2,527: Smiley's People by John le Carré

Although I’m a big fan of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, I can’t help but think that they have done spy novels a tremendous disservice.  Even though they are far less shallow than the films, they still slide over the heart of espionage, skipping over subtleties with a gadget, a fight or a perfectly made cocktail.

Not so with le Carré.  His novels strip away all the illusions we may have about the glamour of spying, exposing the corrosive effects of lives of constant betrayal and suspicion.  Even Smiley, probably one of the drabbest heroes of literature, is not immune to this, suffering from the acid drips of repeated lies, exploitation and treachery.  Like its predecessors in the so-called Karla trilogy, Smiley’s People is an unemotional exploration of the darker side of human nature and the effects on otherwise decent men of being required to live and work on that side.

At the end of The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley has been outmanoeuvred by the odious Saul Enderby who, together with Sam Collins applies a stiletto to Smiley’s back and replaces him as Head of the Circus.  This state of play continues to exist at the beginning of Smiley’s People, with George in enforced retirement and again deserted by his errant wife, Ann.

But old spies never truly retire and Smiley is pressed back into service, albeit on a totally deniable basis, by Enderby and Lacon, a senior civil servant with no distinguishing virtues.  A relic of the Circus’ past, an Estonian émigré who had once led a spy network controlled by George has turned up dead on Hampstead Heath, having tried to re-establish contact with the Circus.

Although Lacon and Enderby merely want the matter swept under the carpet by George, he begins to investigate and finds a connection to a old Russian woman living in Paris, whose daughter’s identity has been taken by the KGB to use as a “legend” to insert an agent into Western Europe.

Smiley slowly pieces together the puzzle by forcing former colleagues and agents to give him information and himself travelling through Europe to assemble the clues.  It becomes apparent that the “legend” has been used unofficially by Smiley’s nemesis, Karla, to get his illegitimate daughter out of the Soviet Union and into a hospital in Switzerland.

There’s a different feel to Smiley’s People than the other two books in the trilogy.  Although the pace of the story remains deliberate, Smiley is a much more active character, not being content to pull strings from behind the scenes but actually getting out there to find information and manage a sting that enables him finally to make contact with Karla.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy began the trilogy by telling the story of Karla’s greatest victory over Smiley by infiltrating the Circus through Bill Haydon and encouraging Haydon not only to betray Smiley but also to have an affair with Ann, adding a second betrayal.  Smiley’s People, therefore, provides a satisfying conclusion as Smiley uses Karla’s own techniques against him, using the leverage of his knowledge of Karla’s weakness – his daughter – to force him to defect.  At the very end, we see Karla walking across a bridge from East to West Germany.  Symbolically, as he arrives in the West, he drops the cigarette lighter that he had taken from George in Tinker, Tailor, the lighter inscribed from Ann to George and which hinted at George’s weak spot.

Yet Smiley’s revenge is hollow.  He leaves the lighter on the ground and takes no pleasure in his incredible coup.  He is even diminished by his success.  He is less of a man for having lowered himself to Karla’s level by using his daughter against him. I was left with an empty feeling at the end, that there were no winners, only men beaten by the demands of the secret world.  Smiley has served his country faithfully, despite the politics and the treachery within his own service and has been left broken in spirit, an anonymous casualty of the Cold War.

I could leave it here and simply say that Smiley’s People and the Karla trilogy as a whole are supreme examples of the true spy novel, setting a standard that hasn’t yet been matched by any Western writer, although Robert Littell and Alan Furst come quite close, Graham Greene would definitely be up there if one considers some of his books to be spy novels and Charles Cumming is also treading some of the same ground.

But I don’t think that is fair.  Like Greene, le Carré deals with the human condition.  He counterpoints professional treachery and deception with the personal.  Each of the books in the Karla trilogy has his characters suffering on a personal level, with Smiley himself suffering repeatedly from the cheating of his wife.  In Smiley’s people, there is an awkward scene where Lacon takes George for dinner and spends the meal trying to get George to give him relationship advice as he too is facing losing his wife.  Never a strong character, this leaves him looking even more foolish and ineffectual than ever.

