Honourable Schoolboy (26 page)

‘They have to reduce it to their own size,’ Smiley explained uncritically. Beyond that, he seemed bent on oriental self-effacement, and no prodding from Guillam was going to shake him out of it. Enderby demanded fresh ashtrays. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary said they should try to make progress.

‘Think what it’s costing the taxpayer, just having us sit here,’ he urged proudly. Lunch was still two hours away.

Opening round three, Enderby moved the ticklish issue of whether to advise the Hong Kong Government of the intelligence regarding Ko. This was impish of him, in Guillam’s view, since the position of the shadow Colonial Office (as Enderby referred to his homespun confrères) was still that there was no crisis, and consequently nothing for anyone to be advised of. But honest Wilbraham, failing to see the trap, walked into it and said:

‘Of course we should advise Hong Kong! They’re self-administering. We’ve no alternative.’

‘Oliver?’ said Enderby with the calm of a man who holds good cards. Lacon glanced up, clearly irritated at being drawn into the open. ‘Oliver?’ Enderby repeated. ‘I’m tempted to reply that it’s Smiley’s case and Wilbraham’s Colony and we should let them fight it out,’ he said, remaining firmly on the fence.

Which left Smiley: ‘Oh well, if it were the Governor and nobody else I could hardly object,’ he said. ‘That is, if you feel it’s not too much for him,’ he added dubiously, and Guillam saw the red-head stoke himself up again.

‘Why the dickens should it be too much for the Governor?’ Colonial Wilbraham demanded, genuinely perplexed. ‘Experienced administrator, shrewd negotiator. Find his way through anything. Why’s it too much?’

This time, it was Smiley who made the pause. ‘He would have to encode and decode his own telegrams of course,’ he mused, as if he were even now working his way obliviously through all the implications. ‘We couldn’t have him cutting his staff in on the secret, naturally. That’s asking too much of anyone. Personal code books - well we can fix him up with those, no doubt. Brush up his coding if he needs it. There is also the problem, I suppose, of the Governor being forced into the position of agent provocateur if he continues to receive Ko socially - which he obviously must. We can’t frighten the game at this stage. Would he mind that? Perhaps not. Some people take to it quite naturally.’ He glanced at Enderby.

Wilbraham was already expostulating. ‘But good heavens, man - if Ko’s a Russian spy, which we say he isn’t anyway - if the Governor has him to dinner, and perfectly naturally, in confidence, commits some minor indiscretion - well, it’s damned unfair. It could ruin the man’s career. Let alone what it could do to the Colony! He must be told!’

Smiley looked sleepier than ever.

‘Well of course if he’s given to being indiscreet,’ he murmured meekly, ‘I suppose one might argue that he’s not a suitable person to be informed anyway.’

In the icy silence Enderby once more languidly took the matchstick from his mouth.

‘Bloody odd it would be, wouldn’t it, Chris,’ he called cheerfully down the table to Wilbraham, ‘if Peking woke up one morning to the glad news that the Governor of Hong Kong. Queen’s representative and what have you, head of the troops and so forth, made a point of entertaining Moscow’s ace spy at his dinner table once a month. And gave him a medal for his trouble. What’s he got so far? Not a K is it?’

‘An OBE,’ said somebody sotto voce.

‘Poor chap. Still, he’s on his way, I suppose, He’ll work his way up, same as we all do.’

Enderby, as it happened, had his knighthood already, whereas Wilbraham was stuck in the bulge, owing to the growing shortage of colonies.

‘There is no case,’ said Wilbraham stoutly, and laid a hairy hand flat over the lurid folder before him.

A free-for-all followed, to Guillam’s ear an intermezzo, in which by tacit understanding the minor parts were allowed to chime in with irrelevant questions in order to get themselves a mention in the minutes. The Welsh Hammer wished to establish here and now what would happen to Moscow Centre’s half million dollars of reptile money if by any chance they fell into British hands. There could be no question of their simply being recycled through the Circus, he warned. Treasury would have sole rights. Was that clear?

It was clear, Smiley said.

Guillam began to discern a gulf. There were those who assumed, even if reluctantly, that the investigation was a fait accompli; and those who continued to fight a rearguard action against its taking place. Hammer, he noticed to his surprise, seemed reconciled to an investigation.

