Agent Running in the Field

“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.

“Well, Steff, a lot of people will do a lot of things for money and a lot of people will do things for spite or ego. There are also people who do things for an ideal, and wouldn’t take your money if you shoved it down their throats.”

This quote employs parallel structure to explore different motivations for betrayal, contrasting material incentives with conviction. The passage creates a hierarchy of loyalty, positioning ideological commitment above financial or personal motivations, which directly connects to the theme of Political Idealism Versus Pragmatic Reality.

“My initial instinct has been to enjoy Florence with caution: one of those upper-class girls who’ve grown up with ponies and you never quite know what’s going on inside. Steff would loathe her on sight, Prue would worry.”

This passage uses class distinctions to establish Florence’s social position while revealing Nat’s ingrained suspicion of surface-level class signifiers. The predictions about Steff’s and Prue’s reactions demonstrate how personal judgments intersect with professional assessments in intelligence work.

“It is my considered opinion that for Britain and Europe, and for liberal democracy across the entire world as a whole, Britain’s departure from the European Union in the time of Donald Trump, and Britain’s consequent unqualified dependence on the United States in an era when the US is heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism, is an unmitigated clusterfuck bar none.”

This excerpt employs escalating diction and metaphorical language to articulate Ed’s political idealism. The formal style of the opening contrasts with the explosive conclusion, mirroring the ways educated analysis can transform into radical action.

“And finally, do I forget that I’m a civil servant, albeit a secret one, pledged to uphold my government’s policy, assuming it has one? Or do I rather say to myself: this is a courageous and sincere young fellow—eccentric, yes, not everyone’s cup of tea and the better for it in my opinion—whose heart is in the right place, is in need of someone to listen to him, is only seven or eight years older than my daughter—whose radical views on any known topic are a fact of family life—and plays a very decent game of badminton?”

Nat’s description of Ed as eccentric provides a subtle foreshadowing of Ed’s duplicitous professional identity, while the qualified aside highlights the paradoxical nature of intelligence work. The comparison to Steff, meanwhile, emphasizes how personal relationships can influence professional judgment—a central facet of Nat’s arc.

“‘What about President Donald Trump then?’ he demands, enunciating the name as if it were the very devil’s. ‘Do you or do you not regard Trump, which I do, as a threat and incitement to the entire civilized world, plus he is presiding over the systematic no-holds-barred Nazification of the United States?’”

This passage employs hyperbolic language and religious imagery to characterize political opposition to the current American regime. The use of “Nazification” as a metaphor reveals how extreme political views can justify extreme actions, as demonstrated by the choices Ed makes throughout the novel that eventually lead to treason against the British Crown.

“The biggest gift you can give the young is time, and it was always in my mind that I hadn’t given Steff enough of it, and perhaps Ed’s parents hadn’t been any too generous in that respect either.”

This passage connects personal failure in parenting with broader generational themes. The comparison between Ed’s and Steff’s experiences suggests a pattern of parental absence that shapes political, as well as personal, development.

“In Ed’s world there was no dividing line between Brexit fanatics and Trump fanatics. Both were racist and xenophobic. Both worshipped at the same shrine of nostalgic imperialism.”

Metaphors are employed in this passage to illustrate Ed’s black-and-white political worldview, defining him in opposition to Nat’s more measured nature. The equation of different political movements demonstrates how Ed’s ideological absolutism shapes his perception of reality, supporting the theme of political idealism versus pragmatic reality.

“If the relationship between Florence and myself is emphatically non-tactile, with each of us going to elaborate lengths not to brush hands or otherwise make physical contact, it is nonetheless close. It turns out that our lives overlap in more ways than we might have expected, given the difference in our ages. Her father the ex-diplomat had done two successive stints at the British Embassy in Moscow, taking with him his wife and three children of whom Florence was the eldest. Prue and I had missed them by six months.”

This quote uses physical distance as a metaphor for professional boundaries while ironically revealing underlying connections between Nat and Florence. The parallel family histories in Moscow create an unexpected intimacy despite Nat and Florence’s careful maintenance of physical space.

“I am doing the decent thing. I am answering the cry that every agent-runner the world over takes to his grave. The tunes vary, the lines vary, but in the end it’s the same song every time: I can’t live with myself, Peter, the stress is killing me, Peter, the burden of my treachery is too great for me, my mistress has left me, my wife is deceiving me, my neighbours suspect me, my dog’s been run over and you my trusted handler are the one person in the world who can persuade me not to cut my wrists.”

In this description, the narration employs repetitive structure and varied iterations to illustrate the predictable patterns of manipulation. The list of personal crises reveals how personal trauma becomes instrumentalized in intelligence work, supporting the theme of The Manipulation of Truth.

“As each barren month succeeded the last, Russia department’s patience evaporated until a day when Pitchfork was turned over to the Haven for ‘maintenance and non-active development’—or, as Giles had it, ‘to be handled with a thick pair of rubber gloves and a very long pair of asbestos tongs, because if ever I smelt triple, this boy has all the markings and then some.’”

The colloquial language about triple agents, combined with imagery centering around protection, demonstrates systematic distrust within intelligence organizations. Within intelligence operations, such metaphorical language can serve to codify institutional prejudices.