In some ways, I think le Carré almost uses the world of espionage as a prism through which to explore these aspects of the human character, to show what happens to people who both perpetrate the lies and are also the victims of hem.  It is notable that all of the former agents and colleagues whom Smiley involves in his investigation in Smiley’s People are somehow damaged or reduced by their involvement with the Circus, from Toby Esterhase, eking out an existence as a shady art dealer to dear old Connie, an alcoholic wreck, living in squalor with her partner.  There’s not a great deal of hope or happiness in le Carré’s writing, just a sense of the futility of it all.

2,543: The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré

I was in Moscow last week on business and, in a little bit of spare time, had a good old wander around Red Square and the Kremlin.   Although I’ve been in Russia a few times in the past few years, I hadn’t actually revisited the square since the first time I was there in 1987.  Now, it’s probably my age but, being a child of the Cold War era, images of Soviet-era parades and old movies with fur-hatted men furtively passing secrets in the snow under the Kremlin towers were filling my mind so, as night follows day, I suddenly had the urge to read some John le Carré.

The magic of the Kindle worked and that evening after dinner, I was tucked up in my hotel bed with The Honourable Schoolboy.  It probably wasn’t the obvious choice as it focuses on events in South East Asia, rather than Cold War Europe.  It was, however, the next on my le Carré list to read (or, actually, re-read) following my review last year of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which is itself in the public consciousness again with the release of the new movie version.

Following the unmasking of the mole at the heart of the Circus, le Carré’s fictional British Secret Service, George Smiley has been put at its head to determine the extent of its penetration and to salvage what he can from the rubble.  As well as being demoralised and financially crippled, the Whitehall bureaucrats and politicians are circling, waiting to sntach chunks to add to their own empires.

Smiley’s personal life is also in tatters with his wife, the beautiful but sexually incontinent Ann, having been outed as the traitor’s lover and having again deserted George.  He is also becoming slightly obsessed with Karla, his nemesis from Moscow Centre, the spymaster behind the infiltration of the Circus.

Many of the characters from Tinker, Tailor also appear in The Honourable Schoolboy.  Smiley is still faithfully protected by his strange little bodyguard, Fawn and Peter Guillam remains as his cup-bearer.  The eccentric analyst Connie Sachs is present and Oliver Lacon is joined by a number of other, even more reptilian, civil servants.

The Circus is under intense pressure to achieve something to justify its continued existence.  Smiley and Connie embark on a strategy of “taking back-bearings” – by reviewing old cases that had been suppressed by the mole on Karla’s orders, they can ascertain what Moscow is concerned about and then come up with an offensive operation.  Whilst doing this, they uncover a money-laundering operation in South East Asia pursuant to which Karla is funnelling cash to a Soviet agent.

At this point, the Honourable Jerry Westerby, a journalist and part-time Circus spy (and the titular character of the book) is called out of his Italian retirement to help Smiley investigate the identity of the beneficiary of the funds.  Smiley then uses him as a tool to shake up the other side in order to bring the Soviet spy into the open.  Jerry is a conflicted kind of guy, however, and for both him and Smiley, their personal issues begin to interfere more and more with their professional roles with some depressingly inevitable conclusions as what should be a triumph for the Circus brings defeat for them both.

The Honourable Schoolboy was written in the mid-1970s during the tragic dénouement of US involvement in South East Asia and at a time of financial woe in the UK (plus ça change…..) and, just as a period piece, it is full of the flavour of that time – the decaying corruption and sweaty grime of the drug-addled wars in places such as Laos and Cambodia, the long, slow decline of British colonial rule in Hong Kong and the tired and tawdry stagnation of London.  In the sections of the book set in Hong Kong, there are even foreshadowings of the shift in financial power from East to West that we are experiencing today as the British taipans are portrayed as corrupt, lazy and morally bankrupt and ripe by contrast to the new energetic and confident Chinese businessmen.

Beneath the historical canvas, there is a downbeat air of deception of betrayal throughout the book on numerous levels.  Smiley’s pre-occupation with Karla seemingly blinds him to the plotting of Enderby and the CIA liaison Martello which ultimately results in his downfall.  There are numerous personal betrayals – Smiley by Ann and the Orphan by Westerby to name just two.  And, of course, there are the professional betrayals that we expect in a spy novel.  Noone is clean in this book and at every turn, there is cheating, deception and dishonesty.

If I’m being honest, the book could have been a couple of hundred pages shorter as le Carré got a little carried away with his Asian war zone descriptions.  Also, the period Hong Kong expat language seems very old-fashioned and a bit camp.  It is also not a book to be read when you’re down as it is very bleak and pessimistic in its world view.

