Smiley's People (46 page)

“Then, Counsellor, since we cannot afford to delay, I must ask you to study the incriminating photographs on the table behind you,” Smiley said, with the same studied dullness.

“Photographs? What photographs? How can you incriminate a diplomat? I demand to telephone my Ambassador immediately!”

“I would advise the Counsellor to look at the photographs first,” said Smiley, in a glum, regionless German. “When he has looked at the photographs, he is free to telephone whomever he wants. Kindly start at the left,” he advised. “The photographs are arranged from left to right.”

A blackmailed man has the dignity of all our weaknesses, Smiley thought, covertly watching Grigoriev shuffling along the table as if he were inspecting one more diplomatic buffet. A blackmailed man is any one of us caught in the door as we try to escape the trap. Smiley had arranged the layout of the pictures himself; he had imagined, in Grigoriev’s mind, an orchestrated succession of disasters. The Grigorievs parking their Mercedes outside the bank. Grigorieva, with her perpetual scowl of discontent, waiting alone in the driving seat, clutching the wheel in case anyone tried to take it from her. Grigoriev and little Natasha in long shot, sitting very close to each other on a bench. Grigoriev inside the bank, several pictures, culminating in a superb over-the-shoulder shot of Grigoriev signing a cashier’s receipt, the full name Adolf Glaser clearly typed on the line above his signature. There was Grigoriev, looking uncomfortable on his bicycle, about to enter the sanatorium; there was Grigorieva roosting crossly in the car again, this time beside Gertsch’s barn, her own bicycle still strapped to the roof. But the photograph that held Grigoriev longest, Smiley noticed, was the muddy long shot stolen by the Meinertzhagen girls. The quality was not good but the two heads in the car, though they were locked mouth to mouth, were recognisable enough. One was Grigoriev’s. The other, pressed down on him as if she would eat him alive, was little Natasha’s.

“The telephone is at your disposal, Counsellor,” Smiley called to him quietly, when Grigoriev still did not move.

But Grigoriev remained frozen over this last photograph, and to judge by his expression, his desolation was complete. He was not merely a man found out, thought Smiley; he was a man whose very dream of love, till now vested in secrecy, had suddenly become public and ridiculous.

Still using his glum tone of official necessity, Smiley set about explaining what Karla would have called the pressures. Other inquisitors, says Toby, would have offered Grigoriev a choice, thereby inevitably mustering the Russian obstinacy in him, and the Russian penchant for self-destruction: the very impulses, he says, which could have invited catastrophe. Other inquisitors, he insists, would have menaced, raised their voices, resorted to histrionics, even physical abuse. Not George, he says: never. George acted out the low-key official time-server, and Grigoriev, like Grigorievs the world over, accepted him as his unalterable fate. George bypassed choice entirely, says Toby. George calmly made clear to Grigoriev why it was that he had no choice at all: The important thing, Counsellor—said Smiley, as if he were explaining a tax demand—was to consider what impact these photographs would have in the places where they would very soon be studied if nothing was done to prevent their distribution. There were first the Swiss authorities, who would obviously be incensed by the misuse of a Swiss passport on the part of an accredited diplomat, not to mention the grave breach of banking laws, said Smiley. They would register the strongest official protest, and the Grigorievs would be returned to Moscow overnight, all of them, never again to enjoy the fruits of a foreign posting. Back in Moscow, however, Grigoriev would not be well regarded either, Smiley explained. His superiors in the Foreign Ministry would take a dismal view of his behaviour, “both in the private and professional spheres.” Grigoriev’s prospects for an official career would be ended. He would be an
exile
in his own land, said Smiley, and his family with him. All his family. “Imagine facing the wrath of Grigorieva twenty-four hours a day in the wastes of outer Siberia,” he was saying in effect.

At which Grigoriev slumped into a chair and clapped his hands on to the top of his head, as if scared it would blow off.

“But finally,” said Smiley, lifting his eyes from his notebook, though only for a moment—and what he read there, said Toby, God knows, the pages were ruled but otherwise blank—“finally, Counsellor, we have also to consider the effect of these photographs upon certain organs of State Security.”

