Le Carre shows espionage at its best and worst in this novel, new to Penguin Modern Classics

When the Department - faded since the war and busy only with bureaucratic battles - hears rumour of a missile base near the West German border, it seems like the perfect opportunity to regain some political standing in the Intelligence market place. The Cold War is at its height and the Department is dying for a piece of the action.

Swiftly becoming carried away by fear and pride, the Department and her officers send deactivated agent Fred Leiser back into East Germany, armed only with some schoolboy training and his memories of the war.

In the land of eloquent silence that is Communist East Germany, Leiser's fate becomes inseparable from the Department's.