I have enjoyed reading the 575 pages of John Le Carré 1977 second book of his Karla Smiley trilogy called The Honourable Schoolboy, so much so that I stayed up reading in bed until after 1 am last in order to find out what happens at the end of his full complex but always engaging story. It is a book to be read once and enjoyed and then read again, making notes before writing a considered article. I have the time but am not prepared to use for this purpose given other priorities and planned programmes of activity. However nor can I simply write an impression and must check back whenever I am unsure or seek additional information. In event I compromised and settled for writing with more rereading over the weekend and a two part note reflecting the two part of the volume.
The story is set as USA were about to get out of Vietnam in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge to take power in Cambodia under Pol Pot for the next four horrendous years. China after the Cultural Revolution had become unstable with the arrest of so called gang of four in 1976. The Americans were beginning to lick their wounds and distrustful and resentful of the Brits who had kept out of Vietnam and had nearly led them into sharing their intelligence with the enemy, the cold war enemy of Russia.
The story of the Honourable Schoolboy can be considered from three perspectives. The principal is that of the Honourable Jerry Westerby who works as an International Reporter in the Far East, undertaking assignments for British Intelligence for which he has been fully trained but is presently on a Sabbatical writing the great novel in Tuscany shacked up with a young woman that came by his way,
The second is that not just the perspective of George Smiley temporary chief of Intelligence Operations but the extraordinary Team process by which a mission unfolds and is executed and which may or may not bear a relationship to the reality past and present.
Thirdly is the morality or more accurately the immorality of the work which leads to individuals questioning and changing sides.
Having explored aspects of the internal machinations of those directly involved in the day to day management of the service in the previous work Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Le Carré now explores the interaction between the service and the rest of Whitehall and the Cousins, the Americans in addition to his preoccupation, some would say obsession with Karla and the Russians. And of course now there are the Chinese what are they up to next?
The difference between Jerry Westerby and the other Le Carré Agent with whom I previously identified with, Alec Lomas, portrayed brilliantly by Richard Burton in the film of the same name, is that Jerry is that rare combination of being upper class, Eton and Oxford, a genuine intellectual wild man of action more at home with Hemingway than C P Snow where one can find the Smiley or two.
Lomas was willing to go to prison and then to be captured and tortured by the enemy because of his anti communist commitment, he drank more than he should and enjoyed heterosexual relationships whenever the opportunity came his way, but Alec cares what happens, feels and takes responsibility for his actions and when he finds the behaviour of both sets of master questionable and that his own side is prepared to take the life of the woman he has come to care about despite her sincere but naive political views, he says no and is also killed rather than live on with the knowledge of his role in what has happened. Jerry Westerby also questions but he has one weakness greater than the women, the drink and drugs, even the excitement of the role,-Smiley asks and Jerry will do.
Not having read The Spy who came in from the Cold I do not know if Alec Lomas was an agent or a scalphunter, that is one of those trained as assassins, to kidnap, commit burglaries and other activities outside the British Law although he appears to be more of an agent, committed to a cause he believed in
Jerry is not a killer although he can look after himself. Unlike the Bond characters that always appear to be living in the present and other similar fictitious creations one of the joys, and at times difficulties, of Le Carré writing is that he provides individuals whose past affects their present, consciously and unconsciously. To appreciate this the reading should be slow digesting and reflecting, unless you have the kind of mind, which I do not, that assimilate at a flash and continue to remember,
The story begins after Smiley has returned to patch up the pieces at the Circus, still under a cloud himself because despite his part in the unmasking of Haydon because he had worked with the man over several decades and had not reacted against the man‘s affair with his wife, affecting, it is argued, his judgement just as Karla had predicted, although this was as much his resignation that his wife needed affairs just as he needed to be at the top in at the Circus.
The Circus is under pressure to find something which will resurrect their standing although their masters in the administration and the party political government have insisted on closing down many outposts and disbanding agent chains knowing these had been compromised over the decades of the betrayal. The politicians and Mandarins would like something to impress the Cousins.
As the story opens we quickly switch from London to Hong Kong, then a Crown territory under contract from China and to be handed back before the end of the last century and into the world of the news reporters attempting to secure scoops and therefore spending as much time watching and listening to each other as they are making new contacts out there on the street and the corridors of power. They appear to spend a great part of their time at an old style colonial club, meals and drinks throughout the day and night, taking cabs to the nearest playground for girls and drugs. Up at the top although nothing like as impressive a position as in Gibraltar was the home of the UK area spooks relying on radio and telephonic communications if the era before the Internet.
Given this background of International great events and local colonialism where the people are divided between the round eyes and the slant eyes, the main interest of the newshounds seems at first parochial, trying to establish that the chief spy and his household has closed down and what did this all mean. The two characters of significance we are first introduced are Luke, a Californian Journalist, and William Craw, a man of mature years and experience if life, journalist and trusted agent for the Circus. In a joke about Watergate and Deep throat, Craw suggests they contact stripped pants Shallow Throat at the Colonial office as I suspect it was still called in a vain attempt to gain some news, at least that was the front he was putting up, pretending to his colleagues he was in the dark as much anyone. It is Craw who publishes the first exposé which Smiley commends as a masterpiece if disinformation.
