The Little Drummer Girl

By John Le Carre. New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1983. 430 pp. $15.95

Reviewed by John N. Gatch Jr.

In his latest work John Le Carre has moved from the arcane world of espionage to the equally arcane but more violent world of terrorism. Gone is the chess game between George Smiley, the archetypical British agent, and the Soviet spymaster Karla. In its place is a present-day, deadly struggle between Kurtz, an Israeli intelligence officer, and Khalil, a dispossessed and stateless Palestinian who commands an effective terrorist network operating in Europe. Khalil has concluded there can be no distinction between Jew and Israeli. The whole Jewish race is a Zionist power base and Zionists will never rest until all Palestinians have been destroyed. Hence any Jewish person or organization anywhere becomes a legitimate target.

Plotting to Penetrate

The book begins with a graphic description of the bombing of an Israeli diplomat's house near Bonn which results in the death of the diplomat's son. Kurtz believes the only way to discover and eliminate Khalil is to penetrate his organization and take him while he is committing an act of terrorism. Kurtz activates this plan only after overcoming strong objections from his own superior and from hawkish Israeli generals who want massive retaliation for each terrorist incident, by the use of Israeli air or commando strikes against Palestinians in Lebanon.

The agent for Kurtz's plan is a trendily radical and impressionable British actress named Charlie. She bears some resemblance to the real-life Vanessa Redgrave except that she is not a star but a member of a provincial repertory company. Kurtz, through Joseph, a legendary Israeli agent runner, recruits Charlie. After a series of intricate maneuvers Charlie is made known to Khalil's organization. She is eventually accepted as a fighter for the Palestinian cause, and goes to Beirut. In Lebanon she sees at first hand the conditions of the Palestinian community and eventually is sent to a guerrilla training camp near the Syrian border. The furious and exciting climax comes when Charlie, to demonstrate her new loyalty, takes the central role in a terrorist action involving the planting of a briefcase bomb targeted against a respected Jewish humanist from Jerusalem who is lecturing in West Germany.

The book can be read on several levels. It has the beautifully written, intricate and logical plot readers have come to expect from Le Carre. The professional touches are there also—believable descriptions of surveillance operations, cutouts, forged documentation, agent recruitment and the whole paraphernalia of the secret world. One particularly effective vignette describes Kurtz coming to a procedural agreement with a senior British intelligence officer who himself once fought Zionist terrorism in Palestine during the days of the British Mandate. The book is an almost totally satisfying example of the British thrillers of the Graham Greene and Eric Ambler genre.

Resentment and Hate

The Little Drummer Girl has political relevance. As the story develops, Charlie is in effect twice brainwashed—first by the Israeli case officer Joseph, and then by a Captain Tayeh at the Palestinian camp in Lebanon. Le Carre masterfully captures the burning Zionist determination which created and has nurtured Israel, and with equal effectiveness reflects Palestinian (and Arab) bewildered resentment and hate at being made a second victim of the crimes committed against the Jews in Germany. Why the difference between Arabs and Israelis have thus far been irreconcilable has seldom been more clearly delineated.

Finally the book poses a moral question for the world—and particularly for the West. In its guilt-ridden reaction to the Holocaust, the West effectively assisted and supported the establishment of Israel in the face of the opposition of the majority of the people who were on the land that became Israel. In the process a new displaced and persecuted group was created. Who then is guilty of the crimes committed against the Palestinians?

Most Israeli statesmen, writers and political philosophers naturally have refused to assume the burden of guilt by ignoring or even denying the existence of Palestine as an entity and the Palestinians as people. In fact the European founders of the Zionist movement in their ignorance saw Palestine as the ideal location for a Jewish homeland because it was "the land without people for a people without land." Western observers, particularly in the United States, having acknowledged guilt for the Holocaust, generally cannot bring themselves to assure a double burden by accepting that Palestinians have not received justice and that the United States is in large part responsible. For example, the respected Washington Post reviewer Jonathan Yardley in his comments on the book looks away from the question of guilt—"Yes: Life is hell for the Palestinian refugees and for millions of others to whom life has been unspeakably cruel. But it is not axiomatic that because they suffer, those in happier situations are contemptible."

This book touches a nerve. Read it.

John N. Gatch Jr. is a former U.S. foreign service officer whose last assignment was as deputy representative of the Secretary of State on the President's Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism.