Agent Running in the Field

The last novel published before John le Carré’s death is set in a world where the bad guys are Trump, Putin and Boris rather than Stalin and Ho Chi Minh, and where Brexit has replaced the Cold War as the chief threat to Britain’s security, but otherwise it draws very much on the world of professionalism, betrayal and office politics that we first met in books like The spy who came in from the cold and Tinker, tailor. Nat, the time-served agent-runner and amateur badminton player who narrates this story, returning to the UK after a spell abroad in the full expectation that the Service will want to put him out to grass, would have a lot in common with Alec Lomas and George Smiley. They even talk with the same intonation.

Not le show more Carré’s strongest book — there is the weak initial premise of the two protagonists meeting accidentally at the badminton club and each not noticing that the other’s account of what he does for a living is full of the kind of deliberate vagueness only professional spies ever use (…in this kind of novel). The slightly rushed and uncharacteristically optimistic ending is a disappointment too. But it’s full of good stuff along the way, both in the usual sharp observations of how office politics works in government offices and in the acerbic comments on the current world situation that he puts in the mouths of his characters (a Ukrainian ex-KGB gangster characterises Trump as “Putin’s shit-house cleaner”, for example). show less

A gentle, convincing, compelling story of modern spying, filled with real people, surprising twists and scathing assessments of our Brexit Blunder and Trump as Putin's poodle.

I recommend listening to John Le Carré narrating "Agent Running In The Field".His measured delivery which captures every nuance, his perfectly rendered accents for characters domestic and foreign and his patient, bear-with-me-I-promise-it-will-be-worth-it tone add authenticity to the read. The book is written as a first-person account of events addressed directly to the reader. Le Carré's narration makes it easy to maintain the illusion that you and he are settled in comfortable armchairs, sharing a glass of something in a private room in his club.

"Agent Running show more In The Field" is the story of a spy in his mid-forties, returned to England towards the end of his operational career after years spent in various parts of Europe, recruiting agents, mostly to combat Russia's hybrid war on Western Europe who is now trying to decide what to do next. He ends us with a domestic posting to an obscure branch of the service where circumstances and his own inability to leave his operational instincts behind, result in him being in the centre of a major counter-espionage operation against the Russians in London.

This plot provides the framework for exploring the impact on long-serving offficers of being led by a government committed to delivering Putin's Brexit and a Foreign Secretary (now Prime Minister) that the security services themselves have identified as a security risk because of his close ties to Russia, at a time when Trump is declaring Europe to be his enemy, undermining NATO and apparently doing whatever Putin asks him to do.

There is an example, early in the book, where the spy tries to explain for the first time to his now-university-age daughter that he is not a low-flying diplomat but a spy tasked with persuading foreign nationals to betray their country. When he explains that some people do this because of their ideals, his daughter, rather sceptically, asks him to specify. What follows gives a great insight into how those who serve our present government may feel about them. The spy says:
"Let's say, just for instance, somebody has an idealistic vision of England as the Mother of all democracies or they love our dear Queen with an unexplained fervour. It may not be an England that exists for us any more, if it ever did, but they think it does, so go with it."
"Do you think it does?"
"With reservations."
"Serious reservations?"
"Well, who wouldn't have for Christ's sake?", I reply, stung by the suggestion that I've somehow failed to notice that the country's in free-fall. A minority Cabinet of tenth raters. A pig-ignorant Foreign Secretary who I'm supposed to be serving. Labour no better. The sheer bloody lunacy of Brexit. I break off. I have feelings too. Let my indignant silence say the rest.
"Then you do have serious reservations," she says in her purest tone, "even very serious. Yes?"
Too late I realise that I've left myself wide open. But perhaps that was what I wanted to achieve all along, to give her the victory, acknowledge that I'm not up to the standard of her brilliant professors and then we can go back to being who we were.
"So, if I've got this right," she resumes as we embark on our next ascent, "for the sake of a country that you have serious reservations about, even very serious, you persuade other nationals to betray their own countries." And as an after thought: "The reason being that they don't share the same reservations that you have about your country, wereas they do have reservations about their own country. Yes?"
Yet this book is more than a polemic against the success of Putin's campaign to destroy the West. It gives a convincing portrait of a man re-assessing his life: his marriage, his relationship with his daughter, the impact of his operational life on his own character and his responsibility to act when he can.

As this is Le Carré, it also provides a very convincing view of modern spycraft which is all the more powerful for its matter-of-factness. Even when the spy places himself in harm's way, Le Carré manages to convey the reality of the threat without resorting to melodrama.

