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I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. - W.H. Auden

What if you devoted your entire life to something because you thought it was the right thing, the good thing, the moral thing, and then you ended your life wondering if you had been completely wrong? It happens to a lot of people, particularly because things shift on us as the years go by and change in ways we do not notice or acknowledge, and because with age comes wisdom, or if not wisdom, perhaps just clearer vision.

MacArthur famously said, “Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away.� Perhaps the same can be said of old spies, cold wars, and people who live on the fringe of society, just clambering for survival. And, if they have not died, but are only faded, can they be restored?

These were some of the thoughts I had while reading this novel, because John le Carre is one of those who sees the underbelly of life, and the betrayals it contains, and does not flinch. The time is 1974-75, Vietnam is falling from the hands of the Americans, Southeast Asia is a hotbed of activity, legal and illegal, the British still exercise control of a sort over Hong Kong, and all the major powers are jockeying for power. The Russians are actively working the Asian world for intelligence, and Karla, Smiley’s nemesis is playing cards that the British and Americans don’t even know he is holding.

Enter George Smiley, an aging British spy, who still carries the moral code and convictions of World War II, but must try to fit that image of the world into a more cynical, less forgiving, reality. He releases into this malestrom a seasoned operative by the name of Jerry Westerby, a man who seems so isolated and lonely that he made me ache, another man who has given his life to an occupation that breeds doubt and insecurity in men who are so seemingly strong and fearless. And, another man who is questioning what it has all been about.

Peter Guilliam sums it up rather well, I thought, and in doing so lays out the basic premise of the entire book:

One day, thought Guillam, as he continued listening, one of two things will happen to George. He’ll cease to care or the paradox will kill him. If he ceases to care, he’ll be half the operator he is. If he doesn’t, that little chest will blow up from the struggle of trying to find the explanation for what we do.

This is the sixth book in the Smiley series, and the second in the Karla Trilogy, and what I have observed in reading them is that George Smiley’s struggle to reconcile the job he does--the terrible consequences that often go with it, the deception and the sacrifices--is constant, never-ending, and personally costly. That he survives at all is miraculous, but he does, because he is the heart and conscience of the Circus, and eventually the heart is needed or the body dies.

One last thought, if anyone can write a more complex, intricate, entangled plot without failing to leave even the slightest element dangling, I have never encountered them. This is a spy novel, of course, but it is oh so much more. When you close the book, you will not leave the characters or the story behind, and you will see parallels all around you in our own society, in the duplicitousness of government, in the way some people play chess with other people’s lives, in the way sometimes everyone loses.