John le Carre · 1963 · thriller

John le Carre's 1963 novel, the book that made the spy story serious. Alec Leamas watches his last agent shot at the Berlin checkpoint and is brought home to be finished. Instead Control offers him one more job: to fall apart publicly, be recruited by the other side, and feed them evidence against the East German officer who destroyed his network.

1. 1
   West Berlin

   At the checkpoint, Leamas watches his last surviving agent shot off his bicycle in the wire - the end of the Berlin network, and of a career spent running men who are now all dead.

2. 2
   London

   Recalled to Cambridge Circus, Leamas is given one last job and begins performing his own ruin: a squalid job, mounting debts, drink, a girl in a library, and finally a shopkeeper knocked down in the street and a prison sentence.

3. 3
   The Hague

   The bait is taken. Leamas is run out to Holland and debriefed on a beach by a Soviet-bloc interrogator called Peters, selling his service piece by piece - and finds the London papers have already reported him a defector.

4. 4
   Leipzig

   Behind the curtain he gives Fiedler the evidence to hang Mundt, and it works - until Liz, brought over on a Party exchange to Leipzig, is produced at the tribunal and says three true things that destroy the entire case.

5. 5
   The Berlin Wall

   Leamas understands at last which side of the operation he was really on, and what has been done to Fiedler and to him. The way out is a ladder against the Wall in the dark - and he does not climb down the western side without her.