A string of questions on ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ residencies, though wearisome, served to entrench the fear of a red peril. Luff, the parliamentarian, wanted the difference spelt out to him. Smiley patiently obliged. A ‘legal’ or ‘above-the-line’ resident, he said, was an intelligence officer living under official or semi-official protection. Since the Hong Kong Government, out of deference to Peking’s sensitivities about Russia, had seen fit to banish all forms of Soviet representation from the Colony- embassy, consular, Tass, Radio Moscow, Novosti, Aeroflot, Intourist and the other flags of convenience which legals traditionally sailed under… then by definition it followed that any Soviet activity on the Colony had to be carried out by an illegal or below-the-line apparatus.

It was this presumption which had directed the efforts of the Circus’s researchers toward discovering the replacement money-route, he said, avoiding the jargon ‘goldseam’.

‘Ah well, then, we’ve forced the Russians into it,’ said Luff with satisfaction. ‘We’ve only ourselves to thank. We victimise the Russians, they bite back. Well, who’s surprised by that? It’s the last government’s hash we’re settling. Not ours at all. Go in for Russian-baiting, you get what you deserve, Natural. We’re just reaping the whirlwind as usual.’

‘What have the Russians got up to in Hong Kong before this?’ asked a clever backroom-boy from the Home Office.

The Colonialists at once sprang to life. Wilbraham began feverishly leafing through a folder, but seeing his red-headed assistant straining at the leash he muttered: ‘You’ll do that one then, John, will you? Good,’ and sat back looking ferocious. The brown-clad lady smiled wistfully at the torn baize cloth, as if she remembered it when it was whole. The sixth-former made his second disastrous sally:

‘We consider the precedents here very enlightening indeed,’ he began aggressively. ‘Moscow Centre’s previous attempts to gain a toehold on the Colony have been one and all, without exception, abortive and completely low grade.’ He reeled off a bunch of boring instances.

Five years ago, he said, a bogus Russian Orthodox archimandrite flew in from Paris in an effort to make links with remnants of the White Russian community:

‘This gentleman tried to press-gang an elderly restaurateur into Moscow Centre’s service and was promptly arrested. More recently, we have had cases of ship’s crew coming ashore from Russian freighters which have put in to Hong Kong for repair. They have made ham-fisted attempts to suborn longshoremen and dock workers whom they consider to be leftist oriented. They have been arrested, questioned, made complete fools of by the press, and duly confined to their ship for the rest of its stay.’ He gave other equally milk-and-water examples and everyone grew sleepy, waiting for the last lap: ‘Our policy has been exactly the same each time. As soon as they’re caught, right away, culprits are put on public show. Press photographs? As many as you like, gentlemen. Television? Set up your cameras; Result? Peking hands us a nice pat on the back for containing Soviet imperialist expansionism.’ Thoroughly over-excited, he found the nerve to address himself directly to Smiley. ‘So you see, as to your networks of illegals, to be frank, we discount them. Legal, illegal, above-the-line, below it: our view is, the Circus is doing a bit of special pleading in order to get its nose back under the wire!’

Opening his mouth to deliver a suitable rebuke, Guillam felt a restraining touch on his elbow and closed it again. There was a long silence, in which Wilbraham looked more embarrassed than anybody.

‘Sounds more like smoke to me, Chris,’ said Enderby drily.

‘What’s he driving at?’ Wilbraham demanded nervously.

‘Just answering the point your bully-boy made for you, Chris. Smoke. Deception. Russians are waving their sabres where you can watch ‘em, and while your heads are all turned the wrong way, they get on with the dirty work t’other side of the Island. To wit, Brother Ko. Right, George?’

‘Well, that is our view, yes,’ Smiley conceded. ‘ And I suppose I should remind you - it’s in the submission actually - that Haydon himself was always very keen to argue that the Russians had nothing going in Hong Kong.’

‘Lunch,’ Martindale announced without much optimism. They ate it upstairs, glumly, off plastic catering trays delivered by van. The partitions were too low, and Guillam’s custard flowed into his meat.

Thus refreshed, Smiley availed himself of the after-luncheon torpor to raise what Lacon had called the panic factor. More accurately he sought to entrench in the meeting a sense of logic behind a Soviet presence in Hong Kong, even if, as he put it, Ko did not supply the example:

How Hong Kong, as Mainland China’s largest port, handled forty per cent of her foreign trade.

