Operationally, of course, as Jerry recognised immediately, Tiu’s appearance was a gift from the gods. If information was to be fed back to Ko, then Tiu was an infinitely more impressive channel for it than Lizzie Worthington could ever hope to be.
She had finished kissing Tiu, so she handed him to Jerry.
‘Mr Tiu, you’re my witness,’ she declared, making a great conspiracy of it. ‘You must remember every word I say. Jerry, go straight on just as if he wasn’t here. I mean, Mr Tiu’s as silent as the grave, aren’t you? Darling,’ she said, and kissed him again. ‘It’s so exciting,’ she repeated, and they all settled down for a friendly chat.
‘So what you looking for, Mr Wessby?’ Tiu enquired, perfectly affably, while he tucked into his beef. ‘You a horse-writer, why you bother-pretty girls, okay?’
‘Good point, sport! Good point! Horses much safer, right?’
They all laughed richly, avoiding one another’s eyes. The waiter put a half bottle of Black Label Scotch in front of him. Tiu uncorked it and sniffed at it critically before pouring.
‘He’s looking for Ricardo, Mr Tiu. Don’t you understand? He thinks Ricardo is alive. Isn’t that wonderful? I mean, I have no vestige of feeling for Ric, now, naturally, but it would be lovely to have him back with us. Think of the party we could give!’
‘Liese tell you that?’ Tiu asked, pouring himself two inches of Scotch. ‘She tell you Ricardo still around?’
‘Who, old boy? Didn’t get you. Didn’t get the first name.’
Tiu jabbed a chopstick at Lizzie. ‘She tell you he’s alive? This pilot guy? This Ricardo? Liese tell you that?’
‘I never reveal my sources, Mr Tiu,’ said Jerry, just as affably. ‘That’s a journalist’s way of saying he’s made something up,’ he explained.
‘A horse-writer’s way, okay?’
‘That’s it, that’s it!’
Again Tiu laughed, and this time Lizzie laughed even louder. She was slipping out of control again. Maybe it’s the drink, thought Jerry, or maybe she goes for the stronger stuff and the drink has stoked the fire. And if he calls me horse-writer again, maybe I’ll take a defensive action.
Lizzie again, a party-piece:
‘Oh Mr Tiu, Ricardo was so lucky! Think who he had. Indocharter - me - everyone. There I was, working for this little airline - some dear Chinese people Daddy knew - and Ricardo like all the pilots was a shocking businessman - got into the most frightful debt’ - with a wave of her hand she brought Jerry into the act - ‘my God, he even tried to involve me in one of his schemes, can you imagine! - selling whisky, if you please - and suddenly my lovely, dotty Chinese friends decided they needed another charter pilot. They settled his debts, put him on a salary, they gave him an old banger to fly -’
Jerry now took the first of several irrevocable steps.
‘When Ricardo went missing he wasn’t flying an old banger, sport. He was flying a brand-new Beechcraft,’ he corrected her deliberately. ‘Indocharter never had a Beechcraft to their names. They haven’t now. My editor’s checked it right through, don’t ask me how. Indocharter never hired one, never leased one, never crashed one.’
Tiu gave another jolly whoop of laughter.
Tiu is a very cool bishop, your Eminence, Craw had warned. Ran Monsignor Ko’s San Fransico diocese with exemplary efficiency for five years and the worst the narcotics artists could hang on him was washing his Rolls-Royce on a saint’s day.
‘Hey Mr Wessby, maybe Liese stole them one!’ Tiu cried, in his half-American accent. ‘Maybe she go out nights steal aircraft from other airlines!’
‘Mr Tiu, that’s very naughty of you!’ Lizzie declared.
‘How you like that, horse-writer? How you like?’
The merriment at their table was by now so loud for three people that several heads turned to peer at them. Jerry saw them in the mirrors, where he half expected to spot Ko himself, with his crooked boat-people’s walk, swaying toward them through the wicker doorway. Lizzie plunged wildly on.
‘Oh it was a complete fairy tale! One moment Ric can scarcely eat - and owed all of us money, Charlie’s savings, my allowance from Daddy - Ric practically ruined us all. Of course, everyone’s money just naturally belonged to him - and the next thing we knew, Ric had work, he was in the clear, life was a ball again. All those other poor pilots grounded, and Ric and Charlie flying all over the place like -’
‘Like blue-arsed flies,’ Jerry suggested, at which Tiu was so doubled with hilarity that he was obliged to hold on to Jerry’s shoulder to keep himself afloat - while Jerry had the uncomfortable feeling of being physically measured for the knife.
‘Hey, listen, that pretty good! Blue-arse fly! I like that! You pretty funny fellow, horse-writer!’
It was at this point, under the pressure of Tiu’s cheerful insults, that Jerry used very good footwork indeed. Afterwards, Craw said the best. He ignored Tiu entirely, and picked up that other name which Lizzie had let slip.
