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

by John Le Carré

“To sum it up, Karla was the proverbial cold-war orphan. He had left home to do a job abroad. The job had blown up in his face, but he couldn’t go back: home was more hostile than abroad. We had no powers of permanent arrest, so it was up to Karla to ask us for protection. I don’t think I had ever come across a clearer case for defection. I had only to convince him of the arrest of the San Francisco network—wave the press photographs and cuttings from my briefcase at him—talk to him a little about the unfriendly conspiracies of Brother Rudnev in Moscow, and cable the somewhat overworked inquisitors in Sarratt, and with any luck I’d make London by the weekend. I rather think I had tickets for Sadler’s Wells. It was Ann’s great year for ballet.” Yes, Guillam had heard about that, too: a twenty-year-old Welsh Apollo, the season’s wonder boy. They had been burning up London for months. The heat in the jail was appalling, Smiley continued. The cell had an iron table at the centre and iron cattle rings let into the wall.