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The Secret Pilgrim is a 1990 episodic novel by British writer John le Carré, set within the frame narrative of an informal dinner talk given at the spy-training school in Sarratt…
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Investigate this subjectThe Secret Pilgrim is a 1990 episodic novel by British writer John le Carré, set within the frame narrative of an informal dinner talk given at the spy-training school in Sarratt by George Smiley. As Smiley talks, the first-person narrator, whom readers know only as "Ned", recalls his own experiences in a long career in the service.
The Secret Pilgrim is a 1990 episodic novel by British writer John le Carré, set within the frame narrative of an informal dinner talk given at the spy-training school in Sarratt by George Smiley. As Smiley talks, the first-person narrator, whom readers know only as "Ned", recalls his own experiences in a long career in the service. The various episodes are triggered by comments from Smiley, which send Ned into tangential memories. The individual stories together create a portrait of Ned himself, moving from the start of his career at the beginning of the novel to his retirement in the final chapter.
Smiley reflects on the end of the Cold War, and makes a rueful joke that, in one way, the world has changed, but in another, it has always been the same and the secret services are gradually waking up from their own deluded perceptions of it, and themselves.
After a couple of years of training at the Sarratt Nursery, in the glens of Argyll and battle camps of Wiltshire, Ned is looking forward to his first overseas posting and is disappointed to be kept in London, as part of a team of watchers keeping an eye on a Middle Eastern royal family. In a famous Knightsbridge store, Ned becomes alarmed when he sees a suspicious Arab closely following the prince's wife at a distance. Ned prepares to incapacitate him with a martial arts blow, but his supervisor Monty grabs Ned and holds him back. Ned learns that the wife is a compulsive shoplifter and the man is not a fanatic assassin, but instead assigned by the prince to pay compensation and hush money to the stores she steals from. Monty comments, "That's the trouble in our job, Ned. Life's looking one way, we're looking the other."
Smiley informs Ned's students that no one on Earth is more adept at hiding his true feelings than the privately educated Englishman – "which is why some of our best officers turn out to be our worst, and our worst, our best, and why the most difficult agent you'll ever have to run is yourself."
Ned returns to his flat in humiliation after the episode in Knightsbridge, and finds Smiley and the Circus's head of Personnel going through his belongings. Smiley informs him that Ned's best friend from Sarratt, Benjamin Arno Cavendish, disappeared just after starting his assignment in Berlin, and the East German network he was supposed to be running has collapsed. In Ben's flat, the Circus found a love letter written to Ned. Ned is shocked, as he had no idea that Ben was homosexual, much less so passionately attached to him.
After Smiley leaves, Ned tracks down Ben, hiding with his German cousin, Stephanie, in the Western Isles of Scotland. Ben confesses that, beneath his confident, derring-do exterior, he is always terrified of failure, especially when he feels he has to live up to the example of his father, who had an illustrious career during the Second World War as a mathematician, devising the Double-Cross System. While in Berlin, Ben was constantly harassed and patronised by his immediate superior, Haggerty, who despised Ben for replacing him due to his clean reputation. Before his first meeting with the lead agent in East Germany, Ben wrote a crib sheet with the agents' names and contact procedures, and took it with him when he crossed into East Berlin. As it turned out, he didn't need it, and his meeting with the agent went perfectly, but after he crossed back into West Germany, he realised he'd lost the crib sheet somewhere. Unable to warn the network before it collapsed, Ben secretly fled Germany and sought shelter with Stephanie. It takes a moment for Ned to absorb the "appalling banality" of Ben's story; "that you could lose a network in the same way you might lose a set of keys or a pocket handkerchief."
Smiley has had Ned followed, and Circus agents arrive to take Ben in for questioning, shortly after he finishes his story. Ned later hears that he has been dismissed from the Circus.
While one of Ned's students is quizzing Smiley about the 'secret' of conducting an interrogation, Smiley frowns and says that recognising the truth is far more difficult than spotting a lie. After all, spies are naturally suspicious people, and nothing is more suspicious to them than a completely innocent man who has nothing to hide.
After his unwitting exposure of his friend Benjamin Cavendish, Ned is posted to Hamburg in Western Germany to run a network of Baltic sailors, led by a passionate Latvian smuggler named Brandt. Though surprisingly efficient, Ned is wary of his position due to his predecessor's hushed up departure after embezzling massive amounts of Circus funds and settling to Southern Spain with his boyfriend.
In the course of their operations, Brandt reveals his new girlfriend, Bella, who is said to be the daughter of a friend of Brandt's. Head of London Station, Bill Haydon orders Ned to inquire about Bella's credentials due to the fact that her sudden appearance in the network's inner circle appears suspicious. Ned eventually seduces (or rather, is seduced by) Bella and they begin an affair during Brandt's absence.
Later, Brandt's men walk into a trap at the coast of Narva in Estonia and the crew are taken by the Soviets. Brandt is taken to Sarratt for interrogation while Ned is summoned to London for debriefing. He is interviewed by Haydon, who was accompanied by his lieutenants, Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase along with George Smiley. Ned is interrogated about Bella's background and her story about being the daughter of a German soldier who had raped her mother when her "father" was fighting in the Second World War.
Though Ned answers reasonably, Haydon counters him with a photograph, depicting Bella as a language student in a Moscow Centre linguistics school that trains prospective undercover agents. Haydon's coterie, barring Smiley, take the photograph as genuine, as its source is London Station's Witchcraft Project. Ultimately, it's decided that Bella must have been the mole and Ned is ordered to bring her in to be in
Source: The Secret Pilgrim (CC BY-SA)
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