Smiley's People the book part 2

George Smiley travelled incognito to Hamburg under a false passport and Circus money which he had not handed in when he retired and kept at his club. He appears to have told no one of his mission including former colleagues at the Circus. He had learned from Toby Esterhase that the way to make contact with Otto Leipzig in an emergency was through the man’s friend who owned a sex night club in Hamburg. This fitted into the picture he had printed out from the negative which the General had obtained from Villem Craven, the lorry driver and son of his brother comrade in arms who had died heroically in the war.

The photo was of two men, naked closer to old than middle age, on the kind of communal bed at such places as the Hamburg club, with two young women also naked. George who met Otto once recognised him as one of the two men and the reader is left to assume that either he had shown Connie or by some other means he had identified the other man as the Russian hood Kirov who was attached to the Russian Embassy in Paris. Smiley had paid an all year entrance fee of 175 marks at the club and an additional 25 for the first drink. He had seated himself alone at a table and given the waiter a tip so that he was not pestered by any of the naked women waiting for new customers. Other customers according to the novel were enjoying their intimate company while on the stage a couple went through the motions of intercourse. In the TV production there is a sado-masochistic couple stimulating play followed by a lesbian couple as he waited for the owner to arrive at 11 pm because we are advised he had other clubs to visit beforehand.

Smiley is given a meeting and hospitality and carefully communicates what has happened to the client of his enterprise with the photograph which he presumed was taken for the customer from a vantage point on one side of the office. Kretzschmar appears a cultured man of no illusion who emphasises that he operates a good business, selling sex where others sell ties, respecting the confidentiality of his clients except in this one instance because of his affection for the General who trusted in Otto because of his past services. Kretzschmar asks several times if Smiley has anything to give and when Smiley says no he says pity. Smiley is able to get information about the likely whereabouts of Otto who has not been in contact for some two weeks which fits into the period when Villem returned with the negative and the General was assassinated. Smiley says he is anxious to warn Otto who he believes is also in danger, adding that he thought the man would know that but had participated from choice, a point with the club owner concurs. There were issues of honour and principle involved.

We then follow Smiley to the home of Otto which is occupied by a young couple who had been making love and they advise where Otto has a boat at a location among a group of camped travellers on the shoreline. They are unfriendly suspecting him of being police but eventually someone rows him out to the anchored boat. Here he finds Otto (Vladek Sheybal) naked, bound hand and foot, tortured and dead for sometime. Before leaving he notes some yellow chalk mark and a line handing over the side followed by a sports shoe with a small packet sewn into the toe and later finds that the packet contains half a postcard. He manages to escape from the site as a couple of travellers take off the boot lid of the car which they fold and place back within the boot.

He then visits Kretzschmar at his home where he is having a barbecue. He had been given a personal card with the information. He explains what has happened and gives him the half of the card which the night club owner matches and then gives him a copy a video of what happened when after the sting Otto confronted Kirov and blackmailed the hood to reveal what he has been up to. There are also audio tapes of what was said. Kretzschmar is distressed by the news of the death of Otto and offers his resources in support including manpower but Smiley says although appreciative he will manage and will fulfil what the General and Otto had in mind. He does ask for the man to book him a flight to London under the name he has travelled but we see him deposit his fake passport in a bin and then travel to Paris by train using his real name.

In Paris Madam Ostrakova has been under observation and threat and on her way home from the bus is pursued by two men who throw her on to the bonnet of their following car. She survives with only bad bruises after persuading the hospital to keep her in over night. Following this she hides in her flat fearing to go out and without food and without as much sleep as she can, sitting in a chair holding an old hand gun after persuading the concierge and her husband to tell any visitors that she gone away to stay with friends. Eventually she agrees to open the door to the concierge who has Smiley with her, just in time as she is at the point of collapse from lack of food and sleep. Smiley contacts his former work colleague and assistant Peter Guillam who features more in the Honourable Schoolboy that the first of the trilogy who is now married, but not to Molly Meakin and whose wife is expecting a child. He is now attached to the British Embassy in Paris but his work on behalf of the Circus is severely curtailed because of the Government policy.

He does exactly as Smiley asks of him. He leaves the office and from a phone box contacts the Paris emergency services to go to the building and while they are there blocking the movement of the Russian surveillance vehicles they take Olga to Peter’s home to be looked after until he can make arrangements for her to go to the safe house of a couple who had been with the underground resistance during the Second World war. He gives Peter the video and audio tapes for his assistant to go take to London insisting that he ensures the Circus meet him when he arrives at Heathrow airport. He provides a covering note and asks Peter to arrange for a meeting with Sir Saul Enderby and his advisers when he returns to London after first ensuring that Madam Ostrakova is settled in safety.

Peter is none too pleased with Smiley when he discovers that the operation to date has been unauthorised and that his position at the embassy is in doubt especially having called out the emergency services. However once he has brought Smiley back to London he realises that the situation may have been justified when a top level meeting within the Circus is arranged at 8 pm in the evening.

At the meeting is Sir Paul Enderby, the new head of research replacing Connie, one Molly Meakham who refers to the boss as Chief. I thought there was reference in the book to the infamous Sam Collins in attendance, now Director of Operations who plotted behind Smiley’s back with Enderby and Lacon to ensure the product was delivered to the American rather than to the UK interrogation centre; also Lauder Strickland, another yes man to Enderby and Lacon played by Bill Patersen. First they show a couple of frames of the video at the moment when the blackmail is revealed by Otto, They are then provided with a transcript of the audio tapes which runs to over 100 pages and where Enderby reads the salient points, This covers that a member of the Russian embassy team in Switzerland has opened an account into which is paid £10000 a month which is the fee for a young woman with the name of Alexandra Ostrakova at a mental health clinic and where he visits each week and then gives a report working directly to Karla and outside all the usual systems and checks..

There is a discussion as to whether George should be empowered to go to Bern and attempt to turn the contact, Anton Grigoriev, and therefore provide a direct route to attempt to blackmail Karla into voluntarily coming over. Enderby is torn between the implications if the mission fails because he does not dare seek permission from Lacon who will be required to go to the Wise Men committee for approval knowing it is against current policy and would reveal the clandestine activity undertaken todate also without authority, and with the glory which would follow if the mission is successful, especially the kudos with the Americans.

He insists that Peter Guillam accompanies Gorge as his minder and George bring back Toby Esterhase to organise the surveillance team, and with Strickland observing and reporting back directly to Enderby. The team stakes out the clinic where the girl, Karla‘s daughter, is being treated and also the movements of Grigoriev who is hen pecked by his wife and has been informed of his mission in the Swiss capital. As with the operation in the Honourable Schoolboy considerable attention is given to establishing the details of the financial account and Grigoriev’s control and direct involvement as he draws cash to pay the fees of the clinic which is run by an Order of Nuns.

There is a genuine amusing situation developed when Anton is taken by the team on one of the only opportunities each week when he is on his own. He and his family are offered a welcome in the west as an alternative to exposure to the interests in Russia who would take action against him for participating in the unofficial use of funds. He is concerned about the length of time he is away fro m his wife and the grilling he will get from her when he returns so Smiley stiffens his backbone and provides him with the script to explain to his wife why he will be late. The ploy is a great success and the diplomat realises it is something he can use again to gain more freedom from the wife which he finds funny roaring with contagious laughter especially when he says that what has happened is looking more and more a good thing.

Smiley then goes to visit the young woman to have first hand knowledge of her and to also find out the strength of the link with her father. It emerges she is aware of being watched by a man in the distance at various stages during her life but without his ever having direct contact. She believes she is Titiana and the daughter of someone important. She hates where she is and pleads with Smiley to accompany him.

Smiley then writes to Karla offering him asylum with the opportunity to be with his daughter and to provide the treatment available which will be able to cure her condition. Otherwise she will be doomed to state institutions and he will never see or have contact with her again. He will also be exposed for his unauthorised activities

There is the final scene where they wait in Berlin at one of the crossing points for Karla to come. At the key moment he seems to hesitate when on the bridge from the Russian end of the Border crossing looks back and lights a cigarette. There is mounting tension and building of excitement as he continues and George goes out to confront him although the two only exchange looks at this point rather than words. The man drops the lighter given by Anne with an inscription and which Karla took when the two met in India all those years ago. The taking of the lighter has been used against George by people like Enderby and Lacon. Smiley had commented to one such recent jibe that it as a common lighter although they had been made to last. He is not seen to pick up the lighter nor is anyone else. Karla who is played by Patrick Stewart is driven off. Peter Guillam remains alone with Smiley and comments “you won George.” George reflects without emotion, yes I have, or words to similar effect.

But there is sense that this far from a victory more the closing of a long drawn out chapter within his life and that he has now to come to terms with retirement away from the Circus and his life as a Spy and Spy chief. He is to make one more appearance in a Le Carré book when he is asked to lecture at the training school and to reminisce on his experience. He does not become involved in the present.

