Literature / The Quest for Karla

(aka: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)

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John le Carré's The Quest for Karla (otherwise known as Smiley Versus Karla) is a trilogy of spy novels set during the Cold War. They're part of a longer, loosely-knit series of books featuring British Intelligence officer George Smiley, with the trilogy covering his long battle with Russian spymaster Karla. Dealing with betrayal, love and the often mundane nature of spying, it asks awkward and painful questions about keeping secrets from your friends, lovers and indeed yourself.

The series consists of three books published between 1974 and 1979. These are:

1. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
2. The Honourable Schoolboy
3. Smiley's People

For the television adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People (The Honourable Schoolboy was skipped due to budget constraints), starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley and Patrick Stewart as Karla, see here.

For the 2011 film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley, see here.

Tropes featured include:

• Accidental Pun: In The Honourable Schoolboy, Jerry Westerby first meets Drake Ko's bodyguard Tiu while posing as a journalist at a racetrack where one of Ko's horses is competing. In every subsequent encounter, he calls him "horse-writer". As he only speaks broken English, he doesn't realize that it sounds like a pun on "horse rider".
• Achilles' Heel: Karla has one in the form of his love for his daughter, and Smiley has Ann, his wife, though he overcomes this by the end of the series. Both he and Karla use each others' weaknesses again each other, with Smiley more successful in the end.
• Admiring the Abomination: Smiley's tone is almost dreamy as he describes Karla's very, very clever scheme to "tur[n] the Circus inside out," and remarks, "it would be beautiful in another context."
• Alas, Poor Villain: Drake Ko. Sure, the guy was involved in a long line of violent crimes and dodgy businesses over the years, and his mission was quite hostile to Smiley's interests. But at the end of the day, all he really wanted to do was bring his little brother home safely. It's hard not to shed a tear when the CIA grab Nelson away from him, just moments after finally getting to see him again.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Jerry Westerby falls in love with Ko's mistress, Lizzie Worthington. By that point, however, Lizzie has been repeatedly betrayed and abused by her lovers. Her feelings for Jerry remain mostly ambiguous; she often appears indifferent to him, simply going along with his plans for lack of a better option.
• All There in the Manual: Some of the events of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy come across much, much differently if you've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Looking Glass War. In particular, Control's fate starts looking like Laser-Guided Karma.
• The Alleged Car: Jerry Westerby has to take a nail-biting flight in a tattered, rusty, and practically collapsing plane in The Honourable Schoolboy.
• Animal Motifs: Horses come up quite frequently in The Honourable Schoolboy. One of Jerry Westerby's neighbors in Italy is a horse-breeder, Jerry is said to be skilled at handling horses, Drake Ko owns a racehorse named after his younger brother, Tiu repeatedly calls Jerry "horse-writer" after he gets into a racetrack by pretending to write an article about the race, Smiley's management of the Circus is compared to "carrying [a] horse up the hill", at least one crumbling Circus building is figuratively called "an old horse put out to grass", and the Dwarf jokingly guesses that "Big Moo's wife's horse has the hiccups" when Luke announces that he has news in the opening scene. Two of the chapters are also titled "Mr. George Smiley's Horse" and "More About Horses". Possibly coincidentally, the opium trade figures heavily into the plot; "horse" is a common slang term for "heroin".
• As You Know: The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People have ample doses of this, as there's usually a lot of complicated backstory without which the plot makes no sense.
• Ascended Extra: Jerry Westerby in The Honourable Schoolboy. He has a brief role in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as one of the old Circus operatives who Smiley interviews for clues about the Mole's identity, but he reappears as the central protagonist of The Honourable Schoolboy when Smiley assigns him to investigate Karla's funds in Hong Kong. It turns out that the Mole overlooked him because he was only an occasional Circus agent, making him one of the few field agents whose identity wasn't leaked to the Soviets.
• Badass Bookworm: Smiley, who specializes in German poetry. In the office, he is typically a quiet, meek figure, whose demeanor belies the many, many successful operations that he ran. In Tinker Tailor he was the one called in to hunt down the mole; in Honourable Schoolboy he was responsible for largely rebuilding the Circus from the ground up. In Smiley's People, he's spending his retirement working on a monograph, but is again called out of retirement because his agents know that there is no one as good as he.
• Badass Decay: An in-universe example with Sam Collins. He starts off as a hard-bitten field man with (per Jerry Westerby) "a reputation as an ace operator" who Control trusts to act as duty officer on the night of Testify. He ends up as Saul Enderby's sycophantic dogsbody.
• Bait the Mole: Smiley's plan to ensnare The Mole is to have Ricki Tarr, who the rest of the Circus believes has defected or gone to ground, send a message claiming to have "information crucial to the well-being of the Service". The real mole will assume that this means Tarr has found out the mole's identity or can corroborate independently Irina's story and go to meet with his handler to discuss what to do next. Smiley, having already found their safe house, will wait for them to show up.
• Batman Gambit: In the climax of Tinker Tailor, Smiley and Guillam rig the mole's London safe house so that he is tricked into incriminating himself on tape. Because the recorders are controlled by a switch that the occupants can manipulate, Guillam flips the toggle fitting upside down so that the "on" position actually turns it off and vice versa. When Gerald arrives, as predicted, he inadvertently switches on the recording setup, thinking he's turning it off, and Smiley is able to listen in as Gerald reveals his identity.
• Battle Butler: Fawn, Smiley's factotum in the first two novels. Always on hand with a cup of tea, always quick to hold coats, open doors and deliver telegrams with brisk, quiet efficiency. Before the Fall, though, he worked with Peter Guillam as a scalphunter and is, by trade, a silent killer.
