Book Review: Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel by Nick Harkaway

As I read Karla’s Choice, a famous quote from The Godfather reverberated in my head: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part III. George Smiley, of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold fame, is retired and living in Oxford, no longer one of the Circus’s most adept and agile spies. It’s the spring of 1963.  For historical reference, the Berlin Wall, which figures so prominently in John le Carré’s novels, won’t come down for another twenty-six years.  Smiley and his wife Lady Ann spend much of their time visiting her aristocratic relatives and traveling abroad. To everyone’s surprise, the somewhat odd couple have never been happier.  

Why would I be reminded of Michael Corleone’s rueful statement? It’s because Control reaches out to Smiley and leans on him to do one “short” job. Here’s the set-up. Lady Ann spots Circus stalwart Amelia (Millie) McCraig, driving “an achingly stylist MGA coupé.” When Ann says, ‘look who’s here,’ to her husband he knows she’s not happy. The visitor was “someone she didn’t like, or she would have just used the name.” Before opening the front door, Ann says baldly, “she’s going to ask you to come back.”  When the three of them speak in the front hall, Ann tells Millie she’s lucky she caught them since they’re on their way to ‘a glamourous party in the Alps.’

‘Please don’t trouble with the hospitalities, Lady Ann, I’m afraid I’ve business with your husband. Old business, I promise, not new. George, five minutes. Then St Moritz can have you back.’

‘Five minutes,’ Ann said, before Smiley could speak. ‘I’ll leave you to it then. Always a pleasure, Millie. And I do love that car. Spotless. So you.’

Millie and George sit. Smiley knows how to be still. Millie is irritated that “the line of his gaze never dropped below the shoulder.” ‘It’s new business,’ she said. ‘I lied. I’m sorry.’ Finally, Millie comes to the crux of why Control needs Smiley inside the tent. 

‘There’s a girl, Susanna Gero. She’s Hungarian. She works for a fleshy sort of literary agent named Laszlo Bánáti here in London.’ She waited.

 

Smiley shrugged: carry on.

A man who said he was working for Moscow Centre came to Susanna’s door and said he’d been sent to London to kill Laszlo. But for unclear reasons (he’s found God) he decided not to go through with it. Laszlo has disappeared as has the would-be assassin.  When a Russian agent defects “in the most unusual of circumstances,” attention is paid. Control believes that Susanna is in danger—she’s a “pretty Hungarian girl up to her neck in a Moscow assassination plot.” There’s no one who gives a damn about Susanna’s safety the way Smiley would. Millie says, ‘Walk her in, get everything from her and see her safe out,’ insisting it will take no more than 48 hours. Smiley protests—‘Come on, Millie,’ Smiley said. ‘It’s done. Let the old dog sit by the cooker—don’t ask him to go and chase rabbits with the younger ones’—but it’s futile. Millie refuses to take no for an answer, even when Smiley says he’s tired.  Smiley stipulates the staff he requires to get the job done and departs for London with Millie at the wheel. How unusual for a spy to come back into the cold, where “the cold represents the danger, isolation, and emotional hardship of spy work.” Smiley is taciturn, holding his cards close to his vest, but it’s obvious that returning to the Circus is taking a toll on him (and tangentially, his always volatile marriage).

This story, particularly its ending, sets the stage for epic battles to come. As well, it references earlier events that readers will know well, from the world of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, especially the death of Alec Leamas.  Leamas’s death haunts everyone who knew him. It’s the impetus for Smiley to try to de-escalate the violence, particularly collateral damage, when the titans of the world of spies relentlessly strike and counterstrike. Not to give anything away but Karla, Moscow’s pre-eminent spook, is not moved by Smiley’s approach, as Control sums up: 

Control nodded. ‘I asked you to show me the Smiley way and you showed me. Offered Karla the chance to call it all off. No tricks, just the thing itself. Do you reckon he understood that? Knew you meant it?’

 

‘Yes, I think so.’

 

‘And no quarter given in reply. Well, then: at least I know what he is. A true believer. That’s how it ends.’

 

Smiley looked around for Leamas, but didn’t find him.

 

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, not ends. Not just yet.’

Karla’s Choice plunges the reader into a maelstrom of intrigue and danger. The story moves from London to Vienna, to Eastern Europe and Portugal, with no let-up in suspense. Author Nick Harkaway is John le Carré’s son—he grew up with George Smiley and the Circus. Harkaway has filled in the gaps, fleshed out “the missing decade between two iconic installments in the George Smiley saga—The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”  Fans of George Smiley, and they are legion, will rush to read Karla’s Choice, as well as re-read le Carré’s earlier novels.