Karla (fictional character)
Encyclopedia
Karla is a fictional character in several novels by John le Carré
. A Soviet Intelligence officer, he most often appears as a distant antagonist of George Smiley
. His real name is never revealed; instead he takes his codename, a woman's, from that of the first network he recruited.
His most prominent appearances are in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
, The Honourable Schoolboy
, and Smiley's People
, three novels which were later published as a single omnibus
edition entitled Smiley Versus Karla or The Quest for Karla in the US.
In the BBC
's television adaptations of both Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People, Karla is played by the British actor Patrick Stewart
. Karla is only seen briefly, in one scene in each production, and does not speak.
during a dinner when he sketches what little is known of Karla.
Among the rumours are: that his father was a professional intelligence officer first for the Czarist Okhrana and later for the Bolshevist
Cheka
(a considerable endorsement of his skills, if he was allowed to serve two such radically different regimes); that as a boy Karla worked as a kitchen boy on a train in occupied Siberia
during the Russo-Japanese War
of 1904-1905 (putting his birth somewhere in the late 19th century); and that he was trained in espionage by "Berg" (a possible reference to an alias used by Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov), which Smiley compares to "being taught music by... a great composer."
This much is rumour, but the first definite proof of Karla's activities came during the Spanish Civil War
, when he entered Franco
's fascist Spain posing as a White Russian
journalist (i.e., an anti-Communist Russian), and recruited a large number of German agents. The network was code-named "Karla", and the agent was later known only by that name. It was an outstanding achievement for such a young man, and would become characteristic of Karla.
He next appeared during the German invasion
of Russia, running networks of partisans
behind German lines. He discovered that his radio operator was a double agent for the Germans, and so fed him false information that caused the Germans massive confusion. According to one legend, at "Yelnya", Karla caused the Germans to shell their own forward line (presumably a reference to either the Yelnya Offensive
during the first Battle of Smolensk
, or the second Battle of Smolensk
).
During his years as a field agent, Karla traveled in several countries, recruiting agents who would later go on to be very highly placed in their respective national regimes. He traveled to England in 1936 and 1941, and recruited Bill Haydon
, code-named "Gerald", who eventually became the number-two man in the "Circus" (the British Secret Intelligence Service
); at another time he recruited Nelson Ko, a high-ranking technocrat in the People's Republic of China
(according to Connie Sachs
, Karla was one of the few Soviets to predict the souring of Sino-Soviet relations).
In 1948, Karla was caught up in one of Stalin
's random purges of the Soviet military and intelligence organizations, and sent to prison in Siberia
. His wife, a student from Leningrad
, killed herself. However, Karla served his time and returned to intelligence work, and the experience did nothing to dull his devotion to the Communist cause.
While setting up a network in California
, Karla was unexpectedly caught when his radio codes were broken, and he was arrested on his way back to Moscow in Delhi
. Smiley interviewed him there, trying to persuade him to defect. At the time, Karla was known only by his current workname, "Gerstmann", and no one had any idea he was the legendary figure Karla. Smiley felt that his case was ironclad: his superiors at Moscow Centre
were clearly looking to make him the scapegoat for the failure in California, and he was certainly facing execution. During his interview with Smiley, Karla never said a word, and when Smiley offered Karla his cigarette lighter, Karla took it away with him. Karla returned to Moscow, and somehow contrived to have his superiors dismissed and executed, and himself appointed in their place.
After being promoted away from active fieldwork, Karla sought to create his own independent apparatus inside Moscow Centre, believing that the servicing of his personal agents was too important a job to leave to others. After several years, he finally became senior enough to create this apparatus (named in Smiley's People
as the Thirteenth Directorate). He founded a special training camp outside Moscow and trained a selection of handpicked men (usually ex-military officers) to act as handlers of his various mole
s.
as the spymaster who recruited and controls "Gerald", the mysterious mole inside the Circus. By the time of that novel, Gerald has become the number-two man in the Circus, and Karla is using Gerald's handler, Alexei Polyakov, to feed the Circus fabricated intelligence that appears highly valuable. This allows the Circus (and, by proxy, Karla) to gain access to highly valuable intelligence from the American C.I.A.
, and also creates a perfect cover for Gerald's activities: Polyakov must pretend to his superiors that he is running a mole inside the Circus in order to meet with the Circus officials, so the Circus itself ignores and suppresses any indications that there is a mole – not realizing that there really is.
