Smiley's People

For the article by Neal Stephenson, see Smiley's people (essay).

Smiley's People
First edition cover
Author(s)	John le Carré
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Karla Trilogy
Genre(s)	Spy novel
Publisher	Hodder & Stoughton (UK) & Random House (USA)
Publication date	November 1979
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	384 pp (hardback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-340-24704-5 (UK hardback edition) & ISBN 0-394-50843-2 (US hardback edition)
OCLC Number	6102346
Preceded by	The Honourable Schoolboy

Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy. George Smiley is called out from retirement for the last time to investigate the death of one of his old agents, a former Soviet General, titular head of an Estonian émigré organization based in London. Smiley learns the General had discovered information that leads to a final confrontation with George Smiley's nemesis, the Soviet spy-master Karla.

Plot

Maria Andreyevna Ostrakova is a Soviet émigrée in Paris who defected to the West years ago leaving behind a daughter named Alexandra. Ostrakova is persuaded by a Soviet agent, calling himself Kursky, that her daughter may be permitted to emigrate and join her in Paris, for "humanitarian reasons". Ostrakova eagerly applies for French citizenship for her daughter, but time passes with no sign of Alexandra and no further contact with "Kursky." She realises that she had been duped, and her real-life story has been used, probably by the KGB, for some unknown reason. She therefore contacts an old friend of her late husband, a General Vladimir, a former World War II Soviet general who was secretly an agent for the British because of his love for his native Estonia. After his eventual defection, "the General" became the leader of a pro-Estonian independence group, of dubious usefulness to Western intelligence agencies but nonetheless a hero among the Russian émigré community living in the West.

Vladimir immediately realizes that Ostrakova was unwittingly used to provide a "legend", i.e., a false identity, for an unknown young woman through a scheme personally directed by KGB master spy Karla. He also recognises that the operation is wholly unofficial, because Karla uses untrained and blundering Soviet diplomatic personnel rather than trained intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover.

Vladimir attempts to contact "Hector" (Toby Esterhase), his old handler and "postman" in the British Secret Service, but is rebuffed as Esterhase is now retired from the Circus (the London headquarters of British Intelligence). Vladimir nevertheless sends his agent and confidant Otto Leipzig to interview Ostrakova in Paris. From a photograph, Ostrakova immediately identifies "Kursky". The General later sends another friend's son, Villem, to Hamburg to collect vital proofs from Leipzig. He then contacts British Intelligence again. This time he insists on speaking to his former senior case officer "Max" (George Smiley), not realising that Smiley is also retired. The current Circus personnel are unfamiliar with Vladimir and are therefore sceptical and uncooperative. Meanwhile, Vladimir's activities have been betrayed by Karla's network of informers within the Russian émigré community. Vladimir is professionally assassinated while on his way to meet with a young and inexperienced handler from the Circus, evidently by Moscow agents.

New Circus head Saul Enderby and Civil Service undersecretary Oliver Lacon are certain that the General was merely an obscure ex-agent seeking attention, and want to bury the matter quickly to protect themselves and the Circus from any scandal. They recall George Smiley from his forced retirement in the hope that he will quickly clean up the incident and bury any links to the Circus. Unlike Enderby and Lacon, Smiley takes seriously Vladimir's claims about valuable information and begins to investigate rather than sweeping the issue under the rug. He fortuitously recovers a letter from Ostrakova to the General from a postman outside Vladimir's rundown flat. Close to the spot where Vladimir was murdered, he then discovers a half-empty packet of Gauloises cigarettes (the General's favourite brand), which Vladimir had thrown into a tree just before his death. The packet contains the negative of a compromising photograph of Leipzig and another man. Smiley recalls that Leipzig had often used a venal Russian amateur agent named Oleg Kirov, who was susceptible to blackmail, as a source of information, and surmises that Kirov is probably the other man in the photograph. Soviet agents meanwhile bungle an attempt to kill Ostrakova.

Smiley next consults former Circus researcher Connie Sachs. Although very ill, she remembers clearly some background information on Kirov, who is also known by the cover name "Kursky", and as the "Ginger Pig". Following the late General's logic that Karla was acting outside the dedicated system he himself devised, Connie also recounts old rumours that Karla had a daughter by a mistress whom Karla had deeply loved but who ultimately turned against him and was sent to the Gulag on Karla's orders. The daughter, Tatiana, grew up without a mother and with a father she never knew, became mentally unstable (as demonstrated by "acting out" through repeated petty crime and rampant promiscuity) and was subsequently confined to a mental institution.

