John le Carré - The Secret Pilgrim

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John le Carre

The Secret

Pilgrim

John le Carre

ONE

LET ME CONFESS to you at once

that if I had not, on the spur of

the moment, picked up my pen and

scribbled a note to George Smiley

inviting him to address my

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John le Carre

passing-out class on the closing

evening of their entry course-and

had Smiley not, against all my

expectations, consented-I would

not be making so free to you with

my heart.

At the most, I. would be offering

you the sort of laundered

reminiscence with which, if I am

honest, I was a bit too inclined

to regale my students: feats of

secret chivalry, of the dramatic,

the resourceful and the brave.

And always, of course, the

useful. I would be enthralling

you with memories of night drops

into the Caucasus, hazardous

crossings by fast boat, beach

landings, winking shore lights,

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John le Carre

clandestine radio messages that

ceased in mid-transmission. Of

silent heroes of the Cold War

who, having made their

contribution, modestly went to

earth in the society they had

protected. Of defectors-in-place

snatched in the nick of time from

the jaws of the opposition.

And to a point, yes, that is the

life we lived. In our day we did

those things, and some even ended

well. We had good men in bad

countries who risked their lives

for us. And usually they were

believed, and sometimes their

intelligence was wisely used. I

hope so, for the greatest spy on

earth is worth nothing when it

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John le Carre

isn't.

And for the lighter note, over a

second whisky in the

Probationers' Mess, I would have

picked out for them the occasion

when a three-man reception team

from the Circus, operating inside

East Germany, and gallantly led

by myself, lay freezing on a

ridge in the Harz Mountains,

praying for the flutter of an

unmarked plane with its engines

cut, and the blessed black

parachute floating in its wake.

And what did we find when our

prayer was answered and we had

slithered down an icefield to

claim our treasure? Stones, I

would tell my wide-eyed students.

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John le Carre

Chunks of honest Argyll granite.

The despatchers at our Scottish

airbase had sent us the training

cannister by mistake.

That tale, at least, found a

certain echo, even if some of my

other offerings tended to lose

their audience halfway through.

I suspect that my impulse to

write to Smiley had been brewing

in me longer than I realised. The

idea was conceived during one of

my regular visits to Personnel to

discuss the progress of my

students. Dropping in on the

Senior Officers' Bar for a

sandwich and a beer, I had bumped

into Peter Guillam. Peter had

played Watson to George's

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John le Carre

Sherlock Holmes in the long

search for the Circus traitor,

who turned out to be our Head of

Operations, Bill Haydon. Peter

had not heard from George for-oh,

a year now, more. George had

bought this cottage in North

Cornwall somewhere, he said, and

was indulging his dislike of the

telephone. He had some kind of

sinecure at Exeter University,

and was allowed to use their

library. Sadly I pictured the

rest: George the lonely hermit on

an empty landscape, taking his

solitary walks and thinking his

thoughts. George slipping up to

Exeter for a little human warmth

in his old age while he waited to

take his place in the spies'

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John le Carre

Valhalla: And Ann, his wife? I

asked Peter, lowering my voice as

one does when Ann's name comes up-

for it was an open secret, and a

painful one, that Bill Haydon had

counted among Ann's many lovers.

Ann was Ann, said Peter, with a

Gallic shrug. She had bits of

family with grand houses on the

Helford Estuary. Sometimes she

stayed with them, sometimes she

stayed with George.

I asked for Smiley's address.

“Don't tell him I gave it you,”

said Peter as I wrote it down.

With George, there had always

been that certain kind of guilt

about passing on his whereabouts-

I still don't quite know why.

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John le Carre

Three weeks later Toby Esterhase

came down to Sarratt to give us

his celebrated talk on the arts

of clandestine surveillance on

unfriendly soil. And of course he

stayed for lunch, which was

greatly enhanced for him by the

presence of our first three

girls. After a battle lasting as

long as I had been at Sarratt,

Personnel had finally decided

that girls were all right after

all.

And I heard myself trailing

Smiley's name.

There have been times when I

would not have entertained Toby

in the woodshed, and others when

I thanked my Maker I had him on

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John le Carre

my side. But with the years, I am

pleased to notice, one settles to

people.

“Oh look here, my God, Ned!” Toby

cried in his incurably Hungarian

English, smoothing back his

carefully pomaded mane of silver

hair. “You mean you haven't

heard?”

“Heard what?” I asked patiently.

“My dear fellow, George is

chairing the Fishing Rights

Committee. Don't they tell you

anything down here in the sticks?

I think I better take this up

with the Chief actually, one to

one. A word in his ear at the

Club.”

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John le Carre

“Perhaps you'd tell me first what

the Fishing Rights Committee is,”

I suggested.

“Ned, you know what? I think I

get nervous. Maybe they took you

off the list.”

“Maybe they did at that,” I said.

He told me anyway, as I knew he

would, and I duly acted

astonished, which gave him an

even greater sense of his

importance. And there is a part

of me that remains astonished to

this day. The Fishing Rights

Committee, Toby explained for the

benefit of the unblessed, was an

informal working party made up of

officers from Moscow Centre and

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JohnleCarreTheSecretPilgrimByJohnleCarreONELETMECONFESStoyouatoncethatifIhadnot,onthespurofthemoment,pickedupmypenandscribbledanotetoGeorgeSmileyinvitinghimtoaddressmyfile:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/Le%20Carre,%20John%20-%20The%20Secret%20Pilgrim.htm(1of1219)[16.02.200319:08:33]JohnleCarrepassing-outc...

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John le Carré - The Secret Pilgrim

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