The Spy Who Came In from the Cold  

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"The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee and said, "Why don't you go back and sleep? We can ring you if he shows up."
Leamas said nothing, just stared through the window of the checkpoint, along the empty street.
"You can't wait forever, sir. Maybe he'll come some other time. We can have the Polizei contact the Agency: you can be back here in twenty minutes."
"No," said Leamas, "it's nearly dark now."
"But you can't wait forever; he's nine hours over schedule."
"If you want to go, go. You've been very good," Leamas added. "I'll tell Kramer you've been damn good."
"But how long will you wait?"
"Until he comes." Leamas walked to the observation window and stood between the two motionless policemen. Their binoculars were trained on the Eastern checkpoint.
"He's waiting for the dark," Leamas muttered, "I know he is."

--incipit from The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963) by John le Carré

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The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a 1963 Cold War spy novel by the British author John le Carré. It depicts Alec Leamas, a British agent, being sent to East Germany as a faux defector to sow disinformation about a powerful East German intelligence officer. It serves as a sequel to le Carré's previous novels Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, which also featured the fictitious British intelligence organization, "The Circus", and its agents George Smiley and Peter Guillam.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold portrays Western espionage methods as morally inconsistent with Western democracy and values. The novel received critical acclaim at the time of its publication and became an international best-seller; it was selected as one of the All-Time 100 Novels by Time magazine.

Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Spy Who Came In from the Cold" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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