " Tinker." "Tinker." "Bill Haydon, Head of Personnel" " Tailor." "Roy Bland, Head of Iron Curtain Networks" " Soldier." "We leave out sailor." "Too much like tailor." " Richman." " Don't like it." "Sounds like police work - fraud, Swiss banks." "Toby Esterhase, Top Lamplighter, exquisite head sleuth" " Poorman." "Yes..." "Poorman." "And George Smiley, my devoted deputy" " Beggarman." " Have you got it?" " I'll remember." "All I want from you, Jim, is...one word." "Just the one codename." "If you have to scrawl it on the front door of the Embassy in Prague or phone our resident hood and shout it in his ear before you go underground - if there's some kind of a fumble and it's necessary - just give me that one word." "Remember, if you're caught, deny me." "I don't know you're there." "Where do I meet Stevcek?" "How?" "When?" "On Friday March 20... ..Stevcek will be inspecting the weapon research station at Tisnov near Brno, about 100 miles north of the Austrian border." "He'll be visiting a hunting lodge for the weekend." "It's a place high up in the forest not far from Racice." "He'll provide you with an escort from Brno, and he expects you on the evening of Saturday March 21st." "Mm." "What does he get from us?" "The usual assurances." "If and when he wants to come, we'll look after him." "One word will do it, Jim." "I'm almost there." "(PHONE RINGS)" "(PHONE RINGS)" "(CZECH SINGING/BRASS BAND)" "(MEN CHEER)" "(THE FOOTBALL FANS CHANT)" "(FANS' VOICES FADE)" "(HE COUGHS)" "(WOMEN'S VOICES)" "(CAR HORN BLARES)" "(THUNDER)" "(DRIVER SPLUTTERS)" "(SHOUTED ORDERS)" "(RAPID GUNFIRE)" "(RAPID GUNFIRE)" "(GUNFIRE)" "(GUNFIRE CONTINUES)" "(SHOUTS ORDERS)" "(RAPID GUNFIRE)" "(EXCITED VOICES)" "(MAN SPEAKING IN CZECH)" "(SCREAMS)" "Barabbas was a bookseller." "Mr Smiley, please." "You're making an investment." "Remember that when I sell it back to you." "A pleasure to do business with you, sir." "You always have a joke for me." " We could trust this to the Post Office." " I'll send it on." " I'll slip out that way, if you don't mind." " Not at all, sir." "George!" "Hello, there!" "My dear boy!" "The maestro himself!" "Don't say you've forgotten me?" " Hello, Roddy." " How marvellous to run into you." "They told me you were locked up with the monks in St Gallen or somewhere!" "Self-exile, they said." "I knew it wasn't true." "You, George, you'd never leave England." "You're not capable of such an act of abandonment, no matter how shabbily the Circus treated you." "So...what have you been doing all these months?" "I want to know everything, every little bit." "How's the delectable wife?" "How is the lovely Lady Ann?" "Not in town at the moment, I hear." "Pound to a penny you're shopping for her." "Little prezzies all the time, they tell me." "Are you back on the beat, George..." "or did you never really chuck it in?" "Has it all been cover?" "Cover, George?" " Roddy, I've retired." " All right, George, if you say so." " You look well, but I mustn't delay you." " No, George, really!" "My friend, you can't get away like that!" "Roddy Martindale simply wouldn't let you." "It's months since we last had a chin-wag!" "Let me buy you an aperitif and then let me take you to dinner." "Allow me that privilege." "Honour me, George." "I can tell that no one else has claimed you tonight." " It's kind of you..." " It's my role in life." "We all need to be good at something." " Wasn't Jebedee your old tutor?" " Yes, once upon a time." "How do you rate Sparke, the one who came from the School of Oriental Languages?" "Not quite there." "Had trouble with his nerves, they say." "What a pity." "All dead and gone." "Only appreciated by a select few, like you and me." "You flatter me." "Now, George, let's talk about your old boss." "Control." "He kept his name a secret." "Shall we talk about Control?" " If you insist." " It wasn't a secret to you, was it?" "He never had any secrets from you, his trusted right hand." "I don't know." "That's the point about secrets." "Close as thieves Control and Smiley were, so they say." " THEY are very complimentary." " Don't flirt, George!" "I'm an old trooper." "You and Control were just like that." "That's why you were thrown out." "It's why Bill Haydon's got your job." "It's why Percy Alleline got into Control's chair when it ought to be YOU and why Bill Haydon's his cup-bearer and you're out altogether." " If you say so, Roddy." " I do." "I say more than that." "Far more." "I say this." "Control never died at all." "He's been seen... ..in South Africa." "Now, we can't blame a man for wanting a bit of peace in the evening of his life." "Willy Andrewartha walked straight into him in Jo'burg Airport in the waiting room." "Not a ghost." "Flesh." "That's the most idiotic story I've heard." "Control died of a heart attack." "After a long illness, through which he worked." "He hated South Africa." "He hated everywhere except Surrey, the Circus and Lord's Cricket Ground." "Yes, of course." "Willy was always the most god-awful liar." "I said, "Willy, you should be ashamed of yourself."" "I...suppose what put the last nail into Control's coffin was the Czecho scandal, the poor devil that got shot in the back." "The one who was thick with Haydon." "With his picture in the newspaper under some fictitious name, but we know his REAL name." "Jim Prideaux." "Somehow I don't think I can ever quite believe in Percy Alleline as Chief, can you?" "It might be just my natural cynicism, but power sits poorly on those we've grown up with." "There are so few who can carry it off." "Percy's such an obvious fellow, especially after Control, who was a positive serpent." "How can anyone take Alleline seriously?" "All that heavy good fellowship." "One thinks of him in the old days, lolling in the Travellers' bar, sucking away on that log of a pipe..." "and buying drinks for all the moguls." "Really!" "One does like one's perfidy to be subtle, don't you agree?" "What's his knack?" "Living off the wits of his subordinates?" "Really, Roddy, I can't help you." "I never knew Percy as a force, only as a..." "Striver?" "Right." "With his eyes on Control's purple, day and night." "Now he's actually wearing it and the mob loves him." "So who's doing the business for him?" " Who is it?" " I cannot help you." "Who's the clever-boots?" "Well, not Percy, that's for sure." "Don't say the Americans trust us again." "They'd never fall for Percy." "Please stop this!" "Wonderfully well he's doing." "Little committees popping up, red carpet for Percy wherever he goes, tripping the light fantastic in Whitehall!" " You're out of my depth, truly." " So who's earning him his reputation?" " Anything you want, sir?" " No, thank you." "We've finished now." "It's my party, George." "I'll get the bill when I'm ready." "So who's pulling the strings for Percy Puppet?" "How about dashing Bill Haydon, your old rival... in EVERY sense, I'm told." "Of course, he never was orthodox, was he?" "Genius never is." "All right, then, it's Roy Bland, the shop-soiled white hope." "The first redbrick don to make the Circus." "If it's neither of them, and Control is really dead, then there's only one possibility left." "It's someone who's pretending to be in retirement." "YOU, George." "Admit it!" "You featherhead, Martindale!" "You pompous, bogus, gossiping old featherhead!" "Roy Bland is not redbrick." "He was at St Antony's College, Oxford." "Oh, don't be silly, dear." "Of course St Antony is redbrick." "Makes no difference there's a bit of sandstone in the same street." "Just because he was your protégé." "I suppose he's Haydon's boy now." "Bill was father to them all, wasn't he?" "Or something like that." " It's not mine, thank you." " Don't tip him." "It's a guinea at Christmas." "Anyway, it's MY party." " Bill draws them like bees to a honey pot." " Goodnight, Roddy." "Fancy a nightcap?" "Start afresh with the bubbly?" "Why not, George?" "I think I will." "Of course, Bill's got the glamour." "Not like some of us." "Star quality, I call it." "One of the very few." "I'm told that women literally bow down before him...if that's what women do." "Goodnight." "Love to Ann." "EVERYBODY'S love to Ann." "Bits of sandstone...shop-soiled white hope." "Everybody's love to Ann." "Oh, damn!" "Oh...damn!" " Peter?" " (SIRENS BLARE OUTSIDE)" "I'd leave that coat on if I were you, George." "We've a long way to go." "Well, you're not me." "Before I go anywhere, I shall change out of my sopping shoes." " And, also, make a pot of coffee." " You sound a little testy, George." " Lacon is waiting for you." " Me, Peter?" "George, I've been sent to deliver you." "I've been reviewing my situation in the last half-hour of hell and I've come to a very grave decision." "After a lifetime of living by my wits and on my memory," "I shall give myself up full-time to the profession of forgetting." "I'll put an end to emotional attachments which have long outlived their purpose." "Namely the Circus, this house, my whole past." "I shall sell up and buy a cottage, in the Cotswolds, I think." "Steeple Aston sounds about right." "Do I need overnight things?" " I'm not taking any." " I shall establish myself as a mild eccentric." "Discursive, withdrawn, but possessing one or two loveable habits, such as muttering to myself as I bumble along innocent pavements." "I shall become an oak of my own generation." "You make the coffee." "You know where everything is." "You can even pick my front door locks." "Clever Peter Guillam." "I saw you parking this toy in Curzon Street." "I ran away." "Good guess on your part." " Why did you think I was looking for you?" " I hoped you weren't, but you found me." "You had to come home sometime." " It's far too young for you, Peter." " It's quick." "I'm surprised you didn't get thrown out, too." "You had all the qualifications for dismissal." "Good at your work, loyal, discreet." "What happened tonight, George?" "How's Ann?" "Roddy Martindale happened tonight." "Why do I permit it?" "I tell myself it's for politeness' sake," "It's not." "It's weakness." "And the fact that I've nothing better to do." "My wife's fine, thank you." "(SIREN BLARES)" "They've put me in charge of scalphunters." "You are Jim Prideaux's successor?" "You?" "Looking after the heavy mob?" "Why not?" "Tucked away at Brixton behind the broken glass and barbed wire, despatching thugs occasionally, kept at arm's length from the Circus ringmasters." " How is Jim?" "Do you know?" " In quarantine." "I don't mean to pry." "I merely ask." "Can he get around?" "Can he walk and so on?" " Bad backs can be terribly tricky." " The word is he manages pretty well." "He's back in England." "Address unknown." "Travel." "Is that still the scalphunters' official name?" "Hit and run, cosh and carry." "Sorry." "Now, Control always preached that good intelligence work is gradual and rests on a kind of gentleness." " It's not my department." " No." "The scalphunters were the exception Control allowed to his own rule." "On Bill Haydon's persuasion." "A reflection of Bill temperament, of course." "The solo initiative." "Very dashing...very audacious." "(TRAFFIC ROARS BY)" "I'm sorry, Peter." "What?" " Lateralism." "Are you familiar with the word?" " I most certainly am not." "It's the "in" doctrine." "We used to go up and down." "Now we go along." " What does that mean?" " Before, the Circus ran itself by regions." "Africa, Satellites, Russia, China, South East Asia, West Indies." "Each region was commanded by its own juju man." " Control held the strings." "Remember?" " It strikes a distant chord." "Today everything operational is under one hat." "It's called London Station." "Regions are out, lateralism is in." "Who's station commander?" "Bill Haydon." "His No.2 is Roy Bland." "Toby Esterhase runs between them like a poodle." "They're a service within the service - share secrets and don't mix with the proles." " There are three of them and Alleline." " That's right." " The object is to make us more secure." " A very good idea." "Why did Lacon send you for me?" "Why did he send ME for you or WHY did he send me?" "Quite right." "I should've known better than to ask." "Remember your last day at the Circus?" "One day before Control departed and the new regime took over." "You stuck your head round my door and said "I've been sacked"." "We went out and you got drunk." "Why pick me, George?" "I was pretty low grade." "Running some very sketchy networks of merchant seamen - whatever Poles, Russians, Chinks, I could cobble together" "Why me, George?" "You want a reason?" "You fastened on that word when I asked why you'd been kicked out." " I'll tell you what you said." " I hope this won't be embarrassing." "You said, "Reason as logic or reason as motive or reason as a way of life?" ""They don't have to give reasons." "I can write my own," ""and that is not the same as the half-baked tolerance that comes from no longer caring."" "I thought that was pretty impressive stuff from a man as drunk as you were." "At least I had the good sense not to let you drive me home." "Lacon sent me for you, George." " (GUILLAM) It's like Dracula's blood bank!" " Lacon said it was his Hampshire Camelot." "Built by a teetotal millionaire." "He thinks that explains everything." "I'm so out of touch." "Does Lacon have any particular title nowadays?" "Just Sir Oliver of the Cabinet Office." "Permanent watchdog of intelligence affairs." "He loves being one of nature's prefects." "(RINGS DOORBELL)" "George, hello!" "Thanks for coming!" "Come on in, will you?" "Guillam." "Been enjoying retirement, George?" "You haven't missed the warmth of human contact?" "I rather would, I think." "One's work with old buddies." "Oh, I think I manage very well, thank you." "Yes, yes, I'm sure I do." "And you?" "All goes well with you?" "Oh, no great changes." "No, no, all very smooth." " Charlotte got her scholarship to Roedean." " Oh, very good." "How about your wife?" "In the pink and so on?" "Very bonny, thank you." "Ah, all spruce and shipshape again, Guillam?" "You were grubby." "He did look a ruffian, didn't he, George?" "Well...shall we?" "Please, George, I want him to talk particularly to you." "All right, Fawn, lock us in, please." " I think you know Mr Smiley, don't you?" " 'Course I do." "You once gave me a job." "You remember?" "Tarr, sir." "Ricki Tarr." "The lawyer's boy from Marseilles." "You changed my first nappies." "They were very tough interviews you gave us tender young recruits." "Of course, 12 years ago." "It's that long." "You don't look any different to me, sir." "No, 12 years ago nobody, but nobody, got taken on unless we got past you." "Not even scalphunters, who aren't quite your type." " We all had to get the nod from Mr Smiley." " Tarr." "Of course I remember you." "Your father was an Australian, I recall." "A solicitor and a Nonconformist lay preacher." "Altogether a most unusual chap to pop up in Marseilles." "Just such odd circumstances do seem to provide us with...suitable personnel." "Bad boys like Ricki." "Daddy thought he could beat the sin out of me, but you knew better." "He only beat it further in... ..and that's what scalphunters are made of." " Isn't that right, Mr Guillam?" " We're waiting, Tarr." "Yes, we ought to get on." " I guess I'd better make my pitch." " (GUILLAM) Let's keep it precise." "Before you begin, Ricki, do I understand correctly that no one at the Circus knows you're in England?" "Only Mr Guillam." "You're officially absent without leave." "On the wanted list." "I think I'm safe now." "I've got a story to tell you all about spies." "And if it's true, which I think it is, you boys are gonna need a whole new organisation, right?" "Shall I start with the day you sent me to Lisbon?" "It changed my life." "You might find it's going to change all your lives." "(CHORISTER) # Lord, now lettest thou thy servant" "# Depart in peace" "# According to" "# Thy word" "# For mine eyes have seen" "# Thy salvation" "# Which thou hast prepared before the face" "# Of all people" "# To be a light" "# To lighten" "# The gentiles" "# And to be the glory" "# Of thy people" "# Israel" "# Glory be to the Father" "# And to the Son" "# And to the Holy Ghost" "# As it was in the beginning" "# Is now and ever shall be" "# World without end" "# Amen #" "You're officially absent without leave." "On the wanted list." "I think I'm safe now." "I've got a story to tell you all about spies." "And if it's true, which I think it is, you boys are gonna need a whole new organisation, right?" "Shall I start with the day you sent me to Lisbon?" "It changed my life." "You might find it's going to change all your lives." "(TARR) Our resident buffoon - old galloping major called Tufty Thessinger - wanted a helping hand." "My boss says you've got your eyes on a likely piece of merchandise for us." " What's his style, then, this Boris?" " He's a real Flash Harry." "Not your common-or-garden Russian granite-face." "During the day, he fulfils his norm like the rest." "There's a mixed bag of technical advisers." "Boris is with civil engineers." "At night, he makes his own arrangements." "Bashes the bars and clubs as if there's no tomorrow." "The man hasn't slept for a week." "My boys are folding at the knees." "A Muscovite with official connections and an appetite for the fleshpots seems ripe for the picking." " Always use another defector, can't we?" " Absolutely." "Got to keep in stock." "Nothing else on him, apart from the booze?" "If I'd got something to blackmail him on, I would hardly have needed London to come and fix it." "Temper, temper, Tufty!" "You think we Russians disapprove of comfort." "No, that's the Chinese." "All miserable boiler suits and the smallest comfort for the biggest number." "Not for me." "Boris looks after number one like any real person the world over." "It's nice talking to you." "Some people, when I say I'm from Moscow, I see this look in their faces." "I know what they are thinking - "He's going to indoctrinate us," ""put our names in his little black book and then awful men in black" ""will tap at our door at night and they'll say, 'Boris says you are good friend of Russia" ""'and you'll tell us all about the secret sex life of your MP and the mayor."'" "Let me get you all another drink." "Yes, indeed, be my guest." "Waiter!" "(SINGS PORTUGUESE LAMENT)" "(ROMANTIC SONG PLAYS)" "(WOMAN LAUGHS RAUCOUSLY)" "And I am telling YOU we're definitely in the wrong ball game with this, chummy." "That's a professional, a Moscow Centre-trained hood." "The way he sets himself." "That alone!" "Well...if you're right." "OK, you know." "He'd be quite a catch." "We scalphunters are forbidden to trawl for double agents." "New orders from above." "At the first smell of the opposition, drop hot potato into ample lap of London Station." "No, I'm cabling Guillam "no sale" and booking a flight home." "Okey-dokey, Ricki." "And since the job is finished... ..let us seal it, so to speak." "Nags me a bit, though, this Boris." "Makes his rounds every night, does he?" "Never missed yet." "I told you, my boys..." "Well, before I go, I might just take a peep inside Boris's kennel, see what's under the mattress." "Can't be any harm in that, can there?" " Orders is orders." " I like keeping my hand in." "It's been quiet lately." "You can get rusty." "Well, enjoy yourself, my son, but don't break any eggs, Ricki, please." "I have to live here." "Remember?" "(WOMAN'S VOICE) Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall receive comfort." "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness... ..for they shall be filled." "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain..." "Boris?" "Good question, lady." "Where IS Boris?" "This is his room, right?" "I wish you no harm." "Sorry if I frightened you." "You caught me by surprise." "I wasn't expecting a lady, just Boris." " I'm his wife." " I don't wanna upset you..." " Does my husband know you?" " No point in pussyfooting, lady." "Your Boris walked off with my girl." "That's a liberty." "To add insult to injury, he was drinking on my wallet." "I thought I'd come up here and have a word with Boris." "Sorry, but that's the way it is." "Thanks for not screaming the place down." "You should be careful what you say about my husband." "He's an important man." " He has influential friends." " You frightening me off, Mrs Boris?" "I've got quite a name for looking after myself." "I'm your original Australian self-made success story." "Rags to riches and punching all the way." "Bureaucrats don't scare me, not even the Russian kind!" "Don't call me Mrs Boris." "My name's Irina." " I'm Tony Lawrence." " Are you?" "Yeah." "You just mention that name in Adelaide." "I'm in car sales, property, frozen foods." "If I was Boris, I wouldn't be out chasing other blokes' women." " I wouldn't feel the need." " Boris is Boris." "And Lawrence..." "..is someone else." "I don't know anything about Australia." "Perhaps somewhere tomorrow?" "The evening?" "Are you sure you don't want something stronger?" "You look as if it might help." "Don't misunderstand me, Irina." "You look great." "Really lovely." "I just meant it might...relax you." "You seem more scared now than you were last night." "It can't be me." "I'm not supposed to do this - meet people, talk without official approval." " I can't do that." " Where's the harm?" "Just two strangers in a foreign land getting to like each other." "It's normal behaviour." "I do special work." "I travel as a trade delegate in my own right." "Textiles." "I'm highly trained, experienced." "Tired of it." "I hate it." "I want to escape from it." " Textiles?" " It's like a prison." "I need someone to help me." "I can be quite brave, Lawrence." " Tony!" " I shall call you Lawrence." "Colonel Lawrence." "Like Lawrence of Arabia." "He was English." "I know." "There's an English expression." ""It takes one to spot one."" "You wouldn't have fooled me for long, even without putting those wedges in the door." "It's the way we look for things, isn't it?" "We don't stare." "We don't seem to be looking." "We are not like tourists..." "or prostitutes...or pickpockets." "We