A Most Wanted Man sees Le Carré exploring the human cost of the practice of targeted abduction of Muslim individuals known as "extraordinary rendition." … At the start, Issa has made his way to Hamburg, having escaped from detention and torture in Russia, where he has been falsely implicated in radical Islamist activity. But Issa is also the illegitimate son of a now deceased Soviet army general who has lodged in an illicit account at Brue Frères Bank the ill-gotten gains made by looting, raping, and murdering his way through Chechnya during the 1980s. These so-called Lippizaner accounts—where "black" money can slowly be made to turn "white"—have been set up by Tommy Brue's father and predecessor as bank president at the behest of the British secret service in return for General Karpov's willingness to trade secrets during the dying days of the Soviet Union. … However, Annabel and Tommy's hopes are ultimately dashed when outside forces from MI5 and the CIA—with the connivance of the more conservative elements of the German hierarchy—gate-crash the transfer meeting, sabotaging Bachmann's plans to "turn" Abdullah in order to trace the real terrorists. The last we see of Issa and Abdullah is as they are bundled into the back of an unmarked van before, we presume, being "rendered" to an undisclosed location for rather more heavy-handed treatment.

QUESTION: Le Carré dramatizes how rendition sweeps up the falsely accused — worth investigating real parallel cases cited in reporting on the post-9/11 rendition program. DEFINE: The term 'extraordinary rendition' is defined here through its fictional illustration: targeted abduction of Muslim individuals to undisclosed locations.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 326