The Honourable Schoolboy

by John Le Carré

And he knew that when they were cross the Thais killed a great deal sooner and more thoroughly than almost everyone else, even though, when they condemned a man to the firing squad, they shot him through a stretched bed sheet in order not to offend the laws of the Lord Buddha.

The money-changers used to be Chinese, Jerry remembered. This one was Indian. The Chinese get out early, but the Indians stay to pick the carcass.

And perhaps Charlie Marshall, in his ruin and despair, as he sobbed out the forbidden secrets, understood Jerry’s reasoning: that in a city about to be given back to the jungle, there was no destruction unless it was complete.

At the airport, he ditched the Walther in a rubbish bin and at the last minute bribed his way aboard a plane to Saigon which was his destination. Taking off, he wondered who had the longer expectation of survival: himself or the city.

The fact remains that Saigon was the worst place on earth for Jerry to be kicking his heels. Periodically, as the delays dragged on, there was talk at the Circus of sending him somewhere more salubrious, for instance to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, but the arguments of expediency and cover always kept him where he was: besides, tomorrow everything might change.

‘Now if that were so, and Ko’s ambition were, let us say, to reintroduce the opium habit to the Mainland – slowly, but gradually creating new markets, you follow me – well, I reckon he would go a very long distance to prevent that information making the front pages of the world’s press. That’s not all, either. There’s another aspect altogether, even more lucrative.’

The enlisted men wore Charlie-Marshall-style patches on their uniforms, mostly in praise of drugs. The mood was sullen, defeated and innately violent. The Thai troops greeted nobody. Nobody greeted the Thais.

And it must be admitted that the languid Major Masters had attached very little significance to the no-show, as he later called it, of some travelling English fairy. ‘ASSUME EXPLANATION YOUR END’ his message ends. Major Masters now lives in Norman, Oklahoma, where he runs a small automobile repair business.

In the beginning was the deed, Smiley liked to say to him, in his failed-priest mood, quoting from one of his German poets. For Jerry, that simple maxim had become a pillar of his uncomplicated philosophy. What a man thinks is his own business. What matters is what he does.

In one way this thought amused Jerry very much, for Sam had a reputation as an ace operator, whereas Lizzie Worthington might well star at Sarratt as the archetypal Woman Never to Be Recruited as Long as She Can Speak or Breathe.

‘Not at all,’ said Smiley politely, still gazing at the chart. ‘Brits we are and Brits we shall remain.’ It’s his Karla expression, Guillam decided: the one that comes over him when he looks at the photograph.

‘There’ll be no war, will there, Peter darling?’ she had said reassuringly, squeezing his hand as he led her along the corridor. ‘But in the struggle for peace not a single stone will be left standing, bless the old fox. I’ll bet they didn’t thank him for that one in the Collegium either.’

Rushing back to the Circus, di Salis duly reported this amazing question to Connie Sachs – as Lacon, of course, wished him to – and Connie was thereafter seen little. She spent her time quietly ‘packing her trunk’ as she called it: that is to say, preparing her Moscow Centre archive for posterity.

Then one of the housekeepers let slip that George might be suffering from a spot of strain, and this phrase struck a chill everywhere, for even the dimmest little gnome in Banking Section knew that strain, like old age, was a disease for which there was only one known remedy, and it did not entail recovery.

appoint Sam Collins as his head of operations, Smiley showed nothing but courtesy toward the suggestion. Sam was a hustler, Enderby explained, and hustlers were what Langley liked these days. The

‘For fifth floor ears only,’ he told them. His audience was appalled, then proud. Connie wept, and tried to claim him as another of Karla’s victims, but she was held back in this for want of information about who or what had killed him.