Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) s01e05 Episode Script

1 George, I've brought all I can find on Jim Prideaux.
Thank you.
Prideaux and Bill Haydon were really very close, you know.
- I hadn't realised.
- Yes.
Thank you.
Operation Testify.
We need to understand what happened or, rather, why it happened.
The file you borrowed, Peter, gives us a nudge in the right direction.
I know who to talk to next.
Your day was hardly wasted.
- I am glad of that.
- We've traced Prideaux.
He's now a teacher.
Thursgood Preparatory School for Boys, in the West Country.
Right.
Three, two, one gol Come onl Come onl Handbrake on, gear in neutral, switch off ignition.
Please, sir, how long, sir? A time, sir? - Timekeeper, time, please, Rhino? - Please, sir, how long? Well done, Roach, knew you would, second time round.
Sir, how long? Now then, Jumbo see that man - Seen him before? - No, sir.
- Anybody seen him before? - No, sir.
He's not staff, not village, so who is he - beggarman, thief? Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor.
Richman, Poorman, Beggarman, Thief.
Why doesn't he look this way? Something funny about that.
A bunch of boys burning up a car and he doesn't give them a glance! - You would, wouldn't you? - Yes, sir.
Doesn't he like boys? Cars? Didn't even look at that car, best Britain ever made and years out of production! Right.
Gather round.
Come on! Anybody sees him again, let me know, or any other sinister bodies.
Yes, sir.
Don't want juju men wandering around, pretending they don't know we exist.
- First glimpse, tell me? - Yes, sir.
Jumbo, I don't hold with odd bods wandering around a school.
Last place I was at, a gang cleared the place out.
House cups, money, boys' watches, nothing's sacred to them.
We don't want them swiping the Alvis.
It's irreplaceable, thanks to socialism.
- Colour of hair, Jumbo? - Sort of light, sir.
- Height? - About the same as you, sir.
- Age? - Well hard to say, sir.
Of course, at that distance.
You'd know him again, I'm sure.
Best watcher in the unit, Jumbo Roach.
If he keeps his specs clean.
Aa-ah.
Ow! Please, sir! - Oh, it's you, Jumbo.
- I've hurt my leg, sir.
Oh, dear.
Can you get up? Slowly.
Slowly.
Fell off the bricks, did you, Jumbo? Let's have a look nothing broken.
Just a graze.
Matron will soon put that right.
A good excuse for getting in late, missing Evensong.
Tripped over in the lane, is that what you'll tell her? We've a secret.
I can trust you, I know that.
We're good at keeping secrets, loners like you and me.
Is it because of that man? Would you shoot him? Are you working undercover, like Bulldog Drummond in the book? Some boys wanted to call you Bulldog, but we thought Rhino was better.
- Bigger than a bulldog.
- Well I used to be a soldier.
What you saw just now, that's a souvenir.
You know, it's like this.
How I got it, they're both secrets, I keep them to myself.
- You understand, don't you, Jumbo? - Yes, sir.
Knew you would, knew you would.
- Goodnight, Jumbo.
- Night-night, sir.
Thank you, sir.
- Well, well, long time no see.
- Hello, sir.
- Care for it? - Very impressive.
Better than selling washing machines! It's odd putting a dinner jacket on at ten in the morning.
Reminds me of diplomatic cover, come to think of it.
Believe it or not, it's straight.
Makes a change.
- All our help is from the arithmetic.
- I'm sure it is.
My employers might let me invest a few pennies.
They're tough boys but very go-ahead, you know.
Rather like we were in the old days.
So what can I do for you? I want to talk to you about the night Jim Prideaux was shot.
The night of Operation Testify, which is what it was called.
- Writing your memoirs, George? - We're re-opening the case.
Who's this "we", old boy? Lacon called me in, with the Minister's blessing.
I can give you a number to confirm, but I'd prefer not.
All power corrupts, but some must govern, and in that case Brother Lacon will scramble to the top.
The record's been filleted.
Of what is on the file, the most useful information is that you were duty officer that night.
Yes.
I'd just come back from Tokyo, a three-year stint.
Thought I'd push off to the south of France for a month's leave.
Old Mendel, Control's minder, picked me up in the passage and marched me to Control.
Place felt weird, no one about except radio and code people.
That harridan, Molly somebody, was monitoring, a busy little body.
Molly Purcell.
