'Now I'll tell you a damn odd thing about this stage of the game. At the start, I worked Thomas the Aussie to death. I fed her a lot of smoke about a sheep station outside Adelaide and a big property in the high street with a glass front and "Thomas" in lights. She didn't believe me. She nodded and fooled around and waited till I'd said my piece, then she said "Yes, Thomas," "No, Thomas" and changed the subject.'

On the fourth evening he drove her into the hills overlooking North Shore and Irina told Tarr that she had fallen in love with him and that she was employed by Moscow Centre, she and her husband both, and that she knew Tarr was in the trade, too; she could tell by his alertness and the way he listened with his eyes.

'She'd decided I was an English colonel of intelligence,' said Tarr with no smile at all. 'She was crying one minute and laughing the next and in my opinion she was three-quarters of the way to being a basket case. Half, she talked like a pocket-book loony heroine, half like a nice up-and-down suburban kid. The English were her favourite people. Gentlemen, she kept saying. I'd brought her a bottle of vodka and she drank half of it in about fifteen seconds flat. Hooray for English gentlemen. Boris was the lead and Irina was the back-up girl. It was a his-and- hers act, and one day she'd talk to Percy Alleline and tell him a great secret all for himself. Boris was on a trawl for Hong Kong businessmen and had a postbox job on the side for the local Soviet residency. Irina ran courier, boiled down the microdots and played radio for him on a high-speed squirt to beat the listeners. That was how it read on paper, see? The two nightclubs were rendezvous and fallback for his local connect, in that order. But all Boris really wanted to do was drink and chase the dancing girls and have depressions. Or else go for five-hour walks because he couldn't stand being in the same room with his wife. All Irina did was wait around crying and getting plastered and fancy herself sitting alone at Percy's fireside telling him all she knew. I kept her there talking, up on the hill, sitting in the car. I didn't move because I didn't want to break the spell. We watched the dusk fall on the harbour and the lovely moon come up there, and the peasants slipping by with their long poles and kerosene lamps. All we needed was Humphrey Bogart in a tuxedo. I kept my foot on the vodka bottle and let her talk. I didn't move a muscle. Fact, Mr Smiley. Fact,' he declared, with the defencelessness of a man longing to be believed, but Smiley's eyes were closed and he was deaf to all appeal.

'She just completely let go,' Tarr explained, as if it were suddenly an accident, a thing he had had no part in. 'She told me her whole life-story from birth to Colonel Thomas; that's me. Mummy, Daddy, early loves, recruitment, training, her lousy half marriage, the lot. How her and Boris were teamed at training and had been together ever since: one of the great unbreakable relationships. She told me her real name, her workname and the covernames she'd travelled and transmitted by, then she hauled out her handbag and started showing me her conjuring set: recessed fountain pen, signal plan folded up inside; concealed camera, the works. "Wait till Percy sees that," I tell her - playing her along, like. It was production- line stuff, mind, nothing coach-built, but grade one material all the same. To round it off she starts barking the dirt about the Soviet Hong Kong set up: legmen, safe houses, letter boxes, the lot. I was going crazy to remember it all.'

'But you did,' said Guillam shortly.

Yes, Tarr agreed; near on, he did. He knew she hadn't told him the whole truth, but he knew truth came hard to a girl who'd been a hood since puberty and he reckoned that for a beginner she was doing pretty nice.

'I kind of felt for her,' he said with another flash of that false confessiveness. 'I felt we were on the same wavelength, no messing.'

'Quite so,' said Lacon in a rare interjection. He was very pale, but whether that was anger or the effect of the grey light of early morning creeping through the shutters, there was no way to tell.

'Now I was in a queer situation. I saw her next day and the day after and I reckoned that if she wasn't already schizoid she was going to be that way damn soon. One minute talking about Percy giving her a top job in the Circus working for Colonel Thomas, and arguing the hell with me about whether she should be a lieutenant or a major. Next minute saying she wouldn't spy for anybody ever again and she was going to grow flowers and rut in the hay with Thomas. Then she had a convent kick: Baptist nuns were going to wash her soul. I nearly died. Who the hell ever heard of Baptist nuns, I ask her? Never mind, she says, Baptists are the greatest, her mother was a peasant and knew. That was the second biggest secret she would ever tell me. "What's the biggest, then?" I ask. No dice. All she's saying is, we're in mortal danger, bigger than I could possibly know: there's no hope for either of us unless she has that special chat with Brother Percy. "What danger, for Christ's sake? What do you know that I don't?" She was vain as a cat but when I pressed her she clammed up and I was frightened to death she'd belt home and sing the lot to Boris. I was running out of time too. Then it was Wednesday already and the delegation was due to fly home to Moscow Friday. Her tradecraft wasn't all lousy but how could I trust a nut like that? You know how women are when they are in love, Mr Smiley. They can't hardly-'

Guillam had already cut him off. 'You just keep your head down, right?' he ordered, and Tarr sulked for a space.

