A Most Wanted Man
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 1416594892
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From the “literary master for a generation” (The London Observer) comes a fiercely com- pelling and current novel set in Hamburg that plays to all of le Carré’s trademark strengths— Germany, rival intelligence operations, and sympathetic protagonists who discover a taste for moral integrity.
A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.
Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client’s survival becomes more important to her than her own career—or safety.
In pursuit of Issa’s mysterious past, she confronts the incon- gruous Tommy Brue, the sixty- year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.
Annabel, Issa, and Brue form an unlikely alliance—and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the so-called War on Terror, the spies of three nations converge upon the innocents.
Poignant, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man
is alive with humor, yet prickles with tension until the last heart-stopping page. It is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.
freer and taller himself. He had arrived early, but Lantern and his two boys had arrived earlier and were seated like three middle executives between Brue’s corner and the swing doors, presumably to head him off in case he made a dash for it with Issa’s passport. Across the aisle and short of the entrance to the grill room sat the two women who had hurried to Annabel’s aid at Louise’s restaurant. They looked ready to do it again: unsmiling and methodical as they engaged in unconvincing dialogue
caused both groups of watchers to abandon all pretense of doing anything except watch them. “Or are there variants on your side of the house?” he went on breezily. “Vital to compare versions with these people, I find. They’re not what we might call overburdened with truthfulness. Here’s how they described it to me. You bring our client to the bank, he makes his dispositions and is then taken—directly, I am assured—to an establishment of which I am not permitted to know the address, where he will
consensus order from a committee that was at war with itself and lived in a capsule where the smell of warm blood never entered? His gaze returned sharply to Niki. A black, incongruously old-fashioned telephone that sat on a ledge above the screens was ringing out its homely tone. Niki’s features didn’t flicker. She didn’t raise her eyebrows to him in question, or exhort him or join him in his hesitation. She let the phone go on ringing out, and waited for a sign from him. Bachmann nodded to
by-your-leave from him, had put a full-scale watch on the Oktays’ house. Mohr had invited the Hamburg police public relations department to make a so-called goodwill visit on the off chance of getting a sight of the mysterious houseguest. Mohr was an offense against every known tenet of intelligence good housekeeping, but Mohr also had loot from his rampage. OPERATION FELIX Report Number Four, relating to the night of Friday, 18 April. “At approximately 20.40 hours the subject Melik Oktay
fond of British bankers operating black bank accounts on their patch,” Lantern suggested, with a pretty lift of his young eyebrows. In the taxi, Brue checked his mobile, then called Frau Ellenberger. No, not a word from her, Herr Tommy. Not on your direct line either. There was a place, a precious place, open to the general public yet private to himself, that Brue repaired to when his life became oppressive. It was a small museum dedicated to the work of Ernst Barlach, sculptor. Brue was no