Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: A George Smiley Novel (George Smiley Novels Book 5)

Steeple Aston—that was a place. He would set up as a mild eccentric, discursive, withdrawn, but possessing one or two lovable habits such as muttering to himself as he bumbled along pavements. Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn’t these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forwar

“There won’t be much, I’m sure,” Smiley had said, as if thinner files were easier. “But there ought to be something, if only for appearances.” That was another thing about him that Guillam didn’t like just then: he spoke as if you followed his reasoning, as if you were inside his mind all the time.

“I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn’t. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one’s aims are, that’s the trouble, specially if you’re British. We can’t expect you people to determine our policy for us, can we? We can only ask you to further it. Corre

“I sometimes think I safeguard your opinion of him. Is that possible? That I somehow keep the two of you together. Is that possible?” “It’s possible.” He added, “Yes, I suppose I’m dependent on him, too, in a way.”

For a space, that was how Smiley stood: a fat, barefooted spy, as Ann would say, deceived in love and impotent in hate, clutching a gun in one hand, a bit of string in the other, as he waited in the darkness. Then, gun still in hand, he tiptoed backward as far as the window, from which he signalled five short flashes in quick succession. Having wai

Treason is very much a matter of habit,

“I didn’t know you spoke Russian,” said Smiley—a comment lost to everyone but Tarr, who at once grinned. “Ah, now, a man needs a qualification in this profession, Mr. Smiley,” he explained as he separated the pages. “I may not have been too great at law but a further language can be decisive. You know what the poets say, I expect?” He looked up fro

Her formless white face took on the grandmother’s glow of enchanted reminiscence. Her memory was as compendious as her body and surely she loved it more, for she had put everything aside to listen to it: her drink, her cigarette, even for a while Smiley’s passive hand.

But Smiley had a second reason, which was fear, the secret fear that follows every professional to his grave. Namely, that one day, out of a past so complex that he himself could not remember all the enemies he might have made, one of them would find him and demand the reckoning.