Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

by John Le Carré

‘Scotch,’ said Haydon, ‘a bloody great big one.’ With a feeling of utter disbelief, Smiley listened to the familiar voice reading aloud the very telegram which Smiley himself had drafted for Tarr’s use only forty-eight hours ago. Then for a moment one part of Smiley broke into open revolt against the other. The wave of angry doubt which had swept over him in Lacon’s garden, and ever since had pulled against his progress like a worrying tide, drove him now on to the rocks of despair, and then to mutiny: I refuse. Nothing is worth the destruction of another human being. Somewhere the path of pain and betrayal must end. Until that happened, there was no future: there was only a continued slide into still more terrifying versions of the present. This man was my friend and Ann’s lover, Jim’s friend and for all I know Jim’s lover too; it was the treason, not the man, that belonged to the public domain. Haydon had betrayed. As a lover, a colleague, a friend; as a patriot, as a member of that inestimable body which Ann loosely called the Set: in every capacity, Haydon had overtly pursued one aim and secretly achieved its opposite. Smiley knew very well that even now he did not grasp the scope of that appalling duplicity; yet there was a part of him that rose already in Haydon’s defence. Was not Bill also betrayed? Connie’s lament rang in his ears: ‘Poor loves. Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves . . . You’re the last, George, you and Bill.’ He saw with painful clarity an ...