Agent Running in the Field

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of cursing.

“The natural-born agent-runner is his own man. He may take his orders from London, but in the field he is the master of his fate and the fate of his agents. And when his active years are done, there aren’t going to be many berths waiting for a journeyman spy in his late forties who detests deskwork and has the curriculum vitae of a middle-ranking diplomat who never made the grade.”

Le Carré employs ironic characterization here to explore ideas of institutional trust versus individual autonomy. The description of an agent runner as “his own man” while simultaneously taking “orders from London” highlights the inherent contradiction in intelligence work, where personal judgment must operate within institutional constraints.

“It’s my guess that there’s a Dom somewhere in everyone’s life: the man—it always seems to be a man—who takes you aside, appoints you his only friend in the world, regales you with details of his private life you’d rather not hear, begs your advice, you give him none, he swears to follow it and next morning cuts you dead.”

This passage characterizes Dom through metaphor to establish him as an archetype of institutional betrayal. The universal claim elevates Dom from an individual character to a symbol of institutional dysfunction, while the observation that “it always seems to be a man” connects his personal betrayal to broader patterns of gendered power dynamics.

“I’d like to have told her why I’d failed to phone her on her 14th birthday, because I knew it still rankled. I’d like to have explained that I had been sitting on the Estonian side of the Russian border in thick snow praying to God my agent would make it through the lines under a pile of sawn timber. I’d like to have given her some idea of how it had felt for her mother and me to live together under non-stop surveillance as members of the Office’s Station in Moscow where it could take ten days to clear or fill a dead letter box, knowing that, if you put a foot out of place, your agent is likely to die in hell.”

Through the repetition of “I’d like to have,” this passage employs anaphora to emphasize the cumulative weight of the falsehoods in Nat’s relationship with his daughter. The specific details of espionage work contrast sharply with the child’s birthday milestones, illustrating how institutional obligations corrupt personal relationships.