You're the expert — what do we know about the East German Steel Mission?'
'Pure as the driven snow, dear boy, except for their sudden departure. Only about three men and a dog in the thing. They hung out in Hampstead somewhere. No one quite knew why they were here when they first came but they've done quite a decent job in the last four years?'
'What are their terms of reference?'
'God knows. I think they thought when they arrived that they were going to persuade the Board of Trade to break the European steel rings, but they got the cold shoulder. Then they went in for consular stuff with the accent on machine tools and finished products, exchange of industrial and technical information and so on. Nothing to do with what they came for but rather more acceptable, I gather.'
'Who were they?'
'Oh — couple of technicians — Professor Doktor someone and Doktor someone else couple of girls and a general dogsbody'
'Who was the dogsbody?'
'Don't know. Some young diplomat to iron out the wrinkles. We have them recorded at the Department. I can send you details, I suppose?'
'If you don't mind?'
'No, of course not.'
There was another awkward pause. Smiley said: 'Photographs would be a help, Peter. Could you manage that?'
'Yes, yes, of course.' Guillam looked away from Smiley in some embarrassment. 'We don't know much about the East Germans really, you know. We get odd bits here and there, but on the whole they're something of a mystery. If they operate at all they don't do it under Trade or Diplomatic cover – that’s why, if you’re right about this chap, it's so odd him coming from the Steel Mission?'
'Oh,' said Smiley, flatly.
'How do they operate?' asked Mendel.
'It's hard to generalise from the very few isolated cases we do know of. My impression is that they run their agents direct from Germa~y with no contact between controller and agent in the operational zone. '
'But that must limit them terribly, cried Smiley. 'You may have to wait months before your agent can travel to a meeting place outside his own country. He may not have the necessary cover to make the journey at all.'
'Well, obviously it does limit him, but their targets seem to be so insignificant. They prefer to run foreign nationals — Swedes, expatriate Poles and what not, on short-term missions, where the limitations of their technique don't matter. In exceptional cases where they have an agent resident in the target country, they work on a courier system, which corresponds to the Soviet pattern.'
Smiley was listening now.
'As a matter of fact,' Guillam went on, 'the Americans intercepted a courier quite recently, which is where we learnt the little we do know about G.D .R. technique?'
'Such as what?'
'Oh well, never waiting at a rendezvous, never meeting at the stated time but twenty minutes before; recognition signals — all the usual conjuring tricks that give a gloss to low grade information. They muck about with names, too. A courier may have to contact three or four agents — a controller may run as many as fifteen. They never invent cover names for themselves ?'
'What do you mean? Surely they must?'
'They get the agent to do it for them. The agent chooses a name, any name he likes, and the controller adopts it. A gimmick really —' he stopped, looking at Mendel in surprise. Mendel had leapt to his feet.
Guillam sat back in his chair and wondered if he were allowed to smoke. He decided reluctantly that he wasn't. He could have done with a cigarette.
'Well?' said Smiley. Mendel had described to Guillam his interview with Mr. Scarr.
'It fits,' said Guillam. 'Obviously it fits with what we know. But then we don't know all that much. If Blondie was a courier, it is excep- tional — in my experience at least — that he should use a trade delegation as a staging post.'
'You said the Mission had been here four years,' said Mendel. 'Blondie first came to Scarr four years ago.'
No one spoke for a moment. Then Smiley said earnestly: 'Peter, it is possible, isn't it? I mean they might under certain operational conditions need to have a station over here as well as couriers.'
'Well, of course, if they were on to something really big they might?'
'Meaning if they had a highly placed resident agent in play?'
'Yes, roughly.'
'And assuming they had such an agent, a Maclean or Fuchs, it is conceivable that they would establish a station here under trade cover with no operational function except to hold the agent's hand.'
'Yes, it's conceivable. But it's a tall order, George. What you're suggesting is that the agent is run from abroad, serviced by courier and the courier is serviced by the Mission, which is also the agent's personal guardian angel. He'd have to be some agent.'
'I'm not suggesting quite that — but near enough. And I accept that the system demands a high-grade agent. Don't forget we only have Blondie's word for it that he came from Abroad.'
Mendel chipped in: 'This agent — would he be in touch with the Mission direct?'
'Good lord, no,' said Guillam. 'He'd probably have an emergency procedure for getting in touch with them — a telephone code or something of the sort?'
'How does that work?' asked Mendel.
'Varies. Might be on the wrong number system. You dial the number from a call box and ask to speak to George Brown. You're told George Brown doesn't live there so you apologise and ring off. The time and the rendezvous are prearranged — the emergency signal is contained in the name you ask for. Someone will be there.'
'What else would the Mission do?' asked Smiley.
'Hard to say. Pay him probably. Arrange a collecting place for reports. The controller would make all those arrangements for the agent, of course, and tell him his part of it by courier. They work on the Soviet principle a good deal, as I told you — even the smallest details are arranged by control. The people in the field are allowed very little independence.'
There was another silence. Smiley looked at Guillam and then at Mendel, then blinked and said:
'Blondie didn't come to Scarr in January and February, did he?'
'No,' said Mendel; 'this was the first year?'
'Ferman always went skiing in January and February. This was the first time in four years he'd missed.'
'I wonder,' said Smiley; 'whether I ought to go and see Maston again?'
Guillam stretched luxuriously and smiled: 'You can always try. He'll be thrilled to hear you've been brained. I've a sneaking feeling he'll think Battersea's on the coast, but not to worry. Tell him you were attacked while wandering about in someone's private yard — he'll understand. Tell him about your assailant, too, George. You've never seen him, mind, and you don't know his name, but he's a courier of the East German Intelligence Service. Maston will back you up; he always does. Specially when he's got to report to the Minister.'
Smiley looked at Guillam and said nothing.
'After your bang on the head, too;' Guillam added; 'he'll understand.'
'But, Peter—'
'I know, George, I know.'
'Well, let me tell you another thing. Blondie collected his car on the first Tuesday of each month.'
'So?'
'Those were the nights Elsa Fennan went to the Weybridge Rep. Fennan worked late on Tuesdays, she said.'
Guillam got up. 'Let me dig about, George. Cheerio Mendel, I'll probably give you a ring tonight. I don't see what we can do now, anyway, but it would be nice to know, wouldn't it?' He reached the door. 'Incidentally, where