just know how to see." "Boris isn't as good as he ought to be." "He enjoys showing off too much, so he misses things." "He missed you, didn't he?" "But you didn't miss him, did you, Colonel?" " Are you very good?" " The best." "God gave me ALL the talents." "Try me." "I like being in the presence of Christianity." "I understand why some women become nuns." "Give themselves." "Their whole lives given...willingly." "There's freedom in that." "I've met Christians I've envied very deeply." "Envy is a sin, I know that, but I confess it here in this holy place." "There, Christians were being interrogated." "The worst time to see people." "And the best sometimes." "I'm studying the Bible." "Secretly, of course." "That isn't freedom." ""Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden."" "Is that it?" "Do you know how it goes on?" "There's a village below here." "Right by the sea." "Very quiet." "We could take a room." "Would you like that?" "How long have you worked with Boris?" "They made us a team a long time ago." "He's a specialist in picking up foreign businessmen for Moscow Centre." "I look after communications for him." "The special codes." "Couldn't we be a team?" "You could take me to England." "That's what I want, Lawrence." "You could." "I know something." "Something so important." "It's one of the biggest secrets ever." "It would make you so famous." "But it's so secret." "Tell me." "Tell me, Irina." " I'm frightened." " I can look after you." "You'll be safe." "I can only speak to your Chief." "Alleline." "Nobody else." "It's too dangerous." "I can only speak to Alleline." " Tell me." " Only the Head of the Circus." "I've got to go back now." "They'll be looking for me." "There's too much to tell now." "Maybe tomorrow...if I can." "The cemetery." " Come on, Lawrence!" " We can talk in the car." "Tomorrow." "There's too much." "I have to be calm... ..or tonight they'll notice." "I drink too much sometimes." "They are used to that." "Some of the priests are drunkards." "They told me that at school." "When I was still in Moscow, before I started travelling with Boris," "I had a relationship with a filing clerk at the Centre in Dzerzhinsky Square." "We went against regulations." "We used to meet outside." "He was very sweet." "Your looks remind me of him." "His name was Ivlov...and he told me a story." "He was frightened to... ..but sometimes, if you know something so big, so secret, you have to tell it to someone." "It has to be someone you love... ..like I'm telling you now." "It's all right, darling." "It's all right." "Have you heard of Karla?" "He's an old fox, the most cunning of them all at the Centre." "He works so secretly that some people don't even know he exists." "This story Ivlov told me concerns one of Karla's greatest conspiracies and it is happening in England." "Do you know what is meant by the word "mole"?" "Yes." "Moles burrow very deep into the fabric of Western imperialism." "They are very dear to Moscow because it may taken 15 or 20 years before they are used." "Well, my friend Ivlov told me he had worked in London." "His cover was as a driver at the Embassy." "Do you have a name to give me?" "Ivlov's work name in London was "Lapin"." "He didn't know it meant rabbit in French." "It fitted because he was just a nobody, serving drinks with women at receptions." "But, all the time, he was the secret right-hand man to Colonel Gregor Viktorov, and Viktorov is the agent who briefs and debriefs the mole." "His name, Irina." "In London, Viktorov's cover is Cultural Attaché, known as Polyakov." "I'm so frightened." "So tired." "You must take me home with you." "We could be happy." "Finish the story." "Who's the mole?" "Where is he?" "I can only speak to Alleline." "We are in danger." "You must get me to him." "Face to face with the Head of the Circus." "Nothing else is safe." "You trust me, don't you?" " I want you." " Alleline will take some persuading." "Tell him..." "I have information crucial to the well-being of the Circus." "Use those words." "(THUNDER)" "Morning, Tufty." "Can I come and play with your toys?" "I thought you'd finished your hols, Ricki." "What must they be thinking back home?" "They'll be all right." "I've got a postcard to send them." "They're going to love me for it." "(PHONE RINGS)" "Thank you." "How much are you going to tell me?" "The message is graded "flash" to London Station... ..and "By hand of duty officer only"." "Uh-hm." "Drastic stuff, eh?" "That's maximum security limit." "What did you get on Boris?" "It's your show, my son." "(TELEPRINTER TYPES)" "Nothing for you, Ricki... ..again." "(TELEPRINTER TYPES)" "(TARR) "Supply date of intake into Moscow Centre." ""Name her present Head of Section." "Name previous sections employing her." ""Also... " Someone's stalling." "But if that's what they want." "(IRINA) "Lawrence, listen, I'm talking to you." ""This is my gift for you in case they take me away before I can speak to Alleline." ""I would prefer to give you my life, Lawrence," ""but I think it more likely that this secret will be all I have to make you happy." ""Use it well." ""I started to tell you about Ivlov," ""who's known in London, or used to be, as 'Lapin'," ""and about Viktorov, who's really Polyakov." ""The mole in London is known by the codename of Gerald." ""There are many remarkable measures to preserve his security - most secret." ""Written reports from Gerald to Karla in Moscow Centre" ""are cut in two and sent by separate couriers, even after coding." ""And Gerald's output has sometimes been almost too much for Polyakov to handle." ""Some of it is spoken onto tape at secret meetings" ""and can only be played back on special machines." ""There is also undeveloped film." ""Anyone opening the reels wrongly destroys it immediately." ""Lawrence, this is the secret I'm giving you..." ""..with all my love." ""The mole Gerald is a high functionary in British Intelligence." ""Very close to the Head of the Circus." ""Lawrence, I fear for the safety of anyone employed by the Circus." ""Take care with this knowledge." ""I'm telling you this because I'm afraid it's all finished for me." ""The guards have started watching me like animals." ""Were you indiscreet?" "Did you tell them in London more than you let me think?" ""Now you understand why only Alleline would do." ""But do not blame yourself. "" "(WOMAN SINGS PORTUGUESE LAMENT)" ""Will they let us live in Scotland, Lawrence?" ""I've read everything about Scotland." ""It's the Garden of Eden, isn't it?"" "Read it!" ""In my heart, I am free." "Inside me burns a new and blessed light." ""I used to think that the secret world was a separate place and I was banished..." ""..but God has shown me we have only to open the door and step outside to be free." ""Always long for the light which I have found." ""It is called love." "Now I shall take this to our secret place while there is still time." ""Why could you remember so few prayers?" "Your father must have been a great man."" "And that's it." " See?" "She was crazy." " That's not the original notebook?" " No, sir." " Where is it?" " I put it back in the dead letter box." " And then?" "I tried the airport, just on the off chance." "Put it this way, sir, I had to know!" "I got hold of a little Italian air hostess." "She liked me." "She said an unscheduled Soviet plane took off a few hours before." "Centre of attraction was an invalid - lady in a coma." "They carted her on a stretcher." "Her face was bandaged." "The rest of the party included two male nurses and a doctor." "I didn't let it go at that." "I checked the hotel." "No Irina, no Boris." "(MOURNFUL CELLO MUSIC)" "My musical daughters." "Perhaps she really was ill." "Not much more than 24 hours between your first telegram and Irina's departure." " You can hardly lay it at London's door." " You can...just." "If someone in London had good footwork and in Moscow, too." "That's what I told myself - what you said." "My very words, Mr Smiley." "The Russians could've tumbled to her having it off with me or she'd started blabbing to Boris to pay him off for boozing and whoring, but then I thought, "Come on, Ricki, that was gold she was giving you!" ""She had to sweat it out of herself!" "'" "I figured they'd give her another going over on the plane, then the big boys would take over." "Not more than a day or two before they went to the cemetery." " So you made yourself scarce." " He panicked and went native." "Istanbul." " Playing the loving father with his daughter." " That's right." "Danny's my little kid." "The mother seems to be leader of the pack of his numerous wives." "You've been away three months." "Why choose this particular moment to come to us?" "Go on." " Did something frighten you?" " Someone looking for me." " Who?" " I didn't find out." "That's why I came." "Now, Ricki...passports." " Who are you at the moment?" " Poole." "British." "I reckoned Lawrence wasn't the flavour of the month in Moscow, so I had that run up." " It's not bad." " In Lisbon, he had two Swiss escapes." " One for him, one for Boris." " What did you do with them?" " How did you get rid of them?" " Burned them." " How did you get back to England?" " Via Dublin." "I told Mr Guillam." "I'm checking." "Be damn careful!" "I don't want the wrong people on my back!" "He took my gun away, too." "He shouldn't have done that, Mr Smiley." "Why did you go to Mr Guillam?" "Didn't it cross your mind he might turn you over to Alleline?" "Mr Guillam's my boss." "I don't figure he likes the new arrangements at the Circus any more than YOU do." "We don't need that, Tarr." "He kept well out of sight." "When he gave me his story, I rang Sir Oliver from a call box." "I rang him here, not London." "There was no reason to suppose the phone was tapped." "There was every reason." "Unusual for Moscow Centre to use a husband-wife team." "Hard to believe... ..unless they had children in Moscow." " Hostages." " They have." "It's true." "Common law marriage." "Unofficial, but permanent." "There's a lot the other way around these days, Mr Smiley!" "Fit, George?" "Natter." "Garden." " Super." " Fawn!" "When you came to me six months ago talking about a mole in the Circus," "I threw you out." "I was remiss." "You instructed me to abandon my inquiries because they were "unconstitutional"." "Was that the word I used?" "How very pompous of me." "(CELLO PLAYS)" " You never had any, did you?" " What?" "Children." "You and Ann." "No." "I didn't absolutely trust your motives." "I thought Control had put you up to it." "As a way of hanging on to the power and keeping Alleline out." ""There are three of them...and Alleline." Control's words." "The composition of the now all-powerful London Station." "Bill Haydon, Roy Bland, Tony Esterhase." "Three of them." "And Alleline." "Yes, quite." "But at the time, George." "After all, we both held perfectly honourable positions." "You felt Jim Prideaux had been betrayed and you wanted a witch hunt." "My Minister and I felt there had been incompetence on the part of Control." " A view which the Foreign Office shared." " I quite understand your dilemma." "Thank you (!" ") It isn't every day that the head of one's secret service embarks on a private war." "And, don't forget, you were Control's man." "He preferred you to Haydon." "When he launched that misadventure, you fronted for him." "You were in the hot seat." "You had to go." "You didn't offer a suspect." "Remember the circumstances, George." " Percy Alleline has done extremely well." " With Haydon to field for him, who wouldn't?" "He's produced intelligence, not scandal, and won the trust of his customers." "That special source of Percy's - it produced the Witchcraft material." "Is that still running?" "Since you ask, yes." "Source Merlin is our mainstay." "And, yes, the name of his product is Witchcraft." "The Circus hasn't had such good material in living memory." "In mine, anyway." " Does it still get the same special handling?" " Certainly." "Now precautions will have to be more rigorous." "No." "Gerald the mole would soon latch on to that." "Of course he would." "We can't move." "We can't investigate because we can't employ the Circus." "We can't eavesdrop or watch or open the mail because we'd need Esterhase's lamplighters." "And Esterhase is suspect like the others." "It's the oldest question of all, George." "Who can spy on the spies?" "Get the security mob in." "They'll do a job for you." "You know the Minister won't have that." "Rightly, too." "Ex-colonial bobbies ploughing through the Circus files." "It's a serious point, George." "I wouldn't give much for field agents' chances once the security gentlemen come barging in." "How many do we have?" "600...give or take a few." "Plus 120 behind the Iron Curtain." "So I can tell the Minister you'll do it?" "You'll take the job, clean the stables." "Go backwards, go forwards, do whatever's necessary." "It's your generation, after all." "Your legacy." "I never heard of anyone who left the Circus without some unfinished business." "There's no...emotional or other reason which you feel might debar you from the assignment?" "You must speak up, George." "The state of my marriage must be common knowledge if it has got as far as Ricki Tarr." "For the record, the thing with Ann and Bill Haydon is long over." "My wife's present infatuation is with a young actor... ..currently unemployed." "There's always that part of us that belongs to the public domain." "You always knew that, I'm sure." " So did Jim Prideaux." " What does that mean?" "Well, good Lord, a bullet in the back is held to be quite a sacrifice...even in your world." "Two bullets, actually." "They were at Oxford together, weren't they" " Bill and Jim?" "Stablemates at the Circus, the famous Haydon-Prideaux partnership." ""The iron fist in the iron glove" somebody called it." "Prideaux was far too old for that Czech nonsense." " It made no difference." " No, quite." "I shall need some help." "Remember Control's man Mendel?" "Yes, of course." "If he's the chap you want." "Oh, Norman!" "The table's Georgian, so you will love it for me, won't you, Mr Barraclough?" "I shouldn't lend it to you, really." "It was the Major's." "I'm very grateful, I'm sure." " Everything all right?" " Yes, fine." "We'll leave you in peace, then." "I shall want every scrap..." "and you've known me long enough." "Times of who comes and goes." "Most of all, more important than you can imagine, this." "Any suspicious characters putting questions to your staff under ANY pretext, even if they're the Guards Armoured or Sherlock Holmes." "There's only me and Norman, and they won't get far with Norman, will they, dear?" "You're too sensitive." "The same with any incoming letters for him." "I'll want to see postmarks and times posted." "One thing more." "There'll be objects he will ask to be lodged in the safe." "Mainly they'll be papers." "There's only one person who'll look at them apart from him." "That's me." "Don't try fiddling with them, 'cause he's sharp, and you've known me long enough." "Tarr's cables to the Circus were detailed and specific." "London Station required him to submit copious background on Irina." "Names of former contacts, acquaintances inside Moscow Centre." "There should be a file of some size and we need to see it." "That's Circus material." "I can deliver only from the Minister." "I know that look, George." "I'm breaking into the Circus, am I?" " Playing Burglar Bill." " If you wouldn't mind." "While you're enjoying yourself, I shall visit Oxford to look up an old, invaluable friend." "Please, don't take any unnecessary risks." "(CHORISTER) # Lord, now lettest thou thy servant" "# Depart in peace" "# According to" "# Thy word" "# For mine eyes have seen" "# Thy salvation" "# Which thou hast prepared before the face" "# Of all people" "# To be a light" "# To lighten" "# The gentiles" "# And to be the glory" "# Of thy people" "# Israel" "# Glory be to the Father" "# And to the Son" "# And to the Holy Ghost" "# As it was in the beginning" "# Is now and ever shall be" "# World without end" "# Amen #" "Tarr's cables to the Circus were detailed and specific." "London Station required him to submit copious background on Irina." "Names of former contacts, acquaintances inside Moscow Centre." "There should be a file of some size and we need to see it." "That's Circus material." "I can only deliver from the Minister." "I know that look." "I'm breaking into the Circus, am I?" " Playing Burglar Bill." " If you wouldn't mind." "While you're enjoying yourself, I shall visit Oxford to look up an old, invaluable friend." "Please, don't take any unnecessary risks." "(SMILEY) Assume, Peter, the Circus has the dogs on you 24 hours a day." "Think of it as a foreign country." "Hello, Bryant." "Hello." "Nice to see you again, sir." "Just a moment, please." "Mr Guillam, sir." "Mr Lauder Strickland's expecting you." "He'll meet you on the 5th floor." "Right." "Thanks." "(BUZZER SOUNDS)" "(DOOR SQUEAKS)" " About time someone oiled this." " We keep asking." "You can talk till you're blue in the face!" "Well met, Peter." "Greetings." "A trifle late, but never mind." "Sorry, Lauder." "You have to make allowances for country yokels." " How long have you had that monster?" " You really are a stranger, aren't you?" "It saves man hours." "Fantastic." "Quite fantastic." " Sorry, terribly sorry." " Hello, Bill." "What the hell are YOU doing here, you pariah?" "He wants to buy a diplomatic courier." "He needs to wash some dirty money." "That's a job for Banking Section, so we're sorting out the tangle." "He knows it has to be cleared here." "He told me the papers were routed to you." " They're probably in your in-tray now, Bill." " They had better be, Peter." "Lock up the spoons." "Scalphunters will have the gold out of your teeth!" "Lock up the girls, as well...if they'll let you!" "There you go, Bert." "Keys of the city." "London Station couldn't be in better hands." "Everything's a lot tighter here these days, Guillam." "Hey, Lauder, hold on!" "Have you seen bloody Bill anywhere?" "Indeed I have seen Bill." "We were having a brief word back down the corridor." " He's wanted urgently." " Immediately." "We've put out an alert for him." "I suspect he may well be on his way to you at this moment." "Peter...hello." "Hi." "Thanks for the glad hand." "I did wipe the cow dung off my boots." "What's the joke, Roy?" "No joke, Peter, old lad." "Just...surprised to see you, that's all." " We're used to having this floor to ourselves." " Like to see my pass, Toby?" " How are you keeping?" " I wintered very well." "You know what it's like in Brixton these days." "Plenty of Ludo, ping pong." " Normally I have my afternoon zizz now." " Off with you, Peter." " Don't waste Lauder's time." " No, sir." "Sorry, sir." "(DOG BARKS)" " (DOG BARKS)" " Shut up, Flush!" "Stop it." " (DOG BARKS)" " Stop it, boy." "It's only a dunderhead." "Flush, shut up!" "George Smiley!" "Oh, but you lovely, darling man!" "You haven't come to sell me a hoover!" "You're my gorgeous George!" " Connie." " Oh, George." "Jingle, darling, could you possibly make it tomorrow?" "Don't be cross." "It isn't often my oldest, oldest lover comes to see me." "Oh, George, if only I'D seen you first." "I'll give you a whole hour all to yourself." "Honestly I will, darling." "One of my dunderheads." "I will teach... ..I don't know why." "Oh, George, of all the lovely, darling men I ever knew." "He walked, Flush." "Don't you see his shoes?" "Oh...bless you, darling." "God bless." "Did he walk alone, Flush?" "Not accompanied, were we?" "Quite alone, Connie." "So...what does George want from Connie?" "The bad boy!" "Her memory." "To go over some very old ground, Connie." "Hear that, Flush?" "First, they chuck us out with an old bone, then they come begging to us." "I was the best Head of Research the Circus ever had!" "Everyone knew that!" "And what did they say the day they gave me the chop?" "That personnel cow! "You're losing your sense of proportion, Connie." ""Time you got out into the real world."" "I hate the real world!" "I like the Circus and my lovely boys!" "Polyakov." "Aleksey Aleksandrovich Polyakov." "Cultural Attaché, Soviet Embassy, London." "Born March 3rd, 1922... ..in the Ukraine." "Graduate of Leningrad State University." "Height five-foot-ten." "Colour of eyes, green." "Colour of hair, black." "Married, but unaccompanied by wife, and a six-cylinder Karla-trained hood if ever I saw one!" "But don't tell Percy Alleline or Toby Esterhase." "Oh, no," "Aleksey Aleksandrovich was as pure as the driven snow." "He was Persil white, wasn't he, Flush?" "And Connie's an old silly." "If she doesn't lay off and do as she's told, she'll have to pack her bags and go." "He's come alive" " Polyakov." "Just as you predicted." "'Course he has!" "Of course he has!" "I knew it in my bones!" "The day he arrived, I thought, "Hello, I'll have some fun with YOU." Tough as a button!" "Cultural Attaché?" "Balls!" "Army written all over him." "But not declared, George, not a mention." "Oh, he had a lovely voice." "Mellow, like yours." "I used to play the tapes over and over just to bathe in it." "Bottom pincher, too." "I just know." "Not that we ever caught him at it." "We might have if Tobe had played along and offered him a bum, but tiny Tobe wouldn't." "Eight years." "I watched Pretty Polly for eight years." "Then last Remembrance Day, I got him." "There he was, that smashing November morning, at the wreath laying." "We photographed his medals - two gallantry and four campaign." "Oh, yes." "Aleks Polyakov was a star soldier just as I'd told them, and not a word." "So I said to Toby, "Listen, you two-faced ferret," ""ego has got the better part of cover and that's nothing new." ""Now will you turn Pretty Polly inside out for me?" ""Because Connie's little hunch has turned up trumps."" "What did Toby Esterhase say?" "Oh, I got the dead-fish voice." " "Tell Percy Alleline." "Percy's in charge."" " And then?" ""Not every ex-warrior's a Karla agent," says Percy." "I said, "Listen, Percy, Polyakov's running an English mole."" "So I get the rude letter. "Stop it or else."" "I wrote at the bottom - "Yes, repeat no!"" "So...here we are... ..Flush and me." "Please kiss me, George." "Hey-ho." "Halcyon days." " Did I start the landslide, George?" " You were always dead right, Connie." " Is George now picking up the pieces?" " Something of the sort." "Poor loves." "Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves." "Englishmen could be proud then." "They could, George." "All gone." "Taken away." "Bye-bye, world." "If it's bad, George... ..don't come back." "Promise?" "I want to remember you just as you were." "My lovely, lovely boys." "Promise?" "All right, Lauder, I'll just have to wait for the wheels to turn." "I don't need a pass to use the gent's, do I?" "(CHARLADY SINGS OUTSIDE DOOR/ CLATTERING BUCKET)" "# I gotta love one man till I die" "# Can't help loving that man of mine #" "(MAN) Stop that moaning!" "Pages had been removed with a razor blade." "No mention of Ricki Tarr's cable from Lisbon." "No Irina, no Boris, no Tarr." "There's a note scribbled on the next page." ""All inquiries to Head of London Station."" "It's in Toby Esterhase's handwriting." "The janitor's attendance list has also been removed." "Nothing to tell us who was duty officer..." "or even who was in the building." "Connie's appraisal matches the story Irina gave Ricki Tarr." "The implications, the indications, are that Karla has managed to build himself a cadre of senior men placed about the globe who work exclusively to him at Moscow Centre." " Polyakov is Karla's executant in London." " You offer that as a working hypothesis?" "Operation Witchcraft, that vital flow of Russian intelligence which happily came Alleline's way." ""Supplementary estimates to the Treasury." ""Special accommodation in London."