You were in Berlin, Bill Haydon was up-country and Percy Alleline in Scotland.
Control had cleared the decks.
My God, he was a shock.
I'd heard he wasn't his old self, but I wasn't prepared.
It was like opening a coffin lid.
He didn't waste time on pleasantries.
I need somebody to man the switchboard, got to be an old hand.
I could bring someone from the out-stations, but you're better.
You've been away from the in-fighting and vendettas around here.
You don't know what I'm talking about, good.
Just do exactly what I tell you.
There could be a crisis tonight.
I've got a man doing a special job.
It's of the utmost importance to the service.
The service, us - it could change everything for us.
Your job tonight is to act as cut-out.
Cut-out between me and whatever goes on in the building.
If anything comes in radio signal, phone call, letter, anything, no matter how trivial it seems, you are to wait wait till the coast is clear then bring it to me, by hand, Sam.
Don't use the internal phones, don't put anything down on paper for future reference.
Is that understood? When it's all over you're not to breathe a word about it.
Never, not to anybody.
Not to Smiley.
Not to Haydon, not to Bland, nobody.
- If I have to send out something? - Only what I tell you.
It could cost them the match, which will be sewn up by Paul Mariner.
Or by Woods still down or by Muhren or by Wark and in the end by none of them.
Unbelievable.
Paul Mariner is completely flattened.
He deserves better than that.
He's my man of the match.
Bollocks! Yes.
Duty officer.
Mmm.
Right, yes, I see.
I'll have to call you back.
It all sounds very unlikely.
Collins? This is urgent.
Well, it's open.
All hell's broken out on the Czechoslovak air.
Half is coded but enough isn't.
- Prague or Brno? - Brno.
Yes.
Go back, Molly, keep listening.
Control? Control, the resident clerk from the Foreign Office came on first, with a story from Reuter's head man in London.
Molly picked it up too.
Reuters and Fleet Street papers have had another go at the Foreign Office.
They're saying a British spy has been shot in Brno.
The Czechs are telling the world of an act of provocation by a Western power.
They haven't named the dead man yet.
Can I have a brief, please? Control, I need a brief.
We must say something.
Do you want me to deny it, a flat denial, to start with? Do you want me to get someone else in? Do you want to come downstairs and handle it yourself? It's deniable.
He had foreign documents.
No one could know he was British yet, there hasn't been time.
Even if he's not dead.
- Find Smiley.
- He's in Berlin.
Yes.
Well, anyone will do, it makes no difference.
Tell Mendel to get me a taxi.
You sent Mendel home.
He's been named.
Hello? Hello.
Is that Mrs Smiley? You got my message, then? - Where did you leave it? - I rang George Smiley's house, in case his wife happened to know where you were.
You are a friend of the family? I saw the ticker-tape at the club, some God-awful shooting party.
Tell me, Czechoslovakia, right? Jim Prideaux's been shot.
The Czechs only have his work name, Ellis.
Jim shot dead? That was the first flash.
Since then the word used is simply "shot".
The Czechs are saying that Prideaux - Ellis - travelling on false papers and assisted by Czech counter-revolutionaries, tried to kidnap a Czech general, unnamed, in a forest near Brno and smuggle him over the Austrian border.
Further arrests are imminent.
- Go on.
- According to our military, there are heavy Czech tank movements along the Austrian border.
Lacon's been on and so has the Minister, wanting to know "What the hell?" and "Why?" I've put out emergency calls to Smiley, Alleline, Bland.
I'm glad to see you.
I'm sorry, Bill.
All right, Sam.
Now.
First thing we do you call this number.
It's Toby Esterhase.
Tell him you're speaking for me.
He's to pick up the two Czech agents at the London School of Economics.
Lock them up - now.
Straight away, Sam.
Jim's worth a lot more than those two.
But it's a start.
I'll have a word with the chief hood at the Czech Embassy.
If they hurt a hair on Jim Prideaux's hair, I'll strip the entire Czech network in this country bare.
You can pass that on to his masters.
I'll make him the laughing stock of the profession.
I'm bound to say, Haydon was a treat to watch.
I used to think of him as a pretty erratic sort of devil.
Not that night, believe me.
He virtually dictated a press statement for the Foreign Office to put out.
There it was the following morning in the Sunday papers.
"Prague radio sensation" dismissed with dignified scorn.
