Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Read Online Free PDF Page B

inevitability Martindale came to more recent things—the change of power and Smiley’s withdrawal from the service.
    Predictably, he started with the last days of Control: “Your old boss, George, bless him, the only one who ever kept his name a secret. Not from you, of course, he never had any secrets from you, George, did he? Close as thieves, Smiley and Control were, so they say, right to the end.”
    “They’re very complimentary.”
    “Don’t flirt, George; I’m an old trooper, you forget. You and Control were just like that.” Briefly the plump hands made a token marriage. “That’s why you were thrown out—don’t deceive me, that’s why Bill Haydon got your job. That’s why he’s Percy Alleline’s cup-bearer and you’re not.”
    “If you say so, Roddy.”
    “I do. I say more than that. Far more.”
    As Martindale drew closer, Smiley caught the odour of one of Trumper’s most sensitive creations.
    “I say something else: Control never died at all. He’s been seen.” With a fluttering gesture he silenced Smiley’s protests. “Let me finish. Willy Andrewartha walked straight into him in Jo’burg airport, in the waiting-room. Not a ghost. Flesh. Willy was at the bar buying a soda for the heat; you haven’t seen Willy recently but he’s a balloon. He turned round, and there was Control beside him dressed up like a ghastly Boer. The moment he saw Willy he bolted. How’s that? So now we know. Control never died at all. He was driven out by Percy Alleline and his three-piece band, so he went to ground in South Africa, bless him. Well, you can’t blame him, can you? You can’t blame a man for wanting a drop of peace in the evening of his life. I can’t.”
    The monstrosity of this, reaching Smiley through a thickening wall of spiritual exhaustion, left him momentarily speechless.
    “That’s ridiculous! That’s the most idiotic story I ever heard! Control is dead. He died of a heart attack after a long illness. Besides, he hated South Africa. He hated everywhere except Surrey, the Circus, and Lords Cricket Ground. Really, Roddy, you mustn’t tell stories like that.” He might have added: I buried him myself at a hateful crematorium in the East End, last Christmas Eve, alone. The parson had a speech impediment.
    “Willy Andrewartha was always the most God-awful liar,” Martindale reflected, quite unruffled. “I said the same to him myself: ‘The sheerest nonsense, Willy; you should be ashamed of yourself.’ ” And straight on, as if never by thought or word had he subscribed to that silly view: “It was the Czech scandal that put the final nail into Control’s coffin, I suppose. That poor fellow who was shot in the back and got himself into the newspapers, the one who was so thick with Bill Haydon always, so we hear. Ellis, we’re to call him, and we still do, don’t we, even if we know his real name as well as we know our own.”
    Shrewdly Martindale waited for Smiley to cap this, but Smiley had no intention of capping anything, so Martindale tried a third tack.
    “Somehow I can never quite believe in Percy Alleline as Chief, can you? Is it age, George, or is it just my natural cynicism? Do tell me, you’re so good at people. I suppose power sits poorly on those we’ve grown up with. Is that a clue? There are so few who can carry it off for me these days and poor Percy’s such an obvious person, I always think, specially after that little serpent, Control. That heavy good fellowship—how can one take him seriously? One has only to think of him in the old days lolling in the bar of the Travellers’, sucking away on that log pipe of his and buying drinks for the moguls; well, really, one does like one’s perfidy to be subtle, don’t you agree? Or don’t you care as long as it’s successful? What’s his knack, George, what’s his secret recipe?” He was speaking most intently, leaning forward, his eyes greedy and excited. Only food could otherwise move him so deeply.