The plot is entertaining. You know that the various strands must be connected but how and when they connected continued to surprise and please me, right up to the surprisingly action-packed ending. show less

At 88, David Cornwell, much better known as John Le Carré, is still writing exceptional novels about spies, what they do and how, and the impact their work has on their inner wellbeing. His newest creation is less complex than many of his most notable works, but it reflects his view of contemporary politics, particularly Brexit and the shambles of US governance.

The story focuses primarily on Nat, a British agent returning home after an overseas stint "running agents", expecting his career to end after 47 years. Rather than being sacked, he's assigned to direct a deadend bureau in London, of course with a detested, ambitious, and untrustworthy colleague overseeing his handling of the assignment. A primary responsibility is debriefing a show more Russian, ostensibly a defector, but one the Service suspects is intended to be a double agent, who will win the trust of the British and then pass Russian disinformation to them.

Nat quickly finds himself juggling a reunion with his lawyer wife Prue after a multi-year overseas assignment, reconnecting—perhaps more accurately connecting—with a rebellious daughter, readopting a proper British lifestyle, and extending his career as an amoral representative of British intelligence, playing mind games with his superiors in the Service as well as possibly (likely) duplicitous colleagues. The Service has a cast of specialists, and naturally each departmental supervisor is wary of the other supervisors. This is intelligence, after all. Agents manipulating other agents in a realm of intrigue, deception, and, if necessary to achieve a desired end, betrayal.

Then Nat learns of secret British documents being offered to a foreign intelligence service. It triggers perhaps the trickiest "agent running" operation of his career. He suspects many of his long-time colleagues are counting on his failure. Ha!

Recommended. show less

Even when Le Carre is at less than his best, he still laps the rest of the field! My main grouse with this is that Le Carre isn't breaking any new ground, just doing what he does so well: plunging his likeable/humble/shrewd protagonist into a situation that turns increasingly impossible and compromising, then somehow extracting him at the end, bloodied/bruised but somehow unvanquished.

In this case the protagonist is Nat, avid badminton player and experienced agent runner back from the cold and facing retirement - but on his way out, would he mind terribly temporarily supervising a home for washed-up assets? Except, of course, as soon as he arrives, at least one of his ponies transforms into a racehorse and before you know it we're show more surveilling dead drops, reinvestigating long-forgotten intelligence disasters through a new lens, and taking meetings with foreign agents. Game on!

Especially intriguing given current events is the novel's setting in time and space. The plot unfolds against a background of post-Brexit despair and trepidation about the potential consequences of Trump's presidency on the stability of the European Union. What's a patriot to do when his country is being run by "a pig-ignorant foreign secretary" and his nation's closest ally is in the hands of a Putin fanboy? A question that turns out to be as relevant today as it was back in 2018 when Le Carre was setting paper to pen.

Besides his gorgeous use of language, idiom, and metaphor, what I love about Le Carre novels are the all-too-human protagonists, simultaneously idealistic but jaded, resilient but vulnerable, honorable but flawed. Nat's a patriot but, after a career in intelligence, he's also struggling to reconcile the many hypocrisies of his chosen career field. He's brilliant at his professional responsibilities, but painfully insecure when it comes to the care and handling of the wife (liberal lawyer) and daughter (prickly hipster) he adores. His heart is pure, but not exempt from prejudices and desires (for sport, for companionship, for normalcy) that end up leading him into a situation fraught with moral and ethical implications.

The book ends somewhat abruptly: I get the sense that, once Le Carre wrote the parts that mattered to him, he simply couldn't be bothered whisking away the dishes or sweeping up crumbs. Moreover, the ending hits as a bit unrealistic (especially for Le Carre, the ultimate worldly realist), positing that an otherwise shrewd, careful operative would choose morality over duty. But such are the prerogatives of an author at the end of his career, aware that he has nothing left to prove. show less

Nat is an agent runner in “the Office”—one of Britain’s secret intelligence services. He’s approaching the dangerous middle age when he’s too young to be pushed upstairs (even if he wanted to be) but too old to be considered at the top of his game. However, an opportunity for an operation lands in his lap, and with it the chance to prove one last time that he has what it takes.

I picked up this book and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished. The adjectives that spring to mind are “light, crisp, clear”—while some may complain of other le Carré works being labyrinthine, filled with riddles wrapped in intrigues wrapped in enigmas, this is as stripped-down as a spy story can get. It’s up to the minute, being set in show more the UK in 2018, with Brexit and Anglo-American relations high on the national radar, and the remnants of the Cold War play to le Carré’s strengths.