• Beneath the Mask: George Smiley appears to be a slightly myopic, helpless, and generally tragic old man who is genuinely sick of all the betrayals and lies that constitute his profession and that has wrecked his personal life. Only occasionally do we see why he's still in the Circus: he is brilliant and very, very good at what he does, i.e., the betrayals and lies that constitute his profession. His opponent, Karla, appears to be an iron-willed fanatic for whom taking advantage of the opposition's humanity is part of the job. It is not until Smiley's People that we see the crack in his mask: his love for his illegitimate daughter, Tatiana, who is driven insane by her inability to recognize the spymaster as her father. The ending of Smiley's People implies that beneath their masks, Smiley and Karla are similar— a revelation that drives Smiley to retire for good.
• Berserk Button: Invoked and played with. Throughout the trilogy, characters try to goad Smiley out of being The Stoic by mentioning what they're sure will be his Berserk Button, Ann's infidelity. It never works.
  • One of the few times we see him provoked into anger (he stands up and raises his voice!) is when Connie compares him to Karla one too many times in "Smiley's People".
• Big "NO!": A very uncharacteristic one from Smiley in Smiley's People, when Connie Sachs mentions that many people in the Circus thought that he and Karla weren't that different.
• Bilingual Bonus: There's a fair amount of untranslated French in The Honourable Schoolboy.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Bill Haydon has been exposed as the mole and George Smiley is appointed to head the Circus. But the Service is left seriously damaged by Haydon, who's killed while in custody, jeopardizing the exchange of agents held by Moscow Centre.
  • The Honourable Schoolboy. Hooray, Operation Dolphin has succeeded! But the Americans have made off with Nelson Ko instead of sharing him with the Circus, Drake Ko's schemes to reunite with his brother have come to naught, Fawn assassinates Jerry Westerby (possibly just because Jerry attacked him earlier), and George Smiley has been forced out...again.
  • Smiley's People. Smiley defeats his nemesis Karla. But in order to do so, Smiley breaks his code of conduct and has to exploit Karla's love for his mentally ill daughter.
• Bookends: Of the decades-long conflict between Smiley and Karla. During the first face-to-face meeting between Smiley and the unknown Soviet agent who would eventually become the spymaster Karla, the man swiped Smiley's engraved cigarette lighter and kept it since. When the two confront again at Karla's defection, he drops the lighter to the ground in front of Smiley, who leaves it there.
• Bribe Backfire: A rather bleakly humorous version is mentioned in Smiley's People. A CIA station in Switzerland tried to bribe a local professor so that they could run wires through his property to bug the Soviet embassy. The professor took the money and promptly reported everything to the local police, who were embarrassed no end. Turns out the CIA had already talked to them, and they were looking forward to their promised portion of the intelligence gathered.
• Brick Joke: At the very end of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley suddenly remembers the copy of Grimmelshausen he forgot at Martindale's club, back at the very beginning of the book.
• Broken Bird:
  • Hilary in Smiley's People, who had some sort of mental breakdown while working for the Circus. It's not clear what prompted it, though.
  • Elizabeth Worthington in The Honourable Schoolboy.
  • Karla's daughter, Tatiana, in Smiley's People.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • Connie Sachs has some eccentric habits but is absolutely unmatched in her knowledge about Russia.
  • Toby Esterhase constantly bitches and moans about resources and his work load, is cold and rude to his colleagues, runs scams, and has an extremely strange way of speaking. However, whenever he's shown on the job he's utterly professional and gets it done. There's a reason he's the only member of the senior staff Smiley keeps on in The Honourable Schoolboy.
• Character Shilling: Percy Alleline, Roy Bland, and Toby Esterhase all elicit their fair share of complaints from other characters in the first novel, but everybody speaks glowingly of Bill Haydon and how brilliant he is. In fact, they lay it on so thick it becomes pretty obvious for a reader to guess Haydon is the mole, simply because of how heavy-handed the misdirection is.
• Character Tics:
  • Whenever he's thinking, Smiley polishes his glasses on his tie.
  • Anyone who encounters Karla in person (and lives) describe him chain-smoking cigarettes.
• Chekhov's Gun/Chekhov's Skill: Jim Prideaux handily dispatches an owl by breaking its neck. He does the same to Bill Haydon at the end of the novel.
• Code Name:
  • Karla is only known by the name of the first agent he recruited. We never learn any part of his real name.
  • In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the mole suspects are allocated code names by "Control" based on the nursery rhyme "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor; rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief". when he sends Jim Prideaux to find out from a Czechoslovak general: "Tinker" for Percy Alleline, "Tailor" for Bill Haydon, "Soldier" for Roy Bland, "Sailor" and "Rich Man" are skipped as the former sounds too similar to "Tailor" and the latter seemed inappropriate, "Poor Man" for Toby Esterhase and "Beggarman" for George Smiley.
• Cool Teacher: Prideaux becomes a prep school teacher in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and befriends a student, Bill Roach, to whom he acts like a friendly, older brother figure. When he realizes he's training the boy to become a spy, like he was, he shoos him away. Roach becomes a source of comfort and support for him after his killing of Haydon and the subsequent Heroic BSoD.
• Crazy Cat Lady: By Smiley's People, Connie Sachs, who is dying, has started taking in all sorts of random, and frequently decrepit, animals.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Ricky Tarr is a crude field agent (a Scalphunter) whom everyone naturally assumes has defected or deserted when he goes missing. But he successfully evades capture, gains a false passport and returns with the story he uncovered about the mole.
• Cunning Linguist: Downplayed with Toby Esterhase.
  ...Tiny Toby spoke no known language perfectly, but he spoke them all.
• Dead Drop: In Smiley's People, a yellow thumbtack on a ferry indicates that one is ready.
• Depraved Bisexual: Bill Haydon. At the end of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, he gives Smiley a four-figure cheque for a woman and what is assumed to be his kid, while also asking him to pay off a male sailor. The book also heavily implies that Haydon and Prideaux were lovers, and that Prideaux murdering him is in response to a lover's betrayal as much as a professional one.
• The Dilbert Principle: Exploited by the Mole in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Bill Haydon arranges for Percy Alleline to get appointed Chief of the Circus by providing him with seemingly useful Soviet intelligence, knowing that he's one of the most incompetent spies in the agency—and thus, the one least likely to finger him as a Soviet agent.
  Control: There were three men and Alleline.
