Word: karla
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Tales of a Master Spy From the Other Side The former chief of East German intelligence and the model for John le Carre's Karla, MARKUS WOLF talks about espionage in the bad old days of the cold war, why he returned from Moscow to face possible imprisonment and what he likes best about his favorite spy novelist...
...Among readers of spy novels you may be better known as Karla than as Markus Wolf. Have you read the novels of John le Carre? Do you see yourself in his Karla character...
...tale sounded like a John le Carre thriller, and with good reason: the main character is believed to have been the model for the novelist's Karla, the fabled communist spy master. Markus Wolf, former chief of the foreign intelligence arm of Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police, emerged in Vienna last week, where he had been secretly living since Aug. 30. He applied for political asylum in Austria -- a request that was promptly denied. The wily spy chief, who is wanted in Germany on espionage charges, is currently free on appeal...
...Soviet Union, which has already antagonized Germany by harboring former East German leader Erich Honecker, is unlikely to want him back. Wolf says his own choice would be Germany. But coming in from the cold and staying free might be an objective out of reach even for Karla...
...were committed on both sides of the Berlin Wall. There was a peculiar similarity to the sunless corridors and bureaucratic fatigue of Moscow and Washington. Enemies became interdependent and sometimes indistinguishable; it was a case of the left hand strengthening the right. George Smiley in Britain needed his rival Karla in Moscow. NATO needed the Warsaw Pact. The CIA needed the KGB. And the spy novelists needed them...