Smiley's People characters

Appears from the start

The head of Moscow Centre's special directorate, the Soviet officer who ran the agent that destroyed the Circus and who has been Smiley's opponent for twenty years. He is known to the British only by a work name, a photograph and a career reconstructed from fragments: ascetic, unbribable, and safe from the ordinary levers because he appears to want nothing for himself. Smiley met him once, years ago, in an Indian jail, tried to turn him and failed, and gave him a cigarette lighter belonging to his wife.

Appears from the start

A Russian emigree living in modest circumstances in Paris, ageing, unwell and alone, who left the Soviet Union many years ago and had to leave a daughter behind. She is approached in a cafe by a Soviet official who offers, on conditions, to have the girl allowed out to join her. Suspicious of the offer and of the papers she is asked to sign, she writes for advice to the leader of an emigre organisation she trusted long ago.

Appears from the start

The Soviet official who approaches Ostrakova in Paris: nominally a trade or embassy functionary, effusive, sweating and oddly clumsy for a man on such an errand. He talks a great deal more than his business requires.

First appears in chapter 2

An elderly Estonian, once a soldier and a Soviet officer and for decades afterwards the leader of a Baltic emigre group in London, run for years as a Circus agent and then dropped when the service reorganised. Poor, proud and still observing the tradecraft he was taught, he telephones his old service demanding to speak to the case officer he knew by a work name, insists on meeting under Moscow rules, and says he has something that concerns them all.

First appears in chapter 4

Long retired from the Circus, living alone in Chelsea and sorting his papers, still married in name to Ann and still without her. He is fetched out at night to deal with the death of a former agent, on the understanding that his job is to tidy the matter away quietly. He is old, tired and out of practice, and the one man who understands what the dead man was trying to say.

First appears in chapter 4

Smiley's wife, absent, living elsewhere with someone else, and still the fixed point of his private life. Her cigarette lighter and her infidelities both belong to the history that binds Smiley to his opponent.

First appears in chapter 5

The Cabinet Office official responsible for the intelligence services, anxious above all that an emigre killing in London should not become a political embarrassment. He wants the affair closed with a minimum of enquiry and turns to Smiley because Smiley can be disowned.

First appears in chapter 5

A senior Circus administrator of the present regime, protective of procedure, budgets and his own position, who treats the dead man as an obsolete liability and Smiley as an awkwardness to be managed.

First appears in chapter 5

A very young Circus duty officer who took the old man's telephone call and, having been taught nothing about the people the service used to run, handled it by the book. He is shaken by what followed and tells Smiley more than he is supposed to.

First appears in chapter 7

An Estonian exile who runs a Baltic emigre library and club in London, once the General's deputy and now the keeper of his organisation's dwindling affairs. Talkative, aggrieved and a considerable chess player, he gives his own version of the old man's last weeks.

First appears in chapter 8

A young Estonian lorry driver on the continental routes, the son of one of the General's old comrades, who ran errands for the old man out of family loyalty and without understanding what he was carrying. He is frightened and wants nothing more to do with any of it.

First appears in chapter 10

The Circus's former Soviet researcher, now seriously ill and living in the Norfolk countryside with her companion and her dogs, drinking and remembering. Her memory for Moscow Centre's people and their careers is still complete, and she has never stopped following the career of one officer in particular.

First appears in chapter 10

A stateless adventurer of Baltic origin, sometime prisoner, confidence man and agent for several services, who worked with the General for years. Charming, unreliable and physically brave, he lives in Hamburg and has been chasing a particular Soviet official for reasons of his own.

First appears in chapter 12

A former Circus officer, now dealing in pictures in the West End under an assumed name and a foreign accent. Hungarian, adaptable and expert in surveillance and safe houses, he owes Smiley his freedom from prosecution and comes back to run a team for him without asking what the operation is for.

First appears in chapter 14

A Hamburg nightclub proprietor and old associate of Otto Leipzig, discreet, businesslike and loyal to his friend. He keeps what Leipzig left with him and will hand it over only on the right terms.

First appears in chapter 20

The commercial counsellor at the Soviet embassy in Bern, a pedantic, henpecked official with an academic manner, a wife who watches him and a mistress among the embassy staff. He performs, under orders from Moscow, a private duty outside all normal embassy business, and he is very frightened of it.

First appears in chapter 20

A young Russian woman in a private Swiss clinic, disturbed, articulate and intermittently violent, held under a name and a nationality that are not hers. She does not know who is paying for her, and the accounts she gives of her own history contradict one another.