• Disappointed by the Motive: Questioning Haydon about his motives for becoming a traitor, Smiley is conscious that he is being told only half the truth, and that half consists largely of "half-baked political assertions". Later, on the train to see Ann, Smiley turns over a half-dozen different motives in his head, ranging from political (genuine disappointment at the United Kingdom's diminished role in world affairs, and its eclipsing by the United States as the dominant superpower in the Cold War) to personal (embracing communism as a poor substitute for a "loveless childhood" with an abusive father). Smiley ultimately decides that only Karla saw "the last little doll" inside the traitor, and besides, that original motive likely faded into insignificance along with the rest of his youthful idealism:
  [He] was on the path, and Karla would have known how to keep him there. Treason, like everything else, is very much a matter of habit.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Fawn drags a would-be wristwatch thief from his car, then climbs out to break both of the boy's arms in The Honorable Schoolboy, to Guillam's horror.
• Double Agent: Bill Haydon in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
• Double-Meaning Title: The Honourable Schoolboy. Most obviously, the title refers to Jerry "The Schoolboy" Westerby and his stringent sense of duty in a time of great cynicism. Jerry is also the son of a minor English nobleman, and can justifiably call himself "The Honourable Gerald Westerby".
• Dramatic Irony: In Smiley's People, the actions of General Vladimir, Otto Leipzig, and Oleg Kirov, all formerly from Estonia, led Smiley to finding Karla's secret daughter, Tatiana, which forces Karla's defection. Her mother happened to have been from Estonia.
• Drives Like Crazy:
  • Fearful of kidnappers having snatched his wife, Peter Guillam in Smiley's People blitzes through the streets of Paris from the embassy, turning what should be a forty-minute drive through rush hour traffic into eighteen. Police reports placed him jumping through three sets of lights and touching 140 km/h near the home stretch. It turns out to be Smiley paying a surprise visit with Madame Ostrakova in tow instead of kidnappers.
  • On a lighter note, the surveillance team in Switzerland pegs Grigorieva as an enthusiastic but terrifyingly unskilled driver. On one occasion she hauled her husband out of the driver's seat, climbed in, and promptly clipped the post of their driveway, sending the watchers into uncontrollable laughter.
• End of an Age: A recurring theme. As is repeatedly mentioned in the narration, many of the old secrets of the espionage trade begin to quietly die out as the Cold War drags on, and the Old Masters like Smiley and Control are replaced by impulsive youngsters who never had to prove themselves in the high-stakes chaos of World War II. Control is said to have been the last English intelligence operative who successfully kept his name secret for his entire career, and Smiley's colleagues remember him as "surely the last of the true greats" after his retirement.
• Enemy Civil War: The antagonism between the Soviet Union and Communist China is a major plot point in The Honourable Schoolboy. Karla, being Karla, has a valuable agent planted in China.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Drake Ko in The Honourable Schoolboy. Though it's debatable whether he's truly "evil", he's in league with Russian intelligence, and he has at least been party to a few violent crimes over the years. But his unconditional love for his younger brother Nelson is a major redeeming quality, and it turns out that most of his supposed hostile actions against the West were done to protect his brother.
• Face–Heel Turn: Deconstructed, thanks to the Grey-and-Gray Morality, in The Honourable Schoolboy. Jerry Westerby ultimately goes rogue and tries to help Drake Ko smuggle his brother Nelson—a Soviet mole—out of China. However, Westerby only does it because he wants to save Ko's lover from getting caught in the crossfire, and Ko's only real crime is looking out for his beloved brother.
• Fake-Out Opening: No, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is not a British boarding school novel, but the opening chapter is written to give the impression that it is.
• Famous-Named Foreigner: The Hungarian Toby Esterhase shares his last name with the Esterházys, a very prominent Hungarian noble family. It's implied the character might be related to them, or is at least pretending to be.
• Feed the Mole: The sort of intelligence deemed suitable for leaking to moles is dubbed "Chickenfeed". The cabal of high-level intelligence officials believe that they are only giving chickenfeed to their pet Soviet mole, while one of their number is in fact feeding the mole with real, vital intelligence. Similarly, they view the intelligence supplied back to them as being gold; Smiley, however, is suspicious from the get-go—"Topicality is always suspect," he remarks of the first report—and confirms in the end that it was all Karla's chickenfeed, with just a few scraps of the good stuff at the start in order to bait the hook.
• Foreshadowing: In Tinker Tailor, the mole's identity is strongly suggested by several plot developments before he is unmasked.
  • Jim Prideaux's bonding with the young schoolboy Bill Roach in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy hints at The Mole being Prideaux's old schoolmate Bill Haydon. Late in the novel, Prideaux spurns Roach because he reminds him of his duty to kill Haydon. Played up in the movie adaptation, where Roach is played by a rotund, dark-haired child actor who could easily be a young Colin Firth.
  Prideaux: Known a lot of Bills. They've all been good'uns.
  • In Smiley's flashback with Roy Bland, the latter man rattles off an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote to rationalize how he can be a left-wing academic and a Circus agent at once. "An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional." The mole is codenamed "Gerald" and of the four suspected moles, Haydon is a painter.
  • Smiley spends all of Chapter 29 absorbing the contents of Jim Prideaux's personnel file and of a letter Bill Haydon wrote endorsing him to join the Circus out of Oxford. In his letter to his tutor, Haydon recounts how he has infiltrated left-wing student groups at his instruction, to better undermine them. Years later, Haydon, code-named Gerald, would do the same thing on behalf of Moscow Centre, this time with Karla as his handler.
  • In Chapter 23, Smiley mentions off-hand in a conversation with Guillam that Karla was known to have been in England in 1936, for an estimated six months, but under an unknown cover identity. In Chapter 29, the letter Haydon writes to Fanshawe, dated to February 3rd, 1937, also contains an account of Haydon meeting with a Russian lecturer, "Khlebnikov," to vet him as a Circus asset. It's strongly implied that this man, described as a "small fellow" attached to the Soviet embassy in London, was actually Karla himself, and that this meeting had the reverse purpose: Haydon was the target, and "Khlebnikov" was the recruiter.
