A delicate truth

I wasn't sure at first I would enjoy this latest novel from the man who invented the modern morality-play espionage novel. An undistinguished career foreign office paper-pusher is dispatched to the field to oversee a joint terrorist operation in Gibraltar. There, a reluctant Welsh military officer looks to him when ordered to take action that seems precipitous and unwise. He tut-tutts ineffectually and something happens, but we're not sure what. It's all behind a curtain of confidentiality - but the official is assured everything went well. returnreturnAnother official, young and brash and with highly-honed instincts, gets wind of the botched operation a few years later and begins to sniff around, soon realizing his career trajectory will take a sharp turn if he carries on. But he does (and the plot takes off like a rocket) because lurking under those political instincts is a stubborn belief in doing what's right. Eventually he, the now-retired tut-tutting diplomat, and the Welsh soldier, drummed out of the army, his marriage, and mainstream society, join forces to expose what happened when mercenaries, supplied by a right-wing American firm that has made a killing on the amorphous, unending "war on terror," blundered on a small remnant of Britain's empire.returnreturnIn the post-cold-war novels of LeCarre his weary geo-political game of chess has given way to a game where the rules are hidden and the players are not so much governments as individuals in power who will benefit if they operate on behalf of giant corporations. He often uses a kind of parody that tastes like bitter laughter but which also refuses to bow to the "life is stranger than fiction, which has to behave itself" rule. I think he's given up on trying to portray his enemy with sympathy, and t don't blame him. You can make this stuff up, he seems to be saying, and he's writing about a threat that feels more powerful than Communism because the moles are in charge and those who object are entirely on their own. The banding together of these three individuals in a hopeless situation is moving and thrilling and couldn't be more topical. It's depressing that they are so few and so outgunned, but it's thrilling to be in their company.