"It wasn't suicide, Toby," Smiley said, still without a glance at him. "It definitely wasn't suicide. I saw… — John le Carré

"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.

"The best I ever met," old Mendel, the Superintendent's one-time superior, had told him over a friendly pint not long ago. Mendel was retired now, like Smiley. But Mendel knew what he was talking about and didn't like Funnies any better than the Superintendent did—interfering la-di-da amateurs most of them, and devious with it. But not Smiley. Smiley was different, Mendel had said. Smiley was the best—simply the best case man Mendel had ever met—and old Mendel knew what he was talking about.