Onyx reviews: Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 09/19/2019

For a quarter of a century, Nathanial (Nat for short) has been stationed abroad, primarily in eastern European nations, where he has been an agent runner, covertly supervising British spies and expertly turning foreigners against their own nations. Now, at 47, he's back in London, believing his days of spycraft are at an end. He spends a lot of time at his private athletic club, where he has long been the reigning badminton champion.

The game of badminton seems an unlikely metaphor for the kind of work Nat does in the name of his government. Still, it involves keeping an irregularly shaped object in the air and attempting to get it past a vigilant opponent, who is equally determined to drive it to the ground on the other side of the net. Perhaps not so inappropriate after all for the world of secret agents.

Most of his years abroad have been spent apart from his wife Prue, who joined him during his early days in Russia but gave up the game for a career as a human rights lawyer. Their adult daughter Stephanie has no idea her father was anything but a minor diplomat who was never around much when she was growing up, although she's now old enough for him to share some of his secrets with her. Instead of retirement, though, the Home Office has one last assignment for Nat, one that seems cushy and lacking in challenge. He's to take over the Haven, a London substation that has been underperforming for years. He's to either whip it into shape or oversee its decommissioning.

With Brexit and the controversy surrounding their involvement in the American elections, interest in Russian activities has been renewed. Nat and his team soon latch onto promising leads that propel them into the middle of a high-profile investigation. The Haven is suddenly front and center again. Nat is fully back in the game, requiring covert trips back to some of his old Eastern European haunts to extract information from unwilling assets he has dealt with in the past.

In his spare time, Nat takes on another challenge: a brash young man named Ed who accosts him at his club demanding to play badminton. It's uncouth and untoward, but Nat sees no harm in testing his skills against Ed, who proves to be a formidable opponent. After their semi-regular bouts, they retire to a pub, where Ed holds forth on contemporary political issues. His long-winded diatribes against Brexit, fascism and Trump find a sympathetic ear in Nat, although the agent runner is generally reticent to speak as openly or at such length. From the very beginning, Nat reveals to readers that something significant will come from these meetings, something he will be required to explain in detail to his superiors.

On of Le Carré's strengths has always been in showing how mundane spy work is much of the time. In his new position at the Haven, Nat has to deal with various levels of bureaucracy, both inside and outside of the Secret Intelligence Service, to get anything done. Approval is required not only from the higher-ups in the spy agency, but also from unaffiliated entities that manage the government's purse strings. Spying, as it turns out, is an expensive business, even for something as mundane as tapping phones or following a suspected foreign agent for any length of time. Numerous people and resources are required every time an agent meets with or surveils a contact. His fiscal overlords can be stingy, thwarting or curtailing some of his team's agenda.

Nat's team's main asset is a man named Sergei, a supposed defector who was sent to England as a sleeper agent. Sergei has been cooperating with Florence, Nat's second-in-command at the Haven, although he hasn't been able to provide much information until now, when he is suddenly contacted by his Russian handlers. The spy world is a small one, so it should come as no surprise when a number of seemingly unrelated threads begin to cross and get entangled.

Opponents of the current occupants of the White House and 10 Downing Street, as well as of Britain's decision to leave the European Union, will find much to like in Ed's diatribes. Le Carré pulls no punches; he lets Ed voice opinions shared by many, in no uncertain words. The young man's idealism, though, leaves him vulnerable to exploitation, and it is up to Nat to figure out how to salvage the situation. His solution may not please his superiors. The Cold War may be warming up again, and Le Carré has his finger on the pulse of the conflicted sentiments surrounding contemporary political issues.