?" ""Wider exploitation." ""See also Secret Annexe." May I see it?" " The Minister keeps it in his safe." " Do you know the combination?" " Certainly not." " What's the title of this unobtainable document?" "It doesn't have one." "It's highly secret and we've kept the readership to a minimum." "The supplier of the Witchcraft material is Merlin." "Does the file give his identity?" "Don't be ridiculous." "The Minister wouldn't want to know and Alleline wouldn't want to tell him." " What does "wider exploitation" mean?" " I refuse to be interrogated." "Why do you waste your time pursuing this?" "I should have you cleared before you see this." " Witchcraft cleared?" " Yes, George." "Do we have a list of people who've been cleared in that way?" "I hope you're not going fey, George." "Please, stick with the primary problem - the mole Gerald - instead of rootling around in extraneous matters." "This is no time to be whimsical." "Are you off?" "You won't forget Prideaux?" "Anything you can get on him, even scraps, would help." "He has a point, George." "Witchcraft and Merlin, Polyakov and the mole." "Prideaux getting himself shot up on some wild goose chase of Control's in Czechoslovakia." " You think it all connects?" " I think I am not the first to make this journey of exploration." "I believe Control was here before me." "He might even have made the full distance but for the bullets in Prideaux's back." ""There are three of them and Alleline." Control's words." "He meant Operation Witchcraft." "Merlin's minders or inventors or programmers or marionettes...or what?" "Why was Control so hostile to Alleline?" "Percy wasn't a fool." "Percy can flirt, Peter." "And Control hadn't reckoned on the power of the Alleline lobby." " Who were they?" " Golfers." ""Golfers and Conservatives." That's what Control said to me." "I got a call from Control one day - very sharp, very combative." ""George, come in here or there'll be bloodshed."" "Brother Percy's trying to twist my tail." "Take a look at this nonsense." "Top-level Soviet naval despatch." "Specially prepared for the Soviet High Command... ..isn't it, Percy?" "An appreciation of a naval exercise in the Med and the Black Sea, of which our sailors have been screaming for details." " Haven't they, Percy?" " Topicality's always suspect." "Yes, George." "Would you like to repeat that for Percy?" " Who made the translation?" " God made it, didn't he, Percy?" " Don't ask him." "He won't tell you." " Shore-to-sea strike power." "Radio activation of enemy alert procedures." "This is hardly my territory." "Don't let that worry you." "Total ignorance of subject matter doesn't bother Percy." " Whose initials are these?" " Zharov." "Admiral, Black Sea Fleet." " What do our own evaluators say?" " They've not seen it." "What's more, they're not going to." "However, Lilley of Naval Intelligence has passed a preliminary opinion, has he not, Percy?" "Percy showed it to him last night." " Over a pink gin, was it, Percy?" " At the Admiralty." "Note that, George." "They battened down the hatches for Percy." "Brother Lilley telephoned me half an hour ago to congratulate me." "He believes this material to be neither a plant nor chickenfeed, but gold dust, and he seeks our permission to..." "Percy's, I suppose I should say... ..to apprise his fellow Sea Lords of its conclusions." "Quite impossible." "It's for his eyes only for another couple of weeks." " It's so hot, you see, George." " But where does it come from?" " Who's the case officer?" " You'll enjoy this." "Source Merlin has access to the most sensitive levels of Soviet policy-making." "We've dubbed his product Witchcraft." "Ask him who "we" are, George." "Merlin is the fruit of a long cultivation by certain people in this service." "People who are bound to me as I am to them." "People not entertained by the failure rate about this place." "There's been too much blown, too much lost, wasted." "Too many scandals." "I've said so many times." "I could've talked to the wind for all the heed HE paid me." ""He" means me, George." "The ordinary principles of security have gone to the wall in this service." "It's all divide and rule, stimulated from the top." " Me again." " We're losing our livelihood, our self-respect." "We've had enough." "We've had a bellyful, in fact." "Please." "Like everybody's who's ever had enough, he wants more." ""This service."" "Alleline would sell his mother for a knighthood and "this service" for a seat in the Lords." " Suppose Merlin's genuine?" " Suppose Merlin would pick Percy?" "!" "It seems somebody has." "I gather Percy's under the impression he picked himself and a whole team." "You're sure he left you out, are you, George?" " What are you going to do about it?" " Depends on "it"." "I'll wait for "it" to show itself." "In the meantime, I see nothing to deal with except Percy's envious eye on my chair." "And I've put my thumb in that optic before." " George, tittle-tattle Tuesday again?" " Hello, Percy." "(PERCY) Toby, Roy." "This time." "Oh, Lor'!" "I thought it would be half over by now." "Got a rabbit to pull out of your hat, Percy?" "You've got that Britain-can-make-it look." "Very intimidating." "Should we have brought our sandwiches?" "I'll be brief, Bill, so long as I'm not obstructed." "I'm sorry." "Traffic." "I should've walked." "I think you and Percy between you are contriving to keep me off the streets." "They're all here now, sir." "Would you go in, please, gentlemen?" "How often do I have to emphasise the extreme sensitivity of the source of the Witchcraft product?" "There is no existing method of Whitehall distribution to meet the case." "Need I remind you of that disgraceful incident when an Under-Secretary..." "Albeit it overworked, so be it." "But the fact remains the man actually gave his despatch box key to his personal assistant." "We simply cannot afford that kind of ludicrous insecurity when we are handling Witchcraft." "Now..." "..I have already discussed the problem with Lilley of Naval Intelligence." "He is prepared to put at our disposal a special main reading room in the Admiralty main building, where Witchcraft material can be seen and watched over by a senior janitor of this service." "Wouldn't you rather have Securicor (?" ")" "The reading room will be known for cover purposes as the conference room of the Adriatic Working Party - the AWP room, for short." "Thank you." "Customers with reading rights will not have passes, since these can be too accessible." "Instead, they will appear on a special list with photographs." "They will identify themselves personally to MY janitor." " Whose janitor, Percy?" " He's already got his own personal wizard." "The odd commissionaire seems modest enough domestic staff." "(COUGHING)" " Allowing that all this is necessary..." " Essential." "..my Minister will want to know more about the cost." "It must appear to be borne by the Admiralty, even if you reimburse covertly." "Of course." "The reading room will have to be extensively rebuilt to begin with." "Now, I'd like to call your attention to the Foreign Office comment on the most recent Witchcraft product." "And I quote, "This document sheds an extraordinary sidelight" ""on Soviet aggressive thinking."" "Does that mean they like it, Percy?" "Do you like it, Bill?" "It's from the very heart of your territory." "In 25 years, I haven't laid hands on anything of that quality." "Unless I'm mistaken, nor have our American cousins." "Anyone taking it to Washington could drive a hard bargain." " Early days, Bill." " Agreed." "But if Merlin maintains that standard, we can buy whatever's in the Yanks' shop." "I don't think Control's going to play." "That would rule me out, as well, of course." " Percy will get his reading room." " Yes." "And after that, I suppose anything's possible." "Did you want to ask me something?" "I'm afraid he's not seeing anyone today." "Again?" "I'm being asked why he's cancelled the Tuesday conferences." "I can't add anything to his memorandum, even for you." " Even if I could, Mr Smiley..." " No, of course." "I was rather hoping, before I set off on this Hong Kong trip..." "Well, when I get back, perhaps he'll have got through that little lot." "Now there's a committee." "The Minister is in the chair, Alleline's vice-chairman." "Merlin's become an industry." "It's THE industry and I'm not employed." " You won't even read Alleline's reports." " I haven't time." "Buying their way in with counterfeit money." "Tell them that." "Tell them anything." "I need time." "There are three of them and Alleline." "Sweat them." "Tempt them." "Bully them." "Anything." "Give them what ever they eat." "I need time." "Prompt as ever, Mr Smiley." " How are your children, Toby?" " Doing terribly well." "The boy's at Westminster." "Is that right?" "You daughter's probably left school by now." " First-year medical student." "Loves it." " Good for her." "Toby..." "I have to ask you this." "Sorry to come prying." "Your department's behind with its work sheets." "Two months almost." "Now, why is that?" "It's not lamplighter style." "We're not infallible, George." "Two months?" "Well, I won't question it." "Is it terribly important?" "If you say it is, I'll see it's dealt with." "The question is WHY, Toby." " Let me be blunt." " Not YOUR style, George." "I'm allowed to say that, surely?" "I am, after all, one of your oldest protégés." "Vienna was a long time ago." "You haven't been using your staff for any special jobs?" "Either at home or abroad?" "The kind of special jobs which, for reasons of security, you haven't felt able to mention in your returns." "Who would I do that for?" "In my book, that's completely illegal." "Well, if Percy Alleline, for example, ordered you to do something and not record it, that would put you in a difficult position." " What sort of something?" " Clear a letter box, prime a safe house." "Watch someone's back." "Spike an embassy." "It's all lamplighter work." "If Percy told you to do it, you might reasonably assume he was acting on instructions from the fifth floor." "I do like the service." "I may be sentimental about it, but I prefer to stay in it." "Now, you understand that." "You of all people." "My problem is promotion." "I mean, the absence of it." "I've so many years' seniority that I feel quite embarrassed when these young fellows ask me to take orders from them." "Who, Toby?" "Which young fellows?" "Roy Bland?" "Percy?" "Would you call Percy young?" "Who?" "When you're overdue for promotion and working hard, anyone looks young who is above you on the ladder." " Have you been taking orders?" " You know the line of command, George." "Perhaps Control could move you up a few rungs." "Well, you know, actually... ..I'm not sure he's able to these days...are you?" " So what's the deal?" " There isn't a deal, Roy, really." "It's just that Control feels the present situation is unhealthy." "He doesn't like to see you getting mixed up with a cabal." "Nor do I." " So what's the deal?" " What do you want?" "What about 5,000 quid out of the reptile fund for starters?" " Then a house and a car?" " And the kid to Eton." " Your father would turn in his grave." " Let him rotate, the old Commie thug." "If there's no deal, George, you'll have to tell Control he can get stuffed." "I've paid, you see." "You know that." "I don't know what the hell I've bought with it, but I've paid a packet." "Poznan, Budapest, Prague, back to Poznan." "Have you ever been to Poznan?" "Sofia, Kiev." "Two bloody nervous breakdowns and still between the shafts." "That's big money at any age...even yours." "No one can deny that, Roy." "And...you brought me in, remember." "If you think I'm going to the bad, you've only got yourself to blame." "You're an educated sort of a swine." ""An artist is a bloke who can hold two fundamentally opposing views" ""and still function."" " Who dreamed that one up?" " Scott Fitzgerald." "Well, Fitzgerald knew a thing or two." "And I'm definitely functioning." "As a good socialist, I'm going where the money is." "As a good capitalist, I'm sticking with the revolution because, if you can't beat it, spy on it." "Don't look like that, George?" "It's the name of the game these days." "You scratch my conscience, I'll drive your Jag, right?" "No." "Did you get that from Haydon?" "Is that one of Bill's jokes about materialist England, the pigs-in-clover society?" " Don't you like it?" " Not much." "Of course there are acquisitive instincts in Western society." "They are offset against other concerns you won't find in..." "Poznan, Budapest, Kiev, Sofia." "Tell me all about it, George." "I'm just saying that's England now, man." "All you have to do is look out the bloody window." "You're seen with Bill Haydon a great deal these days." "Jealous, George?" "You've got his job." "You're Control's High Chamberlain." "What more do you want?" "Long as it lasts." " They do say you write the reports." " That's Roy's job." "No." "Bland makes the translations." "YOU write the covering reports." "They're typed on your machine." "The material's not cleared for typists." "Percy Alleline won't do." "Is that the premise?" "Which means that Merlin won't do either." "Poor old Control." "He is in a pickle." "Merlin would do if he were MY source, wouldn't he?" "If dazzling bloody Bill had hooked a whacking big fish and wanted to play him alone, what would happen then?" "Control would say, "That's very nifty of you, Bill boy." "You do it just the way you want." ""Have some filthy jasmine tea."" "He'd be giving me a medal now...instead of sending you snooping round corridors." "We used to be rather a classy bunch." "Why are we so vulgar these days?" " He thinks Percy's on the make." " So he is." "I also want to be head boy." "And Toby and Roy have designs on your spot." "Since when was ambition an offence in our beastly outfit?" "Is Ann at home?" "Sent her out to play while you grill your old buddy." " Who runs him, Bill?" " Percy?" "Who do you think?" "Karla runs him." "Stands out a mile." "Lower-class bloke with upper-class sources." "Must be a bounder." " Bill..." " Percy's sold out to Karla." "Only explanation." " Percy's our house mole." " I meant who runs Merlin?" "Who is Merlin?" "What's going on?" "This is a Callot, isn't it?" " Nice, very nice." " Bill." "Doesn't anyone think MY nose should be out of joint?" "I'm supposed to be in charge of the Russian target." "Given it my best years." "Set up networks, talent-spotters, all mod cons." "You've all forgotten what it's like to run an operation where it takes three days to post a letter and you don't get an answer." "That's hardly fair to Control." "You know how he detests glamour-boy agents who hog the budget, how he hates "miracles" if they put the networks out of focus." "Pity he doesn't have the same hatred of failure." "Has he lived with it too long?" "Face it, George, it's Percy." "Percy's success...it's thrown Control." "And me, a bit." "Trouble is, my networks haven't been good enough." "This is new." "I fancy this very much." "Ann gave it me." " Making amends?" " Probably." "Must have been quite a sin." "How is she?" "George...cut the cord." "Get away from Control." "He's cut you out of his life for weeks." "Despatching you with errands a probationer could handle." "What's he doing up there?" "He's gone through files of Circus folk heroes from year minus-one" "Half of them under the earth already." "Sniffing out the dirt to see who was pink, who was a queen." "He's given us all up." " I don't think that's true." " Senile paranoia." "Control's going potty." "And he's also dying." "It's just a question of which gets him first." "And within six months of Bill Haydon's diagnosis," "Control was indeed dead." "And what killed him?" "Operation Witchcraft or Operation Testify?" "Neither." "Let's not be melodramatic." "Control would disapprove." "He died of old age." "A little early." "But Testify destroyed his function in life, which was a form of murder." "I don't have nearly enough on Testify, Peter." "Would you, please...er...?" "Of course, George." "(CHORISTER) # Lord, now lettest thou thy servant" "# Depart in peace" "# According to" "# Thy word" "# For mine eyes have seen" "# Thy salvation" "# Which thou hast prepared before the face" "# Of all people" "# To be a light" "# To lighten" "# The gentiles" "# And to be the glory" "# Of thy people" "# Israel" "# Glory be to the Father" "# And to the Son" "# And to the Holy Ghost" "# As it was in the beginning" "# Is now and ever shall be" "# World without end" "# Amen #" "And within six months of Bill Haydon's diagnosis," "Control was indeed dead." "What killed him?" "Operation Witchcraft or Operation Testify?" "Neither." "Let's not be melodramatic." "Control would disapprove." "He died of old age." "A little early." "But Testify destroyed his function in life, which was a form of murder." "I don't have nearly enough on Testify, Peter." "Would you, please...er...?" "Of course, George." "Telephone for you, sir." "Such a rough voice." "He says it's someone from your garage." "Right." "Your rude mechanic has bad news for you." "Personally, I find mechanics are bad news, by and large." " Which phone, Alwyn?" " The one on the left." "Get on to the head office and find out when they can supply the damn thing!" "Hang on." "I think I've got the number." "Alwyn, sling that bag across for me, please." "I will, sir." "There you go." " Open it for you?" " No, thanks." "Right, are you ready?" "The number you want is 437 6299." " Seems to be going according to plan." " Thank you." "He does sound jumpy." "He might have overdone it a bit there." "He was very loud." "I've seen it happen before." "Tough ones who crack at 40." "They lock it away, then suddenly you find 'em at their desks, the tears pouring on the blotter." " I thought I ought to say what's on my mind." " Peter will manage." " You heard about his assignment in North Africa?" " Something, whispers." "Peter was overmatched and he lost." "His agents were hanged." "No one recovers entirely from that sort of thing." "That is, I wouldn't trust a man...who did." "Bag, please." "Peter, sorry to disturb you, but we have a tiny crisis." "Percy Alleline would like a word with you." "Can you come now?" "Of course, Toby." "Have you been waiting?" "Didn't you tell Mr Esterhase where I was?" "We've only just got here, Peter." "Your office told us you were doing a spot of devilling." "Only..." "Percy's anxious to speak to you now, you see." "Is there a shuttle to Brixton?" " Yes." " Ask Transport to take that thing over." "Will do, sir." "Will do." "Percy wants to consult you." "How are the martial arts, Paul?" "Any new tricks you could show me?" "Paul and I were paired on a tough-guy course." "Damn near killed each other." "Peter." "Please." "Wotcha, Pete." "Well, now, young Peter Guillam, welcome to my house, about which you've been making calls, I hear." "Are you lonely in the Brixton outposts?" "Tired of chasing the local virgins?" "If there are any in Brixton, which I would doubt!" "Excuse my freedom, Mo." "You DO know that Mo Delaware is our new Head of Research?" "Man with message in cleft stick does reach Brixton, does he?" "Barring the monsoon." "I hear you have been hobnobbing with the late, lamented Ricki Tarr, formerly of your section, despatched by you to Lisbon and, since then, listed by this service as a defector." " How is he?" " We have tea at Fortnum's every afternoon." "Jasmine." "Peter Guillam, you may not be aware of this, but I am possessed of an extremely forgiving nature." "I positively seethe with goodwill." "All I require from you is the matter of your discussion with Tarr." "I do not ask for his head or any other part of his offensive anatomy, and I will restrain my impulse personally to strangle him...or you." "I would even consider bringing you back into the palace from hateful Brixton, where presently you linger in well-earned obscurity." "I can't wait for him to turn up!" "And there's a free pardon for Ricki until I get my hands on him." "I'll tell him that, word for word." "He'll be thrilled." "I'm very disappointed in you, young Peter." "I pay you honest money and you stab me in the back." "I consider that extremely poor reward for keeping you alive, against the entreaties of my advisers, I may tell you." "Let us begin again." "If