The spying game is not what it used to be.
That is a matter of regret for John le Carre, eminent novelist and former spy, who has done more than almost any other writer to forge our idea of how the game is played. Ian Fleming's action-hero James Bond may be more famous, but le Carre's universe has the ring of truth. His secret agents exist in a world of stalemate, moral compromise, ambiguity and betrayal.
That's again the terrain of his 21st novel, "A Most Wanted Man," but in some ways the landscape has changed. The end of the Cold War changed things. The Sept. 11 attacks changed them again, revealing a frightening new menace and adding a glossary of chilling new terms -- "war on terror," "extraordinary rendition" -- to our common language.
"I have no nostalgia for the Cold War," says le Carre, who worked for British intelligence in Germany in the 1960s, when tensions with the Soviet Union were at their chilliest.
"I think I have nostalgia for the hope that existed during the Cold War that when it ended we would redesign the world. We never did that. We missed the whole trick."
"Man," which comes out Tuesday, is set firmly in our jittery post-9/11 world. Le Carre locates the action in Hamburg, the German port city where several of the 9/11 hijackers planned their attacks. Its central character is Issa, an enigmatic half-Chechen refugee who appears in Hamburg sporting a long black coat, muddy motives and a claim to a mysterious fortune.
To Annabel Richter, an idealistic young human rights lawyer who takes up his case, Issa is a challenge. To the German, British and American spies who hone in on him, he is a possible asset and a potential threat.
Le Carre is fascinated by the way globalization and immigration have brought disparate peoples closer together, without bridging the gaps in culture, wealth and experience that divide them. Despite attempts at mutual understanding, the novel's characters are on a collision course.
"We know so little, we understand so little, about Islam -- the cultural differences that separate us, the thought processes that separate us," says the writer, whose real name is David Cornwell.
"It's very difficult to find a common ground. I'm not offering solutions here, but trying to paint a moment in our time. I'm very hung up on trying to catch the moment of where we are and trying to make a neat little story that reflects our feelings."
Since his breakthrough book, "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," in 1963, le Carre has become one of Britain's most successful writers. Many of his books -- most recently "The Constant Gardener" -- have been turned into films. His books may be categorized as thrillers, but they are reviewed as serious novels.
The enemy in his new book is not just terrorism, but also the treachery and betrayal of supposed allies. Le Carre's German spies are caught between their own goals and the demands of impatient American colleagues, depicted as willing to cut a few ethical corners in the cause of neutralizing a perceived threat.
Le Carre can see the criticism coming.
"I don't expect a terribly warm reception in the United States," he says.
"I'm not antiAmerican. But I'm certainly anti the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld disaster of the last eight years." Like many liberal Europeans, he believes the United States has been "hijacked."
America has claimed the right "to seize any citizen of any country whom it deems offensive to it," he says.
"America has licensed torture. In the end, I ask the same question that I've been asking through a whole lot of books: How much of this stuff can we do to ourselves in protection of our democracy and remain a democracy worth protecting?"
FYI: "A Most Wanted Man" by John le Carre