Smiley flies to Hamburg, where he hopes to learn the rest of the story. He tracks down Claus Kretzschmar, an old associate of Leipzig and owner of the seedy night club where the photograph discarded by the General was taken. Kretzschmar gives him directions to Leipzig's temporary address on a boat in a gypsy encampment, but Soviet agents have found Leipzig first, torturing and killing him. Smiley's postmortem search of Leipzig's boat uncovers what Karla's agents did not; the torn half of a postcard hidden underwater in an old shoe. His discovery is witnessed by several people, and his rental car is severely damaged by the gypsies. Smiley rushes to finish his work in Hamburg before the German authorities and Soviet thugs close in on him. Here Smiley appears as the spy of old (his first assignment was in Germany before the war according to Call for the Dead) and a master of tradecraft.

He takes the half of the postcard to Kretzschmar, who matches it to the other half and gives Smiley a tape recording made at the time the photograph of Leipzig and Kirov was taken, and the photocopy of Ostrakova's first letter to Vladimir, which he had sent to Leipzig. Smiley reads the letter and flies to Paris, fearing for Ostrakova's life. With help from his old friend and former lieutenant Peter Guillam, now serving out his days in the British Embassy in Paris, Smiley gets Ostrakova to safety. He also learns that Kirov has been summoned back to Moscow, and has probably been killed for his indiscretions.

Smiley then returns to London where he meets in secret with Enderby. The transcribed tape of Kirov's confession to Leipzig shows that Karla is secretly diverting official funds (US $10,000 every month) and misappropriating resources through the Soviet embassy in Bern, Switzerland, using a commercial attache named Grigoriev. The money is going to the care of Karla's daughter who has been committed to an expensive Swiss psychiatric facility under the faked citizenship papers of Ostrakova's daughter. Smiley explains that if British Intelligence can obtain proof of this activity, they may have the information necessary to blackmail (or "burn") Karla and force him to defect or face disgrace and possibly execution. Unexpectedly, Smiley obtains approval, and secret and deniable funding, from Enderby to mount an operation to secure the evidence from Grigoriev and close the trap on Karla.

While Smiley does research at the Circus, Toby Esterhase, the former head of the Circus's "lamplighters" (covert surveillance operations) section, sets up a team in Bern to keep Grigoriev under surveillance. Smiley then visits his estranged wife, Ann, and makes a point of cutting all relations with her, deliberately shedding his illusions (Karla previously described Ann as 'the last illusion of an illusionless man') as he prepares to face down his greatest foe. Smiley recognises how ruthless he must become if he is to be Karla's nemesis.

In Bern, Smiley learns that, like Kirov, Grigoriev is untrained in spycraft and hopeless at concealment. Esterhase's team soon gains ample evidence of his unofficial handling of funds for Karla and his affair with one of his secretaries. Although Grigoriev is normally accompanied everywhere by his formidable wife, Grigorieva, he makes an informal trip into Bern by himself one Sunday and is bundled into a car by Esterhase and his helpers. He is then subjected to Smiley's expert interrogation, and given the choice of cooperating and defecting, or being returned to the Soviet Union in disgrace with the prospect of a lifetime facing Karla's and Grigorieva's wrath. Grigoriev quickly confesses all he knows of the arrangements regarding Alexandra's care and the details of the visits he makes to her.

Although it is unnecessary, Smiley visits "Alexandra", who is being treated in an institution run by an order of nuns. Among her "symptoms" is her insistence that she is actually called Tatiana and is the daughter of a powerful man who can make people disappear but who does not actually exist. Smiley then writes a letter to Karla, which Grigoriev passes on instead of his usual weekly report on "Alexandra's" condition and the minutiae of her treatment. Although not described, it is assumed the letter details Karla's illegal activities and offers him the stark choice: defection to the West, and protection for Tatiana; or exposure, leading inevitably to destruction by adversaries within Moscow Centre, and Tatiana left to her fate.

