The Honourable Schoolboy (George Smiley, #6; Karla Trilogy #2)

by John Le Carré

When they met a familiar face, he greeted it for both of them, flapping his vast free arm like a Fascist.

Guillam was exhausted. Forty is a difficult age at which to stay awake, he decided. At twenty or at sixty the body knows what it’s about, but forty is an adolescence where one sleeps to grow up or to stay young.

“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.

“It’s the Cousins,” Guillam said gently. “About Brother Ricardo, your favourite pilot. They want to meet with you at the Annexe as soon as possible. I’m to ring back by yesterday.” “They want what?” “To meet you. But they use the preposition.” “Do they? Do they really? Good Lord. I suppose it’s the German influence. Or is it Old English? Meet with. Well, I must say.” And he lumbered off to his bathroom to shave.

He gave a studious frown, and blinked, then whipped off his spectacles and, to the secret delight of everyone, unconsciously subscribed to his own legend by polishing them on the fat end of his tie.