  • Smiley, when questioning Prideaux, finds it curious and out of character that Jim tried to consult with him before leaving to carry out Operation Testify, but never once visited Bill. He was lying. Jim visited Bill and tried to warn him that Control was closing in on him, having found out independently that Haydon was the mole. In return, Bill betrayed him to Karla.
  • During Operation Testify, Haydon claims he found out about Prideaux's capture from ticker tape at his private members club, and long before anyone at the Circus logically could have told him about it; the news broke on the radio after his club had closed for the night. When Smiley points this out to Sam Collins, Sam has an uncharacteristic moment where he stares into the distance, realizing that Haydon is lying, but puts the thought out of his mind.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Crude field agent Ricky Tarr is known for being a loose cannon, but he’s the one who exposes the mole. Smiley regards him with cool, measured protectiveness. Guilliam, by contrast, continues to show him nothing but open hostility long after Ricky is proven right.
• Gender-Blender Codename: Karla is male, but he is only known by the name of the first agent he recruited, who was a woman.
• Glory Days: All of the older characters have outlasted the British Empire, and don't quite know what to do with themselves.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Both the British and Russian intelligence agencies are perfectly happy to do terrible things.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Smiley notes that the interrogation centre where The Mole is being held isn't as well-guarded as it used to be. The perimeter isn't being patrolled, and the guards are too busy watching TV to accompany the mole when he decides to go for a midnight stroll whereupon he gets his neck broken.
• Happily Married: Guillam by the third book, in contrast to the disappointing conclusion of George's marriage to Ann.
• Hastily Hidden MacGuffin: Smileys People has Estonian exile General Vladimir contact retired British Intelligence agent George Smiley about a "legend" operation being conducted by Soviet mastermind Karla. "I have two proofs, and can bring them with me." The General is murdered before he meets with Smiley. However, Smiley deduces from the General's footprints in the snow that the victim paused in his flight to jettison something toward a municipal park. There, Smiley finds a pack of cigarettes in a tree, which contains two compromising photo negatives.
• Heinous Villainy Needed: a favorite recurring theme of le Carre:
  • In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, George Smiley has been tasked with unmasking The Mole inside the British Secret Service, but his superiors are worried that the Russians will retaliate by exposing the Service's folly to the media. Smiley predicts otherwise: since the Soviets are heavily invested in portraying the Western powers (including the United States and Britain) as mortal enemies, it actually works against them to portray those enemies as foolish and gullible. The TV adaptation makes this explicit:
    Smiley: If you make your enemy look stupid, you lose the justification for taking him on.
  • Tinker, Tailor begins with Smiley predicting that his nemesis, the Soviet spymaster Karla, is a "fanatic" and that will one day be his downfall. The third and last volume, Smiley's People, ends with Karla defecting to the West and surrendering to British Intelligence after Smiley discovers that Karla has been using state funds for his mentally ill daughter's care, and ruthlessly blackmails him with the information. Karla has been Smiley's "Great White Whale" for decades, but Smiley only defeats him because Karla is just as vulnerable through his family as Smiley was.
    Peter Guillam: George you won.
    Smiley: Did I? Yes... yes, I suppose I did.
• Henpecked Husband: Grigoriev of Smiley's People, with the added fun that he is having an affair with his secretary. It makes for prime blackmail material: losing his post is bad enough, but living in Siberia facing the wrath of Grigorieva twenty-four hours a day would be a Fate Worse than Death.
• The Hero Dies: At the end of The Honourable Schoolboy, Jerry Westerby goes into a dangerous situation to try to rescue his love interest, who is tangled up with the bad guys, and is killed. It underscores his status as the "honourable schoolboy" of the title, too straightforwardly honest to survive in the murky world of espionage.
• Heroic BSoD: After he finds his friend Luke murdered, Jerry Westerby spends the rest of The Honourable Schoolboy in this state.
• Hidden in Plain Sight:
  • The Circus doesn't go very far to hide Jim Prideaux, since he takes up his new job as a French teacher using his own name.
  • This is how The Mole in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is concealed. Witchcraft facilitates this. Because it is explicitly an intelligence-trading con, where valuable Soviet intelligence is traded for useless Western information, no one bothers looking closer when the results end up being of phenomenal benefit. This allows the mole to switch the information, providing genuine Western intelligence to Karla through "Merlin" in exchange for useless Soviet intelligence, and con the rest of the Circus into stymieing any attempt to unmask the scheme.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Karla spent a lifetime building an efficient and fanatical espionage organisation that is devoted to communism, which he cannot use when he needs to use illicit funds for an illegal and personal act. He defects when found out by Smiley, out of fear it will turn on him and destroy his daughter.
• Ho Yay: Bill Haydon and Jim Prideaux; invoked by the narration in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Given Haydon's proclivities, background documents are rather coy about the two of them.
• Honey Trap:
  • Karla employs a subversion to get the upper hand on Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (see It's Personal). He knows that Smiley is the one most likely to figure out that Haydon is the mole, so he orders Haydon to seduce Smiley's wife, and makes sure that everyone in the Circus knows that he did it. He knows that Smiley's anger will cloud his judgement and that no one at the Circus will take him seriously if he accuses Haydon of treason.
  • In Smiley's People, Otto Leipzig sets a honey trap for Oleg Kirov, who, to use Connie Sachs' phrase, "walked in with his eyes wide shut."
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Haydon to Alleline in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Part of how Smiley comes to suspect that Bill Haydon is the mole in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. During Operation Testify, he found out about Prideaux's capture long before anyone at the Circus logically could have told him about it; the news broke on the radio after his club had closed for the night
• Idiot Ball: In The Honourable Schoolboy, there's extensive in-universe discussion of whether or not Smiley is carrying one when it comes to Jerry Westerby's obsession with Elizabeth Worthington.