It was good light reading over breakfast at the Savoy.
- Then you went to the south of France.
- Two lovely months.
- Did anyone question you again? - Percy Alleline.
He was acting Chief by then, you were out and Control was in hospital.
He wanted to know why I was duty officer on the fateful night.
That chap Masterman was down for it.
I told him I'd nowhere to kip and a quiet weekend at the Circus would save me money for France.
- Percy said I was a liar.
- That's why they sacked you? - For fibbing? - Alcoholism.
There were five empty beer cans in the duty officer's waste bin.
There's an order against booze on the premises.
What was your offence? I couldn't convince them I wasn't involved.
If you want anyone's throat cut, give me a buzz.
Sam, listen, it was too late for Haydon's club to be running ticker-tape, wasn't it? He was making love to Ann that night.
You guessed and were right.
You phoned her, she told you he wasn't there, and as soon as you rung off she pushed him out of bed, and Bill turned up an hour later, knowing about Czecho.
But you didn't tell Ann about Czecho.
I'll find my own way down.
Mind how you go, George.
- Smiley.
- Jim.
If you're not on your own, I swear I'll break your neck.
Quite alone, Jim.
God damn you, George, what the hell do you want? I'm sorry, Jim, but I have to know what happened.
I'm finished, man.
Told to draw the line and I've drawn it.
How do you like school mastering? You had a spell of it after the war, was that at a prep school? Don't come playing cat and mouse with me, George Smiley.
Look at the file.
Circus file? Not available to me, Jim, I'm blackballed.
Hard luck I've had access to a few papers which Lacon borrowed for me.
Pretty old stuff.
It went back to your undergraduate days with Bill Haydon at Oxford.
There's a letter Bill wrote about you to his tutor, Fanshawe, Circus talent spotter, in which he named you suitable material for British Intelligence.
I can quote the odd line from memory.
"He has that heavy quiet that commands.
"He's my other half.
Between us we make one marvellous man.
"He asks nothing better than to be in my company, "or that of my wicked, divine friends.
"I'm vastly tickled by the compliment.
"He's virgin, about eight foot tall, "and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge.
" Christ! Christ, man, we were children.
Yes, of course.
What do you want to know? I thought we could at least be comfortable while we talk.
It isn't far.
I came round in a prison hospital, barred windows, high up.
They operated, after a fashion.
Next time I came round, I was in a cell with no windows at all.
I tried to work out a campaign to meet the interrogation, but I'd never be able to keep quiet, no chance of that.
If I was to stay sane, possibly even survive, there had to be dialogue, they had to believe I'd told them all I knew.
I decided I'd give them my version of Operation Testify first, the one Control spelled out for me.
I was head of scalphunters.
I mounted my own campaign without the knowledge of my superiors because I wanted to prove I was worth promotion.
If I could believe that, I could bury all thoughts of a traitor inside the Circus.
No mole.
No meeting with Control.
No Tinker, Tailor.
I was there to turn General Stevcek and just that.
Then I thought I could throw them the names of one or two other Soviet and satellite visuals who'd turned recently.
Even give them the rundown of my entire Brixton stable, anything.
So long as I forgot the mole and Tinker, Tailor.
I kept to myself our Czech networks.
You know I recruited the founder members? - A fine piece of work.
- That's the joke.
They couldn't care less about the networks, knew it all.
Rolled them up.
They knew damn well that Testify wasn't my private brainchild.
I began exactly where I wanted to end, at the briefing in St James's.
All they wanted to talk about was Control's rotten apple theory: Tinker, Tailor and the Circus spy.
Did they know the address of the St James's flat? Yes, they even knew the brand of the sherry.
What about Control's charts on Stevcek's career, did they know about those? No.
Not at first.
Tell me about the networks.
Did anyone get out? No.
It seems they were shot.
The story is you blew them to save your own skin.
I know that isn't true, of course.
For Christ's sakes, let's go somewhere we can breathe.
They moved me about a lot, different rooms, different prisons.
Depending on who was interrogating and what methods they used.
There was quite a lot of muscle.
Electrical, most of it.
Yes, movement cars, lorries, corridors, cells.
Once a plane.
I was hooded and passed out after take-off.
Punished for that, huh.
I think I was in Russia part of the time.
Would you like to stretch your legs? It might help.
They went straight to the heart of it.
