Aditya Sinha: A legacy of John le Carre

John le Carre is a favourite though his best novels date back to the height of the Cold War The Smileys People trilogy beginning with Soldier Sailor Tinker Spy 1974 is terrific but the one I have reread countless times is unglamorous yet masterful The Spy Who Came in From the Cold 1963 about a double deception operation even though Soviet communism and europes Iron Curtain are now relics these espionage novels stand the test of time Like Agatha Christies mysteries they double as nostalgia for an england that has recently slipped away Since the Cold War provided Le Carres novels with an identifiable and formidable foe the 1989 liberation of eastern europe and the 1991 dissolution of the USSR snatched away the raison detre of Smileys UniverseJohn Le Carre PicGetty ImagesNo wonder the novels churned out after A Perfect Spy 1986 lack a compelling narrative Le Carre conjured topical narratives involving Chechen separatists and Latin American upheavals and some were made into movies but these are nothing more than current events potboilers nowhere as engrossing as the chessgame Cold War novels It may also be Britains declining profile in global affairs postWorld War II America began managing international affairs in 1945 and Britains decline was hastened by the betrayal by its spies notably Kim Philby uncovered in the 1960s Perhaps thats why British fiction and cinema think Dunkirk repeatedly return to WWII Britains final moment of gloryLe Carres espionage novels so engrossed me that early in my career I constantly sought out spies In the 1980s I befriended a man who ran the Intelligence Bureaus Punjab operations Ajit Doval is now Indias National Security Advisor In the 1990s I befriended the IBs Kashmir pointsman who later became Indias spy chief when he took over the Research and Analysis Wing AS Dulat and I cowrote Kashmir The Vajpayee Years 2015 I have other espiocrat friends too Besides Dovals operation to retrieve Romanian diplomat Liviu Radu from Khalistani terrorists in 1991 and besides Dulats story or two that are too hot for print India doesnt seem to produce espionage stories that match le CarreSo when the publicity blitz for Le Carres latest A Legacy of Spies promised a return to Smileys Universe I was ecstatic It stars Peter Guillam George Smileys trusted assistant who would today be 84 years old around the same as le Carre And tantalisingly A Legacy of Spies was said to be a sequel of sorts to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold In anticipation I wondered if Vladimir Putin had provided a proper villain for Le Carre since he has resurrected the more sinister aspects of his impoverished Russian State which recently wreaked havoc through surveillance and electronic deception in US elections As soon as the novel was electronically available I downloaded it even though I by far prefer physical booksexcept for an interesting and major twist twothirds of the way through A Legacy of Spies is rather disappointing Craftwise it has an interesting structure in that it is both a sequel and a prequel to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold Britains modern Secret Intelligence Service has dug out the case which took the lives of field agent Alec Leamas and english citizen Liz Gold in divided Berlin because it is being sued by their respective children Yet key files from the era are missing secreted away by Smiley from the suspected highlevel mole in the service and so the elderly Guillam is summoned by lawyers to find and read the files He complies The novel gives a fascinating insight into the bureaucratic coldness that even former warrior spooks face This retelling of the story that led to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Guillams expanded role within it Le Carre makes clever use of a moment in the earlier novel where Smiley is accompanied by a younger associate so as to sneak Guillam into the later narrative is what gives the story its meat and like the earlier novel uses a tragic heroine as the narratives emotional coreYet the payoff at the end is a damp squib even as readers expectations about George Smiley are fulfilled Perhaps this is the problem with espionage It is simply an unglamorous bureaucracy of eggheads sitting around and plotting sophisticated mind games and Le Carre delivered the only story worth telling Or perhaps it is a problem with writing Authors usually have one story to tell the great ones two or three The rest as evidenced by Salman Rushdies latest borebomb just dont know when to give up and in the process tarnish the gold they had earlier mined By my reckoning youd be far far better off reading the Karachi antiterrorism copturnedwriter Omar Shahid HamidAditya Sinhas crime novel The CeO Who Lost His Head is available now He tweets autumnshade Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom