A few remaining questions (more). . .

6) Why hadn’t anyone at the Circus thought to go through Control’s flat after he died BEFORE Smiley and Peter? He clearly left a lot of sensitive material lying around.

7) Re Turkey (again), why did the Soviets choose to kill Boris and Tufty? Did they think that Ricki/Irina had confided in those two as well? Was the torture therefore to find out what they knew? Seems so quick as to have been unlikely to elicit any information. Ricki/Irina should have been their real targets based on the information they presumably received from Bill, and clearly they wanted to capture & interrogate Irina rather than kill her. Surprising that they DIDN’T nab Ricki at that time. He didn’t exactly make himself scarce. Smiley knew he was in danger back in London: “Karla will be looking for you—it’s not safe to stay here.” (Of course the Circus would be looking for him too.)

8) When Percy calls Peter into his office to ask him “How’s Ricki Tarr these days?” he seems unreasonably ANGRY at Peter even though he has no reason to suspect his complicity in Tarr’s “defection.” His anger may have been staged as a sort of interrogation technique to check Peter’s reaction, but recall that did have reason to suspect that Ricki’s cable from Turkey regarding a defector at the highest level in the Circus MIGHT have been accurate. After all, Percy really did know there was a “mole” at the Circus—he, Toby, Roy, and to his knowledge Bill WERE in fact passing (fake) intel to Polyakov, and there would be no reason to think that Percy wouldn’t consider some knowledge of this back in Moscow as the source of Irina’s offer of service (and not the REAL mole, of which he had no knowledge). What proof did Toby have that Ricki was really a defector? Until the 30,000 pounds appeared in his bank account (presumably monitored somehow by the Circus) the only evidence he had was that Tarr “disappeared” in Istanbul and that Tufty had been killed by someone with a knife. Percy seems genuine when, after Peter asks him why Tarr is returning, he answers “to muddy the waters, that’s why. To get us chasing our own tail.” But here is what may be a plot hole: Percy does not know there is a REAL mole at the Circus. To his knowledge the only mole (or cabal of fake moles) is his little group passing chickenfeed intel to Polyakov, which he thinks the KGB thinks is genuine. Why in the hell would Karla then recruit a defector such as Ricki and send him back to stir the pot and get the Circus to look for internal leaks? Percy’s actions in the scene with Peter in the 5th floor quiet room do not seem to have proper motivational foundation. If Tarr were just a simple defector, even then Percy would have no reason to come down on Peter so hard.

9) Who compromised the British network in Hungary? There was debate as to whether it was Jim breaking under torture or whether perhaps Haydon had done so. It had to be Jim. If Haydon was the culprit he would have opportunity to do it long before Jim was captured. Perhaps he waited until Jim had been caught so that everyone would THINK it was the result of an interrogation. Possibly. But when Bill storms into his office after learning Jim’s been shot, he does seem legit when he yells for Toby to “roll up” the Hungarian network immediately. By the way, he also seems legit in wanting to convey to the Hungarians that they “better not harm one hair on [Jim’s] head”—lends credence to the idea that through his treachery Jim was supposed to be captured and no more (and therefore Bill was shocked to hear Jim had been shot), but it still doesn’t tell us what exactly he had expected the KGB to do with him.

10) How did Smiley find out where Jim was teaching?

11) Upon Smiley’s return from Berlin, how did Haydon get dressed and downstairs so quickly after boinking his wife? Or had nothing yet happened that night and he simply timed his visit around the hour Smiley was due home, sat at the table and waited while having a scotch, and then conspicuously put his shoes on in front of Smiley to make it LOOK like something had happened? If so, it would have been hard to pull off the timing so well, and the fact that Anne was really was upstairs getting dressed further confuses the issue.

12) In the scene where they take Toby to the airfield, how did Peter know exactly when Toby would appear and come out of the freight elevator? Did he stand there all day waiting?