A more interesting question to ask might be, "what happens if a client creates N independent connections through the network, over a long period of time so that circuits are not reused?" If a malicious operator possesses only three nodes, and N is sufficiently large (i.e. greater than n*(n-1)*(n-2), where n is the number of Tor nodes), then chances are, the attacker would be able to break the anonymity of at least one connection...
Geoff