And what of Olga Ostrakova? When she recovers her strength a little and is able to relax at the safe house George and Peter has arranged for her, there is sufficient time for George to explain to her something of what the Russians were up to though this was before the last phase had commenced so what was said would have been limited and is not shared with the reader. Her main concern is the question: will she ever see or have contact with her daughter again? Gorge helps her to accept that it will never happen and she must find a way of continuing as she had done before. The irony is that this was the right thing to have said when the book was written. It was a decade later that the Berlin wall was breached marking the collapse of the Soviet system. Mother and daughter assuming both remained alive would have been able to meet and if they wished live together.

It was just after the removal of the wall with the reunification of Germany that Smiley was invited to lecture at the training school. He asked not to be invited again. By then he and Ann would have known that whatever had passed between them they needed each other for the present and whatever future was left to them.

Smiley's People

After seeing the recent film and read Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor and the Honourable Schoolboy of the Karla Trilogy, I could not resist continuing with Smiley’s People and watching the original TV taped video at the same time. Doing this involved changing video players, cleaning the video heads and readjusting the second video player to the tape. This all took time but was well worth the effort because the TV script brilliantly transfers the book to screen with one if the best assemblies of British acting. describe.

I found the book and the TV production the most dramatic and engaging of the three works and all three can be experienced individually with satisfaction and enjoyment while the three together do form a major work in this genre.

And yet the basic plot with which I was already familiar is a simple one. It is known that the head Russian Spooks, Karla married and had a daughter with mental health problems and when he uses a émigré widow in order to bring her to the West for treatment, George Smiley officially retired for the second time within a few short years is first brought back to clear up a potentially damaging mess that ahs occurred with the death of a former agent, and then alerted to what is happening sets about creating a situation in which Karla is forced to defect if he wishes the young woman to get the treatment she needs.

The difference between Le Carré and so many others working in this genre of writing is the understanding of human behaviour and his ability to draw characters whose outward personalities we can recognise and which in the BBC production the casting was superb. The only difference I can immediately see between the TV production and the book is a slight variation in the sequence of some events to ensure the that TV watcher has a clarity in their understanding for with the book one can stop and reflect or re-read a passage to ensure you have grasped what the author is communicating. As in all three of the Karla novels Le Carré switches from the individuals caught up the main event and the Spooks trying to understand what is happening before they personally act to bring the situation to a satisfactory conclusion.

The work begins with an émigré living in Paris who has reached a level of security although she has five different locks on her flat door. I encountered this fear when as a social worker I needed to visit a family of refugees from one of the post World War uprisings, Poland, Hungry, it does not matter which and had to wait for a similar number of locks and bolts to be opened before gaining entry and was explained that the mother had become and remained a nervous wreck after the experiencing the invasions of Germans and then the Russians. While the fear of the bombs is enough for most of us to deal with, being the subject of not one but two totalitarian and ideological invasions is beyond the comprehension of most of us.

The present level of the personal security of Madame Osktravova, played by Eileen Atkins, is shattered when she is approach by a Russian hood, Oleg Kirov working at the Embassy in Paris who offers the woman the opportunity to see her daughter once more. Her husband a nationalist and a Jew was banished to Siberia from where he escaped to the West and then his wife subsequently against all expectation was given permission to join him during his last moments as he was dying from cancer. The price was to leave her daughter behind who was taken into care and who according to Kirov (Dudley Sutton) had become a criminal by running away from the institution. It had been decided to rid the country of the young woman so all Olga had to do was to fill an application for the daughter to come to her in the West and permission would be granted. But Olga was no push over and in Paris she had been in contact with General Vladimir, (played by Curt Jurgens), the leader of the Estonian émigré’s with his chief Assistant Mikkel (Michael Gough) who also work for the Circus as an agent looked after by Toby Esterhase in terms of day to day contact and by George Smiley as the supervisor “the Vicar“. Because his role had been exposed he had fled to London when he had been effectively pensioned off in the form of a grant to his organisation, after the coup in which Saul Enderby, of the Foreign Office had become the permanent head of the Spooks and gained his knighthood after and despite George’s success in the saga of the Honourable Schoolboy.

In addition there had been a Political change with the policy decision taken to end the clandestine activities of the Circus in general including those of the émigré’s considered out of touch with reality and a nuisance in terms of the official attempts to establish better relations with the Soviet Union and is occupied territories. I remember articles and news programmes which from time to time painted an unsympathetic picture of these aging individuals clinging to past and scheming for something which most commentators considered unrealistic. This of course may have been a double bluff, presenting one government position for International consumption while behind the scenes everything was being done to bring about the collapse which took place against all general expectation.

In this instance Olga writes to General about what had happened and that no daughter had arrived. The General makes contact with an associate in Western Germany Otto Leipzig someone who had worked for Karla directly and had become a double agent, a fantasist at times, a racketeer and a pimp but who had provided valuable information over time about the Russian operations and is a personal friend of the owner of a sex night club in Hamburg.

In the first part of the novel and TV experience all we know is that the General had made contact with a European Lorry driver based in England and accompanies him on a journey to one of the ports bringing with him a bag/basket filled with oranges and that he is to meet someone on a ferry with a copy of the previous day’s paper who will place a folder of film negatives on top of the basket which he must bring back.

Later we learn that the mission had been carried out by Villem the son of a literal brother in arms of the General who had died a hero in the war and brought up by the General who he had come to regard as father rather than an uncle. He had married to Stella, a British woman, played by Maureen Lipman who wanted her husband to have nothing to do with the past, especially now that he got a well paid job and was planning to buy their own home. She had effectively banned all contact with the General so when Smiley arrives as part of his clean up operation and to establish what happened, she first denies her husband is present and then is shocked to learn that the two had contact with the general accompanying him to the coastal port with the basket giving him the instructions and then visiting on his return while his wife was out the house to collect the negatives.

The negatives had been passed to him by Otto who had also been to Paris to warn Olga she had to be careful. The General had replied to her letter sending her the torn half of an unused postcard. The man he would send would slip the other half of the card under her door so she would know it was someone she could trust and who she nicknamed as the magician.

Back in London the General had become very excited on receipt of the negatives. In one of the early parts of the book and TV production he attempts to ring George who he knows as Max at the Circus. But Max is long retired and the young man, Nigel Mostyn (Stephen Riddle) a recent recruit but sufficiently experienced to have heard George speak at the training school, had taken the call on a special phone used exclusively for contact from the émigré’s and other pensioned off agents. Mostyn asks the General to ring back (when his section head gets back from lunch) but the man does not return until later and then goes off for long weekend leaving Mostyn to deal with the situation himself.


Mostyn has checked the simple data record system which informs who the general is and who Max is and although this is not stated in either the book or TV production it can also be assumed he checked who the Sandman was. In addition to be told to deal the situation himself he had been told not to contact Smiley because the superiors knew how Smiley would react and because he was part of the former Order which the new political master had effectively abolished.

The General had insisted on Moscow Rules, the traditional spy craft of leaving nothing to chance. He had arranged a safe house close to Hampstead Heath where he had bread Vodka, black bread, a salami type sausage, gherkins and the proceeded to the heath and a particular hut where he had placed a drawing pin/ The General had paced a chalk mark to say all was well and he would proceed to the safe house while Mostyn had gone to the house to wait for General who had not arrived. His body was later found with his face half blown away.

It was at this point that Sir Saul had contacted Oliver Lacon, the Cabinet Office link, another super casting, with Anthony Bate, and his tendency to talk in platitudes and a lack of insight into people or understanding of the world beyond his limited public school Oxbridge experience. He wants the matter cleared up in such a way that the General never had any connection with the Circus and with no loose ends to be followed. As his “vicar” Lacon also argues that the man’s death could be said to have been Smiley’s responsibility. The Circus had been damaged enough by the recent past and was in the political doghouse so that any new scandal would cause it broken up further or abolished. There was now a committee of wise men who had to approve anything and everything in advance. Lacon as does the equally awful Saul Enderby later played in this instance by Barry Foster also ask Smiley about his wayward but influential wife and well connected wife. Is she well, is she with him or away up to her tricks. Smiley would prefer no reference and when they want to get under his skins they refer to her relationship with the traitor Bill Haydon fearing that if Smiley and confided in his wife and she with Haydon then the info would have gone straight back to Moscow.

Mostyn who appears a good and sensible lad leaves the service because he has lost his first agent. In TV series Enderby says he tried to get Mostyn into the BBC but there was not interested so he had gone into a Monastery. In the book when Mostyn reveal to Smiley the conversation was taped Lacon stamps on the young man saying this is a confidential development and Smiley is no longer part of the time but it is a move to prevent Smiley learning what was said. Smiley gets the information Mostyn privately that the General had said he was able to deliver the Sandman and that he had two proofs. The reason Karla is called the Sandman is because everyone he comes into contact is sent to sleep!

When examining the body and tracing the evidence of the man’s walk along paths through the Heath Smiley notes that he is shot in the face, a Karla trade mark to serve as a warning. He also notes that although it is evident from the foot pattern that the General had hurried when he knew someone was following he had stopped at one point before continuing to where the actual assassin was waiting for him. Smiley is shown the body and the route by Michael Elphick who plays the police Chief Superintendent who has been instructed to cooperate with Smiley who is not there so to speak and has to leave the scene before the press arrive.

