Chapter Text
Peter snaps awake at the crack of dawn, and immediately, he knows that he’s not really awake. For one thing, the windows are open and the curtains are billowing in a soft, cold breeze; he’s absolutely certain that he closed the windows before turning in last night.
For another, Fawn is standing on top of his dressing table.
“What time is it?” he asks.
“It’s time you woke up, but you’ve been sleeping in till noon the last few weeks.”
“I don’t have to be anywhere,” he answers sullenly.
“Don’t you?” In one smooth, gliding motion, she’s off the dresser and onto the floor. She moves silently toward the edge of the bed to stand beside him. “Early retirement, then?” She bends to pat his belly. “Getting started on a little paunch there?”
He tries to brush her hand away, but when he makes contact, he can’t feel anything. It’s different from the last time she came to him, when she had felt so solid, so real. Now it’s as though she’s holding back the warmth and substance of her, to punish him for something.
“You’re pissed off with me.”
She raises an eyebrow, but says nothing.
“Why?”
“For someone who says he has nothing in his life, you’re awfully casual about throwing away gifts.”
He props himself up on his arms and frowns up at her. “What are you talking about?”
She starts to move away from the bed, and he reaches out to grasp her hand, but it’s insubstantial, he’s clawing at air. “Wait. Fawn, what are you talking about?"
She hops up onto the window ledge, half-fading in the light of dawn. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t.” He untangles himself from the blankets and shuffles toward the window, but she’s gone.
When he awakes for real, the windows are closed, just as he’d left them.
Sherlock is already at work on his laptop when John shuffles downstairs to make tea.
“There’s no milk,” Sherlock says absently.
John sighs. “Never mind. I'll do without today.”
Sherlock listens to the clatter of cutlery on stoneware, cupboard doors opening and closing. “No beans, either,” he adds.
“No –“
The word is strangled in John’s throat before he can even say it fully. When he emerges from the kitchen, he is clenching and unclenching his fists the way he always does when he’s trying to keep his anger or frustration from spilling out.
“You were supposed to go to the shops two days ago.”
Sherlock looks up. “I was?”
“You were,” he says firmly. “We talked about it. You said that you would, and you didn’t. When I reminded you, you said you would go yesterday instead. And still you didn’t.”
“I’ll go today,” Sherlock says offhandedly, clearly bored with the subject.
“You’ll –“ Another word strangled, and soon John is crossing the room in quick strides, closing the laptop and yanking it away from him. “All right. You and I, we need to have a talk.”
Sherlock’s hands remain poised over the keyboard that is no longer there. He slowly lowers them onto the surface of the table. “I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“No, we were merely talking. Having a talk is different.”
“Different, how?”
John’s shoulders rise and then slump. “Arguing about when you’ll actually go out and do the shopping – that’s talking. Threshing out why you haven’t left the flat to do the shopping, or anything at all, in over a week – or why things have been so tense around here lately -- that’s having a talk.”
Sherlock curls his lips in impatience. “There’s nothing for me to do but go over these cold cases. Why should I leave the flat?”
John drags a chair toward Sherlock and sits down to face him. “Listen. We’ve been tiptoeing around each other these last two weeks. I can’t stand it any more, can you?”
“I haven’t been tiptoeing,” Sherlock mutters.
John refuses to be put off. “All right. Two weeks ago, you told me that you rely on me for guidance in matters of -- sentiment. You remember?”
Sherlock looks away, visibly annoyed. “Of course I remember. There’s nothing wrong with my memory.”
John continues. “I told you that day that I was afraid. Afraid of losing your friendship. Afraid of being … marginalised in your life.”
“Yes. Utter foolishness, but yes."
“I was unconscious for weeks, Sherlock. And when I woke up, everything seemed … different, somehow. The whole thing with Moriarty had become so complex, so hard to grasp. Even now, I’m still struggling to understand it all.”
“John.” Sherlock’s voice is quiet, his tone as gentle as he can possibly make it. “You were recovering from serious injuries. It’s quite understandable.”