We the turn to Jerry and the arrival of a telegram from Smiley, coded of course, but enough to get him to leave and abandon the bedmate only recently rescued as she traversed the globe. Young Peter Guillam is back at the top and it is often through his eyes that we appear learn about the impenetrable aging Smiley keeping his own Counsel restricting what he is prepared to reveal to individuals and times of his choosing. It takes the great part of section one of the book to establish why Jerry Westerby has been recalled and what he is to do.
The new team at the top has assembled to discuss how they should approach re-establishing the authority and integrity of the service by discovering a major source of new intelligence. Smiley had appointed a factotum assistant as he had done in Soldier Sailor. This time it is a man called Fawn, an anonymous individual who I am not sure if we ever learn anything of his background. Peter appears something of a fetcher and carrier to but accompanies Smiley to important meetings. Connie Sacks is back from her Oxford retirement, endearingly referring to everyone out in the field as her dear boys but remains the great Soviet analyst together with the less attractive Doc di Salis, another Circus Burrower, an expert on China although I am not sure why he as brought in before the direction everyone would take is established. Also early on Smiley consulted Sam Collins an older field officer, described as dapper, something of a dandy with a moustache and smoking brown cigarettes. He was an Asian field hand with 5 years in Borneo, 6 in Burma and 5 in North Thailand before 3 years in Vientiane, the capital of Laos who gained what is described as a dazzling first at Cambridge. If anything this will become the Sam Collins story as much as that of Westerby or Smiley, but I give too much away and would never have been a good spy for this reason alone.
In jargon the Burrowers were asked to look for Karla backbearings, to go over everything that happened which traitor Bill Haydon had a hand in and try and detect where he may have covered up something which he did not wish pursued or given important or ongoing attention. Files that should have been there but were not, people told not to bother or to disregard what today looked as if it required greater attention. This was Connie’s great strength as she knew more than anyone, including Smiley the minutiae of the Karla’s signature, his trade craft. And it was as a consequence of her efforts that requests were made for records from the one of the remaining outposts in the Far East, Ventiane the capital of Laos.
What was discovered was that Russian money, large qualities of money, $25000 a month (1970’s value) was being passed through a complex route ton Honk Kong where it accumulated as a trust and had not been touched todate and this then led to an eminent married Chinese business Drake Ko OBE, a man vetted before confirming is honour and with the kind of standing that when the Governor, (respectfully referred by the journalists as Big Moo), invited local bigwigs in for an informal get together to learn what was actually afoot or of concern in he colony, Ko was always included on the guest list. That he is called Drake is a clue to his background which was revealed much later. He has a beautiful ‘round eye’ mistress and the investigation of her background also becomes crucial to unravelling why the money was being sent and why it was not touched.
It was Jerry Westerby’s role to return to his old job in Hong Kong to find out about Ko and his English mistress with a German Christian name, Liese Worth and the significance of her other names.
Jerry discovers that Ko had a son who died and later we learn was called Nelson, with Nelson and Drake big clues as to the man’s back ground which includes a spell in London reading for the Bar and also that among the charities supported is a Baptist Church and a Hospital for children which bears his name. He is also into horse racing and has had a successful animal called Lucky Nelson. It is at the racetrack at Westerby engineers an introduction to Ko for an interview. We not learn much except he had come as refugee from the mainland
Before further action can be taken the authority of the ‘masters’ has to be agreed and Peter accompanies Smiley to present his case to a committee with the Foreign Office team (with interests in Russia and China and the rest of the Far East excluding Hong Kong) by Saul Enderby one time Ambassador to Indonesia and his right hand every day link man with the Circus, Roddy Martindale plus a Parliamentary Under Secretary sitting at one end of the table.
At the other end, significantly, is the three person team from the Colonial Office, whose interest is Hong Kong and regarded themselves as superior because they actually managed territories but in reality it is the Foreign Office which has the ear of the Cabinet Office and Oliver Lacon who sits apart but opposite from Smiley and Guillam, with ‘the Competition’ that is the home security services directly across. The Defence Ministry had two and the Treasury a similar number also facing the applicants.
Le Carré provides what I can assert is a good description of all such type of meetings are made to a collective of varied and often competing interests, each jockeying for position, some playing a short, while others a longer, game and where most of the positioning and decision taking takes place in bilateral deals beforehand. How far should Circus be allowed to go and within what bounds and funding? What should the Governor be told if anything and what of the Cousins, the Americans?
One thing was agreed early on that if there was a go ahead and the UK got it hands on the half million of Russian money in the Hong Kong Trust Fund it would go to the Treasury in total. It was not this form of Gold that Smiley was after, he sensed there was something big because Karla’s view was people should work and contribute to the cause because of its rightness and therefore the sum of such a size meant it covered something of great significance. The problem was that Smiley was caught in a Catch 22. The panel wanted to know what the very big was before investing while e Smiley also wanted to know but needed the funds and the approval to find out. One of the cards played by Smiley was to point out that under his standing instruction to give priority to repairing the damage with the Cousins if the panel decided not to further the line of inquiry as some favoured he would be obliged to pass on what he had established to date to the Cousin and let them investigate and therefore take any Glory which emerged creating further embarrassment that British intelligence had not only been compromised but was unable to act when important new information became available. They could be further damned if they went ahead and just as badly damaged if they did not.