'All I knew was, Irina wanted to defect - talk to Percy as she called it. She had three days left and the sooner she jumped the better for everybody. If I waited much longer she was going to talk herself out of it. So I took the plunge and walked in on Thesinger, first thing while he was opening up the shop.'

'Wednesday the eleventh,' Smiley murmured. 'In London the early hours of the morning.'

'I guess Thesinger thought I was a ghost. "I'm talking to London, personal for head of London Station," I said. He argued like hell but he let me do it. I sat at his desk and coded up the message myself from a one-time pad while Thesinger watched me like a sick dog. We had to top and tail it like trade code because Thesinger has export cover. That took me an extra half hour. I was nervy, I really was. Then I burnt the whole damn pad and typed the message on the ticker machine. At that point there wasn't a soul on earth but me who knew what the numbers meant on that sheet of paper, not Thesinger, nobody but me. I applied for full defector treatment for Irina on emergency procedure. I held out for all the goodies she'd never even talked about: cash, nationality, a new identity, no limelight and a place to live. After all, I was her business representative in a manner of speaking, wasn't I, Mr Smiley?'

Smiley glanced up as if surprised to be addressed. 'Yes,' he said quite kindly. 'Yes, I suppose in a manner of speaking that's what you were.'

'He also had a piece of the action, if I know him,' said Guillam under his breath.

Catching this or guessing the meaning of it, Tarr was furious. 'That's a damn lie!' he shouted, colouring deeply. 'That's a-' After glaring at Guillam a moment longer, he went back to his story.

'I outlined her career to date and her access, including jobs she'd had at Centre. I asked for inquisitors and an Air Force plane. She thought I was asking for a personal meeting with Percy Alleline on neutral ground but I reckoned we'd cross that bridge when we were past it. I suggested they should send out a couple of Esterhase's lamplighters to take charge of her, maybe a tame doctor as well.'

'Why lamplighters?' Smiley asked sharply. 'They're not allowed to handle defectors.'

The lamplighters were Toby Esterhase's pack, based not in Brixton but in Acton. Their job was to provide the support services for mainline operations: watching, listening, transport and safe houses.

'Ah well, Toby's come up in the world since your day, Mr Smiley,' Tarr explained. 'They tell me even his pavement artists ride around in Cadillacs. Steal the scalphunters' bread out of their mouths too, if they get the chance, right, Mr Guillam?'

'They've become the general footpads for London Station,' Guillam said shortly. 'Part of lateralism.'

'I reckoned it would take half a year for the inquisitors to clean her out, and for some reason she was crazy about Scotland. She had a great wish to spend the rest of her life there in fact. With Thomas. Raising our babies in the heather. I gave it the London Station address group, I graded it flash and by hand of officer only.'

Guillam put in: 'That's the new formula for maximum limit. It's supposed to cut out handling in the coding rooms.'

'But not in London Station?' said Smiley.

'That's their affair.'

'You heard Bill Haydon got that job, I suppose?' said Lacon, jerking round on Smiley. 'Head of London Station? He's effectively their chief of operations, just as Percy used to be when Control was there. They've changed all the names, that's the thing. You know how your old buddies are about names. You ought to fill him in, Guillam, bring him up to date.'

'Oh I think I have the picture, thank you,' Smiley said politely. Of Tarr, with a deceptive dreaminess, he asked: 'She spoke of a great secret, you said?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Did you give any hint of this in your cable to London?'

He had touched something, there was no doubt of it; he had found a spot where touching hurt, for Tarr winced, and darted a suspicious glance at Lacon, then at Guillam.

Guessing his meaning, Lacon at once sang out a disclaimer: 'Smiley knows nothing beyond what you have so far told him in this room,' he said. 'Correct, Guillam?' Guillam nodded yes, watching Smiley.

'I told London the same as she'd told me,' Tarr conceded grumpily, like someone who has been robbed of a good story.

'What form of words, precisely?' Smiley asked. 'I wonder whether you remember that?'

' "Claims to have further information crucial to the well-being of the Circus, but not yet disclosed." Near enough, anyhow.'

'Thank you. Thank you very much.'

They waited for Tarr to continue.

'I also requested Head of London Station to inform Mr Guillam here that I'd landed on my feet and wasn't playing hookey for the hell of it.'

'Did that happen?' Smiley asked.

'Nobody said anything to me,' said Guillam drily.

'I hung around all day for an answer but by evening it still hadn't come. Irina was doing a normal day's work. I insisted on that, you see. She wanted to stage a light dose of fever to keep her in bed but I wouldn't hear of it. The delegation had factories to visit on Kowloon and I told her to tag along and look intelligent. I made her swear to keep off the bottle. I didn't want her involved in amateur dramatics at the last moment. I wanted it normal right up to when she jumped. I waited till evening then cabled a flash follow-up.'