The Spy Who Came in from the Cold s-3

by John le Carré

  "What did he say?"

  "He said there was a job he'd got to do. Someone to pay off for something they'd done to a friend of his. I didn't really understand it all, not really."

  There was a very long silence and the little man looked more worried than ever. Finally he asked her: "Do you believe that?"

  "I don't know." She was suddenly terrified for Alec, and she didn't know why.

  The man asked: "Leamas has got two children by his marriage, did he tell you?" Liz said nothing. "In spite of that he gave your name as next of kin. Why do you think he did that?" The little man seemed embarrassed by his own question. He was looking at his hands, which were pudgy and clasped together on his lap. Liz blushed.

  "I was in love with him," she replied.

  "Was he in love with you?"

  "Perhaps. I don't know."

  "Are you still in love with him?"

  "Yes."

  "Did he ever say he would come back?" asked the younger man.

  "No."

  "But he did say good-bye to you?" the other asked quickly.

  "Did he say good-bye to you?" The little man repeated his question slowly, kindly. "Nothing more can happen to him, I promise you. But we want to help him, and if you have any idea of why he hit Ford, if you have the slightest notion from something he said, perhaps casually or something he did, then tell us for Alec's sake."

  Liz shook her head.

  "Please go," she said, "please don't ask any more questions. Please go now."

  As he got to the door, the elder man hesitated, then took a card from his wallet and put it on the table gingerly, as if it might make a noise. Liz thought he was a very shy little man.

  "If you ever want any help—if anything happens about Leamas or—ring me up," he said. "Do you understand?"

  "Who are you?"

  "I'm a friend of Alec Leamas." He hesitated. "Another thing," he added, "one last question. Did Alec know you were...Did Alec know about the Party?"

  "Yes," she replied hopelessly. "I told him."

  "Does the Party know about you and Alec?"

  "I've told you. No one knew." Then, white-faced, she cried out suddenly, "Where is he? Tell me where he is. Why won't you tell me where he is? I can help him, don't you see; I'll look after him...even if he's gone mad, I don't care, I swear I don't...I wrote to him in prison; I shouldn't have done that, I know. I just said he could come back any time, I'd wait for him always..." She couldn't speak any more, just sobbed and sobbed, standing there in the middle of the room, her broken face buried in her hands; the little man watching her.

  "He's gone abroad," he said gently. "We don't quite know where he is. He isn't mad, but he shouldn't have said all that to you. It was a pity."

  The younger man said, "We'll see you're looked after. For money and that kind of thing."

  "Who are you?" Liz asked again.

  "Friends of Alec," the young man repeated; "good friends."

  She heard them go quietly down the stairs and into the street. From her window she watched them get into a small black car and drive away in the- direction of the park.

  Then she remembered the card. Going to the table she picked it up and held it to the light. It was expensively done, more than a policeman could afford, she thought. Engraved. No rank in front of the name, no police station or anything. Just the name with "Mister"—and whoever heard of a policeman living in Chelsea?

  MR. GEORGE SMILEY. 9 BYWATER STREET, CHELSEA. Then the telephone number underneath. It was very strange.

  12

  East

  Leamas unfastened his seat belt.

  It is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths in the fire, their destruction were coincidental with attainment. Following directly upon his decision, Leamas was aware of a comparable sensation; relief, short-lived but consoling, sustained him for a time. It was followed by fear and hunger.

  He was slowing down. Control was right.