you won't give me a straight answer, perhaps you'll unburden to somebody more persuasive." " Roy." " (ROY COUGHS)" "Tarr's got a daughter, hasn't he?" "Yes." "Calls her Danny." " Talk about her a lot?" " He told me he was fond of her." " That's all I know." " What are you shrugging like that for?" "!" "I'm accusing you of playing hooky behind my back with a damn defector, of playing damn-fool parlour games, and all you do is shrug at me?" "!" "There's a law against consorting with enemy agents!" "Want me to throw the book at you?" "!" "I haven't seen him!" "Who's playing games?" "Not me." "You are." "So get off my back!" " Who's Danny's mother?" " Eurasian girl." "Tarr likes to think she passes for European." "And the child." "12 years old, long blonde hair, brown eyes, slim." "Is that Danny?" "Could be." "So if I told you Danny and her mother were due in London three days ago on a direct flight from Tunis, I take it you would share our perplexity?" " Yes, I would." " Then you'd keep your mouth shut when we let you out of here?" "It isn't ordinary flight information, Peter." "The source is very private." "Ultra, ultra sensitive, in fact." "In that case, Toby, I'll try and keep my mouth ultra, ultra shut." "So...what do you make of it, young Peter?" "You're his boss, guide, philosopher, friend." "Tell me why Ricki Tarr's in London." " You said his girl and his kid were expected." " Don't be obtuse, man!" "Where Danny goes, there goes Tarr." "Except he'd move first and have his impedimenta follow, yes?" "That would be favourite." "Tarr was supposed to be sitting in Moscow." "Now he's back here on the Russian payroll." "Why's it all so hot?" "What kind of plant is he when we know everything about him?" "Down to his attack of swine fever, from which he's only partially recovered!" "Excuse my freedom, Mo (!" ")" "What kind of plant is that?" "Never mind what sort." "Muddying pools, poisoning wells." "That damn sort." "Pulling the rug out." "Now, listen." "Just remember this." "At the first peep, the first whisper of Tarr or his lady or his wee bairn, young Peter Guillam, you come to one of us grown-ups." "Anyone you see at this table." "But not another damn soul." "The name on the passport is Poole." "P, double O, L, E. All three of them." "Tarr told his woman, so we understand, in case of difficulties, she should come to you." "Sign that, Peter, would you?" "Stupid bloody cabaret." " Percy gets more insufferable every day." " I wouldn't know, Bill, would I?" "(CAR HORN)" ""I certify that I have today been advised of Witchcraft Report No. 308, Source Merlin." ""I undertake not to divulge any part of this report nor to divulge the existence of Source Merlin."" " (CAR HORN)" " Get over, you sodding snail!" " Peter..." " That bastard Tarr!" "Peter, slow down." "Slow down." "The file on Testify seemed a bit thin." "I hope it was worth the sweat." "Ricki Tarr's not lied to us, not in any material way." "He's simply done what agents the world over do." "Failed to tell us the whole story." " On the other hand, he has been rather clever." " Are you actually pleased with him?" "Well, yes." "We now know that Source Merlin works to Moscow Centre, because that's where Merlin's information on Ricki Tarr must have come from." "From Karla." "Ricki's been a lot better today, sir." "Not nearly so...nervy." "He did his football pools this morning, then we planted some trees in the garden, and this evening we had a game of cards." " Has he been out alone?" " No." " Used the telephone?" " Wouldn't dare, sir." "Has he talked about his daughter Danny or her mother?" "He did over the weekend, but he's cooled off about them since in view of the emotional side." "Did he mention any arrangements for meeting them, anything about passports?" " No, sir." " What has he talked about, for God's sake?" "Mostly the Russian lady, Irina." "He mentions her name a lot." "He likes to read her diary." "He says he's gonna make Moscow Centre swap the mole for Irina when the mole's been caught." "Then he'll buy her a place in Scotland." "He says he'll see me right." "Get me a big job in the Circus." "I just listen, of course." "(SMILEY) Right." "You don't post those football coupons, Fawn?" " No, Mr Smiley." " Let's hope he doesn't win." "That would be expensive for us." " Thank you for your help." "Sorry to impose." " He's gone to bed." "I must ask you once more." "What did you do with the two Swiss escape passports you took with you to Lisbon?" "I told you." "Burned them." "When you bought your fake British passport in Istanbul, a passport for yourself in the name of Poole, did you buy any others from the same source?" "Why?" "Why should I?" "To protect your child and her mother." "That seems reasonable." "It wouldn't be very gallant to leave them to the mercy of the Moscow hood on your tail while you escaped to all this..." "VIP protection." "It's horrible to think of." "Truly horrible to contemplate the lengths Karla might go to in order to obtain your silence... ..or your services." "But perhaps what you actually did and forgot to tell us about was to burn the British passports you obtained for Mrs Poole and Miss Danny Poole, but kept your own to convince Karla's footpads you thought it was still safe." "Then, probably, you made travel bookings in the name of the Poole family for the same reason." "You doctored the Swiss passports for Danny and her mother and made other arrangements for them... ..like staying in Marseilles, perhaps..." "I don't know where they are, but I'm sure no harm has come to them." "Watch your own damn woman!" "Leave mine alone!" "(SMILEY) No, Peter." "It's just as well I shouldn't know where they are so long as you don't try to communicate." "Unless, of course, you want me to help in some way." "Money or whatever." "No need." "Let's trust each other, shall we?" "Are we friends again, Mr Guillam?" "It won't be long now." " Got all you need?" " Can I have my gun back?" "Yes." "Well, why not, Peter?" " Do we buy that?" " Oh, yes." "I told you he'd been clever." "A little bit of the truth is indispensable in the games agents play." "You know that." "Ricki put his family in safekeeping and found his own way home." "He fooled the Russians." "If Karla had a deal with him, would you and I be alive and living in hope?" "Not by now, I think." "Let it breathe a little." "Just leave it." "We'll pour it when we're ready." "Does anyone know Karla's real name?" "How old is he?" "Another mystery." "Decades of his life unaccounted for." "So many of the people he's worked with have a way of...dying off." "He was in England in 1936 and '41." "That's documented." "We can assume it was some time during that period he recruited our mole Gerald." "I met him once." "In Delhi." "Long before we came to know him as the legendary Karla." "In the mid-fifties, Moscow Centre was in pieces on the floor." "Wholesale purgings and shootings." "As a result, defection everywhere." "I became a kind of commercial traveller." "The whole world was my territory." "Inspecting the goods, fixing the terms." "Disposing as seemed best." "On London's instructions, of course." "Well, I found myself off to India, where the authorities had arrested, at our request, on some trumped-up immigration nonsense, a Mr Gerstmann..." "Karla's name at that time." "He was on his way back to Moscow from San Francisco, except that he didn't know that he was Moscow-bound." "He'd been told to rendezvous with a Tass correspondent in Delhi." "The message from the Tass man was an aeroplane ticket and..."Don't ask me any questions, comrade."" "Karla was in disgrace." "Summoned... ..and doomed." "There were two things he didn't know - first, we'd intercepted the radio signal directing him to Delhi." "Secondly, the San Francisco network he'd organised had been rolled up, hide and hair, the day he left." "Could we take those things off his hands?" "I only have to shout for you, don't I?" "Mr Gerstmann... ..you are the Cold War orphan." "If you go home to Moscow, you'll be shot or sent to die in a camp." "Wouldn't you prefer to ask us for protection?" "We have no powers of permanent arrest." "Our arrangement with the Americans was that they hit your agents and we make you this invitation." "I can't see an alternative for you." "If you cooperate, we can give you a new start, a new identity." "Seclusion, a modest amount of money." "Why don't you start by telling me your true name?" "Would you like a cigarette?" "I know you're a chain-smoker." "Please." "I know this is what you smoke." "Look..." "I'm not offering you wealth..." "or smart women or your choice of fast cars - things you haven't any use for." "And I won't make any claims about the moral superiority of the West." "I'm sure you can see through our values, as I can see through yours in the East." "You and I spend our lives looking for the weaknesses in each other's systems." "I'm sure each of us has experienced innumerable technical satisfactions in our wretched Cold War." "But now your own side is going to shoot you...for nothing." "For misdemeanours you have not committed." "Because of a power struggle within your own hierarchy." "Because, probably, of someone's treachery... ..or sheer incompetence." "I'm sure both of us, when we were young, subscribed to great visions." "Not any more." "After all you've seen... ..you can't still be committed to that old grand design." "It's achieved nothing..." "except new forms of the old misery." "Don't destroy yourself." "They're not worth it." "Do you know where your wife is?" "I mean, at this moment." "You have to think about her." "She'll have to make a new life." "She'll have a friend...one really good friend who could look after her." "Perhaps we could get in touch with her secretly." "If you stay with us, we might be able to arrange something." "An exchange for someone your people want returned." "But if you go back, it can do her nothing but harm." "She'll be cold-shouldered...suspected." "The best she can hope for is to be allowed to see you before you're shot." "Another meaningless firing squad." "Guard." " What did Control say when you got back?" " "I hope to God they do shoot him."" "But they didn't." "His boss was the one who faced the firing squad, as it turned out." "Mr Gerstmann survived...and thrived." "How he thrived." "He went on to build his legend and become the Karla we know." "Who, all the time he sat looking at me, was thinking of Gerald the mole." "Have you noticed, Peter... that whenever I really trouble one of our acquaintances with my questions, he'll raise the matter of my failure as a husband...to confound me." " Instructive." " Ricki Tarr tried it twice." "Unimportant, in his case." "Spite." "Well...that was sumptuous (!" ")" "That boy Fawn - good at his judo, isn't he?" "Karate." "Judo is what Fawn would call "Just your little cuddle, Mr Smiley."" "(GUILLAM CLICKS HIS FINGERS)" "I don't think even Toby Esterhase's people would follow us here." "The food's well below the standard they've come to expect." "So Karla's fireproof." "He can't be bought or beaten." "Not fireproof, because he's a fanatic." "I may have behaved like the archetype of a flabby Western liberal, but I'd rather be MY kind of fool than his." "One day, that lack of moderation will be Karla's downfall." "He's never touched radio since the débâcle in San Francisco." "Cut it right out of his handwriting." "His agents aren't allowed near it." "That's something else you and Karla have in common." "Yes, I am prejudiced against radio men." "Tiresome breed." "Overstrung, unreliable." " What's the other thing?" " The cigarette lighter." " I assume he still has it." " As far as I know." " Sorry, George." " Not at all." " How do you feel, Peter?" " I'm all right." "After Delhi, you know, Control gave me three months' leave without any option." "When this is over, I hope you'll take it easy for a while." "We're not quite there, but nearly." "Peter, have you got the handbrake on?" "(WAILING SIREN PASSES OUTSIDE)" "Operation Witchcraft." "Alleline to Minister." ""Extremely secret and personal." ""We spoke." "Merlin, as you may have known for some time, is not one source but several." ""It'll do the Treasury no harm to learn..." Percy was enjoying himself!" ""..to learn that Merlin's 10,000 Swiss francs a month in salary" ""and a similar figure for expenses are scarcely excessive" ""when the cloth has to be cut so many ways." ""Nevertheless, I regard it as paramount" ""that knowledge of the London house and its purpose" ""remain absolutely at a minimum."" "In a sense, Alleline's quite right about Merlin." "Of course Merlin represents several sources." "Various departments of Moscow Centre, with Karla cuing them in on the basis of the most timely material of the moment." "Sometimes he likes to direct Circus attention to a topical subject, sometimes to deflect it." "For example, after Ricki Tarr's encounter with Irina in Lisbon," "Merlin delivered some vivid insights on the "ideological penetration" ""of the United States."" "But Karla doesn't know what Tarr's done with Irina's information." "Which brings us to your interrogation by Alleline and his reference to Tarr's probable role over here in "muddying pools" et cetera." "Merlin's message on Tarr, I suggest, was that Ricki would be trying to sell to someone in London, on Karla's behalf, fictitious material about a traitor in the Circus." "Nothing muddier than that, is there?" "Remember, Merlin is totally believed." "We have a connection between Merlin and the mole." "And at the heart of this beautifully symmetrical plot is a house in London for which the Treasury paid £60,000." "Plus another 10 for making it more to Merlin's liking." "Or Gerald's." "Fascinating, George." "Thank you." "How do I explain to my Minister, least painfully, that Merlin's a fraud and he'll have to tell the Americans so?" "He's devoted to Merlin." "Impress upon him that whatever he's buying from the Americans with Merlin's discredited currency is going to Moscow via Gerald the mole." "That should do the trick." "This document is not one you've asked me to bring." "It arrived only today." "Source unknown." ""According to a recently released prisoner from Lubianka," ""Moscow Centre held a secret execution in March." ""The victims, three of its functionaries, were shot in the back of the neck."" " One was a woman." " Ricki Tarr mustn't know." "It's vital he gets no wind of this." "God knows what he'd do if he found out Irina was dead." " We may need to use him." " Do you believe Tarr's in love with her?" "A Highlands homestead, the avenging lover?" "The honourable Ricki Tarr?" "He may feel compelled, Peter." "Everybody has a loyalty somewhere." " He mustn't know." " I agree." " I've brought all I could find on Jim Prideaux." " Thank you." "Prideaux and Bill Haydon were really..." "very close, you know." " I hadn't realised." " Yes." "Thank you." "Operation Testify." "We need to understand what happened or, rather, why it happened." "The file you borrowed gives us a nudge in the right direction." "I think I know who to talk to next." "Your day was hardly wasted." "I am glad of that." "We traced Prideaux." "He's now a teacher." "Thursgood Preparatory School for Boys." "It's in the West Country." "Right." "(CHORISTER) # Lord, now lettest thou thy servant" "# Depart in peace" "# According to" "# Thy word" "# For mine eyes have seen" "# Thy salvation" "# Which thou hast prepared before the face" "# Of all people" "# To be a light" "# To lighten" "# The gentiles" "# And to be the glory" "# Of thy people" "# Israel" "# Glory be to the Father" "# And to the Son" "# And to the Holy Ghost" "# As it was in the beginning" "# Is now and ever shall be" "# World without end" "# Amen #" "George, I've brought all I can find on Jim Prideaux." "Thank you." "Prideaux and Bill Haydon were really..." "very close, you know." " I hadn't realised." " Yes." "Thank you." "Operation Testify." "We need to understand what happened or, rather, why it happened." "The file you borrowed, Peter, gives us a nudge in the right direction." "I know who to talk to next." "Your day was hardly wasted." " I am glad of that." " We've traced Prideaux." "He's now a teacher." "Thursgood Preparatory School for Boys, in the West Country." "Right." "Three, two, one...goI" "(CHILDREN CHEERING)" "(CRIES OF SUPPORT)" "Come onI Come onI" "(ALL) Handbrake on, gear in neutral, switch off ignition." "Please, sir, how long, sir?" "A time, sir?" " Timekeeper, time, please, Rhino?" " Please, sir, how long?" "Well done, Roach, knew you would, second time round." "Sir, how long?" "Now then, Jumbo...see that man..." " Seen him before?" " No, sir." " Anybody seen him before?" " No, sir." "He's not staff, not village, so who is he - beggarman, thief?" "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor." "(ALL) Richman, Poorman, Beggarman, Thief." "Why doesn't he look this way?" "Something funny about that." "A bunch of boys burning up a car and he doesn't give them a glance!" " You would, wouldn't you?" " Yes, sir." "Doesn't he like boys?" "Cars?" "Didn't even look at that car, best Britain ever made and years out of production!" "Right." "Gather round." "Come on!" "Anybody sees him again, let me know, or any other sinister bodies." "(ALL) Yes, sir." "Don't want juju men wandering around, pretending they don't know we exist." " First glimpse, tell me?" " Yes, sir." "Jumbo, I don't hold with odd bods wandering around a school." "Last place I was at, a gang cleared the place out." "House cups, money, boys' watches, nothing's sacred to them." "We don't want them swiping the Alvis." "It's irreplaceable, thanks to socialism." " Colour of hair, Jumbo?" " Sort of light, sir." " Height?" " About the same as you, sir." " Age?" " Well...hard to say, sir." "Of course, at that distance." "You'd know him again, I'm sure." "Best watcher in the unit, Jumbo Roach." "If he keeps his specs clean." "(BOYS CHOIR SINGING IN DISTANCE)" "(DOG BARKS IN DISTANCE)" "Aa-ah." "Ow!" "Please, sir!" " Oh, it's you, Jumbo." " I've hurt my leg, sir." "Oh, dear." "Can you get up?" "Slowly." "Slowly." "Fell off the bricks, did you, Jumbo?" "Let's have a look...nothing broken." "Just a graze." "Matron will soon put that right." "A good excuse for getting in late, missing Evensong." "Tripped over in the lane, is that what you'll tell her?" "We've a secret." "I can trust you, I know that." "We're good at keeping secrets, loners like you and me." "Is it because of that man?" "Would you shoot him?" "Are you working undercover, like Bulldog Drummond in the book?" "Some boys wanted to call you Bulldog, but we thought Rhino was better." " Bigger than a bulldog." " Well..." "I used to be a soldier." "What you saw just now, that's a souvenir." "You know, it's like this." "How I got it, they're both secrets, I keep them to myself." " You understand, don't you, Jumbo?" " Yes, sir." "Knew you would, knew you would." " Goodnight, Jumbo." " Night-night, sir." "Thank you, sir." " Well, well, long time no see." " Hello, sir." " Care for it?" " Very impressive." "(PHONE RINGING)" "Better than selling washing machines!" "It's odd putting a dinner jacket on at ten in the morning." "Reminds me of diplomatic cover, come to think of it." "Believe it or not, it's straight." "Makes a change." " All our help is from the arithmetic." " I'm sure it is." "(WHINE OF VACUUM CLEANER)" "My employers might let me invest a few pennies." "They're tough boys but very go-ahead, you know." "Rather like we were in the old days." "So...what can I do for you?" "I want to talk to you about the night Jim Prideaux was shot." "The night of Operation Testify, which is what it was called." " Writing your memoirs, George?" " We're re-opening the case." "Who's this "we", old boy?" "Lacon called me in, with the Minister's blessing." "I can give you a number to confirm, but I'd prefer not." "All power corrupts, but some must govern, and in that case Brother Lacon will scramble to the top." "The record's been filleted." "Of what is on the file, the most useful information is that you were duty officer that night." "Yes." "I'd just come back from Tokyo, a three-year stint." "Thought I'd push off to the south of France for a month's leave." "Old Mendel, Control's minder, picked me up in the passage and marched me to Control." "Place felt weird, no one about except radio and code people." "That harridan, Molly somebody, was monitoring, a busy little body." "Molly Purcell." "You were in Berlin, Bill Haydon was up-country and Percy Alleline in Scotland." "Control had cleared the decks." "My God, he was a shock." "I'd heard he wasn't his old self, but I wasn't prepared." "It was like opening a coffin lid." "He didn't waste time on pleasantries." "I need somebody to man the switchboard, got to be an old hand." "I could bring someone from the out-stations, but you're better." "You've been away from the in-fighting and vendettas around here." "You don't know what I'm talking about, good." "Just do exactly what I tell you." "There could be a crisis tonight." "I've got a man doing a special job." "It's of the utmost importance to the service." "The service, us - it could change everything for us." "Your job tonight is to act as cut-out." "Cut-out between me and whatever goes on in the building." "If anything comes in..." "radio signal, phone call, letter, anything, no matter how trivial it seems, you are to wait... wait till the coast is clear then bring it to me, by hand, Sam." "Don't use the internal phones, don't put anything down on paper for future reference." "Is that understood?" "When it's all over..." "you're not to breathe a word about it." "Never, not to anybody." "Not to Smiley." "Not to Haydon, not to Bland, nobody." " If I have to send out something?" " Only what I tell you." "(TV:" "FOOTBALL COMMENTARY)" "It could cost them the match, which will be sewn up by Paul Mariner." "Or by Woods...still down..." "or by Muhren...or by Wark... and in the end by none of them." "Unbelievable." "Paul Mariner is completely flattened." "He deserves better than that." "He's my man of the match." "Bollocks!" "(CLICK