Episode 4, Chapters 17 – 19
Reading the book in parallel with the tv show is really fun for this part!
I watched Smiley meet Herr Kretzschmar on TV first, then read about it the next day … and hugely enjoyed both!
Chapter 17 – Now Smiley is in Lubeck Germany, on the bleak northern Germany road Herr K directed him to take to find Otto Leipzig..
The road was as empty as the landscape.
Just as I watched it on TV last night:
- He finds the shabby house nestled in an industrial area.
- He disturbs the obviously fornicating young couple …
- … but he does get them to direct him to a boat in an even sketchier area.
- At the boat harbor he is faces with the problem of getting on the boat.
- So just as TV, he persuades an old man in a dinghy to row him out there.
- Poor ole Otto had been tortured to death.
- It was really gross on video, but only mildly gross in print.
- He does find a packet suspended on fishing line off the side of the boat.
- Marked with yellow chalk, which we by now recognize as the General’s tradecraft.
- The scummy local derelicts trash his rental car like in the video and the book.
- He gets the heck out of there in his trashed rental car to avoid meeting the police.
The printed page is better here, because we get a nice internal dialog about how soon the German police are gonna come looking for him. He buys a funny hat and some extra clothes, just so ticket takers and direction givers will remember him a little differently.
You can tell he’s too old for this shit. Those kids were creepy.
It’s the weekend, and he determines that Herr Kretzschmar is at his house in the suburbs of Hamburg. He takes the train to there.
They are having the German idea if an American suburban pool party.
I loved it!
Herr K doesn’t recognize Smiley because of the funny hat, so lets his wife welcome him!
His wife is a leggy babe in Vegas pool clothes, the perfec embodiment of a bourgeois German idea of Vegas style. 🙂
[In the video the funny that stuff happens at Herr K’s is different, but the drama when he hears that Max is dead is the same intense thing!]
Smiley and the missus have pleasant conversation for a minute until Herr K comes and who Smiley is, and that he is distressed!
They go inside and he gets the bad news about Otto.
It’s a stark contrast, the carefree summer party outside and Herr Kretzschmar being genuinely grief-stricken over Otto inside.
He really liked Otto, and he really wants to fuck up whoever did it!
I came out of this episode with a deep admiration for Herr Kretzschmar!
He’s a guy you would want to have on your side!
Chapter 18 – Back to Paris, and Madame Ostrakova still in her lonely flat trying to survive.
Recouperating on her divan.
Facing the door with her ancient pistol clutched in both hands.
She can see them out the window in the courtyard below. On TV, they are a cartoon version of Russian KGB agants, black coats, black hats and a menacing way of something as harmless as asking directions to her flat.
264 Too many people are collected in the hallway to watch them as they knock on her door, so they leave for the moment. You know they will be back.
FINALLY, Smiley arrives at that same barricaded door. The same concierge accompanies him upstairs.
She tries to bullshitting Madame O, that Smiley is a doctor to get her to open the door.
Smiley tells her the simple truth, that he has the letter she sent to the General. He slips it under the door …. she lets him in!
Slap-stick interlude
It’s funny to see one of these over-dignified brit dudes suddenly break a sweat and start hurrying! It’s a wonderful scene on the TV show and a great few pages in the book starting on p268.
Our old friend Peter Guilliam (from the last book) is now Head of Station at British Embassy in Paris. He gets a call from his wife, who is French, pretty, and pregnant. She’s very agitated and says he has to come immediately!
He busts into his own house, grabs the intruder in a headlock!
It’s George Smiley … with Madama Ostrakova in the bedroom being ministered to by Marie-Claire Guilliam.
This part is VERY video-friendly. It’s just another action scene on the page, but it’s Keystone Kops sequence on the screen.
Episode 5, Chapters 19-
Chapter 19 – George and Saul get together.
Saul Enderby is a classic, central casting upper class British twit!
He’s very easy to mock and bitch about, but over the next few pages he turns out to be a lot smarter than he acts. He’s actually good at his job. He DID replace Smiley as the Head Man after all… And the pro-Smiley crowd still has it out for him to this day. Bt he actually comes off as pretty good at the job in this book.
pp 276-288 The next few pages are him rereading Smiley’s report, which is about the events of this book. It’s VERY enligthening, a look into Karla’s mind among other things.
288-293 After Enderby helpfully recaps this complicated story, they get down to what Smiley wants, which is approval of a mission regarding Karla and the mystery woman who Karla wants a legend for.
