She and an activist African doctor had been investigating the deleterious effects of a new tuberculosis drug on patients. Her husband ends up going AWOL and roams the world trying to track down her killers. We see the first act through the eyes of Woodrow, another British diplomat. The wife's relationship with the doctor is a red herring as well. Some of his former strengths seem, suddenly, weaknesses.
Bad guys win.
Where his heroes of the past squirmed in the grip of Manichaean forces working on a Cold War scale, they are today loners who stand up and walk into oblivion. Quayle's end is something else. He's symbolic only of a failed career and of marriage to a wife of whom he never seems to have been worthy. John Le Carr . We also invited Salon readers to e-mail questions for Le Carr .