have come back into the service of the Circus as the top aide to Control, Maston's mysterious successor as the Circus' chief. It's revealed that, following the events of Call for the Dead, Smiley and Guillam succeeded in turning Mundt, the sole survivor of the spy ring, into a British double agent, and sent him back to East Germany. Fearing that Mundt's cover is about to be blown, Smiley and Control manipulate agent Alec Leamas into posing as a defector and sending him to Germany under the assumption that he is going to orchestrate Mundt's death. Along the way, Smiley learns that Leamas blew his own cover to his girlfriend, a nineteen-year-old communist sympathiser named Liz Gold, and arranges to incorporate her into the plot. Although Liz's unwitting role ultimately ensures the mission's success, it also results in her death, prompting a grief-stricken Leamas to give up and let himself be shot dead at the Berlin Wall as Smiley attempts to extricate him. Smiley plays a small but pivotal role in The Looking Glass War, le Carré's fourth novel, occupying the "North European desk" at the Circus. He appears sporadically throughout the book as a liaison to The Department, a military intelligence agency, which attempts to surreptitiously conduct a dangerous and unnecessary operation without the Circus' knowledge. Smiley's appearance here is notable in that War is the only book of the series to depict his and Control's personal relationship in great detail. The climax of the novel bears witness to Smiley's ruthlessness, as he is dispatched by the Circus to end the Department's operation and force the abandonment of a Department employee to ameliorate the damage they have caused. Smiley does not appear in either of le Carré's next two works, only one of which dealt with espionage. Prior to the Karla trilogy Several years pass between Smiley's appearance in The Looking Glass War, set circa 1964, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which takes place in 1973. During this period, Smiley's position in the Circus comes to be threatened by his contemporary Bill Haydon, proteges Toby Esterhase and Roy Bland, and ambitious newcomer Percy Alleline. Alleline develops a personal feud with Control due to the latter's class and ethnic prejudice against Percy's Scottish heritage, prompting factions to form within the Circus, with Control, Smiley, and Peter Guillam on one side and Alleline, Haydon, Esterhase, and Bland on the other. When