And here Grigoriev released his head and drew the handkerchief from his top pocket and began wiping his brow, but as hard as he wiped, the sweat came back again. It fell as fast as Smiley’s own in the interrogation cell in Delhi, when he had sat face to face with Karla.

Totally committed to his part as bureaucratic messenger of the inevitable, Smiley signed once more and primly turned to another page of his notebook.

“Counsellor, may I ask you what time you expect your wife and family to return from their picnic?”

Still dabbing with the handkerchief, Grigoriev appeared too preoccupied to hear.

“Grigorieva and the children are taking a picnic in the Elfenau woods,” Smiley reminded him. “We have some questions to ask you, but it would be unfortunate if your absence from home were to cause concern.”

Grigoriev put away the handkerchief. “You are spies?” he whispered. “You are Western spies?”

“Counsellor, it is better that you do not know who we are,” said Smiley earnestly. “Such information is a dangerous burden. When you have done as we ask, you will walk out of here a free man. You have our assurance. Neither your wife, nor even Moscow Centre, will ever be the wiser. Please tell me what time your family returns from Elfenau—” Smiley broke off.

Somewhat half-heartedly, Grigoriev was affecting to make a dash for it. He stood up, he took a bound towards the door. Paul Skordeno had a languid air for a hard-man, but he caught the fugitive in an armlock even before he had taken a second step, and returned him gently to his chair, careful not to mark him. With another stage groan, Grigoriev flung up his hands in vast despair. His heavy face coloured and became convulsed, his broad shoulders started heaving as he broke into a mournful torrent of self-recrimination. He spoke half in Russian, half in German. He cursed himself with a slow and holy zeal, and after that, he cursed his mother, his wife and his bad luck and his own dreadful frailty as a father. He should have stayed in Moscow, in the Trade Ministry. He should never have been wooed away from academia merely because his fool wife wanted foreign clothes and music and privileges. He should have divorced her long ago but he could not bear to relinquish the children, he was a fool and a clown. He should be in the asylum instead of the girl. When he was sent for in Moscow, he should have said no, he should have resisted the pressure, he should have reported the matter to his Ambassador when he returned.

“Oh, Grigoriev!” he cried. “Oh, Grigoriev! You are so weak, so weak!”

Next, he delivered himself of a tirade against conspiracy. Conspiracy was anathema to him, several times in the course of his career he had been obliged to collaborate with the hateful “neighbours” in some crackpot enterprise, every time it was a disaster. Intelligence people were criminals, charlatans, and fools, a masonry of monsters. Why were Russians so in love with them? Oh, the fatal flaw of secretiveness in the Russian soul!

“Conspiracy has replaced religion!” Grigoriev moaned to all of them, in German. “It is our mystical substitute! Its agents are our Jesuits, these swine, they ruin everything!”

Bunching his fists now, he pushed them into his cheeks, pummelling himself in his remorse, till with a movement of the notepad on his lap, Smiley brought him dourly back to the matter in hand:

“Concerning Grigorieva and your children, Counsellor,” he said. “It really is essential that we know what time they are due to return home.”

 

In every successful interrogation—as Toby Esterhase likes to pontificate concerning this moment—there is one slip which cannot be recovered; one gesture, tacit or direct, even if it is only a half smile, or the acceptance of a cigarette, which marks the shift away from resistance, towards collaboration. Grigoriev, in Toby’s account of the scene, now made his crucial slip.

“She will be home at one o’clock,” he muttered, avoiding both Smiley’s eye, and Toby’s.

Smiley looked at his watch. To Toby’s secret ecstasy, Grigoriev did the same.

“But perhaps she will be late?” Smiley objected.

“She is never late,” Grigoriev retorted moodily.

“Then kindly begin by telling me of your relationship with the girl Ostrakova,” said Smiley, stepping right into the blue—says Toby—yet contriving to imply that his question was the most natural sequel to the issue of Madame Grigorieva’s punctuality. Then he held his pen ready, and in such a way, says Toby, that a man like Grigoriev would feel positively obliged to give him something to write down.

