Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s not murder.

Jim Prideaux repeated it to himself, as he carefully stashed the gun into the rucksack. It’s killing a mad dog before it can do any more damage. Saving a man’s reputation, if you want to look at it that way, making sure that he’ll be remembered for all the good he did do, not this one…mistake, error in judgement, complete and utter bloody screw up, however you want to put it.

He looked around the caravan, making sure, he hadn’t missed anything, but everything was clean and tidy.

It would cause a scandal of course. An intelligence agent gunned down in London, but there will be enough suspects that Jim doubts he will even be mentioned.

The visit here will have been unofficial, sounding out how much he knew or suspected, he highly doubts that the other man mentioned it to anyone. Lacon had been a bluff, he was sure of that. Or it would have been a confederate at the end of the line. Identifying voices on telephones was notoriously difficult, even for the most skilled listeners. Or was it possible that Lacon…?NO!

He shot that line of reasoning down before it could go any further. If Lacon was compromised, then it was all in vain and why would a mole, why would Gerald (as he still thought in his head, separating the traitor from his friend) be needed?

The visit had been a precaution, a confirmation that Jim did not know anything and confirmation that he hadn’t spoken to anyone since his return. He thought he’d handled it pretty well, almost text book in fact. Just sticking to the facts, the ones that Moscow could check. Not giving any of his own thoughts away, insisting that the idea of a mole was ridiculous, that he hadn’t, even under interrogation given it any serious thought as to the identity of the mole and all the while his heart pounding so loud that he thought the other man must hear it. Must see in his eyes that he knew and that he was afraid.

There are many ways to die, many ways to kill a man. Jim should know, he’s done most of them. It’s why he insisted upon driving to start with and why he immediately retrieved the gun as soon as he was released. Too easy, if it really was Lacon on the other end of the line, to report back that their chat had gone fine, but must have said something to upset him, something to push him over the edge. Gerald would feel guilty about it or seem to of course, but nothing to be done.

Or sleeping tablets in the vodka, a tragic suicide of a lonely man in a hotel room. Sad, but definitely not suspicious, especially with his fingerprints on the bottle. He kept his consumption to a minimum, but couldn’t help been relieved when reliving what had happened, coupled with the stress he was already under brought most of it back up.

A shot through the head while they were walking, he’d spent the whole time ready to bolt again, to at least make the bastard work for his life.

Or even snap his neck. Physically he’s stronger than Gerald, but if it came to it, he’s not completely sure with the shoulder that he could do it. That he could overpower the other man.

Apparently he’d passed whatever sort of sick test was been run, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, waiting for Gerald, for Moscow to decide that he was an acceptable risk and needed to be dealt with.

Hence the gun. Hence his determination to deal with the problem once and for all.

He wishes he could leave something to explain it to those left behind. Max, Peter Guilliam, Anne, heck even Bill if it comes down to it. Something to explain, even if it’s only to be found after he’s gone. Something to explain the death, to stop them running around in circles. Guilliam in particular, he thinks will do that. The other man, Gerald, is his mentor, his friend. Guilliam will tear himself up backtrack every mission, every agent, every hood, even if it takes him the rest of his career. If he ever finds the truth or thinks he does…he wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Jim can almost see Guilliam opposite him, raging. Calling him a liar, a murderer, all sorts. He wouldn’t believe it. Jim wishes he had that luxury.

He'd tried to give Gerald a chance to run or to make it right, that night, before he left. But it hadn’t worked out.

He’ll do it right this time. One shot, carefully aimed.

No mess, no pain. He owes the other man that at least.

It’s strange to find he’s not actually angry with him. Angry with the Russians, certainly. Angry with Moscow Centre definitely, even angry with Anne Smiley for being such a fool, but with the man himself, with Gerald, he’s not.

He feels sorry for him. Sad. Disappointed that the man would throw everything away and for what? For some ideal? Some idea? Did he even know any more? Jim has watched many agents and knows after a certain point deception for the sake of deception becomes an aim in it’s self.

He sets off, walking quickly, the ticket for London tucked carefully out of sight.

