A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré

Published by Viking on September 5, 2017

John le Carré created the most extraordinary character in spy fiction when George Smiley appeared in Call for the Dead (1961). Smiley became a primary or secondary character in several other novels, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), the novel that put John le Carré on the map. In the Karla trilogy (1974 to 1979) — the best spy novels and among the finest literary novels I’ve ever read — Smiley unmasks a mole in British intelligence. Smiley was a moral man who used immoral means to do his job well and suffered for it. Younger than Smiley but often at his side was Peter Guillam, a key player who helped Smiley gather information that exposed the double agent and brought down Karla, the mole’s handler.

John le Carré died at the end of 2020, leaving behind a legacy of brilliant spy fiction (plus a mainstream novel that I quite enjoyed). His final novel, published in 2019, was a standalone. Two years before the release of that novel, he penned the aptly titled A Legacy of Spies, the last novel in the Smiley series. In many ways, it showcases his own legacy by reaching back to the events in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and explaining how events leading up to and following the tragedy of that novel — Alec Leamas and Liz Gold are shot at the Berlin Wall — were manipulated by Smiley and the man known only as Control.

At Smiley’s direction, Guillam has kept the true details of that incident out of the official record. Eventually the truth bites at his ankles, as Alec’s son, Cristoph, together with Liz’s daughter Karen, have sued the government, claiming that it is complicit in their parents’ deaths. Well, they’re right about that to some degree, although they don’t know all the details of Operation Windfall, conceived to smoke out the traitor in the upper ranks of the Secret Intelligence Service and to mislead Russia while protecting a vital source, an operation that had unfortunate consequences for Leamas and Gold.

Now the SIS needs to feed someone to the wolves to satisfy Parliament. Smiley is nowhere to be found. Official files have disappeared and, if they could be found, they would be covered with Guillam’s fingerprints. Guillam is politely interrogated before being locked in a library where he can read some of the secret files he hid (although not the ones he concealed off premises) as a prelude to answering more questions. Much of the novel is told in Guillam’s memory as he reads memoranda, some of which he wrote, and tries to assemble a coherent story about the past that doesn’t quite live up to the truth. As he does so, he fears that only Smiley can save him from his own indiscretions.

It put a smile on my face just to read the names of characters who have become iconic in spy fiction: Toby Esterhase, Bill Hayden, and the memorable Jim Prideaux, who makes a brief appearance near the novel’s end, quite unchanged since his featured role in The Honourable Schoolboy. And of course Smiley himself, still idealistic, still troubled by the moral choices that challenge his idealism. Looking back on his life, Smiley admits that he has never cared about preserving capitalism or Christendom. His duty was to England, not the England of Brexit but an England that was “leading Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason.” That England, he frets, may be moving away from reason and returning to darkness, as was much of the world when A Legacy of Spies was published.

Guillam is old as he tells this story. Unless John le Carré left a nearly finished manuscript lying about, it is his last appearance, a last glimpse of all the characters who did their best during the Cold War to lead England out of darkness. It offers the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is Smiley’s career and puts a frame around the completed picture. John le Carré did his fans a huge favor, and added to an unparalleled legacy of his own, with A Legacy of Spies.

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Agent Running in the Field by John Le Carré

Published by Viking on October 22, 2019

No writer gives espionage a more human face than John Le Carré. His protagonists have regrets, but they make up for their mistakes with competence and an unfailing sense that doing the right thing is more important than doing what their bosses expect.

Nat is married to Prue. In their prime, they were both stationed in Russia, where they spied for the Secret Intelligence Service. Now Nat has an SIS desk job and Prue is a human rights lawyer. They live quietly in Battersea, have a daughter, and are generally happy. Events in this tight novel will test their contentment.

Nat is a badminton champ at Battersea’s Athleticus club. A young man named Ed Shannon has recently joined the club. He challenges Nat to a match because Nat is the best. They begin a sort of friendship, although Nat and Ed are both vague about their employment. Nat even brings a co-worker named Florence to a mixed doubles match, pretending that he doesn’t really know her. When Florence abruptly quits her job, the reader will suspect that the relationship between Nat and Ed and Florence will turn out to be bad for Nat’s career. That suspicion will be warranted, but the plot follows a surprising path.

Bryn Jordan, Nat’s former station chief in Moscow and currently “ruler-for-life of Russia department,” decides it is time to put Nat out to pasture. Nat doesn’t fit the new image of SIS, meaning he isn’t a young man with advanced computer skills. Rather than kicking Nat to the curb, Jordan sends him to London General. Its current head is Dominic Trench, who was station chief in Budapest when Nat was posted there. Dom is the kind of man “who takes you aside, anoints you his only friend in the world, regales you with the details of his private life you’d rather not hear, begs your advice, you give him none, he swears to follow it and next morning cuts you dead.”

Dom puts Nat in charge of the Haven, an all-but-defunct substation of London General, “a dumping ground for resettled defectors of nil value and fifth-rate informants on the skids.” Although it is a dead-end job, Nat endeavors to undermine Dom and Bryn by actually accomplishing something. He begins with a sleeper agent, a defector who is suddenly called to service by his Russian masters.

