Status Updates From The Looking Glass War

“Well, here you have it: here is the law you were looking for. Congratulate yourself; you found it. We sent him because we needed to; we abandon him because we must. That is the discipline you
Admired." He turned to Smiley. "You too: I find you contemptible. You shoot us, then preach to the dying. Go away. We’re technicians, not poets…”

"Well, it isn't a conference then, is it? A conference isn't operational.
Not unless," she added with a giggle, "you're having it in the Kremlin."
"All right, it's not a conference. It's an operation. That's why I'm getting subsistence."
She looked at him cruelly. She was a thin, childless woman, her eyes half shut from the smoke of the cigarette in her mouth.

It is a place of old faces and young bodies; of young faces and old bodies; where the tensions of war have become the tensions of peace, and voices are raised to drown the silence, and glasses to drown the loneliness; it is the place where the searchers meet, finding no one but each other and the comfort of a shared pain; where the tired watchful eyes have no horizon to observe.