Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Most people's understanding of British espionage tends to be heavily influenced by James Bond - indeed, the average person's idea of a spy is often based on Ian Fleming's character. To be fair, James Bond is a most fascinating character: good-looking, cultured, a little flamboyant at times, but always able to accomplish the mission, and always, always able to get the girl. In light of these attributes, it's easy to see why people are attracted to Ian Fleming's version of espionage.

But any spy, or any student of espionage, who worked during the Cold War or studied what espionage was like during that period - which, incidentally, was also the same period during which Fleming's James Bond operated - would know that real espionage was nothing like what was portrayed in Fleming's novels. What Fleming depicted in his books was a fantasy, an ideal of what he thought espionage should be like. But this was not how real espionage was conducted by the British during the Cold War. Espionage during the time was dirtier, more complex - and certainly not as flamboyant.

It is this “real world” of Cold War espionage that John Le Carre attemps to portray in his novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which was recently made into a movie starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy, and Benedict Cumberbatch. The movie has already received rave reviews, and for good reason - it is a well-crafted story featuring some of the best British actors in the industry, with enough action and suspense to keep the audience on their toes.

The novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starts out in the middle of things, with an intelligence officer named Ricki Tarr just home from foreign parts with some very important - and dangerous - information: the existence of a mole within the Circus. George Smiley, once one of the Circus's best operatives but now in forced retired, is brought into the case. Following the threads of information found in files and stories from those involved, Smiley - with the help of a handful of other agents, including a relative newbie named Peter Guillam - puts together the pieces of Operation Testify: the same blown mission which led to his being put into forced retirement, and which ultimately leads him to the mole within the Circus. It also puts him on the trail of an elusive Russian operative known as Karla, who has been pulling the strings all this time. Thus, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the first book of what is known as the Karla Trilogy, and is followed by two other books: The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People.

The storyline of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is, in and of itself, a very interesting one. I have not read a lot of novels on espionage: I have not read any of the Fleming novels, and though I have seen quite a few Bond films, I do think I have a sufficient education in history to know that what James Bond does is not what a real spy would do (to say nothing of the villains Bond encounters). Real espionage is dirty, dangerous work, and there's simply no time to go swanning on a yacht in the Mediterranean or throwing dice in Monte Carlo, sipping a martini, shaken, stirred, or otherwise. To be sure, James Bond is James Bond and his stories have their place, but what he does is not true espionage, not by any stretch of the word.

It is because of awareness of the facts above that I deeply appreciate Le Carre's attempt at verisimilitude in his novel. The spies in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy know better than to get themselves caught, and while they do enjoy luxury when they can get it, they know that they do not necessarily need it to live - especially when one must go without the usual comforts on a mission behind Soviet lines. The discomfort is not only physical, but can also be mental and psychological. Le Carre does not go into detail regarding torture methods (though one of the characters - the central victim of the fallout from the failure of Operation Testify - does undergo it), but the novel makes it very clear that an ideal spy must not only be strong physically, but must be strong mentally as well.

Another notion that I greatly appreciate in Le Carre's novel is the emphasis on invisibility. A spy must be able to go undetected for as long as possible, even when the mission is done. All spies have a variety of cover identities, and they must take great care not to burn, or blow the cover these identities provide them, so that they may be reused for another mission. And, of course, blowing one's cover while undercover is another thing that a spy mustn't do. If h were a real spy, James Bond would either have a lot of cover identities, or “James Bond” would simply be one of them - though given how many times he's blown that particular identity, he ought not to use it anymore.

There is also a fascinating grayness in the way the Circus handles information, which is the lifeblood and currency of espionage: information - some of it false, and some of it accurate - is traded by double agents, often with the Circus's blessing, and this occurs so frequently that it's practically policy. One would imagine that agents - even double agents - simply fabricate information to feed to the enemy, but that is not true. In order to maintain their status as double agents, they must be able to feed in reliable information, and so some real secrets are occasionally handed to the other side. Generally, though, these secrets are not all that vitally important - “chicken feed,” as they are described in the novel. It's only when very important secrets get out to the enemy that trouble really ensues.

One of the most obvious and immediate difficulties of reading this novel is the jargon the agents use when speaking to each other about their tradecraft (and that word is, also, an example of jargon, referring as it does in an oblique way to espionage itself). The liberal use of it without any prior explanation could be the result of the fact that this is the fifth book in a series, and so the author might reasonably expect that the reader no longer needs any explanation for these terms. However, I still feel that the novel could use, at the very least, a kind of brief glossary at the beginning or end of the novel, for those readers who are coming to the books after having seen the movie, or (as in my case) reading the book in anticipation of seeing the film when it is released in my country.

Another thing that might put potential readers off the novel is that it starts slow - rather too slow, almost. The novel could have potentially picked up speed when Smiley began his search for the mole in the Circus, but a majority of the potentially exciting scenarios in the novel occur in the form of flashbacks - and flashbacks of the sort that appear in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy are really only very exciting in film, not on the page. It's only in the last one-fourth of the book - when Smiley's investigation really picks up steam and he lays his trap for the mole - that the reader will find themselves riveted to the page, unable to put it down. This is, of course, if they managed to get through the initial three-fourths without feeling the intense desire to put the book down and never open it again.

As a whole, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a decent read, especially for readers who think James Bond is unrealistic and are looking for something a bit more down-to-earth, as it were. However, readers might be put off a little by the amount of espionage jargon used right at the very beginning, as well as by novel's very slow start. Those looking for action and adventure right from the get-go might not like this novel, but those who are willing to be patient about it will likely be rewarded.

Additional note: Wikipedia provides a handy glossary of tradecraft terms for those who are reading this novel out-of-sequence (since I am under the assumption that earlier novels have already explained these terms).