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Peter would have clapped George Smiley on the shoulder, if George Smiley had been any other man. “I’m happy for you, sir,” said Peter, the sir bubbling up from an earlier time in their relationship, when Mr Smiley had been the father-figure Peter wanted to impress. George was no less deserving of Peter’s respect, even when the years between them softened the formality of their workplace association into a warmer mentorship.
George nodded, and his cheeks tightened into a smile far less politely pained than usual. Peter’s ability to read him had leapt ahead these past months. George was happy Anne had come back, and there was no need to discuss the fact. Not like George’s other obsession, his hunt for Karla. That struggle was nearly as old as George’s marriage and required dozens of people to discuss the particulars, even when those people had no idea who Karla was. Peter envied George’s quiet freedom to go home to his wife.
“I’m leaving now, Peter,” George said each night as the clock ticked past half five, and Peter would walk him out to the station. Occasionally he would shadow him all the way to his home where the windows glowed dimly with signs of life. Peter didn’t grudge George any bit of his happiness, but he also knew his own heart well enough. He missed Richard bitterly, and though George’s troubles with Anne had meant nothing to Peter before, now he and George could have commiserated on lost loves, if only in Peter’s head.
*
George dispatched Peter to bring Connie Sachs to the Circus during his first week. He would have collected her himself, he said, but his new position allowed no leeway in the delegation of most tasks -- his time was treasure. Connie cooed over the Citroen as she folded her bulk into the passenger seat. “Always a fast car for you, Peter. Your true love. You couldn’t live without one.” She clutched her bag on her lap with fat, clever fingers as if she carried divinations of the world. Considering her perpetual, gleeful confidence and history of always being right, she might well hold the secrets of the universe in there. Except she wasn’t always right. Peter could live without a fast car. He would prefer not to.
*
Bill Haydon’s death, scrubbed from any official record as completely as his blood had been scraped from the dirt, shadowed only the few people allowed to know. The rumor mill ground away, as usual, but rumors were for speculation and analysis, much like the daily football scores. “When Prideaux went, I was surprised Haydon stuck with the Circus, for all he’s a lifer,” Peter overheard at one of the local watering holes. “Joined at the hip, those two, and more than the hip,” was one reply, and then, “Please do spare me your filthy innuendoes, but there was real affection there.” Peter drove Smiley to Thursgood’s Preparatory School the day before Smiley began his first day at the office. To save time, Smiley’s most precious commodity, Peter was sure, because the quiet between them during the ride lacked the usual ease, and George bade Peter to stay with the car. George returned before Peter got bored of listening to the daily hum of a boys’ school: creaky music rehearsals escaping the classroom like a bird battering a window, the stark song of boys’ voices on the field, the occasional slam of a door and pound of feet on the ground. Nostalgia for childhood welled from Peter’s memory, let loose by the noises, the sun splitting the clouds, the pretty grounds, all of it. That he waited in the middle of a place much like where Richard worked didn’t send an expected pang. Leaning against his car in a shaft of sunlight did, though.
George’s light footfalls drew Peter to the present. “That didn’t take long. How is he?”
“As I expected,” replied George. With delicate respect he added, “He sacrificed more than most in all this.”
Peter swallowed, and swallowed again. He didn’t want to clear his throat in front of George.
“Take me home, please. Anne is holding dinner.”
*
It became a point of pride that Peter’s moral center proved it wasn’t rotted through when, after a promising month of reconciliation, George withdrew from Anne, spending longer hours at the Circus every day until he spent all his days at the Circus, and Peter drew no satisfaction whatsoever in George’s return to bachelorhood.
*
Friday, late: the transition from work to home, except it wasn’t much of a home anymore. Peter stooped to remove the wedge from the jamb of his flat, a habit taught to him by George years ago, given up when Richard had moved in and resumed when he’d moved out. A pointless exercise. His little safeguards protected nothing but the hollow rooms inside. Peter entertained the whimsy of getting a dog to absorb some of the silence within, but even as his mouth twisted, bitter -- the dog had been Richard’s idea -- Peter brushed his fingertips over the sliver of wood, and a heated prickle built along his back. He had set it lower on the jamb that morning.
He drew his gun from his bag before setting the bag carefully to one side. He slid his key to the lock, turning it slowly, and then pushed the door wide quickly, gun braced in both hands instantly, but the flat was empty. Peter secured the door, checked the windows, and then searched for evidence of theft.
