Smiley's People

"Two seemingly unconnected events heralded the summons of Mr. George Smiley from his dubious retirement. The first had for its background Paris, and for a season the boiling month of August, when Parisians by tradition abandon their city to the scalding sunshine and the busloads of packaged tourists."

"The Superintendent called softly to the trees, where his men stood among their blacked-out cars like a next generation waiting for its turn."

"The second of the two events that brought George Smiley from his retirement occurred a few weeks after the first, in early autumn of the same year: not in Paris at all, but in the once ancient, free, and Hanseatic city of Hamburg, now almost pounded to death by the thunder of its own prosperity; yet it remains true that nowhere does the summer fade more splendidly than along the gold and orange banks of the Alster, which nobody as yet has drained or filled with concrete."

"The two men had been together for fifteen minutes but this was the Superintendents first question. For a while Smiley did not seem to hear it, but his silence was not offensive, he had the gift of quiet. Besides, there is a companionship about two men contemplating a corpse."

"The best I ever met," old Mendel, the Superintendents one-time superior, had told him over a friendly pint not long ago. Mendel was retired now, like Smiley. But Mendel knew what he was talking about and didnt like Funnies any better than the Superintendent did—interfering la-di-da amateurs most of them, and devious with it. But not Smiley. Smiley was different, Mendel had said. Smiley was the best—simply the best case man Mendel had ever met—and old Mendel knew what he was talking about."

"Enderby, reading aloud the debriefing transcript of Oleg Kirov: "I made the acquaintance of the head of the independent Thirteenth Intelligence Directorate, subordinated to the Partys Central Committee, who is known throughout Moscow Centre only by his workname, Karla. This is a womans name and is said to belong to the first network he controlled. That right, George?" "It was during the Spanish Civil War," said Smiley. "The great playground."