An Exclusive Extract from Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel by Nick Harkaway

A gripping new novel set in the universe of John le Carré's most iconic spy, George Smiley, written by acclaimed novelist Nick Harkaway.

Control, in any case, would have none of it. ‘You’ll go where you’re sent,’ he’d told Haydon with some asperity; ‘it’s more important than a ragged-trousered legacy agent from Stalin’s time. George can handle Róka for me. He owes us that much.’ Yes, Smiley thought, that’s it exactly. I served you for twenty-five years and more, but all that creates is a greater obligation to keep going. The salamander lives in the fire because it has forgotten how to live any other way.

So now was the moment Smiley had both looked forward to and dreaded: a face-to-face conversation, alone, with Control. They sat not in the meeting room but in Control’s same drab office, with its row of filing cabinets like the Callanish Stones. The long case clock beside the fireplace tocked lugubriously over the sound of the wind. They were practically under the eaves, and there was an easterly blowing. Control liked to say it whispered secrets from Moscow. They’d been there for nearly ten minutes, and still no one spoke.

Control’s silences were the stuff of legend within the Circus. He made you imagine his questions and answer them, so that you performed your own interrogation. Accustomed and even a little jaded, Smiley had composed himself, not to wait but simply to sit. The key to getting any kind of traction with Control lay in recognising the absence of words not as prelude but as the meet- ing in itself, and making him say what he wanted.

A year and a half ago, Smiley had not exercised this discipline with sufficient rigour. Control had called him in one afternoon and announced that he was considering a particular operation and Smiley wouldn’t like it. It was necessary, but still very bad. Control would handle the detail and all Smiley need do was pick up the pieces afterwards. No need for both of them to carry it.

This had been, in retrospect, chum. Control had bloodied the water, and Smiley had been lured into asking and then demand- ing that he share the burden. Together they had sent Alec Leamas to Berlin with orders to take down the Stasi’s most effective attack dog, Hans-Dieter Mundt, and when Leamas arrived, Mundt had been ready for him.

‘I think I decline,’ Smiley said, when Control opened his mouth to speak. If it was a rarity for anyone to out-wait Control, no one interrupted him, ever. ‘You said I owed you this. In fact, I do not. I already have done what was necessary – not that it was ever important that I do it, except to you. The problem is clear, your sources are gathered in, and I no longer work here. Thank you for the opportunity to say goodbye. And to remind myself of how very much I did not wish to return.’

He went to gather up his things, when Control erupted from his chair, his voice shockingly loud, cracking as he shouted, ‘Sit down!’ like an affronted prince.

Smiley, if he felt the tug of obedience in his knees, stayed on his feet, and the ghost of Leamas stretched between them.

‘I chose his clothes,’ Smiley said at last. ‘For the burial. His step-mother was supposed to do it. I understand they didn’t get along. In the end she sent a telegram saying she wasn’t coming. She gave excellent reasons. But that left me in Alec’s flat, alone with a dozen pairs of shoes: French, British, German, Italian, Czech. They say you’re supposed to begin with the shoes. I don’t know why. I picked some black ones from Oslo. They weren’t the newest, but I thought I remembered them. Then I muddled through a suit and so on. I think I rather overdressed him, in the end.’ He shook his head. ‘I found I didn’t want him to be cold, you see. I’m not religious. Well, you know my feelings on that: it’s one of the unkindnesses of modern life that there’s no excuse for it, any more. But I couldn’t shake the idea that Alec did a lot of standing around waiting, and he needed comfortable shoes and a good winter coat.’ He looked at his own shoes. Church’s, made soft by time.

‘That’s why I left. It’s why I’m not coming back. This business has forgotten its root – or, I suppose I should say, you have.’