That story unfolds in the entertaining style a reader would expect of Le Carré, but it takes off when it circles back to Nat’s relationship with Ed. Naturally, Ed falls under suspicion and naturally, given the suspicious minds at work in SIS, Nat is regarded as a potentially culpable partner in crime. And naturally, everyone at SIS has it wrong, but it will take some quick thinking and astute tradecraft for Nat resolve the problem as best he can.

Nat, Prue, Ed, and Florence are in the vein of Le Carré’s most likeable characters. The “enemy” is kept backstage — for a time, it isn’t even clear which country is using its intelligence efforts against Britain — but Nat’s real enemies, as is often the case in a Le Carré novel, are the bureaucrats and politicians who have risen to the level of their incompetence. Brexit lurks in the background, as does Donald Trump, both mucking up the ability of Britain and America to work together to achieve common goals.

Even if his best work is behind him — and his best is the best — Le Carré remains the reigning champion of the espionage novel. He is still an astute observer of the human capacity for deception as well as the human fallibility that allows deceivers to triumph. He wrote this novel at the age of 88, but he has not forgotten, and refuses to condemn, the virtues of youthful idealism. Agent Running in the Field suggests that aging people can use their own brand of idealism to thwart, in some small way, a system that rewards duplicity and that confuses patriotism with blind obedience to rules that serve leaders, not the country.

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[Note: If you believe the reviewers (and I use the term loosely) who gave this novel one star on Amazon because it does not glorify Trump, you might conclude that the book is an anti-Trump diatribe. In fact, Trump barely rates a mention, although CIA machinations do play a role in concert with Brexit. The book is a best seller because it deserves to be, regardless of the mindless attacks launched by the right wing extremists who feel duty bound to attack anything they perceive as being even vaguely liberal.]

A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

Published in the UK and by Scribner in the US in 2008

There is no more observant student of human nature than John le Carré. He explores the spaces between what people say and what they leave unsaid. He examines motivations, which are so often failings: an aging man’s irrational devotion to a young woman; an aging woman’s loyalty to a bond that never existed; bureaucracies at war with each other and bureaucrats at war with their souls. His protagonists are keenly aware of their shortcomings and often think of how their lives could have, or should have, turned out differently. So it is with Tommy Brue.

Brue is a private banker in Hamburg, having inherited and then moved the bank he inherited from his father. Brue also inherited some questionable accounts that his father created to hold wealth smuggled from the collapsing Soviet Union.

A lovely and lively young lawyer for a charitable organization gives Brue an account number that was given to her by Issa, who got it from his father, who got it from Brue’s father. Issa is from Chechnya and has spent time in a Turkish prison. He managed a harrowing journey to Hamburg despite being wanted by law enforcement agencies in several countries.

To determine whether Issa is entitled to funds that Brue would prefer his father had never accepted, Brue must delve into Issa’s identity and history. John le Carré develops not just Issa’s story, but the story of Chechnya — the home of Issa’s mother, who was raped at fifteen by Issa’s Russian father. Issa looks to Brue for protection rather than money, but Brue is not in the protection business. Brue is in the uncomfortable position of addressing moral questions rather than banking questions. If (unlike his father) Brue insists that legal formalities be followed, Issa will likely be deported and then will certainly be tortured, by Turks or Russians or others.

Brue is typical of John le Carré protagonists, particularly in his later work. Brue suspects his wife is cheating on him but doesn’t want to know. He runs from difficulties, preferring avoidance to confrontation. His social behavior is proper but he is incapable of expressing true feelings. He behaves prudently during an uneventful life until the time comes to choose between cautious behavior and meaningful but dangerous action. When he makes the choice, he isn’t entirely sure why. He is energized by a young woman who ignites, if not lust exactly, an opportunity for self-examination.

Issa’s lawyer, Annabel Richter, is also typical of le Carré in that her character is complex and conflicted. She views Issa as “her tutor in unbearable pain and hope.” She has learned from failure — hers as a lawyer, or the legal system’s — that a time would come when she would break all the rules for a client. Issa is that client.

The other key character, apart from Issa, is Gunther Bachman, a German intelligence officer stationed in Hamburg as punishment for his sins. One of his people sees that Sweden has identified Issa as an escaped prisoner from Turkey who gave the slip to Swedish authorities. Bachman works out that Issa may be coming to Hamburg. He then finds himself in a bureaucratic nightmare as British intelligence, the CIA, and his German superiors engage in a turf war.

Issa is far from a terrorist. He wants nothing to do with violence or his father’s wealth, which he regards as ill-gotten and thus in violation of Islamic law. He wants only to pursue a career in medicine. The plot focuses on how the fighters in the war on terror are at war with humanity in their willingness to sacrifice the innocent, all to make doubtful gains in their efforts to thwart terror. Some readers might see the novel as cynical; I viewed it as honest. As always, John le Carré tells a good story and creates characters who stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

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