“But you see -- you were different, too. I’m used to you being preoccupied – with cases, with puzzles, with scientific problems. But this time, there was something else.”
Sherlock shakes his head, frustrated despite his resolve to be patient. “Of course there was something else, John. Whatever else I’ve done before, none of it has ever been equivalent in scale or magnitude to being pitted against the Soviet Union’s spymaster. On top of Moriarty himself, who is quite enough of a handful.”
John shifts in his seat, leaning closer to Sherlock. “No, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about … how hopeful you looked whenever your mobile phone rang, or went off with a text alert. How disappointed you were when it wasn’t who you were hoping it would be. How far off your mind would seem to be. And not just your mind, Sherlock. Your heart. You may have thought no one noticed – and honestly, you’re a good actor that way, you keep your feelings under such a tight lid.”
A long silence. “But you did.”
“Yeah, well. I suppose I know you better than most.”
Sherlock leans back in his chair and looks down at his hands. “John, it was never my intention to hurt you.”
A sad smile spreads slowly over John’s face. “Sherlock, you’ve never been in the military. You’ve never known what it’s like to see your mates go off into the field, when you have to stay behind `cause you’re injured. You feel like you’re letting them down, somehow. What if something happens and you aren’t there to help?"
“The life I have here – the work we’ve built over this last year – it matters a great deal to me. It’s given me purpose. Do you fully realise that yet? So whenever you left me in hospital, I felt … useless. Irrelevant.”
“But John,” Sherlock protests. “I could hardly allow you to come running around with me. You weren’t fully healed yet. Even now, you’re still in recovery.”
“I know that. Right here,” John says, tapping the side of his head. “But here,” and then he puts his hand over his heart, “I felt like you were leaving me behind, somehow. And later, when I confirmed that there was … Peter -- it honestly felt like I’d become a needless appendage.”
Sherlock looks stricken, and John puts out a hand to touch his arm. “Sherlock. Sherlock. I’m just being honest here. It’s important. I need to say it, and you need to listen and try to understand what I’m saying.”
“All right.”
John studies him for a moment. “Things have been so quiet around here lately that I’ve had plenty of time by myself to think. About what I felt. Or what I thought I felt. And about what I feel now.
“I was jealous. Yes, it’s funny, isn’t it? But I realise now that I was jealous not in the way that I first thought I was. Not because I … feel about you the way you obviously feel about Peter. But because I felt that I’d been supplanted in your life.”
“Supplanted? But that’s –“
“Yes, it’s ridiculous. I know it’s ridiculous now. But it took me a while, you understand?”
“You are … You are my only friend, John. There is no one on earth who can supplant you.”
John smiles -- that familiar, gentle, patient smile that Sherlock finds so comforting. “I know that now: Peter didn’t take my place. He simply created his own.”
The other man nods, but he doesn’t say a word for some time. He merely looks down at his hands; he’s holding them in his lap, palms upward.
“And now that place is empty.”
Sherlock’s mobile phone rings, and he picks it up from where it is lying on the table.
“Yes?” A pause as he listens, and then his eyes widen with surprise. “What? Are you absolutely certain?” Another pause.
“Tell me where.”
He rings off, rises to his feet. “I think you had better come along on this one.”
“Why, who was that? What’s happened?”
“Mycroft. He has a corpse on his hands. Someone we both know.”
Ricki Tarr is standing outside the entrance to the rather seedy hotel. When he sees Sherlock and John, he acts like he doesn’t know them. Instead, he shoots them both a look that says follow me, turns and walks into the lobby -- all stained carpeting and the residual stink of stale cigarette smoke. He leads them to the lifts, presses a button, waits for the doors to open. When they do, he gets in and holds them open to allow the two men to enter, without acknowledging them even once.
When the doors close, he turns to them. “It’s not pretty,” he says with a grim face.
Sherlock shrugs. “Few corpses are.”
The lift lurches to a halt on the eighth floor. “This one’s special,” Ricki replies, holding the lift doors open for them again. “Turn left. 813.”