“If I do not find these augurs quite as ominous as I might have done, that is because my head is still rejoicing in the improbable chain of connection that Sergei and his Anette have revealed to me. I am reminded of an aphorism of my mentor Bryn Jordan: if you spy for long enough, the show comes round again.”

Dramatic irony manifests in Nat’s failure to recognize warning signs. This contrast between individual blindness and organizational wisdom demonstrates the cyclical nature of intelligence operations.

“Dom doesn’t do confrontation, which is something we both know. His life is a sideways advance between things he can’t face.”

The spatial metaphor “sideways advance” characterizes Dom and describes the way in which a life of spycraft can change individual personalities. Between moments of potential conflict, Dom’s actions reflect larger organizational behaviors, particularly with regard to unclear and shifting motivations.

“Putin had always been a fifth-rate spy. Now he was a spy turned autocrat who interpreted all life in terms of konspiratsia. Thanks to Putin and his gang of unredeemed Stalinists, Russia was not going forward to a bright future, but backwards into her dark, delusional past.”

Individual psychological analysis connects to institutional consequences in the narrative through the concept of konspiratsia. By positioning Russia’s movement as backward rather than forward, the text analyzes institutional regression through the psychology of leadership.

“‘You know what Trump is?’

‘Tell me.’

‘He’s Putin’s shithouse cleaner. He does everything for little Vladi that little Vladi can’t do for himself: pisses on European unity, pisses on human rights, pisses on NATO. Assures us that Crimea and Ukraine belong to the Holy Russian Empire, the Middle East belongs to the Jews and the Saudis, and to hell with the world order.’”

Through direct analogies about cleaning and political actions, the passage outlines a hierarchy of control in global politics. To this end, le Carré uses repetition to emphasize power dynamics between nations and the ridiculous nature of some foreign policy notions.

“He is Ed codenamed Delta and he is loping over the threshold into the outdoors, tray in one hand, briefcase in the other, blinking around him as if he’s wearing the wrong spectacles. I am remembering something I read a hundred years ago in a Chekist handbook: a clandestine meeting appears more authentic if food is taken.”

A reference to the Chekist handbook turns this ordinary moment into spycraft analysis. Simple actions like carrying food become significant through the lens of intelligence training, and Nat’s lifetime of knowledge transforms casual observation into professional assessment.

“I watched the whole of the rest of the movie in real time, live on screen, without uttering a word or offering the smallest gesture that could in any way inhibit the enjoyment of my fellow members of the audience—even if thirty hours later, when I was standing under the shower, Prue did remark on the bloodied imprint made by my fingernails digging into my left wrist. She also refused to accept my story of a badminton injury, going so far as to suggest in a rare moment of accusation that the fingernails were not my own.”

In this passage, physical details of self-injury demonstrate emotional control rather than the usual association of emotional dysregulation. The badminton excuse links to the ongoing sports motif while revealing deception, connecting personal stress to professional requirements.

“The pottery Staffordshire dog is the safety signal, she is telling him—or I think she is, because my ears are blurring. If there’s no doggie in the window, it means abort, she’s telling him. Or maybe she’s saying it means come on in.”

Here, le Carré presents the Victorian pottery dog—a symbol of the erosion of institutional trust —with deliberate ambiguity. The uncertainty about its meaning (“or maybe”) reveals how even established signals become unreliable in the field of global espionage.

“I’ll never know how long they kept me waiting in that little room, but it can’t have been short of an hour with nothing to read and just a blank, pastel-painted yellow wall to stare at because they had taken away my Office mobile.”

The removal of the mobile phone symbolizes institutional control over communication and time. In doing so, the author employs environmental detail to convey institutional power through enforced waiting.

“Point about Trump is, he’s a gang boss, born and bred. Brought up to screw civil society all ways up, not be part of it.”

In this passage, the contrast between criminal and civic organizational structures provides a framework for institutional critique. This comparison frames leadership analysis in direct terms, linking civic and criminal systems.

“For fully fifteen minutes I wait, and by the sixteenth I have all but given up. She’s not there. She’s out running, she’s with an agent, a lover, she’s off on one of her cultural jaunts to Edinburgh or Glyndebourne or wherever her cover requires her to show her face and press the flesh.”

The list of possibilities in this passage shows how spy work affects normal situations. Intelligence habits can transform ordinary waiting into strategic analysis. Professional training creates multiple explanations for a simple absence, demonstrating how working for the Service can overpower other aspects of a spy’s life.

“‘Is this why they fired you, Nat?’ she asks.

‘For the boy?’

‘In part.’

‘And now you have come to rescue us from him.’

‘Not from Ed. From yourselves. What I’m trying to tell you is that somewhere along the line between London, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and wherever else your masters confer, Shannon’s offer to you wasn’t just blown. It was intercepted and taken up by a rival firm.’”

The passage employs dialogue to reveal multiple layers of deception. The metaphor of “rival firm” demonstrates how commercial language masks state violence. In the same way, Operation Jericho shows how deeply damaging policies can be hidden and exploited within everyday, unremarkable documents.