• Incompetence, Inc.: The Circus in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an institution in decline due to the actions of The Mole in subverting it, but the narrative makes it clear that he was only able to get so far because of the complacency, laziness, and greed endemic in its membership. It's telling that Karla's ultimate aim isn't to gain control of the Circus for its own sake, but to use it as a conduit to siphon prized American intelligence.
• I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: In The Honourable Schoolboy, Ricardo explains his monologuing problem to Jerry: "You confuse me, Voltaire. If I tell you too much, I have to shoot you. I'm a very talkative person, you follow me? I get lonely up here, it is my disposition always to be lonely. I like a guy, I talk to him, then I regret myself. I remember my business commitments, follow me?"
• In-Series Nickname: Jerry Westerby is "The Schoolboy". His mentor Bill Craw is "The Old Craw".
• In the Back: Where Prideaux gets shot.
• Irony: In the very beginning of the first book, Prideaux tells Bill Roach he's "known a lot of Bills. All of them good'uns." Bill Haydon is both Prideaux's lover and the mole who betrayed him.
• It's Personal: Karla deliberately takes advantage of this by ordering Haydon to sleep with Ann, thereby making Smiley unable to truly suspect him in a cold, detached way. In the end, Smiley's only way to retaliate is to threaten Karla's illegitimate daughter with exposure. In a profession rife with Dirty Business, these are the incidents that trouble Smiley the most.
• Knew It All Along: When The Mole is finally identified in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley ruefully reflects that not only did he know all along, but everyone else in the Circus did, too - instinctively, if not empirically, since Bill Haydon was the only one of them for whom being a traitor would be in character, but all of them chose to just put it out of their minds, "like an illness they hoped would go away if it was never owned to, never diagnosed."
• Knight in Sour Armor: George Smiley is an experienced but cynical spy. Despite the moral complications and issues of his work, George always seeks to do the best job he can in his spying because he still believes it is the right thing to do. George is idealistic but also fully aware of the moral greyness of his environment.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: When Ricky Tarr comes out of hiding, asking for a meeting with Percy Alleline with information "Vital to the safeguarding of the service". The mole immediately activates his escape plan. The mole notes that Ricky would only approach The Circus with concrete evidence, and even a small nugget of info will lead to his capture. Just as Smiley knew he would.
• Let Me Get This Straight...: the plots of the books tend to be so convoluted that explanations tend to be necessary, particularly for Smiley's People, where Saul Enderby has to confirm via George Smiley just how all the events that had happened so far tie together and lead to Karla.
• Lured into a Trap: Controls suspicion of a mole at the heart of the circus, leads him to conduct a personal investigation into who it is. When the Mole realises this, he develops a plot to discredit Control with a false defector. Whilst the plot discredits Control and wounds the Circus. It's botched in such a way that allows Smiley to pick up where Control left off and lead him straight to the mole.
• Mandatory Unretirement: Smiley has been brought out of retirement, albeit in an informal or advisory capacity, to clean up various messes made by his former colleagues in the security services. Twice.
• Manly Tears: Smiley in The Honourable Schoolboy, after two informants are killed during a rescue attempt.
• The Masochism Tango: Smiley's relationship with his wife, which persists despite her chronic inability to remain faithful to him. He finally puts an end to it in Smiley's People, although without explicitly asking for a divorce.
• Married to the Job: The series implies that the duplicity necessary to maintain a career in Intelligence torpedoes any possibility of maintaining a healthy marriage.
• May–December Romance: Smiley and Lady Ann; Jerry Westerby and Liz Worthington; Guillam and Marie-Claire.
• The Matchmaker: Peter Guillam has appointed himself the designated go-between in the Smileys' regular breakups. Smiley finally chews him out for it in Smiley's People.
• Meaningful Name: Drake and Nelson Ko were both named after famed British sailors—which is fitting, since they're descended from the "boat people" of Shantou, who historically ran Chinese trade with the West. Drake Ko ultimately enlists the aid of a fleet of Chinese junk ships to smuggle his brother out of China.
• Memento MacGuffin: The lighter that Lady Ann gave Smiley, which Karla steals during a flashback in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Karla drops it in front of Smiley when he finally defects in Smiley's People, but Smiley decides not to pick it up.
• Mole in Charge: Control realizes that one of the very top agents in the Circus must be The Mole. Technically averted in that the mole is not actually the head of the Circus; that job goes instead to Percy Alleline, who is more pompous and ambitious, and thus more easily manipulated by Karla and the mole.
• The Mole: The main plot of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is finding the mole. The novel is also the Trope Codifier; it popularised a term that has been around since at least the 17th century, though it was a very obscure one. Le Carré though claimed it was a KGB term.
• Murder by Mistake: Luke for Jerry Westerby in The Honourable Schoolboy.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: The failure of Operation Testify results in Smiley being ousted at the Circus because he was Control's lieutenant. But because he was outside of the intelligence establishment at the time Ricki Tarr brought evidence of The Mole, Oliver Lacon feels comfortable in involving him as a counterintelligence consultant. Emphasized in that Smiley was one of Control's primary suspects and was deliberately reassigned to keep him isolated from London at the time Testify was launched. The failure, and indeed the entire operation, was instrumental in ideally placing Smiley to uncover the mole Karla was trying to protect.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In the introduction to the reprint edition of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Le Carré notes that The Mole is partly based on Kim Philby (the Philby affair brought an end to Le Carré's own MI6 career).
• No Name Given: Control and Karla. Control's success in keeping his real name secret gets lampshaded in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
  • Outside the Circus, Control has two different names (and two different "wives"), neither of which appears to be the real one. This is based on real life; the existence of the Secret Intelligence Service was not publically acknowledged by HM Government at the time, nor were its chiefs named.
  • Karla is only known by the name of the first agent he recruited (a woman); even following his defection, his real name is never revealed.
• Not Now, Kiddo: In The Honourable Schoolboy, Peter Guillam keeps having this problem when he tries to explain to George Smiley that Sam Collins and Martello are probably conspiring against him. At the end of the novel, Guillam begins to wonder if Smiley knew all along, and allowed himself to be done in.