Smiley recounts what little he knows of Karla's history, including his interview with Karla in Dehli, and predicts that Karla is a "fanatic", and one day that fanaticism will be the end of him. After Smiley exposes the mole as Bill Haydon, Haydon reveals that Karla has directed all of his activities, including encouraging Haydon to cuckold Smiley by carrying on an affair his wife, Ann. He tells him that Karla regarded Smiley as the person most likely to uncover Haydon as the mole, and that the affair was calculated to cloud Smiley's judgement of Haydon and cast any accusations he may make as the vengeance of a wronged husband.
As he drives to break the news to Ann, George reflects that Haydon's self-justifying "confession" was an inadequate explanation for his reasons for becoming a traitor in the first place, and only Karla discerned what quality in Bill allowed him to be turned – in Smiley's words, only Karla saw "the last little doll
inside Bill Haydon."
that Haydon betrayed. Smiley, appointed temporary chief of the Circus, scrambles to contain the disaster and save who can be saved, but with only minimal success. This is the last indication of Karla's direct involvement in the events of the novel.
However, Smiley quickly takes the offensive. On the theory that Haydon's activities for the Circus were entirely directed by Karla, Smiley reasons that Haydon's record can lead them to other possible moles of Karla in other countries, who can yield valuable intelligence to restore the Circus's prestige. He is proven right, as evidence of Haydon's firm refusal to investigate a possible money laundering
operation in Laos
leads them to unmask and capture Nelson Ko, Karla's mole inside the People's Republic of China
. Karla does not appear to have a direct hand in protecting his mole; instead, the Circus's main opponent is Nelson's brother Drake, a powerful crime lord in Hong Kong
.
During his tenure as Chief, Smiley keeps a photograph of Karla on the wall in his office, seemingly as an object of obsession. It is an uncharacteristically symbolic and personal gesture for Smiley that unsettles his subordinates.
's atheist views). He hid his daughter for a while, and then decided to try to create a new identity for her to distance her from him. This caused Tatiana to suffer a mental breakdown, and to become schizophrenic.
Unable to get her proper treatment under the Soviet system, Karla used a set of amateur agents to find or create a false identity for Tatiana that would allow him to send her to Western Europe (as Alexandra Ostrakova, the daughter of an émigré family), to an adequate mental health clinic (ironically, as new Circus Chief Saul Enderby comments, Karla had trained his own handpicked agents to be both too smart and too fanatically devoted to his ideals to be trusted with carrying out his private scheme).
Because these agents are amateurs, they make several mistakes that allow Smiley to pick up on Karla's scheme. In desperation, Karla orders the assassination of several men, which only has the effect of galvanizing Smiley's investigation further. Finally, Smiley is able to gather damning proof of Karla's activities that will ensure his destruction by his rivals at Moscow Centre, and offers Karla a choice: defect to the West, or be destroyed. Knowing full well that his fall will be Tatiana's, Karla obeys.
In what is his only personal appearance in the novels (as opposed to being described by someone else), Karla crosses into West Berlin
and is taken into custody by Circus officers. As he leaves, he drops Ann's cigarette lighter on the ground, but Smiley feels no urge to pick it up. Smiley has won at last, but by a cruel irony, he and Karla have switched roles: Smiley has become the ruthless exploiter of Karla's vulnerability, while Karla has been defeated not through his fanaticism, but his love for his daughter.
, when Smiley tells a group of probationary intelligence officers that he was the one who debriefed Karla in captivity. Speaking in general about the nature of interrogations, Smiley says that sometimes they are "communions between damaged souls." The dating of Smiley's first encounter with Karla, in the jail in New Delhi, is unclear. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
, we are told that the interrogation took place in the fifties. But in Smiley's People
, Smiley recalls the meeting as having occurred in the sixties.
American Camel
cigarettes.
, the legendary former head of the East German foreign intelligence bureau; or KGB General Rem Krassilnikov
, whose obituary in the New York Times stated that his CIA opponents viewed him as a real-life Karla.
adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People, though he does not speak in either. He is played by Patrick Stewart
.
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
. A Soviet Intelligence officer, he most often appears as a distant antagonist of George Smiley
George Smiley
George Smiley is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is an intelligence officer working for MI6 , the British overseas intelligence agency...