OF FINGERS)" "(CHURCH CLOCK CHIMES)" "(PHONE RINGS)" "Yes." "Duty officer." "Mmm." "Right, yes, I see." "I'll have to call you back." "It all sounds very unlikely." "Collins?" "This is urgent." "Well, it's open." "All hell's broken out on the Czechoslovak air." "Half is coded but enough isn't." " Prague or Brno?" " Brno." "(PHONE RINGS)" "Yes." "Go back, Molly, keep listening." "Control?" "Control, the resident clerk from the Foreign Office came on first, with a story from Reuter's head man in London." "Molly picked it up too." "Reuters and Fleet Street papers have had another go at the Foreign Office." "They're saying a British spy has been shot in Brno." "The Czechs are telling the world of an act of provocation by a Western power." "They haven't named the dead man yet." "Can I have a brief, please?" "Control, I need a brief." "We must say something." "Do you want me to deny it, a flat denial, to start with?" "Do you want me to get someone else in?" "Do you want to come downstairs and handle it yourself?" "It's deniable." "He had foreign documents." "No one could know he was British yet, there hasn't been time." "Even if he's not dead." " Find Smiley." " He's in Berlin." "Yes." "Well, anyone will do, it makes no difference." "Tell Mendel to get me a taxi." "You sent Mendel home." "(POLICE SIREN OUTSIDE)" "He's been named." "Hello?" "Hello." "Is that Mrs Smiley?" "You got my message, then?" " Where did you leave it?" " I rang George Smiley's house, in case his wife happened to know where you were." "You are a friend of the family?" "I saw the ticker-tape at the club, some God-awful shooting party." "Tell me, Czechoslovakia, right?" "Jim Prideaux's been shot." "The Czechs only have his work name, Ellis." "Jim...shot dead?" "That was the first flash." "Since then the word used is simply "shot"." "The Czechs are saying that Prideaux" " Ellis - travelling on false papers and assisted by Czech counter-revolutionaries, tried to kidnap a Czech general, unnamed, in a forest near Brno and smuggle him over the Austrian border." "Further arrests are imminent." " Go on." " According to our military, there are heavy Czech tank movements along the Austrian border." "Lacon's been on and so has the Minister, wanting to know "What the hell?" and "Why?"" "I've put out emergency calls to Smiley, Alleline, Bland." "I'm glad to see you." "I'm sorry, Bill." "All right, Sam." "Now." "First thing we do...you call this number." "It's Toby Esterhase." "Tell him you're speaking for me." "He's to pick up the two Czech agents at the London School of Economics." "Lock them up - now." "Straight away, Sam." "Jim's worth a lot more than those two." "But it's a start." "I'll have a word with the chief hood at the Czech Embassy." "If they hurt a hair on Jim Prideaux's hair," "I'll strip the entire Czech network in this country bare." "You can pass that on to his masters." "I'll make him the laughing stock of the profession." "I'm bound to say, Haydon was a treat to watch." "I used to think of him as a pretty erratic sort of devil." "Not that night, believe me." "He virtually dictated a press statement for the Foreign Office to put out." "There it was the following morning in the Sunday papers." ""Prague radio sensation" dismissed with dignified scorn." "It was good light reading over breakfast at the Savoy." " Then you went to the south of France." " Two lovely months." " Did anyone question you again?" " Percy Alleline." "He was acting Chief by then, you were out and Control was in hospital." "He wanted to know why I was duty officer on the fateful night." "That chap Masterman was down for it." "I told him I'd nowhere to kip and a quiet weekend at the Circus would save me money for France." " Percy said I was a liar." " That's why they sacked you?" " For fibbing?" " Alcoholism." "There were five empty beer cans in the duty officer's waste bin." "There's an order against booze on the premises." "What was your offence?" "I couldn't convince them I wasn't involved." "If you want anyone's throat cut, give me a buzz." "Sam, listen, it was too late for Haydon's club to be running ticker-tape, wasn't it?" "He was making love to Ann that night." "You guessed and were right." "You phoned her, she told you he wasn't there, and as soon as you rung off she pushed him out of bed," "and Bill turned up an hour later, knowing about Czecho." "But you didn't tell Ann about Czecho." "(PHONE RINGS)" "I'll find my own way down." "Mind how you go, George." " Smiley." " Jim." "If you're not on your own, I swear I'll break your neck." "Quite alone, Jim." "God damn you, George, what the hell do you want?" "I'm sorry, Jim, but I have to know what happened." "I'm finished, man." "Told to draw the line and I've drawn it." "How do you like school mastering?" "You had a spell of it after the war, was that at a prep school?" "Don't come playing cat and mouse with me, George Smiley." "Look at the file." "Circus file?" "Not available to me, Jim, I'm blackballed." "Hard luck (!" ")" "I've had access to a few papers which Lacon borrowed for me." "Pretty old stuff." "It went back to your undergraduate days with Bill Haydon at Oxford." "There's a letter Bill wrote about you to his tutor, Fanshawe," "Circus talent spotter, in which he named you suitable material for British Intelligence." "I can quote the odd line from memory." ""He has that heavy quiet that commands." ""He's my other half." "Between us we make one marvellous man." ""He asks nothing better than to be in my company," ""or that of my wicked, divine friends." ""I'm vastly tickled by the compliment." ""He's virgin, about eight foot tall," ""and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge."" "Christ!" "Christ, man, we were children." "Yes, of course." "What do you want to know?" "I thought we could at least be comfortable while we talk." "It isn't far." "I came round in a prison hospital, barred windows, high up." "They operated, after a fashion." "Next time I came round, I was in a cell with no windows at all." "I tried to work out a campaign to meet the interrogation, but I'd never be able to keep quiet, no chance of that." "If I was to stay sane, possibly even survive, there had to be dialogue, they had to believe I'd told them all I knew." "I decided I'd give them my version of Operation Testify first, the one Control spelled out for me." "I was head of scalphunters." "I mounted my own campaign without the knowledge of my superiors because I wanted to prove I was worth promotion." "If I could believe that," "I could bury all thoughts of a traitor inside the Circus." "No mole." "No meeting with Control." "No Tinker, Tailor." "I was there to turn General Stevcek and just that." "Then I thought I could throw them the names of one or two other Soviet and satellite visuals who'd turned recently." "Even give them the rundown of my entire Brixton stable, anything." "So long as I forgot the mole and Tinker, Tailor." "I kept to myself our Czech networks." "You know I recruited the founder members?" " A fine piece of work." " That's the joke." "They couldn't care less about the networks, knew it all." "Rolled them up." "They knew damn well that Testify wasn't my private brainchild." "I began exactly where I wanted to end, at the briefing in St James's." "All they wanted to talk about was Control's rotten apple theory:" "Tinker, Tailor and the Circus spy." "Did they know the address of the St James's flat?" "Yes, they even knew the brand of the sherry." "What about Control's charts on Stevcek's career, did they know about those?" "No." "Not at first." "Tell me about the networks." "Did anyone get out?" "No." "It seems they were shot." "The story is you blew them to save your own skin." "I know that isn't true, of course." "(RETCHING AND RUNNING WATER)" "For Christ's sakes, let's go somewhere we can breathe." "They moved me about a lot, different rooms, different prisons." "Depending on who was interrogating and what methods they used." "There was quite a lot of muscle." "Electrical, most of it." "Yes, movement...cars, lorries, corridors, cells." "Once a plane." "I was hooded and passed out after take-off." "Punished for that, huh." "I think I was in Russia part of the time." "Would you like to stretch your legs?" "It might help." "They went straight to the heart of it." "Why did Control go it alone?" "What did he hope to achieve?" "His comeback, I said." "That got a laugh!" "With tinpot information about Czecho military emplacements?" "Wouldn't get him a meal at his club." "So I said maybe poor old Control was losing his grip." "That bored them." "Back to the cooler, punished again." "You know, I-I hoped I'd go mad." "Oh, no." "They knew how to stop that." "They left me alone for a couple of days." "Got me ready for the long one." "That was when I ga...ga...gave... g...gave them what they wanted." "It's a matter of health as much as anything." "You don't break exactly, just run out of stories." "Only the things locked away deep down were what was coming into my brain." "That was when I told them about Control's charts on Stevcek." "Also Control's rotten apple theory?" "Yes, the mole, codenames we worked out for Control's suspects." "Tinker" " Percy Alleline, Tailor" " Bill Haydon," "Soldier" " Roy Bland, Poorman" " Toby Esterhase," " Beggarman" " George Smiley." " What was the reaction?" "He thought for a bit then he offered me a cigarette." " Who did?" " What?" "Oh, sorry, by this stage there was some frosty bearded fellow left." "He seemed to be head boy." "Just him and a couple of guards standing back while he made his kill." " I hated that damn cigarette." " Why?" "It was a foul American thing, Camel." "I remember the packet." " Did he smoke them?" " Never stopped." " Was that the end of it?" " More or less, yes." "I have to know everything, Jim." "The rest was just gossip." "He wanted to know Circus tittle-tattle, who's going up, who's going down, a lot of tripe." " About what?" "Who?" " Bland, how much he drank." "Esterhase, how can anybody trust a man dressed like that?" "A lot of tripe." "What did he say about me?" "He showed me his cigarette lighter, said it was yours." "A present from Ann - "All my love" - her signature engraved." " Did he say how he came by it?" " A confrontation years ago." " Said you'd remember." " Anything else?" "Come on, I'll not buckle just because a Russian hood's made a joke about me." "He reckoned after Haydon's fling with her, she may care to redraft the inscription." "I told him to his face he could go to bloody hell." "You can't judge Bill by things like that." "He's got different standards." " He was never one for regulations." " You weren't one to see him straight." "That's it, everything." "(CHURCH BELL TOLLS)" "Bill made a huge fuss about your repatriation." "He said any price was fair to get one loyal Englishman home." "I remember his verdict on Control's handling of Testify." ""The most incompetent operation ever launched" ""by an old man for his dying glory, and Jim Prideaux paid the cost of it."" "Proud of your memory, aren't you?" " Did you see Bill when you got back?" " No." " Your oldest closest friend?" " I was in quarantine." "Well, yes, but...never mind." "Let's go over your debriefing at Sarratt to wrap it up." "Were the inquisitors sympathetic or not?" "Never appeared, no questions at all." "I was in limbo." "Ate a lot, drank a lot, slept a lot." "Then Toby Esterhase turns up." "New suit, full of himself." "Says the Circus has nearly gone under due to Operation Testify and I'm currently number one leper." "Control's out of the game and there's a reorganisation to appease Whitehall." " They sent Toby?" " Yes, the little charmer (!" ")" " He told me not to worry." " About what?" "My special brief, whatever Control had told me." " Did Toby spell it all out?" " Said a few people knew the real story and I needn't worry, it was being taken care of." " All the facts were known." " Were they indeed...?" "Then he gave me 1,000 quid in cash, to add to my gratuity." " Who from?" " Didn't say." "Didn't all this strike you as a bit odd?" "No inquisition." "Toby throwing loose money around?" "Through you, the Russians have discovered the exact reach of Control's suspicions about a traitor in the Circus." "He'd narrowed the field to five and no one's asking you anything?" "The facts were known, man." "Toby ordered me not to approach anyone or to try to make my story heard." "The Circus was back on the road." "I could forget Tinker, Tailor, the whole damn game, moles, everything." ""Drop out," he said." ""You're a lucky man, Jim, forget it." ""Eh?" "Forget it."" "So Toby actually mentioned Tinker, Tailor to you?" "However did he get hold of that?" "That's what I've been doing." "Obeying orders and forgetting." "(BOYS CHATTER" " A BELL RINGS)" "(CHORISTER) # Lord, now lettest thou thy servant" "# Depart in peace" "# According to" "# Thy word" "# For mine eyes have seen" "# Thy salvation" "# Which thou hast prepared before the face" "# Of all people" "# To be a light" "# To lighten" "# The gentiles" "# And to be the glory" "# Of thy people" "# Israel" "# Glory be to the Father" "# And to the Son" "# And to the Holy Ghost" "# As it was in the beginning" "# Is now and ever shall be" "# World without end" "# Amen #" "The facts were known, man." "Toby ordered me not to approach anyone or to try to make my story heard." "The Circus was back on the road." "I could forget Tinker, Tailor, the whole damn game, moles, everything." ""Drop out," he said." ""You're a lucky man, Jim." ""Forget it, right?" "Forget it."" "So Toby actually mentioned Tinker, Tailor to you?" "However did he get hold of that?" "And that's what I've been doing." "Obeying orders and forgetting!" "(SCHOOL BELL RINGS)" "(ROLL OF THUNDER)" "(INDISTINCT CHATTER)" "George, old boy." "What an amazing thing." " Trust you popping up out of nowhere." " How are you, Jerry?" "George, this is terrific." "What are you doing?" "How's the demon wife?" "How's everything?" "First things first, what'll you have?" "Fancy a bottle of bubbles?" "Shall we?" " A brandy and ginger ale is fine." " Sure?" "All right." "Linda, give us a double brandy and ginger ale and another bucket of gin, will you?" " I think I'll marry her." " How many would that be?" "I'm a divorce addict, hopeless case." "Not lucky like you, George, but there's only one Ann." "I'll do a deal, an offer you can't refuse." "I'll shack up with Ann, be the envy of London, and you can have my job on the comic." "You've the turn of phrase for the women's ping-pong." ""Inscrutable Chinese Wizardess"." "Do you fancy it?" "Is that the task for today?" "Much bigger stuff, old boy." "Footer, the opiate of the people." "Heap big transfer..." "Scottish Thunderboots to rescue of ex-champs now on the slide." " Thanks, Linda, my love." " Will I write it down, Mr Westerby?" "Ah, please, Linda." " Cheers, George." " Cheers." "This isn't entirely a chance meeting." "I got the letter you wrote me, last football season." "I burnt it straight away." "Right, thanks." "Stupid of me, talking out of school...sorry." "No, you did what you felt was right at the time and so did I." "Haven't seen many of the boys and girls lately, actually." "Guess they've put both of us on the shelf." "With me I can hardly blame them." "Firewater not good for braves." "They think I'll blab, crack up." "I'm sure they don't." "I expect they're resting you up." "They do that, you know?" "In case you've wondered, I didn't tell anyone about your letter." "I was out of favour - out of work." "Writing to me wasn't what put them off, if that's what you thought." "In your letter you said you were a bit worried about Toby Esterhase." "Felt you ought to get something off your chest." "I got all xenophobe and suspicious." "Thought Toby had gone a bit haywire, in fact." " I should talk." " Tell me now." "You'd just come back from Czechoslovakia, hadn't you?" "Last job I did for Tobe." "Looks like the last I'll ever do." " Letterbox job?" " Yes, nothing to it, really." "Telephone kiosk, ledge at the top, dump a package ready for collection." "That was Budapest." "The Czechoslovak thing, I ran into by accident." "Had to go on to Prague, for the comic." "Nothing to do with Tobe." " Linda, sweetheart." " Again, Mr Westerby?" "Please, my beauty." "Oh, no, no, no." "Got time to eat?" "We'll go Dutch on that, shall we?" "I was in this bar in Prague, always use it." "Locals go there, all sorts." "Well, I got in with this crowd round a corner table, a bloke playing a squeeze box, we're all hugger-mugger to the music..." "Ah, thank you, Linda, my love." "And there's this kid with a pudding bowl haircut." "Army...obvious." "He's on leave, well in his cups, and knows I'm English." "Suddenly he says, do I want to know the truth about the British spy shot by the Russian secret police?" "Just like that." "Yells it right in my ear." "I play dumb, and he goes right on with it." "You know, the Jim Prideaux shambles." "He was belly-aching about being a foot soldier of the line." "Seems on the two nights in question, they were being chased till dizzy." "Make camp, break camp, move up, move back...fix bayonets!" "But the big point was the Russian contingent." "Full warpaint - tanks, motor-bikes, tracker dogs and a big car load of very sinister civilians." "Dirty work afoot in the forest, up near the Austrian border." "So, my little friend, being a sassy little devil, decides to ask his sergeant what's it all about." ""Sarge," he says, "What's going on?" "We being invaded, Sarge?"" ""No, son," says the sergeant." ""The Russians are after a British spy" ""who tried to kidnap a general."" " "Are" after...or "were" after?" " Exactly." "That's what the kid wanted to tell me." "The Russians moved in on the Friday." "It was the day after when they got Jim." "As he said, they were ready and waiting for him." "Knew the lot, in advance." "Heap bad story." "Bad for our big chief." "Bad for tribe." "So, as soon as I got back, I went and told all to Tobe." "How did he take it?" "To begin with it was "Thanks a million, Jerry, old boy."" "He'd go and pow-wow with the top brass." "Then the next morning..." "You're so plastered these days, you can't tell fact from fiction!" "You're an embarrassment!" "You go on a bender, drink yourself into cloud cuckoo land, then come staggering back here with a load of tripe like this!" "You're pathetic!" " Look, old boy..." " I don't want any excuses." " I had to report what I heard." " You believed every stupid word!" "Swallowed it like mother's milk!" "A load of half-baked rumours, you come spreading them round here, what you can remember, through your alcoholic haze!" " I didn't forget a thing." " Well, you will now!" "You'll forget the lot!" "Don't you see?" "The boy was a plant - provocateur, in layman's language." "He was doing a job for Moscow Centre." "Object - disruption." "Make the Circus chase our own tails." "And you fell for it, Jerry." "That's all." "OK, Tobe, you know best." "If you don't want the story, that's your business." "I'll do it for the paper." "You'll what?" "Not about the Russians getting there first, but the rest, it's all good stuff." "Story wasn't covered well at the time, just the official statement." "If old Jerry gets a splash about the day the Czechs mobilised for WWIII - except it was one lone Englishman surrounding them - that's a good piece." "The comic might even run an ad on the telly." "The day after that I was called for by the editor." "THE editor, not the sports bloke." "He tells me some clown has been on the phone with a formal warning." ""Keep that baboon Westerby off the Czecho spy story." ""Any further reference against the national interest." ""End of message."" "So, I didn't get the Reporter of the Year award." "Can't, can you, when your story's on the spike?" "Cheers." "You didn't spike it entirely." "I mean, you wrote to me." "Dropped the letter in by hand." "Must have been the same day you talked to Toby Esterhase." "Well, as I said at the time, it just felt odd." "My mistake, old boy." "When I heard you got the heave-ho, I felt an even bigger damn fool." "I thought it was you who phoned the editor." "It wasn't." "'Course not." "Sorry." "Nothing untoward going on?" "Tribe hasn't gone on the rampage?" "But are you hunting alone?" "I'm not the brightest, but when you start asking questions, there's got to be something." "All I'm saying is, any time, old boy." "Thank you, Jerry." " Rum chap, Toby Esterhase." " But good." "God, first rate, brilliant, but rum." "You won't forget to give my love to Ann?" "One of the great marriages, always said so." "Come on, Jerry, out with it." "Did Toby say something about Ann?" "Some story he'd got." "I told him to stuff it up his silk drawers." "(CHEERING)" " I suppose I should have been prepared." " Take on a temporary, you can't expect loyalty." "Well done, that boy!" "We're going to lose this match." "So much for Prideaux's coaching." "I'm absolutely furious with that man." "It's monstrous to clear off." "Did he say what's wrong with his mother?" "No, he did not." "She is supposed to be dying." "That's one excuse for absence he can hardly use again." "Not at all, Mother." "One false alarm can easily lead to another." "I'll ask for a full medical diagnosis next time." "(CHEERING, WHISTLE BLOWS)" "Those front row forwards of theirs look over-age to me." "Did he ever tell you how he got that awful shoulder?" " Fell off a bus with a bottle of vodka..." " What?" "Fell off a bus with a bottle of vodka inside him, I shouldn't wonder." "I suppose I shall have to take his French." "Oh, come on, Thursgood, keep up!" "He's gone in the Alvis." "He'd never trust any other form of transport." "If he'd gone for good, he wouldn't leave the caravan behind, would he?" "Stands to reason, that!" "Besides, he'd have said "Goodbye" properly, Rhino would." "Wouldn't just go, not Rhino." "Not like a juju man." " (KNOCKING)" " I've come about the furs." " Hello, Toby." " Peter." "It's not exactly five-star." "But then we are shopping a bit downmarket." "Safe houses I have known!" "Take the weight off your feet, won't