at a recent Karfeld rally, in which a mob stormed a British library and fatally assaulted the female librarian- revealed to be Harting's ex-girlfriend- occurred because Harting had attempted to shoot Karfeld from a window of the library. Turner believes Harting may try again to assassinate Karfeld at his next rally, which Turner and Bradfield attend. The novel ends with Karfeld addressing the rally and delivering an anti-Western European, Nazi-apologist speech until violence erupts between his supporters and a group of socialist counter-protestors. In the ensuing chaos, Harting attempts to shoot Karfeld but misses; Karfeld's supporters kill him as Turner rushes to his aid. As Turner watches helplessly, they search his body for the last pieces of incriminating evidence against Karfeld. Major characters Rawley Bradfield - Head of Chancery at the British Embassy in Bonn Leo Harting – long-term temporary employee at the British Embassy Alan Turner – British Foreign Office official Ludwig Siebkron – German Interior Ministry official Klaus Karfeld – German industrialist and politician Writing Le Carré was initially unhappy with the book, later writing in the foreword to a 1991 reprinting that the novel "is printed with aversion in my memory". In the same foreword, le Carré revealed that he based the hostile, reactionary Turner on himself, admitting that he was going through a nervous breakdown at the time of writing due to the dissolution of his marriage; he would ultimately stop work on the book for a period to deal with his personal life before returning to it later. For a period, he believed the book would be his farewell to espionage fiction, following it up with a semi-autobiographical literary novel he intended to restart his career, The Naive and Sentimental Lover. In retrospect, he wrote there that "the novel is not the eyesore I always imagine it to be". John le Carré said that his intention was "to write something close to a black comedy about British political manners, and yet the result was widely perceived to be ferociously anti-German". He said that he wanted to write "an informed nightmare, not an accurate prophecy. My aim was to tell what I might best call a political ghost story". Leo Harting is the ghost, Alan Turner is his exorcist and Bradfield is the owner of the haunted house. While most of the characters were original creations, le Carré wrote that Leo was directly based on a