Toby Esterhase

Toby Esterhase is a fictional character in John le Carré's George Smiley spy novels including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People, as well as some of the stories in The Secret Pilgrim.

He is a high-ranking officer in "the Circus" (a British secret intelligence agency), eventually becoming head of "lamplighters."

George Smiley recruited Esterhase (Eszterházy or Esterházy), a Hungarian, in Vienna, when he was a starving student living in the ruins of a museum of which his late uncle had been curator.

He eventually rose to be head of the Lamplighter division (the Circus name for a host of covert "service" personnel, whose duties include covert surveillance, courier deliveries, and maintaining safe houses).

At the time of Tinker, Tailor, Esterhase has a son at Westminster and a daughter at medical school. He is married, but has a reputation as a womaniser.

When the Circus became polarised between supporters of the ailing Chief, "Control", and his rival, Percy Alleline, Esterhase gravitated towards Alleline out of ambition, forgetting his past loyalty to Smiley, who was Control's supporter. Along with Alleline, Bill Haydon, and Roy Bland, Esterhase forms part of the "magic circle" with access to the marvelous Soviet intelligence code-named "Witchcraft," supplied by the mysterious "Source Merlin."

Esterhase is one of the five high-ranking Circus officers Control suspects of being a Soviet mole. After Control's death, Esterhase embraces the new Alleline regime and allows his lamplighters to be almost entirely given over to serving Operation Witchcraft, which is in fact nothing but a disinformation campaign orchestrated by Soviet spymaster Karla. Esterhase's own role is to pretend to be a Soviet mole when meeting with the Soviets. They know he is not, of course, but his pretense provides a cover story for Alleline, Bland, and Esterhase himself, justifying his role as a courier between the real mole, Haydon, and his Soviet controllers.

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