be long." "So, we're expecting a Pole, are we, Peter?" "In the fur trade." "You think I might take him on as a courier?" "I'd like him on my own payroll, for preference." "Looks useful." "But what's the point?" "My lads are under-employed as it is." "Very generous of you, Peter." " (DOOR BUZZER)" " Stay put, Toby." "Sorry about this, Toby." "Against the wall, Tobe." "Did he come alone or is there a little friend waiting in the square?" "Looks all clear to me, sir." "Go back to the other room and don't take your eyes off the street." " Seen something?" " Turn the light out a moment." "Just a shadow, I suppose." "Yes, I think so." "I want to put a thesis to you, Toby, about what's been going on." "Let's cast our minds back, say about 18 months, when Control is still with us." "Percy Alleline wants his job, everyone knows that." "Though Control is sick and past his prime, Percy can't dislodge him." "It's a time of uneasiness in the Circus." "Morale is low, activity is low." "Yes?" "I remember, George." "Well, Percy's door opens one day and one of our senior men walks in." "We'll call him Gerald." "It's just a name." "Gerald says, "Percy, I've stumbled on a major source of Russian intelligence." ""It could be a gold mine."" "Perhaps they take a walk or a drive." "Whatever, Percy listens, because what Gerald goes on to say is music in Percy's ears." ""Some of us," Gerald tells him," ""are worried sick about the state the Circus is in." ""Look at our operational losses, agents, networks."" "He's careful not to suggest there's a traitor inside the Circus, but emphasises that slovenliness at the top is leading to failure all round." "That is to say, it's all Control's fault." "My thesis, you understand." " Sure, George." " Another notion is that Percy Alleline was his own Gerald." "He bought himself a top Russian spy and then manned his own boat." "I don't believe that." "I think he'd mess it up, don't you?" "Sure, George." "So the next thing is for Gerald to say to Percy," ""I and a little group of like-minded friends" ""want you to be our father-figure, Percy." ""We're not political men, we don't know our way in the Whitehall jungle." ""But you do." Did you bring a baby-sitter, Toby?" "Why should I?" "I came to meet Peter and some Pole in the fur trade." "Do you want Fawn to go down and have a look?" "No, need him here." "Can't take the chance." "Yes, well, Gerald says that if Percy will handle the committees, he and his friends will handle Merlin." "Merlin being the Moscow intelligence source and Witchcraft the name of the material he supplies." "How well it all worked." "Merlin's material proved excellent, as everyone agreed, except Control." "Eventually Control was out and Percy was king." " So what's new, George?" " Ever bought a fake picture, Toby?" "I sold a couple once." "The more you pay, the less inclined you are to doubt its authenticity." "Merlin's price was 20,000 francs a month into a Swiss bank, according to the file." "Yes, Toby, this is official." "There came the day when Gerald admitted Percy to the greatest secret of all:" "that the Merlin set-up has a London end." "Aleksey Aleksandrovich Polyakov," "Cultural Attaché at the Russian Embassy in London." "You're on record as grading him snow-white, Toby." "Quite untainted with the mischief of espionage." "In fact, he's Merlin's London representative." "That's the start, I should tell you now, of a very clever knot." "Everything to do with Witchcraft is secret, of course, but a lot of people are involved - transcribers, translators, codists, evaluators, God knows what." "It doesn't worry Gerald, of course." "He likes it because the art of being Gerald is to be one of a crowd." "When it comes to Polyakov, that's a different story." "Who knows it?" "Only you, Roy Bland, Bill Haydon and Percy." "Three of you and Alleline." "You're the magic circle." "Who meets him, Toby?" "For God's sake, let me sweat the bastard." "You all meet him." "How's that?" "Percy represents the authoritarian side." "Asks after his wife, suggests it's time he took a holiday." "Very paternal, Percy would be." "Bill Haydon, I think, would see Polyakov much more often." "Bill's a Russian expert and good entertainment value." "Bill would shine when it comes to the briefings and follow-up sessions, making sure the right messages went back to Moscow." "Roy Bland's good on economics and is top man on the satellite countries, so he'd have plenty to chat about." "Then there's you, Toby." "You'd have solo sessions with Polyakov as there's tradecraft to discuss and all those little snippets about goings-on inside the Embassy, which are pretty much your field." "If the magic circle wanted him to do some photography inside the Embassy, it would be you who would supply the film." "Replenish his stock from time to time." "Take him little sealed packets." "Toby, you wouldn't be lying?" "Did you bring a baby-sitter?" " Cross my heart." " What would you use for a job like this?" " Cars?" " No." "On foot." " Keep walking them through." " How many?" " Eight." "Ten, maybe." " What about one man, alone?" " One?" "Never." "Impossible." " I can call Mendel to take a look." "I'm sure Toby's right." "Listen, George, I know Polyakov works for Moscow Centre." "Of course I do." "We all know." "But come on." "Think how many other operations we've run this way." "We've bought Polyakov, right." "He's a Moscow hood but he's also our joe." "He's got to pretend to his own people that he's spying on us." "So we've got to give him one or two goodies now and then." "Sure, I've passed him the odd sealed packet - chickenfeed." "He can send them home, Moscow Centre clap him on the back, say he's a big man." "It happens all the time." "Come on, George, you know the game." "Are you Polyakov's agent inside the Circus?" "Someone has to be." "If his cover for meeting you people is that he's spying on the Circus, then he must have a man on the inside." "Polyakov can't report back to Moscow Centre after he's picked up a great load of Circus chickenfeed and say, "I got this from the boys."" "He's got to have a whole history." "How he selected his man, courted him, bought him, how they meet and where." "The whole paraphernalia of running a double agent." "And all this in Moscow Centre's archives." "You, Toby?" "Toby Esterhase masquerades as a Circus traitor to keep Polyakov in business." "My hat, Toby." "A dangerous job like that deserves a whole chestful of medals." "You're on a damn long road." "What happens to you if you never reach the other end?" "With Lacon and the Minister behind me?" "Why pick on the little guy?" "Why not go for the big ones..." "Percy Alleline, Bill Haydon?" " Thought you were a big guy these days." " You're the perfect choice, Toby." "Resentful about slow promotion, sharp-witted, fond of money..." "With you as his agent, he has a cover story that really works." "The big three give you the little sealed packets of chickenfeed and Moscow Centre thinks you're all theirs." "The problem arises when it turns out you've been handing Polyakov the crown jewels and getting Russian chickenfeed in return." "If that's the case, Toby, you're going to need good friends, like us." "Gerald of course, is a Russian mole." " And he's pulled the Circus inside out." " But Witchcraft material isn't chickenfeed." " It's the best." " It was good at first." "George, suppose you're wrong?" " Toby..." "I" " Who told you to muzzle Jerry Westerby?" "The same person who sent you down to Sarratt with £1,000 for Jim Prideaux and the instruction, "Get lost"?" " Speak up." " Was it Percy?" "I think so." "Maybe it was Bill, though." "Listen, it was a big operation." "Sometimes Roy..." "It never seemed to come straight from one." "There was a committee." "I took a lot of orders." "You told Prideaux to forget about Tinker, Tailor." "Where did that come from?" "I never knew what that meant." "Now, George, that's the truth." "Poor Toby..." "Yes, I do see." "What a dog's life you must have been leading, running between them all." "George, if there's anything I can do, of a practical nature." "You know me, George." "My boys are pretty well trained." "If you want to borrow them..." "I'd have to speak to Lacon, of course, but...you'd expect that." "All I want is for this thing to be cleared up." "For the good of the Circus." "I want nothing for myself." "Where's this safe house you keep exclusively for meeting Polyakov?" "5 Lock Gardens, Camden Town." "You'll be staying here for a night or two." "Fawn will look after you." "Fawn!" "You'll have to make appropriate explanations to the Circus, by telephone." "You're having girl trouble or whatever sort of trouble you're in these days." "Then there's your wife, of course." "Sure, George, I can handle that." "If he's any bother, Fawn, use your own discretion." "Peter, I want you to watch my back." "Will you do that?" " Look for one man." "But look!" " We'll join up in Sussex Gardens." "Same as you, George." "Just a feeling..." "someone, but couldn't say for certain." "I covered you both to the front door." "If you did have company, he's cleverer than me." "But it's been known." "Do you have anyone in particular in mind?" "Will I go to pavement level and take a sniff?" " Well, proceed?" " Yes." "Right." "Now, the Minister has one major worry." "In his own words," ""How much porcelain gets broken at the end of the day?"" "Scandal, he's talking about." "If we unmask the mole, will the Russians cut their losses by telling the world's press" " how they made fools of us?" " I think not." "Make your enemy look stupid, you lose the justification for taking him on." " I've told him that, George." " So isn't his mind at rest?" "He hopes there'll be nothing messy." "Nothing that could provoke Moscow." " But proceed?" " Heavens, yes." "Clean the stables." "Problem, flush out the mole." "Method?" "We need to alarm him, just sufficiently to make him call for a crash meeting with Polyakov at the safe house." "A meeting Gerald the mole needs all to himself, secret from the rest of the Witchcraft magic circle." "There are two of them and Alleline." " You've definitely cleared Esterhase?" " Oh, yes." " Thank you." " Karla really did bring off the perfect fix..." "For a while." "It would be beautiful in another context." "Tinker" " Alleline." "Tailor" " Haydon." "Soldier" " Bland." " Spot the mole." " Quite." "Ways and means, George?" "Ricki Tarr will go to Paris." "He'll make use of the appropriate Embassy facilities to send a signal to the Head of London Station." ""Something, something, something," which we'll now concoct." "(SEAGULLS CRY)" "The message will be, "Have information vital to the safeguarding of the service." ""Request immediate meeting." "Personal."" "Remember, "Vital to the safeguarding of the service."" " It's even true." " Don't forget that." "No mistakes, Ricki." "Your head's on the block." "Not the only one, Peter." "(TAPPING OF TYPEWRITER KEYS)" "(CHORISTER) # Lord, now lettest thou thy servant" "# Depart in peace" "# According to" "# Thy word" "# For mine eyes have seen" "# Thy salvation" "# Which thou hast prepared before the face" "# Of all people" "# To be a light" "# To lighten" "# The gentiles" "# And to be the glory" "# Of thy people" "# Israel" "# Glory be to the Father" "# And to the Son" "# And to the Holy Ghost" "# As it was in the beginning" "# Is now and ever shall be" "# World without end" "# Amen #" "Tinker" " Alleline." "Tailor" " Haydon." "Soldier" " Bland." " Spot the mole." " Quite." "Ways and means, George?" "Ricki Tarr will go to Paris." "He'll make use of the appropriate Embassy facilities to send a signal to the Head of London Station." ""Something, something, something," which we'll now concoct." "The message will be, "Have information vital to the safeguarding of the service." ""Request immediate meeting." "Personal. "" "Remember, "Vital to the safeguarding of the service. "" "No mistakes, Ricki." "Your head's on the block." "Not the only one, Peter." "Check." "Toby Esterhase did say two full milk bottles and all's well and you may enter?" "Yes, George." "And that's the second time." "Is it?" "Well, let's not pretend we're not nervous." "Check, George." "Ready to record?" "Shall we try it?" "I'll go upstairs." "What would you like - Monteverdi, Irving Berlin, Mick Jagger?" "This machinery, installed at great expense to the British taxpayer, is voice-activated..." "When I stop speaking, the tape will stop recording." " (CLICK)" " See?" "# Old man river That old man river" "# He just keeps rolling... #" "(FAINT SINGING)" "Hello, here's something..." "Soldier's just arriving." "That's all three of them in there now." " Under starter's orders." " Importantly, who gets away first?" "Just going for a walk." "Back with you in a minute." "Peter?" "All clear?" " As far as I can judge." "No promises." " You should come down now." " Proceed?" " Proceed." " What's that?" " Nothing, just fiddling." " You there?" " Yes." "Someone just leaving." "Can't quite make him out." "Called a taxi right to the door." "Cheeky." "Thank you." "Join us." "(TAXI DRAWS UP)" "(TAXI DOOR OPENS THEN CLOSES)" "(DOOR OPENS THEN CLOSES)" "(A DOOR CLOSES, FOOTSTEPS)" "(KEY TURNS IN LOCK, TAXI ENGINE)" "(DOOR CLOSES)" "(FOOTSTEPS)" "(CAN RATTLES)" "(VOICES SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)" " What will you drink?" " Scotch." "Bloody great big one." "Have you anything on you that I should..." " Will Alleline go to Paris?" " He's got to." "Stay just long enough to..." "He knows Tarr would never stick his neck out..." "Something to buy back his good name...and then some." "You know what it is." "Karla's got 24 hours to get me out." "The time has come, Aleks." "You!" "You...!" "You!" "You butchered my agents..." "How many since?" "How many?" "Two hundred?" "Three?" "FOUR?" "!" " Stop that!" " All right!" "All right!" " Are you armed, Bill?" " I'm a Soviet diplomat." " This behaviour..." " Shut up!" "Peter, will you phone Percy Alleline and ask him and Roy Bland to come here immediately?" "Then Lacon, then Toby Esterhase." "I think the first thing to do is to play them this evening's tapes." "That should save a great deal of time in explanations." " (SPEAKS IN RUSSIAN)" " Aleks...really." "Oh, they're on." "Do you mind if I finish my drink, George?" " No one out there you noticed?" " Quiet as the grave." "Very proper, George." "Don't want anything irrelevant, do we?" "Very tidy, George." " Will Alleline go to Paris?" " He's got to." "He'll delay just long enough to keep his dignity." "He can't jump the moment Ricki Tarr tells him to." "Tarr would never stick his neck out unless he'd something precious, something to buy back his good name...and then some." "And you and I know what it is." "Karla's got 24 hours to pull me out." "The time has come, Aleks." "Well, that's that." "Congratulations, George." "Next step, gentlemen?" "Would you agree, Percy, that our best course is to make some positive use of Bill Haydon?" "We need to salvage whatever's left of the networks he's betrayed." "Yes." "We sell Bill to Moscow Centre for as many of our men in the field as can be saved." "For humanitarian reasons." "Professionally, of course, they're finished." "Quite." "The sooner you open negotiations with Karla, the better." "You're much better placed to talk terms with our friend downstairs than I am." "Polyakov remains your direct link with Karla." "The only difference is this time you know it." "It's definitely your job, Percy." "You're still Chief." "Officially...for the moment." "Very well, George." "Excuse me, sir." "Mr Guillam says is it all right if the inquisitors take Mr Haydon away now, sir?" "Shall I go first?" "(HAYDON) All the best, Percy." "I want Fawn to stay with him." "I'm sorry about the assault...unprofessional." "It was just that...it would have to be Bill Haydon, wouldn't it?" "He was always our hero, in capital letters." "I mean for the younger lot...my kind, anyway." "The antiquated English patriot." ""Never mind all the dirt we have to do." "It's for England."" "The funny thing is, it's an effort not to think of him with affection." "I suppose Bill would say that means you've grown up, Peter." "Always good for a laugh, wasn't he, Bill?" "I'd like to thank you, by the way." "You helped enormously." "Truly, Peter." "Lacon assures me there's been no coercion." "I hope that's true." "Oh, yes." "No complaints, George." "Bit of a nose-bleed, keep feeling dizzy." "I'm sure it's just the excitement of it all." " Why have you been weeping?" " Sheer exasperation." "The pettiness of our inquisitors." "They're utterly incompetent." "They believe I know the names of Karla's other moles around the world." "Idiots!" "I can't talk to people like that." "You're prepared to say something to me, according to Lacon." "Can't Percy get a move on doing his horse-trading with Karla?" "I'm sure it'll only be a day or two now." " What do you want to know?" " Oh..." "Why?" "When?" "How?" "Why?" "You ask that!" "Because it was necessary..." "that's why!" "Someone had to." "We were bluffed!" "You, me, Control...all of us." "The Circus talent spotters all those years ago... they picked us when we were golden with hope." "Told us we were on our way to the Holy Grail, a lifetime of glory in front of us." "Service to the great cause." "Freedom's protectors." "Oh, my God...what a question... "Why?"" "Do you know what's killing Western democracy, George?" "Greed...and constipation - moral, political, aesthetic." "I hate America very deeply." "The economic repression of the masses...institutionalised." "Even Lenin couldn't foresee the extent of that." "Britain...oh, dear!" "No viability whatever in world affairs." "I suppose that's when it began." "Turning my eyes to the east, I mean." "When I saw how trivial we'd become as a nation - say the forties." "By 1950, I was slipping Karla occasional gifts of intelligence, carefully selected morsels to help the Russian cause against America." "At that time I was scrupulous not to give Moscow anything harmful to ourselves, our own agents in the field." "I still believe the secret services are the only real expression of a nation's character." "Until the mid-fifties, I still had hopes... lingering loyalty to what WE represented." "Self-delusion, of course." "We were already America's streetwalkers." "I was granted Soviet citizenship twelve years ago." "They've given me a couple of medals." " What medals?" " I didn't ask." "Does it matter?" " Quite a lot to Bill, one supposes." " Possibly." "We're going to get a bit more from him, I hope." "I do hope so, George." "He's right about the state of affairs down there, slovenly." "They don't even patrol the perimeter, day or night." "I have mentioned it." "The thinking on Sarratt is that it should be as inconspicuous as possible." "I'm concerned for Haydon's safety." "Aren't you being a little over-dramatic?" "He can only go to Russia, and we're sending him there, anyway." "The number of people who need to be told about all this, as we agree, must be kept as small as possible." "I suppose your wife will have to be among them." "I know you told me... she and Haydon...over and done with now..." "There's always the unknown factor in matters of the heart, isn't there?" "I'm thinking about the future, any possible further contact." "If Ann doesn't know..." "She does meet so many different sorts of people." " She gets around." " I'm sorry, George." "Not at all." "I quite take your point." "Ann must let us know of any approach, directly or indirectly," " made by or on behalf of..." " Exactly." "Or even apparently on behalf of, or merely concerning, Bill Haydon." " Thank you." " I was going to tell her anyway." "You might call it balancing the books." "Absolutely." "One thing perplexes me more than anything else about the mole conspiracy." "Karla devised Operation Witchcraft primarily as a means of putting poor Percy Alleline on Control's throne." "But why didn't Karla want Haydon to take over the Circus himself?" "It would've been less difficult to arrange, with all Bill's acknowledged accomplishments." "No, no." "We had the perfect set-up." "Percy made the running, I slipstreamed behind him." "Roy and Toby did the legwork." "Far better for me to remain the freewheeling subordinate, the laughing cavalier." "Being in charge could have bogged me down - admin, meetings, dinners, chewing the cud in Whitehall." " Never happened to Control." " A natural recluse, Control." "I couldn't have behaved like that and got away with it." "No, no, George." "Karla and I agreed." "I would have been wasted as Chief." " Could have done it, of course." " Of course." "I'd like to go inside now." "(TV:" "WEATHER FORECAST)" "Yes, you're right." "The Czechoslovakian business was a bit of a desperate throw." "But something pretty bold was called for." "I was certain Control was getting very warm indeed." "All that burrowing in the files he was doing." "It was paying off, I knew." "He'd built up an uncomfortably impressive inventory of the number of operations I'd either blown or managed to cripple." "Then, of course, he was narrowing his field of suspects." "A short list of officers of a certain age, experience, rank." "He did well, considering he was so ill." "Surprised Karla." "Was the offer of information from General Stevcek genuine?" "Good Lord, no." "It was a fix from start to finish." "Stevcek existed, of course." "Still does." "Very distinguished man." "But he never offered anything to Control or anybody else." "Did you expect Control to send Jim Prideaux?" "Well...obviously, we needed to be certain Control would rise to the bait." "We had to spell it out that he'd got a big gun, to make the story stick." "We knew he'd only settle for someone outside London Station." " Someone he trusted." " And who spoke Czech, of course." "Naturally." "It had to be a man who was old Circus, to bring the temple down a bit." "Yes, I see the logic of that." "It was perhaps the most famous partnership the Circus ever had." "You and Jim, back in the old days." ""The iron fist in the iron glove." Who was it who coined that?" "I got