The following day he inspects the flat of the General in the hope that there is evidence to help him learn what the émigré leader was working on and he notices a large pack of French cigarettes which we later learn had been bought as a present by Villem. Previously he had inspected the contents of pockets of the General which had been placed in plastic bags. This included a receipt for a taxi which at over £17 indicated a long or length journey and which after bribing the driver revealed that he had taken the General to the home of Villem Craven stopping off to by a toy for his Godson on the way and then waiting an hour to collect him to bring him home. There was no cigarette packet although the General was a chain smoker.

He also returns to the Heath and explores the undergrowth at the point where he stopped when knowing he was being followed and then spots a packet of French cigarettes placed in branch of tree. It is only later that he carefully examines the picture from the negative which he develops at his home. Before this he visits the office of the General to express his condolences to Mikkel and to Mikkel’s wife who works as a secretary clerical officer and who is known to be one of the many women with whom the General had a relationship. He has been told that Mikkel had been trying to get in with Villem following return from his mission and the General’s visit to him about the £50 he had loaned and which Villem said he had returned to the General, Smiley speculates whether Mikkel had spoken to the enemy out of ambition to replace the General and because of the relationship with the man’s wife. Similarly he had questioned Villem and his wife to check that had not betrayed the man.

There was one piece of information learned from the General which had confirmed Smiley’s concern from the outset that the General had asked for him and not his first contact Toby Eaterhase given that he had been such a stickler for standard procedures. He had expressed great disappointment about Toby some two weeks previously.

This Smiley follows up when he visits the dodgy art gallery Toby now runs following his retirement. Toby Eaterhase is a central European who Smiley rescued and recruited when they were both young men and Smiley a fieldman, In Tinker Tailor he had become head of the pavements artists those who conduct human surveillance and a member of the fifth floor confidants of the former chief, of Haydon and the others. He had been leaned on by Smiley to become his man in setting up the unmasking of Haydon and was played in the film by a David Suchet of Poirot fame as a pathetic wimp who runs with the hares and the hounds according to appears to be winning. In the TV productions he is played by Bernard Hepton who went on to play the leading role in a wartime underground series based in Belgium whose name escapes and I am too lazy to check.

His portrayal is of a confident con man selling fakes and besieged by creditors. He admits that the General came to see him with the proposition that he should go over to Hamburg to collect the proofs that Karla had created a legend, a fake history in order to place a spy using the identity of the child of an émigré and that he had arranged for the Russian hood Oleg Kirov to be blackmailed by his friend Otto Leipzig with the help of sex night club owner Claus Kretschmar. Toby had rejected the request because he had no regard for Otto and did not want to get involved again having been pensioned off.
George makes one further visit in which he is officially discouraged from doing. He goes to Oxfordshire to see Connie Sachs) played by Beryl Reid, as he had done in Tinker Tailor then bringing her back to work for him in the Honourable Schoolboy. Now she is disabled running an animal sanctuary with the help of a former female member of the Circus who had a breakdown, Hilary (Norma West), who is alarmed at the visit of Smiley fearing is it going to upset the secure existence she had developed with Connie. He presses Connie and her failing memory who confirms his own understandings that Karla had married but had been responsible for the execution of the woman when she commenced to question the regime. They had a daughter that Karla had raised at arm’s length and who had become psychological disturbed.

I am not sure at what point we get to meet Anne his wife, played by Sian Phillips who also plays the same role in the first book but who is only seen briefly from behind in the film. In the book she rings Smiley seeking his company at but he is unable to invite or go to her, fully engaged and anxious that anyone who may have knowledge of the legend is likely to be eliminated. In this TV adaptation he visits her at her father’s home to explain that he is going away and that she had best remain where she is and that he is arranging for two men to provide security day and night. She asks if he is unable to tell her what is going on because of her affair with Bill Haydon.

Smiley has the technique of never answering anyone’s questions, says goodbye and goes to Hamburg.

The Honourable Schoolboy part two

The shaking of the tree that Smiley demanded is also the title of the second part of the Honourable Schoolboy which sees Jerry Westerby under the guidance of Craw attempting to force Ko and his brother into declaring themselves by establishing contact with Liese Worth, as she had become known. He posed as himself but in the guise of one of the investors in the distillery operation- cum racket- which Elizabeth had claimed to have the concession in Laos. He was also a journalist seeking a story, arguing that their chance reunion, although she did not remember him because they had not previously met, was his interest in her chum Tiny Ricardo.

He is dead she persisted, the version previously accepted by the Circus until the American cousins revealed they had fouled up. He pressed but she insisted so as part of the game he accepted this in exchange for a dinner with her as consolation prize. Thus it was Jerry came to see Ms Worth as more than an assignment and thus the wise readers suspect this was to be his downfall reminding once more of Richard Burton in the Spy who refused to come in from the Cold because of the official treatment of a woman he had come to care about, although she was the only precipitating cause of his final action.

Over drinks and the meal he asked her about Tiny and also how she got the scars on her chin which she claimed had occurred while fox hunting on the parental estate in Shropshire with a mother who did not know how to boil an egg. She was he considered one of the best liars and actors he had encountered. She persisted that Ricardo, her lost love, had died in a plane crash on the Thai Cambodian border 18 months previously and that no body had been found. He persisted that the evidence was that a 15 year old girl had taken her offspring to the Mexican embassy claiming that Ricardo was the father which meant he was alive somewhere. Whatever she said now she was pass that info back shaking the tree, a little.
Her also wanted her to explain how suddenly the investors, the distillery back in Scotland had all got their money back which Ricardo and she had borrowed to fund whatever they were really into, also some time after his alleged death. She had made a phone call and the relief arrived in the form of Mr Tiu. The young woman claimed that she and Ricardo had operated a ramshackle outfit with planes their last legs do anything for anyone anywhere if the price was right. Jerry then pressed home the point he had been briefed to make casually asking if the rumour was correct that their customers included the Russians. Tiu reminded of the Chinese distaste for the Russians and Ms Worth ridiculed the idea of having a Russian paymaster. The two returned to the apartment Ko had provided Ms Worth while Jerry wondered how much he had now shaken their tree.

It was not just Guillam who wondered what game Sam Collins was playing when Jerry spotted him keeping watch on the apartment and he demanded angrily of Craw and the Circus what the hell was going on. Craw advised the centre that he told Jerry he was mistaken and that Collins was not back on the payroll and had no connection with the Ko situation. Smiley was worried that his other means for shaking the tree had been rumbled for he believed that only he, Connie, Sam and Craw knew that Collins had been sent as well. It is a pity that Guillam did not share his sighting of Sam in the office with Lacon and Enderby with Smiley or Smiley might have thought otherwise. For the moment Smiley was content with how Craw had handled Jerry’s rant.

Guillam meanwhile was fully occupied with Molly Meakin as she covered bite marks on her neck when invited to attend the enlarge gathering of burrowers in the Circus conference room with Smiley presiding as Doc di Salis unveiled his finding out the Chinese name of brother Nelson - Yao Kai-sheng and from that his official records.

The man was born in 1928 and of humble parents. There was reference to moving to Shangahi but no mention of the Missionaries and their school. From an early age he had joined then clandestine revolutionary groups and studied the available literature. He had tried to join Mao but was unable to do so because of his youth so he concentrated on achieving a united front between thee students at the University of Communication and the peasants. His official Chinese records show that he was a heroic student seeing the light long before others. He was at University in Leningrad between 53 and 56 and there he appears to have been recruited by ‘brother’ Ivan Ivanovitch Bretley a Karla trained talent spotter. It was arranged for him to have a tour of Soviet Shipyards according to the Chinese record before returning to Shanghai and placed in charge of a railway workshop. The Circus knew this meant he went off to the Karla spy school for a year before his first placement. Smiley enquired as to any reference to Drake. He was reported to have died during the Communist Take Over in 1949. Smiley said it was a case full of people pretending to be dead and hoped they someday they found a real corpse. Within an hour he regretted his remark.

By the time of the Cultural Revolution Nelson had been given control of the bulk of the naval tonnage through his management of the main shipyards. And then came the cultural revolution and he was taken down with the rest. But his brains, technical know how and experience was needed so by 1973, just about the time that the payments to brother Drake got into swing he was fully rehabilitated and rising fast. He quickly gets appoint with responsibilities for the navy in Shangahi and then to the central committee of the Communist Party and had become and adviser to the committee concerned with munitions and Defence. Everyone digested the significance of this information.
This now made Nelson a gold stream of all gold streams because he had intelligence about the details of the crucial Chinese submarine fleet. The Americans were spending millions attempting to gain the information. The Doc continued that Ricardo made his opium running trip within months of the rehabilitation and Tiu had also gone to Shanghai six weeks after Ricardo. And then parting gift that there had been a German Intelligence report suggesting that Nelson had recently been co-opted onto the Chinese equivalent of Circus steering group because of his knowledge of electronic surveillance although this latter point was a guess as no one knew how the Russian Intelligence operated at its top.

