""Thank you," said Smiley again. And a moment later, with more ease than his portly figure might have suggested him capable of, he had vanished among the trees. But not before the Superintendent had shone the torch full upon his face, a thing he hadn't done till now for reasons of discretion. And taken an intense professional look at the legendary features, if only to tell his grandchildren in his old age: how George Smiley, sometime Chief of the Secret Service, by then retired, had one night come out of the woodwork to peer at some dead foreigner of his who had died in highly nasty circumstances. Not one face at all actually, the Superintendent reflected. Not when it was lit by the torch like that indirectly from below. More your whole range of faces. More your patchwork of different ages, people and endeavours."
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chapter 3
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Smiley's People
Smiley's People (1979) is a spy novel by John le Carré, the third in his trilogy featuring George Smiley and the Soviet spymaster Karla, following Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy. Smiley's People was dramatized as a six-part serial for television for the BBC in 1982 as a sequel to the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy mini-series, again starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley.
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