Free Smiley's People by John le Carré Page B

placed—George—placed between the intelligence fraternity and Cabinet. As a channel, as a filter, as a brake.” One hand had remained outstretched, dealing these metaphors like cards. “To look over the Circus’s shoulder. To exercise control, George. Vigilance and accountability in the interest of a more open government. You don’t like it. I can tell by your face.”
    “I’m out of it,” Smiley said. “I’m not qualified to judge.”
    Suddenly Lacon’s own face took on an appalled expression and his tone dropped to one of near despair.
    “You should hear them, George, our new masters! You should hear the way they talk about the Circus! I’m their dog’s-body, damn it; I know, get it every day! Gibes. Suspicion. Mistrust at every turn, even from Ministers who should know better. As if the Circus were some rogue animal outside their comprehension. As if British Intelligence were a sort of wholly owned subsidiary of the Conservative Party. Not their ally at all but some autonomous viper in their socialist nest. The thirties all over again. Do you know, they’re even reviving all that talk about a British Freedom of Information Act on the American pattern? From within the Cabinet? Of open hearings, revelations, all for the public sport? You’d be shocked, George. Pained. Think of the effect such a thing would have on morale alone. Would Mostyn here have ever joined the Circus after that kind of notoriety in the press and wherever? Would you. Mostyn?”
    The question seemed to strike Mostyn very deep, for his grave eyes, made yet darker by his sickly colour, became graver, and he lifted a thumb and finger to his lip. But he did not speak.
    “Where was I, George?” Lacon asked, suddenly lost.
    “The Wise Men,” said Smiley sympathetically.
    From the sofa, Lauder Strickland threw in his own pronouncement on that body: “Wise, my Aunt Fanny. Bunch of left-wing flannel merchants. Rule our lives for us. Tell us how to run the shop. Smack our wrists when we don’t do our sums right.”
    Lacon shot Strickland a glance of rebuke but did not contradict him.
    “One of the less controversial exercises of the Wise Men, George—one of their first duties—conferred upon them specifically by our masters—enshrined in a jointly drafted charter—was stock-taking . To review the Circus’s resources worldwide and set them beside legitimate present-day targets. Don’t ask me what constitutes a legitimate present-day target in their sight. That is a very moot point. However, I must not be disloyal.” He returned to his text. “Suffice it to say that over a period of six months a review was conducted, and an axe duly laid.” He broke off, staring at Smiley. “Are you with me, George?” he asked in a puzzled voice.
    But it was hardly possible at that moment to tell whether Smiley was with anybody at all. His heavy lids had almost closed, and what remained visible of his eyes was clouded by the thick lenses of his spectacles. He was sitting upright but his head had fallen forward till his plump chins rested on his chest.
    Lacon hesitated a moment longer, then continued: “Now as a result of this axe-laying—this stock-taking, if you prefer—on the part of the Wise Men, certain categories of clandestine operation have been ruled ipso facto out of bounds. Verboten. Right?”
    Prone on his sofa, Strickland incanted the unsayable: “No coat-trailing. No honey-traps. No doubles. No stimulated defections. No émigrés. No bugger all.”
    “What’s that?” said Smiley, as if sharply waking from a deep sleep. But such straight talk was not to Lacon’s liking and he overrode it.
    “Let us not be simplistic, please, Lauder. Let us reach things organically. Conceptual thinking is essential here. So the Wise Men composed a codex, George,” he resumed to Smiley. “A catalogue of proscribed practices. Right?” But Smiley was waiting rather than listening. “Ranged the whole field—on the uses and abuses of agents, on