The Looking Glass War recap

The Department, a British military intelligence organisation that has been decaying since the war, receives a report of Soviet missiles being moved near Kalkstadt in East Germany. Its Director, Leclerc, seizes on it as the operation that will restore the Department's standing. A courier, Taylor, is sent to Finland to collect film from an airline pilot and is killed on an icy road; the young aide sent to recover his effects, John Avery, bungles the trip completely. Undeterred, the Department revives its wartime methods and recruits Fred Leiser, a Polish agent it ran twenty years earlier and has not contacted since, now a garage owner in England. Trained in an Oxford house on obsolete wireless procedure and flattered into believing he is wanted, Leiser is sent across the border, killing a young sentry on the way. His transmissions are too slow and too long, and East German direction-finding locates him at once. At the last, Control and Smiley of the rival Circus close the operation down, having lent their help precisely so that the Department would ruin itself. Leiser is abandoned inside East Germany, and the men who sent him go home.

On a freezing northern airfield, Taylor, a courier for a British intelligence organisation known only as the Department, waits for a delayed flight. He is there to take delivery of a roll of film from Lansen, a civil airline pilot who has been paid to divert his route over a restricted area of East Germany and photograph what is on the ground. The handover is clumsy: Taylor has been drinking, the arrangements are amateurish, and the pilot is frightened and wants out. Carrying the film, Taylor walks out into the dark towards his hotel and is struck and killed by a car on the icy road. The film is not recovered. What was meant to be the Department's first real operation in years has cost a man's life in its opening hours and produced nothing.

In London the Department is revealed as a shabby remnant. Once a substantial wartime military intelligence organisation, it has shrunk to a few rooms, a dwindling staff and work nobody values, overshadowed by the better-funded civilian service, the Circus. Its Director, Leclerc, lives on memories of what the Department did in the war and treats the present crisis as its restoration. The cause of it all is a refugee report and a photograph suggesting Soviet rockets are being moved to Kalkstadt in East Germany, near the border. Around Leclerc are Haldane, the clever, ailing head of research, who despises the illusions but is drawn back into operational work, and Woodford, who is loud about the old days. Leclerc's young assistant John Avery, restless in an unhappy marriage and unsure what he is for, is delighted to be given his first real job: to fly north under a false name and recover Taylor's body and effects.

Avery's trip is a failure at every level. His cover name does not match his papers, the consul and the police are unhelpful, the hotel and the dead man's belongings are already picked over, and he finds nothing of the film. He is frightened, out of his depth and obliged to improvise lies he has not been taught to tell. The Circus, approached for help, provides it with a courtesy that costs it nothing. Avery comes home with the sense of having been tested and found wanting, and the Department greets him as a returning hero because it needs to. His wife Sarah, told nothing and asked to accept everything, is nearer to leaving him. Leclerc, so far from being deterred by two failures, concludes that the only remaining course is to put an agent on the ground inside East Germany.

Leclerc obtains Ministry approval and the Circus agrees, with unexpected readiness, to provide facilities. The Department goes to its wartime files and finds Fred Leiser, a Pole it ran as an agent twenty years ago, now naturalised, running a garage in the south of England and long forgotten by the service he risked his life for. Flattered by the approach and hungry to be one of them again, he agrees. He is installed in a rented house near Oxford and trained by Haldane, Avery and the old wireless instructor Johnson, using the procedures, codes and equipment of the last war because that is what the Department still knows. The set is heavy and slow, the schedules are inflexible, and none of it has been revised for twenty years of Soviet direction-finding. Avery, told to keep close to him, becomes genuinely attached, and lies to him steadily about how much the Department can protect him.

Training ends with Leiser fitter, better dressed and wholly convinced of his own importance, and with the men running him privately aware of how poor his chances are. Haldane says so; Leclerc does not listen. The party moves to Lübeck to set up a base station, and Leiser is taken to the border and put across at night. On the crossing he is challenged by a young East German frontier sentry and kills him with a knife, which shakes him badly and leaves a body that will be found. Inside, he makes his way towards Kalkstadt, stealing a motorcycle and living on nerve, and begins to transmit. The schedules are long, the procedure is obsolete, and he is on the air far past any safe limit. In Lübeck the operators take his signals, and the East German search for the source begins almost immediately.

Leiser reaches Kalkstadt, finds shelter with a young woman and continues to transmit at length from her room while the direction-finders converge. Whatever he has seen is never confirmed, and the Department's certainty about the missiles is never substantiated. At the base, Control and Smiley arrive from the Circus and end the operation: the facilities, the cover and the protection are withdrawn, and everyone is to go home. The Circus had assisted from the beginning in the expectation that the Department would destroy itself, and does not pretend otherwise. Leclerc, still speaking of the Ministry and the next phase, accepts the closure without appearing to understand what has happened to him. Haldane retreats into contempt. Avery, who promised Leiser that he would never be left, breaks down. Leiser goes on transmitting inside East Germany, hunted, with nobody listening and no way home, and the Department packs its equipment and leaves.

Leiser's transmissions, sent on wartime procedure from a set that is far too slow, are located by East German direction-finding almost as soon as he begins. He kills again in the course of the run, moves to a room in Kalkstadt and goes on transmitting, and the search closes on him while the Department listens. Whatever he saw at the missile site is never established, and it ceases to matter. At the Lübeck base, Control and Smiley arrive to shut the operation down: the Circus withdraws its facilities, the cover arrangements and the diplomatic protection, and the Department is instructed to leave. It becomes plain that the Circus lent its help knowing what would happen, content to let a rival destroy itself with an operation the Circus never believed in. Leclerc, still talking about the Ministry and about the next stage of the operation, accepts the closure without appearing to understand it and prepares to report a success. Haldane, who expected nothing else, retreats behind his contempt. Avery, who promised Leiser that he would not be abandoned, breaks down. Leiser is left transmitting inside East Germany with no one listening and no way out, and the men who sent him fly home.