I did have one revelation in the back of my mind from fairly early on, but seeing how it played out, and what other elements of the story came together in the conclusion was well worth the price of admission. show less

Not unlike le Carré’s other novels, “Agent Running in the Field” captures the spirit of the times. In this instance, he masterfully evokes the UK in the time of Brexit. Le Carré’s use of first-person narration permits candor in its rawest form. “(T)he British public is being marched over a cliff by a bunch of rich, elitist carpetbaggers posing as men of the people.” Trump is “Putin’s shithouse cleaner.” Despite his scathing critiques if the current state of affairs, le Carré nonetheless provides once again a cracking good story of betrayal, political machinations, and human imperfection.

Conservative establishment types have taken over. Money is the main motivator. Britain’s influence in the world is declining. show more Malaise seems to be prevalent. In the face of all this, le Carré takes us to the all-too-British Athleticus club in Battersea for some badminton; and to the Haven, a minor player on the UK spy scene, for much of his story.

Our narrator is Nat, a 46-year-old washed-up British spy, whose final assignment is to fix or close down Haven. He is bitter and angry, so his loyalties seem opaque. Yet, his greatest solace clearly comes from twos directions. First, Prue, his younger wife, is a self-assured high-powered human-interest attorney, who serves as a reliable, but laissez-faire sounding board. Second, Ed Shannon is an inelegant but accomplished 25-year-old badminton partner, who is even more angry and disgusted than Nat. Ed’s focus is the rising neo-fascist tendencies in the world, Trump, and Brexit which he describes as an “unmitigated clusterfuck.” While Prue’s loyalties seem fairly transparent, Ed’s are more obscure.

To this mix, le Carré adds Florence. She is a brilliant and attractive agent working at the Haven. In fact, she is probably the only good thing about the place. She uncovers a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch who seems to be working with Moscow and sets out to surveil him. Of course, le Carré fills out his cast of characters with the usual British agents, whom Nat dismisses as his "chers collègues" and he throws in a few double and triple agents for good measure.

The plot moves along at a brisk pace with plenty of spy stuff, divided loyalties, and resurrected ancient history. Le Carré builds tension, not with action scenes, but with plenty of excellent dialogue, including the internal type from Nat. The climax is both surprising and satisfying. show less

John le Carré’s latest novel, Agent Running in the Field, realistically and informatively describes spy tradecraft like only an experienced insider can. [During the 1950s and 1960s, le Carré worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).] Nat, the narrator and protagonist, is a middle age British spy who believes he is about to be declared “redundant” by his employer, the British Secret Service. Although he is probably in his late 40s, he is very fit; in fact, he is the champion badminton player at the tony Athleticus Club. But he is rather old for an active agent, and more importantly, doesn’t take well to authority. The Secret Service does not fire Nat, but it gives him a rather show more dead-end assignment reporting to a man he detests.

One day, a young American named Ed comes into Nat’s fancy club and challenges him to a badminton match. The two are pretty evenly matched, and after some time, Nat and Ed become fast friends, usually sharing a pint or two after each match. Ed is very vocal about his politics: he thinks Brexit is a disaster for Britain and he hates Trump. One can almost, but not quite, hear the author opining through Ed. Nat is very reserved about expressing his opinions and never discloses his profession - after all, he is a spy. Ed’s affection for Nat becomes so intense that he eventually asks Nat to be the best man at his wedding.

Things get very complicated when Nat’s unit discovers a Russian agent is actively attempting to recruit a British resident to disclose the details of a very secret [so secret that Nat is not even informed of its nature] project involving the U.K. and the U.S.A. Complications proliferate when Nat discovers that the Russians’ target is none other than his friend Ed. The British spy service then tasks Nat with the job of turning Ed into a double agent.

This in fact has been Nat’s specialty over his career: “agent running” - that is, cultivating a source to work for the British Secret Service. It is a long game, requiring patience and a willingness to privilege strategy and tactics over relationships, much like badminton.

Le Carré describes Ed as very moral, but quite naive, and Nat sees him in just that light. Nat knows that Ed’s motives are pure even if his actions may run counter to British interests. Nat is conflicted between his professional duty and personal friendship. Ed is facing substantial prison time if he does not agree to work with the British. His only way of avoiding the Hobson’s choice of prison or double agency is to leave the country, a difficult if not impossible task now that the British have an eye on him.

At this point, Le Carré’s (and Nat’s) knowledge of spy tradecraft takes over and provides a satisfying if not thoroughly happy denouement.

The story is somewhat more complicated than I can do justice to in a short review. Le Carré’s prose is limpid; he is able to carry the action along largely by dialog.

Evaluation: Le Carré may be 88, but he hasn’t lost his touch. I was thoroughly engrossed in this story.

(JAB) show less