Guillam thought George then overplayed his hand by asking for the recently closed Hong Kong residency to be opened not knowing that this was the master stroke of a ploy because in turning down something that was not needed it would provide several interests with the belief they had gained their way and a sense of testosterone victory while George got the authority to go ahead as asked but with some limitations and restrictions, most of which he had assumed would be imposed beforehand.
This brings me to an earlier development, the attempt to find out about the former bed partner of Ko’s present mistress Liese Worth; this was a Mexican pilot involved with the Ko funded Air freight and transport company based in Ventiane. A man called Tiny Ricardo.
Sam Collins sources declared the man had died but Smiley wanted this double checked with the Americans through a probationer Burrower who had immediately caught Peter Guillam’s hungry eye, Molly Meakin, an Oxbridge blue stocking recruit whose family were old Circus and whose function as a desk officer in Registry also involved a routine meeting with the Cousins every Friday in which they exchanged lists of information required if available. This was to prove a key to unlocking the support of the Cousins while agreeing that Hong Kong remained the UK patch, although it has to be said that this was what Smiley was also led to believe at the time.
It was another seasoned campaigner whose lectures back at the Training centre in the UK always attracted good audiences, William Craw who unlocked the fact that Liese Worth was in fact Elizabeth Worthington. This led to finding that she had not just a husband but a child back home but she had left one day and there had been no contact there after. But she also had parents called Pelling her birth surname, and this led to a visit from Smiley saying he had been asked to vet her background because she was under consideration for an important position in an international company. She had ambition to make something of her life beyond that offered by her family and answered an advert which led to being a hostess in Bahrain. She had ended up in Far East claiming to be working undercover for the British Secret service working for a distillery company with a concession which she managed in Laos based in its capital Ventiane. It was evident from the couple as the story unfolded that her father wanted to believe his daughter while his wife thought this was just another set of stories in which she tried to pretend what she was not. In Ventiane she was living with pilot Tiny, a big man. She was working for someone called Mellon insisted the husband. The father also had to hand the last letter she had sent to them explaining that she was working for a good cause and they would be proud of her, On arrival she had to contact a Mr Mackervoor of the British Council who was an established trader but only half the story. As she was to investigate a situation concerning drugs and bullion which she had been told not to talk about to anyone and the work could be dangerous and she did not know what the outcome would be or when she would be able to have contact with them again and end asking them to pray for her.
Now Smiley would have known what the name Mackervoor meant because I had read in connection with the work of the Circus in the Far East, of this name of an agent called Mackervoor who had since died Smiley then went and had a secret chat with Mrs Pelling who had left the room tired of the attempt by her partner to rewrite the history of their daughter in the most favourable light. She revealed that her daughter had gone to the Chinaman(Ko) to help Tiny and had fallen in love with him and that he had become a father figure to her.
There was one more startling piece of information revealed to the reader when Smiley returned to office and made a check with confirmed that Mellon was the name which his agent Sam Collins used when in that part of the world. I am sure it is later in the novel that the reader is informed that Sam had dropped her because she could not keep quiet about working for the Service and therefore endangering his position and that of the others involved in the immediate area.
Sam was able to confirm that the girl had arrived in Ventiane with a couple of hippies on the Kathmandu trail and when they departed, she had gone to the British Consul for help and he had put her in touch with Sam because he thought on looks alone she was exploitable. He had placed her alongside the flying boys so to speak because of interest in the drug situation and had not told London because London via Haydon was killing off all activity. He had found a way of paying he woman and she had come up with Ricardo and a bullion racket which led back to Hong Kong. He had dropped her as soon as he realised she was a disaster so was relieved when Ricardo got her join him with the air freight company.
This had come out because of protests from Peter about the sudden appearance of Sam at the top table and to have direct access without going through the usual channels. Smiley explained that Sam was important because he knew the Elizabeth Worthington nee Pelling. Connie reminded of what Edgar Hoover said about preferring to have someone inside the tent pissing out than the converse.
It was also shortly after this that the work of the Burrowers came up with information which brings considerable information about Drake Ko after an investigation into his time in London allegedly studying to become a barrister. He had given the name of Baptist Minister and his wife as referees and the Minister was alive and living with his daughter back in the UK. What they had to say would lead to the why the money was stacking up and being stored in Hong Kong.
It was Connie and De Salis who Smiley sent to interview the Missionary in the pretext that Ko was being considered for an honour and they needed to confirm the background. He had gone to Missionary Training school at 20 and was on ship for Shanghai when 24.
He explained that in 1936 his wife had found Drake and his young brother Nelson at the docks searching for their mother. They had founded a school for children without mothers, mostly day attenders but some borders among the 44 they were able to manage teaching the basics and Christianity. Drake was assessed as being 10 or 11 and his brother 8. Their daughter was then 12. His brother had been injured in the civil war with part of his arm bone sticking through the flesh. The two were very different with Drake accepting the Westernisation and Nelson rejecting.
Yes they had returned to China after the World War but by then he had become a widow and yes they had met up with Drake who would have married the daughter had she shown any interest her father argued. Drake had been much affected by the death of the wife of the Missionary but he and his brother had returned to speaking Chinese losing their English. The Missionaries had remained until the Communist take over in 49. It was during that time that the brothers appeared to have separated and lost contact with each other with Nelson opting for the Communists and his brother not, so it seemed. Back in Shanghai at the age of 19 the daughter accused Drake of having become a gang member and a thief while her father asserted that his main interest was get an education for his young brother. The impact of his studies was to turn Nelson firmly against the West and the Church and this had led to him being part of as group which smashed up the mission. Drake had given his brother a hiding for that.
