Agent Running in the Field

by John le Carré

Thanks to Putin and his gang of unredeemed Stalinists, Russia was not going forward to a bright future, but backwards into her dark, delusional past.

The two leaders are in Helsinki giving a joint press conference. They are standing shoulder to shoulder before the flags of both their nations. Trump, speaking as if to order, is disowning the findings of his own intelligence services, which have come up with the inconvenient truth that Russia interfered in the 2016 American presidential election. Putin smiles his proud jailer’s smile.