Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré Page A

once worked in a section responsible for recording the particulars of all the foreign agents employed by Centre. I laughed and told him that no such record existed; it was an idea of dreamers to suppose so many secrets would be in one place. Well, we were both dreamers I suppose.’ ”
    Again Tarr broke off. “We get a new day,” he announced. “She kicks off with a lot of ‘good morning Thomas’s,’ prayers, and a bit of love-talk. A woman can’t write to the air, she says, so she’s writing to Thomas. Her old man’s gone out early; she’s got an hour to herself. Okay?”
    Smiley grunted.
    “ ‘On the second occasion with Ivlov, I met him in the room of a cousin of Ivlov’s wife, a teacher at Moscow State University. No one else was present. The meeting, which was extremely secret, involved what in a report we would call an incriminating act. I think, Thomas, you yourself once or twice committed such an act! Also at this meeting Ivlov told me the following story to bind us in even closer friendship. Thomas, you must take care. Have you heard of Karla? He is an old fox, the most cunning in the Centre, the most secret; even his name is not a name that Russians understand. Ivlov was extremely frightened to tell me this story, which according to Ivlov concerned a great conspiracy, perhaps the greatest we have. The story of Ivlov is as follows. You should tell it only to most trustworthy people, Thomas, because of its extremely conspiratorial nature. You must tell no one in the Circus, for no one can be trusted until the riddle is solved. Ivlov said it was not true that he once worked on agent records. He had invented this story only to show me the great depth of his knowledge concerning the Centre’s affairs and to assure me that I was not in love with a nobody. The truth was he had worked for Karla as a helper in one of Karla’s great conspiracies and he had actually been stationed in England in a conspiratorial capacity, under the cover of being a driver and assistant coding clerk at the Embassy. For this task he was provided with the workname Lapin. Thus Brod became Ivlov and Ivlov became Lapin: of this poor Ivlov was extremely proud. (I did not tell him what Lapin means in French.) That a man’s wealth should be counted by the number of his names! Ivlov’s task was to service a mole. A mole is a deep-penetration agent so called because he burrows deep into the fabric of Western imperialism, in this case an Englishman. Moles are very precious to the Centre because of the many years it takes to place them, often fifteen or twenty. Most of the English moles were recruited by Karla before the war and came from the higher bourgeoisie, even aristocrats and nobles who were disgusted with their origins, and became secretly fanatic, much more fanatic than their working-class English comrades, who are slothful. Several were applying to join the Party when Karla stopped them in time and directed them to special work. Some fought in Spain against Franco Fascism, and Karla’s talent-spotters found them there and turned them over to Karla for recruitment. Others were recruited in the war during the alliance of expediency between Soviet Russia and Britain. Others afterwards, disappointed that the war did not bring Socialism to the West. . .’ It kind of dries up here,” Tarr announced without looking anywhere but at his own manuscript. “I wrote down, ‘dries up.’ I guess her old man came back earlier than she expected. The ink’s all blotted. God knows where she stowed the damn thing. Under the mattress maybe.”
    If this was meant as a joke, it failed.
    “‘The mole whom Lapin serviced in London was known by the code name Gerald. He had been recruited by Karla and was the object of extreme conspiracy. The servicing of moles is performed only by comrades with a very high standard of ability, said Ivlov. Thus while in appearance Ivlov-Lapin was at the Embassy a mere nobody, subjected to many humiliations on