John glances back at him. “You’re not coming?”
Ricki shrugs. “Seen it already,” he says, just as the doors begin to close.
They turn left as instructed, into a short hall. Anthea is waiting at the end of it, thumbs tapping furiously away on the keys of her smartphone. She gives them the barest of nods as they approach, but doesn’t say a word; she merely tilts her head toward the half-open door of 813.
Sherlock pushes the door open and they both enter the room. Mycroft is standing by the window, speaking quietly to someone on his mobile phone. George Smiley is standing by the bathroom door. When he sees Sherlock, he gives him a weary smile.
“Joining the party, eh?” a gruff voice asks from one corner of the room, and Sherlock and John turn around. It’s a tall, massively built man, with a half-smoked cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth.
Sherlock’s eyes narrow. “Arkady Leonov. Also known as Colonel Kirill Zotov, deputy chief of Moscow’s feared Thirteenth Directorate.”
“Sherlock Holmes. Pain in the ass.” Zotov laughs heartily at Sherlock’s affronted expression. “I jest, Mr. Holmes. Well, actually, I don’t. But I mean it in a nice way.”
Sherlock pointedly ignores him, and turns to Smiley. “Mr. Smiley?”
Smiley tilts his head in the direction of the bathroom, and Sherlock and John cross the room to take a look. But Smiley holds out a hand to stop Sherlock.
“Mr. Holmes, I must warn you … the Colonel’s men have been quite … thorough.”
Zotov snorts in amusement. “Enthusiastic. The word you want is enthusiastic.”
Sherlock nods, then proceeds to the bathroom, followed closely by John.
The bathtub is partially covered by the half-drawn shower curtain, but the water is dark with blood. One leg is dangling over the edge of the tub. The two men move closer to the tub carefully, as though they’re walking through a minefield. Then Sherlock draws back the curtain.
“Jesus,” John finally manages to say after a few moments.
Sherlock says nothing; he simply pulls the curtain back to its original position. He walks out of the bathroom, and John follows.
Mycroft has ended his telephone conversation and is speaking with Zotov.
“You let him do this,” Sherlock hisses to his brother.
Mycroft ignores the accusing tone. “I did what I felt was warranted by the circumstances.”
“I could have beaten him. Eventually.”
“I don’t think there is anyone in this room who doubts that for a moment, brother. But until you did, there was far too much risk of … collateral damage. I don’t need to remind you of young Mr. Guillam, for example. Or his previous lover.”
Sherlock takes a deep breath, then turns to Smiley. “And what do you think of all this?”
Smiley shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I think Colonel Zotov and I need to go and have a nice quiet chat somewhere.”
Zotov stubs his cigarette out on an ashtray. “Name the place and the time, Mr. Smiley.” He actually means it; he’s not being ironic, although everything that comes out of the man’s mouth sounds as though he is.
Mycroft is already moving toward the door. “Anthea has arranged for the cleanup staff to come. They should be here very soon. I suggest that we all vacate the premises before they arrive.” He’s out the door quickly, followed by Zotov, and then John.
Sherlock turns to Smiley. “Where’s Peter?” he asks quietly.
“He didn’t tell you?” Smiley says, then quickly shakes his head. “No. No, I don’t suppose he would have. Peter has decided to leave the Circus.”
“What?”
Smiley nods. “Hasn’t been formalised yet, and there’s a fairly detailed process to go through but … he tells me that he won’t change his mind.”
Sherlock remains silent, and Smiley heaves a deep sigh. "I'm worried about him, frankly. He's a good lad. He’s always been.”
Another sigh, even deeper. "It's a rare bird we're losing, Mr. Holmes. I don't want him to stay if he doesn't want to. I just want him to be ... " He shrugs, finally, unable to find an appropriate word. "Well. You know."
Sherlock casts his eyes downward; he looks completely defeated.
“John,” Mycroft says, stopping John as he is about to get into the lift. “A moment, if you please?” He nods to Anthea – unspoken instruction to take care of Zotov. She nods in response, and the lift doors close.
