Percy Alleline

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Sir Percy Alleline is a fictional character in British novelist John le Carré's work. He is the Chief of the "Circus", Le Carré's fictionalised version of MI6/SIS, in the novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Alleline was played by Michael Aldridge in the television serial based on the novel.

Alleline comes from a religious Scottish background and is portrayed as a man of limited potential who rises beyond his level of competence thanks to his impeccable political connections. He joins British intelligence shortly after World War II thanks to the "furious" lobbying of Maston, a mediocre Circus hack, and is promptly sent to a backwater assignment in Latin America. Alleline performs unexpectedly well and is reassigned to India, where he also leaves a good impression. He is then dispatched to Egypt with the difficult task of following in the footsteps of Bill Haydon, a Circus legend in the Middle East, yet nearly succeeds in equalling his illustrious predecessor. However, the decidedly pro-American Alleline involves himself in a U.S.-backed coup that runs contrary to the interests of British oil companies. The coup aborts and Alleline, exposed, is returned to London in disgrace.

Thanks to his political connections, Alleline escapes relegation to a low-level job and coaxes Control, the anonymous head of MI6, into promoting him to the specially created position of Director of Operations, a role that theoretically gives him the right to examine all operations in the field but in fact is empty of real power. Starved of any responsibility, Alleline is determined to find a way back to "a seat at the top table" of the Circus by any means necessary.

When a group of ambitious MI6 officers led by Bill Haydon approaches him with information about Source Merlin, a provider of seemingly invaluable intelligence on the USSR, Alleline sees an opening. He relentlessly promotes the so-called Witchcraft material collected from Merlin to his political contacts, burnishing his own credentials at a time when Control is falling from grace due to a string of operational setbacks. In 1972, after the failure of Operation Testify in which British agent Jim Prideaux is shot and captured by the Soviets, Control is forced into retirement along with many other competent old-timers including his right-hand man George Smiley. Haydon's group assumes total control of the Circus and Alleline is promoted to Chief (along with a much-desired knighthood) on the continuing strength of Witchcraft.

This cabal of intelligence officers includes Bill Haydon, Toby Esterhase and Roy Bland which leads to the often-repeated phrase used in the TV version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: "Three of them and Alleline".

Unbeknownst to Alleline, Merlin is in fact a Soviet double agent planted by Moscow Centre to engineer the eviction of Control and protect the existence of a mole, code-named Gerald, at the highest level of the Circus. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley is called back from retirement in 1973 to investigate growing suspicions of Soviet penetration of the Circus and ultimately unmasks Gerald, provoking Alleline's resignation.

According to the timeline of later le Carré work, Alleline is already dead by 1989 or 1990, when the events of the novel The Secret Pilgrim take place.

Alleline is presented as a bombastic bureaucrat full of low cunning and intimidation, with a distinctive turn of phrase. He has risen to his position not through tradecraft, but through plausibility and connections. His political ambitions (and particularly his devotion to the USA) are presented in harsher terms by le Carré than the mole Gerald's devotion to the USSR.

A common theme in le Carré's novels is the transient personal triumph of the politically adept administrator over the true intelligence officer; Alleline, Maston (in Call for the Dead) and Sir Saul Enderby (in many of the later novels starting with Smiley's People) are all portrayed as having reached their positions through politics and social networking rather than any inherent brilliance in their chosen profession. The buffoonish Roddy Martindale in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is also another example of this kind of politician/spy.