It had taken Drake six years of working to see his brother graduate as an engineer. He had worked in the shipyards alongside the Russian technicians who had poured in since the revolution.
It was then the old man dropped his bombshell that the only news he had since being forced to return to the UK was that his brother was dead. It had happened when they were living in Durham. Drake had come to England with his an entourage including a henchman called Tiu (the Circus had established that Tiu was the front man for several of Ko’s questionable enterprises). He was 42 and the year 1967 at the time and arrived in a Rolls Royce bringing presents including £1000 for the church. He already had the OBE and said he had come to study law and wanted her father to sponsor him. They could pin down to the month because it was his father’s birthday hence the gift to the church. The daughter remembered his words. I have no brother. De Salis pressed about the circumstances, but on this they failed to obtain further information of substance. Before they left Connie was inspired when she asked if the name Liese meant anything and the answer explained more in that the Missionary’s wife had been a German Lutheran of that name.
They were driven back by Toby Easterhase with the news for Smiley. It was the Doc who set about trying to uncover the Chinese name which it was evident that Nelson had used to establish if in fact like the son of Ko of the same name, he was also dead.
But before this there were two developments which were to prove of subsequent great significance. The first remained a mysterious matter of concern because when Guillam went to deliver the monthly account of expenditure to Lacon at the Cabinet office he had witnessed Sam Collins emerge in conversation not only with Lacon but Saul Enderby of the Foreign Office.
The second was that Cousins wanted an urgent meeting and when they arrived they were met not just by the CIA but by a representative of the Drug Enforcement Agency in the US. The purpose of the meeting was ostensibly to report on the latest activities of Ko and Tiu but eventually they got round to admitting that Tiny Ricardo was not dead. Ricardo had made contact with a regional Narcotics bureaux offering to sell and tell info about an opium mission into China and led to one of great historically truths being admitted by the US in this fictional form.
During the US involvement in Laos they had needed the support of hill tribes in the combat and these tribes survived on a single economy of opium growing which the CIA had turned a blind eye to. The Narcotics Bureaux was less sanguine about what had taken place “The company played Godfather to the hill tribes.... Menfolk were fighting while the Company people flew up to the villages, pushed their poppy crops, screwed their women and flew their dope.” Despite the protestation of the CIA man, the Narcotics contact continued “ as long as the war was on Ricardo carried dope for the CIA to keep the home fires burning in he hill villages. When the war ended he carried on the trade for himself. He had all the connects and knew where the bodies were buried. They admitted that the call from Tony Ricardo had been logged on the second of April 1973. He was offering opium at the standard rates and wanted $50000 and a German Passport for a one way exit in exchange for his information involving mainland China. Ricardo went to explain that the plane used was a Bechcraft which was kept hidden, off the books. In addition to buying the opium some 200 kilos the local agent had sent the story to HQ. At HQ the senior manager took the decision that he could not invest that amount of public money in a gamble especially where the individual supplying the info wanted a one way ticket to disappear into Europe or wherever. There was no further action taken. The only other information was that the China contact had been prepared to pay gold in exchange for the opium said to have been just less than half a ton. The name of the contact was to have been revealed once Ricardo’s price was being paid.
It was then the battle commenced between the Narcotics Enforcement who wanted hands on control of what happened next and the CIA who accepted that as the centre of enquires was a British territory, it was for the Brits to take the lead. My background note is to remind of the hatred that had existed between Russia and China and which had carried through despite both nations becoming communist led politically and economically. It is also worth reminding that the generally held view by nations that it is was important to spy on ones friends as on enemies because tomorrow friends can become enemies and vice versa. In World War II Russia joined Germany and then they went to war with each other, and reminding of the fictional TV Series Spooks where because the UK is hold discussion with Russia about sharing intelligence information, it is the Yanks who appear to be spiking the development, killing a British agent in the process.
The Le Carré allegation being that the Russians were providing the gold to supply their contact in China with the opium to be used to subvert the Chinese. Smiley commented that it was take a lot more opium to subvert the 800 million Chinese on the mainland at that time. The Narcotics man wanted control reminding the CIA that back home a lot of influential people wanted to know how come their boys in Vietnam had become drug addicts. Smiley reminded of the agreement that the US would not interfere in British action in Hong Kong without explicit prior permission. The CIA agreed but then slapped a time limit of three months, probably less.
Smiley demanded to know how far up in the chain information has been passed on and it was admitted they knew there was an individual in Hong Kong who was receiving Russian money and was involved in flying opium to China. Smiley wanted to know if they knew about the girl. There was knowledge that the girl had been with Ko in Bangkok and onto Manila.