It is, however, satisfyingly complex and meaty as well as giving a plausibly grubby view of the secret world and, save for some of the dialogue, stands up well to the passage of time.

2,576: 1,001 Books Challenge - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

Amongst many readers there appears to be a kind of sub-conscious prejudice against “genre” books.  “Oh, it’s only a romance story” or “It’s not bad…….for a science fiction novel.”  It’s almost as if, by forming part of a recognisable category of story, a book is somehow disqualified from being considered as just a “good book”.  Some people would even go as far as to conceal their reading of such books or, in some cases, to deny reading them altogether.

Now I am not, for a second, claiming that all, or even many, “genre” books count as good literature.  One of the reason thrillers or horror stories can form recognisable genres is that there are certain conventions that can easily slip into formula and, being essentially plot-driven, it becomes possible to hide poor characterisation, weak imagery and wooden dialogue behind a clever (or at least flashy) plot.  Equally, I am not for a second arguing that disliking “genre” novels is an invalid choice or a lie – indeed I can’t abide romance or horror novels, in general.  All I am saying is that a novel shouldn’t be disqualified from consideration as good literature merely by virtue of its subject matter.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a case in point.  On its face, it is the tale of how George Smiley, a former senior member of the Circus (le Carré’s proxy for MI6) is brought back secretly to investigate a report from an unreliable agent in the field that there is a Soviet mole high up in the Circus.  As he becomes convinced that the report is true, Smiley begins to suspect that the mole was also responsible for the failure of an operation to kidnap a Czech general that ended with the responsible agent, Jim Prideaux, being shot and captured.

Prideaux, having been repatriated in a spy swap, reveals that Control, the disgraced former Head of the Circus, had also suspected the existence of a mole and had narrowed it down to four men, the new Head, Percy Alleline and his three closest colleagues, Roy Bland, Bill Haydon and Toby Esterhase.  Each of these had been given a nickname from an old children’s rhyme – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Poorman.

Alleline had risen to prominence in the Circus by his source of intelligence on the Soviet Union, codenamed Merlin.  This source has convinced the British that he is able to maintain his cover in Moscow by pretending to feed information to them from a false British mole.  Smiley deduces that Karla, the mastermind of Moscow Centre (the proxy for the KGB) has set this up both to discourage the powers at the Circus from hunting for a mole and to act as a cover for the real mole passing real intelligence back to Moscow.  In the end, Smiley unmasks the traitor who is murdered before he can be sent to Moscow.

So far, so standard but Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is far more than “just” a spy novel.  The characterisation is rich and detailed.  The main characters are not just stereotypical spies and traitors – they have real lives and real emotions.  One of the hallmarks of the book is how their private lives affect their feelings and leak into their professional lives from Smiley’s relationship with his promiscuous wife to Peter Guillam’s suspicions and paranoia about his younger girlfriend and Toby Esterhase’s perpetual feeling of being an outsider in Britain.

Le Carré uses these characters to explore his central theme of deception.  This theme runs through the novel, not just in the obvious sense of the deception of the Circus by Moscow and the traitor but also the betrayal of friendships by the mole and the personal betrayals that several of the main characters experience.  In a sense, the hunt for the mole is almost a backdrop or setting for his exploration of trust and betrayal.

The imagery of Tinker, Tailor is also wonderful.  Written in 1970s, the drabness and gloom of Britain at that time pervades the book and is wonderfully evoked by le Carré.  This is not James Bond or Jason Bourne.  The world of le Carré’s spies is one of shadows and ambiguities.  Their beliefs seem less than solid and, at times, they appear to have more in common with their enemies than with people in the ordinary world.  There is no glamour here, no car chases or luxury hotels, just bedsits in Bayswater and run-down safe houses.

Tinker, Tailor is the first in a cycle of three novels, known as the Karla Trilogy, which explore the struggle between Smiley and his Soviet rival, Karla.  An earlier novel, the Spy Who came in from the Cold was lauded by Time magazine as one of its All-time 100 Novels and has been praised as the best spy novel of all time but, in my opinion, Tinker, Tailor matches it.  To call this “just” a spy story is a bit like saying that Lennon and McCartney could knock out a bit of a tune – it really doesn’t tell the whole story.