The watchers have gone now, but it does no harm not to take chances. He’ll get the train from Staton, nearly 4 miles from Thursgood’s.

It’s only a single. If everything goes to plan, he’ll buy a return in London and hang the expense.

If it doesn’t…well, he won’t be coming back.

He’s sorry about that. Would have liked to say goodbye to his boys. To Jumbo. But he hadn’t had the opportunity to say Goodbye to his other boys, so why should this be any different?

Somethings just have to be done. Nothing to else to be said.

Carefully, Jim Prideaux eased his way down the hill into the station at Staton, just as the 5:40 to London was coming in.

He boarded it, showing his ticket to the guard without a word and sat down, waiting as the train carried him closer and closer to London and to the man he was going to kill. To Gerald. To George Smiley.

Chapter Text

It might seem odd, but by the time Jim Prideaux has reached the Avis from Control’s flat, he’s happy. It might seem an odd reaction to Control’s news (a mole in the very heart of the circus), but he is.

As he turns over the engine and heads for home, he’s almost singing.

He feels like a two hundred pound weight has been lifted off his shoulders, because it’s not his fault.

His men, Josef, Sirius, Reggie, Maddock and well over a hundred more, hadn’t died because he had made a mistake or the agency had made a mistake. They had died because of a traitor within the organisation. Because of Moscow.

As he parked and walked into his flat, he wanted to ring Ellen up and tell her “It’s over. It’s not our fault, so you can stop doing that walk through to my office with that carefully neutral face and a file in your hand that tells all but the most junior scalphunter that we’ve lost one. It’s not our fault. It’s a bloody traitor in the circus and in a few weeks he’ll be gone!”

He grinned to himself as he poured a glass of vodka.

Knowing Ellen, if he distrubed her at, he glanced at the clock, gone midnight, her response would be. “Very good Mr Pideaux. Now don’t you think you better get to bed sir? You’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

And once she’d hung up on him, because Ellen worried about him at least as much, if not more than her boys, she'd ring up  Bill or George and ask them to check up on him. To make sure he was alright.

That brought him back to earth and he took the glass of vodka over to the sofa with him.

Five names. Five men. One of them a traitor. All of them men  he knew had worked with for decades. One of them is his best friend. And one of them a traitor.

It was strange that even later on, whatever he said to Smiley that he'd never doubted it was true. That there was a traitor. Whether it was just faith in the Old Man, a thousand small things coming together in his subconscious or just desperation, he didn't know and truthfully didn't care. It just was true.

He absentmindedly took a sip of Vodka, while running the names though his head. The real names, even as he ticks codenames off on his fingers.

Percy Allerine. Bill Haydon. Roy Bland. Toby Esterhase. George Smiley.

Jim's the first to admit he's no juju man, no great thinker. Oxford is about the only thing which separates him from the rest of the scalp hunters, but he sat there, on the sofa, sipping at the vodka and thinking.

He doesn't wonder what or how Control has come up with those 5 names. He just sits there  turning their names over in his end, like they're names of scalp hunters for a mission and he wants to make sure he's picked the most likely fit before he instructs Ellen to send them in  for briefing.

Thinking of Ellen almost unconsciously alters the order and makes Toby Esterhase first.

Because Toby heads up the lamplighters and if things went wrong and he wasn't available, he would be the person Ellen or Cy would be most likely to approach for instructions. It was the reason he'd had weeks where it seemed that he could hardly step out of his office without tripping over Monty or Harry Slingo. 

Brixton might be the Circus Exile, but it's closer to Acton and most of the boys have worked together enough to be fairly confident of a sympathetic ear to their troubles.

Understanding why Control would suspect Toby is ridiculously easy. It's the same reason Toby is exiled to Acton. Toby, no matter how hard he tries, how many dangerous missions he undertakes, how well he manages his staff, no matter how hard he tries to be English gentleman, is a foreigner. A Hungarian spying for the English.

It's equally easy to understand Toby's motives for galavanting towards Allerine, if Circus rumours are true. Toby is the boy on the edge of the gang  desperate to belong, to be accepted as a full member of the gang. It's a prize that Control will never offer and Allerine is unscrupulous enough to dangle. He may even be sincere in offering it, but Jim wouldn't like to see the price tag.