The next priority for the team was tracing the aircraft as well as the ongoing search for Nelson, if he continued to exist with Ricardo appearing to be alive in Ventiane. They were able to trace a brand new Bechcraft sale to a firm based in Bangkok and but was then immediately sold on. Smiley then held a conference with those actively involved concluding that they appeared to have gone as far as possible and that given the set time limit they need to upset the present balance and this would be achieved by Jerry Westerby. Sam Collins then disappeared, it was believed retired with enhanced pension rates. Guillam who disliked Sam was less convinced of this, as he revealed constantly to his latest woman Molly Meakin, especially after than meeting where he had encountered Sam with the bigwigs. This ends the first book of the story, although combined into one volume
The story is set as USA were about to get out of Vietnam in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge to take power in Cambodia under Pol Pot for the next four horrendous years. China after the Cultural Revolution had become unstable with the arrest of so called gang of four in 1976. The Americans were beginning to lick their wounds and distrustful and resentful of the Brits who had kept out of Vietnam and had nearly led them into sharing their intelligence with the enemy, the cold war enemy of Russia.
The story of the Honourable Schoolboy can be considered from three perspectives. The principal is that of the Honourable Jerry Westerby who works as an International Reporter in the Far East, undertaking assignments for British Intelligence for which he has been fully trained but is presently on a Sabbatical writing the great novel in Tuscany shacked up with a young woman that came by his way,
The second is that not just the perspective of George Smiley temporary chief of Intelligence Operations but the extraordinary Team process by which a mission unfolds and is executed and which may or may not bear a relationship to the reality past and present.
Thirdly is the morality or more accurately the immorality of the work which leads to individuals questioning and changing sides.
Having explored aspects of the internal machinations of those directly involved in the day to day management of the service in the previous work Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Le Carré now explores the interaction between the service and the rest of Whitehall and the Cousins, the Americans in addition to his preoccupation, some would say obsession with Karla and the Russians. And of course now there are the Chinese what are they up to next?
The difference between Jerry Westerby and the other Le Carré Agent with whom I previously identified with, Alec Lomas, portrayed brilliantly by Richard Burton in the film of the same name, is that Jerry is that rare combination of being upper class, Eton and Oxford, a genuine intellectual wild man of action more at home with Hemingway than C P Snow where one can find the Smiley or two.
Lomas was willing to go to prison and then to be captured and tortured by the enemy because of his anti communist commitment, he drank more than he should and enjoyed heterosexual relationships whenever the opportunity came his way, but Alec cares what happens, feels and takes responsibility for his actions and when he finds the behaviour of both sets of master questionable and that his own side is prepared to take the life of the woman he has come to care about despite her sincere but naive political views, he says no and is also killed rather than live on with the knowledge of his role in what has happened. Jerry Westerby also questions but he has one weakness greater than the women, the drink and drugs, even the excitement of the role,-Smiley asks and Jerry will do.
Not having read The Spy who came in from the Cold I do not know if Alec Lomas was an agent or a scalphunter, that is one of those trained as assassins, to kidnap, commit burglaries and other activities outside the British Law although he appears to be more of an agent, committed to a cause he believed in
Jerry is not a killer although he can look after himself. Unlike the Bond characters that always appear to be living in the present and other similar fictitious creations one of the joys, and at times difficulties, of Le Carré writing is that he provides individuals whose past affects their present, consciously and unconsciously. To appreciate this the reading should be slow digesting and reflecting, unless you have the kind of mind, which I do not, that assimilate at a flash and continue to remember,
The story begins after Smiley has returned to patch up the pieces at the Circus, still under a cloud himself because despite his part in the unmasking of Haydon because he had worked with the man over several decades and had not reacted against the man‘s affair with his wife, affecting, it is argued, his judgement just as Karla had predicted, although this was as much his resignation that his wife needed affairs just as he needed to be at the top in at the Circus.
The Circus is under pressure to find something which will resurrect their standing although their masters in the administration and the party political government have insisted on closing down many outposts and disbanding agent chains knowing these had been compromised over the decades of the betrayal. The politicians and Mandarins would like something to impress the Cousins.
As the story opens we quickly switch from London to Hong Kong, then a Crown territory under contract from China and to be handed back before the end of the last century and into the world of the news reporters attempting to secure scoops and therefore spending as much time watching and listening to each other as they are making new contacts out there on the street and the corridors of power. They appear to spend a great part of their time at an old style colonial club, meals and drinks throughout the day and night, taking cabs to the nearest playground for girls and drugs. Up at the top although nothing like as impressive a position as in Gibraltar was the home of the UK area spooks relying on radio and telephonic communications if the era before the Internet.
Given this background of International great events and local colonialism where the people are divided between the round eyes and the slant eyes, the main interest of the newshounds seems at first parochial, trying to establish that the chief spy and his household has closed down and what did this all mean. The two characters of significance we are first introduced are Luke, a Californian Journalist, and William Craw, a man of mature years and experience if life, journalist and trusted agent for the Circus. In a joke about Watergate and Deep throat, Craw suggests they contact stripped pants Shallow Throat at the Colonial office as I suspect it was still called in a vain attempt to gain some news, at least that was the front he was putting up, pretending to his colleagues he was in the dark as much anyone. It is Craw who publishes the first exposé which Smiley commends as a masterpiece if disinformation.
We the turn to Jerry and the arrival of a telegram from Smiley, coded of course, but enough to get him to leave and abandon the bedmate only recently rescued as she traversed the globe. Young Peter Guillam is back at the top and it is often through his eyes that we appear learn about the impenetrable aging Smiley keeping his own Counsel restricting what he is prepared to reveal to individuals and times of his choosing. It takes the great part of section one of the book to establish why Jerry Westerby has been recalled and what he is to do.
