Book Review by Robert Wiersema AGENT RUNNING IN THE FIELD by John le Carré John le Carré has been a literary icon for more than half a century. The publication of his third novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold in 1963, was an international event and vaulted le Carré to wide recognition. It remains one of his best-known books, and its success allowed le Carré to retire fromMI6 and pursue writing full time. Books likeTinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honorable Schoolboy and Smiley’s Peoplewere dark espionage novels, following the role of British Intelligence during the Cold War. The fading of that conflict forced le Carré to shift his focus, to include backdrops such as the Arab-Israeli conflict (inThe Little Drummer Girl), Latin American drug and gun smuggling (inThe Night Manager) and international conspiracies around corruption and pharmaceutical money (inThe Constant Gardener). At every step, he has used his fiction – no matter the setting – to shine a light on contemporary international issues, with an eye to fundamental human concerns, including the cost of loyalty and the role of family against international affairs. It’s strange, though: le Carré is so inarguably great that readers sometimes lose track of just how damn good he is, book by book. His new novel, Agent Running in the Field, is a perfect example. It’s a low-key but powerful thriller, a deep inquiry into values and loyalty threaded through a story of secrets and betrayal. If it were written by an unknown author, there would likely be fireworks. Because it’s le Carré, we just expect it to be good. And it is. Nat, the novel’s protagonist, has spent a quarter of a century running agents for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, playing on the foibles of high-ranking foreign targets and drawing them in to work as double agents for Britain. But that, it seems, is all coming to an end. At 47, Nat thinks as the novel begins that he is being put out to pasture. And he’s pretty much okay with that. He’s getting a lot of joy from playing badminton at a private club, especially against Ed, a newcomer half his age whose challenge to Nat’s on-court supremacy has shifted to a weekly game. Their trips to the bar after each game, where the loser buys a round and Ed expounds on his ideological frustration with Brexit, Trump and the general state of the world, are the closest Nat comes to a social life. Nat, however, isn’t forcibly retired. Instead, he’s shifted to Haven, a virtually defunct section of London General where he supervises a motley crew of spies, including a young operative – Florence – who is focused on a London-based Ukrainian oligarch with connections to both Moscow and pro-Putin forces in the Ukraine. Suddenly, the shallow backwater to which Nat has been relegated becomes one of the centres for intelligence and action, and he is back in the field one last time. Agent Running in the Field is, like all of le Carré’s works, a novel of powerful subtlety; a book in which a glance carries as much narrative weight as a fistfight does in a James Bond movie. Intelligence has never been a glamorous world in le Carré’s eyes, and things have only become more complicated since the Cold War ended, as ideological beliefs shift around the pursuit of money, a power which knows no borders. As always, the key human factors are at play: what is the nature of loyalty? To what – or whom – do we owe it? And what would any of us do when our loyalties are put to the test? It’s powerful stuff, and a strong reminder that le Carré’s greatness isn’t all behind him and that we should never, ever, take him for granted. CSANews | WINTER 2019 | 55
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