John le Carre · 1977 · thriller

John le Carre's 1977 novel, the middle book of the Karla trilogy. With the Circus wrecked by the mole, Smiley goes looking for what Moscow was protecting, and finds a money channel running into South East Asia. Jerry Westerby, journalist and occasional agent, is sent east to follow it - through Hong Kong and into a war that is visibly ending.

1. 1
   London

   Smiley inherits a service that has been read by Moscow for years and is trusted by nobody - and rebuilds it by working backwards through the files, hunting not for a traitor now but for whatever the traitor was covering up.

2. 2
   Hong Kong

   The thread is a Soviet payment running through Hong Kong to a Chinese businessman, and Jerry Westerby is sent out under journalistic cover - into a colony of clubs, racecourses and money where everyone is somebody's agent.

3. 3
   Vientiane

   The trail runs into Laos among airline men, opium and correspondents, in a war the Americans are already packing up from - and Westerby, who is meant simply to report, begins making his own decisions about people.

4. 4
   Bangkok

   The money runs Vientiane to Bangkok and on to the Hong Kong account. Westerby comes out of Laos the hard way - over the Mekong by boat at Nong Khai, then a night drive south through country nobody sensible drives at night.

5. 5
   Phnom Penh

   Phnom Penh under siege, the airport shelled and the city about to fall, is where le Carre's own reporting shows hardest - and where the ending is decided by Westerby caring about someone, which is unforgivable.

6. 6
   Saigon

   Saigon with the Americans packing up, files burning in the embassy yard and the war a few weeks from ending - the bleakest of the stops, and the one where the decay le Carre keeps describing stops being a metaphor.

7. 7
   Hong Kong

   Back to the colony for the ending, where the Circus has an operation waiting on the water and Westerby is expected to stand clear of it - and does not, which is what the whole book has been moving toward.