The new team at the top has assembled to discuss how they should approach re-establishing the authority and integrity of the service by discovering a major source of new intelligence. Smiley had appointed a factotum assistant as he had done in Soldier Sailor. This time it is a man called Fawn, an anonymous individual who I am not sure if we ever learn anything of his background. Peter appears something of a fetcher and carrier to but accompanies Smiley to important meetings. Connie Sacks is back from her Oxford retirement, endearingly referring to everyone out in the field as her dear boys but remains the great Soviet analyst together with the less attractive Doc di Salis, another Circus Burrower, an expert on China although I am not sure why he as brought in before the direction everyone would take is established. Also early on Smiley consulted Sam Collins an older field officer, described as dapper, something of a dandy with a moustache and smoking brown cigarettes. He was an Asian field hand with 5 years in Borneo, 6 in Burma and 5 in North Thailand before 3 years in Vientiane, the capital of Laos who gained what is described as a dazzling first at Cambridge. If anything this will become the Sam Collins story as much as that of Westerby or Smiley, but I give too much away and would never have been a good spy for this reason alone.
In jargon the Burrowers were asked to look for Karla backbearings, to go over everything that happened which traitor Bill Haydon had a hand in and try and detect where he may have covered up something which he did not wish pursued or given important or ongoing attention. Files that should have been there but were not, people told not to bother or to disregard what today looked as if it required greater attention. This was Connie’s great strength as she knew more than anyone, including Smiley the minutiae of the Karla’s signature, his trade craft. And it was as a consequence of her efforts that requests were made for records from the one of the remaining outposts in the Far East, Ventiane the capital of Laos.
What was discovered was that Russian money, large qualities of money, $25000 a month (1970’s value) was being passed through a complex route ton Honk Kong where it accumulated as a trust and had not been touched todate and this then led to an eminent married Chinese business Drake Ko OBE, a man vetted before confirming is honour and with the kind of standing that when the Governor, (respectfully referred by the journalists as Big Moo), invited local bigwigs in for an informal get together to learn what was actually afoot or of concern in he colony, Ko was always included on the guest list. That he is called Drake is a clue to his background which was revealed much later. He has a beautiful ‘round eye’ mistress and the investigation of her background also becomes crucial to unravelling why the money was being sent and why it was not touched.
It was Jerry Westerby’s role to return to his old job in Hong Kong to find out about Ko and his English mistress with a German Christian name, Liese Worth and the significance of her other names.
Jerry discovers that Ko had a son who died and later we learn was called Nelson, with Nelson and Drake big clues as to the man’s back ground which includes a spell in London reading for the Bar and also that among the charities supported is a Baptist Church and a Hospital for children which bears his name. He is also into horse racing and has had a successful animal called Lucky Nelson. It is at the racetrack at Westerby engineers an introduction to Ko for an interview. We not learn much except he had come as refugee from the mainland
Before further action can be taken the authority of the ‘masters’ has to be agreed and Peter accompanies Smiley to present his case to a committee with the Foreign Office team (with interests in Russia and China and the rest of the Far East excluding Hong Kong) by Saul Enderby one time Ambassador to Indonesia and his right hand every day link man with the Circus, Roddy Martindale plus a Parliamentary Under Secretary sitting at one end of the table.
At the other end, significantly, is the three person team from the Colonial Office, whose interest is Hong Kong and regarded themselves as superior because they actually managed territories but in reality it is the Foreign Office which has the ear of the Cabinet Office and Oliver Lacon who sits apart but opposite from Smiley and Guillam, with ‘the Competition’ that is the home security services directly across. The Defence Ministry had two and the Treasury a similar number also facing the applicants.
Le Carré provides what I can assert is a good description of all such type of meetings are made to a collective of varied and often competing interests, each jockeying for position, some playing a short, while others a longer, game and where most of the positioning and decision taking takes place in bilateral deals beforehand. How far should Circus be allowed to go and within what bounds and funding? What should the Governor be told if anything and what of the Cousins, the Americans?
One thing was agreed early on that if there was a go ahead and the UK got it hands on the half million of Russian money in the Hong Kong Trust Fund it would go to the Treasury in total. It was not this form of Gold that Smiley was after, he sensed there was something big because Karla’s view was people should work and contribute to the cause because of its rightness and therefore the sum of such a size meant it covered something of great significance. The problem was that Smiley was caught in a Catch 22. The panel wanted to know what the very big was before investing while e Smiley also wanted to know but needed the funds and the approval to find out. One of the cards played by Smiley was to point out that under his standing instruction to give priority to repairing the damage with the Cousins if the panel decided not to further the line of inquiry as some favoured he would be obliged to pass on what he had established to date to the Cousin and let them investigate and therefore take any Glory which emerged creating further embarrassment that British intelligence had not only been compromised but was unable to act when important new information became available. They could be further damned if they went ahead and just as badly damaged if they did not.
Guillam thought George then overplayed his hand by asking for the recently closed Hong Kong residency to be opened not knowing that this was the master stroke of a ploy because in turning down something that was not needed it would provide several interests with the belief they had gained their way and a sense of testosterone victory while George got the authority to go ahead as asked but with some limitations and restrictions, most of which he had assumed would be imposed beforehand.
