New Act for the Circus Master

By Stefan Kanfer

SMILEY'S PEOPLE by John le Carre; Knopf; 374pages; $10.95

This has been a vintage year for spies, real and imagined. In that second realm of entertainment, terrorists stalked the bestseller list, and every month new operatives peered from the dust jackets of international thrillers. Most of the books, of course, were time killers, for those who like it dead. But a few managed to cross the DMZ into the demanding arena of art.

There in a colorless London house lives George Smiley, Master Spy (ret.). Resolutely out of style, fat as the Michelin tire man, he has long been cuckolded by his wife and betrayed by close associates. It is tune the old cold warrior hung up his spites. Not Smiley. Once more, Author John le Carre trots him out in a flawed and misnamed adventure: Smiley's People is actually about the people's Smiley. All of his endearing characteristics, so well catalogued in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy, are herein amplified. Now heading toward 70, the man retains the rumpled character of a professor who has forgotten his socks--and perhaps his name. Yet Smiley misses no conversational nuance, no backstairs Whitehall intrigue. Because of a few previously overlooked clues, his final assignment rises to an Olympic-scale contest of Soviet and British will.

In the great tradition, Smiley's People begins with minor violence. An obsolete agent has been shot. His terminal message is broadcast to Smiley, onetime head of the Circus--the British Secret Service. But detente is now the order of the day, and the Circus is anxious to bury both the victim and his story. Ordinarily, the ultimate company man might agree. But behind homicide Smiley detects the ruthless spirit of Karla, his longtime adversary in Moscow. Publicly accepting the injunction of superiors, Smiley decides to do a little freelance investigation. On the scent from London to Germany he encounters a brilliant cast of characters from previous enterprises: Connie, the sapphic Soviet expert whom the Circus has dubbed Mother Russia; Oliver Lacon, the icy intelligence chief whose marital distress parallels Smiley's; the estranged Ann, still Mrs. Smi ley, and still destructive; and, ultimately, Karla himself.

From the airless corridors of London to the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Smiley battles Karla as masters play chess by mail, visualizing the opponent, pondering alternatives, waiting agonizing days for the next move. And herein lie the novel's aggravating weaknesses. Readers have been here long, long ago. Smiley, the cerebral sleuth, may be as corpulent as Nero Wolfe, but in this adventure he is suddenly Sherlock Holmes redivivus. His obsessive enemy is a new version of Dr. Moriarty. The audience is Watson, condemned to wonder what the detective is up to when he examines those cigarettes and whom he sees in that faded snapshot -- questions resolved at the proper theatrical instants. Moreover, Karla, in a pivotal chapter, turns out not to be inhuman after all; he has, in fact, Victorian sentiments, although in all previous appearances, he has been nothing but an arachnid.

In any other spy novel these might be fatal lapses. But Le Carre is not any other spy novelist. Throughout, he is aware not only of the moral squalor that can attend espionage -- but also of Auden's ironic observation: "We are left alone with our day, and the tune is short and/ History to the defeated/ May say Alas but cannot help or pardon."

Those conflicting observations give Smiley his dimension and Smiley 's People its distinction. Yet aficionados must view this work with mixed feelings. It is melancholy to realize that a weakly plotted book contains the secret agent's last bow. It is reassuring to know that even now John le Carre, Circus Master, is in Switzerland pondering the next big act for the center ring. -- Stefan Kanfer

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