The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Background

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold occurs during the heightened tensions that characterised the late 1950s and early 1960s Cold War, when a Warsaw Pact–NATO war sparked in Germany seemed likely. The story begins and concludes in East Germany, about a year after the completion of the Berlin Wall and around the time when double-agent Heinz Felfe was exposed and tried.

In Call for the Dead, le Carré's debut novel, a key character is Hans-Dieter Mundt, an assassin of the Abteilung ("the Department"), the East German Secret Service, who is working under diplomatic cover in London. When uncovered by agents George Smiley and Peter Guillam of the British intelligence service "the Circus" (which is led by "Control"), he escapes from England to East Germany before Smiley and Guillam can catch him. Two years later, at the time of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Mundt has risen from the field to the upper-echelon of the Abteilung, because of his successful counter-intelligence operations against the spy networks of the British secret services.

Plot

The West Berlin office of the Circus is under the command of Station Head Alec Leamas, who served as an SOE operative during World War II and fought in the Nazi occupied Netherlands and Norway. It has just lost its last and best double agent, shot whilst defecting from East Berlin. With no operatives left, Leamas is recalled to London by Control, the Circus chief, who asks Leamas to stay "in the cold" for one last mission: to fake the defection of a senior British agent to an East German operative named Mundt, and then to frame Mundt as a British double agent. Fiedler, one of Mundt's subordinates — who suspects that Mundt is already a double agent — is targeted as a potentially useful adjunct.

To bring Leamas to the East Germans' attention as a potential defector, the Circus sacks him, leaving him with only a small pension. He takes and loses a miserable job in a run-down library. There, he meets Liz Gold, who is the secretary of her local cell of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and they become lovers. Before taking the "final plunge" into Control's scheme, Leamas makes Liz promise not to look for him, no matter what she hears. Then, after getting Control to agree to leave Liz alone, Leamas initiates the mission by assaulting a local grocer in order to get himself arrested.

After his release from jail he is approached by an East German recruiter and taken abroad, first to the Netherlands, then to East Germany, en route meeting progressively higher echelons of the Abteilung, the East German intelligence service. During his debriefing he drops casual hints about British payments to a double agent in the Abteilung. Meanwhile, Smiley, posing as a friend of Leamas, appears at Liz's apartment to question her about him and to offer financial help.

In East Germany, Leamas meets Fiedler. The two men engage in extended discussions, in which Leamas's pragmatism is contrasted with Fiedler's idealistic outlook. Leamas observes that the young, brilliant Fiedler is concerned about the righteousness of his motivation and the morality of his actions. Mundt, on the other hand, is a brutal, opportunistic mercenary, an ex-Nazi who joined the Communists after the war out of expediency, and who remains an anti-Semite.

The power struggle within the Abteilung is exposed when Mundt orders Fiedler and Leamas arrested and tortured. The leaders of the East German régime intervene after learning that Fiedler applied for an arrest warrant for Mundt that same day. Fiedler and Mundt are released, then summoned to present their cases to a tribunal convened in camera. At the trial, Leamas documents a series of secret bank account payments that Fiedler has matched to the movements of Mundt, while Fiedler presents other evidence implicating Mundt as a British agent.

Meanwhile, Liz, who had been invited to East Germany for a Communist Party information exchange, is forced to testify at the tribunal. Called by Mundt's attorney as a witness she admits that Smiley paid her apartment lease after visiting her, and that she promised Leamas that she would not look for him after he disappeared. She also admits that he had said good-bye to her the night before he assaulted the grocer. Realizing that their cover is blown, Leamas offers to tell all in exchange for Liz's freedom, admitting that Control gave him the mission to frame Mundt as a double agent. But when the tribunal halts the trial and arrests Fiedler, Leamas finally understands the true nature of Control and Smiley's scheme.

Liz is confined to a jail cell, but Mundt releases her and puts her in a car that will take her to freedom; Leamas is at the wheel. During their drive to Berlin, Leamas explains everything: Mundt is, in fact, a double agent reporting to Smiley. The target of Leamas's mission was Fiedler, not Mundt, because Fiedler was close to exposing Mundt. Leamas and Liz unwittingly provided Mundt with the means of discrediting Leamas, and in turn, Fiedler. Their intimate relationship facilitated the plan. Liz realizes to her horror that their actions have enabled the Circus to protect their asset, the despicable Mundt, at the expense of the thoughtful and idealistic Fiedler. Liz asks what will become of Fiedler; Leamas replies that he will most likely be executed.

Liz's love for Leamas overcomes her moral disgust, and she accompanies Leamas to a break in the wire fronting the Berlin Wall, from which they can climb the wall and escape to West Berlin. Leamas climbs to the top but, as he reaches down to help Liz, she is shot by a Mundt operative. She falls and Leamas hesitates. Then he climbs back down the Eastern side of the wall, to be shot and killed too.

Characters

Cultural impact

At its publication during the Cold War (1945–91), the moral presentation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) rendered it a revolutionary espionage novel by showing the intelligence services of both the Eastern and Western nations as engaging in the same expedient amorality in the name of national security. John le Carré also presented his western spy as a morally burnt-out case.

The espionage world of Alec Leamas portrays love as a three-dimensional, problematic emotion that can have disastrous consequences for those involved. Moreover, good does not always vanquish evil in Leamas's world, a defeatist attitude that was criticized in The Times.

In her essay Is Common Human Decency a Scarce Commodity in Popular Literature?, Margaret Compton contrasts the ending of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold with the ending of Call for the Dead: "Le Carré's début book ends with [George] Smiley feeling deeply guilty about having killed Dieter Frey, the idealistic East German spy who had been Smiley's agent and friend during the Second World War. Leamas and Liz, in the The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, both make a diametrically opposite moral choice in that each values their personal relationship over any political loyalty."

Time magazine, while including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in its top 100 novels list, stated that the novel was "a sad, sympathetic portrait of a man who has lived by lies and subterfuge for so long, he's forgotten how to tell the truth." The book also headed the Publishers Weekly's list of 15 top spy novels in 2006.

TV series

Paramount Television and The Night Manager producers The Ink Factory are teaming to develop a limited series based on the novel with Simon Beaufoy is the writer. On January 14, 2017, AMC and the BBC re-teamed with The Ink Factory for the series.

Awards and nominations

Le Carré's book won a 1963 Gold Dagger award from the Crime Writers' Association for "Best Crime Novel". Two years later the US edition was awarded the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for "Best Mystery Novel". It was the first work to win the award for "Best Novel" from both mystery writing organisations. Screenwriters Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper, who adapted the book for the 1965 movie, received an Edgar the following year for "Best Motion Picture Screenplay" for an American movie.

In 2005, the fiftieth anniversary of the Dagger Awards, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was awarded the "Dagger of Daggers," a one-time award given to the Golden Dagger winner regarded as the stand-out among all fifty winners over the history of the Crime Writers' Association.