John Le Carré, A Most Wanted Man (Penguin Canada, 2009), p. 359

How very true. This book strongly reminds me of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American novel (UK, 1955), but “the other way ‘round” - if I may say so.

In Le Carré’s final dialogue the issue is about justice:

‘Rendered? he repeated stupidly. ‘What’s rendered? What justice are you talking about?’

‘American justice, asshole. Whose do you think? Justice from the fucking hip, man. No-crap justice, that kind of justice. Justice with no fucking lawyers around to pervert the course. Have you never heard of extraordinary rendition? Time you Krauts had a word for it… Eye for a fucking eye… Justice as retribution, ok? Abdullah was killing Americans. We call that original sin. You want to play softball spy games? Go find yourself some Euro-pygmies…’

I personally have the feeling that Greene’s epilogue is rather more near to reality, at least in the long run - and if Vietnam, then Beirut, then Mogadishu, then Iraq and now, Afghanistan, are taken as recent historical examples.

But all of this can be probably linked back to Le Carré’s quote, above: to ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door…