THE SECRET PILGRIM
by John le Carre
Knopf; 335 pages; $21.95
Attentive John le Carre fans may recognize the narrator of the author's 13th novel. He is Ned (no last name given), the British intelligence official who ran the operation so vividly bungled in the best-selling The Russia House (1989). That fiasco was not Ned's fault, to be sure, but he has been punished by his Service superiors anyhow, unplugged from the power loop and farmed out to teach spycraft to young recruits. On an inspired whim, Ned manages to lure his old mentor, George Smiley, out of retirement to spend...