Free Smiley's People by John le Carré Page A

reply.
    “Commit nothing to paper whatever,” Strickland warned him, wiping the back of his hand on his moustache as if one or the other were wet. “Hear me? That’s an order from on high. There was no encounter, so you’ve no call to fill in the usual encounter sheet or any of that stuff. You’ve nothing to do but keep your mouth shut. Understand? You’ll account for your expenses as general petty-cash disbursements. To me, direct. No file reference. Understand?”
    “I understand,” said Mostyn.
    “And no whispered confidences to those little tarts in Registry, or I’ll know. Hear me? Give us some tea.”
    Something happened inside George Smiley when he heard this conversation. Out of the formless indirection of these dialogues, out of the horror of the scene upon the Heath, a single shocking truth struck him. He felt a pull in his chest somewhere and he had the sensation of momentary disconnection from the room and the three haunted people he had found in it. Encounter sheet? No encounter? Encounter between Mostyn and Vladimir? God in Heaven, he thought, squaring the mad circle. The Lord preserve, cosset, and protect us. Mostyn was Vladimir’s case officer! That old man, a General, once our glory, and they farmed him out to this uncut boy! Then another lurch, more violent still, as his surprise was swept aside in an explosion of internal fury. He felt his lips tremble, he felt his throat seize up in indignation, blocking his words, and when he turned to Lacon his spectacles seemed to be misting over from the heat.
    “Oliver, I wonder if you’d mind finally telling me what I’m doing here,” he heard himself suggesting for the third time, hardly above a murmur.
    Reaching out an arm, he removed the vodka bottle from its bucket. Still unbidden, he broke the cap and poured himself a rather large tot.
     
    Even then, Lacon dithered, pondered, hunted with his eyes, delayed. In Lacon’s world, direct questions were the height of bad taste but direct answers were worse. For a moment, caught in mid-gesture at the centre of the room, he stood staring at Smiley in disbelief. A car stumbled up the hill, bringing news of the real world outside the window. Lauder Strickland slurped his tea. Mostyn was seating himself primly on a piano-stool to which there was no piano. But Lacon with his jerky gestures could only scratch about for words sufficiently elliptical to disguise his meaning.
    “George,” he said. A shower of rain crashed against the window, but he ignored it. “Where’s Mostyn?” he asked.
    Mostyn, no sooner settled, had flitted from the room to cope with a nervous need. They heard the thunder of the flush, loud as a brass band, and the gurgle of pipes all down the building.
    Lacon raised a hand to his neck, tracing the raw patches. Reluctantly, he began: “Three years ago, George—let us start there—soon after you left the Circus—your successor Saul Enderby—your worthy successor—under pressure from a concerned Cabinet—by concerned I mean newly formed—decided on certain far-reaching changes of intelligence practice. I’m giving you the background, George,” he explained, interrupting himself. “I’m doing this because you’re who you are, because of old times, and because”—he jabbed a finger at the window—“because of out there.”
    Strickland had unbuttoned his waistcoat and lay dozing and replete like a first-class passenger on a night plane. But his small watchful eyes followed every pass that Lacon made. The door opened and closed, admitting Mostyn, who resumed his perch on the piano-stool.
    “Mostyn, I expect you to close your ears to this. I am talking high, high policy. One of these far-reaching changes, George, was the decision to form an inter-ministerial Steering Committee. A mixed committee”—he composed one in the air with his hands—“part Westminster, part Whitehall, representing Cabinet as well as the major Whitehall customers. Known as the Wise Men. But