The secret companion

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The secret companion (English original title: The Secret Pilgrim ) is a spy novel by the British writer John le Carré from 1990. The focus of the plot is the British agent Ned, who remembers the various stages of his career after the fall of the Berlin Wall . For the eighth time in le Carré's work, the now retired George Smiley has an appearance.

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Ned, agent of the British foreign intelligence service and former head of the Russia House , is at the end of his career a trainer for young agents in Sarratt . He has invited George Smiley, the legendary former head of the Circus , who now heads the Committee for Fishing Rights, a joint working group of the British and Soviet secret services, to the introductory course . Smiley uses his speech to point out the new challenges for the secret service after the end of the Cold War . Meanwhile, Ned looks back at the stages of his own career.

Ned, too, was trained in Sarratt at the side of his best friend Ben. While the brilliant Ben was transferred to Berlin soon after completing his training to take over an agent's ring in the GDR , Ned had to prove himself in small missions such as monitoring the kleptomaniac wife of an Arab potentate on a shopping tour in London . Through a rookie mistake, Ben lost his entire agent ring, settled down and hid with his cousin Stephanie, where Ned inadvertently led Smiley and the Circus. The distant Stephanie, with whom he only exchanged a few words, remained an unattainable dream for him for a lifetime.

Ned got into a relationship with Mabel, a colleague from the Circus, but longing to break out drove him into the arms of other women, such as that of the beautiful Latvian Bella, the friend of Sea Captain Brandt, one of the numerous outside spies of the Circus who fell victim to the British mole Bill Haydon were. It was Haydon who unjustly accused Bella of treason and thus put an end to the love affair. Ned remembers the comedic wiretapping in the Vatican on the day that Haydon's double play was exposed. He remembers the incompetent Hungarian agent Professor Teodor, who could be deported to the Americans after a fake murder attempt, where he successfully carried out anti-Soviet propaganda.

Ned remembers the notorious Polish Colonel Jerzy, who one day caught him and tortured him almost to death, only to then, apparently out of sheer weariness, offer to work as a double spy for the British. He remembers the interrogation with the German terrorist Britta in Beirut and the appeal for peace of a young American student who had survived a car bomb attack. He remembers an Asian by choice named Hansen, who bitterly regretted spying for the British after the bombing of Cambodian villages. Out of love for his kidnapped daughter, he went into captivity by the Khmer Rouge , only to find the girl later in a brothel in Bangkok .

Ned remembers Sergeant Major Hawthorne, whose son had been murdered by fellow inmates after a long career as a criminal, and who, by gifting him with his cufflinks, convinced the Smiley that the boy had only pretended to be in prison and had served the circus loyally for a lifetime. He remembers the confession of the British cipher Cyril Frewin, whose loneliness and longing for friendship were exploited by the Soviet spy Sergei Modrian and whom Ned could only disappoint when he finally uncovered his betrayal. Finally, on his last days on duty, he meets the unscrupulous British arms dealer Bradshaw, at the end of which Ned wonders if he has spent his life fighting the wrong enemy. Only in retirement does he finally have the feeling of stepping into the normal world, which has so far remained completely unknown to him.

background

With The Secret Companion , John le Carré finally said goodbye to the subject of the Cold War , with which he had already wanted to end in two earlier novels: Agent on his own behalf and A blinding spy . Later books such as Single & Single and The Eternal Gardener turned their gaze from dealing with communism to dealing with unrestrained capitalism . The novel is dedicated to Alec Guinness , the actor George Smileys in the two BBC film adaptations of Lady, King, Ace, Spy and Agent in his own cause .

Two episodes are based on real events: The anecdote about Smiley's cufflinks was actually attributed to Maurice Oldfield, who headed MI6 in the UK from 1973 to 1978. The Asian by choice Hansen had his model in the French Buddhism researcher François Bizot, whom le Carré had met in Cambodia and who had actually been captured by the Khmer Rouge and later released. However, le Carré changed Hansen's life story greatly and made him a western spy in distress.

The episode with Captain Brandt takes place against the background of the real " British Baltic Fishery Protection Service ".

Award

In 1992 the Danish translation Den hemmelige pilgrim received the Palle-Rosenkrantz Prize .

expenditure

also licensed editions for the German Book Association (1992) and Bertelsmann Club (1992)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See: en: Maurice Oldfield in the English Wikipedia .
  2. ↑ See: en: François Bizot in the English Wikipedia .
  3. ↑ John le Carré: Foreword . In: The secret companion . List, Munich 2003, pp. 7-11.