Being a good Muslim, Issa wants nothing to do with the wages of sin that his depraved father earned. He is willing to concede that if he wants to fulfill his desire of becoming a doctor he needs to stay in Germany and have the wherewithal to attend medical school. The rest of the money though must be donated to Muslim charities devoted to doing good works with special attention given to his half brothers and sisters in Chechnya. Gunther has just the person in mind to be the one to be the recipient of Issa's largess, and if all goes according to plan, the good and moderate Muslim, Dr. Abdullah, will distribute the money. Ninety-five percent will go to legitimate charities, but the five per cent that ends up in terrorist hands will provide the leverage he requires to turn Abdullah into the double agent who will provide Germany with advance warning of any and all future plots.
For those not used to a John Le Carre novel it may come as something of a shock to read an espionage novel flagrantly critical of intelligence services the world over. Although we find ourselves cheering on Gunther Bachmann as he struggles to sell his plan to his bosses and out-manoeuvre not only the American and British intelligence services that want a piece of the action, but rival departments in Germany's intelligence service, it's only because he's the lesser of all the evils involved. Issa's a terrorist, says one; he's a hapless fool, replies Gunther. Lock him and Dr. Abdullah up under the lights and see what happens, say the police; run Abdullah as a double agent and we will have all the answers you want and more, says Gunther.
But Gunther has no qualms about using Tommy and Annabelle to push Issa, and promises them anything they want even if he doubts that his promises are any good. If there are any innocents in this book, Tommy and Annabelle are them, but they are both turned into double agents against themselves and must figure out how to ensure they don't betray Issa into the bargain. As they deal with the morality of their choices, and their limited options, they are forced to look deeper into themselves than ever before in their lifetimes. Le Carre has done his usual masterful job of creating characters who have spent their lives hiding behind carefully constructed public faces and are finally forced to deal with the cracking of their facades.
Article comments
1 - Fred
As a long-time fan of Le Carré, "A Most Wanted Man" was a looked-forward to reading. In general it lived up to expectation, although Le Carré's cynicism is a little too obvious, and his "Intelligence" characters largely caricatures. One annoyance of the edition I read was that it was published in the US (a large print edition by Center Point) and translated, for some odd reason, into US English. No big deal, except that one of the British intelligence operatives has a business card with US spellings (an unlikely scenario from the very British Le Carré ).