Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

as he put it. “This stand was part of an old wardrobe, see. If you kneel in the back pew and grope around, there’s a loose board. Behind the board there’s a recess full of rubbish and rat’s mess. I tell you, it made a real lovely drop, the best ever.”
    There was a short pause, illuminated by the vision of Ricki Tarr and his Moscow Centre mistress kneeling side by side in the rear pew of a Baptist church in Hong Kong.
    In this dead letter-box, Tarr said, he found not a letter but a whole damn diary. The writing was fine and done on both sides of the paper, so that quite often the black ink came through. It was fast urgent writing with no erasures. He knew at a glance that she had maintained it in her lucid periods.
    “This isn’t it, mind. This is only my copy.”
    Slipping a long hand inside his shirt, he had drawn out a leather purse attached to a broad thong of hide. From it he took a grimy wad of paper.
    “I guess she dropped the diary just before they hit her,” he said. “Maybe she was having a last pray at the same time. I made the translation myself.”
    “I didn’t know you spoke Russian,” said Smiley—a comment lost to everyone but Tarr, who at once grinned.
    “Ah, now, a man needs a qualification in this profession, Mr. Smiley,” he explained as he separated the pages. “I may not have been too great at law but a further language can be decisive. You know what the poets say, I expect?” He looked up from his labours and his grin widened. “ ‘To possess another language is to possess another soul.’ A great king wrote that, sir, Charles the Fifth. My father never forgot a quotation, I’ll say that for him, though the funny thing is he couldn’t speak a damn thing but English. I’ll read the diary aloud to you, if you don’t mind.”
    “He hasn’t a word of Russian to his name,” said Guillam.
    “They spoke English all the time. Irina had done a three-year English course.”
    Guillam had chosen the ceiling to look at, Lacon his hands. Only Smiley was watching Tarr, who was laughing quietly at his own little joke.
    “All set?” he enquired. “Right, then, I’ll begin. ‘Thomas, listen, I am talking to you.’ She called me by my surname,” he explained. “I told her I was Tony, but it was always Thomas, right? ‘This diary is my gift for you in case they take me away before I speak to Alleline. I would prefer to give you my life, Thomas, and naturally my body, but I think it more likely that this wretched secret will be all I have to make you happy. Use it well!’ ” Tarr glanced up. “It’s marked Monday. She wrote the diary over the four days.” His voice had become flat, almost bored. “ ‘In Moscow Centre there is more gossip than our superiors would wish. Especially the little fellows like to make themselves grand by appearing to be in the know. For two years before I was attached to the Trade Ministry, I worked as a supervisor in the filing department of our headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square. The work was so dull, Thomas, the atmosphere was not happy, and I was unmarried. We were encouraged to be suspicious of one another; it is such a strain never to give your heart, not once. Under me was a clerk named Ivlov. Though Ivlov was not socially or in rank my equal, the oppressive atmosphere brought out a mutuality in our temperaments. Forgive me, sometimes only the body can speak for us—you should have appeared earlier, Thomas! Several times Ivlov and I worked night shifts together, and eventually we agreed to defy regulations and meet outside the building. He was blond, Thomas, like you, and I wanted him. We met in a café in a poor district of Moscow. In Russia we are taught that Moscow has no poor districts, but this is a lie. Ivlov told me that his real name was Brod but he was not a Jew. He brought me some coffee sent to him illicitly by a comrade in Teheran—he was very sweet—also some stockings. Ivlov told me that he admired me greatly and that he had