The Honourable Schoolboy recap

After the exposure of a Soviet mole at the top of the Circus, George Smiley takes over a ruined service and rebuilds it by working backwards through the files: what the traitor suppressed must be what Moscow wanted protected. Connie Sachs and Doc di Salis uncover a Soviet payments channel running through Vientiane into a Hong Kong trust account for Drake Ko, a shipping magnate and pillar of the colony. Jerry Westerby, journalist and part-time Circus hand, is sent to Hong Kong under press cover to shake the tree. He blackmails a bank official, who is then tortured and killed; traces Ko's failed attempt to fly a man out of China; and follows the trail through the pilots Charlie Marshall and Ricardo, and through Ko's mistress Lizzie Worthington, with whom he falls in love. The prize proves to be Drake's brother Nelson, a senior Chinese official who has served Moscow for years and whom Drake has been trying to bring out. As the pick-up is arranged, Whitehall and the Americans take the operation over. Jerry disobeys his orders to protect Lizzie and is shot dead by his own side; the Americans take Nelson, and Smiley loses the Circus.

Previously: the Circus, Britain's secret intelligence service, was penetrated for decades by Bill Haydon, its most admired officer, who had been recruited and run by Karla, the head of Moscow Centre's special directorate. Haydon betrayed every network the service ran, engineered the fall of the old chief, Control, and gave away the operation that left the field officer Jim Prideaux shot and imprisoned. George Smiley, pushed out of the service after Control's fall, was brought back by the Cabinet Office to identify the traitor, reconstructed the whole history from the outside with the help of Peter Guillam, the researcher Connie Sachs and the retired policeman Mendel, and trapped Haydon at the safe house where he met his Soviet controller. Haydon, who had conducted an affair with Smiley's wife Ann on Karla's instructions, was arrested and then killed at the service's training establishment before he could be exchanged. The Circus was left without networks, allies or credibility, and Smiley, the last untainted senior officer, was asked to take charge of the wreckage.

In Hong Kong the foreign press corps, among them the old Australian hand Craw, marks the collapse of British intelligence in the colony after the scandal in London. In England, Smiley presides over a Circus stripped of staff, money and standing, working out of a half-empty building with Peter Guillam, Connie Sachs and the China specialist Doc di Salis. His method is to work backwards: since the traitor destroyed or buried whatever would have damaged Moscow, the gaps in the files are a map. Connie and di Salis dig through the wreckage of the archive and find a channel of Soviet money moving through a bank in Vientiane and into a trust account in Hong Kong, an operation Haydon had taken pains to bury. The beneficiary is Drake Ko, a wealthy Hong Kong shipping magnate, philanthropist and racehorse owner, and a considerable figure in the colony's establishment. Smiley recalls Jerry Westerby, a journalist who has done occasional field work for the Circus for years, from Tuscany, and prepares to put him into Hong Kong under press cover.

Jerry arrives in Hong Kong, resumes his life as a correspondent and is run by Craw. With no resources for a proper operation, Smiley's plan is to shake the tree: to touch Ko's money where it will be noticed, and watch what moves. Jerry blackmails Frost, an official of the trustee company, into showing him the account, and learns that the Soviet payments have been accumulating for years for a beneficiary other than Ko himself. Shortly afterwards Frost is tortured and killed, which tells the Circus how important the secret is and leaves Jerry with the knowledge that he caused it. In London the Circus's dependence becomes the real problem: Lacon controls the money, the Foreign Office figure Saul Enderby takes a proprietary interest, and the American service under Martello has the aircraft, the listening posts and the funds that Smiley does not. Cooperation is agreed on terms nobody spells out.

Jerry follows Ko's history and his people, among them his manager and enforcer Tiu. The Vientiane end of the money leads to a small air charter company and to an operation some years earlier in which a pilot was paid a great deal to fly north into Chinese airspace on a mission he was not told the purpose of. The pilot was Ricardo, officially reported dead in a crash. Jerry establishes that Ricardo did not die: he ran, and Ko allowed the story to stand. The woman who connects the pilots to Ko is an Englishwoman living in Hong Kong under an assumed name, Lizzie Worthington, once married to a London schoolteacher and later attached to Ricardo, and now Ko's mistress. In London the operation is written up as the Circus's route back to respectability, and the Americans are brought further in.

Jerry meets Lizzie and finds a woman who has invented and discarded several versions of herself and is watched constantly by Ko's people. He becomes attached to her, which is precisely what his instructions do not allow. Sent up-country, he works through the surviving members of the old Indochina air trade and reaches Charlie Marshall, an opium-dependent pilot in a besieged town, who is terrified of what he knows. Under pressure, and out of loyalty to his friend, Marshall gives Jerry the shape of the thing: the flight Ricardo was paid for was an attempt to bring a man out of China, and the man matters more to Ko than his fortune does. Jerry's reports to London begin to be edited by the distance between what he is finding and what Whitehall wants the operation to be.

Jerry finds Ricardo alive in hiding, boastful and dangerous, and gets from him the last of the story: he took Ko's money, lost his nerve over Chinese territory, dumped his cargo and disappeared, and Ko let him live on condition that he stayed dead. The purpose of the flight, and of the Soviet money accumulating in Hong Kong, was to bring one particular man out of China: somebody Ko has spent years and a great deal of money trying to reach, and who matters to him more than his business or his reputation does. In London, Smiley and Connie work at the last piece of the identification, while Jerry's attachment to Lizzie puts him steadily further out of step with his instructions. Word comes that the crossing is at last to be attempted, and the Circus, the Americans and Whitehall all prepare to be present.

The man Ko has been buying is his younger brother Nelson, separated from him in childhood and left behind on the mainland, trained in the Soviet Union and risen to a senior position in Chinese naval and industrial administration, where he has supplied Moscow with intelligence for twenty years. He is Karla's agent inside China, and the money accumulating in Hong Kong is what Moscow pays for him. Nelson is brought out by boat to a Hong Kong island, and the reception is taken over by the Americans, with Enderby and Martello having already settled in London who will keep the prize. Jerry, ordered home and unable to leave Lizzie to Ko's people or to the Circus's arrangements, comes to the island and interferes with the pick-up; he is shot dead by his own side. Nelson is flown away by the Americans, and with him goes the greatest intelligence catch of Smiley's career, credited to other men. Drake Ko loses his brother, Lizzie survives, and Karla loses an agent he had run for twenty years. In London the operation is presented as a triumph of cooperation and Smiley's part in it is quietly reduced. Enderby takes over the Circus, Sam Collins is rewarded, Guillam is posted abroad, and Smiley, who found Nelson and paid for him with Frost's life and Jerry's, is retired without ceremony.

Nelson Ko is brought out of China by boat to a Hong Kong island, where the Circus and the Americans are waiting for him. The prize is enormous: a Soviet-run source inside the Chinese establishment, and with him everything Karla has been buying for years. It is also too big for a bankrupt British service to keep. Enderby and Martello have already settled the matter in London: the Americans take Nelson and the credit, and Enderby takes the Circus. Jerry, sent to the island against his own intentions, tries at the last to get Lizzie and Drake Ko clear and interferes with the pick-up. He is shot dead by his own side, and Nelson is flown away by the Americans. Drake Ko is left with his brother taken and his protection gone, and Lizzie survives without either of the men who used her. In London the operation is written up as a triumph in which Smiley's part is quietly minimised: he is eased out of the chief's chair, Enderby succeeds him, Sam Collins is rewarded, and Guillam is posted abroad. Karla has lost a great agent, but the men who profit are not the ones who found him, and Smiley leaves the Circus with nothing.