Smiley looked at his watch. To Toby's secret ecstasy, Grigoriev did the same.
'But perhaps she will be late?' Smiley objected.
'She is never late,' Grigoriev retorted moodily.
'Then kindly begin by telling me of your relationship with the girl Ostrakova,' said Smiley, stepping right into the blue - says Toby - yet contriving to imply that his question was the most natural sequel to the issue of Madame Grigorieva's punctuality. Then he held his pen ready, and in such a way, says Toby, that a man like Grigoriev would feel positively obliged to give him something to write down.
For all this, Grigoriev's resistance was not quite evaporated. His amour propre demanded at least one further outing. Opening his hands, therefore, he appealed to Toby : 'Ostrakova!' he repeated with exaggerated scorn. 'He asks me about some woman called Ostrakova? I know no such person. Perhaps he does, but I do not. I am a diplomat. Release me immediately, I have important engagements.'
But the steam, as well as the logic, was fast going out of his protests. Grigoriev knew this as well as anyone.
'Alexandra Borisovna Ostrakova,' Smiley intoned, while he polished his spectacles on the fat end of his tie. 'A Russian girl, but has a French passport.' He replaced his spectacles. 'Just as you are Russian, Counsellor, but have a Swiss passport. Under a false name. Now how did you come to get involved with her, I wonder?'
'Involved? Now he tells me I was involved with her! You think I am so base I sleep with mad girls? I was blackmailed. As you blackmail me now, so I was blackmailed. Pressure! Always pressure, always Grigoriev!'
'Then tell me how they blackmailed you,' Smiley suggested, with barely a glance at him.
Grigoriev peered into his hands, lifted them, but let them drop back on to his knees again, for once unused. He dabbed his lips with his handkerchief. He shook his head at the world's iniquity.
'I was in Moscow,' he said, and in Toby's ears, as he, afterwards declares, angel choirs sang their hallelujahs. George had turned the trick, and Grigoriev's confession had begun.
Smiley, on the other hand, betrayed no such jubilation at his achievement. To the contrary, a frown of irritation puckered his plump face.
'The date, please, Counsellor,' he said, as if the place were not the issue. 'Give the date when you were in Moscow. Henceforth, please give dates at all points.'
This too is classic, Toby likes to explain : the wise inquisitor will always light a few false fires.
'September,' said Grigoriev, mystified.
'Of which year?' said Smiley, writing.
Grigoriev looked plaintively to Toby again. 'Which year! I say September, he asks me which September. He is a historian? I think he is a historian. This September,' he said sulkily to Smiley. 'I was recalled to Moscow for an urgent commercial conference. I am an expert in certain highly specialized economic fields. Such a conference would have been meaningless without my presence.'
'Did your wife accompany you on this journey?'
Grigoriev let out a hollow laugh. 'Now he thinks we are capitalists!' he commented to Toby. 'He thinks we go flying our wives around for two-week conferences, first class Swissair.'
' "In September of this year, I was ordered to fly alone to Moscow in order to attend a two-week economic conference," ' Smiley proposed, as if he were reading Grigoriev's statement aloud. ' "My wife remained in Berne." Please describe the purpose of the conference.'
'The subject of our high-level discussions was extremely secret,' Grigoriev replied with resignation. 'My Ministry wished to consider ways of giving teeth to the official Soviet attitude towards nations who were selling arms to China. We were to discuss what sanctions could be used against the offenders.'
Smiley's faceless style, his manner of regretful bureaucratic necessity, were by now not merely established, says Toby, they were perfected : Grigoriev had adopted them wholesale, with philosophic, and very Russian, pessimism. As to the rest of those present, they could hardly believe, afterwards, that he had not been brought to the flat already in a mood to talk.
'Where was the conference held?' Smiley asked, as if secret matters concerned him less than formal details.
'At the Trade Ministry. On the fourth floor... in the conference room. Opposite the lavatory,' Grigoriev retorted, with hopeless facetiousness.
'Where did you stay?'
At a hostel for senior officials, Grigoriev replied. He gave the address and even, in sarcasm, his room number. Sometimes, our discussions ended late at night, he said, by now liberally volunteering information; but on the Friday, since it was still summer weather and very hot they ended early in order to enable those who wished to leave for the country. But Grigoriev had no such plans. Grigoriev proposed to stay in Moscow for the weekend and with reason : 'I had arranged to pass two days in the apartment of a girl called Evdokia, formerly my secretary. Her husband was away on military service,' he explained, as if this were a perfectly normal transaction among men of the world, one which Toby at least, as a fellow soul, would appreciate even if soulless commissars would not. Then, to Toby's astonishment, he went straight on. From his dalliance with Evdokia he passed without warning or preamble to the very heart of their enquiry:
'Unfortunately, I was prevented from adhering to these arrangements by the intervention of members of the Thirteenth Directorate of Moscow Centre known also as the Karla Directorate. I was summoned to attend an interview immediately.'
At which moment the telephone rang. Toby took the call, rang off, and spoke to Smiley.
'She's arrived back at the house,' he said, still in German.
Without demur, Smiley turned straight to Grigoriev : 'Counsellor, we are advised that your wife has returned home. It has now become necessary for you to telephone her.'
'Telephone her?' Horrified, Grigoriev swung round on Toby. 'He tells me, telephone her! What do I say? "Grigorieva, here is loving husband! I have been kidnapped by Western spies!" Your commissar is mad! Mad!'
'You will please tell her you are unavoidably delayed,' Smiley said.
His placidity added fuel to Grigoriev's outrage : 'I tell this to my wife? To Grigorieva? You think she will believe me? She will report me to the Ambassador immediately. "Ambassador, my husband has run away! Find him! " '
'The courier Krassky brings your weekly orders from Moscow, does he not?' Smiley asked.
'The commissar knows everything,' Grigoriev told Toby, and wiped his hand across his chin. 'If he knows everything, why doesn't he speak to Grigorieva himself?'
'You are to adopt an official tone with her, Counsellor,' Smiley advised. 'Do not refer to Krassky by name, but suggest that he has ordered you to meet him for a conspiratorial discussion somewhere in the town. An emergency. Krassky has changed his plans. You have no idea when you will be back, or what he wants. If she protests, rebuke her. Tell her it is a secret of State.'
They watched him worry, they watched him wonder. Finally, they watched a small smile settle over his face.
'A secret,' Grigoriev repeated to himself. ' A secret of State. Yes.'
Stepping boldly to the telephone, he dialled a number. Toby stood over him, one hand discreetly poised to slam the cradle should he try some trick, but Smiley with a small shake of the head signalled him away. They heard Grigorieva's voice saying 'Yes?' in German. They heard Grigoriev's bold reply, followed by his wife - it is all on tape - demanding sharply to know where he was. They saw him stiffen and lift his chin, and put on an official face; they heard him snap out a few short phrases, and ask a question to which there was apparently no answer. They saw him ring off again, bright-eyed and pink with pleasure, and his short arms fly in the air with delight, like someone who has scored a goal. The next thing they knew, he had burst out laughing, long, rich gusts of Slav laughter, up and down the scale. Uncontrollably, the others began laughing with him - Skordeno, de Silsky, and Toby. Grigoriev was shaking Toby's hand.