The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

by John Le Carré

A girl performed a striptease, a young, drab girl with a dark bruise on her thigh. She had that pitiful, spindly nakedness which is embarrassing because it is not erotic; because it is artless and undesiring.

‘You’ve nearly always got a weapon: an ash-tray, a couple of coins, a fountain pen – anything that will gouge or cut.’ It was the favourite dictum of the mild little Welsh sergeant at that house near Oxford in the war; ‘Never use both hands at once, not with a knife, a stick or a pistol; keep your left arm free, and hold it across the belly. If you can’t find anything to hit with, keep the hands open and the thumbs stiff.’

he differed from professional interrogators who set store by initiative, by the evocation of atmosphere and the exploitation of that psychological dependency of a prisoner upon his inquisitor.

‘I am afraid that as a nation we tend to over-organise. Abroad that passes for efficiency.’

‘There’s only one law in this game,’ Leamas retorted. ‘Mundt is their man; he gives them what they need. That’s easy enough to understand, isn’t it? Leninism – the expediency of temporary alliances. What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.

‘I mean, you can’t be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now?’

Today, the same man, with better teeth and hair and a much smarter suit, can be heard explaining away the catastrophic illegal war in Iraq, or justifying medieval torture techniques as the preferred means of interrogation in the twenty-first century, or defending the inalienable right of closet psychopaths to bear semi-automatic weapons, and the use of unmanned drones as a risk-free method of assassinating one’s perceived enemies and anybody who has the bad luck to be standing near them. Or, as a loyal servant of his corporation, assuring us that smoking is harmless to the health of the Third World, and great banks are there to serve the public. What have I learnt over the last fifty years? Come to think of it, not much. Just that the morals of the secret world are very like our own. John le Carré