Mycroft takes John aside. “How is he?”
“Sherlock? He’s …” John pauses to consider his answer for a moment, and then says: “He’s not fine.”
Mycroft looks down at his shoes gloomily. “I had thought as much.”
“You knew, then?” John asks. “About him and Peter? All along?”
“There is very little that my brother can keep from me, and I from him. That’s the main reason for all this … animosity between us.” Mycroft turns his focus on John. “And you?"
“Me? What about me?”
“How are you?”
“I’m …” He realises that Mycroft is talking about him in relation to Sherlock. Had he been that transparent all this time? He thinks about his answer carefully; if the Holmes brothers cannot keep things from each other, it’s hardly possible for someone like him to hide anything from them. So he decides that honesty is the best option. “I’m good, Mycroft. I think I’ve arrived at a certain … clarity about where your brother and I stand with each other.”
Mycroft looks relieved – oddly enough, not so much for Sherlock as for John. He confirms this seconds later. “Whatever you may think of me, John, I have grown rather fond of you – in my own fashion. I suppose this is an opportune time to tell you that I respect you as I do few people.” He looks down at his shoes again. “I did not wish to see you hurt.”
John can appreciate just how much effort it must have taken Mycroft to make this admission. “I’m all right, Mycroft. I really am. Thanks for caring.” He glances down the hallway, slightly anxious, to check if Sherlock is on his way out. When there’s no sign of him, he continues. “I’m just concerned about him. I wish things were different.”
Mycroft sighs. “Guillam is too decent. Too – noble. And my brother is too proud. And quite frankly, between the two of them, I don’t know who is the bigger idiot.”
John chuckles. “It’s neck and neck, I think.”
They both laugh, and then Mycroft holds his hand out to John. “Thank you, John.”
They shake hands, but John looks slightly bewildered. “What for?”
“For going where I can’t go. For being what I can’t be.”
“And what’s that?”
A look of regret flickers over Mycroft’s face, but it’s gone before John can even register it.
“My brother’s friend.”
They converge outside the hotel entrance just as two laundry vans pull up to the pavement. They’re not really laundry vans, of course.
“George?” Mycroft begins. “I think you and the Colonel have a great deal to discuss.”
“Of course.” Smiley turns to Zotov. “Colonel?”
“Mr. Smiley.” They head off together, where Ricki Tarr is waiting.
“Sherlock, John. Can we drop you off anywhere?”
John glances at Sherlock, decides that he’s not in the mood. “We’ll find a cab, Mycroft. Besides, someone –“ and he casts a glance at Sherlock, “has to drop by the supermarket to pick up some essentials."
Sherlock scowls at him.
“Very well,” Mycroft says, suppressing a smile. “Good day.”
He begins to walk toward the idling Jaguar, but Sherlock’s voice stops him.
“Mycroft.”
He turns around. “Yes?” he asks, clearly ready for another confrontation.
Sherlock comes up very close to him, his stance almost threatening, even though he is an inch or two shorter than his older brother.
“Don’t think for one second that I don’t know the real reason why you allowed Zotov to do this.”
Mycroft replies in that long-suffering voice that he always uses in these situations: “Indeed? And what is the real reason, brother dear? Do tell.”
It happens very quickly, and it’s strained and embarrassing and awkward, but Sherlock pulls his brother close in an embrace. The blood all but drains out of Mycroft's face. Neither of them seems to know what to do with his long arms, nor remember where his head should go. But after much fumbling, they are still, Mycroft’s hand buried in his brother’s curls.
When they part, they both automatically clear their throats and straighten up their clothes, mumbling incomprehensibly at each other. Then, they turn around and walk briskly in separate directions, Mycroft to his waiting car, Sherlock toward John.
John smiles at Mycroft’s retreating figure, then hurries to catch up with Sherlock.
“Well, that was nice,” he says. “Very nice, indeed.”
Sherlock quickly snaps at him. “You would be a great deal more helpful to me, John, if you reminded me of those essentials that you say I need to pick up.”