Smiley asked Doc to speculate on the motive for turning traitor on his country and the Doc suggests that there did not need to be motive. Nelson would have been asked perhaps as a vigilante or custodian of Russia’s support for China by providing information. In my view if so then the events of the cultural revolution would have reinforced the Russian view in his mind, together with his fortunate advancement subsequently. The money was available for Nelson should he be forced or able to leave China.

Smiley then asked about another flyer who had worked with Ricardo called Charlie Marshall. This was information with Molly Meakin had been brought in to advise. They had both been Langley trained at their secret aviation school. They, the Americans, say he was dropped at the end of the Laos war having carried opium which it was assumed he had continued for his own purposes. It was only at this point that Smiley picked up the message which Guillam had been asked to give his leader swiftly having responded to a phone call at the request of the boss.

We learn the news indirectly as the action switches back to Hong Kong and it is Luke the American journalist who is attempting to get the info on the torture and murder of a senior official of the South Asian and China Trustee Department, the man from whom the Circus had been able gain their knowledge of the Russian funded Ko Trust. Smiley held an inquisition about who knew they had blackmailed the man into revealing the required information. There was confidence that Lacon and his masters, Karla and the Americans did not know. The Doc wanted to disassociate himself from such illegal action but he had no need to worry because Smiley said he took full responsibility and suggested the killing meant the tree had indeed been shaken.

This I suggests begs the question of whether any killing of the innocent is justified in a cold war against a nation such as Russia or China or against any religious or political faction in a war against terror on the part of a civilised democracy espousing human and civil rights and the rule of law.

Despite the killing Smiley remains bullish because the victim had no knowledge about those to whom he had given information. They tried to analyse the next moves by those concerned and the decision was taken to get Peter to ask the Cousins to step up electronic surveillance on Tiu, but at a distance without the use of the pavement artists. The next other step taken was to send Jerry to Ventiane and find Ricardo and to do this first by tackling another self styled Captain, Charlie Marshall and which takes Jerry to Phaom Penh the capital of Cambodia and to a veteran journalist Keller who brings him up todate with the local scene and the progress of the Khmer Rouge.

Le Carré paints a vivid and for some exciting picture of the situation which includes a dinner party with the Americans during which there is noise of firing and rocket bombs. Back at the hotel he gets a message to come to a room signed L which Westerby thinks is a woman only to find it is Luke moved to the city to take a closer look at the unfolding events. My understanding is that he then Jerry takes a flight to Vientiane that he made direct inquiries about Ricardo and Marshall was told that Ricardo was dead which left only Marshall who never flew in the mornings and his flight was always chartered.

Jerry also learns that the airport at Phnom Penh closed because the Khmer had exploded an ammunition dump ay the airport. He still bribes and flatters his way onto the tarmac at Vientiane and finds the plane, the Beechcraft in a hanger with the faded emblem of Ko’s racing colours on one side of the fuselage. Here is encountered Marshall giving order to the ‘coolies’ in their language and he gives him the line about doing a story of Ricardo as a means of travelling with him to Ventiane. What appeared to do the trick was a copy of Voltaire’s Candide having learned that the pilot favoured the works of the writer. Charlie sums up their journey prospects in this way. We are forbidden to take off and we are forbidden to land and we fly over the Khmer Rouge for an hour and a half. We are leaking oil and are 500 tons overweight. And you wanna come?

The effort and the risk appeared fruitless as Marshall insisted he did not know Ko or Tiu and was not interested in politics and self styled himself as straightforward opium smuggler. They made it back in the dark and when a jeep arrived for a couple of passengers known in the trade as cooks for their ability in transforming the raw opium into saleable products. It sped off quickly it into dark leaving the plane watched over by two lorry loads of local police there to protect the three tons of opium that had been carried.

And then he saw a figure approach into the plane with a Castro beard and a limp which identified him immediately as the deceased and the plane then took off leaving him alone and to explain his presence to the police. The man shot in the direction of Jerry before departing.
This meant confronting Charlie and he waiting a couple off hours before finding him full of drugs and drink and girls and as Ricardo was to say later, you sat on his head forcing him through cold turkey until you got what you wanted. Charlie becomes a pathetic self pitying figure recounting his story in fits of fear, nostalgia and melancholy together with the lives of Ricardo and Lizzie. He admires Ko and Tiu who along with Ricardo are the good guys. But he does admit that it was Ms Worth who went to Ko and begged him to take the heat away from Ricardo. He talks of the time he, Ricardo and Lizzie lived together in Ventiane, a place that Ko had never gone near but Tiu did. He was able to confirm that it was Sam Collins who had told Lizzie that with her figure and passport he could arrange for her to in out of Hong Kong like a Princess. But he said she had messed up dropped her. Tiu had wanted him to do a special operation but he passed it on to Ricardo. He also revealed where Ricardo was but this is not spelled out in the novel.

Jerry made his report to Craw who passed it to London. He then went to Bangkok and on to Saigon. Luke who had Jerry’s key for his Hong Kong flat took Jerry‘s flight under his name back to Honk Kong. The friends were not to meet again. Why this was so governed the future of Jerry, but only to a degree,

Back home Smiley was caught in a frenzy of changing positions. The Colonial Office insisted that the Governor had to be told because he had invited Ko to a at home function, while the Foreign Office wanted no action in that respect but a full sharing partnership with the Americans and let them take responsibility for finishing the mission, enabling them to counter the Vietnam failure and therefore enhance the UK interest with them.

Molly Meakin fuelled Guillam’s concern about the game being played by declaring that Enderby and the CIA man Martello not only sent their children to the same schools but were spending weekends fishing in Scotland together. In part this was also because Enderby‘s latest wife, his third, was American and a great socialite.

Nothing else appeared to be happening in Hong Kong because although Charlie Marshall had immediate rang Tiu after recovering from his confrontation with Jerry. Tiu had cut him short and told him to see Harry, and Harry was on no body’s radar whoever he was. (Some readers may have thought this was Ricardo though!) There was nothing for five weeks until the news that the captain of Ko’s junk fleet had made a visit to several of the outer islands. There was panic when Ko seemed to vanish on his launch only to return with Ms Worth having been to a Regatta. Smiley decided that Jerry should next move on Ricardo which meant leaving of Saigon where he had languished for five weeks out of reach of Ko and company. Le Carré paints another vivid picture in the last days before the West left the country until the situation steadied again.

Jerry made his way out via North Thailand and then by a dangerous road trip into the middle of nowhere to meet a colonel who Charlie said knew Ricardo and where he was. This was the deal Tiu had fixed for Ricardo, a place where only crazy men would go but where he could land and fly the plane which was his to keep and for Charlie to use for continuing business operation. This was the deal unless Ricardo or Charlie messed up or spoke out in which case they would wish they had never been born, or words to that effect, hence Charlie’s panic and despair at being forced to tell Jerry.

Ricardo expresses surprise to see him believing that he was already dead but then not surprised because as Charlie had described him as determined. What do you want Voltaire he enquired and Jerry said blackmail Ko for two million each and he and Lisie would be free. Ricardo is not interested and comments that he definitely heard Voltaire had a serious accident. He was upset that Voltaire had sat on Charlie’s head and forced cold turkey and had disrespect by taking Lizzie out to dinner when she was with Ko, wanting to know if Jerry had screwed her. He said that if Voltaire survived he should tell Lizzie he forgave her. I made Lizzie, he said, taught her art, culture religion business and religion and how to make love. He went on rather like Charlie ... His seven years in Vietnam, two in Laos and £4000 dollars a month CIA money and him a Catholic. But there was a difference Jerry concluded. He eyes said after I have told you I will kill you.

Jerry explained that the deal was real because the hold they would have was through evidence that Ko had been responsible for Ricardo going to China. Given that he sum being offered was significant greater than that Ricardo had wanted from the CIA Ricardo appeared to become interested and talked of his plan to go to Bali and create a colony of artists, concerts sometimes, developing fifty properties of which they would have one each.

He tells Jerry of his life in Vietnam of his love for school girl emphasising to her that he is Mexican not American. Then a B52 accidentally flattens the village. He insists on going down with Charlie beside him in a helicopter and they find everyone dead, including the girl. He explains his deal with the Cambodians to train them to fly with 100000 US at the end but he knows the plan is usually to ensure there is an accident which he does not survive so they do not pay. He outwits them and they pay. Ricardo is survivor.

After lunch he explains his contact with Tiu and covers the same ground thereafter as Charlie. The deal was 5000 dollars for a day trip taking 400 kilos of opium. After inquiries he told Tiu that if the job was a soft as he said 5000 was too much and it was as difficult as he believed then he wanted to taken on as a consultant for 25000 a year. In addition he wanted 20000 up front with 10000 deductible from his annual salary upon completion thus making the mission worth 35000 to him over the year. They agreed but instead of cash Tiu arranged for his debts to be cleared up.

After about five or six weeks later he was finally told the mission was on and taken to where the brand new Beechcraft and been set up with Tiu in the co pilot seat and lots of maps. Ricardo was to enter China and follow the Mekong river to a village where they will land and be met and exchange the opium for a package which is the receipt and must be returned. However after setting off he funked it and came back and was presented as dead. Then Jerry explained to him about the Russians paying Ko and that the mission was to have brought his brother out. Nelson had been the package.

