The Little Drummer Girl: A Novel
Language: English
Pages: 560
ISBN: 0143119745
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Delicate Truth and Our Kind of Traitor is soon to be a major motion picture starring Ewan McGregor
The Pigeon Tunnel, John le Carré's first work of non-fiction, will be available from Viking in September 2016
"You want to catch the lion, first you tether the goat."
On holiday in Mykonos, Charlie wants only sunny days and a brief escape from England’s bourgeois dreariness. Then a handsome stranger lures the aspiring actress away from her pals—but his intentions are far from romantic. Joseph is an Israeli intelligence officer, and Charlie has been wooed to flush out the leader of a Palestinian terrorist group responsible for a string of deadly bombings. Still uncertain of her own allegiances, she debuts in the role of a lifetime as a double agent in the “theatre of the real.”
Haunting and deeply atmospheric, John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl is a virtuoso performance and a powerful examination of morality and justice.
With an introduction by the author.
his dyspeptic gaze. “It is,” he said thoughtfully. “It is. Go to the top of the class, Mr. Raphael.” Kurtz’s third photograph—or, as Litvak later irreverently called it, his third card in the trick—had been so beautifully forged that even the best guess of Tel Aviv’s aerial reconnaissance experts had failed to pick it out from the bunch that they had been invited to inspect. It showed Charlie and Becker approaching the Mercedes in the forecourt of the Delphi hotel on the morning of their
her window, Charlie tapped on it and gave her a cheery wave hullo. How she did that, where she got the wit from, she would never know. She kept going, but no footsteps or furious voices came after her, no car screeched alongside. She reached the main road, and somewhere along the way she pulled on one leather glove, which was what Joseph had told her to do if and when they flushed her. She saw a free cab and hailed it. Well then, she thought cheerfully, here we all are. It was only much, much
bathing cap and little else. But Joseph, they now declared, was to be so named for his Semitic looks and for the striped coat of many colours that he wore over his black trunks when he strode to their beach, or left it. Joseph also for his standoffish attitude to fellow mortals and his look of being the chosen one to the detriment of others not so favoured. Joseph the despised of his brethren, aloof with his water-bottle and his book. From her place at the table, Charlie looked on grimly as
got hurt.” “Jesus,” said Litvak, and glanced at Kurtz, whose questioning now acquired the resonance of a courtroom soap opera: “Ned, you indicated just now that Charlie was maybe softening somewhat in her convictions. Is that what you are saying?” “Yes, I think so. If her convictions were ever very hard, that is. It’s only an impression, but old Marjory thinks so too. Sure of it—” “Has Charlie confided such a change of heart to you, Ned?” Kurtz interrupted, rather sharp. “I just think that
decides to speak to you,” Joseph resumed, with a swift, measuring glance at her. “In a soft and appealing foreign accent, part French, part something else, he addresses you without shyness or inhibition. He is not interested in arguments, he says, you are everything he has ever dreamed of, he wishes to become your lover, preferably tonight, and he calls you Joan although you tell him you are Charlie. If you will go out with him to dinner, and after dinner you still do not want him any more, he