“I wrote to him,” Smiley says to Zotov in the car.
“To whom?” Zotov asks, even though he already knows the answer.
“Karla, of course.” He keeps his eyes fixed on the passing scenery outside the car window. “I told him what we knew. And what I thought he should do about it.”
Zotov eyes him warily. “You think you were giving him a way out. But you know that you could have endangered his life by doing this, yes?”
Smiley’s expression is neutral. “He could have half a chance, or none.”
Zotov leans back in the seat, spreading his long, chunky legs out. He studies Smiley’s lined, careworn face, and he finally understands.
“He is your obsession. And you, his.”
Smiley turns to look at Zotov, but remains silent.
“You have been chasing each other’s tails for more than twenty years. Pushing pawns on a chessboard that spans the globe. And now that you finally have him in checkmate – you do this -- thing.” Zotov shakes his head, both in disbelief and admiration. “You are a strange man, George Smiley.”
Smiley looks away again. “Do you think he will accept it? My proposal?”
Zotov grunts. “Something tells me that you would not have written to him at all, had you not been certain of the outcome."
Smiley’s sleep is restless, troubled. In his dreams, he keeps seeing Ann: the glint of sunlight in her hair in the middle of a crowd, the hem of her skirt trailing as she rounds a corner. She’s always just a little out of reach, and when he calls her name, she doesn’t stop for him. It’s not long before he’s breathless, sweat beading on his forehead. He follows her down a succession of streets, her laughter urging him on, and he can never quite catch up.
Then he turns yet another corner, and he sees her. With a man: younger than her, tall, broad-shouldered, well-dressed. He offers her his arm, and she takes it, beaming up at him. They coo at each other, share a private joke, giggle, kiss.
Smiley trails a few steps behind, but she turns around and tells him sternly: Stop following me, George.
But you’re my wife, he wants to say, but the last word comes out as life.
No, I’m not. The Circus is your life. Go back to it.
He stops. Ann, he says, and it comes out like a whine, and he hates himself.
Go back to your boys, George. Sooner or later, they all end up like you. Dead, one way or another.
He wakes up, or thinks he wakes up, and he’s broken out into a cold sweat.
Then he sees a familiar shadow in one corner of the room.
“Fawn?”
She glides forward in that aerodynamic way of hers, and hops up to crouch at the foot of the bed.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
She tilts her head to one side and he can see that she’s frowning.
“You’re unhappy about something. And you’ve come to me.”
She nods.
“Am I the cause, my dear? Or am I to fix it?”
The frown eases a bit when he asks the second question. “So. I’m to fix it. But what is it? Will you tell me?”
You already know.
Smiley sighs.
She gets off the bed and stands next to him. Without a word, she bends and kisses him on the forehead.
“I miss having you around, Fawn,” he says, in a tone that’s both complaining and sad. “You were the only one at the Circus who could make a decent cup of tea.”
She smiles, and then walks away, fading into the darkness.
When he opens his eyes for real, it’s well past 7am. He sits up slowly, joints aching, and takes a moment to gradually regain his bearings.
Then he touches his forehead, and smiles.
He puts on a pair of tatty bedroom slippers and goes to the bathroom, uses the toilet, washes his hands and face. When he’s done, he slips on a thick, heavy toweling robe and heads downstairs to the kitchen.
He puts some water on to boil. Bread, eggs, butter on the counter. When the water boils, he makes himself a mug of tea.
He’s about to fire up the stove when he hears a noise in the garden. He sets the mug down on the kitchen table, walks to the back door and peers through the glass panel.
He opens the door and shuffles out, drawing his robe closer around himself.
Peter is on his knees in the cyclamen patch, his nose red from the cold. He's managed to root out all the dead, scraggly stems and roots; they lie in a small heap to his left. To his right, there is a cluster of new cyclamen in small pots. He is busy replanting them in the soil bed. He doesn't look up when Smiley approaches.
"You never did get around to putting parsnips in," he observes.
"No, I never did."
