Strickland had unbuttoned his waistcoat and lay dozing and replete like a first-class passenger on a night plane. But his small watchful eyes followed every pass that Lacon made. The door opened and closed, admitting Mostyn, who resumed his perch on the piano-stool.
'Mostyn, I expect you to close your ears to this. I am talking high, high policy. One of these far-reaching changes, George, was the decision to form an inter-ministerial Steering Committee. A mixed committee' - he composed one in the air with his hands - 'part Westminster, part Whitehall, representing Cabinet as well as the major Whitehall customers. Known as the Wise Men. But placed - George - placed between the intelligence fraternity and Cabinet. As a channel, as a filter, as a brake.' One hand had remained outstretched, dealing these metaphors like cards. 'To look over the Circus's shoulder. To exercise control, George. Vigilance and accountability in the interest of a more open government. You don't like it. I can tell by your face.'
'I'm out of it,' Smiley said. 'I'm not qualified to judge.'
Suddenly Lacon's own face took on an appalled expression and his tone dropped to one of near despair.
'You should hear them, George, our new masters! You should hear the way they talk about the Circus! I'm their dog's-body, damn ie I know, get it every day! Gibes. Suspicion. Mistrust at every turn, even from Ministers who should know better. As if the Circus were some rogue animal outside their comprehension. As if British Intelligence were a sort of wholly owned subsidiary of the Conservative Party. Not their ally at all but some autonomous viper in their Socialist nest. The thirties all over again. Do you know, they're even reviving all that talk about a British Freedom of Information Act on the American pattern? From within the Cabinet? Of open hearings, revelations, all for the public sport? You'd be shocked, George. Pained. Think of the effect such a thing would have on morale alone. Would Mostyn here ever have joined the Circus after that kind of notoriety in the press and wherever? Would you, Mostyn?'
The question seemed to strike Mostyn very deep, for his grave eyes, made yet darker by his sickly colour, became graver, and he lifted a thumb and finger to his lip. But he did not speak.
'Where was I, George?' Lacon asked, suddenly lost.
'The Wise Men,' said Smiley sympathetically.
From the sofa, Lauder Strickland threw in his own pronouncement on that body : 'Wise, my Aunt Fanny. Bunch of left-wing flannel merchants. Rule our lives for us. Tell us how to run the shop. Smack our wrists when we don't do our sums right.'
Lacon shot Strickland a glance of rebuke but did not contradict him.
'One of the less controversial exercises of the Wise Men, George - one of their first duties - conferred upon them specifically by our masters - enshrined in a jointly drafted charter was stocktaking. To review the Circus's resources world-wide and set them beside legitimate present-day targets. Don't ask me what constitutes a legitimate present-day target in their sight. That is a very moot point. However, I must not be disloyal.' He returned to his text. 'Suffice it to say that over a period of six months a review was conducted, and an axe duly laid.' He broke off, staring at Smiley. 'Are you with me, George?' he asked in a puzzled voice.
But it was hardly possible at that moment to tell whether Smiley was with anybody at all. His heavy lids had almost closed, and what remained visible of his eyes was clouded by the thick lenses of his spectacles. He was sitting upright but his head had fallen forward till his plump chins rested on his chest.
Lacon hesitated a moment longer, then continued : 'Now as a result of this axe-laying - this stocktaking, if you prefer - on the part of our Wise Men - certain categories of clandestine operation have been ruled ipso facto out of bounds. Verboten. Right?'
Prone on his sofa, Strickland incanted the unsayable : 'No coat-trailing. No honey-traps. No doubles. No stimulated defections. No migrs. No bugger all.'
'What's that?' said Smiley, as if sharply waking from a deep sleep. But such straight talk was not to Lacon's liking and he overrode it.
'Let us not be simplistic please, Lauder. Let us reach things organically. Conceptual thinking is essential here. So the Wise Men composed a codex, George,' he resumed to Smiley. 'A catalogue of proscribed practices. Right?' But Smiley was waiting rather than listening. 'Ranged the whole field - on the uses and abuses of agents, on our fishing rights in Commonwealth countries - or lack of them - all sorts. Listeners, surveillance overseas, false-flag operations - a mammoth task, bravely tackled.' To the astonishment of everyone but himself, Lacon locked his fingers together, turned down the palms, and cracked the joints in a defiant staccato.
He continued : 'Also included in their forbidden list - and it is a crude instrument, George, no respecter of tradition - are such matters as the classic use of double agents. Obsession, our new masters were pleased to call it in their findings. The old games of coat-trailing - turning and playing back our enemies' spies - in your day the very meat and drink of counter-intelligence - today, George, in the collective opinion of the Wise Men - today they are ruled obsolete. Uneconomic. Throw them out.'
Another lorry thundered giddily down the hill, or up it. They heard the bump of its wheels on the kerb.
'Christ,' Strickland muttered.
'Or - for example - I strike another blow at random - the over-emphasis on exile groups.'
This time there was no lorry at all : only the deep, accusing silence that had followed in its wake. Smiley sat as before, receiving not judging, his concentration only on Lacon, hearing hint with the sharpness of the blind.
'Exile groups, you will want to know,' Lacon went on - 'or more properly the Circus's time-honoured connections with them - the Wise Men prefer to call it dependence, but I think that a trifle strong - I took issue with them, but was overruled - are today ruled provocative, anti-dtente, inflammatory. An expensive indulgence. Those who tamper with them do so on pain of excommunication. I mean it, George. We have got thus far. This is the extent of their mastery. Imagine.'
With a gesture of baring his breast for Smiley's onslaught, Lacon opened his arms, and remained standing, peering down at hint as he had done before, while in the background Strickland's Scottish echo once again told the same truth more brutally.
'The groups have been dustbinned, George,' Strickland said. 'The lot of them. Orders from on high. No contact, not even arm's length. The late Vladimir's death-and-glory artists included. Special two-key archive for 'em on the fifth floor. No officer access without consent in writing from the Chief. Copy to the weekly float for the Wise Men's inspection. Troubled times, George, I tell you true, troubled times.'
'George, now steady,' Lacon warned uneasily, catching something the others had not heard.
'What utter nonsense,' Smiley repeated deliberately.
His head had lifted and his eyes had turned full on Lacon, as if emphasising the bluntness of his contradiction. 'Vladimir wasn't expensive. He wasn't an indulgence either. Least of all was he uneconomic. You know perfectly well he loathed taking our money. We had to force it on him or he'd have starved. As to inflammatory - anti-dtente, whatever those words mean well, we had to hold him in check once in a while as one does with most good agents, but when it came down to it he took our orders like a lamb. You were a fan of his, Oliver. You know as well as I do what he was worth.'