Le Carré's fourth book was meant to be a satire, and apparently it didn't go over well with his fans. It tells the story of a small, unnamed intelligence unit that tries to pull off an intelligence-gathering operation in East Germany. After several bungled attempts, they finally recruit a Polish immigrant who had done service for their department during WWII, and try to retrain him for a mission to collect information about a reported missile site. Everything that can go wrong does, and the unit pulls out, leaving him behind. A pretty grim outcome, but meant to show the impact of inter-agency rivalry, and (I think) the expendibility of someone not British. Very well written, but again, tragic.
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