by
John le Carre
468
pages, Sceptre
Review
by Pat Black
“I
used to love those double-double games,” says an old intelligence researcher in
Smiley’s People. “All of life was
there.”
Smiley’s People is
the final part of John Le Carre’s “Karla” trilogy, concluding the long-term,
long-distance battle of wits between British spymaster George Smiley and his
Soviet nemesis, the head of the Thirteenth Directorate of Intelligence in
Moscow – the man with the curiously feminine codename.
Smiley,
the hero of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
and the reluctant leader of the decimated British secret service in The Honourable Schoolboy, is once again
in retirement at the start of this novel. Old, fat, owlish, short-sighted, with
the air of a thoroughly repressed Oxford don, Smiley is the anti-Bond. It’s
difficult to imagine him cocking a gun without pursing his lips in distaste,
and it’s almost as difficult to think of him slipping between the sheets with
pretty young things. Indeed, his wife, Ann, is quite famously unfaithful,
having proven to be Smiley’s great weakness and the entry point, pun intended,
for Karla’s mole in Tinker Tailor.
Smiley
might well have been a librarian in another life, burrowed deep in a section of
dusty, forgotten books in dead languages which no-one ever, ever borrows. Indeed,
there’s a hint that this is precisely what he has done, dedicating his
attention to abstruse academic interests and idling towards the grave in a
dingy house in London, while his wife whoops it up with ballet dancers and
actors down in their country pile in Cornwall.
But,
as in Tinker Tailor, Smiley is
brought back to do what he does best. An Estonian general Smiley once acted as
case officer for has been found in Hampstead Heath with his face turned into
raw mince by Soviet bullets. The old general, Vladimir, had been active of
late, seemingly chasing ghosts, before being assassinated. The current
incumbents of the Circus had written the general off as a crank, a relic from
the early days of the Cold War, paying a heavy price for a cry for attention.
Smiley’s superiors at the Circus and Whitehall want him to bury the case. But
Smiley, in his inimitable way, smells a rat.
Earlier,
in Paris, a Soviet defector is approached by an amateurish Russian agent,
offering her a chance to be reunited with her daughter, left behind following
defection. The woman begins to suspect that the person who is to be spirited
out of Russia is not in fact her daughter. She, too, sniffs a rat, and decides
to get in touch with a contact in the espionage world she has long left behind:
an old Estonian general, now living in London.
To
describe the rest of the plot in any kind of haste would be to do it a
disservice. Smiley’s People pays its
threads out slowly. Although you’ve got plenty of time to slow down and take a
good look at what’s happening, the tangle of contacts, aliases, double agents
and double-crosses can take a while to unravel. It’s a ponderous book, but I
don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. At the expense of repeating myself, it’s
this considered, measured quality that I enjoyed the most about the Karla trilogy.
To me it was unusual and therefore addictive, this slow-burning tension, this
perfectly-plotted pathway, that finally leads us to a confrontation between the
two heavyweights.
As
before, the contrast between “tradecraft” in a novel written in 1981 and what
we see in today’s espionage fiction is stark. I can just about remember the
early 1980s, but this era’s buttonhole photography, radio microphones and hair-across-the-crack-in-the-door-style
security arrangements, as described by Le Carre, seems like the Stone Age.
Today’s surveillance and intelligence gathering culture is science fiction in
comparison, all of it underpinned by that great esoteric language, the electric
Sanskrit of machine code.
One
particular section where operatives strive to capture a photo of a Russian
agent embracing his mistress seems quaint in a world where people are using
tiny hand-held computers to take pictures of themselves, and the world around
them, constantly.
And
then there’s CCTV to consider, automatic number plate recognition, computer
passwords, keystroke mirroring, internet banking and mobile phone technology
which can tell security services precisely where you are and where you’ve been,
should they be minded to check. Smiley and Co’s trails of breadcrumbs and
gingerbread houses look like fun in comparison to our time’s cold, brutal,
technical world of instant recognition and retribution.
Smiley’s
Englishness is his blessing as well as his curse. He got my dander up good and
early, remarking on Circus operative Strickland’s Scottishness, his “Aberdonian
brogue”, as a shorthand way of saying that he is brash, obnoxious and
aggressive. That’s the kind of observation that I would tend to peg out on the
same line as racism.
Smiley
wonders why it is that Scotsmen are drawn to the world of espionage. What’s it
to you, George? I might wonder the same of moneyed English public school boys
and positions of power, their cane-crossed buttocks nestled in hot seats all across
Westminster and Whitehall. But, that slip aside, Smiley is a compelling character
with a solid moral core. His deep-rooted snobbery could be upsetting in any
other context except national security, but his mannered priggishness and
protestant work ethic serve him well.