This brings me to an earlier development, the attempt to find out about the former bed partner of Ko’s present mistress Liese Worth; this was a Mexican pilot involved with the Ko funded Air freight and transport company based in Ventiane. A man called Tiny Ricardo.
Sam Collins sources declared the man had died but Smiley wanted this double checked with the Americans through a probationer Burrower who had immediately caught Peter Guillam’s hungry eye, Molly Meakin, an Oxbridge blue stocking recruit whose family were old Circus and whose function as a desk officer in Registry also involved a routine meeting with the Cousins every Friday in which they exchanged lists of information required if available. This was to prove a key to unlocking the support of the Cousins while agreeing that Hong Kong remained the UK patch, although it has to be said that this was what Smiley was also led to believe at the time.
It was another seasoned campaigner whose lectures back at the Training centre in the UK always attracted good audiences, William Craw who unlocked the fact that Liese Worth was in fact Elizabeth Worthington. This led to finding that she had not just a husband but a child back home but she had left one day and there had been no contact there after. But she also had parents called Pelling her birth surname, and this led to a visit from Smiley saying he had been asked to vet her background because she was under consideration for an important position in an international company. She had ambition to make something of her life beyond that offered by her family and answered an advert which led to being a hostess in Bahrain. She had ended up in Far East claiming to be working undercover for the British Secret service working for a distillery company with a concession which she managed in Laos based in its capital Ventiane. It was evident from the couple as the story unfolded that her father wanted to believe his daughter while his wife thought this was just another set of stories in which she tried to pretend what she was not. In Ventiane she was living with pilot Tiny, a big man. She was working for someone called Mellon insisted the husband. The father also had to hand the last letter she had sent to them explaining that she was working for a good cause and they would be proud of her, On arrival she had to contact a Mr Mackervoor of the British Council who was an established trader but only half the story. As she was to investigate a situation concerning drugs and bullion which she had been told not to talk about to anyone and the work could be dangerous and she did not know what the outcome would be or when she would be able to have contact with them again and end asking them to pray for her.
Now Smiley would have known what the name Mackervoor meant because I had read in connection with the work of the Circus in the Far East, of this name of an agent called Mackervoor who had since died Smiley then went and had a secret chat with Mrs Pelling who had left the room tired of the attempt by her partner to rewrite the history of their daughter in the most favourable light. She revealed that her daughter had gone to the Chinaman(Ko) to help Tiny and had fallen in love with him and that he had become a father figure to her.
There was one more startling piece of information revealed to the reader when Smiley returned to office and made a check with confirmed that Mellon was the name which his agent Sam Collins used when in that part of the world. I am sure it is later in the novel that the reader is informed that Sam had dropped her because she could not keep quiet about working for the Service and therefore endangering his position and that of the others involved in the immediate area.
Sam was able to confirm that the girl had arrived in Ventiane with a couple of hippies on the Kathmandu trail and when they departed, she had gone to the British Consul for help and he had put her in touch with Sam because he thought on looks alone she was exploitable. He had placed her alongside the flying boys so to speak because of interest in the drug situation and had not told London because London via Haydon was killing off all activity. He had found a way of paying he woman and she had come up with Ricardo and a bullion racket which led back to Hong Kong. He had dropped her as soon as he realised she was a disaster so was relieved when Ricardo got her join him with the air freight company.
This had come out because of protests from Peter about the sudden appearance of Sam at the top table and to have direct access without going through the usual channels. Smiley explained that Sam was important because he knew the Elizabeth Worthington nee Pelling. Connie reminded of what Edgar Hoover said about preferring to have someone inside the tent pissing out than the converse.
It was also shortly after this that the work of the Burrowers came up with information which brings considerable information about Drake Ko after an investigation into his time in London allegedly studying to become a barrister. He had given the name of Baptist Minister and his wife as referees and the Minister was alive and living with his daughter back in the UK. What they had to say would lead to the why the money was stacking up and being stored in Hong Kong.
It was Connie and De Salis who Smiley sent to interview the Missionary in the pretext that Ko was being considered for an honour and they needed to confirm the background. He had gone to Missionary Training school at 20 and was on ship for Shanghai when 24.
He explained that in 1936 his wife had found Drake and his young brother Nelson at the docks searching for their mother. They had founded a school for children without mothers, mostly day attenders but some borders among the 44 they were able to manage teaching the basics and Christianity. Drake was assessed as being 10 or 11 and his brother 8. Their daughter was then 12. His brother had been injured in the civil war with part of his arm bone sticking through the flesh. The two were very different with Drake accepting the Westernisation and Nelson rejecting.
Yes they had returned to China after the World War but by then he had become a widow and yes they had met up with Drake who would have married the daughter had she shown any interest her father argued. Drake had been much affected by the death of the wife of the Missionary but he and his brother had returned to speaking Chinese losing their English. The Missionaries had remained until the Communist take over in 49. It was during that time that the brothers appeared to have separated and lost contact with each other with Nelson opting for the Communists and his brother not, so it seemed. Back in Shanghai at the age of 19 the daughter accused Drake of having become a gang member and a thief while her father asserted that his main interest was get an education for his young brother. The impact of his studies was to turn Nelson firmly against the West and the Church and this had led to him being part of as group which smashed up the mission. Drake had given his brother a hiding for that.
