by John le Carre Hodder & Stoughton, HK$285
Who wants him? Everyone, it seems. For a start, he is an illegal immigrant so the Swedish, Danish and German authorities want him extradited. He has escaped from prison in Turkey and before that from Russia where his torturers have not finished with him so they want him back. As a suspected Chechen separatist and Islamist jihadi, he is on many wanted lists.
Now two smooth operators from the British embassy in Berlin want to track him down. The section head of the CIA in Germany has made a special trip to Hamburg to discuss him; she wants a piece of him too. Divisions of the German intelligence services are squabbling over him, agreeing only that they don't want him to fall into the hands of the police. He knows nothing of them, but to the entire Berlin espiocracy he is a wanted man.
Gunther Bachmann, field agent of the quaintly named German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, also wants him - and thinks he has him - to serve as bait to catch a bigger fish swimming around in the murky waters of the so-called 'war on terror'.
An idealistic young lawyer and the shabby Scottish director of a struggling private bank in Hamburg also want him - but to save him.
Who is this most wanted man?
His name is probably Issa Karpov although perhaps that should be Ivan Grigorevich. He seems to be the son of a Chechen Muslim woman and the Russian Red Army colonel who raped her. He is tall, thin, weak, stubborn and exasperatingly childish but also the bearer of a great burden of suffering. Issa arrives in Hamburg a refugee and fugitive from some searing experience and it soon becomes clear that the assumption of the authorities that he is a terrorist is wide of the mark. He seems to inspire charity and cruelty in equal proportions. He is an innocent man.