A Legacy of Spies: John le Carre's latest book will not disappoint his fans

The enjoyment and excitement notwithstanding, devoted readers of le Carre's Cold War ouvre will be left with some niggling questions

Most readers of John le Carre were disappointed when history forced him to abandon the Cold War and one of its unforgettable warriors, George Smiley. But there was always the hope and the expectation that someday le Carre would return, even as a kind of envoi, to the terrain that he had made  memorably his own. It would appear that such a yearning had also been gnawing at the author’s  creative guts. He goes back to the Cold War in his new novel and revives many familiar players of that  covert war — Control, Bill Haydon, Jim Prideaux, Smiley himself, Alex Leamas, Mendel, Mundt, Millie  McCraig and even Fawn. The person who revisits the Cold War landscape — the narrator of this novel — is none other than Peter Guillam, Smiley’s cupbearer right through the Karla trilogy. 

This novel is inextricably linked to two other previous novels — Call for the Dead and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Peter Guillam, in retirement in his ancestral property in Brittany, is, all out of the blue, summoned to London by his former service. That service is no longer called the Circus by those who work for it. For one thing, it is no longer located in Cambridge Circus but south of the river in a hideous modern building. It is altogether a very bureaucratised government department. No one takes  orders from a donnish man who sips jasmine tea and serves bad South African sherry. Instead of old janitors nodding familiar figures into the building as they used to in the Circus, there are in the modern building machines and swipe cards. 

A LEGACY OF SPIES; Author: JOHN LE CARRE; Publisher: VIKING; Pages: 272; Price: Rs 599

When Guillam presents himself there, he is informed that an old operation in which he was involved has now come up for enquiry because the son and the daughter of the two people who died in the course  of the operation codenamed Windfall are now threatening to go to court and demanding explanations and compen-sation. Guillam is an important witness and the repository of many secrets. The progress and the tragic end of Operation Windfall were described in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. At  the end of that novel, Liz Gold was shot while trying to climb the Berlin Wall, and Alec Leamas, despite appeals  from George Smiley to jump from the wall to freedom, decided to climb down on the East German side and face  the bullets. The son of Leamas and the daughter of Gold — nowhere in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold  was it even remotely hinted that a son and a daughter existed — are digging for facts and Christophe–Leamas’s son — has had access to the Stasi files on the episode. 

Guillam is the man who knows too much and he is not sure how much he should reveal without clearance from  Smiley whose whereabouts are unknown. He is faced with little choice as the house called Stables, still  maintained by Millie McCraig, from which the operation was run to keep it away from other prying eyes of the  Circus, has been discovered. Stables also contains the files pertaining to the operation. Guillam is made to read  the files even though parts of them he wrote himself and then add from his memory. He does the latter reluctantly and selectively. 

Burton with Claire Bloom who plays his love interest in the film

The novel moves from the present to the past as Guillam reads the files and remembers the background, what  actually happened and his role in what transpired. Looming over Operation Windfall and thus over Guillam’s memory of it is the shadow of the suspicion in the minds of Control and Smiley that there existed within the Circus a mole (perhaps more than one) and hence the  more than usual secrecy. It is exciting to read how this ultra-secret operation was conceived and run. This was, after all, an operation, as Leamas discovered to his horror in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, where the agent (Leamas) himself did not know who the real target was. 

The enjoyment and the excitement notwithstanding, devoted readers of le  Carre’s Cold War ouvre will be left with some niggling questions. When was Mundt, who attempted to kill Smiley in Call for the Dead, recruited and by whom? There is some evidence in that novel to suggest that he was “turned” after he was arrested since he managed to depart from  Britain in spite of a nation-wide alert. But in this latest novel it is clear that Smiley “turned” him after he had come to Britain to murder a Circus agent from Germany. To complicate matters, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold hinted that Smiley was a rather reluctant participant in the operation: “His fever is permanent’’ Control had told  Leamas in their last meeting. Smiley returns to his legacy only to open a can of confusing and unanswered questions. And finally, it is not clear if Guillam’s memory is all that reliable. He writes, “Cambridge may have educated him [Jim Prideaux], but it never tamed him.’’ Jim did not go to that obscure university by the river Cam. He was up at Oxford at the same time as Bill Haydon at The House. 

Guillam could not possibly be unaware of the glowing recommendation Bill wrote to Fanshawe, don and Circus talent spotter, about Jim. Pah, pah give me an ounce of civet John le Carre, even you nod regarding your own unforgettable characters.
 

The reviewer is Professor Of History And Chancellor 

Ashoka University