the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, defected and revealed a widespread Soviet spying network in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada that came as a considerable shock to the leaders of western nations. During that period, Smiley first met his Soviet nemesis, Karla, in a Delhi prison. Karla proved impossible to crack, though an increasingly desperate Smiley inadvertently revealed his own weakness – his affection for his wife, Ann – during the interrogation. After he offered Karla the use of his cigarette lighter – a gift from his wife – Karla stole it, keeping it as a symbol of his victory over Smiley. The incident would continue to haunt Smiley for the remainder of his career. In the novels The early novels Smiley first appears in Call for the Dead, le Carré's debut novel. After an introductory chapter documenting Smiley's wartime bravery, the narrative moves to 1960, which finds the formerly heroic Smiley working a menial intelligence job, security-clearing civil servants. After a man he interviewed apparently commits suicide in despair over being a suspected communist, Smiley resigns from the Circus in disgust; the revelation that the man's death may in fact have been a murder spurs Smiley to launch an independent investigation with the help of his protege, Peter Guillam, and police detective Oliver Mendel. Smiley's investigation uncovers that the "suicide" was in fact a murder perpetrated by an East German spy ring operating in the UK and being operated by one of his own former agents, whom he accidentally kills in a physical altercation. Although the Circus offers him his job back as a reward, Smiley declines, instead leaving England for a tentative reunion with Ann, who had earlier left him for a racing car driver. Smiley spends much of the story bemoaning the loss of the talented agents who were his mentors prior to the war, and their replacement by such talentless bureaucrats as the current head of service, Maston, who is widely, if secretly, mocked. It is while pursuing a sedate life of scholastic research in German literature at a university in the West Country (probably Exeter) that he is called upon to investigate a murder at a fictional public school in le Carré's next novel, A Murder of Quality. Smiley next reappears as a minor but pivotal character in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, his third novel. Smiley is revealed to