I secretly kinda like Enderby, even though he sets himself to to be very hate-able. After bitching at Smiley for a few more pages he gives him everything he needs.
p 293 Their last snippet of conversation is about Smiley’s lighter!
If you’ve read the whole cycle, recall that Smiley actually interviewed Karla in India many years ago. “Tried to get him to defect”. Tricky bastard that he is, Karla came out of that meeting with Smiley’s lighter. “An ordinany Ronson, they’re built to last”!
Chapter 20
We’re sort of at the beginning of the end game now.
Smiley is in a weeks long holding pattern. We get impressions from Toby and others of how inward he is.
300 He shakes his watchers and takes to train to visit Ann, his estranged wife! Recall that she is REALLY estranged because her affair with Bill Hayden …. which made that whole thing so much worse.
307 Finally things are moving.
Smiley takes a plane and train to Berne Switzerland.
Chapter 21
The chapter is very fun if you delight in the play-by-play on British spy-craft of the era (which I do!)
309 Toby is briefing George about Grigoriev’s cover at the Russian Consulate in Berne. If you’ve lost track of who the hell Grigoriev is, he’s the other fellow in the sex photo with Otto Leipzig. The photo that seems to have gotten Otto and the General killed.
It’s really fun how le Carre teases it all out, but Grigoriev a mid-level Russian foreign service hack, who Karla has chosen to implement his plan.
George and Saul have a very funny back and forth about how Karla can’t use his regular VERY good spies for this because it’s off the books. So he chooses Grigoriev, who is pretty good at tracking the kind of off-the-books spending they’re asking him to do, but he’s a terrible spy. 🙂
[I think the other reason is that he is basically kind man who treats the girl as well as you could hope for.]
He’s the Russian they plan to “burn” in their lingo.
So here we are, George and Toby and Grigoriev, who’s suddenly got enough money to buy his own Mercedes.
310 “They like the guy George. You know how watcher are.
It’s love or hate all the time. They like him.”
And indeed, he is a very sympathetic likeable fellow in the BBC series!
“What do you make of Grigoriev, Toby? What is he?“
“A trained hood he isn’t, George. No tradecraft, actually a complete catastrophe. But he’s not straight either. He’s a half-breed, George.“
Chapter 22
Now we switch frames to the institution where they are keeping Tatiana (called Alexandra at the institution).
She makes a weak pass at the doctor, just to relieve the bordom. Mostly we just get a few pages of her confused internal dialog. She is indeed a little cray-cray.
And who can blame her?!
This scene kind of bland on the screen, but what’s going on in her head is very intense on the written page.
Chapter 23
Back to Toby and George in a coffee shop, watching the bank where Grigoriev goes every Friday to get his cash.
Here is why I love reading these books:
322 George saw the yellow mail van parked boldly in the no-parking bay, and he knew it was Toby’s post. Toby had a life-long faith in mail vans; he stole them wherever he went …
327 The second half of the chapter is Grigoriev doing the second half of his Friday routine, which is to to ride his bike to the institution (so no one sees his diplomatic plates) and visit Tatiana/Alexandra.
He really is a nice guy. And the girl really is kind of a mess.
Episode 6, Chapters 24 –
Chapter 24 – We’re gettin there!
337 Ten pages were devoted to finding the right time and right way to approach Grigoriev. I’m happy to say that the movie followed the written script very closely here and was delightful.
Grigoriev sneaks off from his routine to watch a chess game in the park. This is the opportunity Toby and his crew have been waiting for to get him away from his Soviet watchers so they can abduct him.
They do it very smoothly in broad daylight in a public park, and bring him to Smiley.
Smiley plays his part as a disapproving Soviet commisar perfectly, and soon Grigoriev was singing like a bird!
354 Another scene that was charming in the book AND the show, Smiley makes him call his wife and be authoritative with her. He loved it! And all the watchers loved it and cheered him. It was very sweet.
Chapter 25 Still with Grigoriev.
357 Grigoriev still telling his is story. He is taken to meet Karla.
Chapter 26
The final meeting took took the last twelve minutes of the final show. It was very suspenseful. Toby was so wired up he could barely form sentences!
He and George and Peter G watch the little man in a workers overcoat walk across the checkpoint bridge between East and West Germany and turn himself over to the watchers.
Lotta stuff going on in the eye contact between him and Smiley.
He dropped Smiley’s lighter (which no one but Smiley noticed?!).
I’m pretty sure Smiley just walked away and left it there.
This was very hard on me, because I would have HAD TO pick it up if it were me….. 🙂