"Balls, the lot of it. It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D… — John le Carré
"Balls, the lot of it. It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D. Is that booze you're toting in that bag?"
"Yes. Yes, it is," said Smiley.
"Goody. Let's have lots. How's the demon Ann?"
On the draining-board, amid a permanent pile of washing-up, he found two glasses, and half filled them.
"Flourishing, I gather," he replied.
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"It wasn't suicide, Toby," Smiley said, still without a glance at him. "It definitely wasn't suicide. I saw the body, believe me. It wasn't a jealous husband either - not unless he was equipped with a Moscow Centre murder weapon."
"Oliver, I wonder if you'd mind finally telling me what I'm doing here," Smiley heard himself suggesting for the third time, hardly above a murmur.
Even then, Lacon dithered, pondered, hunted with his eyes, delayed. In Lacon's world, direct questions were the height of bad taste, but direct answers were worse.
The drawing-pin was where Mostyn said it was, at head height exactly, in the best Sarratt tradition of regularity, its Circus-issue brass head as new and as unmarked as the boy who had put it there.
Proceed to the rendezvous, it said, no danger sighted.
Moscow Rules, thought Smiley yet again. Moscow, where it could take a fieldman three days to post a letter to a safe address. Moscow, where all minorities are punk.
