George Smiley travelled incognito to Hamburg under a false passport and Circus money which he had not handed in when he retired and kept at his club. He appears to have told no one of his mission including former colleagues at the Circus. He had learned from Toby Esterhase that the way to make contact with Otto Leipzig in an emergency was through the man’s friend who owned a sex night club in Hamburg. This fitted into the picture he had printed out from the negative which the General had obtained from Villem Craven, the lorry driver and son of his brother comrade in arms who had died heroically in the war.
The photo was of two men, naked closer to old than middle age, on the kind of communal bed at such places as the Hamburg club, with two young women also naked. George who met Otto once recognised him as one of the two men and the reader is left to assume that either he had shown Connie or by some other means he had identified the other man as the Russian hood Kirov who was attached to the Russian Embassy in Paris. Smiley had paid an all year entrance fee of 175 marks at the club and an additional 25 for the first drink. He had seated himself alone at a table and given the waiter a tip so that he was not pestered by any of the naked women waiting for new customers. Other customers according to the novel were enjoying their intimate company while on the stage a couple went through the motions of intercourse. In the TV production there is a sado-masochistic couple stimulating play followed by a lesbian couple as he waited for the owner to arrive at 11 pm because we are advised he had other clubs to visit beforehand.
Smiley is given a meeting and hospitality and carefully communicates what has happened to the client of his enterprise with the photograph which he presumed was taken for the customer from a vantage point on one side of the office. Kretzschmar appears a cultured man of no illusion who emphasises that he operates a good business, selling sex where others sell ties, respecting the confidentiality of his clients except in this one instance because of his affection for the General who trusted in Otto because of his past services. Kretzschmar asks several times if Smiley has anything to give and when Smiley says no he says pity. Smiley is able to get information about the likely whereabouts of Otto who has not been in contact for some two weeks which fits into the period when Villem returned with the negative and the General was assassinated. Smiley says he is anxious to warn Otto who he believes is also in danger, adding that he thought the man would know that but had participated from choice, a point with the club owner concurs. There were issues of honour and principle involved.
We then follow Smiley to the home of Otto which is occupied by a young couple who had been making love and they advise where Otto has a boat at a location among a group of camped travellers on the shoreline. They are unfriendly suspecting him of being police but eventually someone rows him out to the anchored boat. Here he finds Otto (Vladek Sheybal) naked, bound hand and foot, tortured and dead for sometime. Before leaving he notes some yellow chalk mark and a line handing over the side followed by a sports shoe with a small packet sewn into the toe and later finds that the packet contains half a postcard. He manages to escape from the site as a couple of travellers take off the boot lid of the car which they fold and place back within the boot.
He then visits Kretzschmar at his home where he is having a barbecue. He had been given a personal card with the information. He explains what has happened and gives him the half of the card which the night club owner matches and then gives him a copy a video of what happened when after the sting Otto confronted Kirov and blackmailed the hood to reveal what he has been up to. There are also audio tapes of what was said. Kretzschmar is distressed by the news of the death of Otto and offers his resources in support including manpower but Smiley says although appreciative he will manage and will fulfil what the General and Otto had in mind. He does ask for the man to book him a flight to London under the name he has travelled but we see him deposit his fake passport in a bin and then travel to Paris by train using his real name.
In Paris Madam Ostrakova has been under observation and threat and on her way home from the bus is pursued by two men who throw her on to the bonnet of their following car. She survives with only bad bruises after persuading the hospital to keep her in over night. Following this she hides in her flat fearing to go out and without food and without as much sleep as she can, sitting in a chair holding an old hand gun after persuading the concierge and her husband to tell any visitors that she gone away to stay with friends. Eventually she agrees to open the door to the concierge who has Smiley with her, just in time as she is at the point of collapse from lack of food and sleep. Smiley contacts his former work colleague and assistant Peter Guillam who features more in the Honourable Schoolboy that the first of the trilogy who is now married, but not to Molly Meakin and whose wife is expecting a child. He is now attached to the British Embassy in Paris but his work on behalf of the Circus is severely curtailed because of the Government policy.
He does exactly as Smiley asks of him. He leaves the office and from a phone box contacts the Paris emergency services to go to the building and while they are there blocking the movement of the Russian surveillance vehicles they take Olga to Peter’s home to be looked after until he can make arrangements for her to go to the safe house of a couple who had been with the underground resistance during the Second World war. He gives Peter the video and audio tapes for his assistant to go take to London insisting that he ensures the Circus meet him when he arrives at Heathrow airport. He provides a covering note and asks Peter to arrange for a meeting with Sir Saul Enderby and his advisers when he returns to London after first ensuring that Madam Ostrakova is settled in safety.
