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The cover says it all. This is a rare depiction of a love for a father, for a son, and for a friend who is all wrong for this spy.

In an early scene, Magnus Pym (who calls himself Mr. Canterbury) observes a light in an upstairs window. "That's you all over," his landlady remarks. "Disappear for three months, come back in the middle of the night and worry about a light in someone's window. . . . You'll never change, Mr. Canterbury." Neither would the man who called himself John le Carre.

When we met, he was standing on a train platform. "Look. A woman is dancing with a child," he said to me. There in the chill of a Polish night, he saw a vision of paradise through a lit window. It made his face glow. That moment came back to me as I read A Perfect Spy, the novel which comes closest to a memoir of his own life.

He didn't have an ordinary childhood. Neither does Magnus Pym. Both men seek bonds - often in directions which can't hold - to make up for their early losses. And both have a great capacity to be hurt and to love. This is a spy as far from Bond as can be. Vulnerable is the word that comes to mind. Real, too.