Peter pushes soil around the base of one of the plants. "I hate parsnips."
Smiley chuckles. "So do I." Then, after a beat: “Isn’t that soil practically frozen?”
Peter shrugs. “It’s not too bad.” He flips the trowel in his hand. “Good tools.” Satisfied with the work he's done on the plant, he turns and takes another small pot to replant its contents. "I was thinking, George. I've been resting for nearly a month now."
"Yes."
"The shoulder is much better. And so is ... everything else. Or at least, I think it’s getting there. Slowly."
"Mmm."
Peter gently loosens the root ball with his finger and carefully removes the plant from the pot. "Maybe I should, you know. Come back to work. Nothing too strenuous or too complicated at first. Something with a desk and a computer."
Smiley’s heart lifts, but he doesn’t answer at once.
"Are you sure you're ready? There's no rush, you know."
"I broke into your house to plant cyclamen in the dead of winter, George. Surely that tells you how bored I am."
This draws another chuckle from Smiley.
Peter continues working quietly for a while, and then he asks: "Do you ever regret it, George?"
"Regret what, Peter?"
Peter shrugs. "Everything. Mistakes you’ve made. Things you've failed at. People you’ve lost."
Smiley sighs. “Regret is not the exclusive province of our trade, Peter. Everyone regrets something. Even a schoolboy of six can have regrets. Most people just keep going. “
“As you have.” He doesn’t say it, but Smiley knows Peter is talking about Ann.
Smiley looks down at the heap of dead cyclamen. “I suppose that’s all I know how to do.”
You already know, Fawn had said.
Sooner or later, they all end up like you, Ann told him in the dream. Dead, one way or another.
Not this one, my darling. Not if I can help it.
He turns to Peter again. “I’m going to make some tea,” he says, his tone a little brighter now. “Would you like some?”
“Yes, please.”
Smiley heads back inside, closes the door. He doesn’t make tea; instead, he picks up the phone in the kitchen and dials a number, all the while keeping his eyes on Peter through the window.
“Mr. Holmes? Yes. I’m terribly sorry to trouble you on a weekend but … I need your help. No, no, nothing serious. I just … well, I need a hand with some gardening. I’m having trouble with the old back, you see, and I was wondering if … Well, I could, but nobody will come out on a weekend, and it really can’t wait.
“But if it’s inconvenient, I’ll understand. Oh, you will? That’s awfully good of you. Yes, now would be good. Yes, thank you.
“Oh, and Mr. Holmes? I wouldn’t wear a suit, if I were you.”
He hangs up and stares at Peter through the glass for a long time. Then he remembers that he needs to make him a cup of tea.
Karla finally receives the message from Zotov, along with a photograph of what was left in the bathtub. In the message is a detailed plan, a series of steps that he needs to take within the next few days – beginning today.
The plan is clean and meticulous, and there is a certain logic and symmetry – an elegance -- to its structure that pleases him.
It surprises him that George Smiley is capable of this kind of elegance.
But then again, it really doesn’t.
The walls have already started to close in on him. Last week, a small army of state accountants was sent to audit the Thirteenth Directorate’s books. The trainees in the camp were advised that they would be transferred to other facilities closer to Moscow. Temporarily, they were told – the first stage before indefinitely, which would inevitably lead to permanently.
Karla has already been summoned once more to appear before the Council, in about a week’s time. This time, the language of the document is much colder, much less friendly. It’s an indication of what awaits him. He knows this because he has signed hundreds – thousands -- of documents like this before. Most of their recipients ended up in labour camps; the really lucky ones ended up dead.
The walk-bridge at the Berlin Wall. He hadn’t expected this.
Elegant.
He stands and walks slowly to the window. His right trouser pocket is heavy with the weight of the lighter. He looks out one last time at what he has built, and smiles sadly.
We have a saying, George. “Vsyak kulik svoyo boloto khvalit” — every sandpiper praises his own swamp.
We like to imagine that the worlds we create are new. But really, all we do is build decay out of decay. Self-delusion is human nature.