Peter is none too pleased with Smiley when he discovers that the operation to date has been unauthorised and that his position at the embassy is in doubt especially having called out the emergency services. However once he has brought Smiley back to London he realises that the situation may have been justified when a top level meeting within the Circus is arranged at 8 pm in the evening.
At the meeting is Sir Paul Enderby, the new head of research replacing Connie, one Molly Meakham who refers to the boss as Chief. I thought there was reference in the book to the infamous Sam Collins in attendance, now Director of Operations who plotted behind Smiley’s back with Enderby and Lacon to ensure the product was delivered to the American rather than to the UK interrogation centre; also Lauder Strickland, another yes man to Enderby and Lacon played by Bill Patersen. First they show a couple of frames of the video at the moment when the blackmail is revealed by Otto, They are then provided with a transcript of the audio tapes which runs to over 100 pages and where Enderby reads the salient points, This covers that a member of the Russian embassy team in Switzerland has opened an account into which is paid £10000 a month which is the fee for a young woman with the name of Alexandra Ostrakova at a mental health clinic and where he visits each week and then gives a report working directly to Karla and outside all the usual systems and checks..
There is a discussion as to whether George should be empowered to go to Bern and attempt to turn the contact, Anton Grigoriev, and therefore provide a direct route to attempt to blackmail Karla into voluntarily coming over. Enderby is torn between the implications if the mission fails because he does not dare seek permission from Lacon who will be required to go to the Wise Men committee for approval knowing it is against current policy and would reveal the clandestine activity undertaken todate also without authority, and with the glory which would follow if the mission is successful, especially the kudos with the Americans.
He insists that Peter Guillam accompanies Gorge as his minder and George bring back Toby Esterhase to organise the surveillance team, and with Strickland observing and reporting back directly to Enderby. The team stakes out the clinic where the girl, Karla‘s daughter, is being treated and also the movements of Grigoriev who is hen pecked by his wife and has been informed of his mission in the Swiss capital. As with the operation in the Honourable Schoolboy considerable attention is given to establishing the details of the financial account and Grigoriev’s control and direct involvement as he draws cash to pay the fees of the clinic which is run by an Order of Nuns.
There is a genuine amusing situation developed when Anton is taken by the team on one of the only opportunities each week when he is on his own. He and his family are offered a welcome in the west as an alternative to exposure to the interests in Russia who would take action against him for participating in the unofficial use of funds. He is concerned about the length of time he is away fro m his wife and the grilling he will get from her when he returns so Smiley stiffens his backbone and provides him with the script to explain to his wife why he will be late. The ploy is a great success and the diplomat realises it is something he can use again to gain more freedom from the wife which he finds funny roaring with contagious laughter especially when he says that what has happened is looking more and more a good thing.
Smiley then goes to visit the young woman to have first hand knowledge of her and to also find out the strength of the link with her father. It emerges she is aware of being watched by a man in the distance at various stages during her life but without his ever having direct contact. She believes she is Titiana and the daughter of someone important. She hates where she is and pleads with Smiley to accompany him.
Smiley then writes to Karla offering him asylum with the opportunity to be with his daughter and to provide the treatment available which will be able to cure her condition. Otherwise she will be doomed to state institutions and he will never see or have contact with her again. He will also be exposed for his unauthorised activities
There is the final scene where they wait in Berlin at one of the crossing points for Karla to come. At the key moment he seems to hesitate when on the bridge from the Russian end of the Border crossing looks back and lights a cigarette. There is mounting tension and building of excitement as he continues and George goes out to confront him although the two only exchange looks at this point rather than words. The man drops the lighter given by Anne with an inscription and which Karla took when the two met in India all those years ago. The taking of the lighter has been used against George by people like Enderby and Lacon. Smiley had commented to one such recent jibe that it as a common lighter although they had been made to last. He is not seen to pick up the lighter nor is anyone else. Karla who is played by Patrick Stewart is driven off. Peter Guillam remains alone with Smiley and comments “you won George.” George reflects without emotion, yes I have, or words to similar effect.
But there is sense that this far from a victory more the closing of a long drawn out chapter within his life and that he has now to come to terms with retirement away from the Circus and his life as a Spy and Spy chief. He is to make one more appearance in a Le Carré book when he is asked to lecture at the training school and to reminisce on his experience. He does not become involved in the present.
And what of Olga Ostrakova? When she recovers her strength a little and is able to relax at the safe house George and Peter has arranged for her, there is sufficient time for George to explain to her something of what the Russians were up to though this was before the last phase had commenced so what was said would have been limited and is not shared with the reader. Her main concern is the question: will she ever see or have contact with her daughter again? Gorge helps her to accept that it will never happen and she must find a way of continuing as she had done before. The irony is that this was the right thing to have said when the book was written. It was a decade later that the Berlin wall was breached marking the collapse of the Soviet system. Mother and daughter assuming both remained alive would have been able to meet and if they wished live together.