His passports and money were undisturbed in their hiding place, and the locked box holding his ammunition was unmolested, but the wood next to the lock on his desk had a clean, white scratch. Nothing within was missing, but his files had been riffled. Peter had nothing to hide; the drawer contained only his financial papers that documented his taxes, his car, his birth and school records and modest assets. He’d disposed of his marijuana, the American beefcake magazines, even the jar of Vaseline in his bedside table. Whoever had come looking, they had found nothing.
And whoever might come looking would find nothing. All of Richard’s things he’d boxed up and sent away to Richard’s brother in Loughton, which was cruel of Peter. Richard despised his sister-in-law, and he would have to make the trip to Essex to fetch his belongings, but Richard had introduced Peter to his brother only. Peter shouldn’t know Richard’s parents, Thomas and Sarah Weatherburn, who had quietly disowned Richard for his queerness years ago, or his aunt, Constance Dalton, who embraced him for the same reason, or Richard’s old university chum, Rudy Jones, who didn’t give a toss either way and with whom Richard was staying now -- but Peter did know them. He knew all about them.
Since no one had blown off his head on his own doorstep, Peter decided he was in no immediate danger, but the disturbance of his things fretted him through two tumblers of whiskey as he prowled through his flat a second time, and a third, searching for more evidence he knew he hadn’t missed. At midnight he slid into bed on his side, and then rolled to the middle. The scratch in the wood irked him. Someone had fingered his papers, looking, but they’d found nothing, he told himself. His finances were transparent, his family unimpeachable in their history and connections and faults. In the eyes of the Circus his worst sin was bad luck: his string of agents blown in North Africa, along with Prideaux’s misfortunes, had earned his exile to Brixton. No matter that, in hindsight, all the blame could be laid at Bill Haydon’s feet, Peter Guillam was unlucky, and that was a stink hard to wash away. No, he had only one secret that could sink him: his relationship with Richard. In the eyes of the Circus publicity was a far greater sin than deviant sexuality. Even if rumors of his queerness got out, they would do him no great harm, provided he kept a low profile, and he always had. It was the potential for social scandal should the true nature of his association with Richard come to light that would get him sacked. It was an unlikely potential, if only Peter weren’t under surveillance.
But they had found nothing and would find nothing: Peter mentally recited his daily affirmation. Not the Circus, not the thief, not anyone. Peter had cut Richard to the quick with clumsy, brutal stabs that gave no reason for his cruelty and ended when he said, I never loved you; get out of my flat. Richard had packed his things and left, as Peter knew he would. The sound of his key set on the table replayed in Peter’s head whenever he thought obsessively they will find nothing. Richard would be too hurt to look for the real reason, too proud to come begging, and they would find nothing. Not the clothes Richard missed in the laundry, the papers alongside Peter’s, the records, the photos, the books -- oh Christ.
Peter threw back the covers and beelined to the bookcase for the leather-clad bible his grandmother had given him on the event of his confirmation. He thumbed the edge of the book and a photo offered itself from between the thin pages like a stiff, glossy tongue: Richard and Peter, leaning against the Citroen, grinning. They weren’t even touching -- Richard’s brother had taken the photo when they’d arrived at his house in Loughton -- but Peter saw everything between them. Last June they had pulled off the road on the way to Essex to fuck in the soft grass behind some hedges because Richard had tried to open Peter’s trousers while Peter tried to concentrate on the road. They ate sandwiches and drank cans of beer in the sunshine. Peter had drowsed with his head in Richard’s lap, and Richard had mocked him for his girlish need for romance. When given a copy of the photo, Peter asked for the negative because he wanted to make another print. He burned it after Richard had gone to sleep that night and later claimed he’d lost it, which led to annoying Richard’s brother and a momentary spat with Richard. The photo went into the bible because Richard must be discreet for his job, too; but he had clapped it between the pages of Leviticus to be perverse.
Peter shelved the bible and fetched the big ashtray and a lighter to the kitchen table, but he didn’t strike a flame. He looked at the photo impassively. Two blokes in the sunshine in front of a car. They could be friends; they could even be what they pretended for Richard’s brother -- amicable flatmates out for a drive. It was Leviticus and Peter’s vivid memory that damned the image. Peter laid aside the lighter and placed the photograph among the odd notes and stamps tossed casually in a flat, wooden box on his desk. There were even other photos there, of Peter visiting family in Paris years ago, grimed from the tennis court before Testify had gone to shit, and a few uninspired shots from holidays he’d taken in last decade. This photo belonged in that box among fading pictures of the past. Richard, fading with them.
*
Ricki Tarr.
The name assaulted Peter upon awakening the next morning after hours of murky dreams. Most of the details he had forgot already, even as the dream's emotional tenor rang through his heart: sadness, shame, bitter annoyance. All he could remember was the marring white scratch in his desk.
