Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1974 British spy novel by John le Carré, featuring George Smiley. Smiley is a middle-aged, taciturn, perspicacious intelligence expert in forced retirement. He is recalled to hunt down a Soviet mole in the "Circus", the highest echelon of the Secret Intelligence Service. In keeping with le Carré's work, the narrative begins in medias res with the repatriation of a captured British spy. The background is supplied during the book through a series of flashbacks.
Chronology
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the first novel of the Karla Trilogy, the second and third novels being The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) and Smiley's People (1979), later published in an omnibus edition as The Quest for Karla (1982). These are the fifth, sixth, and seventh Le Carré spy novels featuring George Smiley.
Title
Control, the Circus Chief, assigns the code names "Tinker", "Tailor", "Soldier", "Poorman" and "Beggarman" to various senior intelligence officers under suspicion of being a Soviet mole. The names are derived from the English children's rhyme "Tinker, Tailor". In the book, "Sailor" is not used as it sounds too much like "Tailor" and "Rich Man" is not used as it is not a single word. "Thief" is also not used.
Plot
Through a love affair with the wife of a Moscow Centre intelligence officer, British agent Ricki Tarr discovers that there may be a high-ranking Soviet mole within the Circus. Tarr alerts Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service officer responsible for the Intelligence Services, and Lacon enlists Peter Guillam and retired agent George Smiley, to investigate. Smiley and Guillam must investigate without the knowledge of Circus leadership, which is headed by Percy Alleline and his deputies Bill Haydon, Roy Bland, and Toby Esterhase, as any of these could be the mole.
Smiley suspects that the mole was responsible for the failure of Operation Testify, a mission in Communist Czechoslovakia whose ostensible purpose was the kidnapping of a Czech Army general. Operation Testify ended with Circus agent Jim Prideaux shot in the back, and caused the disgrace and dismissal of Control, former head of Circus, who has since died. Prideaux, who survived and was repatriated, reveals to Smiley that Control suspected the mole's existence and the true aim of Operation Testify was to discover the mole's identity.
Percy Alleline, who was Control's rival, has risen to prominence as a result of seemingly top-grade Soviet intelligence from a source code-named "Merlin". Smiley's investigation leads him to believe that the Merlin source is false, and is being used by Moscow Centre to influence the leadership of Circus. Cleverly, Moscow Centre has induced Circus leadership to believe that Merlin maintains his cover in Moscow by feeding them British intelligence from a false Circus mole. As a result, Circus leadership cover up any rumours of a mole, thus protecting the actual mole.
Smiley contrives a trap for the real mole using a communication from Tarr, and the mole is revealed to be Bill Haydon, a respected colleague and former friend who once had an affair with Smiley's estranged wife. Haydon acknowledges he was recruited by Karla, the Moscow Centre spymaster. Haydon is to be exchanged with the Soviets, but is killed before he leaves England. Though his killer is not explicitly revealed, it is strongly implied to be Prideaux, whose motivation was revenge.
Smiley is appointed temporary head of Circus to deal with the fallout.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is John le Carré’s novelisation of his experiences of the revelations in the 1950s and the 1960s which exposed the Cambridge Five traitors, among them Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross and Kim Philby, as KGB moles employed by the SIS.
George Smiley, master spy of the Circus, is modelled upon Maurice Oldfield, an SIS chief although le Carré has denied this link.
Karla is modelled either after Markus Wolf, chief of the HVA (Main Reconnaissance Administration) of the MfS (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit) of East Germany (although le Carré denied this in an interview with Charlie Rose in 1996); or after KGB Gen. Rem Krassilnikov, whose obituary in the New York Times newspaper reported that the CIA considered him as such. Moreover, skewing in favour of the latter, Smiley reports that Karla was trained by "Berg", Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov, a KGB intelligence officer who defected to the West in 1938.
Bill Haydon derives from Kim Philby, who, in the late 1950s, transcended SIS suspicions that he too might be a traitor, given his connection with the defector Guy Burgess, and continued as an SIS intelligence officer until defecting to the USSR in 1963.
Connie Sachs, the Circus's principal researcher, is modelled upon Millicent Bagot.
In June 2008, The Guardian newspaper reported that Peter Morgan and John le Carré were writing a cinematic adaptation of the novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, for Working Title Films and to be directed by Tomas Alfredson.Daily Mail film columnist Baz Bamigboye reported in June 2010 that Gary Oldman is going to play George Smiley.Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch, as Peter Guillam, have also signed up for the film. Mark Strong will appear as Jim Prideaux.