So it's easy to see why Toby would be suspected. But it's those same reasons that make it unlikely that Toby is the mole. Aside from Toby's desire to be accepted, which could, Jim concedes be just good cover, a mole has to be trusted and Toby isn't. Not by the senior Circus, not by the mothers  not even by his own staff, who are far more likely to come to Jim first rather than Toby if they've done something stupid, like leave a code book on a job or got a girl into trouble. He'll send them on to Toby, but he'll listen first, let them explain themselves. Toby will lecture them.

He dismissed Poor Man with a degree of relief and turned his attention to the other four candidates. 

Percy Allerine. Bill Haydon. Roy Bland. George Smiley.

Jim can understand the suspicion behind Roy Bland easily as well. The Circus ran Roy as a double agent behind the curtain for years, and Double Agents can be triple agents, almost before anyone is aware of it. Roy’s father was active enough in the socialism movement for MI5 to have a file on him, and while the sins of the father may not be visited upon the Child, Circus policy on this has always been a little vague.

Jim took a sip of vodka. He doesn’t like Roy Bland, he can admit it here. Roy has all Bill’s faults and none (at least as far as Jim can see) of Bill’s charm. He remembers overhearing one of the Scalphunters, almost certainly quoting Bill, stating that Roy didn’t have a chip on his shoulder, he had a fucking forest. It’s not entirely untrue.

Roy also isn’t trusted. He’s a bit too hearty, too good to be true. Good at what he does, but limited. Roy also seems unlikely.

Allerine he dismissed almost without thought. Jim doubts that if there wasn't a personal animosity between the two men Allerine would even be on the list. Not only has Allerine not been with the service long enough, Jim highly doubts that Allerine knows where half the Baltic states are. Allerine is a puppet, a frontman whose talents for spying are far out stripped by his talent for self publicity 

Who's behind Allerine? Is a question asked even among the corridors of Brixton, with smart money resting on Bill Haydon, as George Smiley is Control's man.

Jim got his feet and poured another shot of Vodka, wondering why that thought should make him uneasy. 

George is Control's man, in peace and in war, as the novelists say. Loyal to Control less out of any personal affection, less because he is Control, their leader, than because he's George Smiley and George is loyal. To his country, to his wife, to the Circus, to his agents, however little they deserve it. He remembers Peter Guilliam telling him about Dieter.

That must have been just before Operation Tulip, and the Capture of Mundt. 

Jim sat up, the feeling of unease increasing. Smiley had good cause to detest Mundt and had never really tried to hide it. He remembered Smiley remarking at a meeting when Mundt summoned Moscow and his presumed death, "Well I can't say it's any great loss", before changing the subject. He remembered being shocked by that at the time. After all Mundt had cost them, all they'd done to keep him safe, that George could dismiss his death so lightly.

Jim put his glass down, his fingers starting to drum uneasily. They'd never established who betrayed Mundt and his death had been linked to the purges going on in Moscow at that time, but supposing it wasn't. Suppose someone had betrayed Mundt? 

He wanted to say it was absurd, but knew that it wasn't. For any intelligent agent making contact with the other side was easier than for your average citizen, because you knew where to go, who to talk to. Any of them could have handed Mundt's name over to over a dozen operatives in perfect safety. Smiley after all had more motive than most. A personal attack on himself which had come within an inch of killing him, the invasion of his home, the attack on that police officer friend of his, the devastation (however well hidden) over the loss of his protege, you could probably even twist it around for Smiley to blame Mundt for Dieter's death. Illogical, but Jim's heard less well argued reasons for killing a man in his time.

Mundt was a torturer and a Sadistic bastard and Jim  can't  honestly say he thinks the world is any worse off for his absence. He thinks he remembered Bill actually putting it like that at the time, but it's a beginning.

Jim shifted uncomfortably. A start. And it's only a year, less than that he realized uncomfortably, that George met Karla. The only member of the Circus who had.

