A Legacy of Spies by Carré John le

Author:Carré, John le [Carré, John le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, Mystery, Historical, Crime
ISBN: 9780735225114
Amazon: 0735225117
Goodreads: 34496624
Publisher: Viking Pr
Published: 2017-09-05T07:00:00+00:00

My telephone is buzzing and the red light is winking. It’s Toby bloody Esterhase, gofer to Percy Alleline and Bill Haydon, yelling at me in his thick Hungarian accent to get my candy arse over to Head Office double-quick. Advising him to watch his language, I jump on my motorbike, which is being held ready for me outside the front door.

Minutes of emergency conference held in Joint Steering’s safe room at Cambridge Circus. Presiding: Bill Haydon (H/JS). Present: Colonel Etienne Jabroche (Military Attaché, French Embassy, London, Chief of French Intelligence Liaison), Jules Purdy (JS French desk), Jim Prideaux (JS Balkans desk), George Smiley (H/Covert), Peter Guillam (JACQUES).

Note-taker assigned to meeting: T. Esterhase. Recorded, part transcribed verbatim. Flash copy to H/Stn Prague.

It’s five in the morning. The summons has come. I have arrived from Marylebone by motorbike. George has come straight from Treasury. He is unshaven and looks more than usually worried.

‘You’re entirely free to say no at any point, Peter,’ he has twice assured me. He has already described the operation as ‘needlessly elaborate’ but his greater concern, try as he might to conceal it, is that the operational plan is the collective achievement of Joint Steering. We are six at the long plywood table in the Circus safe room.

Jabroche: Bill. My dear friend. My masters in Paris need to be assured that your Monsieur Jacques can hold his own on matters of small farming in France.

Haydon: Tell him, Jacques.

Guillam: I’m not worried about that, Colonel.

Jabroche: Not even in the company of experts?

Guillam: I grew up on a French smallholding in Brittany.

Haydon: Is Brittany French? You amaze me, Jacques.

[Laughter.]

Jabroche: Bill. With your permission.

Switching to French, Colonel Jabroche engages Guillam in an animated discussion on the French farming industry, with particular reference to north-west France.

Jabroche: I am satisfied, Bill. He passes. He even speaks like a Breton, poor man.

[More laughter.]

Haydon: But will it play, Etienne? Can you really get him in?

Jabroche: In, yes. Out, will be up to Monsieur Jacques and his good lady. You are in the nick of time. The list of French delegates closes imminently. We are already holding it open. I suggest we keep the presence of Monsieur Jacques at the conference as brief as possible. We enrol him, he goes on the collective visa, he is delayed by illness, but he is determined to make the closing session. As one of three hundred international delegates, he will not be unduly conspicuous. Do you speak Finnish, Monsieur Jacques?

Guillam: Not a lot, Colonel.

Jabroche: I thought all Bretons did. [Laughter.] And the lady in the case speaks no French?

Guillam: To our knowledge, German and school Russian, but no French.

Jabroche: But she has panache, you say? She is personable. She has élan. She can dress.

Smiley: Jacques, you’ve seen her.

I had seen her dressed and I had seen her undressed. I select the first:

Guillam: We’ve only brush-passed. But she’s impressive. Good tradecraft, quick thinking. Creative. Spirited.

Haydon: Jesus. Creativity. Who the hell needs creativity? Woman needs to do what she’s bloody told and shut up, doesn’t she? Is it a goer or not? Jacques?

Guillam: I’m up for it if George is.

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