. His real name is never revealed; instead he takes his codename, a woman's, from that of the first network he recruited.
His most prominent appearances are in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1974 British spy novel by John le Carré, featuring George Smiley. Smiley is a middle-aged, taciturn, perspicacious intelligence expert in forced retirement. He is recalled to hunt down a Soviet mole in the "Circus", the highest echelon of the Secret Intelligence...
, The Honourable Schoolboy
The Honourable Schoolboy
The Honourable Schoolboy is a spy novel by John le Carré. George Smiley tries to reconstruct an intelligence service and to run a successful offensive espionage operation to save the service from falling to the "war hawks" in government...
, and Smiley's People
Smiley's People
Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy...
, three novels which were later published as a single omnibus
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
edition entitled Smiley Versus Karla or The Quest for Karla in the US.
In the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's television adaptations of both Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People, Karla is played by the British actor Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart
Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...
. Karla is only seen briefly, in one scene in each production, and does not speak.
Character history
Much of Karla's history is unconfirmed rumour, as confessed by Smiley to his protégé Peter GuillamPeter Guillam
Peter Guillam is a fictional character in John le Carré's series of espionage novels. He first appears in Call for the Dead at which time he is working for the Ministry of Defence....
during a dinner when he sketches what little is known of Karla.
Among the rumours are: that his father was a professional intelligence officer first for the Czarist Okhrana and later for the Bolshevist
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
(a considerable endorsement of his skills, if he was allowed to serve two such radically different regimes); that as a boy Karla worked as a kitchen boy on a train in occupied Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
during the Russo-Japanese War
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
of 1904-1905 (putting his birth somewhere in the late 19th century); and that he was trained in espionage by "Berg" (a possible reference to an alias used by Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov), which Smiley compares to "being taught music by... a great composer."
This much is rumour, but the first definite proof of Karla's activities came during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, when he entered Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
's fascist Spain posing as a White Russian
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
journalist (i.e., an anti-Communist Russian), and recruited a large number of German agents. The network was code-named "Karla", and the agent was later known only by that name. It was an outstanding achievement for such a young man, and would become characteristic of Karla.
He next appeared during the German invasion
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
of Russia, running networks of partisans
Partisan (military)
A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity...
behind German lines. He discovered that his radio operator was a double agent for the Germans, and so fed him false information that caused the Germans massive confusion. According to one legend, at "Yelnya", Karla caused the Germans to shell their own forward line (presumably a reference to either the Yelnya Offensive
Yelnya Offensive
The Soviet Army's Yelnya Offensive operation was part of the Battle of Smolensk during the initial period of the German-Soviet War....
during the first Battle of Smolensk
Battle of Smolensk (1941)
The Battle of Smolensk was a largely successful encirclement operation by the German Army Group Centre's 2nd Panzer Group led by Heinz Guderian and the 3rd Panzer Group led by Hermann Hoth against parts of four Soviet Fronts during World War II...
, or the second Battle of Smolensk
Battle of Smolensk (1943)
The second Battle of Smolensk was a Soviet strategic offensive operation conducted by the Red Army as part of the Summer-Autumn Campaign of 1943...
).
During his years as a field agent, Karla traveled in several countries, recruiting agents who would later go on to be very highly placed in their respective national regimes. He traveled to England in 1936 and 1941, and recruited Bill Haydon
Bill Haydon
Bill Haydon is a fictional character created by John le Carré, and is a major figure in le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.-Biography:...
, code-named "Gerald", who eventually became the number-two man in the "Circus" (the British Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
); at another time he recruited Nelson Ko, a high-ranking technocrat in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
(according to Connie Sachs
Connie Sachs
Connie Sachs is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Sachs plays a key supporting role in le Carré's Karla Trilogy of spy novels including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People....
, Karla was one of the few Soviets to predict the souring of Sino-Soviet relations).
In 1948, Karla was caught up in one of Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's random purges of the Soviet military and intelligence organizations, and sent to prison in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. His wife, a student from Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
, killed herself. However, Karla served his time and returned to intelligence work, and the experience did nothing to dull his devotion to the Communist cause.