‘Yeah, whatever happened to old Charlie by the way, Lizzie?’ he said, not having the least idea who Charlie was. ‘What became of him after Ric did his disappearing number? Don’t tell me he went down with his ship as well?’
Once more she floated away on a fresh wave of narrative, and Tiu patently enjoyed everything he heard, chuckling and nodding while he ate.
He’s here to find out the score, Jerry thought. He’s much too sharp to put the brakes on Lizzie. It’s me he’s worried about, not her.
‘Oh, Charlie’s indestructible, completely immortal,’ Lizzie declared, and once more selected Tiu as her foil: ‘Charlie Marshall, Mr Tiu,’ she explained. ‘Oh you should meet him, a fantastic half-Chinese, all skin and bones and opium and a completely brilliant pilot. His father’s old Kuomintang, a terrific brigand and lives up in the Shans. His mother was some poor Corsican girl - you know how the Corsicans flocked into Indo-China - but really he is an utterly fantastic character. Do you know why he calls himself Marshall? His father wouldn’t give him his own name. So what does Charlie do? Gives h1mself the highest rank in the army instead. My Dad’s a general but I’m a marshal, he’d say. Isn’t that cute? And far better than admiral, I mean.’
‘Super,’ Jerry agreed. ‘Marvellous. Charlie’s a prince.’
‘Liese some pretty utterly fantastic character herself, Mr Wessby,’ Tiu remarked handsomely, so on Jerry’s insistence they drank to that - to her fantastic character.
‘Hey what’s all this Liese thing actually?’ Jerry asked as he put down his glass. ‘You’re Lizzie. Who’s this Liese? Mr Tiu, I don’t know the lady. Why am I left out of the joke?’
Here Lizzie did definitely turn to Tiu for guidance, but Tiu had ordered himself some raw fish and was eating it rapidly and with total devotion.
‘Some horse-writer ask; pretty damn questions,’ he remarked through a full mouth.
‘New town, new leaf, new name,’ Lizzie said finally, with an unconvincing smile. ‘I wanted a change, so I chose a new name. Some girls get a new hair-do, I get a new name.’
‘Got a new fellow to go with it?’ Jerry asked.
She shook her head, eyes down, while Tiu let out a whoop of laughter.
‘What’s happened to this town, Mr Tiu?’ Jerry demanded, instinctively covering for her. ‘Chaps all gone blind or something? Crikey, I’d cross continents for her, wouldn’t you? Whatever she calls herself, right?’
‘Me I go from Kowloonside to Hong Kongside, no further!’ said Tiu, hugely entertained by his own wit. ‘Or maybe I stay Kowloonside and call her up, tell her come over see me one hour!’
At which Lizzie’s eyes stayed down and Jerry thought it would be quite fun, on another occasion when they all had more time, to break Tiu’s fat neck in several places.
Unfortunately, however, breaking Tiu’s neck was not at present on Craw’s shopping list.
The money, Craw had said. When the moment’s right, open up one end of the goldseam and that’s your grand finale.
So he started her off about Indocharter. Who were they, what was it like to work for them? She rose to it so fast he began to wonder whether she enjoyed this knife-edge existence more than he had realised.
‘Oh it was a fabulous adventure, Jerry! You can’t begin to imagine it, I assure you,’ Ric’s multi-national accent again: ‘Airline! Just the word is so absurd. I mean don’t for a minute think of your bright new planes and your glamorous hostesses and champagne and caviar or anything like that at all. This was work. This was pioneering, which is what drew me in the first place. I could perfectly well have simply lived off Daddy, or my aunts, I mean mercifully I’m totally independent, but who can resist challenge? All we started out with was a couple of dreadful old DC3s literally stuck together with string and chewing gum. We even had to buy the safety certificate. Nobody would issue them. After that we flew literally anything. Hondas, vegetables, pigs - oh the boys had such a story about those poor pigs. They broke loose, Jerry. They came into the first class, even into the cabin, imagine!’
‘Like passengers,’ Tiu explained, with his mouth full. ‘She fly first-class pigs, okay, Mr Wessby?’
‘What routes?’ Jerry asked when they had recovered from their laughter.
‘You can see how he interrogates me, Mr Tiu? I never knew I was so glamorous! So mysterious! We flew everywhere, Jerry. Bangkok, Cambodia sometimes. Battambang, Phnom Penh, Kampong Cham when it was open. Everywhere. Awful places.’
‘And who were your customers? Traders, taxi jobs - who were the regulars?’
‘Absolutely anyone we could get. Anyone who could pay. Preferably in advance, naturally.’
Pausing from his Kobe beef, Tiu felt inspired to offer social chitchat.
‘Your father some big lord, okay, Mr Wessby?’
‘More or less,’ said Jerry.
‘Lords some pretty rich fellows. Why you gotta be a horse-writer, okay?’
