Smiley's People - Plot

Plot

Maria Andreyevna Ostrakova, a Soviet émigrée in Paris, is told by a Soviet agent calling himself "Kursky", that the daughter, Alexandra, who she was forced to leave behind, may be permitted to emigrate and join her 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 has been duped, and writes to General Vladimir, an old friend of her late husband, also a former Soviet general and covert British agent, for help. Vladimir immediately realizes that Ostrakova was unwittingly used to provide a "legend", or false identity, for an unknown young woman in a scheme personally directed by KGB spymaster Karla. He also recognises that the operation is wholly unofficial, because Karla uses blundering Soviet diplomats instead of trained intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover.

Vladimir contacts "Hector" (Toby Esterhase), his old handler and "postman" in the British Secret Service, but Esterhase has left the service and refuses to be involved in Vladimir's plans. Nevertheless, Vladimir sends a confidante, Otto Leipzig, to interview Ostrakova in Paris. From a photograph, Ostrakova immediately identifies the agent "Kursky". Vladimir later sends another agent to Hamburg to collect vital proof from Leipzig. He contacts British Intelligence again, insisting on speaking to his former senior case officer "Max" (George Smiley), not realising that Smiley is also retired. The current Circus personnel, unfamiliar with Vladimir, are sceptical and uncooperative. Meanwhile, Vladimir's activities have been betrayed by Karla's network of informants within the Russian émigré community. Vladimir is 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 Smiley from his forced retirement in the hope that he will bury any links to the Circus. Unlike Enderby and Lacon, Smiley takes Vladimir's claims seriously and begins to investigate. He fortuitously recovers a letter sent to the General by Ostrakova, who is now being shadowed and fears for her life. Near where Vladimir was killed, he also discovers Vladimir's half-empty packet of Gauloises cigarettes, containing the negative of a compromising photograph of Leipzig and another man. Smiley recalls that Leipzig had often used a venal Soviet 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. Meanwhile, Soviet agents bungle an attempt to kill Ostrakova.

Smiley consults former Circus researcher Connie Sachs, who remembers some background information on Kirov, also known by the cover name "Kursky." Following Vladimir's logic that Karla was acting outside the dedicated system he himself devised, Connie also recounts rumours that Karla had a daughter by a mistress whom he 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, 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 was taken. Kretzschmar gives him directions to Leipzig's temporary address on a boat in a gypsy encampment on the Baltic Sea near Lübeck, but two of Karla's agents have found Leipzig first, and tortured and killed him. Smiley's search of Leipzig's boat uncovers what Karla's agents did not; the torn half of a postcard hidden underwater in an old gym-shoe on the hook of a fishing-line. His discovery is witnessed by several people, and his rental car is severely damaged by two gypsy kids. Smiley rushes to finish his work in a small town near Hamburg before German police and Soviet agents close in on him. Here, Smiley appears as the spy of old 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 lays a false trail in the direction of Heathrow, and then hastens by train and ferry to Copenhagen from where he flies to Paris, fearing for Ostrakova's life. With help from his old friend and former lieutenant Peter Guillam, who is 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) to a bank in Thun in Switzerland and misappropriating other resources using a commercial attache of the Soviet embassy in Bern, named Grigoriev. The money is going to the care of Karla's daughter, who has been committed to an expensive Swiss psychiatric sanatorium 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 observation. 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 to watch an open-air chess match 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 accused by Swiss authorities of using a faked Swiss passport and breaking banking laws. Following the official protest he would be returned overnight 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 between defection to the West and protection for Tatiana, or exposure, leading inevitably to his destruction by adversaries within Moscow Centre, and Tatiana being 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 stops and lights a new Camel. He drops the golden cigarette lighter near Smiley he had purloined from him years ago in an Indian prison, 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.