  He'd noticed it first during the Riemeck Case early last year. Karl had sent a message: he'd got something special for him and was making one of his rare visits to West Germany; some legal conference at Karlsruhe. Leamas had managed to get an air passage to Cologne, and picked up a car at the airport. It was still quite early in the morning and he'd hoped to miss most of the autobahn traffic to Karlsruhe but the heavy lorries were already on the move. He drove seventy kilometers in half an hour, weaving between the traffic, taking risks to beat the clock, when a small car, a Fiat probably, nosed its way out into the fast lane forty yards ahead of him. Leamas stamped on the brake, turning his headlights full on and sounding his horn, and by the grace of God he missed it; missed it by a fraction of a second. As he passed the car he saw out of the corner of his eye four children in the back, waving and laughing, and the stupid, frightened face of their father at the wheel. He drove on, cursing, and suddenly it happened; suddenly his hands were shaking feverishly, his face was burning hot, his heart palpitating wildly. He managed to pull off the road into a lay-by, scrambled out of the car and stood, breathing heavily, staring at the hurtling stream of giant lorries. He had a vision of the little car caught among them, pounded and smashed, until there was nothing left, nothing but the frenetic whine of klaxons and the blue lights flashing; and the bodies of the children, torn, like the murdered refugees on the road across the dunes.

  He drove very slowly the rest of the way and missed his meeting with Karl.

  He never drove again without some corner of his memory recalling the tousled children waving to him from the back of that car, and their father grasping the wheel like a farmer at the shafts of a hand plow.

  Control would call it fever.

  He sat dully in his seat over the wing. There was an American woman next to him wearing high-heeled shoes in polythene wrappers. He had a momentary notion of passing her some note for the people in Berlin, but he discarded it at once. She'd think he was making a pass at her; Peters would see it. Besides, what was the point? Control knew what had happened; Control had made it happen. There was nothing to say.

  He wondered what would become of him. Control hadn't talked about that—only about the technique:

  "Don't give it to them all at once, make them work for it. Confuse them with detail, leave things out, go back on your tracks. Be testy, be cussed, be difficult. Drink like a fish; don't give way on the ideology, they won't trust that. They want to deal with a man they've bought; they want the clash of opposites, Alec, not some half-cock convert. Above all, they want to deduce. The ground's prepared; we did it long ago, little things, difficult clues. You're the last stage in the treasure hunt."

  He'd had to agree to do it: you can't back out of the big fight when all the preliminary ones have been fought for you.

  "One thing I can promise you: it's worth it. It's worth it for our special interest, Alec. Keep him alive and we've won a great victory."

  He didn't think he could stand torture. He remembered a book by Koestler where the old revolutionary had conditioned himself for torture by holding lighted matches to his fingers. He hadn't read much but he'd read that and he remembered it.

  It was nearly dark when they landed at Tempelhof. Leamas watched the lights of Berlin rise to meet them, felt the thud as the plane touched down, saw the customs and immigration officials move forward out of the half-light.

  For a moment Leamas was anxious lest some former acquaintance should chance to recognize him at the airport. As they walked side by side, Peters and he, along the interminable corridors, through the cursory customs and immigration check, and still no familiar face turned to greet him, he realized that his anxiety had in reality been hope; hope that somehow his tacit decision to go on would be revoked by circumstance.

  It interested him that Peters no longer bothered to disown him. It was as if Peters regarded West Berlin as safe ground, where vigilance and security could be relaxed; a mere technical staging post to the East.

  They were walking
through the big reception hall to the main entrance when Peters suddenly seemed to alter his mind, abruptly changed direction and led Leamas to a smaller side entrance which gave on to a parking lot and taxi stand. There Peters hesitated a second, standing beneath the light over the door, then put his suitcase on the ground beside him, deliberately removed his newspaper from beneath his arm, folded it, pushed it into the left pocket of his raincoat and picked up his suitcase again. Immediately from the direction of the parking lot a pair of headlights sprang to life, were dipped and then extinguished.

  "Come on," said Peters and started to walk briskly across the tarmac, Leamas following more slowly. As they reached the first row of cars the rear door of a black Mercedes was opened from the inside, and the courtesy light went on. Peters, ten yards ahead of Leamas, went quickly to the car, spoke softly to the driver, then called to Leamas.

  "Here's the car. Be quick."

