Free Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré Page A

around all day for an answer, but by evening it still hadn’t come. Irina was doing a normal day’s work. I insisted on that, you see. She wanted to stage a light dose of fever to keep her in bed but I wouldn’t hear of it. The delegation had factories to visit on Kowloon and I told her to tag along and look intelligent. I made her swear to keep off the bottle. I didn’t want her involved in amateur dramatics at the last moment. I wanted it normal right up to when she jumped. I waited till evening, then cabled a flash follow-up.”
    Smiley’s shrouded gaze fixed upon the pale face before him. “You had an acknowledgement, of course?” he asked.
    “ ‘We read you.’ That’s all. I sweated out the whole damn night. By dawn I still didn’t have an answer. I thought, Maybe that R.A.F. plane is already on its way. London’s playing it long, I thought, tying all the knots before they bring me in. I mean when you’re that far away from them you have to believe they’re good. Whatever you think of them, you have to believe that. And I mean now and then they are—right, Mr. Guillam?”
    No one helped him.
    “I was worried about Irina, see? I was damn certain that if she had to wait another day she would crack. Finally the answer did come. It wasn’t an answer at all. It was a stall: ‘Tell us what sections she worked in, names of former contacts and acquaintances inside Moscow Centre, name of her present boss, date of intake into Centre.’ Jesus, I don’t know what else. I drafted a reply fast because I had a three o’clock date with her down by the church—”
    “What church?” Smiley again.
    “English Baptist.” To everyone’s astonishment, Tarr was once again blushing. “She liked to visit there. Not for services, just to sniff around. I hung around the entrance looking natural but she didn’t show. It was the first time she’d broken a date. Our fallback was for three hours later on the hilltop, then a one-minute-fifty descending scale back at the church till we met up. If she was in trouble, she was going to leave her bathing suit on her window-sill. She was a swimming nut, swam every day. I shot round to the Alexandra: no bathing suit. I had two and a half hours to kill. There was nothing I could do any more except wait.”
    Smiley said, “What was the priority of London Station’s telegram to you?”
    “Immediate.”
    “But yours was flash?”
    “Both of mine were flash.”
    “Was London’s telegram signed?”
    Guillam put in: “They’re not any more. Outsiders deal with London Station as a unit.”
    “Was it decypher yourself?”
    “No,” said Guillam.
    They waited for Tarr to go on.
    “I kicked around Thesinger’s office but I wasn’t too popular there; he doesn’t approve of scalp-hunters and he has a big thing going on the Chinese mainland that he seemed to think I was going to blow for him. So I sat in a café and I had this idea I just might go down to the airport. It was an idea: like you might say, “Maybe I’ll go to a movie.” I took the Star Ferry, hired a cab, and told the driver to go like hell. It got like a panic. I barged the Information queue and asked for all departures to Russia, or connections in. I nearly went mad going through the flight lists, yelling at the Chinese clerks, but there wasn’t a plane since yesterday and none till six tonight. But now I had this hunch. I had to know. What about charters, what about the unscheduled flights, freight, casual transit? Had nothing, but really nothing, been routed for Moscow since yesterday morning? Then this little girl comes through with the answer, one of the Chinese hostesses. She fancies me, see. She’s doing me a favour. An unscheduled Soviet plane had taken off two hours ago. Only four passengers boarded. The centre of attraction was a woman invalid. A lady. In a coma. They had to cart her to the plane on a stretcher, and her face was wrapped in bandages. Two male nurses went with her and one doctor—that