I will see you on that bridge soon, my friend.
There is a knock on Smiley’s door, and Peter, who has just washed his hands in the kitchen, goes to answer it.
He stands in the doorway in shock for a few moments. It’s the same shock that’s written all over Sherlock’s face.
“Peter,” Sherlock finally says, breaking the silence.
“Sherlock.”
Sherlock tries to look behind him to see if Smiley is coming to the door as well, although somehow, he already knows that he isn’t. “Mr. Smiley asked me to come.” He glances down at his outfit: worn jeans, a white t-shirt, a thick black jumper, all topped with his usual coat. “He said he needed some help in the garden.”
Peter steps aside. “Come in.”
Sherlock enters and proceeds to the living room, and Peter closes the door behind him.
“I never would have imagined that you knew anything about gardening,” he says, by way of small talk.
“I suppose I’ve learnt enough from previous cases to get by,” Sherlock answers, removing his coat and laying it on the back of the sofa. He doesn’t explain any further, but looks around the room, past the doors to the kitchen and what appears to be a study. “Where’s Mr. Smiley?” he asks, although he is quite certain now that the answer doesn’t matter.
“He got called away,” Peter replies, and as soon as he says the words, he sees Smiley’s design and deception as plainly as if it had been spelt out for him. “By Oliver Lacon. Something about budgetary allocations for the incoming fiscal year. Said he’d be out all day.” The words, which made perfect sense when Smiley spoke them about an hour ago, now sound so patently false and ridiculous that Peter starts to laugh -- nervously at first, and then, as the reality of Smiley’s machinations sinks in, more freely and heartily.
Sherlock smiles – the deception was apparent to him from the moment Peter answered the door – and soon, he, too, is laughing. He sits on the back of the couch and catches his breath, as Peter wipes tears of laughter from his eyes.
“Gardening. He asked you to help with the gardening.”
“He said he was having trouble with his back.”
“Don’t tell me. He asked you to wear jeans.”
“Well, no. But he advised me against wearing a suit.”
This only provokes more peals of laughter from both men. They laugh as they have not done in months, unrestrained, joyful, helpless; they laugh until their throats hurt, until they're exhausted.
When they’re done laughing, they look at each other for a long time, without saying a word.
It's Peter who closes the distance between them.
“Is that offer still open?” he asks softly.
Sherlock looks up at him. “Offer?”
“Weeks ago, you told me that all you could offer me was something true. You asked me if that was good enough.” He takes a deep breath. “I gave you a foolish answer, believing it was the best for both of us. But now, I want to tell you… It is better than good. It is exactly what I need. It is all that I need.” He holds out his hand, and his voice is so soft now that it’s barely above a whisper. “Please tell me that it’s not too late for me to accept it.”
Sherlock looks down at Peter’s hand. It’s almost involuntary, the way his own hand moves in response; a part of his mind observes what’s happening with great interest, as though it’s detached from the rest of him. His fingers touch Peter’s and Peter wastes no time in grasping them. He pulls Sherlock close, and the contact is electric: it’s as intense as that first kiss what now seems like a lifetime ago, but as comforting and familiar as coming home.
They lose themselves in each other. It’s clumsy, they fumble with buttons and zippers, they laugh, they trip over their trousers and each other. They make it to one of Smiley’s guest bedrooms somehow. They fall into bed, they kiss, they taste, they linger. Their hunger and need boil over, but there is infinite tenderness, too: slow brush of fingers on skin, moments when their eyes meet in the half-light, with the curtains drawn, and express everything for which words are inadequate -- everything for which there are no words.
They murmur each other’s name like a promise.
Smiley has been waiting in his car, some distance from his house. He sees Sherlock arrive, and Peter let him in. Good lad, he cheers Peter on in his mind.
He glances at his wristwatch and waits.
When Sherlock doesn’t emerge from the house after about fifteen minutes, he decides that today – a Saturday -- would be a really good time to iron out all the final details for West Berlin, and his appointment with an old friend.
He drives away and heads for the Circus.