• Number Two: The Circus goes through a succession of them (known as "Cupbearers" in Circus parlance). Smiley starts out as Control's second-in-command; Bill Haydon becomes Percy Alleline's second after the fallout from Operation Testify forces Smiley and Control to resign; Peter Guillam ultimately becomes Smiley's second after Haydon is outed as a Soviet mole.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • One of Smiley's tactics.
  • Jerry Westerby, in The Honourable Schoolboy, often takes on the affectations of an Upper-Class Twit (his father was in fact a Lord) in order to divert attention from his spywork.
• Old Master: Control, for the members of the Circus. The Old Craw, for the Foreign Correspondents. Smiley himself gradually becomes this after stepping into Control's shoes as Chief of the Circus.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Several members of the Foreign Correspondents' Club in The Honourable Schoolboy — the Dwarf, Deathwish the Hun, and the Canadian Cowboy — are only ever referred to by their nicknames.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Connie Sachs became certain that the seemingly harmless Soviet cultural attache was a high-ranking KGB agent when he appeared on Remembrance Day^note Observed on 11 November in the United Kingdom, April 1 in Russia. wearing the uniform of a full colonel in the Soviet Army and a Chest of Medals.
• Out of Focus: Smiley fades into the background for much of The Honourable Schoolboy as Jerry Westerby steps into the spotlight.
• Pet Rat: The Scalphunters are the branch of the Circus that undertakes missions involving kidnapping, Blackmail, and murder. They are kept at "arm's length" to give the Circus some degree of plausible deniability. The department is looked down upon by other members of the Circus. When Peter Guillam is placed in charge of the unit, it's considered an insult to him.
• The Plan: Operation Testify and Operation Witchcraft are both concocted by Karla to discredit Control and subvert the Circus from within. Control has researched high profile intelligence failures to such an extent that he has an uncomfortably thorough itinerary of every operation Gerald was in a position to blow. Knowing that he's closing in on his most valuable asset, Karla forces Control's hand by planting disinformation that a prominent Czech general is willing to defect and knows the mole's true identity. When this operation fails, Control is sacked and soon after dies. Karla concocts Witchcraft to build the reputation of Control's intended successor, Percy Alleline, and insinuate Moscow Centre into the Circus's command structure. Knowing that Alleline is an inattentive spy and inexperienced on Russia, Karla deliberately allows a classified report on a Soviet naval exercise to leak into his possession. Whitehall is highly impressed by the perceived quality of Alleline's product and champions his program, which mysteriously produces intelligence that is highly topical with regard to the government's objectives and with broad access to the highest levels of Soviet policymaking, without asking too many questions about where it came from or whether every Witchcraft report is actually valuable. Witchcraft builds Alleline's reputation as a canny intelligence officer and a marked contrast to Control's string of blown operations and lost agents. When Control is disgraced, Alleline is his natural successor, allowing Gerald to insinuate himself as one of Alleline's subordinates.
• Poirot Speak: The Hungarian Toby Esterhase, who manages to do this in multiple languages.
  Tiny Toby spoke no known language perfectly, but he spoke them all. In Switzerland Guillam had heard his French and it had a German accent; his German had a Slav accent and his English was full of stray flaws and stops and false vowel sounds.
• Posthumous Character: Control.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Invoked and averted in Smiley's People. Estonian ex-Soviet General Vladimir is shot in London's Hampstead Heath by KGB assassins, in the face at close range with a soft lead bullet. One of the constables on the scene takes one look at what's left of the man's face and rushes off to throw up, while his more hardened superior comments:
  Most people expect to be shot in the chest. Your neat, round bullet that drills a tasteful hole. It's the television that does it, I suppose. Whereas your modern bullet can tear off an arm or a leg.
• Prisoner Exchange: The Circus agrees with Karla to swap Haydon for their blown agents in the Soviet bloc that aren't already dead, but Haydon is killed before the exchange can take place. Oliver Lacon asks if Karla will do the deal anyway and Smiley remarks that he won't.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: In Smiley's People, Sam Collins has become this to Circus boss Saul Enderby.
• Properly Paranoid: Technically, everyone, but Control is most properly paranoid. In his case, it reaches the point of Cassandra Truth.
  Control: There were three men, and Alleline...
• Puppet King: In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Control is rendered politically impotent by Percy Alleline's powerful connections in Whitehall. Percy himself becomes this as Circus Chief. Bill Haydon was really in control through him, using Operation Witchcraft to funnel Western intelligence to Karla.
• Put on a Bus: In The Honourable Schoolboy, Bland, along with the Circus' resident Soviet defectors Kaspar and DeKursky, are sent on a mission that ends badly. This leads to all three getting fired.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The ending of every novel.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Fawn, who starts out as a quietly lethal take on Bunter, then turns out to be childishly dependent on George Smiley, and finally tips over into viciousness so glaring that Peter Guillam is horrified.
• Really Gets Around:
  • Smiley's wife, Lady Ann.
  • Both Ricki Tarr and Jerry Westerby.
  • Control apparently did this as a matter of policy.
• Red Herring: Because of the setting of The Honourable Schoolboy, several characters naturally assume that Karla wants to infiltrate the British colony of Hong Kong with Chinese aid — or even to outright wrest it from British control. In truth, his plan is a bit less ambitious: he wants Drake Ko's help in smuggling Ko's brother Nelson — a loyal Soviet mole — out of Communist China.
• Refuge in Audacity: In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, one of Smiley's accomplices is sneaking about in a part of Headquarters that he shouldn't really be in. He comes across a door which slams closed on a spring, and remembers Smiley saying "If you have to make a noise, make a loud one." So our man lets the door slam really hard, as if he had every right to be there. No one investigates.
  • One passage in "Tinker Tailor" reads as this retroactively when one of the four main suspects, Haydon, rants in frustration and in front of his subordinates about having to work with their American 'cousins,' even remarking that it might be time for the UK to forsake the U.S as its ally entirely and start joining forces with the "bloody" Russians already. Turns out he's the mole.