Or perhaps more accurately the man who would become Karla, Moscow's chief fox as Connie calls him. Karla at the time wasn't Karla, just one of two dozen senior agents who Circus tried to turn that year. George admitted that he had blundered the interview, at least according to Circus gossip, blathering about Anne. But they only had Smiley's word for what had passed between them…

Jim slammed his hand down, nearly upsetting the glass. This was ridiculous. 

Yes you could make a case for Smiley as the mole, but that applied equally well to Bill. Bill, who was still half in love with the ideals of communism (“Far better to believe in something bigger than oneselves, rather than just believe in oneself, which is belief in nothing at all, as our American colleagues would have it”), but there was no real reason to suspect George

He wished almost immediately that he hadn’t thought of Bill.

Anne Smiley was in many ways a remarkable woman. Beautiful, Adventurous, Highly Intelligent in many areas and a complete and utter fool in one. Or maybe not so much a fool. After all, she established herself early on with a husband who would always take her back, always love her, no matter how notorious her conduct.

Jim had always felt a sort of kinship with George over this, unspoken and unacknowledged by either man, except once, briefly maybe about a year ago. Jim had been in the Circus headquarters for a meeting, which had overran and he had then gone on to do some additional research relating to the mission, grabbing a spare and unoccupied desk on the fifth floor. It had been after midnight that he’d been awoken by the sound of a typewriter clicking, an unnatural and incongruous sound so late. Getting up, he stalked around the corridors, before spotting a light shining out from under a door. He hadn’t even noticed whose office it was, just flung the door open, to see George Smiley, wearing a truly horrendous suit,  sitting at one of the secretary’s desks, painstakingly picking out the typewriter keys with one finger.

His one consultation was that George was equally surprised to see him.

“Jim!” He’d said, staring as though at a phantom. “I thought I was alone up here.”

Jim had explained that he had been doing some research and must have fallen asleep over it. George had nodded in that uncertain way of his. “I suppose we’re both at a bit of a loose end at the moment.”

He had immediately suggested that they share a taxi, pointing out the lateness of the hour. Jim had refused, possibly a little brusquely. There was something…not pathetic as that could never be applied to Smiley, but very forlorn about the offer. Something that made Jim feel horribly embarrassed. He had retreated, gratefully back to the spare desk and the file he had been reading, and maybe an hour later, he had seen the light go out under the door in the office and he assumed that Smiley had retreated down the backstairs, equally embarrassed.

It had never occurred to him to ask Smiley for an explanation. Smiley was a senior; some would say the Senior, Officer on the Fifth Floor. If he wished to stay on after hours, even do his own typing, then that was his prerogative. There was bound to be a good explanation, even if that explanation was simply to avoid going home to an empty house. There was always something to be done.

Jim got up and firmly screwed the lid back on the Vodka bottle. He was tired. Starting to jump at shadows, look for the suspicious in the quite innocent. Better make this his last one and try to get some kip.

Bill Haydon’s relationship with Anne Smiley had shocked and surprised him, he could admit that. Anne was not only notorious, she was the wife of a colleague and therefore off limits. You might admire your colleagues wives, might even lust after them, but you would never act upon that feeling. It was one of the few rules governing affairs, that the wives of colleagues were taboo. The wife of your best friend since boyhood might not be, but if he was a fellow member of the Circus, then you left her alone.

Bill had always delighted in doing what was unconventional and doing it in such a way that both rubbed it people’s face and made it impossible for them to respond, but as far as Jim knew Ann Smiley was the first time he had even broken that rule. If he had broken it before, he had at least been discreet about it.

He had not been discreet about it. Roy Bland had known about it, been told about it, if Circus Gossip was to be believed within a week, and if Roy knew something, you might as well take out an ad in Piccadilly Circus.  The story had been all over the Circus by the end of the day and even out in Brixton by the end of the week. Everyone had waited, bated breath to see what would happen. How would Smiley react?

Pete Sembrini had been running a book on it at Brixton. 10 to 1 on a fight on the fifth floor. Evens on Smiley divorcing Ann. 5 to 1 on Haydon meeting with an unfortunate “accident” in London. 2 to 1 on George Smiley retiring permanently. 3 to 2 on Peter Guilliam punching Bill Haydon. Ellen had caught them at it.