  It was an old Mercedes 180 and he got in without a word. Peters sat beside him in the back. As they pulled out they overtook a small DKW with two men sitting in the front. Twenty yards down the road there was a telephone booth. A man was talking into the telephone, and he watched them go by, talking all the time, Leamas looked out of the back window and saw the DKW following them. Quite a reception, he thought.

  They drove very slowly. Leamas sat with his hands on his knees, looking straight in front of him. He didn't want to see Berlin that night. This was his last chance, he knew that. The way he was sitting now he could drive the side of his right hand into Peters' throat, smashing the promontory of the thorax. He could get out and run, weaving to avoid the bullets from the car behind. He would be free—there were people in Berlin who would take care of him—he could get away.

  He did nothing.

  It was so easy crossing the sector border. Leamas had never expected it to be quite that easy. For about ten minutes they dawdled, and Leamas guessed that they had to cross at a prearranged time. As they approached the West German checkpoint, the DKW pulled out and overtook them with the ostentatious roar of a labored engine, and stopped at the police hut. The Mercedes waited thirty yards behind. Two minutes later the red and white pole lifted to let through the DKW and as it did so both cars drove over together, the Mercedes engine screaming in second gear, the driver pressing himself back against his seat, holding the wheel at arm's length.

  As they crossed the fifty yards which separated the two checkpoints, Leamas was dimly aware of the new fortification on the eastern side of the wall—dragons' teeth, observation towers and double aprons of barbed wire. Things had tightened up.

  The Mercedes didn't stop at the second checkpoint; the booms were already lifted and they drove straight through, the Vopos just watching them through binoculars. The DKW had disappeared, and when Leamas sighted it ten minutes later it was behind them again. They were driving fast now—Leamas had thought they would stop in East Berlin, change cars perhaps, and congratulate one another on a successful operation, but they drove on eastward through the city.

  "Where are we going?" he asked Peters.

  "We are there. The German Democratic Republic. They have arranged accommodation for you."

  "I thought we'd be going further east."

  "We are. We are spending a day or two here first. We thought the Germans ought to have a talk with you. "

  "I see."

  "After all, most of your work has been on the German side. I sent them details from your statement."

  "And they asked to see me?"

  "They've never had anything quite like you, nothing quite so...near the source. My people agreed that they should have the chance to meet you."

  "And from there? Where do we go from Germany?"

  "East again."

  "Who will I see on the German side?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Not particularly. I know most of the Abteilung people by name, that's all. I just wondered."

  "Who would you expect to meet?"

  "Fiedler," Leamas replied promptly, "deputy head of security. Mundt's man. He does all the big interrogations. He's a bastard."

  "Why?"

  "A savage little bastard. I've heard about him. He caught an agent of Peter Guillam's and bloody nearly killed him."

  "Espionage is not a cricket game," Peters observed sourly, and after that they sat in silence. So it is Fiedler, Leamas thought.

  Leamas knew Fiedler, all right. He knew him from the photographs on the file and the accounts of his former subordinates. A slim, neat man, quite young, smooth-faced. Dark hair, bright brown eyes; intelligent and savage, as Leamas had said. A lithe, quick body containing a patient, retentive mind; a man seemingly without ambition for himself but remorseless in the destruction of others. Fiedler was a rarity in the Abteilung—he took no part in its intrigues, seemed content to live in Mundt's shadow without prospect of promotion. He could not be labeled as a member of this or that clique; even those who had worked close to him in the Abteilung could not say where he stood in its power complex. Fiedler was a solitary; feared, disliked and mistrusted. Whatever motives he had were concealed beneath a cloak of destructive sarcasm.