It was just after the removal of the wall with the reunification of Germany that Smiley was invited to lecture at the training school. He asked not to be invited again. By then he and Ann would have known that whatever had passed between them they needed each other for the present and whatever future was left to them.
The photo was of two men, naked closer to old than middle age, on the kind of communal bed at such places as the Hamburg club, with two young women also naked. George who met Otto once recognised him as one of the two men and the reader is left to assume that either he had shown Connie or by some other means he had identified the other man as the Russian hood Kirov who was attached to the Russian Embassy in Paris. Smiley had paid an all year entrance fee of 175 marks at the club and an additional 25 for the first drink. He had seated himself alone at a table and given the waiter a tip so that he was not pestered by any of the naked women waiting for new customers. Other customers according to the novel were enjoying their intimate company while on the stage a couple went through the motions of intercourse. In the TV production there is a sado-masochistic couple stimulating play followed by a lesbian couple as he waited for the owner to arrive at 11 pm because we are advised he had other clubs to visit beforehand.
Smiley is given a meeting and hospitality and carefully communicates what has happened to the client of his enterprise with the photograph which he presumed was taken for the customer from a vantage point on one side of the office. Kretzschmar appears a cultured man of no illusion who emphasises that he operates a good business, selling sex where others sell ties, respecting the confidentiality of his clients except in this one instance because of his affection for the General who trusted in Otto because of his past services. Kretzschmar asks several times if Smiley has anything to give and when Smiley says no he says pity. Smiley is able to get information about the likely whereabouts of Otto who has not been in contact for some two weeks which fits into the period when Villem returned with the negative and the General was assassinated. Smiley says he is anxious to warn Otto who he believes is also in danger, adding that he thought the man would know that but had participated from choice, a point with the club owner concurs. There were issues of honour and principle involved.
We then follow Smiley to the home of Otto which is occupied by a young couple who had been making love and they advise where Otto has a boat at a location among a group of camped travellers on the shoreline. They are unfriendly suspecting him of being police but eventually someone rows him out to the anchored boat. Here he finds Otto (Vladek Sheybal) naked, bound hand and foot, tortured and dead for sometime. Before leaving he notes some yellow chalk mark and a line handing over the side followed by a sports shoe with a small packet sewn into the toe and later finds that the packet contains half a postcard. He manages to escape from the site as a couple of travellers take off the boot lid of the car which they fold and place back within the boot.
He then visits Kretzschmar at his home where he is having a barbecue. He had been given a personal card with the information. He explains what has happened and gives him the half of the card which the night club owner matches and then gives him a copy a video of what happened when after the sting Otto confronted Kirov and blackmailed the hood to reveal what he has been up to. There are also audio tapes of what was said. Kretzschmar is distressed by the news of the death of Otto and offers his resources in support including manpower but Smiley says although appreciative he will manage and will fulfil what the General and Otto had in mind. He does ask for the man to book him a flight to London under the name he has travelled but we see him deposit his fake passport in a bin and then travel to Paris by train using his real name.
In Paris Madam Ostrakova has been under observation and threat and on her way home from the bus is pursued by two men who throw her on to the bonnet of their following car. She survives with only bad bruises after persuading the hospital to keep her in over night. Following this she hides in her flat fearing to go out and without food and without as much sleep as she can, sitting in a chair holding an old hand gun after persuading the concierge and her husband to tell any visitors that she gone away to stay with friends. Eventually she agrees to open the door to the concierge who has Smiley with her, just in time as she is at the point of collapse from lack of food and sleep. Smiley contacts his former work colleague and assistant Peter Guillam who features more in the Honourable Schoolboy that the first of the trilogy who is now married, but not to Molly Meakin and whose wife is expecting a child. He is now attached to the British Embassy in Paris but his work on behalf of the Circus is severely curtailed because of the Government policy.
He does exactly as Smiley asks of him. He leaves the office and from a phone box contacts the Paris emergency services to go to the building and while they are there blocking the movement of the Russian surveillance vehicles they take Olga to Peter’s home to be looked after until he can make arrangements for her to go to the safe house of a couple who had been with the underground resistance during the Second World war. He gives Peter the video and audio tapes for his assistant to go take to London insisting that he ensures the Circus meet him when he arrives at Heathrow airport. He provides a covering note and asks Peter to arrange for a meeting with Sir Saul Enderby and his advisers when he returns to London after first ensuring that Madam Ostrakova is settled in safety.
Peter is none too pleased with Smiley when he discovers that the operation to date has been unauthorised and that his position at the embassy is in doubt especially having called out the emergency services. However once he has brought Smiley back to London he realises that the situation may have been justified when a top level meeting within the Circus is arranged at 8 pm in the evening.