It had taken Drake six years of working to see his brother graduate as an engineer. He had worked in the shipyards alongside the Russian technicians who had poured in since the revolution.
It was then the old man dropped his bombshell that the only news he had since being forced to return to the UK was that his brother was dead. It had happened when they were living in Durham. Drake had come to England with his an entourage including a henchman called Tiu (the Circus had established that Tiu was the front man for several of Ko’s questionable enterprises). He was 42 and the year 1967 at the time and arrived in a Rolls Royce bringing presents including £1000 for the church. He already had the OBE and said he had come to study law and wanted her father to sponsor him. They could pin down to the month because it was his father’s birthday hence the gift to the church. The daughter remembered his words. I have no brother. De Salis pressed about the circumstances, but on this they failed to obtain further information of substance. Before they left Connie was inspired when she asked if the name Liese meant anything and the answer explained more in that the Missionary’s wife had been a German Lutheran of that name.
They were driven back by Toby Easterhase with the news for Smiley. It was the Doc who set about trying to uncover the Chinese name which it was evident that Nelson had used to establish if in fact like the son of Ko of the same name, he was also dead.
But before this there were two developments which were to prove of subsequent great significance. The first remained a mysterious matter of concern because when Guillam went to deliver the monthly account of expenditure to Lacon at the Cabinet office he had witnessed Sam Collins emerge in conversation not only with Lacon but Saul Enderby of the Foreign Office.
The second was that Cousins wanted an urgent meeting and when they arrived they were met not just by the CIA but by a representative of the Drug Enforcement Agency in the US. The purpose of the meeting was ostensibly to report on the latest activities of Ko and Tiu but eventually they got round to admitting that Tiny Ricardo was not dead. Ricardo had made contact with a regional Narcotics bureaux offering to sell and tell info about an opium mission into China and led to one of great historically truths being admitted by the US in this fictional form.
During the US involvement in Laos they had needed the support of hill tribes in the combat and these tribes survived on a single economy of opium growing which the CIA had turned a blind eye to. The Narcotics Bureaux was less sanguine about what had taken place “The company played Godfather to the hill tribes.... Menfolk were fighting while the Company people flew up to the villages, pushed their poppy crops, screwed their women and flew their dope.” Despite the protestation of the CIA man, the Narcotics contact continued “ as long as the war was on Ricardo carried dope for the CIA to keep the home fires burning in he hill villages. When the war ended he carried on the trade for himself. He had all the connects and knew where the bodies were buried. They admitted that the call from Tony Ricardo had been logged on the second of April 1973. He was offering opium at the standard rates and wanted $50000 and a German Passport for a one way exit in exchange for his information involving mainland China. Ricardo went to explain that the plane used was a Bechcraft which was kept hidden, off the books. In addition to buying the opium some 200 kilos the local agent had sent the story to HQ. At HQ the senior manager took the decision that he could not invest that amount of public money in a gamble especially where the individual supplying the info wanted a one way ticket to disappear into Europe or wherever. There was no further action taken. The only other information was that the China contact had been prepared to pay gold in exchange for the opium said to have been just less than half a ton. The name of the contact was to have been revealed once Ricardo’s price was being paid.
It was then the battle commenced between the Narcotics Enforcement who wanted hands on control of what happened next and the CIA who accepted that as the centre of enquires was a British territory, it was for the Brits to take the lead. My background note is to remind of the hatred that had existed between Russia and China and which had carried through despite both nations becoming communist led politically and economically. It is also worth reminding that the generally held view by nations that it is was important to spy on ones friends as on enemies because tomorrow friends can become enemies and vice versa. In World War II Russia joined Germany and then they went to war with each other, and reminding of the fictional TV Series Spooks where because the UK is hold discussion with Russia about sharing intelligence information, it is the Yanks who appear to be spiking the development, killing a British agent in the process.
The Le Carré allegation being that the Russians were providing the gold to supply their contact in China with the opium to be used to subvert the Chinese. Smiley commented that it was take a lot more opium to subvert the 800 million Chinese on the mainland at that time. The Narcotics man wanted control reminding the CIA that back home a lot of influential people wanted to know how come their boys in Vietnam had become drug addicts. Smiley reminded of the agreement that the US would not interfere in British action in Hong Kong without explicit prior permission. The CIA agreed but then slapped a time limit of three months, probably less.
Smiley demanded to know how far up in the chain information has been passed on and it was admitted they knew there was an individual in Hong Kong who was receiving Russian money and was involved in flying opium to China. Smiley wanted to know if they knew about the girl. There was knowledge that the girl had been with Ko in Bangkok and onto Manila.
The next priority for the team was tracing the aircraft as well as the ongoing search for Nelson, if he continued to exist with Ricardo appearing to be alive in Ventiane. They were able to trace a brand new Bechcraft sale to a firm based in Bangkok and but was then immediately sold on. Smiley then held a conference with those actively involved concluding that they appeared to have gone as far as possible and that given the set time limit they need to upset the present balance and this would be achieved by Jerry Westerby. Sam Collins then disappeared, it was believed retired with enhanced pension rates. Guillam who disliked Sam was less convinced of this, as he revealed constantly to his latest woman Molly Meakin, especially after than meeting where he had encountered Sam with the bigwigs. This ends the first book of the story, although combined into one volume
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