John le Carré - The Honourable Schoolboy

Di Salis does most of the talking. The other ranks feel this to be appropriate. After all, Nelson Ko is the Doc's patch entirely: Chinese to the sleeve-ends of his tunic. Reining himself right in — his spiky, wet hair, his knees, feet and fussing fingers all but still for once, he keeps things in a low and almost deprecating key of which the inexorable climax is accordingly more thrilling. And the climax even has a name. It is Ko Sheng-hsiu, alias Ko, Nelson, later known also as Yao Kaisheng, under which name he was later disgraced in the Cultural Revolution.

'But within these walls, gentlemen,' pipes the Doc, whose awareness of the female sex is inconsistent, 'we shall continue to call him Nelson.'

Born 1928 of humble proletarian stock, in Swatow — to quote the official sources, says the Doc — and soon afterwards removed to Shanghai. No mention, in either official or unofficial handouts, of Mr Hibbert's Lord's Life Mission school, but a sad reference to 'exploitation at the hands of western imperialists in childhood', who poisoned him with religion. When the Japanese reached Shanghai, Nelson joined the refugee trail to Chungking, all as Mr Hibbert has described. From an early age, once more according to official records, the Doc continues, Nelson secretly devoted himself to seminal revolutionary reading and took an active part in clandestine Communist groups, despite the oppression of the loathsome Chiang Kai-shek rabble. On the refugee trail he also attempted 'on many occasions to escape to Mao but his extreme youth held him back. Returning to Shanghai he became, already as a student, a leading cadre member of the outlawed Communist movement and undertook special assignments in and around the Kiangnan shipyards to subvert the pernicious influence of KMT Fascist elements. At the University of Communications he appealed publicly for a united front of students and peasants. Graduated with conspicuous excellence in 1951...'

Di Salis interrupts himself, and in a sharp release of tension throws up one arm, and clenches the hair at the back of his head.

'The usual unctuous portrait, Chief, of a student hero who sees the light before his time,' he sings.

'What about Leningrad?' Smiley asks, from his desk, while he jots the occasional note.

'Nineteen fifty-three to six.'

'Yes, Connie?'

Connie is in her wheelchair again. She blames the freezing month, and that toad Karla jointly.

'We have a Brother Bretlev, darling. Bretlev, Ivan Ivanovitch, Academician, Leningrad faculty of shipbuilding, old-time China hand, devilled in Shanghai for Centre's China hounds. Revolutionary warhorse, latterday Karla-trained talent-spotter trawling the overseas students for likely lads and lasses.'

For the burrowers on the Chinese side — the yellow perils — this intelligence is new and thrilling, and produces an excited crackle of chairs and papers, till on Smiley's nod, di Salis lets go his head and takes up his narrative once more.

'Nineteen fifty-seven returned to Shanghai and was put in charge of a railway workshop -'

Smiley again: 'But his dates at Leningrad were fifty-three to fifty-six?'

'Correct,' says di Salis.

'There there seems to be a missing year.' Now no papers crackle and no chairs either.

'A tour of Soviet shipyards is the official explanation,' says di Salis with a smirk at Connie and a mysterious, knowing writhe of the neck.

'Thank you,' says Smiley and makes another note. 'Fifty-seven,' he repeats. 'Was that before or after the Sino-Soviet split, Doc?'

'Before. The split started in earnest in fifty-nine.'

Smiley asks here whether Nelson's brother receives a mention anywhere: or is Drake as much disowned in Nelson's China as Nelson is in Drake's?

'In one of the earliest official biographies Drake is referred to, but not by name. In the later ones, a brother is said to have died during the Communist takeover of forty-nine.'

Smiley makes a rare joke, which is followed by dense, relieved laughter. 'This case is littered with people pretending to be dead,' he complains. 'It will be a positive relief to me to find a real corpse somewhere.' Only hours later, this mot was remembered with a shudder.

'We also have a note that Nelson was a model student at Leningrad,' di Salis goes on. 'At least in Russian eyes. They sent him back with the highest references.'

Connie from her iron chair allows herself another interjection. She has brought Trot, her mangy brown mongrel, with her. He lies misshapenly across her vast lap, stinking and occasionally sighing, but not even Guillam, who is a dog-hater, has the nerve to banish him.

'Oh and so they would, dear, wouldn't they?' she cries. 'The Russians would praise Nelson's talents to the skies, course they would, specially if Brother Bretlev Ivan Ivanovitch has snapped him up at University, and Karla's lovelies have spirited him off to training school and all! Bright little mole like Nelson, give him a decent start in life for when he gets home to China! Didn't do him much good later though, did it, Doc? Not when the Great Beastly Cultural Revolution got him in the neck! The generous admiration of Soviet imperialist running dogs wasn't at all the thing to be wearing in your cap then, was it?'

Of Nelson's fall, few details are available, the Doc proclaims, speaking louder in response to Connie's outburst. 'One must assume that it was violent, and as Connie has pointed out, those who were highest in Russian favour fell the hardest.' He glances at the sheet of paper which he holds crookedly before his blotched face. 'I won't give you all his appointments at the time of his disgrace, Chief, because he lost them anyway.

But there is no doubt that he did indeed have effective management of most of the shipbuilding, in Kiangnan and consequently of a large part of China's naval tonnage.'

'I see,' says Smiley quietly. Jotting, he purses his lips as if in disapproval, while his eyebrows lift very high.

'His post at Kiangnan also procured him a string of seats on the naval planning committees and in the field of communications and strategic policy. By sixty-three his name is beginning to pop up regularly in the Cousins' Peking watch reports.'

'Well done, Karla,' Guillam says quietly from his place at Smiley's side, and Smiley, still writing, actually echoes this sentiment with a 'Yes'.

'The only one, Peter dear!' Connie yells, suddenly unable to contain herself. 'The only one of all those toads to see it coming! A voice in the wilderness, wasn't he, Trot? Look out for the yellow peril, he told 'em. One day they're going to turn round and bite the hand that's feeding 'em, sure as eggs. And when that happens you'll have eight hundred million new enemies banging on your own back door. And your guns will all be pointing the wrong way. Mark my words. Told em,' she repeats, hauling at the mongrel's ear in her emotion. 'Put it all in a paper, Threat of deviation by emerging Socialist partner. Circulated every little brute in Moscow Centre's Collegium. Drafted it word for word in his clever little mind while he was doing a spot of bird in Siberia for Uncle Joe Stalin, bless him. Spy on your friends today, they're certain to be your enemies tomorrow, he told them. Oldest dictum in the trade, Karla's favourite. When he was given his job back he practically nailed it up on the door in Dzerzhinsky Square. No one paid a blind bit of notice. Not a scrap. Fell on barren ground, my dear. Five years later, he was proved right, and the Collegium didn't thank him for that either, I can tell you! He's been right a sight too often for their liking, the boobies, hasn't he, Trot! You know, don't you darling, you know what the old fool-woman's on about!' At which she lifts the dog a few inches in the air by its forepaws and lets it flop back on to her lap again.

Connie can't bear old Doc hogging the limelight, they secretly agree. She sees the logic of it, but the woman in her can't abide the reality,