At the meeting is Sir Paul Enderby, the new head of research replacing Connie, one Molly Meakham who refers to the boss as Chief. I thought there was reference in the book to the infamous Sam Collins in attendance, now Director of Operations who plotted behind Smiley’s back with Enderby and Lacon to ensure the product was delivered to the American rather than to the UK interrogation centre; also Lauder Strickland, another yes man to Enderby and Lacon played by Bill Patersen. First they show a couple of frames of the video at the moment when the blackmail is revealed by Otto, They are then provided with a transcript of the audio tapes which runs to over 100 pages and where Enderby reads the salient points, This covers that a member of the Russian embassy team in Switzerland has opened an account into which is paid £10000 a month which is the fee for a young woman with the name of Alexandra Ostrakova at a mental health clinic and where he visits each week and then gives a report working directly to Karla and outside all the usual systems and checks..
There is a discussion as to whether George should be empowered to go to Bern and attempt to turn the contact, Anton Grigoriev, and therefore provide a direct route to attempt to blackmail Karla into voluntarily coming over. Enderby is torn between the implications if the mission fails because he does not dare seek permission from Lacon who will be required to go to the Wise Men committee for approval knowing it is against current policy and would reveal the clandestine activity undertaken todate also without authority, and with the glory which would follow if the mission is successful, especially the kudos with the Americans.
He insists that Peter Guillam accompanies Gorge as his minder and George bring back Toby Esterhase to organise the surveillance team, and with Strickland observing and reporting back directly to Enderby. The team stakes out the clinic where the girl, Karla‘s daughter, is being treated and also the movements of Grigoriev who is hen pecked by his wife and has been informed of his mission in the Swiss capital. As with the operation in the Honourable Schoolboy considerable attention is given to establishing the details of the financial account and Grigoriev’s control and direct involvement as he draws cash to pay the fees of the clinic which is run by an Order of Nuns.
There is a genuine amusing situation developed when Anton is taken by the team on one of the only opportunities each week when he is on his own. He and his family are offered a welcome in the west as an alternative to exposure to the interests in Russia who would take action against him for participating in the unofficial use of funds. He is concerned about the length of time he is away fro m his wife and the grilling he will get from her when he returns so Smiley stiffens his backbone and provides him with the script to explain to his wife why he will be late. The ploy is a great success and the diplomat realises it is something he can use again to gain more freedom from the wife which he finds funny roaring with contagious laughter especially when he says that what has happened is looking more and more a good thing.
Smiley then goes to visit the young woman to have first hand knowledge of her and to also find out the strength of the link with her father. It emerges she is aware of being watched by a man in the distance at various stages during her life but without his ever having direct contact. She believes she is Titiana and the daughter of someone important. She hates where she is and pleads with Smiley to accompany him.
Smiley then writes to Karla offering him asylum with the opportunity to be with his daughter and to provide the treatment available which will be able to cure her condition. Otherwise she will be doomed to state institutions and he will never see or have contact with her again. He will also be exposed for his unauthorised activities
There is the final scene where they wait in Berlin at one of the crossing points for Karla to come. At the key moment he seems to hesitate when on the bridge from the Russian end of the Border crossing looks back and lights a cigarette. There is mounting tension and building of excitement as he continues and George goes out to confront him although the two only exchange looks at this point rather than words. The man drops the lighter given by Anne with an inscription and which Karla took when the two met in India all those years ago. The taking of the lighter has been used against George by people like Enderby and Lacon. Smiley had commented to one such recent jibe that it as a common lighter although they had been made to last. He is not seen to pick up the lighter nor is anyone else. Karla who is played by Patrick Stewart is driven off. Peter Guillam remains alone with Smiley and comments “you won George.” George reflects without emotion, yes I have, or words to similar effect.
But there is sense that this far from a victory more the closing of a long drawn out chapter within his life and that he has now to come to terms with retirement away from the Circus and his life as a Spy and Spy chief. He is to make one more appearance in a Le Carré book when he is asked to lecture at the training school and to reminisce on his experience. He does not become involved in the present.
And what of Olga Ostrakova? When she recovers her strength a little and is able to relax at the safe house George and Peter has arranged for her, there is sufficient time for George to explain to her something of what the Russians were up to though this was before the last phase had commenced so what was said would have been limited and is not shared with the reader. Her main concern is the question: will she ever see or have contact with her daughter again? Gorge helps her to accept that it will never happen and she must find a way of continuing as she had done before. The irony is that this was the right thing to have said when the book was written. It was a decade later that the Berlin wall was breached marking the collapse of the Soviet system. Mother and daughter assuming both remained alive would have been able to meet and if they wished live together.
It was just after the removal of the wall with the reunification of Germany that Smiley was invited to lecture at the training school. He asked not to be invited again. By then he and Ann would have known that whatever had passed between them they needed each other for the present and whatever future was left to them.
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