Having told the tale Jerry was convinced he would not be allowed to live and refused the offer to stay the night carefully checked the oil before departing to ensure the vehicle was not bobby trapped but then brought it to halt about twenty minutes after leaving and pushed the driver to the ground before it caught fire and exploded. It was a Vietnam trick, you pulled a pin on a grenade and then placed a strong elastic band to delay the explosion and put it into the petrol tank where the petrol gradually eat into the elastic band and bang.

It was subsequently debated whether Jerry’s heroics had been necessary because only six hours later Tiu telephoned Ko and they arranged an immediate meeting. Tiu then arranged a business trip to mainland China, stopping first at Canton where his company had an office and then onto Shanghai. They could only speculate how Ricardo had managed to contact Tiu possibly by the local police. Possibly Ko was yet to know about the visit and that the existence of his brother was known and the brother’s role. It was time for Nelson to get out before there was any chance that his role in China would be exposed to his government. There were congratulations all round. Lacon called on them personally and Enderby sent round a crate of Champagne.

Jerry made it back to Saigon were he found unfriendly Americans complaining about the loss of the war and the lack of support from the Brits. He was then told the mission had been a success and he was to return to Bangkok and off straight to London and not to Honk Kong under any circumstances.

When Smiley convened a meeting with the CIA in London Enderby came along and pretended that he was not on intimate terms with Martello which aroused Guillam’s suspicions even more that something was going on which Smiley did not know. Lacon of course was there. Martello was ecstatic in his praise but Enderby cautioned saying that while Smiley had done the planning it was the CIA who had provided the artillery. They should now hold the trigger. Martello reminded that George was on the Bridge but Saul argued that what the point of George was being accountable when it was the Americans who would now do all the work on the ground.

After pressing his point in various ways including the advantage of the Americans carrying the can if it went wrong he turned his sights on the proposed debriefing insulting Connie reminding that she had been retired because of her drinking problem and then Doc referring to him as a funny little Jesuit. There was praise for George before they left but Peter Guillam remained concerned haunted by his decision to agree that Sam should take round the last communication George had asked him to deliver to the Foreign Office and then finding him in cahoots with both Enderby and Lacon later
He sensed they were about to be shafted and there was nothing which could now be done to prevent this.

Nevertheless George and Peter flew first class to Hong Kong and Fawn and a baby sitter in the front aisle seats of the tourist compartment.

They all remained unaware that Jerry had not arrived in London and Housekeeping were not made anxious because it was not unusual for fieldmen after a dangerous mission to go on some personal jolly, a feature of the end of every Bond movies no less.

On the long detour made back to Honk Kong Jerry thought of his association with George over the years from the beginning. Jerry had first met George when in the army and undertaking training at the spy school before going to Oxford and bored when George had arrived only to find the lectern too high reminding of the Queen’s visit to the USA and the White House. He had to stand by it so he could see the audience. Jerry had woken from disinterest on realising that George was speaking from experience and a man who in war had been in Germany for three years maintaining a network. After the talk George had singled him out. He had explained why he had not been immediately accepted for employment with the decision based that he needed more experience of the outside, hence going up to Oxford, He said to keep in touch because he was sure there would be a way for him in the future.

After that George had always been there for him and after that as he had told Smiley. You point me in whatever direction and I go. But now for once he was about to disobey.

He could not keep his mind from Ms Elizabeth Worthington and her relationship with Ricardo, with Marshall, with Sam Collins and with Ko and the four hour dinner he had with her. He sensed he was leaving her in Honk Kong sitting on a time bomb about to explode. He needed to see her.

He took his time eventually crossing over to Ventiane and then hitching a ride as flyers are accustomed to do in the so called bucket seat and hen went through an elaborate process to leave without showing his passport and thereby revealing that he was back to anyone. The British foursome plus Martello were unofficial and invisible guests of the US embassy which meant they could speak to no one but themselves while they monitored and in theory controlled developments. The were not staying there but at the Hilton which is said to be five minute walk down hill.

The knowledge was that Ko’s fishing fleet of junks had left Chinese waters and were heading back so taking account of its speed and weather conditions they were able to estimate its time of arrival with the assumption that Nelson was on board. The escape was exactly the same that Ko had made to reach Hong Kong in 1951. They would fish for seven days and then unload their full holds in Canton. The junk carrying Nelson would break away from the fleet with no difficulty because the in China the requirement was to deliver the agreed quota of fish and it had become traditional for any surplus to be separately delivered to the outer island for cash benefit. As with everything else Smiley insists on the most extraordinary level of detail and process, so that nothing is left to chance.

The only diversion was to learn that no one knew where Jerry was and George was not in room when he went to tell him and no one knew where George was except when he returned he added information of value which suggested he had his own information sources in the Colony to that provided by the Americans. They also brought news that Jerry had been located in as having visited to cat houses along he Mekong and was not thought to be crossing over to Ventiane. Where it was known he would be able to entertain himself further.

From the airport in Hong Kong Jerry had made his way to his flat only to find the decomposing body of Luke with much of his face shot off. That was why Ricardo thought he was dead. Tiu’s men or whoever was used had mistaken Luke for Jerry given that he had travelled back to Hong Kong on the ticket which Jerry had purchased to cover his move elsewhere. He took a cab to Kwaloon where he hired a car under his escape passport and made his way to the residence of Ms Worth where he waited and was eventually rewarded by her departure driving herself to one of the bright light spots of town. She was dressed up for some event, a fashion show at a hotel was the finding. There was strict control of entry but Jerry used his charm and his press pass noting that the invited men received lapel pins and their ladies orchids and everyone a free bottle of expensive perfume from the House of Flaubert. He greets Ms Worth as a long lost friend and placing a small gun at her back insists they depart. She shivered and was furious but not afraid or unwilling to leave the particular gathering he thought.

Guillam is distracted during the on going briefing, speculating about Jerry’s whereabouts, missing Molly Meakham and what was happening in reality to all those involved. The official was telling them about the annual religious festival held on the out island of Po Toi and which Ko attended every year. Ko, his wife and Tiu had arrived, but to an isolated Bay on the other side of island but under the watchful eye of the CIA.

Jerry took her back to her flat and waited while she changed into casually wear wanting to know where Ko was and if she could find out, No problem she said she and his wife were good friends, she could contact her, Jerry explained that he found Ricardo and after Charlie had helped him and had a great chat to which she said good, now we are all family. She then said directly what of you want nd replied in kind, you and for keeps. He continued to ask her questions about the relationship with Mellon and when had she last seen Ko, a week ago she replied because he had to fix things. He put his case that the Ko involvement was about to blow up and he thought she would want out and he had come back help, personal initiative. The phone rang and she answered and Jerry assumes it was Ko and instructed her to say she had to see him and that she loved him. But when the lock was turned it was not Ko by Sam Collins and Fawn. Then followed George Smiley.

George wanted to know what he was do there and the implications for the mission had it been Ko. Jerry explained he was courting and also wanted to revenge the death of Luke. Jerry accused them of having blackmailed Lizzie into submission warning her she was now finished. George reminded that by his behaviour he had put George under threat. Jerry , drunk continued to challenge Lizzie about the situation recognising that she had been a spy for longer than he appreciated, with mikes recording what went on in the flat. Fawn and Sam were arranging a flight for Jerry to England, Jerry boasted he would kill Ko if he got the chance. As they drove Jerry, still the worse for drink tried to work out why Smiley had been so angry with him and eventually worked out that Nelson was on his way but he was not sure how.

Guillam was still digesting the discovery he had made when called by Smiley to drive him to Sam’s place where he was listening to info from the island where Ko and Tiu were waiting on his Admiral Nelson launch and then organised Fawn to accompany them to the home of Ms Worth to collect Jerry.

The Jigsaw of the meeting between Sam, Enderby and Lacon was now clear. It is not stated whether Sam alone or they all heard the arrival of Jerry at the flat and the decision taken to ring Lizzie and confirm that the drunken Jerry was there. It was only then that Guillam understood the link between Sam, Lacon, Enderby and George. He centred his hate on Jerry for being kept out of the loop. Now he knew where Smiley was getting his info from and that Martello who must have arranged the electronic listening had played dumb about where Smiley was and how he was able to add the info. What upset Guillam most was he was now expected to take Jerry back to London and leave Smiley to what ever game Sam, Enderby and Lacon were playing behind George’s back

Jerry decided on his way to the airport with Guillam and Fawn that he was not going to leave Lizzie to the other set of wolves and managed a violent escape from the clutches of his baby sitters and made his way back to the flat where Lizzie greeted him with the words Sir Galahad is back. He pleaded her to come with him where she would have a change or stay and have nothing. She came as he spotted the Rocker arriving- Rockhurst the Hong Kong Superintendent of Police. He takes her to anonymous dump where registration was not required and she comments that she was warned she would end up in such a place one day,

He then demanded that she tell him everything she knew and everything she was asked. She replied that it was a replay. He enquired what happened before. She said it was going to happen again. She told her tale of her parents, of Mr Worthington and of Ricardo and that she had loved him and hated him when he beat her up and that when Ricardo disappeared she and Charlie had not accepted and persisted in finding out what had happened. She had gone to see Tiu and found him with Ko and that had led to a contract where Ricardo was saved and she went with Ko. He had wanted to call her Liese although he never explained why and she chose Worth to match her knew identity and ridding herself of the past. Of the present she insisted that Ko never broke his word.

