Call for the Dead
John le Carré
 Foreign Office civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently commits suicide after a routine security check by Circus agent George Smiley. Smiley had interviewed and cleared Fennan only days previously after an anonymous accusation; however, Circus head of service Maston sets up Smiley to be blamed for Fennan's death. While interviewing Fennan's wife Elsa (a Jewish concentration camp survivor) in her home, Smiley answers the telephone, expecting a call from the Circus for him. Instead, it is a wake-up call from the local exchange, but Elsa Fennan seems surprised by it. Smiley then meets Inspector Mendel, a police officer on the verge of retirement who is investigating the Fennan case, and finds out through him that the wake-up call had been specially requested by Samuel Fennan the night before. When Elsa later tells Smiley that she requested the call from the exchange (which Smiley knows to be false), he tells Mendel and Maston. However, Maston unequivocally orders Smiley to refrain from any further investigation into Fennan's death. Back in his office, Smiley receives a letter posted by Fennan the night before, requesting an urgent meeting that day. Believing that Fennan was murdered to prevent the meeting, Smiley promptly resigns from the Circus and attaches his resignation to Fennan's letter, which he forwards to Maston. On returning home, Smiley notices a tall blond stranger inside his house, avoids going inside and notes the number plates of all the cars parked nearby. Mendel traces one car to a criminal named Adam Scarr, who tells Mendel that he rents it out twice a month to a stranger known as "Blondie", who matches Smiley's intruder. Smiley is subsequently attacked and nearly killed while trying to track the car to "Blondie", and Adam Scarr is killed. Investigating further, Mendel learns that Elsa attends a local theatre twice a month with "Blondie" and that the two exchange music cases at each performance. "Blondie" is soon identified by fellow Circus agent Peter Guillam as Hans-Dieter Mundt, an East German agent under diplomatic cover working for Dieter Frey, a German spy of Smiley's during World War II who has since become an important East German agent. Smiley believes that Frey would use a courier like Mundt to service only one highly-placed resident agent. Guillam reports that Mundt has fled England. When confronted with Smiley's evidence, Elsa Fennan confesses to Smiley that her husband was an East German spy, that she was his unwilling accomplice in passing secret documents in the music cases, and that Fennan was killed by Mundt after Frey saw him talking to Smiley. However, Guillam learns that during the last six months Fennan had been taking home insignificant, unclassified documents. Smiley realizes that Elsa Fennan herself is the East German spy and that Fennan had accused himself to meet someone with whom he could discuss his suspicions about his wife. Smiley sets a trap, using his knowledge of Frey's tradecraft from WWII to arrange a rush covert meeting between Frey and Elsa Fennan. When Frey realises he has been tricked, he kills Elsa, but he is trailed by Mendel and killed by Smiley while trying to escape. At the end of the story, Smiley turns down Maston's offer to rejoin the Circus and instead flies to Zurich to see his estranged wife Ann.