Furiously, she had confiscated both the book and pool and been lecturing all the scalphunters like a school teacher when Jim had come out of his office, one of the few times he could ever remember seeing her properly angered by anything her boys had done.

Nothing had happened. Things on the fifth floor were apparently a bit tense, but no more than normal. Guilliam acquired a new girlfriend. The weeks turned into months and George Smiley apparently plodded on as he always had. Perhaps a bit slower, a little more distracted, but it was a busy time at the circus. Certainly his relationship with Haydon remained, at least to outwards appearances, as it always had gone.  To outward appearances at least.

Had it been? Did George know and accept Ann enough not to blame Bill? Did he blame Ann? There had been no outward signs of that either. Ann had continued to reside at Baywater Street and there had been no unseemly rows or anything of that kind, not that you could imagine George Smiley doing anything of that kind.

George never seemed to react with any positive emotion to a situation. Jim would hate to be the poor sod who tried interrogating him. But he felt things. Felt them deeply. Jim knew that.

Could this betrayal, both big and small, be what finally pushed him over the edge? Sent him into Moscows’s arms? Sent him to Karla, who had helped him last time there was a betrayal like this? Driven him to commit one final desperate…

Jim grabbed the glass and swallowed the Vodka in one gulp, almost choking on it. He wasn’t going to think about this any more tonight, he was going to bed!

/*/**/*//*/*/*

Jim is honest enough to admit that for the week after that night he was like a bear with a sore head. Terse and impatient with his boys at Brixton and with Ellen, which was more unusual.

Ellen to her a justice did not alter her behaviour towards him one jot, even after he chewed her out for a typo in an internal report, a mistake he usually wouldn’t have even noticed, let alone commented upon. She merely said, “I apologise to Mr Pideaux” and stayed to retype the report during her lunch hour.

But by Monday evening the chain of command had altered. His boys are going to Cy first with any problems or requests and Cy is going to Ellen, both of them only involving him when the issues are too big for them.

The suspicion, the fear, the knowledge is like a nagging tooth and is one of the reasons he goes looking for Max on Monday Evening. There are several old Czech hands in the scalphunters, but Smiley brought most of them in. Max is one of Jim’s old recruits and couldn’t give a damn about the higher circus politics, while the Scalphunters watch the show intensely.

Meeting Max calms him more than he likes to admit. Helps to put the thing in its proper place. A mission, albeit a dangerous mission. Nothing more.

Except it is everything more.

Jim couldn’t say exactly when meeting Smiley, warning him, first comes into his head, but it’s established enough that when Ellen brings in his ticket to Copenhagen on Thursday afternoon, he asks her. “Do you know George Smiley’s home address?”

Ellen shows a flicker of what might be either surprise or confusion, but she answered quickly enough.  “ No 9 Bywater Street. Chelsea 1605, but I don’t think he’s home at the moment. I have a feeling he’s in Berlin. Due back Sunday.”

He’ll try. Even if Smiley is not at home, he can still leave a note. Ann, for all her faults, is an experienced enough Circus wife to know not to meddle with any notes left for her husband. He’ll write it there. Nothing incriminating. Just enough to tell Smiley that Control suspects and Jim Suspects and both of them will know by Monday and that if George wants to save his skin…or perhaps not his skin. Picturing George Smiley in a Moscow Dacha is nearly as hard as picturing Bill in the same situation..

George looks like the type of man who would take the Roman way out. Lock himself in the bathroom and open his veins. The gas oven possibly, but it sounds a little too painless for George.

Jim nodded to himself and asked one or two questions on missions either due for briefing or return while he was away, not so much to distract Ellen as to distract himself. In one sense, Ellen is a perfect secretary, as incurious and forgetful as a catholic priest in the confessional. She will remember, but she will never tell, not even any internal committees that might be summoned after this.

“Sure you and Cy can cope in my absence?” He asked, teasing and Ellen smiled and assured him that she and Cy can hold the fort.