For all this, Grigoriev’s resistance was not quite evaporated. His
amour propre
demanded at least one further outing. Opening his hands, therefore, he appealed to Toby: “
Ostrakova!
” he repeated with exaggerated scorn. “He asks me about some woman called
Ostrakova?
I know no such person. Perhaps he does, but I do not. I am a diplomat. Release me immediately. I have important engagements.”

But the steam, as well as the logic, was fast going out of his protests. Grigoriev knew this as well as anyone.

“Alexandra Borisovna Ostrakova,” Smiley intoned, while he polished his spectacles on the fat end of his tie. “A Russian girl, but has a French passport.” He replaced his spectacles. “Just as you are Russian, Counsellor, but have a Swiss passport. Under a false name. Now how did you come to get involved with her, I wonder?”

“
Involved?
Now he tells me I was
involved
with her! You think I am so base I sleep with mad girls? I was blackmailed. As you blackmail me now, so I was
blackmailed.
Pressure! Always pressure, always Grigoriev!”

“Then tell me how they blackmailed you,” Smiley suggested, with barely a glance at him.

Grigoriev peered into his hands, lifted them, but let them drop back onto his knees again, for once unused. He dabbed his lips with his handkerchief. He shook his head at the world’s iniquity.

“I was in Moscow,” he said, and in Toby’s ears, as he afterwards declares, angel choirs sang their hallelujahs. George had turned the trick, and Grigoriev’s confession had begun.

 

Smiley, on the other hand, betrayed no such jubilation at his achievement. To the contrary, a frown of irritation puckered his plump face.

“The
date,
please, Counsellor,” he said, as if the place were not the issue. “Give the
date
when you were in Moscow. Henceforth, please give dates at all points.”

This too is classic, Toby likes to explain: the wise inquisitor will always light a few false fires.

“September,” said Grigoriev, mystified.

“Of which year?” said Smiley, writing.

Grigoriev looked plaintively to Toby again. “Which year! I say September, he asks me
which
September. He is a historian? I think he is a historian.
This
September,” he said sulkily to Smiley. “I was recalled to Moscow for an urgent commercial conference. I am an expert in certain highly specialized economic fields. Such a conference would have been meaningless without my presence.”

“Did your wife accompany you on this journey?”

Grigoriev let out a hollow laugh. “Now he thinks we are capitalists!” he commented to Toby. “He thinks we go flying our wives around for two-week conferences, first-class Swissair.”

“‘In September of this year, I was ordered to fly alone to Moscow in order to attend a two-week economic conference,’” Smiley proposed, as if he were reading Grigoriev’s statement aloud. “‘My wife remained in Berne.’ Please describe the purpose of the conference.”

“The subject of our high-level discussions was extremely secret,” Grigoriev replied with resignation. “My Ministry wished to consider ways of giving teeth to the official Soviet attitude towards nations who were selling arms to China. We were to discuss what sanctions could be used against the offenders.”

Smiley’s faceless style, his manner of regretful bureaucratic necessity, were by now not merely established, says Toby, they were perfected: Grigoriev had adopted them wholesale, with philosophic, and very Russian, pessimism. As to the rest of those present, they could hardly believe, afterwards, that he had not been brought to the flat already in a mood to talk.

“Where was the conference held?” Smiley asked, as if secret matters concerned him less than formal details.

“At the Trade Ministry. On the fourth floor . . . in the conference room. Opposite the lavatory,” Grigoriev retorted, with hopeless facetiousness.

“Where did you stay?”

At a hostel for senior officials, Grigoriev replied. He gave the address and even, in sarcasm, his room number. Sometimes, our discussions ended late at night, he said, by now liberally volunteering information; but on the Friday, since it was still summer weather and very hot, they ended early in order to enable those who wished, to leave for the country. But Grigoriev had no such plans. Grigoriev proposed to stay in Moscow for the week-end, and with reason: “I had arranged to pass two days in the apartment of a girl called Evdokia, formerly my secretary. Her husband was away on military service,” he explained, as if this were a perfectly normal transaction among men of the world; one which Toby at least, as a fellow soul, would appreciate, even if soulless commissars would not. Then, to Toby’s astonishment, he went straight on. From his dalliance with Evdokia, he passed without warning or preamble to the very heart of their enquiry: