- 1: Jim Prideaux captured. Some ex-colleague invites Smiley to dinner and keeps asking how incompetent people like Alleline climbed to the top of the Circus. Smiley recalled to service to meet Ricki Tarr.
- 2: Ricki Tarr tells his story to Smiley. Peter Guillam starts stealing material from the Circus, find missing page on the communication officer list. Smiley sets up his investigation operation.
- 3: Smiley meets Connie who tells that she was fired for suspecting Poliakov. Flashbacks show the ousting of Control and Smiley.
- 4: Guillam steals more material from the circus. While doing that, he is called by the top officers to inquire about Ricki Tarr being in England, which they suspect because they discovered that his family has come.
- 5: Jim Prideaux tells his story to Smiley, who cannot easily access the Circus reports about it. When he is returned to England, there was basically no debriefing, and Esterhase already knew about the Tinker Tailor codenames, presumably through Merlin.
- 6: Smiley hears the story of yet another ousted man, who heard the Russians knew in advance about Jim Prideaux' coming. Toby Esterhase dismissed him for alcoholism.