Less than a week later, he and Peter are in a café in West Berlin’s Turkish quarter. Between the two of them, they’ve plowed through six cups of overly sweet coffee. Smiley is lost in his own thoughts, and Peter tries not to interrupt them too much.
Everything is in place: the cameras, the waiting cars, the Circus men in their anonymous clothes watching the bridge from every possible angle. But as the twilight deepens outside the café windows, Peter feels a twin sense of dread and anticipation. He glances over at Smiley; he knows this is the night he has been waiting for, for the better part of two decades. Everything that has happened in the last few years – Jim Prideaux’s betrayal, Alleline’s ascent, Control’s decline and death, Bill Haydon’s unmasking, even Lady Ann’s faithlessness – all of these have led up to this night, in this city, just a few blocks from the bridge.
Peter hopes fervently that Karla will cross that bridge tonight. For Smiley’s sake, but also for his own. It will not bring Fawn or Richard back, nor soften the sting of Haydon's treachery, but it will help him to make sense of it all -- to understand why certain sacrifices are necessary at all.
Smiley’s mobile phone rings; it’s the signal from Mendel. Peter fishes out his wallet, leaves a large note under his cup to cover the bill; Smiley is already halfway through the door.
Darkness has fallen completely now. They walk side-by-side in silence, in the bitter cold, past buildings and shops and cars. Peter will remember this brief journey of theirs in the years ahead like one, very long, rather surreal dream. They get to one end of the walkway somehow, where Ricki has positioned the waiting car in such a way as to not arouse the suspicion of the East German guards in the sentry tower, with their high-powered binoculars.
“This could be him,” Mendel says, urgently-whispered words coming at them through the shared frequency.
In the distance, a small figure emerges from the fog. Peter hands Smiley a pair of binoculars. Long moments tick by, as the figure, dressed as a common labourer, makes its way down the walkway.
Peter watches Smiley: the coiled tension in that ageing body and face has somehow erased decades from both, and he can see the man that Smiley once was -- younger, sharper, colder, more focused.
A formidable and worthy enemy.
Finally, Smiley says the word that everyone is waiting for.
“Yes.”
It’s him.
The last time that Peter dreams of Fawn, he is staring at the photograph.
And then it isn’t a photograph anymore, it is real -- it is her. But the rooftop isn’t the rooftop of that building in Hongkong; it is the rooftop of the Circus, under a gray London sky.
“You came back,” she says.
“So did you.”
She nods. “Just for a little while. Just to say a proper goodbye.”
Peter frowns. “Goodbye? Again?”
“Not again. Just this once.”
Peter chews on his bottom lip. “So I won’t dream about you again? Not ever?”
“Well, you might. But it will just be the residue. Old memories.”
“You mean, all this time that I’ve been dreaming about you – you’ve really been here?”
She smiles at him, then, a genuine smile: the smile of 14-year-old Rei Eristavi, waving to that roaring crowd at Dinamo Stadium after her routine on the beam.
“What do you think?”
He feels utterly bereft. “But why? Why can’t you stay?”
The sun breaks out from behind a thick bank of clouds, and suddenly one corner of the rooftop is illuminated with sunshine. She reaches out to touch his face, and the warmth of her hand feels incredibly real.
“Peter. That’s not the way it goes.” She starts to walk away, heading for the sunlit corner. “Besides, you have it now.”
“What? I have what?”
“What I told you to find. Do you remember?”
“Something good. Something lasting. Something true.”
She glances over her shoulder at him; already she’s fading in the light. “You’ll be fine, Peter. I’m not worried about you. Not any more.”
“Fawn.”
“Be happy, Peter.” She’s almost completely gone now. “And I don't want to see you again for a long time. Not until you’re good and ready.”
“Fawn. Fawn.”
There’s no reply.
The muffled sound of his own crying wakes him up, but already he’s being held close, rocked gently.
“It’s all right, Peter,” Sherlock whispers to him, his lips pressed to the soft, golden hair. “You’re safe. I’m right here.”