• Refuge in the West: British Intelligence learn that Soviet agents have approached a dumpy fireplug of a woman about vouching for the daughter (Alexandra) she left behind in the Soviet Union. George Smiley recognizes this as a "legend" operation, meant to install deep-cover agents under the guise of family of established immigrants. The "agent", Tatiana, turns out to be fake and is actually the daughter of Soviet spymaster Karla. The girl has mental problems that are poorly treated in Communist Russia, so Karla is trying to quietly get his daughter into Western facilities. The British use back-channels to let Karla know that his plan has been discovered, but that the Brits will welcome her nonetheless as a medical refugee.
• Revealing Cover-Up: This is essentially Smiley's thinking at the beginning of The Honourable Schoolboy: the mole, having been essentially in charge of the Circus for years, must at some point have killed off investigations that would have revealed too much about Karla's other operations. Thus, he and his staff look for any promising avenues of investigation that were canceled before they could produce results. This eventually leads them to Drake Ko; a Circus agent who began to investigate Ko's finances was told that Ko was being watched by the Americans, while the Americans were simultaneously warned that the Circus was investigating Ko.
• Rewatch Bonus: In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Jim Prideaux's bonding with the young outcast schoolboy Bill Roach is written to seem more poignant when you know that the mole at the Circus is Prideaux's old schoolmate Bill Haydon.
• Riddle for the Ages: When and how Haydon was recruited as a Soviet mole is never revealed. Smiley is shocked when Haydon tells him that he and Karla had a lifelong relationship, but Haydon refuses to elaborate further. Ultimately, revealing the identity of The Mole answers fewer questions than it creates, and Smiley is left with the unsettling realization that he never truly knew Haydon at all.What also doesn't help is that Haydon's Motive Rant appears to be so contradictory that the mole comes across as either a Consummate Liar or an inconsistent Commie Nazi at best, getting Smiley seriously annoyed after a while.
• Rogue Agent: Towards the end of The Honourable Schoolboy Jerry Westerby goes rogue, largely due to his feelings for Lizzie Worth and his concerns about her getting caught in the crossfire between the Circus and the Kos, but also because he's increasingly become disillusioned about his service to the Circus. Discovering that his friend Luke was murdered after being mistaken for him further adds to this sense of disillusionment. It culminates in his going on the run from the Circus, trying to make a deal with Drake Ko to help Nelson escape in exchange for his and Lizzie's lives, and ultimately being gunned down by Fawn for interfering with the Circus' operation.
• Room Full of Crazy: In reaction to the various disasters befalling the Circus, Control locks himself in his room with old files stacked everywhere, including the floor. Everyone thinks Control is losing his grip, but it turns out he's tracking down The Mole who's behind it all.
• Running Gag: Smiley's inability to talk his way out of a dinner invitation, where the food is inevitably terrible. He doesn't get a decent feed in any of the books until his send off in The Secret Pilgrim.
• Secret Agent Masquerade: Zig-Zagged in the second volume, The Honourable Schoolboy. Sam Collins, a disgraced former member of the British SIS, was assigned to Vientiane in Laos during The Vietnam War and one of his jobs was recruiting a small shuttle airline ferrying supplies to pro-American rebels. Part of this "recruitment" was seducing the young Englishwoman, Lizzie, who worked as a secretary in the office, pretending to be a smuggler. A few months later, as their affair was "cooling off", Sam decided to put some romance back into their affair by revealing to Lizzie that he really was a British secret agent, and she and the airline were doing their patriotic duty. The plan went horribly right: Lizzie (the ultimate ditz) was so thrilled that she immediately shared the news with her boss, her parents in England, and all of her girlfriends in Vientiane and back in England. A horrified Sam had no choice but to drop her and the airline, and leave Vientiane immediately. In this case, Sam wasn't masquerading as a secret agent (he really was one), but he revealed the truth to Lizzie for the same reasons other men pretend to be secret agents: he had no legitimate reason to do so, he only hoped it would make him sexier to his paramour.
• Self-Harm: Peter Guillam catches Fawn deliberately harming himself when he's temporarily abandoned by Smiley.
• Serial Romeo: Peter Guillam is in a relationship with a different woman in each book, but is genuinely and passionately devoted to each while the relationship lasts.
• The Short Guy with Glasses: Smiley. Short, chubby, bespectacled, soft-spoken, and arguably the greatest case-officer to ever work for British intelligence.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Guilliam visits the Circus in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, he compares Bill Haydon's complexion to that of Dorian Gray.
  • Smiley's go-to alias of "Mr Standfast" - on the one hand, it's mentioned as being in reference to The Pilgrim's Progress, and on the other, it's the title of one of John Buchan's Hannay novels (where it's also a reference to The Pilgrim's Progress).
• Shrouded in Myth: Karla. It's said of him in Smiley's People that he "is too important to exist. He controls the whole of Russia, but he does not exist... He does not exist, but everyone is afraid of him."
• Sleight of Handoff: How a mole can pass state secrets to another agent, even while being watched, is discussed in detail. The mole purchases six or so oranges, adds the secret documents, and carries them in a paper bag to the public exchange place, such as a bus stop or ferry landing. The exchange contact will also bring a paper bag of oranges, and the two bags will end up side by side. Each man then departs with the other's bag of oranges, completing the transfer. An extra bit mentions that if either bag contains lemons, it's a signal that the handoff is too risky and must be postponed.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Nelson Ko in The Honourable Schoolboy. He only appears — very briefly — in one of the very last scenes of the novel, but he's mentioned constantly before that, and nearly all of the novel's plot indirectly revolves around him. It turns out that Drake Ko only gets involved with Karla in order to smuggle him out of Communist China.
• Smoking Is Edgy: The wily British agent deduces the plans by his Soviet counterpart, Karla. The British are willing to welcome Karla and his troubled daughter to the West if he is willing to defect. George Smiley and cohorts await Karla on the western side of the Berlin Wall as Karla begins to make his way through the checkpoint and into no man's land. About a third of the way across, Karla stops to light a cigarette and view the scenery. He'd surely be gunned down on the spot if his Soviet masters ever wised up to what he was doing, and the Brits grudgingly admire the brass Karla has to enjoy a cig as though nothing at all was amiss.