Ricki Tarr and his fucking knife.
The sun well up, Peter wasted no time hunting him down. Smiley had recruited Tarr, and Peter helped train him. It took a day to track him to a grotty flat in Croydon. Before Peter knocked, Tarr opened the door. His face showed resignation. “That was quicker than I hoped, but I dunno why I’m surprised,” he said, and withdrew to a dusty living room sparsely littered with two tatty chairs bleeding their stuffing from random straight-edged cuts, a scarred table, and a handful of bookshelves of varying quality full of books and stationery boxes. Ricki gestured to one of the chairs.
But for the decor Peter could have been walking into Smiley’s sitting room once again, his roiling anger flared into violence, beating Ricki where he lay helpless on the couch. Peter wanted to pound him through the bottom of his chair now. Ricki Tarr, looking through Peter’s things, witnessing Richard’s absence even if he didn’t know what he saw. Peter ground his teeth and breathed carefully out. He didn’t sit.
“You should have stayed in Paris.”
“As if Karla’s people couldn’t find me there,” Ricki said. “I’ll take my chances. I’ve got unfinished business to wrap up before I shove off for good.”
Muddying the waters, Alleline had accused. He was wrong at the time, but currently the phrase applied. Ricki Tarr had been the pebble dropped into deep water that led to Haydon’s downfall, but he was used up, less than useless. Out of gratitude or embarrassment -- or lack of resources to do the job, more likely -- the Circus had not run him down, but he was a loose end. “Why haven’t you fucked off? I know you’ve got more than one bolt-hole.”
“I’m here to collect. Mr Smiley owes me.”
“No one owes you a bloody thing.”
“He made me a promise.” Ricki gripped the arms of his chair, belligerent yet still conditioned to respond to Peter’s authority. “I’ll do everything I can, he said, but he won’t see me.”
“He’s head of the Circus. He doesn’t see anyone.”
“He gave me his word,” Ricki insisted. “He said he’d trade for Irina. Don’t tell me you know nothing about it. You fetch his newspaper every morning I bet, and coffee, too, just like a mother. You’ve been right in the thick of it, ever since I came in.”
Ricki must never know, George had told Peter. George needed Ricki’s belief that Irina was alive to flush out Haydon, and the sting had worked. What did it matter now if Ricki knew she was dead?
“What I know doesn’t matter because I don’t care,” Peter said. “You want Irina, you go find her.”
“Smiley’s got the mole; he can make deals. Tell him. Everyone knows he’ll exchange Haydon for some of our people. Tell him to add Irina to the trade.”
The coverup of Bill Haydon’s death had worked well. Peter said, “You want me to ask George on your behalf about a Russian tramp you barely knew, who was likely a double herself.”
“Fuck you. Irina was special.”
Peter scoffed.
“Look, just ask him nice. I’m not that bloke who gives up when things get tough, but there’s no chance I can get to her, not in Moscow. Tell him I want to do right by her. I just want ... She deserves it, for what she’s done, and he knows damn well. Just ask him.”
Peter crowded close, shadowing Ricki from the weak light trickling through the window, and clutched Ricki’s collar with both hands, twisting until Ricki went red. “You didn’t break into my flat to ask me favors. You think grubbing through my things will find you any answers?”
“He won’t see me!” Ricki’s voice was tight. “He’s hiding something, something about Irina or he would see me.”
“He doesn’t care, either; you’re asking the wrong person. Leave it, just leave it.”
“So who should I ask? Hm? Smiley won’t see me. Fawn? Mendal? No, they’re just Smiley’s fists and feet. You, though -- I’ve had the privilege of working for you, and I know you’ve never shied away from getting your hands dirty, especially on Smiley’s behalf. But now I find out you’re squeaky clean, Mr Guillam. Not a hint of grease anywhere. I know you’re tidy enough, but no one’s flat is as blameless as yours. That got me thinking: what’d you know about Irina? What did you hide away?”
Peter hauled Ricki up by his collar and shook him. Ricki’s hands clutched at his wrists to endure, not fight back. A mistake on his part -- George wasn’t in the room to rebuke Peter, and Fawn wasn’t standing ready to pull him away. Peter held tight to Ricki’s collar with his left hand and struck him in the temple with his right, palm open. Peter clenched his fist and hit Ricki in the neck, the jaw, and then Ricki stopped enduring and fought back. Ricki stomped and missed Peter’s foot, and then drove his knee up, hitting Peter hard mid-thigh. Peter stumbled back, hand still welded to Ricki’s collar, and they sprawled, a messy heap, each trying to draw enough space to swing a fist. Peter slugged Ricki in the face again, scoring his eyebrow and rocking his head back, and then smashed him in the mouth, cutting his knuckles on Ricki’s teeth.
