The Looking Glass War

by John le Carre

During the early 1960s, the formerly renowned British military intelligence organisation known colloquially as "The Department" is floundering. Surviving on long past memories of its aerial reconnaissance missions during the Second World War the organisation has been reduced to a skeleton crew consisting of Leclerc, a nostalgic former air commander who now languishes in bureaucracy as Director, John Avery, his 32 year old aide who took the job after failing as a publisher, Taylor, a middle-aged man who views the job as his last chance at glory, and Haldane, a pompous intellectual in ailing health whose research on the Soviet Union and East Germany has been the sole reason for departmental funding from Whitehall. Languishing in the mundanity of bureaucratic battles and inconsequential desk work, the organisation desperately desire the opportunity to regain their standing in the intelligence community, as well as to gain a one up against their now superior rivals in the Circus, headed by chief "Control" and his [[second-in-command]], George Smiley. The Department gets its wish when a defector passes information to the organisation regarding a build-up Soviet missiles in the fictional town of Kalkstadt, near hit-and-run incident, which Leclerc interprets as an attempt to recapture the film by the Stasi. Further setbacks occur when Avery is dispatched to recover Taylor and his effects from the Finns when his documentation doesn't match Finnish information.

Despite the setbacks and their lack of any recent field action, Leclerc persuades the Minister to allow them to send an agent over the Inner German Border into East Germany. Fearing the Circus will take the operation over, the Department is deliberately vague, and presents the entire operation as a training exercise in order to obtain old radio transmitters from Smiley. The Department then tracks down one of its old agents, a middle-aged naturalised Pole called Fred Leiser. Now a mechanic, Leiser has been out of the game a long time and knows little about the current circumstances of the intelligence community. Hoping to stave off any apprehension from Leiser, Haldane and Avery lie to him and tell him the Department is still the dominant espionage unit and is operating at the size it was at its wartime peak. Avery and Leiser become fast friends, with each feeling that the other is mutually beneficial. Avery believes that if Leiser's operation is successful, he will finally have accomplished something in his life that he can be proud of, whilst Leiser, currently in the midst of a mid-life crisis feels the operation is his chance to feel useful again and relive his wartime glory.

In order to train Leiser, the Department leases house in north Oxford. Leiser is restricted to a precise daily training routine, and is allowed specific recreational activities on the condition he is accompanied one of the handlers on the training crew. Over the course of their time in Oxford, it becomes increasingly apparent that Leiser has lost his touch. He is repeatedly beaten with ease during his combat training sparring, whilst Avery helps him to cheat during their Morse code training. Towards the end of his training period, however, Leiser begins to improve, and is able to pass all of his field readiness evaluations, including sending Morse code messages whilst changing frequencies every two minutes to avoid detection which he had previously struggled with.

Posing as academics, the Department sets up in a house close to the border, furnished by the NAAFI. Leiser is taken on a driving tour where he is shown his entry point into East Germany, and then returned to the house to eat a final meal before crossing. It is at this point Leiser is informed he cannot take a firearm across the border with him, causing him to panic. During the inner-German border crossing, Leiser again panics and kills a young East German guard, which is published in East German media. Now panicking, Leiser steals a motorcycle and meets a young German girl in a nearby town. In exchange for information and use of her flat to transmit, Leiser agrees to give her sexual companionship.

During his first transmission, Leiser again falls under the strain of the operation and forgets to change frequency regularly whilst transmitting. As a result he spends 6 minutes on the same frequency slowly transmitting, instead of the maximum of two-and-a-half. This alerts the East Germans, who triangulate his position and converge on his hotel. News reaches Smiley and Control of the situation, and the conversation strongly implies Leiser's failure may have been engineered by Control.

The police discover Leiser in the girl's flat. Now fully aware of the Department's plan, Smiley is sent by the Ministry to bring the Department's men stationed in West Germany back to London and terminate the operation.

The following ending does not appear in the original novel: Smiley explains that Leiser's total ineptitude, combined with his old equipment, will make it easier for him to say he is not a spy. Leclerc and Haldane are tempted further by an extension of the Department's research section at the Circus with more funding, whilst only Avery weeps bitterly about the mission's failure. Having successfully escaped the hotel, Leiser takes refuge with the girl he met. The police encircle him and storm the apartment, the last time that Leiser is seen.

The missile site, meanwhile, almost certainly never existed. The defector has a history of trying to sell fabricated "information" to Western services, the photographs he provided as evidence are dubious, and Leiser was unable to corroborate any part of his story.