In a final scene reminiscent of the opening scene of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Karla, posing as a labourer, defects using a walk-bridge at the Berlin Wall. Unlike Karl Riemeck in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Karla does not panic during the crossing and makes it safely to the Circus's waiting car. Before crossing over into the waiting arms of western agents, Karla drops the cigarette lighter he had purloined from Smiley years ago, a gift to George from his unfaithful wife Ann. Given the opportunity, Smiley fails to pick up the lighter — another sign that he has become that which he resisted for so long. Karla is finally defeated, but the similarity of Smiley's methods to the cold and ruthless techniques of Karla himself robs Smiley of any apparent sense of triumph in the book's closing sentences.

Characters

• Maria Andreyevna Ostrakova - a Russian émigrée in Paris, mother of a girl, Alexandra Glikman, whom she left with the girl's father when she escaped from the Soviet Union
• Oleg Kirov né Oleg Kursky - an agent for Karla, deputed to find a suitable legend for Karla's daughter
• General Vladimir - Estonian émigré, former Soviet general, spied for the British for three years, since defected and later retired
• Otto Leipzig - "The Magician", freelance intelligence agent and occasional fraud, who works with Vladimir to take down Kirov and Karla
• George Smiley - retired, former Acting Chief of British intelligence
• Peter Guillam - Head of the British Intelligence section in the Paris embassy
• Connie Sachs - retired, former analyst and head of Moscow sphere of British intelligence (the Circus)
• Sir Oliver Lacon - Whitehall's Head Prefect to the intelligence service, aka Cabinet Office factotum
• Nigel Mostyn - young intelligence officer who took Vladimir's calls to Circus
• Alexandra Borisovna Ostrakova - Maria Andreyevna's daughter; identity assumed by Karla's daughter
• Karla - Chief of the Thirteenth Directorate within Soviet Intelligence. The Directorate is also known as the Karla Directorate.
• Sir Saul Enderby - Chief of British intelligence
• William (Villem) Craven - son of a deceased friend of Vladimir, performs a courier job for Vladimir
• Mikhel - Vladimir's émigré friend at the Free Baltic library in Bloomsbury
• Elvira - Mikhel's wife, probably Vladimir's lover
• Toby Esterhase - former Circus man, now an antiques dealer, organizes the trapping of Grigoriev
• Claus Kretzschmar - Otto Leipzig's old associate, owner of a seedy night club in Hamburg where Kirov is burned
• Grigoriev - Soviet bureaucrat in Bern who is drawn against his will into, first, Karla's services, then Smiley's
• Krassky - Moscow courier who handles correspondence between Grigoriev and Karla
• Tatiana - Karla's deranged daughter, usually referred to by her assumed identity, "Alexandra"
• Mother Felicity - mother superior of the facility in Thun where Alexandra/Tatiana is kept

Adaptations

Smiley's People DVD cover

Smiley's People was dramatised by John Hopkins for television for the BBC in 1982, as a sequel to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979), again starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. The screenplay was written by John le Carré and John Hopkins.

Cast

• George Smiley - Alec Guinness^*
• Madame Ostrakova - Eileen Atkins
• Peter Guillam - Michael Byrne^†
• Toby Esterhase - Bernard Hepton^*
• Sir Oliver Lacon - Anthony Bate^*
• Sir Saul Enderby - Barry Foster
• Anton Grigoriev - Michael Lonsdale
• Connie Sachs - Beryl Reid^*
• Lauder Strickland - Bill Paterson^†
• Ann Smiley - Siân Phillips^*
• Claus Kretschmar - Mario Adorf
• Karla - Patrick Stewart^*
• General Vladimir - Curd Jürgens
• Otto Leipzig - Vladek Sheybal
• Mother Felicity - Rosalie Crutchley
• Stella Craven - Maureen Lipman
• Oleg Kirov - Dudley Sutton
• Mikhel - Michael Gough
• Detective Chief Superintendent - Michael Elphick
• Villem Craven - Paul Herzberg
• Nigel Mostyn - Stephen Riddle
• Alexandra/Tatiana - Tusse Silberg
• Hilary - Norma West
• Elvira - Ingrid Pitt
• Molly Meakin - Lucy Fleming
• Ferguson - Andy Bradford
• Mr. Brownlow - Alan Rickman
• Beckie Craven - Tanya Rees

^*Same actor/actress as 1979 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. ^†Played by different actor in 1979 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

External links

• Smiley's People at the Internet Movie Database
• British Film Institute Screen Online (TV series)