A cold bite at his ribs sent Peter scuttling back. He clapped his hand over the pain and his palm came away bloody. Ricki Tarr’s fucking knife was snugged tight in Ricki’s hand, a claw curved back under his wrist, ready to slash again.
“I’ll do what I must to ... It doesn’t even have to be like that,” said Ricki. His teeth were red. A crawling thread of blood embellished his left eye and dripped down his cheekbone. “But Mr Smiley won’t meet with me to tell me what I can do.”
“You wanted out, Ricki. You’re out, and Smiley will never take your meeting.” Peter wanted to run the man’s earnest, agonized face into a brick wall. How long had he known her? How much of that time was play-acting? Peter levered himself to sitting and hesitantly probed his side while glaring at Ricki. The little prick had gotten inside his jacket and sliced a long, shallow score along his ribcage.
“Never,” Ricki said, a flat confirmation. He hauled himself upright and leaned his back against his chair. He wiped his knife against the stuffing that purled out of a rent in the fabric, and closed it. The knife disappeared into his jacket, and then he gingerly knuckled at the blood gathering on his brow. “So she’s dead, then. All this, and she’s dead.”
*
On George’s advice, Peter had guarded his private life obsessively in the weeks following his theft of the Witchcraft file from the Circus. Even after he had witnessed George aiming a gun at Bill Haydon, the both of them facing each other, seated, a line of ferocious civility drawn between them, Peter maintained the siege.
After George took control of the Circus in his new suit, the perpetual clench in Peter’s shoulders slowly eased, but he retired every night not knowing if he’d reach for Richard in the morning, having forgotten he was gone, and so he weighed every word he said over the phone, and he continued to monitor the circular movements of unfamiliar faces and vehicles on his street. Esterhase might have lost his masters, but he had deployed his lamplighters to spy on Peter as per his orders, and even from his diminished position, he wouldn’t change the surveillance until ordered otherwise. Peter didn’t ask George to call Esterhase to heel, not right off; he knew George’s desk was piled high, and Peter had nothing to hide anymore.
Months later, as he left Ricki’s flat, Peter stopped lying to himself.
“George,” he said, “I hadn’t thought to ask, but...” The lengths to which Ricki Tarr, of all people, would go for whatever twisted emotion he harbored in his heart, and Peter could barely ask a question. He loathed his hesitation, and it alerted George, who raised his head from his work and looked at Peter gravely. Peter shook off his self-disgust. “Witchcraft. While we investigated it, you warned me to expect scrutiny from the top floor.”
“Yes.”
“How long did it last?”
George sat straighter and pushed his chair back an inch. The weight of his full attention steadied Peter. “I’d been remiss on some basic housekeeping that first week,” he said, “and with Bill Haydon’s hardware scattered throughout the top floor I hesitated on some actions, but I took care of it. Oh, almost a month, now.”
“Yes, of course. I knew you had. It was obvious.” In hindsight, yes, but Peter had been blind to the return to normal. “The lamplighters’ entire department needs tightening up.”
“All of the Circus needs tightening up.”
Peter hummed an agreement, his mind switching to anticipation for the day’s work, even if his ribs itched and stung under the bandage. The work was exacting and demanding, but he could see the shape of what Smiley was striving for. Smiley’s vision was brilliant, and Peter was proud to be in the thick of it.
“Your street is quiet now, Peter. As it should be. You needn’t forego a life outside these walls.”
*
Peter would have rather face escaping a blown safe house than making this call, but he steadied his breath and his hands, and dialed the number. Rudy Jones answered the phone, and Peter made his request.
“Who is calling, please?”
“Peter.”
“Peter who?”
“Just -- Peter.”
“Ah. I’ll just ask if he’s available, shall I?” Rudy’s voice was full of knowledge, an agonizing embarrassment to absorb, but deserved, so deserved. The receiver clunked on a hard surface, and Peter could hear Rudy’s voice faintly, and fainter still, Richard’s, their words indistinct. Peter ran through Richard’s possible responses: You fucking coward to I wasn’t sure I’d hear from you again. Peter would be grateful for a simple Hello. He would likely get nothing, just a click and the drone of an open line.
Moments dragged by. A light echo of footsteps on a hard-surfaced floor sounded through the connection, and then the phone receiver rustled as it brushed an ear. “How did you find me?”
“I always know where you are. Richard.” Peter held his breath and swallowed before he could go on. “Meet me. Please. I want to tell you exactly how I know.”
*