Why did Control go it alone? What did he hope to achieve? His comeback, I said.
That got a laugh! With tinpot information about Czecho military emplacements? Wouldn't get him a meal at his club.
So I said maybe poor old Control was losing his grip.
That bored them.
Back to the cooler, punished again.
You know, I-I hoped I'd go mad.
Oh, no.
They knew how to stop that.
They left me alone for a couple of days.
Got me ready for the long one.
That was when I ga ga gave g gave them what they wanted.
It's a matter of health as much as anything.
You don't break exactly, just run out of stories.
Only the things locked away deep down were what was coming into my brain.
That was when I told them about Control's charts on Stevcek.
Also Control's rotten apple theory? Yes, the mole, codenames we worked out for Control's suspects.
Tinker - Percy Alleline, Tailor - Bill Haydon, Soldier - Roy Bland, Poorman - Toby Esterhase, - Beggarman - George Smiley.
- What was the reaction? He thought for a bit then he offered me a cigarette.
- Who did? - What? Oh, sorry, by this stage there was some frosty bearded fellow left.
He seemed to be head boy.
Just him and a couple of guards standing back while he made his kill.
- I hated that damn cigarette.
- Why? It was a foul American thing, Camel.
I remember the packet.
- Did he smoke them? - Never stopped.
- Was that the end of it? - More or less, yes.
I have to know everything, Jim.
The rest was just gossip.
He wanted to know Circus tittle-tattle, who's going up, who's going down, a lot of tripe.
- About what? Who? - Bland, how much he drank.
Esterhase, how can anybody trust a man dressed like that? A lot of tripe.
What did he say about me? He showed me his cigarette lighter, said it was yours.
A present from Ann - "All my love" - her signature engraved.
- Did he say how he came by it? - A confrontation years ago.
- Said you'd remember.
- Anything else? Come on, I'll not buckle just because a Russian hood's made a joke about me.
He reckoned after Haydon's fling with her, she may care to redraft the inscription.
I told him to his face he could go to bloody hell.
You can't judge Bill by things like that.
He's got different standards.
- He was never one for regulations.
- You weren't one to see him straight.
That's it, everything.
Bill made a huge fuss about your repatriation.
He said any price was fair to get one loyal Englishman home.
I remember his verdict on Control's handling of Testify.
"The most incompetent operation ever launched "by an old man for his dying glory, and Jim Prideaux paid the cost of it.
" Proud of your memory, aren't you? - Did you see Bill when you got back? - No.
- Your oldest closest friend? - I was in quarantine.
Well, yes, but never mind.
Let's go over your debriefing at Sarratt to wrap it up.
Were the inquisitors sympathetic or not? Never appeared, no questions at all.
I was in limbo.
Ate a lot, drank a lot, slept a lot.
Then Toby Esterhase turns up.
New suit, full of himself.
Says the Circus has nearly gone under due to Operation Testify and I'm currently number one leper.
Control's out of the game and there's a reorganisation to appease Whitehall.
- They sent Toby? - Yes, the little charmer - He told me not to worry.
- About what? My special brief, whatever Control had told me.
- Did Toby spell it all out? - Said a few people knew the real story and I needn't worry, it was being taken care of.
- All the facts were known.
- Were they indeed? Then he gave me 1,000 quid in cash, to add to my gratuity.
- Who from? - Didn't say.
Didn't all this strike you as a bit odd? No inquisition.
Toby throwing loose money around? Through you, the Russians have discovered the exact reach of Control's suspicions about a traitor in the Circus.
He'd narrowed the field to five and no one's asking you anything? The facts were known, man.
Toby ordered me not to approach anyone or to try to make my story heard.
The Circus was back on the road.
I could forget Tinker, Tailor, the whole damn game, moles, everything.
"Drop out," he said.
"You're a lucky man, Jim, forget it.
"Eh? Forget it.
" So Toby actually mentioned Tinker, Tailor to you? However did he get hold of that? That's what I've been doing.
Obeying orders and forgetting.
# Lord, now lettest thou thy servant # Depart in peace # According to # Thy word # For mine eyes have seen # Thy salvation # Which thou hast prepared before the face # Of all people # To be a light # To lighten # The gentiles # And to be the glory # Of thy people # Israel # Glory be to the Father # And to the Son # And to the Holy Ghost # As it was in the beginning # Is now and ever shall be # World without end Amen