Jerry was uncertain what to do next have become used to being directed by Smiley through Craw. He strikes me as being on a par in fact with Ricardo and Marshall once he becomes unofficial and working for him, although he is yet to learn that

Meanwhile Martello was exerting pressure on Guillam and then George and even Sam to do something about Jerry on the run but none of them wanted to do anything until the main job was settled one way or the other. The US navy advised that the fleet of junks was arrived as anticipated.

Jerry told Lizze he would be back in a couple hours but she unlikely heard him still in slumber. He needed to be on the move to know where he was going. His made his way to the port and found someone he knew able to tell him that the Admiral Nelson was out to Po Toi for the Tin Hau Festival. He had guessed right. He then knew he had to contact a local fixer called Luigi to get a boat on the quiet.

With Lizzie they found Luigi who immediately made a pass, several passes at Lizzie but he also got them a boat. Luigi argued against going to the Island which he regarded as a bad place with poor festival and food. He advised them to another Island and to eat at the place of a friend. It took ages to leave and Luigi continued his pressure for them to go elsewhere. They were checked out by the authorities at a distance as everyone was, the hundreds of boats already on their way to the festival. He had concerns about the suitability of the boat. They made it and Lizzie who had been before thought she knew where Ko would be.
Guillam was also able to advise George that the couple had a boat and where they were heading also confirmed by the harbour police. Martello was the most anxious by this news and wanted to immediate send someone out to stop them. George argued he wanted nothing to upset the situating as it was. Martello wanted to know what Jerry was doing. Martello said he had to have a landing party on standby and reluctantly George offered Sam and Fawn. Guillam uttered God Help us All.

On the island Lizzie was certain about the climb they had to take but Jerry repeatedly questioned, looking back at the lifeless Admiral Nelson Launch on the way. He let Lizzie take him all the way to the top and then explained that he was certain that Ko had come for his brother who was getting out of China and that she should go back to Hong Kong, making friends with any friendly round eye family she sees and say she has had a row with her boyfriend and can she have a lift back, staying with them overnight if invited or going to a hotel and then meeting up with him at the bar where they gone before the four hour dinner. She agreed saying that if he saw Ko he should say she kept to the deal, she kept her word.

She has been found Smiley was told, picked up by Rockford as soon as she had landed and was claiming she had a row and did not know where Jerry was. The US navy reported the Junks were still on course and the Admiral Nelson was where it had been all day as most if not all the other visitors and left when the Festival ended. Martello demanded that action be taken to ensure that Jerry had never been to the Colony this time.

Jerry waited and saw Drake as Lizzie referred to him with Tiu wade ashore, Tiu with a machine gun across his arms. They were waiting for Nelson to arrive. He created a diversion which enabled him to get at Tiu who he smashed with venom because of Frost and Like and his disregard for Lizzie. Then he turned his attention to Drake but it was the man who called out enquiring Mr Westerby what are you doing here? Ricardo’s men say you want to blackmail me?

He said that he wanted Lizzie and in exchange he would work out a deal for the brother. A political settlement commented Ko. I have had many of them. God loves children they say but did you ever notice God love an Asian child? God Love a peaceful man but has there ever been more civil wars than in Chistendom?

Nelson arrives and the two men embrace a long and relieved embrace and Jerry tells Nelson to get back in the boat before it too late. Then the helicopters came with their lights and took Nelson away leaving his brother helpless and hen before departing they killed Jerry who had tried keep the pledge Lizzie had made to Ko.

There was great excitement back at the Circus mission accomplished. It was Connie the realist who said there would be no knighthood for George because of Bill Hayden. Nelson did not come to the UK as anticipated but went to the United States with Enderby and Martello chairing what was called a joint Processing committee to share the product information. Connie and Doc Salis got themselves ready to be invited to help in the processing but the invitation never came. Connie persuaded Molly Meakin to resign on the basis this would at least get her a rise in pay. It worked and the Housekeeper told her to say as there were great changes underway with a new younger look to the team.

There was no contact from or with George though and eventually one of the Housekeepers let slip he might be suffering strain. Code some said for not coming back, He was alone again as Ann had gone again, but Enderby, Martello and Lacon all called ensuring that the handover was smooth. Enderby was to be the new man with great approval from Martello and the US with Sam Collins the new head of Operations. At least Smiley could agree that Roddy Martindale was not cut of for game and would also depart. When Sam’s furniture from his old room was taken away some cheered and then kept silent when his new furniture arrived. Little Fawn disappeared. The Brixton home of the scalphunters was revived and Toby Easterhase was back with the Acton lamplighters. Sam told everyone of the death of Jerry, Operational it was said so Connie held back from claming it was Karla’s work.

In Hong Kong the Foreign Correspondents Club insisted on an official inquiry into its two missing members, Luke and Jerry and scandalous with rumours that the two had become connected. There was a much publicised trial where Mr Big was not brought to justice but a glamorous English adventuress and drug carrier was featured. The Spooks home was reopened. Craw appeared at the club after awhile but soon left in a distressed state.

No one is said to have debated in public at least with the Circus if George had been the subject of a plot all along as Guillam suspected. It is considered that the intervention of Westerby provided the opportunity for the US to take Nelson away from the control of the Brits. Guillam had been shown a letter from George to Ann when he went to try and bring about a reconciliation between them. George admitted that the days of a clear enemy were past and that it had become the time of conspiracies. These people terrify me he says and I am one of them.

Guillam and George meet for lunch and neither mentions the Honourable Schoolboy.

And me the reader well I want to know what happened to the brothers Ko and to Lizzie and what kind of deals were done with them. I know George is to reappear and to have his greatest triumph. And also of Ricardo and Charlie: what happened to them?

The Honoruable Schoolboy part one

I have enjoyed reading the 575 pages of John Le Carré 1977 second book of his Karla Smiley trilogy called The Honourable Schoolboy, so much so that I stayed up reading in bed until after 1 am last in order to find out what happens at the end of his full complex but always engaging story. It is a book to be read once and enjoyed and then read again, making notes before writing a considered article. I have the time but am not prepared to use for this purpose given other priorities and planned programmes of activity. However nor can I simply write an impression and must check back whenever I am unsure or seek additional information. In event I compromised and settled for writing with more rereading over the weekend and a two part note reflecting the two part of the volume.

The story is set as USA were about to get out of Vietnam in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge to take power in Cambodia under Pol Pot for the next four horrendous years. China after the Cultural Revolution had become unstable with the arrest of so called gang of four in 1976. The Americans were beginning to lick their wounds and distrustful and resentful of the Brits who had kept out of Vietnam and had nearly led them into sharing their intelligence with the enemy, the cold war enemy of Russia.

The story of the Honourable Schoolboy can be considered from three perspectives. The principal is that of the Honourable Jerry Westerby who works as an International Reporter in the Far East, undertaking assignments for British Intelligence for which he has been fully trained but is presently on a Sabbatical writing the great novel in Tuscany shacked up with a young woman that came by his way,

The second is that not just the perspective of George Smiley temporary chief of Intelligence Operations but the extraordinary Team process by which a mission unfolds and is executed and which may or may not bear a relationship to the reality past and present.

Thirdly is the morality or more accurately the immorality of the work which leads to individuals questioning and changing sides.

Having explored aspects of the internal machinations of those directly involved in the day to day management of the service in the previous work Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Le Carré now explores the interaction between the service and the rest of Whitehall and the Cousins, the Americans in addition to his preoccupation, some would say obsession with Karla and the Russians. And of course now there are the Chinese what are they up to next?

The difference between Jerry Westerby and the other Le Carré Agent with whom I previously identified with, Alec Lomas, portrayed brilliantly by Richard Burton in the film of the same name, is that Jerry is that rare combination of being upper class, Eton and Oxford, a genuine intellectual wild man of action more at home with Hemingway than C P Snow where one can find the Smiley or two.

Lomas was willing to go to prison and then to be captured and tortured by the enemy because of his anti communist commitment, he drank more than he should and enjoyed heterosexual relationships whenever the opportunity came his way, but Alec cares what happens, feels and takes responsibility for his actions and when he finds the behaviour of both sets of master questionable and that his own side is prepared to take the life of the woman he has come to care about despite her sincere but naive political views, he says no and is also killed rather than live on with the knowledge of his role in what has happened. Jerry Westerby also questions but he has one weakness greater than the women, the drink and drugs, even the excitement of the role,-Smiley asks and Jerry will do.
Not having read The Spy who came in from the Cold I do not know if Alec Lomas was an agent or a scalphunter, that is one of those trained as assassins, to kidnap, commit burglaries and other activities outside the British Law although he appears to be more of an agent, committed to a cause he believed in

Jerry is not a killer although he can look after himself. Unlike the Bond characters that always appear to be living in the present and other similar fictitious creations one of the joys, and at times difficulties, of Le Carré writing is that he provides individuals whose past affects their present, consciously and unconsciously. To appreciate this the reading should be slow digesting and reflecting, unless you have the kind of mind, which I do not, that assimilate at a flash and continue to remember,

The story begins after Smiley has returned to patch up the pieces at the Circus, still under a cloud himself because despite his part in the unmasking of Haydon because he had worked with the man over several decades and had not reacted against the man‘s affair with his wife, affecting, it is argued, his judgement just as Karla had predicted, although this was as much his resignation that his wife needed affairs just as he needed to be at the top in at the Circus.

