Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (The Karla Trilogy, #1)

by John Le Carré

Now this was an unfortunate question to ask of Roach just then, for it occupied most of his waking hours. Indeed he had recently come to doubt whether he had any purpose on earth at all. In work and play he considered himself seriously inadequate; even the daily routine of the school, such as making his bed and tidying his clothes, seemed to be beyond his reach.

worst of all, whether he would be there when the new term began, for Bill had a feeling he could not describe that Jim lived so precariously on the world’s surface that he might at any time fall off it into a void; he feared that Jim was like himself, without a natural gravity to hold him on.

Martindale had no valid claim on Smiley either professionally or socially. 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.

Living off the wits of his subordinates—well, maybe that’s leadership these days.”

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.

He would set up as a mild eccentric, discursive, withdrawn, but possessing one or two lovable habits such as muttering to himself as he bumbled along pavements. Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn’t these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back? There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one’s own generation.

But Smiley had a second reason, which was fear, the secret fear that follows every professional to his grave. Namely, that one day, out of a past so complex that he himself could not remember all the enemies he might have made, one of them would find him and demand the reckoning.

There were two locks, a Banham deadlock and a Chubb Pipekey, and two splinters of his own manufacture, splits of oak each the size of a thumbnail, wedged into the lintel above and below the Banham. They were a hangover from his days in the field.

“He broke every rule in the book. And some that aren’t.

Partly it was something to do. “Partly, I guess, I couldn’t bear to think of a letter of hers kicking around in a hole in a wall while she sweated it out in the hot seat,” he added, the ever-redeemable boy.

‘To possess another language is to possess another soul.’