Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

by John Le Carré

He worked on the fleshy side of the Foreign Office and his job consisted of lunching visiting dignitaries whom no one else would have entertained in his woodshed.

And now it was pouring with rain, Smiley

was soaked to the skin, and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.

“It is sheer vanity to believe that one fat middle-aged spy is the only person capable of holding the world together,” he would tell himself.

this lot. The duty logbooks were on the top shelf, in bound volumes with the dates pasted

As he went down the road, he heard her humming again, so loud it was like a scream. But it was nothing to the mayhem inside him just then, the currents of alarm and anger and disgust at this blind night walk, with God knew what bodies at the end.

the best way to end loose talk in Hungary, said the author of the paper, borrowing a phrase coined by Khrushchev long before, would be to shoot some more intellectuals.

“An artist is a bloke who can hold two fundamentally opposing views and still function: who dreamed that one up?” “Scott Fitzgerald,” Smiley replied,

juniors were feeding it; a third stood by to operate

green slip with a 43 reference, he returned the two files to their places and positioned himself

it? What do I usually do? He left it on the desk.

unbearable. There was too much of it; it was like tears all over. The cards no longer interested Smiley; his eye had settled on a different game.