• Spy School: The Circus has a combination interrogation centre/training ground at Sarratt.
• Spy Speak: One of the most famous examples, with the trilogy's influence leading to some defictionalization.
• The Starscream: Karla's underlings and rivals at Moscow Centre. Who are looking for an excuse to deprive him of his power and have him liquidated. It is with this in mind that Karla chooses to defect.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Smiley is good at this, much to Fawn's fury.
• Straight Edge Evil: Karla is said to have quite ascetic tastes, the only pleasure he indulges being his fondness for chain-smoking Camel cigarettes.
• Supervillain Lair:
  • In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Connie furnishes a very detailed description of a training camp in Russia which Karla uses as a base for his handpicked directorate within Moscow Centre. Jim Prideaux spends much of his imprisonment here.
  • Defied in Smiley's People. When Grigoriev meets Karla, he is astonished to find him in a virtually bare room, instead of the luxury he was expecting.
• Super-Intelligence: Connie Sachs, former head of Research, is virtually a living repository of knowledge on Soviet intelligence, and was affectionately nicknamed "Mother Russia" for it. Her specialty was tracking the movement of Soviet moles until she came dangerously close to the truth about Polyakov, and "Gerald" had her pensioned off.
• Take a Third Option: In "Smiley's People", Smiley has already used both of his usual two detailed false-identity passports in the names of Barraclough and Standfast recently. What does he do for the journey home to cover his tracks? Use his own passport and travel under the name of George Smiley.
• Take It to the Bridge: The climactic scene of Smiley's People is set on a bridge across divided Berlin, unnamed in the novel but clearly the famous "Bridge of Spies", the Glienicke Bridge. The scene marks an important turning-point for Smiley, the culmination of his final victory against Karla, by blackmailing him into defecting to the West.
• That One Case: "Smiley's People", an espionage example.
• Theme Naming: In addition to the code names taken from the "tinker, tailor" rhyme in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, there's also Drake and Nelson Ko from The Honourable Schoolboy; both were named after famous British admirals (Sir Francis Drake and Lord Horatio Nelson, respectively) after being christened by Jesuit missionaries in China.
• To Know Him, I Must Become Him: This is Smiley's arc during Smiley's People, despite the Big "NO!" (see above).
• Trophy Wife: Ann Smiley is often assumed to be one, because she's considerably younger than her husband and a real beauty and nobody can imagine that she married George because she was attracted to him.
• True Companions: Subverted. Smiley's teams of spies often share a common ethic, but the very nature of their work, rife with betrayal and distrust, prevent them from forming any close bonds with each other. Consequently, when it is finally played straight in Smiley's People with Smiley, Guillam, and Esterhase's team in order to blackmail Gregoriev, and then to receive Karla as he defects, the friendship and trust forms an odd sort of heartwarming feeling.
• 20 Minutes into the Past: The Honourable Schoolboy was published in 1977, two years after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, but it takes place in 1974 at the height of the Cambodian Civil War. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy technically counts as well (it was published in 1974, but takes place in 1973), but recent historical events have little bearing on the plot.
• Twofer Token Minority: Connie, who by the time of Smiley's People is both disabled and in a relationship with a woman.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: George Smiley and Lady Ann, with unromantic results.
• Verbal Tic: Jerry Westerby's "Super" (with optional "Gosh") and Martello's "ah" in The Honourable Schoolboy.
• You Have Failed Me: This seems to be Karla's M.O. whenever an operation of his gets compromised.
• The Watson: Peter Guillam in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
• What Does She See in Him?:
  • George Smiley and Lady Ann.
  • Jerry Westerby and Elizabeth Worthington. Jerry is upfront with himself about the attraction: he has fallen for her because she's a "loser."
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Fawn, who simply disappears without a trace after killing Jerry Westerby - it's an in-universe example, too.
  • Ricki Tarr disappears between Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy.
• Villain Ball: Ziggzagged. Karla launched Operation Testify to kill Control’s hunt. It worked. Briefly. But it was too clumsy. Too exposed. And it never considered that someone might just start asking the same questions all over again.
  • The mole and Karla also mishandle Irina’s elimination. The mole delays Ricky’s request for a meeting, but does it clumsily, just enough for Ricky to smell a rat. And Moscow Centre doesn’t seem all that eager to catch him, either.
• Wife Husbandry: Karla with his mistress. He and his unit rescued a young girl from the ruins of her town in the last days of WWII, and after the war was over, he took her back to Russia as his ward. And then fell in love with that same girl and had a child by her.
• Worthy Opponent: Discussed and invoked. The Minister worries that the exposure of a spy will lead to a scandal the Soviets may exploit, but Lacon (and Smiley, in the TV adaptation) explain that the Soviets won't disgrace their enemy because it'd reflect badly on their own offensive efforts against them.
  If you make your enemy look stupid, you lose the justification for taking him on.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In The Honourable Schoolboy, Lizzie Worthington thinks she’s the heroine of her own spy story. In reality, she’s a pawn in a long Cold War game run by indifferent intelligence services. Sam Collins uses her ruthlessly, and Jerry Westerby’s bungled rescue only makes things worse. The Circus discards her, and she’s thrown into prison on a trumped-up drug charge.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley asks Toby Esterhase what kind of Covert Distress Code is used to arrange an unscheduled meeting with Polyakov (whom the Circus's leadership believes is their conduit to the Russian super-agent "Merlin", when in fact he's passing information from The Mole to Karla. Esterhase says the ordinary procedure is to hang a sign in a window that Polyakov drives past, or - in a genuine emergency - a wrong-number phone call. Smiley asks if the wrong number call has ever been used, and Esterhase says he doesn't know. After a brief Stunned Silence, Smiley asks, "you mean you don't listen to his phone?" The Circus leadership knows that Polyakov is actually a KGB agent; they may solidly believe Polyakov has turned to their side, but come on!