him home, didn't I?" "Yes, that was good of you." "(THUMP OF DARTS ON BOARD)" " The thing with Ann was Karla's idea." " Was it (?" ")" "Yes." "Did you think it was hers?" "Karla always thought, if there was a threat, it would come from you." "He said you were quite good." "But you had this one weak spot..." "Ann." "It was a double fix, actually." "On the one hand, you weren't likely to think of me as a Circus spy if you were preoccupied with what your wife and I got up to in bed." "And on the other, if it was well known that I was her lover, it was bound to look like personal vengeance if you ever did suggest I might be the mole." "So Karla said, not to strain it, but if possible...join the queue." " Point?" " Point." "Presumably it was on Karla's instructions you were with Ann on the night of the Prideaux shoot-up?" "As insurance?" "Oh, yes, he was adamant on that." "They tell me I could be away tomorrow, or the day after at the latest." "Can you make sure any mail gets forwarded from my club?" "And the balance of my salary, of course." "I will." " Anything else?" " Oh, yes, I nearly forgot." "You got a pen somewhere?" "Thanks." "Girlfriend." "Give her this." "I'm away on work of national importance." "Maybe for years...so she can forget me..." "Well, I can't take her with me, can I?" "Even if I could, she'd be a bloody millstone." "Oh, and... there's one particular boy." "A cherub, but no angel." "Haven't seen a lot of him, but better give him a couple of hundred." "Can you do that out of the reptile fund?" " I would think so." " Good." "Oh, God, I'm tired." " My pen, please." " What?" "Oh..." "Certainly." "Sorry." "Thank you." "Don't look round, Bill." "Oh, it's you, Jim." "Come to say goodbye?" "Nice of you." "Glad to see you haven't lost your touch." "Must be in pretty good shape." "Why did you get me back?" "I couldn't leave you rotting in a Czech prison." "Russian." "Why didn't Karla finish me off?" "Was that out of delicacy to you?" "Wasn't that, was it?" "You both thought a corpse might make a lot more fuss than just another repatriated, harmless cripple." " Didn't you?" " The shooting wasn't part of the plan, Jim." "No, not the shooting." "But everything else." "..and the food shall be forestored to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt." "That the land perish not through famine." "And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of all his servants." "And Pharaoh said unto his servants, "Can we find such a one as this," ""a man in whom the spirit of God is?" And Pharaoh said unto Joseph," ""Forasmuch as God hath..." "shewed...thee all this..." ""Forasmuch as God hath...shewed..." ""Forasmuch as..." ""Forasmuch as God hath...sh...sh...shewed...!" ""Forasmuch as God hath showed thee all this."" ""Forasmuch as God hath showed thee all this," ""there is none so discreet and wise as thou art." ""Thou shalt be over my house," ""and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled." ""Only in the throne will I be greater than thou..."" "It seems that at 10.30, Haydon told the guards he felt a bit sick and thought a breath of air would help him." "Because his case was now considered closed, they saw no reason to tear themselves away from some horror film that had just started on the TV and they let him wander off." "Half an hour later, they thought they'd better go and look for him." "He'd received no letters, messages during the day." "I was the only outsider to see him." "But his suit had come back from the cleaners." "Possibly a message was concealed in it, inviting him to a rendezvous." "The guards had not inspected the suit before giving it to him." "I'm afraid that doesn't surprise me." "Any comments, anyone?" "If someone went to the cleaners, said he lost his ticket, could he look through the stuff ready for collection?" "That's one way." "Would the Russians kill Haydon?" "It gives Karla all the reason he needs to cancel the deal on our networks." "But Moscow Centre prides itself on getting its people back." "Important point, Roy." "Well, WHO, then?" "We will all, of course, have to account for our movements last night." "Necessary formality." "Also Mendel, Fawn, Ricki Tarr." "Then, as to the future..." "I've been asked to..." "look after things for a while." "I'd like everyone to take some leave." "Afterwards there'll be some...redeployment..." "..for those of you who wish to remain with the service." "George." " Hello." " Ann." " Just the same." " You too." "No..." "Julian, was that his name?" "Jake." "And no Jake." "Gone." "Actually got a job somewhere." "I'm quite free at the moment." "Enjoying it." "Uncle Guzzle Guts is away too." "Madrid." "So I've got the house to myself." "I've brought you this." "It goes..." "Oh, George." "Very nice of you." "What's been happening?" "How've you all been?" "Did Bill say anything about me?" "I mean me as a person, what he thought about me?" " Not really." " Are you glad he's dead?" "Please...don't say "Not really."" "No, I'm not glad." "There was a moment when I knew, when I heard his voice, talking to Polyakov." "Just for a moment I wanted to shoot him...but it passed." "Bill betrayed totally, didn't he?" "Everything, everyone?" "Was he taking some kind of revenge?" " He must have talked to you." " Should I have passed that on?" "Pillow talk?" "Describe Bill." "Yet another man trying to find a little place in history." "But George, Bill standing at the centre of some secret stage, playing world against world, he had a wonderful time." "He enjoyed himself." "He loved being a traitor." "I'm glad he's dead." "His life was over." " I'm glad for him." " Did you love him?" "Ann, did you?" "No, George." "Poor George." "Life's such a puzzle to you, isn't it?" "(CHORISTER) # Lord, now lettest thou thy servant" "# Depart in peace" "# According to" "# Thy word" "# For mine eyes have seen" "# Thy salvation" "# Which thou hast prepared before the face" "# Of all people" "# To be a light" "# To lighten" "# The gentiles" "# And to be the glory" "# Of thy people" "# Israel" "# Glory be to the Father" "# And to the Son" "# And to the Holy Ghost" "# As it was in the beginning" "# Is now and ever shall be" "# World without end" "# Amen #" "A man who plays a role not to others, but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers." "In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting." "It's a matter of experience, professional expertise." "It's a facility most of us can acquire." "But while a confidence trickster, a play actor or a gambler can return from his performance to the ranks of his admirers, the secret agent enjoys no such relief." "For him, deception is first a matter of self-defence." "No, I wasn't a spy and I didn't meet spies." "Of course, to a novelist, making fact into fiction is simplicity itself." "Interviewers trying to get the truth out of John Le Carré need to keep all their wits about them." "He's not only the man who turned the spy story into high art, he WAS actually a spy." "And spies, of course, are not meant to tell the truth." "Le Carré's classic, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", however, is a critique of a very different kind of liar... ..a double agent who betrayed us to the Russians." "In his isolated house," "Le Carré guided me through the deceptions which have affected his life from childhood." "(LE CARRÉ) What Philby and I had in common was immense, immeasurable, terrifying, irrational fathers." "Men who would tell you anything, lie about themselves, make themselves really unreachable to children." "And Philby's father was the most dreadful fellow, a kind of conman who worked the Middle East, became a Rolls-Royce representative, wormed his way into Saudi Arabian court circles and converted to Islam for convenience." "I always felt with Philby that he took the path I might have taken if I'd been a different animal." "I learned first to be a chameleon." "The technique is based on the theory that the interviewer, loving no one as well as himself, will be attracted by his own image." "You therefore assume the exact social, temperamental, political and intellectual colour of your inquisitor." "Sometimes this method founders against the idiocy or ill-disposition of the inquisitor." "If so, become an armadillo." "Place the interviewer in a position so incongruous that you are superior to him." "Turn him into an ape, send him naked to Masonic banquets, condemn him, like the serpent, to go about on his belly." "When I was five, my mother simply packed up and disappeared." "And I have no memory of mourning my mother at all." "And so my dad was the only parent I knew." "He was a man of no political education, no education at all, tremendous fluency, a wonderful kind of sponge for picking up attitudes and manners and voices and things." "And he stood as a Liberal candidate for a Great Yarmouth constituency." "We can't put our ideals in the collection box." "We can't pay for our son's education with ideals." "He was proposing himself to the people of this constituency as a Baptist, which he wasn't, as a teetotaller, which, my God, he wasn't!" "And as a man of the people, which he certainly was." "And we would stop between meetings, and he had a Bentley and Mr Nutbeam was the chauffeur." "Mr Nutbeam would open the boot of the Bentley which had a dovecote with splits of champagne!" "And..." "And he would whack one home and then into the next school room in some benighted broad or other." "He had one speech, which went, "So, people of Yarmouth, I want you to remember this." ""People come up to me in the road and say to me, 'Ronnie, you're a man of ideals." ""'What place have ideals in politics?" "' I say to them - very Churchillian " ""And I say to them, 'Ideals are like the stars." ""'We cannot reach them but we profit by their presence.' Thank you, people of Yarmouth."" "And every damn speech ended with this piece of nonsense." "Then we got to Acle Broad, out on the Norfolk Broads." "He'd delivered his speech and a woman got up at the back and said, "Is it true the candidate's been in prison?"" "And there was a silence." "And Ronnie, my father, moved to the front of the little podium." "And said, "I see here people of a certain age." "Mothers and fathers and grandparents." ""And I want to ask them this question."" "If one of these children, like this son of mine sitting here behind me, poised to collect some of the highest prizes the law of this country can offer, if one of these children should ever make a mistake" "and pay the price society exacts... ..and come home and say, "Mum, it's me..." "".." "Dad, it's me."" "Which one of you sitting here tonight would slam the door in his face?" "In the car, as we whizzed off to the next meeting," "I said, "What's that about?"" "He said, "Many years ago I was an office boy who took a few bob out of the stamp money box" ""and was caught before I had a chance to put it back."" "Well, I learned later that he was sentenced, I think, to four years in prison." "As I became more grown-up, he used me to deliver messages of the most frightful kind, like, er," ""My father rang." "He's sorry to say the cheque's in the post", or, "He can't make it home this evening."" "And then, before the big crash, we were hiding the cars in the back garden and so on so that they couldn't be repossessed or also so that people didn't know he was there." "He was tremendously warm, sentimental." "He got you in a great big bear hug and would, "Dah, come on!" "Don't look like that, don't be like that."" "Come on, dry those old peepers of yours." "Give your old dad a hug." "There was absolutely no way you could relate face to face, truth for truth." "Never lie, son." "No Pym was ever a liar." "See how I told them the truth tonight?" "God heard me." "Always does." "Really the only retaliation was... was, er...the secret path." "I think I learned to give myself very rarely to people and enormously treasured, as I still do, my secrecy." "I invested institutions with those qualities I hoped to find in parents." "But I received a savagely orthodox and brutal early education from the private and public school systems of those days and then went to the holiday schools between." "So I invested institutions with very cruel and unpredictable powers." "His relations with his housemaster were not good." "He was in Westcott House." "The housemaster was a man called Stanley Thompson, a rigid, rather narrow man." "Kind, but, er... ..morally very different from the Cornwell background." "Thompson had really a very poor view of Mr Cornwell Senior... .understandably!" "So really, Sherborne was very much a mixed blessing." "(ORGAN PLAYS)" "The actual gulf between Sherborne, with its very high church orthodoxy as it then was, and the chaos of domestic life and the terribly funny rackety scenes we lived, that gulf became unbridgeable and absurd." "And I found myself tending to both extremes." "So I stayed with the Anglican Franciscans in Cerne Abbas for one bit of the holiday because I really wanted to immerse myself in the meanings of Christianity and I wanted to commit to the extremes of the teachings of the school I was in." "On the other hand, I then suffered a complete revulsion from the Christianity and the orthodoxy and I began to think that I was the plaything of ridiculous forces." "On one hand, racketing criminality;" "on the other, toffee-nosed high school stuff." "Er, and I fled it, really." "The room has changed, as rooms do." "I don't remember any books around here." "What I remember is a great long table and the professor sitting up at the end." "And I suppose about 20 students or so ranged either side." "You have to understand that in the German as well as the Swiss ethic the professor has a tremendous authority, far greater than one could imagine in any English-teaching institution these days." "And he sat here looking tremendously venerable in his silver hair." "And I was really an escapee from England, and I was a sixteen-and-a-half-year-old kid." "It went over my head, the complete discussion." "He kept talking about "Die fliegenden Blätter der Art und Kunst"." "These were the terms of reference of the Goethian period and I couldn't understand how you'd translate "flying leaves of art and culture"." "And he must, after a while, have identified me as some kind of stowaway... because he asked me to stay behind at the end of the seminar." "So I remained behind and I looked half the age of anybody else there." "If the discussions were in English I wouldn't have understood, but they were in German and about people I'd never heard of and I had my thumb in my mouth, practically, and he said, "What are you doing here?"" "And I said, "Well, I'm a refugee from England."" "And he said, "Well, then you'd better stay!"" "Charlemagne said, "To possess another language is to possess another soul,"" "and I wanted that other soul." "My English one had been sufficiently battered and I'd prefer to change it for a different one." "And it was here, really, that in a curious way I said goodbye, I think for ever, to my sense of integration in English life." "I've returned and I've remained devoted to my own country in lots of ways, but I've always retained that distance from it." "(BELL TOLLS)" "I was completely lonely." "Although I'd cut off from England, I terribly missed the company of English people." "I missed above all my schoolfriends." "So I attached myself to the English community by going to the English church by the embassy." "And..." "I was picked up..." "Well, I was taken into people's homes and..." "One diplomat, who I expect was attached to the intelligence section, asked me to do jobs so trivial and miniscule that they're really of no account whatever." "But I trollied off, thinking I was the greatest spy in the world and hung around in Geneva and gave a gentleman a parcel, and er, looked for somebody carrying last week's "Time" magazine, or whatever." "I thought I was absolutely the male version of Mata Hari." "The clandestine nature of it became me." "It absolutely fitted with my nature at that time." "If we get interrupted by some chance encounter, a friend of yours, friend of mine - but not in the family, I'm sure you understand - you and I are embroiled in the affairs of the British Embassy's Anglo-Swiss Christian Society." "I'm the new secretary, you're my missioner at the university." "Just in case." "He was a child agent, graded "semi-conscious", our way of saying he sort of knows what he is sort of doing and sort of why." "He was 17 years old." "If he needed you urgently he must ring Felicity and say Uncle was in town." "If you needed him you'd phone the Ollingers and say you were Mac passing through." ""Float, Magnus, "you said. "Get in there and be your own charming self, Magnus, "you said." ""Keep your ears and eyes open, see what sticks," ""but for God's sake don't get into trouble with the Swissies. "" "I'd done a run to Geneva, or wherever... ..and I came back to the Lingarstraße, where I lived in a tiny attic, all alone obviously." "And my landlady said, "The Fremdenpolizei want to talk to you."" "That's the Special Branch, who look after undesirable foreigners in this country." "So I was absolutely terrified." "I thought, "My God, this is it." "I'm going to be shot at dawn!"" "Also, my beloved English Raleigh bicycle that I'd brought from England had disappeared." "So I went down to the police headquarters to what seemed to be a formless but formidable, deeply threatening interrogation." "Where had I come from?" "Had I got a student's card?" "Yes, I had." "And finally he said, "And do you know about the law relating to bicycles in Switzerland?"" "And I said, "No." He said, "They should all be registered." ""You were informed against because your bicycle does not carry an official licence." "So get one."" "(VIVIAN GREENE) Father decided David must go to Oxford." "So, in a Cornwell sort of way, one of his pals was a man called Sir James Barnes... ..who was a civil servant and interested, as Father Cornwell was, in the Arsenal Football Club." "He said to Sir James Barnes, "I want to get my son into Oxford."" "Sir James Barnes said, "I know another civil servant, Follett Sandford" - later Registrar here." "He was approached and he said, "Try Keith Murray, the Rector of Lincoln."" "And that's in the first instance..." "And Keith, knowing that I had been at Sherborne, and had only recently come here, said, "What do you know of David Cornwell?" I said, "I think he's a very nice, intelligent chap."" "So we brought him up, interviewed him in the next room." "Er, he did some sort of exam, passed with colours, and in spite of a somewhat grumpy letter from his housemaster at Sherborne, he was admitted." "Well, he was sort of difficult, he was very English and a bit military and very, very withheld." "He kept a very low profile." "He didn't, in fact, engage very much in conversation." "I think the fact that he contributed to the magazine "Oxford Left", as an illustrator, meant that he could hide, he didn't have to discourse." "All he had to do was draw, and therefore he didn't have to engage in conversation." "I did notice him "hanging around", one has to say, a number of meetings and loosely, rather mysteriously associated with the left in Oxford." " One bloke says you were a spy at Oxford." " Yes, er..." "Is that true?" "Yeah, that's true." "Er..." "It's true in the sense that, er... ..there was a conviction then... ..that the Russians, the Soviets, and their allies would be recruiting... ..from the ranks of Oxford, middle-class Oxford undergraduates, in the late forties" "in the same way that they had done in the thirties at Cambridge." "That was the terror." "(WOMAN) Father went bankrupt and there was no money to pay David's fees and I think he just got desperate." "He had no money, he had debts, er..." "He...asked me..." "He said, "Let's get married."" "We were to marry the following year and I'd continue working." "By that time I'd been told that he was going to work for MI5." " Told?" "Somebody came to the house?" " Somebody came and we had dinner." "He told me and said how did I feel about it." "They'd obviously checked me out and I was OK." "They didn't do any further vetting." "But they warned me about how he'd be called off on jobs that I wouldn't know about." "Did you gradually form an ideological notion of what being a spy might be?" " Well..." " And then, sort of, join up?" "Were you just recruited by the army, doing your national service?" "Er, I was recruited, er, both by the army and by the civilian branches of intelligence at different times." "I think, when the option was presented to me, it was immensely attractive, as if the rest of my life had prepared me for this moment." "It was entering the priesthood and it was the call." "I really believed at last that I had found a cause I could serve, that I had, by instinct, the methodology to serve it well." "And I also longed for the dignity which great secrecy confers upon you." "(ANN) I think he was running various informers." "I'd say trades unionists but I don't know if it was only that, but those I knew about... were very often long-term communists who, after '56, got fed up with the whole thing and got worried about the way things were going." "That is my assumption." "I'm not sure." "But I know..." "There was one rather sweet man you felt terribly sorry for." "It felt like betrayal, er..." "but it had a voluptuous quality as it did for my character." "Voluptuous quality in the sense that this was a necessary sacrifice of morality." "And that is a very important component of what makes people spy, what attracts them." "There is something delicious about being told, "Now, we're going to have to burgle that house tonight." ""And, so, we must do this and do this and we must get the drawings and plans..." ""And we'll have a policeman outside while the owners are away, in case they come back," ""and the policeman will say, 'Sorry, you can't come in, we've had a burglary reported here'."" "And these larcenous instincts which are put to the service of the Crown do give a kind