While setting up a network in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Karla was unexpectedly caught when his radio codes were broken, and he was arrested on his way back to Moscow in Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
. Smiley interviewed him there, trying to persuade him to defect. At the time, Karla was known only by his current workname, "Gerstmann", and no one had any idea he was the legendary figure Karla. Smiley felt that his case was ironclad: his superiors at Moscow Centre
Moscow Centre
Moscow Centre is a nickname used by John le Carré for the Moscow central headquarters of the KGB, especially those departments concerned with foreign espionage and counterintelligence...
were clearly looking to make him the scapegoat for the failure in California, and he was certainly facing execution. During his interview with Smiley, Karla never said a word, and when Smiley offered Karla his cigarette lighter, Karla took it away with him. Karla returned to Moscow, and somehow contrived to have his superiors dismissed and executed, and himself appointed in their place.
After being promoted away from active fieldwork, Karla sought to create his own independent apparatus inside Moscow Centre, believing that the servicing of his personal agents was too important a job to leave to others. After several years, he finally became senior enough to create this apparatus (named in Smiley's People
Smiley's People
Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy...
as the Thirteenth Directorate). He founded a special training camp outside Moscow and trained a selection of handpicked men (usually ex-military officers) to act as handlers of his various mole
Mole (espionage)
A mole is a spy who works for an enemy nation, but whose loyalty ostensibly lies with his own nation's government. In some usage, a mole differs from a defector in that a mole is a spy before gaining access to classified information, while a defector becomes a spy only after gaining access...
s.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Karla is first mentioned in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, SpyTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1974 British spy novel by John le Carré, featuring George Smiley. Smiley is a middle-aged, taciturn, perspicacious intelligence expert in forced retirement. He is recalled to hunt down a Soviet mole in the "Circus", the highest echelon of the Secret Intelligence...
as the spymaster who recruited and controls "Gerald", the mysterious mole inside the Circus. By the time of that novel, Gerald has become the number-two man in the Circus, and Karla is using Gerald's handler, Alexei Polyakov, to feed the Circus fabricated intelligence that appears highly valuable. This allows the Circus (and, by proxy, Karla) to gain access to highly valuable intelligence from the American C.I.A.
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
, and also creates a perfect cover for Gerald's activities: Polyakov must pretend to his superiors that he is running a mole inside the Circus in order to meet with the Circus officials, so the Circus itself ignores and suppresses any indications that there is a mole – not realizing that there really is.
Smiley recounts what little he knows of Karla's history, including his interview with Karla in Dehli, and predicts that Karla is a "fanatic", and one day that fanaticism will be the end of him. After Smiley exposes the mole as Bill Haydon, Haydon reveals that Karla has directed all of his activities, including encouraging Haydon to cuckold Smiley by carrying on an affair his wife, Ann. He tells him that Karla regarded Smiley as the person most likely to uncover Haydon as the mole, and that the affair was calculated to cloud Smiley's judgement of Haydon and cast any accusations he may make as the vengeance of a wronged husband.
As he drives to break the news to Ann, George reflects that Haydon's self-justifying "confession" was an inadequate explanation for his reasons for becoming a traitor in the first place, and only Karla discerned what quality in Bill allowed him to be turned – in Smiley's words, only Karla saw "the last little doll
Matryoshka doll
A matryoshka doll is a Russian nesting doll which is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. The first Russian nested doll set was carved in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter at Abramtsevo...
inside Bill Haydon."
The Honourable Schoolboy
In the aftermath of Haydon's exposure, Karla moves ruthlessly to arrest and execute those Circus agents behind the Iron CurtainIron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
that Haydon betrayed. Smiley, appointed temporary chief of the Circus, scrambles to contain the disaster and save who can be saved, but with only minimal success. This is the last indication of Karla's direct involvement in the events of the novel.
However, Smiley quickly takes the offensive. On the theory that Haydon's activities for the Circus were entirely directed by Karla, Smiley reasons that Haydon's record can lead them to other possible moles of Karla in other countries, who can yield valuable intelligence to restore the Circus's prestige. He is proven right, as evidence of Haydon's firm refusal to investigate a possible money laundering
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
operation in Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
leads them to unmask and capture Nelson Ko, Karla's mole inside the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. Karla does not appear to have a direct hand in protecting his mole; instead, the Circus's main opponent is Nelson's brother Drake, a powerful crime lord in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
.
During his tenure as Chief, Smiley keeps a photograph of Karla on the wall in his office, seemingly as an object of obsession. It is an uncharacteristically symbolic and personal gesture for Smiley that unsettles his subordinates.
