Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Espionage master le Carre teases with return of Smiley
The selling of John le Carre’s “A Legacy of Spies” as “his first Smiley novel in more than 25 years” is a bit of a tease. George Smiley, who was at center stage in such classics as “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (his legend was embossed by Alec Guinness’ magnificent performance in the TV adaptation) and last appeared in “The Secret Pilgrim” (1991), is mostly off stage here.
The man in the spotlight is Peter Guillam, Smiley’s onetime disciple at the British intelligence agency known as the Circus. Now living out his years on the farm in Brittany where he grew up (as Pierre), Peter is summoned to London for questioning about his longago role in the failed operation against East German intelligence depicted in le Carre’s 1963 novel, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.”
Under mysterious circumstances, Peter’s old running mate, Alec Leamas, was shot to death at the Berlin Wall, as was his lover, Liz Gold. All these years later, Leamas’ illegitimate son and Gold’s daughter are threatening to sue the service for causing their parents’ deaths through unconscionable lies, indiscretions and betrayals. The Circus sorely needs to avoid the bad publicity.
But even if Smiley makes only brief appearances in “A Legacy of Spies,” long enough to assert “an air of introspection so forbidding, that it would take a brave man to interrupt his reverie,” there is nary a moment in the novel when his presence is not felt. He is, as one underling puts it, “The conscience of the Circus. Its Hamlet.” He is also its calculating puppet master in pulling people’s strings with sometimes dire consequences.
Le Carre peels back history via Peter’s firstperson accounts of the past, interoffice memos and debriefs. Proceeding as we know he will from spot-of-tea politeness to hardball tactics, a buttoned-down lawyer with little regard for the old days (even if he is called Bunny) grills Peter about missing Circus files and other matters pertaining to Operation Windfall.
Peter can claim ignorance or bad memory for only so long before his role in a complicated scheme to “exfiltrate” a double agent working for Stasi, the East German spy agency — and Leamas — comes into focus.
Remember when, following the demise of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, people were wondering what the heck le Carre would do, having outlived his subject? Who would have thought that, thanks to Vladimir Putin, history would catch up to him in his old age — and that, rejuvenated following a spotty turnout in recent years, the prolific author would again make spy fiction so captivating?
Not that le Carre ever fell out of popularity. Film and TV adaptations — including “The Constant Gardener,” “The Night Manager,” “A Most Wanted Man” and the big screen remake of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” — have boosted his reputation and legacy. But now, following last year’s first-rate memoir, “The Pigeon Tunnel,” le Carre again stakes his claim as the only contemporary spy novelist who really matters.
In revisiting “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” le Carre gets to peel back its narrative to reveal juicy new details, with no lack of dark humor. He also gets to frame the story in the consciousness of a new era. His central theme, more potent than ever, is “how much of our human feeling can we dispense with in the name of freedom ... before we cease to feel either human or free?” Or, how long will it be before the violence we commit in the name of peace and religion destroy those values?
A kind of eulogy for the present as well as the past, “A Legacy of Spies” is haunting in the way it downgrades human connections and casts out Peter Guillam from a hopeful existence. “You live in the (expletive) dark because you can’t live in the (expletive) daylight,” Alec Leamas’ son says to him. Even gazing across his farm on a sunny day, his muchyounger lover at his side, Peter can appreciate the truth in that.