John le Carre's is an unremarkable novel about spies in the time of Brexit

The first signs of faltering were manifest in the novel preceding this one, A Legacy of Spies. Towards the end of that book, le Carre shockingly got wrong the biography of one of his most memorable characters, Jim Prideaux, who played a pivotal role in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He was the spy in Tinker Tailor travelling under an assumed name, who was betrayed and shot in Czechoslovakia. He was betrayed by the arch traitor, Bill Haydon, his closest friend, perhaps lover as well. While setting out the background of the Haydon-Prideaux partnership, le Carre wrote that both were up in Oxford at the same time, and it was Bill who had introduced young Prideaux to the don, P R de T Fanshawe, a circus talent spotter, as a suitable candidate for recruitment to British intelligence. But in A Legacy of Spies, the creator of Prideaux has Peter Guillam (another favourite le Carre character) say that Jim Prideaux was up at Cambridge. Such a slip, unheard of in the le Carre oeuvre, produced the fear that perhaps the master was losing his control.

In this new novel, the fear becomes a grim reality. A rant against Brexit, however well-intentioned and heart-warming, doesn’t quite add up to a thrilling novel. The narrator is Nat, a middle-aged spy with many years of running agents abroad who is back in London and fears he will be put out to grass. He is sent to work in a London station nicknamed The Haven which, according to Nat, is “a dumping ground for resettled defectors of nil value and fifth rate informants on the skids”. Nat is also a skilled badminton player, quite the star of the Athleticus Club in Battersea. It is here that he encounters Ed, a new member, who challenges him to a match. Their matches become regular and are invariably followed by a pint or two at the bar.

It is over drinks that Ed (exact occupation unknown and vague) begins his outpourings against Brexit and Trump. His opening sally runs as follows: “It is my considered opinion that for Britain and Europe, and for liberal democracy across the entire world as a whole, Britain’s departure from the European Union in the time of Donald Trump, and Britain’s consequent unqualified dependence on the United States in an era when the US is heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism, is an unmitigated clusterfuck bar none.’’ At the same meeting Ed asks Nat, “Do you or do you not regard Trump, which I do, as a threat and incitement to the entire civilized world, plus he is presiding over the systematic no-holds-barred Nazification of the United States?’’ As Nat listens to Ed he comes to the conclusion that “In Ed’s world there was no dividing line between Brexit fanatics and Trump fanatics. Both were racist and xenophobic. Both worshipped at the same shrine of nostalgic imperialism. Once embarked on this theme, he lost all objectivity. The Trumpists and the Brexiteers were conspiring to deprive him of his European birthright. Solitary as he might be in other ways, on Europe he showed no compunction in declaring that he spoke for his generation...’’ The novel, and all that le Carre has said about it pre-publication, leaves no manner of doubt that le Carre has put his sentiments — and not very subtly — into the mouth of Ed.

Agent Running in the Field; Author: John le Carre; Publisher: Viking; Price: Rs 599; Pages: 288

I happen to share le Carre’s views on Brexit and Trump but in terms of craft I kept wondering if this was the same writer who had woven the plots of the Smiley novels, of The Little Drummer Girl, The Night Manager, The Russia House, among others. The novel starts at a glacial pace (so did The Honourable Schoolboy, except that it was three times longer than this book) — for nearly 100 pages the reader has no idea where the plot is headed. When the plot (and the novel) begins to unravel there are glimpses of the le Carre touch — sharp dialogue, vivid descriptions of a setting, the typical laying out of tradecraft and surveillance. A running theme of the later le Carre has been the theme of disillusionment — with Britain, with the Secret Service often acting as a microcosm for Britain. Nat joins that band for whom the Secret Service was the “last illusion of the illusionless man’’. (le Carre readers will recognise the quoted words from Tinker Tailor — words used by Karla to describe what Ann meant to George Smiley).

The pace quickens with the discovery that the Russians are about to recruit a British agent. That agent turns out to be Ed who is willing to pass on (or already has) top-secret information regarding Britain’s post-Brexit plans to the Russians. Why Ed should prefer Putin to Trump and Boris Johnson is left unexplored by le Carre. Nat finds himself on a sticky wicket. He had unwittingly befriended a potential Russian spy. His service treats him like a leper but a former boss who is now high up in the Secret Service establishment gives him the responsibility of turning Ed into a double agent. Ed, meanwhile, has fallen in love and decided to marry Florence, who, before she resigned, worked at The Haven. The plot now begins to acquire familiar le Carre complexities.

The reader’s expectations are unfortunately belied. Nat and his wife Prue, a radical lawyer, are not only witnesses to the marriage of Ed and Florence but they also plan the couple’s escape from Britain to a remote guest house in the Transylvanian Alps. For Nat it is “as sweet an exfiltration as you could wish for”. For readers, it is the most implausible ending possible. Le Carre, as some of his previous novels have shown, has a fondness for romantic and even poignant endings. Think of Barley Blair in The Russia House waiting in Lisbon for the ship to bring in Katya, the girl he loves; think of Charlie and Joseph, at the end of The Little Drummer Girl, arms locked together, walking awkwardly down the pavement of a town that was strange to them; or Jonathan Pine (aka Jack Linden) in a remote cottage in the west country where in The Night Manager he had brought his girl, Jed, after rescuing her from shackles of the most evil man in the world. In le Carre’s description of these moments there was something uplifting. But in this book the escape of the couple, in an era of complete surveillance, only stretches the credulity of the reader.

This is not a novel of quality. This review is a call for the master.

The reviewer is chancellor and professor of history, Ashoka University