Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (TV Mini Series)

Tinker Tailor (1979)

Alexander Knox: Control

Quotes 

• Control : [to Sam]  I need somebody good to man the switchboard. It's got to be an old hand. I could bring in somebody from one of the old stations, but you're better! Because you've been away for so long, away from the infighting and the vendettas throughout this place... You don't know what I'm talking about. That's good! Just do exactly what I tell you!

• Control : [to Sam]  It could be a crisis, tonight. I've got a man doing a special job. It is of the utmost importance to the Service. 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 rest of the building. If anything comes in - whether you receive a letter, phone call, anything at all no matter how trivial it is - you are to wait, wait until the coast is clear then bring it straight to me. By hand, Sam! You don't use the internal phones, you don't put anything down on paper for reference. Is that understood?

• Sam Collins : 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 just to start with? Do you want me to get someone else? Do you want to come downstairs and handle it yourself?

  Control : It's deniable. He had foreign documents. No one could know he was British at this stage, even if he's not dead.

• Control : Find Smiley!

  Sam Collins : He's in Berlin.

  Control : ...Yes. Well, anyone will do. It makes no difference now.