The Circus is under pressure to find something which will resurrect their standing although their masters in the administration and the party political government have insisted on closing down many outposts and disbanding agent chains knowing these had been compromised over the decades of the betrayal. The politicians and Mandarins would like something to impress the Cousins.

As the story opens we quickly switch from London to Hong Kong, then a Crown territory under contract from China and to be handed back before the end of the last century and into the world of the news reporters attempting to secure scoops and therefore spending as much time watching and listening to each other as they are making new contacts out there on the street and the corridors of power. They appear to spend a great part of their time at an old style colonial club, meals and drinks throughout the day and night, taking cabs to the nearest playground for girls and drugs. Up at the top although nothing like as impressive a position as in Gibraltar was the home of the UK area spooks relying on radio and telephonic communications if the era before the Internet.

Given this background of International great events and local colonialism where the people are divided between the round eyes and the slant eyes, the main interest of the newshounds seems at first parochial, trying to establish that the chief spy and his household has closed down and what did this all mean. The two characters of significance we are first introduced are Luke, a Californian Journalist, and William Craw, a man of mature years and experience if life, journalist and trusted agent for the Circus. In a joke about Watergate and Deep throat, Craw suggests they contact stripped pants Shallow Throat at the Colonial office as I suspect it was still called in a vain attempt to gain some news, at least that was the front he was putting up, pretending to his colleagues he was in the dark as much anyone. It is Craw who publishes the first exposé which Smiley commends as a masterpiece if disinformation.

We the turn to Jerry and the arrival of a telegram from Smiley, coded of course, but enough to get him to leave and abandon the bedmate only recently rescued as she traversed the globe. Young Peter Guillam is back at the top and it is often through his eyes that we appear learn about the impenetrable aging Smiley keeping his own Counsel restricting what he is prepared to reveal to individuals and times of his choosing. It takes the great part of section one of the book to establish why Jerry Westerby has been recalled and what he is to do.

The new team at the top has assembled to discuss how they should approach re-establishing the authority and integrity of the service by discovering a major source of new intelligence. Smiley had appointed a factotum assistant as he had done in Soldier Sailor. This time it is a man called Fawn, an anonymous individual who I am not sure if we ever learn anything of his background. Peter appears something of a fetcher and carrier to but accompanies Smiley to important meetings. Connie Sacks is back from her Oxford retirement, endearingly referring to everyone out in the field as her dear boys but remains the great Soviet analyst together with the less attractive Doc di Salis, another Circus Burrower, an expert on China although I am not sure why he as brought in before the direction everyone would take is established. Also early on Smiley consulted Sam Collins an older field officer, described as dapper, something of a dandy with a moustache and smoking brown cigarettes. He was an Asian field hand with 5 years in Borneo, 6 in Burma and 5 in North Thailand before 3 years in Vientiane, the capital of Laos who gained what is described as a dazzling first at Cambridge. If anything this will become the Sam Collins story as much as that of Westerby or Smiley, but I give too much away and would never have been a good spy for this reason alone.

In jargon the Burrowers were asked to look for Karla backbearings, to go over everything that happened which traitor Bill Haydon had a hand in and try and detect where he may have covered up something which he did not wish pursued or given important or ongoing attention. Files that should have been there but were not, people told not to bother or to disregard what today looked as if it required greater attention. This was Connie’s great strength as she knew more than anyone, including Smiley the minutiae of the Karla’s signature, his trade craft. And it was as a consequence of her efforts that requests were made for records from the one of the remaining outposts in the Far East, Ventiane the capital of Laos.

What was discovered was that Russian money, large qualities of money, $25000 a month (1970’s value) was being passed through a complex route ton Honk Kong where it accumulated as a trust and had not been touched todate and this then led to an eminent married Chinese business Drake Ko OBE, a man vetted before confirming is honour and with the kind of standing that when the Governor, (respectfully referred by the journalists as Big Moo), invited local bigwigs in for an informal get together to learn what was actually afoot or of concern in he colony, Ko was always included on the guest list. That he is called Drake is a clue to his background which was revealed much later. He has a beautiful ‘round eye’ mistress and the investigation of her background also becomes crucial to unravelling why the money was being sent and why it was not touched.

It was Jerry Westerby’s role to return to his old job in Hong Kong to find out about Ko and his English mistress with a German Christian name, Liese Worth and the significance of her other names.

Jerry discovers that Ko had a son who died and later we learn was called Nelson, with Nelson and Drake big clues as to the man’s back ground which includes a spell in London reading for the Bar and also that among the charities supported is a Baptist Church and a Hospital for children which bears his name. He is also into horse racing and has had a successful animal called Lucky Nelson. It is at the racetrack at Westerby engineers an introduction to Ko for an interview. We not learn much except he had come as refugee from the mainland
Before further action can be taken the authority of the ‘masters’ has to be agreed and Peter accompanies Smiley to present his case to a committee with the Foreign Office team (with interests in Russia and China and the rest of the Far East excluding Hong Kong) by Saul Enderby one time Ambassador to Indonesia and his right hand every day link man with the Circus, Roddy Martindale plus a Parliamentary Under Secretary sitting at one end of the table.

At the other end, significantly, is the three person team from the Colonial Office, whose interest is Hong Kong and regarded themselves as superior because they actually managed territories but in reality it is the Foreign Office which has the ear of the Cabinet Office and Oliver Lacon who sits apart but opposite from Smiley and Guillam, with ‘the Competition’ that is the home security services directly across. The Defence Ministry had two and the Treasury a similar number also facing the applicants.

Le Carré provides what I can assert is a good description of all such type of meetings are made to a collective of varied and often competing interests, each jockeying for position, some playing a short, while others a longer, game and where most of the positioning and decision taking takes place in bilateral deals beforehand. How far should Circus be allowed to go and within what bounds and funding? What should the Governor be told if anything and what of the Cousins, the Americans?

One thing was agreed early on that if there was a go ahead and the UK got it hands on the half million of Russian money in the Hong Kong Trust Fund it would go to the Treasury in total. It was not this form of Gold that Smiley was after, he sensed there was something big because Karla’s view was people should work and contribute to the cause because of its rightness and therefore the sum of such a size meant it covered something of great significance. The problem was that Smiley was caught in a Catch 22. The panel wanted to know what the very big was before investing while e Smiley also wanted to know but needed the funds and the approval to find out. One of the cards played by Smiley was to point out that under his standing instruction to give priority to repairing the damage with the Cousins if the panel decided not to further the line of inquiry as some favoured he would be obliged to pass on what he had established to date to the Cousin and let them investigate and therefore take any Glory which emerged creating further embarrassment that British intelligence had not only been compromised but was unable to act when important new information became available. They could be further damned if they went ahead and just as badly damaged if they did not.

Guillam thought George then overplayed his hand by asking for the recently closed Hong Kong residency to be opened not knowing that this was the master stroke of a ploy because in turning down something that was not needed it would provide several interests with the belief they had gained their way and a sense of testosterone victory while George got the authority to go ahead as asked but with some limitations and restrictions, most of which he had assumed would be imposed beforehand.

This brings me to an earlier development, the attempt to find out about the former bed partner of Ko’s present mistress Liese Worth; this was a Mexican pilot involved with the Ko funded Air freight and transport company based in Ventiane. A man called Tiny Ricardo.

Sam Collins sources declared the man had died but Smiley wanted this double checked with the Americans through a probationer Burrower who had immediately caught Peter Guillam’s hungry eye, Molly Meakin, an Oxbridge blue stocking recruit whose family were old Circus and whose function as a desk officer in Registry also involved a routine meeting with the Cousins every Friday in which they exchanged lists of information required if available. This was to prove a key to unlocking the support of the Cousins while agreeing that Hong Kong remained the UK patch, although it has to be said that this was what Smiley was also led to believe at the time.

