Title: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
Rating: 5 Stars
Written sixty years ago, I’ve now read this book at least three or four times. Not only is it my favorite spy novel but it’s one of my all time favorite reads.
It’s the story of Alec Leamas. The novel starts with him as head of the Berlin MI6 station. The novel, written in 1963, is set in its current day. It’s the height of the Cold War. Leamas has created a network of clandestine agents in East Germany. One by one, his agents are discovered and murdered. He’s down to his last agent, his most successful agent, a man named Karl Reimeck. As Reimeck attempts to flee East Berlin, Leamas sees him shot down at the border crossing. He knows that Hans-Deiter Mundt, the brutal head of East German counterespionage, ordered the murder of Reimeck and the destruction of his spy ring.
Mundt has not only beaten Leamas but has destroyed his career. Leamas returns to London in disgrace. With no interest in a desk job, Leamas just wants out of the service. The head of MI6, a man referred to as Control, asks Leamas to stay on for one last mission.
In this role, Leamas acts drunk and dissolute. He gets discharged from MI6 for theft. Once out, he descends even further, nearly homeless, eventually getting in a fight that results in a jail sentence.
His fall from grace is noted by the communist intelligence agencies. Leamas is recruited by one of these agencies. He agrees to betray his country and ends up in East Germany. This is all part of the grand plan to convince the East Germans of Leamas’ bona fides as a turncoat. The plan is that, with Leamas’ testimony along with a couple of other apparent clues that seemingly validate Leamas’ story, it will be enough for one of Mundt’s adversaries in the East German agency to denounce Mundt as a double agent, resulting in his execution.
While planning this mission, the East German agent, Jens Fiedler, is identified by Control as the most likely candidate to take the bait and run with it. Indeed he does. Over several conversations, Fiedler becomes increasingly convinced of Mundt’s guilt. Fiedler builds up a dossier implicating Mundt, eventually arresting him, and putting him on trial in front of a tribunal.
Here’s the obligatory spoiler alert for a sixty year old novel. Mundt really is a double agent for MI6. Leamas’ entire time as head of the Berlin MI6 station was a sham. His network was killed as the necessary cost of protecting Mundt. The leaders of MI6 made sure to put enough holes in Leamas’ cover story that Mundt was able to easily blow it apart at trial. Leamas, having gained respect for Fiedler over time, tries to save him, but in trying to save him just provides more evidence of Fiedler’s guilt. It’s only when Leamas looks at Mundt’s hard, smug, slightly smirking face that he realizes how much of a pawn that he was in an MI6 game that he didn’t even know was being played.
The first time that you read the novel, this reveal is shocking. It’s well hidden. Through the characters, you feel sympathy for Fiedler, even though he’s a staunch communist. Mundt, on the other hand, is hated. He is brutal, kills, and tortures without remorse. He is harshly antisemitic. As Mundt tortures Fiedler, he whispers his hatred of all Jews into his ear.
However, despite his evil nature, Mundt is invaluable to MI6. Therefore, they are perfectly willing not only to sacrifice the innocent Fiedler but also, at a very deep level, betray Leamas, who has given the service the best years of his life.
Both Control and the other MI6 leader, George Smiley, seem to be, on the surface, small, fussy men with the absentminded natures of Oxford dons. This makes their actual cold blooded, pitiless ruthlessness that much more shocking. The two of them are truly playing five dimensional chess where the chess pieces are actual human lives.
When you reread it, you can see the little cookie crumbs that Le Carré drops throughout the text. A small, nondescript, bespectacled gentlemen seems to pop up at certain key moments. Leamas seemingly randomly ends up at a place that leads him to compromise his cover to a woman. This woman is visited for no apparent reason by Smiley. The seeds of the betrayal are woven as subtext as we read about the trap that we think Leamas is laying.
Le Carré (real name David Cornwell) was actually working in MI6 while writing this novel. Its success led him to quit the service and launched his very successful writing career. Since I’ve never been a spy, let alone one during the 1960s Cold War, I certainly can’t attest to its authenticity, but the amoral, world weary, ends justifies the means themes that run rampant through the novel seem to have the feel of truth.
I’m not alone in loving this novel. It won the Edgar award for best mystery novel. Various best crime lists place it in their top ten. Outside of the crime/spy genre, Time magazine named it as one of their 100 best novels.
If you want a fictional look at the spy world during the 1960s Cold War, this is definitely the place to start.
dorkenstein 