A legacy of spies

I like reading Le Carré. Partially it's the relationships: intimate but simultaneously full of secrets and deceptions. Some lies are there to protect the other. The truth is dangerous and unsettling.

And there's a technology to deception. Professionals learn how to deceive as their job, not for their own gain like a con man, but for a greater good, though sometimes the greater good is also a lie--a self deception that allows life to go on while unspeakable horrors are everywhere. Even the records kept are cover stories. What actually happened cannot be trusted to files. And there are second order lies. Lies meant to be seen through so as to distract from the more important lies. And backup lies to be used when the first layer of deception fails. And those used when the second level fails, and so on.

You never know when the enemy is really your friend, doing bad stuff to ingratiate themselves with the opposition so that they can later bring them down. But at the same time, the reader can always tell the good guys from the bad guys because their goodness transcends which side they're on. You see it in how they go out of their way to help others, often by lying to them. In the end, who could doubt that Smiley would save Peter?