It was another seasoned campaigner whose lectures back at the Training centre in the UK always attracted good audiences, William Craw who unlocked the fact that Liese Worth was in fact Elizabeth Worthington. This led to finding that she had not just a husband but a child back home but she had left one day and there had been no contact there after. But she also had parents called Pelling her birth surname, and this led to a visit from Smiley saying he had been asked to vet her background because she was under consideration for an important position in an international company. She had ambition to make something of her life beyond that offered by her family and answered an advert which led to being a hostess in Bahrain. She had ended up in Far East claiming to be working undercover for the British Secret service working for a distillery company with a concession which she managed in Laos based in its capital Ventiane. It was evident from the couple as the story unfolded that her father wanted to believe his daughter while his wife thought this was just another set of stories in which she tried to pretend what she was not. In Ventiane she was living with pilot Tiny, a big man. She was working for someone called Mellon insisted the husband. The father also had to hand the last letter she had sent to them explaining that she was working for a good cause and they would be proud of her, On arrival she had to contact a Mr Mackervoor of the British Council who was an established trader but only half the story. As she was to investigate a situation concerning drugs and bullion which she had been told not to talk about to anyone and the work could be dangerous and she did not know what the outcome would be or when she would be able to have contact with them again and end asking them to pray for her.

Now Smiley would have known what the name Mackervoor meant because I had read in connection with the work of the Circus in the Far East, of this name of an agent called Mackervoor who had since died Smiley then went and had a secret chat with Mrs Pelling who had left the room tired of the attempt by her partner to rewrite the history of their daughter in the most favourable light. She revealed that her daughter had gone to the Chinaman(Ko) to help Tiny and had fallen in love with him and that he had become a father figure to her.

There was one more startling piece of information revealed to the reader when Smiley returned to office and made a check with confirmed that Mellon was the name which his agent Sam Collins used when in that part of the world. I am sure it is later in the novel that the reader is informed that Sam had dropped her because she could not keep quiet about working for the Service and therefore endangering his position and that of the others involved in the immediate area.

Sam was able to confirm that the girl had arrived in Ventiane with a couple of hippies on the Kathmandu trail and when they departed, she had gone to the British Consul for help and he had put her in touch with Sam because he thought on looks alone she was exploitable. He had placed her alongside the flying boys so to speak because of interest in the drug situation and had not told London because London via Haydon was killing off all activity. He had found a way of paying he woman and she had come up with Ricardo and a bullion racket which led back to Hong Kong. He had dropped her as soon as he realised she was a disaster so was relieved when Ricardo got her join him with the air freight company.
This had come out because of protests from Peter about the sudden appearance of Sam at the top table and to have direct access without going through the usual channels. Smiley explained that Sam was important because he knew the Elizabeth Worthington nee Pelling. Connie reminded of what Edgar Hoover said about preferring to have someone inside the tent pissing out than the converse.

It was also shortly after this that the work of the Burrowers came up with information which brings considerable information about Drake Ko after an investigation into his time in London allegedly studying to become a barrister. He had given the name of Baptist Minister and his wife as referees and the Minister was alive and living with his daughter back in the UK. What they had to say would lead to the why the money was stacking up and being stored in Hong Kong.

It was Connie and De Salis who Smiley sent to interview the Missionary in the pretext that Ko was being considered for an honour and they needed to confirm the background. He had gone to Missionary Training school at 20 and was on ship for Shanghai when 24.

He explained that in 1936 his wife had found Drake and his young brother Nelson at the docks searching for their mother. They had founded a school for children without mothers, mostly day attenders but some borders among the 44 they were able to manage teaching the basics and Christianity. Drake was assessed as being 10 or 11 and his brother 8. Their daughter was then 12. His brother had been injured in the civil war with part of his arm bone sticking through the flesh. The two were very different with Drake accepting the Westernisation and Nelson rejecting.

Yes they had returned to China after the World War but by then he had become a widow and yes they had met up with Drake who would have married the daughter had she shown any interest her father argued. Drake had been much affected by the death of the wife of the Missionary but he and his brother had returned to speaking Chinese losing their English. The Missionaries had remained until the Communist take over in 49. It was during that time that the brothers appeared to have separated and lost contact with each other with Nelson opting for the Communists and his brother not, so it seemed. Back in Shanghai at the age of 19 the daughter accused Drake of having become a gang member and a thief while her father asserted that his main interest was get an education for his young brother. The impact of his studies was to turn Nelson firmly against the West and the Church and this had led to him being part of as group which smashed up the mission. Drake had given his brother a hiding for that.

It had taken Drake six years of working to see his brother graduate as an engineer. He had worked in the shipyards alongside the Russian technicians who had poured in since the revolution.

It was then the old man dropped his bombshell that the only news he had since being forced to return to the UK was that his brother was dead. It had happened when they were living in Durham. Drake had come to England with his an entourage including a henchman called Tiu (the Circus had established that Tiu was the front man for several of Ko’s questionable enterprises). He was 42 and the year 1967 at the time and arrived in a Rolls Royce bringing presents including £1000 for the church. He already had the OBE and said he had come to study law and wanted her father to sponsor him. They could pin down to the month because it was his father’s birthday hence the gift to the church. The daughter remembered his words. I have no brother. De Salis pressed about the circumstances, but on this they failed to obtain further information of substance. Before they left Connie was inspired when she asked if the name Liese meant anything and the answer explained more in that the Missionary’s wife had been a German Lutheran of that name.

They were driven back by Toby Easterhase with the news for Smiley. It was the Doc who set about trying to uncover the Chinese name which it was evident that Nelson had used to establish if in fact like the son of Ko of the same name, he was also dead.

But before this there were two developments which were to prove of subsequent great significance. The first remained a mysterious matter of concern because when Guillam went to deliver the monthly account of expenditure to Lacon at the Cabinet office he had witnessed Sam Collins emerge in conversation not only with Lacon but Saul Enderby of the Foreign Office.

The second was that Cousins wanted an urgent meeting and when they arrived they were met not just by the CIA but by a representative of the Drug Enforcement Agency in the US. The purpose of the meeting was ostensibly to report on the latest activities of Ko and Tiu but eventually they got round to admitting that Tiny Ricardo was not dead. Ricardo had made contact with a regional Narcotics bureaux offering to sell and tell info about an opium mission into China and led to one of great historically truths being admitted by the US in this fictional form.

During the US involvement in Laos they had needed the support of hill tribes in the combat and these tribes survived on a single economy of opium growing which the CIA had turned a blind eye to. The Narcotics Bureaux was less sanguine about what had taken place “The company played Godfather to the hill tribes.... Menfolk were fighting while the Company people flew up to the villages, pushed their poppy crops, screwed their women and flew their dope.” Despite the protestation of the CIA man, the Narcotics contact continued “ as long as the war was on Ricardo carried dope for the CIA to keep the home fires burning in he hill villages. When the war ended he carried on the trade for himself. He had all the connects and knew where the bodies were buried. They admitted that the call from Tony Ricardo had been logged on the second of April 1973. He was offering opium at the standard rates and wanted $50000 and a German Passport for a one way exit in exchange for his information involving mainland China. Ricardo went to explain that the plane used was a Bechcraft which was kept hidden, off the books. In addition to buying the opium some 200 kilos the local agent had sent the story to HQ. At HQ the senior manager took the decision that he could not invest that amount of public money in a gamble especially where the individual supplying the info wanted a one way ticket to disappear into Europe or wherever. There was no further action taken. The only other information was that the China contact had been prepared to pay gold in exchange for the opium said to have been just less than half a ton. The name of the contact was to have been revealed once Ricardo’s price was being paid.

It was then the battle commenced between the Narcotics Enforcement who wanted hands on control of what happened next and the CIA who accepted that as the centre of enquires was a British territory, it was for the Brits to take the lead. My background note is to remind of the hatred that had existed between Russia and China and which had carried through despite both nations becoming communist led politically and economically. It is also worth reminding that the generally held view by nations that it is was important to spy on ones friends as on enemies because tomorrow friends can become enemies and vice versa. In World War II Russia joined Germany and then they went to war with each other, and reminding of the fictional TV Series Spooks where because the UK is hold discussion with Russia about sharing intelligence information, it is the Yanks who appear to be spiking the development, killing a British agent in the process.

The Le Carré allegation being that the Russians were providing the gold to supply their contact in China with the opium to be used to subvert the Chinese. Smiley commented that it was take a lot more opium to subvert the 800 million Chinese on the mainland at that time. The Narcotics man wanted control reminding the CIA that back home a lot of influential people wanted to know how come their boys in Vietnam had become drug addicts. Smiley reminded of the agreement that the US would not interfere in British action in Hong Kong without explicit prior permission. The CIA agreed but then slapped a time limit of three months, probably less.

Smiley demanded to know how far up in the chain information has been passed on and it was admitted they knew there was an individual in Hong Kong who was receiving Russian money and was involved in flying opium to China. Smiley wanted to know if they knew about the girl. There was knowledge that the girl had been with Ko in Bangkok and onto Manila.

The next priority for the team was tracing the aircraft as well as the ongoing search for Nelson, if he continued to exist with Ricardo appearing to be alive in Ventiane. They were able to trace a brand new Bechcraft sale to a firm based in Bangkok and but was then immediately sold on. Smiley then held a conference with those actively involved concluding that they appeared to have gone as far as possible and that given the set time limit they need to upset the present balance and this would be achieved by Jerry Westerby. Sam Collins then disappeared, it was believed retired with enhanced pension rates. Guillam who disliked Sam was less convinced of this, as he revealed constantly to his latest woman Molly Meakin, especially after than meeting where he had encountered Sam with the bigwigs. This ends the first book of the story, although combined into one volume