  "Fiedler is our best bet," Control had explained. They'd been sitting together over dinner—Leamas, Control and Peter Guillam—in the dreary little seven dwarfs' house in Surrey where Control lived with his beady wife, surrounded by carved Indian tables with brass tops. "Fiedler is the acolyte who one day will stab the high priest in the back. He's the only man who's a match for Mundt—" here Guillam had nodded—"and he hates his guts. Fiedler's a Jew of course, and Mundt is quite the other thing. Not at all a good mixture. It has been our job," he declared, indicating Guillam and himself, "to give Fiedler the weapon with which to destroy Mundt. It will be yours, my dear Leamas, to encourage him to use it. Indirectly, of course, because you'll never meet him. At least I certainly hope you won't."

  They'd all laughed then, Guillam too. It had seemed a good joke at the time; good by Control's standards anyway.

  * * *

  It must have been after midnight.

  For some time they had been traveling an unpaved road, partly through a wood and partly across open country. Now they stopped and a moment later the DKW drew up beside them. As he and Peters got out Leamas noticed that there were now three people in the second car. Two were already getting out. The third was sitting in the back seat looking at some papers by the light from the car roof, a slight figure half in shadow.

  They had parked by some disused stables; the building lay thirty yards back. In the headlights of the car Leamas had glimpsed a low farmhouse with walls of timber and white-washed brick. The moon was up, and shone so brightly that the wooded hills behind were sharply defined against the pale night sky. They walked to the house, Peters and Leamas leading and the two men behind. The other man in the second car had still made no attempt to move; he remained there, reading.

  As they reached the door Peters stopped, waiting for the other two to catch up. One of the men carried a bunch of keys in his left hand, and while he fiddled with them the other stood off, his hands in his pockets, covering him.

  "They're taking no chances," Leamas observed to Peters. "What do they think I am?"

  "They are not paid to think," Peters replied, and turning to one of them he asked in German, "Is he coming?"

  The German shrugged and looked back toward the car. "He'll come," he said; "he likes to come alone."

  They went into the house, the man leading the way. It was got up like a hunting lodge, part old, part new. It was badly lit with pale overhead lights. The place had a neglected, musty air as if it had been opened for the occasion. There were little touches of officialdom here and there—a notice of what to do in case of fire, institutional green paint on the door and heavy spring-cartridge locks; and in the drawing room, which was quite comfortably done, dark, heavy furniture, badly scratched, and the inevitable photographs of Soviet leaders. To Leamas these lapses from anonymity signified the involuntary identification
of the Abteilung with bureaucracy. That was something he was familiar with in the Circus.

  Peters sat down, and Leamas did the same. For ten minutes, perhaps longer, they waited, then Peters spoke to one of the two men standing awkwardly at the other end of the room.

  "Go and tell him we're waiting. And find us some food, we're hungry." As the man moved toward the door Peters called, "And whisky—tell them to bring whisky and some glasses." The man gave an uncooperative shrug of his heavy shoulders and went out, leaving the door open behind him.

  "Have you been here before?" asked Leamas.

  "Yes," Peters replied, "several times."

  "What for?"

  "This kind of thing. Not the same, but our kind of work."

  "With Fiedler?"

  "Yes."

  "Is he good?"

  Peters shrugged. "For a Jew, he's not bad," he replied, and Leamas, hearing a sound from the other end of the room, turned and saw Fiedler standing in the doorway. In one hand he held a bottle of whisky, and in the other, glasses and some mineral water. He couldn't have been more than five foot six. He wore a dark blue single-breasted suit; the jacket was cut too long. He was sleek and slightly animal; his eyes were brown and bright. He was not looking at them but at the guard beside the door.

  "Go away," he said. He had a slight Saxonian twang. "Go away and tell the other one to bring us food."

  "I've told him," Peters called; "they know already. But they've brought nothing."

  "They are great snobs," Fiedler observed drily in English. "They think we should have servants for the food."

  Fiedler had spent the war in Canada. Leamas remembered that, now that he detected the accent. His parents had been German Jewish refugees, Marxists, and it was not until 1946 that the family returned home, anxious to take part, whatever the personal cost, in the construction of Stalin's Germany.