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The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

1963 novel, famously adapted into a Richard Burton film, about Alec Leamas, an intelligence officer whose East Berlin network gets smashed in a single cataclysmic evening. Leamas returns to London in disgrace, where his commanding officer – “Control” – asks him to go back “into the cold” one last time. Leamas continues his slide into alcoholism and poverty, allowing himself to get picked up by an East German recruiter and brought in for interrogation. In so doing, Leamas hopes to implicate the spymaster who killed his agents, Hans Mundt, as a double agent, thus getting revenge.

The parallels between The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Burn Notice:

• An agent who gets “burned” by his handlers because he’s more useful as a discredited pawn than as a member of the agency.
• Both Leamas and Michael use sophisticated means to not only gather information, but plant disinformation in the minds of their targets. In the Season 3 episode “Questions and Answers,” Michael undergoes a reverse interrogation – letting himself get captured and questioned by the enemy so as to draw out what the enemy knows. This isn’t the first time he’s pulled a stunt like that (S2, Ep 4 – “Comrades” plays out similarly). This is essentially what Leamas does, too – letting Mundt’s subordinate Fiedler interrogate him and, gradually, uncover the “truth.”
• A generally cynical view of the good-guys/bad-guys mentality in espionage. In completing his Job Of The Week, Michael rarely turns his targets over to the cops or the FBI. He usually tricks them into offing each other. And when pursuing the secrets of his own past, Michael has no problem calling on enemies of the state – like when he gets the attention of an NSA goon by having the Libyan Embassy send him a fruit basket (S1, Ep 9). Leamas, once captured by the KGB, is happy to advance Fiedler’s career by giving him the ammunition he needs to tarnish Mundt.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

1974 novel, less famously adapted into a BBC miniseries starring Alec Guinness, about retired British intelligence officer George Smiley. Smiley’s brought back into action by a report from a field agent, who has evidence that the botched operation which drove “Control” out of office was in fact sabotaged by a mole in British Intelligence. Smiley must conduct a secret investigation, without official agency backing, to uncover the mole.

The parallels between Tinker, Tailor and Burn Notice:

• Both Michael and Smiley must assemble a history of a conspiracy through piecemeal efforts. Smiley slowly interviews his way up the ladder until he has enough evidence to corner the mole. Michael assembles the backstory on his burn notice one piece at a time, often confronting handlers instrumental to his being burned. There’s no one clue that puts the whole picture into the frame.
• Both Michael and Smiley are operating without agency protection. Michael has to use Sam’s contacts and the aid of criminals (most often money launderer Barry) to get any intel. Smiley has to convince his former associate, Peter Guillam, to smuggle case files out of British Intelligence offices.
• Finally, Michael’s nemesis throughout Season 2 is a confident blonde spymaster, who coerces Michael into helping her though veiled threats against his family, named Carla. Smiley’s nemesis is the Russian intelligence officer who’s running the British mole, a man Smiley met and lost to years ago … codenamed Karla.

I’ll freely admit that this isn’t smoking-gun evidence for a connection between Burn Notice and the novels of le Carré. But it’s a clue – the tentative hint that might start a deeper investigation. And regardless of whether Matt Nix (creator of Burn Notice) intended the le Carré parallels or not, it’s clear that Burn Notice owes more to George Smiley and Alec Leamas than to James Bond or Jason Bourne.