Smiley's People
In Smiley's People, it is revealed that Karla has a young daughter, Tatiana, by a mistress of his during the Great Patriotic War. His mistress was German, and in his daughter's incoherent memory, Karla had her killed after he overheard her praying (contrary to CommunismCommunism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
's atheist views). He hid his daughter for a while, and then decided to try to create a new identity for her to distance her from him. This caused Tatiana to suffer a mental breakdown, and to become schizophrenic.
Unable to get her proper treatment under the Soviet system, Karla used a set of amateur agents to find or create a false identity for Tatiana that would allow him to send her to Western Europe (as Alexandra Ostrakova, the daughter of an émigré family), to an adequate mental health clinic (ironically, as new Circus Chief Saul Enderby comments, Karla had trained his own handpicked agents to be both too smart and too fanatically devoted to his ideals to be trusted with carrying out his private scheme).
Because these agents are amateurs, they make several mistakes that allow Smiley to pick up on Karla's scheme. In desperation, Karla orders the assassination of several men, which only has the effect of galvanizing Smiley's investigation further. Finally, Smiley is able to gather damning proof of Karla's activities that will ensure his destruction by his rivals at Moscow Centre, and offers Karla a choice: defect to the West, or be destroyed. Knowing full well that his fall will be Tatiana's, Karla obeys.
In what is his only personal appearance in the novels (as opposed to being described by someone else), Karla crosses into West Berlin
West Berlin
West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...
and is taken into custody by Circus officers. As he leaves, he drops Ann's cigarette lighter on the ground, but Smiley feels no urge to pick it up. Smiley has won at last, but by a cruel irony, he and Karla have switched roles: Smiley has become the ruthless exploiter of Karla's vulnerability, while Karla has been defeated not through his fanaticism, but his love for his daughter.
Other
Karla does not appear again in le Carré's novels, except a brief mention in The Secret PilgrimThe Secret Pilgrim
The Secret Pilgrim is a 1990 novel, set within the frame narrative of a series of lectures by John le Carré's George Smiley, famous only within the 'Circus'. The memoirs, narrated by Ned, a former pupil of Smiley's, are, except for the last, triggered by tangential Smiley comments in lectures given...
, when Smiley tells a group of probationary intelligence officers that he was the one who debriefed Karla in captivity. Speaking in general about the nature of interrogations, Smiley says that sometimes they are "communions between damaged souls." The dating of Smiley's first encounter with Karla, in the jail in New Delhi, is unclear. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1974 British spy novel by John le Carré, featuring George Smiley. Smiley is a middle-aged, taciturn, perspicacious intelligence expert in forced retirement. He is recalled to hunt down a Soviet mole in the "Circus", the highest echelon of the Secret Intelligence...
, we are told that the interrogation took place in the fifties. But in Smiley's People
Smiley's People
Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy...
, Smiley recalls the meeting as having occurred in the sixties.
Appearance and Identity
Karla is described as a small, spare man in middle age with an extraordinary composure and ascetic habits. Both Smiley and one of his hapless subjects say that in person he reminds one of a priest. His most identifiable characteristic is his habit of chain smokingChain smoking
Chain smoking is the practice of lighting a new cigarette for personal consumption immediately after one that is finished, sometimes using the finished cigarette to light the next one. It is a common form of addiction.-Causes:...
American Camel
Camel (cigarette)
Camel is a brand of cigarettes that was introduced by American company R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in the summer of 1913. Most current Camel cigarettes contain a blend of Turkish tobacco and Virginia tobacco. Early in 2008 the blend was changed as was the package design.-History:In 1913, R.J...
cigarettes.
Real-life Influences
Several real-life intelligence figures have been postulated as models for Karla, including General Markus WolfMarkus Wolf
Markus Johannes "Mischa" Wolf was head of the General Intelligence Administration , the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security . He was the MfS's number two for 34 years, which spanned most of the Cold War...
, the legendary former head of the East German foreign intelligence bureau; or KGB General Rem Krassilnikov
Rem Krassilnikov
Major General Rem Krassilnikov, was a counter-intelligence officer of the Soviet Union's State Security Committee .His first name was taken from the Russian phrase Revolutsky Mir...
, whose obituary in the New York Times stated that his CIA opponents viewed him as a real-life Karla.
On television
Karla appears briefly in the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People, though he does not speak in either. He is played by Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart
Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...
.