Call For The Dead

'Dieter said you had?'

'Dieter said that?'

'Yes. To Freitag. He told Freitag you were a very clever man. You once deceived Dieter before the war, and it was only long afterwards that he found out, that's what Freitag said. He said you were the best he'd ever met?'

'When did Freitag tell you that?'

She looked at him for a long time. He had never seen in any face such hopeless misery. He remembered how she had said to him before; 'The children of my grief are dead.' He understood that now, and heard it in her voice when at last she spoke:

'Why, isn't it obvious? The night he murdered Samuel.

'That's the great joke, Mr. Smiley. At the very moment when Samuel could have done so much for them — not just a piece here and a piece there, but all the time — so many music cases — at that moment their own fear destroyed them, turned them into animals and made them kill what they had made.

'Samuel always said; 'they will win because they know and the others will perish because they do not: men who work for a dream will work for ever' — that's what he said. But I knew their dream, I knew it would destroy us. What has not destroyed? Even the dream of Christ.'

'It was Dieter then, who saw me in the park with Fennan?'

'Yes.'

'And thought—'

'Yes. Thought that Samuel had betrayed him. Told Freitag to kill Samuel?'

'And the anonymous letter?'

'I don't know. I don't know who wrote it. Someone who knew Samuel I suppose, someone from the office who watched him and knew. Or from Oxford, from the Party. I don't know. Samuel didn't know either.'

'But the suicide letter—'

She looked at him, and her face crumpled. She was almost weeping again. She bowed her head:

'I wrote it. Freitag brought the paper, and I wrote it. The signature was already there. Samuel's signature.'

Smiley went over to her, sat beside her on the sofa and took her hand. She turned on him in a fury and began screaming at him: 'Take your hands off me! Do you think I'm yours because I don't belong to them? Go away! Go away and kill Freitag and Dieter, keep the game alive, Mr. Smiley. But don't think I'm on your side, d'you hear? Because I'm the wandering Jewess, the no-man's land, the battlefield for your toy soldiers. You can kick me and trample on me, see, but never, never touch me, never tell me you're sorry, d'you hear? Now get out! Go away and kill?'

She sat there, shivering as if from cold. As he reached the door he looked back. There were no tears in her eyes.

Mendel was waiting for him in the car.

XIII The Inefficiency Of Samuel Fennan

They arrived at Mitcham at lunch time. Peter Guillam was waiting for them patiently in his car.

'Well, children; what's the news?'

Smiley handed him the piece of paper from his wallet. 'There was an emergency number, too — Primrose 9747. You'd better check it but

I'm not hopeful of that either.'

Peter disappeared into the hall and began telephoning. Mendel busied himself in the kitchen and returned ten minutes later with beer, bread and cheese on a tray. Guillam came back and sat down without saying anything. He looked worried. 'Well,' he said at last; 'what did she say, George?'

Mendel cleared away as Smiley finished the account of his interview that morning.

'I see,' said Guillam. 'How very worrying. Well, that's it, George, I shall have to put this on paper today, and I'll have to go to Maston at once. Catching dead spies is a poor game really — and causes a lot of unhappiness:'

'What access did he have at the F.O.?' asked Smiley.

'Recently a lot. That's why they felt he should be interviewed, as you know.'

'What kind of stuff, mainly?'

'I don't know yet. He was on an Asian desk until a few months ago but his new job was different:'

'American, I seem to remember,' said Smiley. 'Peter?'

'Yes:'

'Peter, have you thought at all why they wanted to kill Fennan so much. I mean, supposing he had betrayed them, as they thought, why kill him? They had nothing to gain:'

'No; no, I suppose they hadn't. That does need some explaining, come to think of it ... or does it? Suppose Fuchs or Maclean had betrayed them, 1 wonder what would have happened. Suppose they had reason to fear a chain reaction — not just here but in America — all over the world? Wouldn't they kill him to prevent that? There's so much we shall just never know.'

'Like the 8.30 call?' said Smiley.

'Cheerio. Hang on here till I ring you, will you? Maston's bound to want to see you. They'll be running down the corridors when I tell them the glad news. I shall have to wear that special grin I reserve for bearing really disastrous tidings.'

Mendel saw him out and then returned to the drawing-room. 'Best thing you can do is put your feet up,' he said. 'You look a ruddy mess, you do.'

'Either Mundt's here or he's no,' thought Smiley as he lay on the bed in his waistcoat, his hands linked under his head. 'If he's not, we're finished. It will be for Maston to decide what to do with Elsa Fennan, and my guess is he'll do nothing.

'If Mundt is here, it's for one of three reasons: A, because Dieter told him to stay and watch the dust settle; B, because he's in bad odour and afraid to go back; C, because he has unfinished business.

'A is improbable because it's not like Dieter to take needless risks. Anyway, it's a woolly idea.

'B is unlikely because, while Mundt may be afraid of Dieter he must also, presumably, be frightened of a murder charge here. His wisest plan would be to go to another country.

'C is more likely. If I was in Dieter's shoes I'd be worried sick about Elsa Fennan. The Pidgeon girl is immaterial — without Elsa to fill in the gaps she presents no serious danger. She was not a conspirator and there is no reason why she should particularly remember Elsa's friend at the theatre. No, Elsa constitutes the real danger?'

There was, of course, a final possibility, which Smiley was quite unable to judge: the possibility that Dieter had other agents to control here through Mundt. On the whole he was inclined to discount this, but the thought had no doubt crossed Peter's mind.

No ... it still didn't make sense — it wasn't tidy. He decided to begin again.

What do we know? He sat up to look for pencil and paper and at once his head began throbbing. Obstinately he got off the bed and took a pencil from the inside pocket of his jacket. There was a writing pad in his suitcase. He returned to the bed, shaped the pillows to his satisfaction, took four aspirin from the bottle on the table and propped himself against the pillows, his short legs stretched before him. He began writing. First he wrote the heading in a neat, scholarly hand, and underlined it.

'What do we know?'