Word: laconic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...longtime adversary in Moscow. Publicly accepting the injunction of superiors, Smiley decides to do a little freelance investigation. On the scent from London to Germany he encounters a brilliant cast of characters from previous enterprises: Connie, the sapphic Soviet expert whom the Circus has dubbed Mother Russia; Oliver Lacon, the icy intelligence chief whose marital distress parallels Smiley's; the estranged Ann, still Mrs. Smi ley, and still destructive; and, ultimately, Karla himself...
...reason for doing nothing. He had watched Whitehall's skirts go up, and come down again, her belts being tightened, loosened, tightened. He had been the witness, or victim-or even reluctant prophet-of such spurious cults as lateralism, parallelism, separatism, operational devolution, and now, if he remembered Lacon's most recent meanderings correctly, of integration. Each new fashion had been hailed as a panacea: 'Now we shall vanquish, now the machine will work!' Each had gone out with a whimper, leaving behind it the familiar English muddle, of which, more and more, in retrospect...