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 comes from a religious Scottish background and is portrayed as a man of limited potential who rises beyond his level of competence thanks to assiduous political networking.
He is recruited by British intelligence shortly after World War II thanks to the "furious" lobbying of Maston, a mediocre Circus hack (presumably the same figure appearing in Le Carre's debut novel, Call For The Dead). Shortly thereafter, Maston falls from favor, and Alleline 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, and nearly succeeds in equaling 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 recalled 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 a senior post. Control is portrayed as a brilliant but dying master spy, a man who was so skilled at his job that no one even knew his name, including George Smiley, who held him in highest regard and later mourned his death. Control, refusing to admit Alleline to any real responsibility, instead specially creates a position for him as Director of Operations, which ostensibly gives him approval authority over all field operations, 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 phrase oft-repeated by Control, and later by Smiley: "There are three of them and Alleline." In other words, three possible puppet masters and the puppet, Alleline. Control, dying from cancer, urges Smiley, his only confidante at the top of the Circus, to create delaying actions in order to slow the cabal's efforts to seize power. Control knows that if he can uncover the Soviet spy Gerald, almost certainly a member of the cabal, he can destroy it before his own death.
Unbeknown to Alleline, Merlin is in fact a complete fabrication created 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, after Control's death and Alleline's accession, to investigate growing suspicions of Soviet penetration of the Circus and ultimately unmasks Gerald.
When the mole is exposed, Alleline is broken by the disaster: one of his chief lieutenants has been exposed as a Russian spy; the marvelous intelligence on which he has built his career turns out to be so much Russian "chickenfeed"; and he is left with the humiliating realization that the only reason he is Chief at all was because Moscow and the mole considered him an ideal stooge. After commencing negotiations with Moscow to exchange the mole for the British Eastern Bloc networks, Alleline turns over his job to Smiley and resigns.
According to the time-line of later le Carré work, Alleline is already dead by 1989 or 1990, when the events of the novel The Secret Pilgrim take place. Aside from the disgrace of the mole's exposure, he has left the Circus a number of awkward messes, in that several of his proteges and allies, of dubious morals, have continued to exploit the opportunities he provided them.
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.
He is also portrayed as a bigamist, or at least as a womanizer; both of his wives (or his wife and regular mistress) are alcoholics.
When Gerald is exposed, there is even a bizarre moment when Smiley finds himself in sympathy with him, since a man like Alleline is undeserving of anyone's loyalty.
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.
Alleline was played by Michael Aldridge in the 1979 television serial based on the novel. In the 1988 BBC Radio 4 7-part series he was played by James Grout. In the 2011 film adaptation, Alleline is portrayed by Toby Jones.