THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503100296
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY TIM WARREN
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
OUR GAME
JOHN LE CARRE
Alfred A. Knopf. 304 pp. $24.
WHEN THE GAME is called but the players want to continue, what do they do?
In the case of some spies, glasnost and the end of the Cold War weren't enough to make them give up a life of subterfuge, duplicity and other assorted dirty tricks - all done, of course, in the name of protecting their nations. Spies might be cashiered by their agencies, or they might retire on their own, but they can't give up the fight - and the game that easily.
This theme is at the heart of John le Carre's latest spy novel, Our Game. In a time when it's generally agreed that the Cold War thriller has run its course, le Carre returns to the arena - not so much to resume the game as to study the effects on its participants. Anyone familiar with the author's works knows he wasn't a fan of the Cold War itself, but Our Game makes it clear he remains drawn to the people involved. And so, in a real sense, this isn't a Cold War novel at all. It's a character study, as well as a thoughtful, generally satisfying thriller.
Protagonists Timothy Cranmer and Larry Pettifer addressed this issue in their days as Cold Warriors for British intelligence: Cranmer saw himself as the ultimate pragmatist, unencumbered by political ideology or concern about means justifying ends. Pettifer was the romantic rebel, a leftist who would attach himself seemingly to every cause that came along.
They were pals at Winchester School, then Oxford. Cranmer, three years older, found himself working as a spy. When it came time to recruit an agent, he turned to his old friend, and taught him everything he knew about the business. Pettifer soon became one of the best.
Their relationship was as complicated as it gets: mentor and teacher, but also friends. And rivals, too - rivals in love, and in their attempts to get a handle on life. Cranmer acknowledges the complexity of their relationship:
``. . . For all his breast-beating and moralising and supposed intellectual breadth, he took to spying like an addict. . . he was sly and vengeful and would steal your woman as soon as look at you; he was a natural for tradecraft and the black arts and that my sin was to promote the cheat in him above the dreamer, which is why he sometimes hated me a little more than I deserved.''
Pettifer became a top double agent, and through his duplicity with Russia's KGB, he discovered many important secrets for Britain. But he also became close to two of his KGB handlers, in particular Checheyev, and, as Our Game opens, it's apparent that they have continued their relationship. Checheyev is not an ethnic Russian but a Caucasian, whose Ingush people have fought the Russians for centuries. Ever the idealist, Pettifer is openly sympathetic to their cause.
Cranmer, who had retired to winemaking in Somerset County while Pettifer had taken a university teaching position, soon finds out that the two are involved in something mysterious and potentially deadly. When Cranmer is summoned to agency headquarters, he learns that Pettifer and Checheyev apparently stole 37 million pounds from the Russian treasury. It seems they had set up an import-export company in the now wide-open Russian marketplace.
Though Cranmer denies any knowledge of their actions, it's strongly implied that he's involved. And there's another factor. Emma, his live-in girlfriend, has taken off with Pettifer. All his life, Cranmer had closed himself off to love and to feelings in general. When he retired, he was smitten by the much-younger Emma. And now she and Pettifer are on the lam, hunted by the police and British intelligence.
The central questions - where are Pettifer, Checheyev and Emma, and what are they doing with the money? - drive the plot along, but what gives Our Game its resonance is le Carre's consideration of the morality involved. Pettifer often chides Cranmer for being so passive, so uninvolved; Cranmer sees his friend and rival as hopelessly naive and impetuous. But even Cranmer cannot remain indifferent to the Ingush's desperate struggle fto survive.
At times, Our Game is, for an author as subtle and oblique as le Carre, surprisingly clumsy. Cranmer can be awfully obtuse for a supposed spymaster - the vagaries of love aside - and using recovered diaries, letters and other paperwork to advance the plot is disturbing. Le Carre needed to reveal some of those details rather than dump them ingloriously in our laps.
But Our Game remains a strong and compassionate novel. Using Cranmer as the name for the protagonist is an obvious allusion to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who turned his head to many of King Henry VIII's transgressions, but later stood up to the monarch and was burned alive for his actions. Timothy Cranmer's struggle to resolve his own moral dilemmas is what Our Game is truly about. It's not enough to have survived the Cold War, we sense. Without beliefs and a moral core, a hollow man is a hollow man in any era. MEMO: Tim Warren is a writer who lives in Silver Spring, Md. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
John le Carre, author of ``Our Game.''
by CNB