How an estimated one out of every five Hong Kong residents travelled legally in and out of China every year: though many-time travellers doubtless raised the average. How Red China maintained, in Hong Kong, sub rosa, but with the full connivance of the authorities, teams of first-class negotiators, economists and technicians to watch over Peking’s interest in trade, shipping and development; and how every man jack of them constituted a natural intelligence target for ‘enticement, or other forms of secret persuasion’, as he put it.

How Hong Kong’s fishing and junk fleets enjoyed dual registration in Hong Kong and along the China coast, and passed freely in and out of China waters -

Interrupting, Enderby drawled a supporting question: ‘And Ko owns a junk fleet. Didn’t you say he’s one of the last of the brave?’

‘Yes, yes he does.’

‘But he doesn’t visit the Mainland himself?’

‘No, never. His assistant goes, but not Ko, we gather.’

‘Assistant?’

‘He has a manager body named Tiu. They’ve been together for twenty years. Longer. They share the same background, Hakka, Shanghai and so forth. Tiu’s his front man on several companies.’

‘And Tiu goes to the Mainland regularly?’

‘Once a year at least.’

‘All over?’

‘Canton, Peking, Shanghai are on record. But the record is not necessarily complete.’

‘But Ko stays home. Queer.’

There being no further questions or comments on that score, Smiley resumed his Cook’s tour of the charms of Hong Kong as a spy base. Hong Kong was unique, he stated simply. Nowhere on earth offered a tenth of the facilities for getting a toehold on China.

‘Facilities!’ Wilbraham echoed. ‘Temptations more like.’

Smiley shrugged. ‘If you like, temptations,’ he agreed. ‘The Soviet service is not famous for resisting them. ‘ And amid some knowing laughter, he went on to recount what was known of Centre’s attempts till now against the China target as a whole: a joint précis by Connie and di Salis. He described Centre’s efforts to attack from the north, by means of the wholesale recruitment and infiltration of her own ethnic Chinese. Abortive, he said. He described a huge network of listening posts all along the four-and-a-half-thousand-mile Sino-Soviet land border: unproductive, he said, since the yield was military whereas the threat was political. He recounted the rumours of Soviet approaches to Taiwan, proposing common cause against the China threat through joint operations and profit-sharing: rejected; he said, and probably designed for mischief, to annoy Peking, rather than to be taken at face value. He gave instances of the Russian use of talent-spotters among overseas Chinese communities in London, Amsterdam, Vancouver, and San Francisco; and touched on Centre’s veiled proposals to the Cousins some years ago for the establishment of an ‘intelligence pool’ available to China’s common enemies. Fruitless, he said. The Cousins wouldn’t play. Lastly he referred to Centre’s long history of savage burning and bribery operations against Peking officials in overseas posts: product indeterminate, he said.

When he had done all this, he sat back, and restated the thesis which was causing all the trouble.

‘Sooner or later,’ he repeated, ‘Moscow Centre has to come to Hong Kong.’

Which brought them to Ko once more, and to Roddy Martindale, who, under Enderby’s eagle eye, made the next real passage of arms.

‘Well what do you think the money’s for, George? I mean we’ve heard all the things it isn’t for, and we’ve heard it’s not being spent. But we’re no fowarder, are we, bless us? We don’t seem to know anything. It’s the same old question: how’s the money being earned, how’s it being spent, what should we do?’

‘That’s three questions,’ said Enderby cruelly under his breath.

‘It is because we don’t know,’ said Smiley woodenly, ‘that we are asking permission to find out.’

Someone from the Treasury benches said: ‘Is half a million a lot?’

‘In my experience unprecedented,’ said Smiley. ‘Moscow Centre’ - dutifully he avoided Karla - ‘detests having to buy loyalty at any time. For them to buy it on this scale is unheard of.’

‘But whose loyalty are they buying?’ someone complained.

Martindale the gladiator, back to the charge: ‘You’re selling us short, George. I know you are. You have an inkling, of course you have. Now cut us in on it. Don’t be so coy.’

‘Yes, can’t you kick a few ideas around for us?’ said Lacon, equally plaintively.

‘Surely you can go down the line a little,’ Hammer pleaded.

Even under this three-pronged attack Smiley still did not waver. The panic factor was finally paying off. Smiley himself had triggered it. Like scared patients they were appealing to him for a diagnosis. And Smiley was declining to provide one, on the grounds that he lacked the data. ‘Really, I cannot do more than give you the facts as they stand. For me to speculate aloud at this stage would not be useful.’