Leipzig and owner of the night club where the photograph was taken. He finds that Leipzig has been murdered by Karla's agents but manages to locate a recognition sign, in return for which Kretzschmar gives Smiley tape recordings of Leipzig and Kirov. Smiley hastens to Paris where, with help from his old colleague Peter Guillam, he gets Maria to safety before Soviet agents murder her too. He also learns that Kirov has been summoned to Moscow and probably killed for his indiscretions. The transcribed tape of Kirov's confession to Leipzig shows that Karla is secretly diverting funds to a Swiss bank account using a commercial attaché named Grigoriev, of the Soviet Embassy in Bern. The money is used for the care of Karla's daughter, who has been committed to a Swiss psychiatric sanatorium under the faked citizenship papers of Maria's daughter. Smiley explains to Enderby that they may be able to blackmail Karla and force him to defect. Enderby authorises Smiley to mount an operation to secure the evidence from Grigoriev. Smiley and Esterhase set up a covert team in Bern to keep Grigoriev under observation. They soon obtain evidence of his unofficial handling of funds for Karla and of an affair with an Embassy secretary. Smiley presents Grigoriev with the choice of cooperating or being reported to the Swiss authorities and, later, Karla. Grigoriev quickly confesses all he knows of the arrangements regarding Alexandra's care and of the weekly visits he makes to her. Among her "symptoms" is her insistence that she is actually called Tatiana and is the daughter of a powerful man who can make people disappear. Smiley writes a letter to Karla, which Grigoriev passes on instead of his usual report on Alexandra's treatment. The letter details Karla's illegal activities and offers him defection to the West and protection for Tatiana, or elimination by his rivals in Moscow Centre. In a final scene, Karla, posing as a labourer, defects using one of the bridge crossings between East and West Berlin. Before giving himself up to the waiting Western agents, Karla stops and lights a cigarette. As he passes near Smiley he drops a gold cigarette lighter, a gift to George from his wife Ann, that Karla purloined from Smiley twenty years earlier in a Delhi prison. Smiley is sickened at having to use Karla's methods against him and does not pick up the lighter. Characters Maria