Ignoring Tiu entirely, Jerry played his trump card and waited for the ceiling mirror to crash on to their table. ‘There’s a story that you people had some local Russian embassy link,’ he said easily, straight at Lizzie. ‘That ring a bell at all, sport? Any Reds under your bed at all, if I may ask?’
Tiu was taking care of his rice, holding the bowl under his chin and shovelling it nonstop. But this time, significantly, Lizzie didn’t give him half a glance.
‘Russians?’ she repeated, puzzled. ‘Why on earth should Russians come to us? They had regular Aeroflot flights in and out of Vientiane every week.’
He would have sworn, then and later, that she was telling the truth. But toward Lizzie herself he acted not quite satisfied. ‘Not even local runs?’ he insisted. ‘Fetching and carrying, courier service or whatever?’
‘Never. How could we? Besides, the Chinese simply loathe the Russians, don’t they, Mr Tiu?’
‘Russians pretty bad people, Mr Wessby,’ Tiu agreed. ‘They smell pretty bad.’
So do you, thought Jerry, catching that first-wife’s scent again.
Jerry laughed at his own absurdity: ‘I’ve got editors like other people have stomach ache,’ he protested. ‘He’s convinced we can do a Red-under-the-bed job. Ricardo’s Soviet Paymasters … Did Ricardo take a dive for the Kremlin? ‘
‘Paymaster?’ Lizzie repeated, utterly mystified. ‘Ric never received a penny from the Russians. What are they talking about?’
Jerry again. ‘But Indocharter did, didn’t they? - Unless my lords and masters have been sold a total pup, which I suspect they have been, as usual. They drew money from the local Embassy and piped it down to Hong Kong in US dollars. That’s London’s story and they’re sticking to it.’
‘They’re mad.’ she said confidently. ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense.’
To Jerry she seemed even relieved that the conversation had taken this improbable course. Ricardo alive - there, she was drifting through a minefield. Ko as her lover - that secret was Ko’s or Tiu’s to dispense, not hers. But Russian money - Jerry was as certain as he dared be that she knew nothing and feared nothing about it.
He offered to ride back with her to Star Heights, but Tiu lived that way, she said.
‘See you again pretty soon, Mr Wessby,’ Tiu promised.
‘Look forward to it, sport,’ said Jerry.
‘You wanna stick to horse-writing, hear that? In my opinion, you get more money that way, Mr Wessby, okay?’ There was no menace in his voice, nor in the friendly way he patted Jerry’s upper arm. Tiu did not even speak as if he expected his advice to be taken as any more than a confidence between friends.
Then suddenly it was over. Lizzie kissed the headwaiter, but not Jerry. She sent Jerry, not Tiu, for her coat, so that she wouldn’t be alone with him. She scarcely looked at him as she said goodbye.
Dealing with beautiful women, your Grace, Craw had warned, is like dealing with known criminals, and the lady you are about to solicit undoubtedly falls within that category. Wandering home through the moonlit streets - the long trek, beggars, eyes in doorways notwithstanding - Jerry subjected Craw’s dictum to closer scrutiny. On criminal he really couldn’t rule at all: criminal seemed a pretty variable sort of standard at the best of times, and neither the Circus nor its agents existed to uphold some parochial concept of the law. Craw had told him that in slump periods Ricardo had made her carry little parcels for him over frontiers. Big deal. Leave it to the owls. Known criminal however was quite a different matter. Known he would go along with absolutely. Remembering Elizabeth Worthington’s caged stare at Tiu, he reckoned he had known that face, that look and that dependence, in one guise or another, for the bulk of his waking life.
It has been whispered once or twice by certain trivial critics of George Smiley that at this juncture he should somehow have seen which way the wind was blowing with Jerry, and hauled him out of the field. Effectively, Smiley was Jerry’s case officer, after all. He alone kept Jerry’s file, welfared and briefed him. Had he been in his prime, they say, instead of halfway down the other side, he would have read the warning signals between the lines of Craw’s reports, and headed Jerry off in time. They might just as well have complained that he was a second-rate fortune-teller. The facts, as they came to Smiley, are these:
On the morning following Jerry’s pass at Lizzie Worth or Worthington - the jargon has no sexual connotation - Craw debriefed him for more than three hours on a car pickup, and his report describes Jerry as being, quite reasonably, in a state of ‘anti-climactic gloom’. He appeared, said Craw, to be afraid that Tiu, or even Ko, might blame the girl for her ‘guilty knowledge’ and even lay hands on her. Jerry referred more than once to Tiu’s patent contempt for the girl - and for himself, and he suspected for all Europeans - and repeated his comment about travelling from Kowloonside to Hong Kongside for her and no further. Craw countered by pointing out that Tiu could at any time have shut her up; and that her knowledge, on Jerry’s own testimony, did not extend even as far as the Russian goldseam, let alone to brother Nelson.