Tough
times call for tough measures, though. Ultimately, Smiley the white knight is forced
to use the kind of tactics his nemesis is famous for in order to bring him to
account. This is portrayed as a defeat, but personally, I think Karla has
caused enough chaos in Smiley’s life to merit a bit of George’s marvellous medicine.
Endearingly, Smiley retains enough of his poise and moral certainty to know
that resorting to the tactics of the brigand is just not cricket, old bean.
This
is perhaps the book’s most ludicrous aspect, as far-fetched as underwater bases
and satellite-swallowing spacecraft in James Bond; the notion that the men of
the Circus are somehow morally superior to their counterparts in Moscow.
Perhaps
the concept of western “freedom” carried more weight in 1981, an ideal not
quite so corrupted by casino capitalism, neoliberal abuses of power and
geopolitical sabre-rattling. Perhaps having an enemy firmly fixed in one
location and one political bracket gave us some kind of moral compass which
we’ve been lacking since the end of the Cold War.
Smiley
finally confronts his one-woman sexual earthquake of a wife in this book,
although the kiss-off is done in an oblique, restrained way. This is one time
when you realise the real world would have been far harsher on flighty Ann –
she would probably have had to answer to treason charges, given her behaviour
with the mole in Tinker Tailor. This
is done, we feel, to cut away Smiley’s ties with his private life and matters
of the heart, to focus all his efforts on bringing Karla down.
Because
Karla has made a mistake – the oldest one in history – and Smiley is all over
it like Bank Holiday rain. With one mild twitch of a stalk of wheat, the old
man spreads his wings over the fields like a golden-eyed owl in the night.
In
Tinker Tailor, The Honourable Schoolboy
and now Smiley’s People, it is always
women who underpin the motivations of the principals, opening the door to their
betrayal or downfall. In Tinker Tailor,
Smiley’s weak point is Ann – a factor exploited over a period of years by Karla
after he stole Smiley’s cigarette lighter, which bears a simple inscription
from his wife. In The Honourable
Schoolboy, Jerry Westerby is doomed the minute he meets his scarlet woman
in the east. In this novel, it’s Karla’s turn to have his heart turned inside
out, his emotions leaving a trail as clear and bright as a streamer of blood in
the open sea.
The
portrayal of women is far less sexist to modern eyes than in the first two
books; indeed, in Ostrakova, and in Estonian information mule Willem’s wife, there
is an attempt to get into women’s minds that doesn’t paint them as silly,
dependent mares, giggling strumpets or flat-shoed harridans - although the
depiction of mentally ill “Alexandra”, the key to the whole affair, had a nasty
whiff of the Victorian loony in the attic.
With
his usual understated cunning and fine-honed intelligence, Smiley closes in on
his quarry. Pleasingly, he is not just restricted to ledgers, libraries and
sealed reports in this book, taking on the role of active fieldman in order to
unpick the knots. There are moments of suspense and the odd bout of violence,
but this is more about Smiley covering his tracks, and uncovering those of
people who went before him in Switzerland, Hamburg and Paris, than car chases
or gun battles. For the most part, the book is a series of tense conversations,
but Smiley’s sabbatical out in the field shifts the story into a higher gear.
Likeable
sidekick and man of action Peter Guillam makes a brief appearance, an easier
bedfellow for James Bond than Smiley. Guillam is about fifty, has a wife half
his age, drives a fast car and likes the buzz of the job. Here, at last, is a
spy fantasy figure we can relate to. Toby Esterhase, a Hungarian agent, is also
called back into action in Smiley’s service, and provides vital assistance as
the noose is placed round Karla’s neck.
A
problem you may run into is that the sumptuous 1983 TV adaptation, starring
Alec Guinness as Smiley, follows the book pretty much to the letter. There are
even lines of dialogue which gave me a flashback to the show. So if, like me,
you knew the Karla story through the DVDs first, then there will be no surprises
for you in Smiley’s People.
In
turn, though, the old TV show did something the novel could not. It revealed to
me Alec Guinness’s acting secret: react to everything as if someone has just
farted. Watch his face, next time, and tell me I’m wrong.
It’s
the best novel in the trilogy. But what a contast to today’s world – even the
fictional one. Compare the “Moscow rules” Le Carre follows to bring us his story,
set just 30-odd years ago, with the microchip tempest of 24, or Spooks, with their
lightning-strike editing, instant global connectivity and flying saucer
technology. In another 30 years our spy stories and the landscape they operate
in will look completely different, again, and it’s today’s technology that will
seem creaky in comparison.
By
that time, we might even have a geographically and ideologically fixed enemy
with which to cross swords, to help us delude ourselves that we are in some way
morally superior.
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