of bias, without doubt." "That's the delight of the game." "He was obviously brilliant there from the start and I think Five thought they'd got quite a catch with him." "That's my impression now." "Maybe I didn't think it at the time." "Until that time, we thought he could make a bit of extra money for us by his painting." "Then he had this long train journey going up and down to London every day from Missenden." "And so he started to write." "Smiley, you interviewed Samuel Arthur Fennen at the Foreign Office on Monday." "Am I right?" " (SMILEY) Yes." "Yes, I did." " What was the case?" "Anonymous letter alleging party membership at Oxford." "Routine interview authorised by the Director of Security." ""Fennen can't have complained, " thought Smiley, "He knew I'd clear him." ""There was nothing irregular, nothing. "" "Did you go for him at all?" "Was it hostile, Smiley?" "Tell me that." "I loaded upon Smiley's shoulders the responsibility of having gone to interrogate a man, you, and I say to you, according to our records, you joined the Communist Party at university." "And you say, yes, but that lasted six months and I realised it was bunkum and anyway I fell in love with a girl and gave it up." "And I say, fine, it's good you got it off your chest." "And I go back to London and you shoot yourself." "I'm called to account in the middle of the night." ""Did you bully Nigel?" "What did you do to him?" ""Christ, can you imagine what this will do for us?" "We hold you personally responsible for this."" "So Smiley began in a situation where he almost felt set up." "Everyone was accusing him of causing a scandal." "He says you cast doubts on his loyalty, that his career in the FO is ruined, that he is the victim of paid informers." "(SMILEY) He said what?" "He must have gone stark madI" "He knows he's cleared." "What else does he want?" "(MARSTON) Nothing, he's dead." "Killed himself at 10.30 this evening." "Left a letter to the Foreign Secretary." "The police rang one of his assistants and got permission to open the letter." "Then they told us." "There will be an enquiry." "Smiley, you're sure, aren't you?" "(ANN) Our second son had just been born at home." "He came back that morning and told me that he'd moved from Five to Six, which he'd done, sort of, out of the blue, and told me we'd go abroad, which would be fun." "Six had a certain glamour because it was attached to the Foreign Office so you travelled." " He was in deep cover there." " When you say "deep cover", you mean?" "Well, some officers are declared to the country if it's a friendly country." "Some aren't." "(NEWSREEL) The central government of the Federal Republic of Germany is situated at Bonn." "Berlin is separated from the West by the Soviet zone, and is not in full part of the Republic." "My stamping ground was Bonn and the larger West German political scene as exemplified in meetings in Hamburg or Munich or Frankfurt or wherever." "Getting to know German politicians was my stuff." "But...when the Berlin Wall went up..." "I happened..." "I'd been in Nuremberg... ..and there'd been a great SPD German Socialist rally addressed by Willy Brandt." "And Willy Brandt said, "We feel in the tips of our fingers" ""that there'll be a crisis in Berlin very soon."" "I went back to Bonn and thought, "I'll do a little telegram just as a journalist would." ""I'll file this one." I had an uneasy feeling." "When I got to the embassy, people were running around the corridors and all the lights were on." "News was coming in of the Friedrichstraße checkpoint going up." "The fun had started." "It happened in series." "First it was barbed wire, then extended barbed wire, then a ploughed strip that was mined." "And I was looking for the new book." "And I think for 48 hours I didn't sleep at all." "When I got back to where we lived," "I was in a state of what I think shrinks call fugue." "I was tremendously high." "In five weeks I wrote a huge, overlong version of "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold."" "And I cut it down to about 55,000 words and bunged it in." "I think I knew then that I'd had one of those moments of what I think of now in retrospect as literary maturity, if you will." "A moment when material and subject come together." "You feel, "Yeah, this one's really right."" "I was pretty sure that I'd said something that was important about the idiocy of the situation, really, and the human cost of it." ""Get back, " Leamas hissed. "Get your hand away." ""How the hell can I see if you wave your hand around like that?" "Slamming the car into first gear, he drove fast across the wide road." "On his left, he was amazed to see the silhouette of the Brandenburg Gate, 300 yards away, and the sinister grouping of military vehicles at the foot of it." ""Where are we going?" he asked softly." ""You're nearly there." "Go slowly now, left..." "No, no, leftI" he cried." "Leamas jerked the wheel in the nick of time." ""Though there, " came the whispered command, "You'll see a street lamp on your right." ""When you reach the second lamp," ""switch off the engine and coast until you see a fire hydrant." "That's it. "" " Why the hell didn't you drive yourself?" " He said you should drive, it was safer." ""LookI" The man pointed down a side street to the left." "They saw a brief stretch of wall, grey-brown in the weary out light." "Along the top ran a triple strand of barbed wire." " How will the girl get over the wire?" " It is already cut where you climb." "You have one minute to reach the wall." "Goodbye." "I knew, just from the papers that had crossed my desk, the imminence of world war." "And when the Berlin Wall went up, some of us at least thought that the end of the world was quite close." "And so I wrote a book, in great heat, which said, "A plague on both your houses."" "I read it in German, of course, and for a long time, it was the only book I read." "This was in the beginning or middle of the '60s." "How did you get hold of it, because it wasn't published, I suppose, in the DDR?" "Yeah..." "You see... ..in my position I was responsible for foreign intelligence work and so I had the West's German magazines and papers." "And I'm not sure whether I gave an order to bring me this book or one of my spies brought it as a present!" "I was surprised how he described the contradiction between Munt and Fidler because I saw them as representatives of intelligence and counter-intelligence and the contradictions were close to our reality at that time and I was astonished, and I would like to ask John Le Carré now," "because until now I haven't an answer, er, had he at that time some information about the situation inside of our ministry of state security?" "I think the techniques of interrogation are not too different in the whole world." "Police methods, the methods of the secret services..." "If an interrogator in our ministry had to interrogate an arrested man, he had on his table the files from the operative service with the facts, observations, information from other agents and so on and so on about this man and why he was suspected." "Usually, one interrogator had some sympathy for the interrogated person and understood them, understood the motives and so on." "And then another one, his way of interrogation is very hard." "In GDR, physical methods of interrogation were forbidden." "The psychological torture, if you want, was the, er, the most successful and painful method for the arrested people." "I don't think..." "It actually was an ideological stand-off in many ways." "I think the information was available to both sides, but whatever the causes, one system was a great deal more benign than the other." "(ANN) It took from..." "When did it get published?" "It got published about autumn '63." "Just at the time when Kennedy was assassinated, I remember." "It had come out around then." "And by January...'64, people like "Life" were after him and photographing him in Hamburg and we were all prancing around in the garden, being photographed peering out of bushes and looking like spies!" "It was all tremendously exciting for him and I was there with three children, being dreary!" "My demands of the service, my expectations, were too many and too great." "Er, I wanted to enter heroic status immediately." "And when it turned out to be, as any large outfit will... ..turned out to be a partly incompetent bureaucracy and so on, and the banality of much that it did, and the ineffectiveness of much that it did," "really came home to me, that began to coincide with a period of parturition, separation." "Things hotted up so quickly." "So many people ringing up, so much photography, so much lionising..." "It became very difficult for the office to handle, I think." "They were terrified his cover would be blown any moment and the whole thing would go." "So he..." "So they asked him to leave very politely." "What was really working full time - overtime, I suppose they would say - was the literary response to the environment I found myself in." "I mean, mine was a worm's-eye view of the whole institution of spying and British intelligence." "I didn't really develop that view until I left the secret world, which happened in my early thirties, and began to use it as my...my metaphor for the human condition, if you like." "It is a little difficult to know when to trust you people, and when not." "You do live by rather different standards, don't you?" "I mean you have to, I accept that." "I'm not being judgemental, our aims are the same after all, even if our methods are different." "I once heard somebody say morality was method." "Do you hold with that?" "I suppose you wouldn't." "You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect." "Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble." "Especially if you're British." "I'd not been in the secret world long before George Blake was unmasked as a defector." "I'd not arrived in Bonn as a young diplomat for more than a few months before Kim Philby was also exposed." "So I observed the impact of this upon the Services themselves." "It was much deeper than, "Christ, which operations are blown?"" "It was, "These were gentlemen." "These were us."" "For the first time it became apparent that Etonians were not necessarily by definition secure." "When you think of the duality of Philby's life, as a double agent..." "So there he is setting up the Albanian operation and he's saying, "Right, you boys, we'll take you off and train you." ""It'll be terribly dangerous but it's for a free Albania, you know what you stand for."" "And then sneaking round the back and saying to his people," ""They'll be landing on this and this night."" "They landed one by one into reception parties launched by the KGB." "And those people died horrible deaths under torture." "He was in the front line of the intelligence world." "He knew what kind of country he was serving secretly." "He knew about the deportations and the corruption." "He knew about the bad stuff." "He knew about the planned genocide of the Soviet middle class." "And yet he went on working against us." "Now, our shortcomings are manifest and we are not a perfect democracy, but, my goodness, we do allow people to protest in public." "And Philby therefore carried to the grave, as far as I was concerned, my unqualified contempt." "(WOLF) He is a man whom you can give a great respect because he did it as a man with conviction very close to my own conviction." "And he did it not because of money or under pressure, or because of lovers and so on." "He was a man of great intelligence." "(NEW SPEAKER) Philby betrayed David..." "Gave his name to the Russians when he was working as an MI6 agent in Bern, a young man at the university." "So Philby gave his name, among other names of course, to us." "Of course Philby was very English." "And it may sound paradoxical, but he reminded me of David." "Dignity... ..er, dry humour..." "..er, soft when necessary, hard when necessary... ..reserved." "It's a vanishing type of an Englishman, but Philby was very much like David." "And like Sir Alec Guiness when he played Smiley." "(LE CARRÉ) It's absolutely typical of Smiley that in a sense he loves an England that doesn't exist." "He loves standards of human behaviour which are unfindable." "And therefore he is some kind of disappointed romantic who has to accept compromise as a kind of personal pain." ""An artist is a bloke who can hold two fundamentally opposing views" ""and still function." Who dreamed that one up?" "Scott Fitzgerald." "Well, Fitzgerald knew a thing or two." "And I'm definitely functioning." "As a good socialist I'm going where the money is." "As a good capitalist I'm sticking with the revolution because if you can't beat it, spy on it." "Don't look like that, George!" "It's the name of the game these days." "You scratch my conscience, I'll drive your Jag, right?" "No." "Did you get that from Haydon?" "Is that one of Bill's jokes about materialist England?" "The pigs in clover society?" " Don't you like it?" " Not much." "There ARE competitive and acquisitive instincts in Western society, but they're offset against other concerns which you won't find in..." "Poznan, Budapest, Kiev, Sofia..." "Tell me all about it, George." "I'm just saying that's England now, man." "All you have to do is look out the bloody window." "I tried to write "Tinker, Tailor" without Smiley, to begin with." "I had a pictorial opening, which I always have, just as I have the final frame of the book in my mind, not knowing what will lie between the two!" "But what I couldn't do was get into the past without the authority of Smiley's own memory." "And once I brought him back," "I realised that, in fact, he was a man with unfinished business." "The restless retirement." "When he sees Peter Guillam coming to him at the beginning, he knows what he's come for." "Just as when he goes to Connie, Connie knows what he's come about." "He loved the Service, the spirit of the Service." "The sense of self-sacrifice, dedication and comradeship which, without doubt, that world imparts." "Smiley was my secret sharer through a lot of early books when I was very scared of emotion." "Emotion was filtered through Smiley." "For as long as he was there, he stood between you and the feelings you might have." "He was a comforter." "Vivian Greene was the strong moral intellect in my life." "And you might say the good side, the strong conscience of Smiley is from Vivian." "David himself, as it were, revealed this in a newspaper article in 1980, was it?" "He used the words, "My mentor at Sherborne who later moved to Oxford."" "I said, "What do you mean by this?" He said, "I've always been secretly amused" ""that you never saw that you had some of Smiley's qualities!" ""An understanding of human nature," ""a sympathy for human frailty..." ""..and a capacity for listening."" "(LE CARRÉ) But really, the rumpledness, the sense of not belonging, the sense of being a misfit, of being personally ugly, these derive so much from the humiliations of childhood." "Even at prep school, my dad didn't pay the fees." "You began to feel that in the way you were segregated and spoken to." ""Have you heard from your father?" "Do you know where he is?"" "And when Lord Iliffe wanted beaters to come and raise the pheasants for him to shoot," "I was one of the boys who was never chosen because it wasn't "right", I wasn't a gentleman." "I took all those things very personally because I expected so much of the institution." "I wanted it to replace parenthood, I wanted it to embrace me." "And the rejection that I suffered somehow went into the misfit that is Smiley." "Er, the outsider that is Smiley." "Er, the very..." "The skilful observer that is Smiley." "And any child who actually believes that home is a terribly dangerous place becomes, in self-defence, a very acute watcher and listener." "(WOLF) George Smiley is a real hero and a man of great intelligence... ..who did his work with full conviction." "I think, of course, it's the result of Carré's inside knowledge, this, er, partly real methods of interrogation, of intelligence work." "And so I can recognise them." "Markus Wolf says you portray the GDR as the evil empire." "Does that square with your creation of Karla, Smiley's opposite number in Moscow Centre?" "Karla is drawn, really, from those '30s Comintern figures where the spirit of self-sacrifice on behalf of the Revolution is absolute." "Vikartin, who was head of the KGB, said to me, "What you must understand is that this was the popular revolution." ""This would free the world." "And we accepted as the bitter pill we had to swallow" ""the mistakes, the acts of inhumanity along the way."" "And I think it was that kind of actually very admirable commitment to the Communist cause that I wanted to dignify in Karla." "What Smiley knows is that in luring Karla away to the West, he, Smiley, has deployed the methods of the East." "And what Karla knows is that in giving way to his human compassion... ..he has broken with his own ethic." "George, in all your life, fantastic!" "Take care, George." "Go well, hear me." "So both of them feel, in a sense, that they've betrayed the code they lived by." "Smiley feels unclean at having blackmailed Karla... ..having discovered he had a mentally defective daughter whom he accommodates in Switzerland." "Come on, old friend, it's bedtime." "George... ..you won." "Did I?" "Yes..." "Yes, I suppose I did." "# It's springtime in Berlin... #" "I waited, at the end of the Cold War, for something to tell us the world can now be reshaped." "That endless stand-off, as it seemed to us, between the two great economic monoliths of the West and the Communist world was over." "The excuses for exploiting the Third World, for imposing dreadful dictatorships on them provided they were anti-communist, all those excuses had gone." "Now something decent could be put together." "A real act of global perestroika could occur." "Nothing happened." "We went into a collective Western atrophy of isolation and self-indulgence." "Our response was to make ourselves fatter and richer and not to take on the world at large." "Er, and so I felt that a great moment in history had simply gone by default." "(LYUBIMOV) Still we're involved in the ethnic wars." "See Yugoslavia, you see Chechnya here in Russia." "And what change?" "Of course Russia is now democratic and a member of some European society, but still espionage is on." "Military competition is on." "The CIA has more money than it had before." "What..." "Who are they spying on, by the way?" "On Poland?" "(PEARSON) I take it that in the end being a spy is such a rotten thing to be that you find ways of feeling good about it and some of those ways may be genuine." "I think he must have felt in the past, at least with part of him, that he was defending an order which was defensible." "The interesting change is manifested, I think, in his new novel, because here he has as his central figure Justin, who does belong to an older order, the old imperialist order, whose values I imagine David might once have upheld," "and thought that he was defending in the best way he could, who moves quite radically in the course of the novel to a much more open position." "In fact, I would say a radical position." "(LE CARRÉ) We meet him as a kind of unawakened conformist who's contracted a rather romantic marriage with a very young girl who is outspoken, a young lawyer, Oxbridge, rich, er, and she's very zealous and idealistic." "When they get to Africa, she peels off and gets into aid work, where she's very happy." "She gets pregnant, loses her baby, and that intensifies her sense of human responsibility." "And she throws herself into the aid work and comes upon very alarming secrets about the pharmaceutical world." "Then we have Justin, after her death, picking up the trail and putting on her mantle." "And it becomes a novel of education, as the Germans would say, a "Bildungsroman"... ..where he learns humanity on the hoof." "An active, contributing humanity, constructive humanity, and an intense sense of responsibility towards the wretched of the earth, who were Tessa's concern." "Drugs have got to be tried on somebody." "Who do you choose?" "Harvard Business School?" "Foreign Office isn't about passing judgement on the safety of non-indigenous drugs, is it?" "It should grease the wheels of British industry, not go round telling everybody that a British company in Africa is poisoning its customers." "You said something interesting at the start of our interviews, that you'd forgotten how to lie." "Yes, that's how I feel now." "I have, I simply have." "I mean, I grew up with two big lies." "Er, three, really." "Er, the one that I've always denied to myself, which was the disappearance of my mother and the lies that were told to us about her." "Then, the tiny time I spent in the secret world." "For years after writing "The Spy Who Came In" and leaving the Service, I went on denying it." "Then the final big lie was while my father was alive, I just couldn't talk about him." "My sister Charlotte rang from London to say that he'd dropped dead." "It was a Sunday evening and he'd just had a massive heart attack." "And..." "I..." "I simply noted it." "I had no feeling of anything at all." "It was as if that part of me had been removed." "And I guess from then on, it's been appraisal rather than mourning." "And fits of tremendous admiration for the juggling act, however many times it failed." "I mean, I've stood alone on a New York street... ..trying to imagine what's it like to be in this city on the run without a penny in your pocket." "And all you've got to do is make sure you've got a clean shirt and a pressed suit." "That was all the equipment he had." "And somehow or another, he survived." "They did this to me, but I've remained who I am." "I'm tempered, I'm able." "Inside myself there's an untouched man." "If they came back now and did everything to me again, they'd never reach the untouched man." "I passed the exam I've been shirking all my life." "I'm a graduate of pain."