The Spy Who Came in from the Cold s-3

by John le Carré

  "Hello," he added to Leamas, almost by the way, "glad to see you."

  "Hello, Fiedler."

  "You've reached the end of the road."

  "What the hell do you mean?" asked Leamas quickly.

  "I mean that contrary to anything Peters told you, you are not going farther east. Sorry." He sounded amused.

  Leamas turned to Peters.

  "Is this true?" His voice was shaking with rage. "Is it true? Tell me!"

  Peters nodded. "Yes. I am the go-between. We had to do it that way. I'm sorry," he added.

  "Why?"

  "Force majeure," Fiedler put in. "Your initial interrogation took place in the West, where only an embassy could provide the kind of link we needed. The German Democratic Republic has no embassies in the West. Not yet. Our liaison section therefore arranged for us to enjoy facilities and communications and immunities which are at present denied to us."

  "You bastard," hissed Leamas, "you lousy bastard! You knew I wouldn't trust myself to your rotten Service; that was the reason, wasn't it? That was why you used a Russian."

  "We used the Soviet Embassy at The Hague. What else could we do? Up till then it was our operation. That's perfectly reasonable. Neither we nor anyone else could have known that your own people in England would get onto you so quickly."

  "No? Not even when you put them on to me your selves? Isn't that what happened, Fiedler? Well, isn't it?" Always remember to dislike them, Control had said. Then they will treasure what they get out of you.

  "That is an absurd suggestion," Fiedler replied shortly. Glancing toward Peters he added something in Russian. Peters nodded and stood up.

  "Good-bye," he said to Leamas. "Good luck."

  He smiled wearily, nodded to Fiedler, then walked to the door. He put his hand on the door handle, then turned and called to Leamas again: "Good luck." He seemed to want Leamas to say something, but Leamas might not have heard. He had turned very pale, he held his hands loosely across his body, the thumbs upwards as if he were going to fight. Peters remained standing at the door.

  "I should have known," said Leamas, and his voice had the odd, faulty note of a very angry man. "I should have guessed you'd never have the guts to do your own dirty work, Fiedler. It's typical of your rotten little half-country and your squalid little Service that you get big uncle to do your pimping for you. You're not a country at all, you're not a government, you're a fifth rate dictatorship of political neurotics." Jabbing his finger in Fiedler's direction he shouted:

  "I know you, you sadistic bastard, it's typical of you. You were in Canada in the war, weren't you? A bloody good place to be then, wasn't it? I'll bet you stuck your fat head into Mummy's apron any time an airplane flew over. What are you now? A creeping little acolyte to Mundt and twenty-two Russian divisions sitting on your mother's doorstep. Well, I pity you, Fiedler, the day you wake up and find them gone. There'll be a killing then, and not Mummy or big uncle will save you from getting what you deserve."

  Fiedler shrugged.

  "Regard it as a visit to the dentist, Leamas. The sooner it's all done, the sooner you can go home. Have some food and go to bed."

  "You know perfectly well I can't go home," Leamas retorted. "You've seen to that. You blew me sky high in England, you had to, both of you. You knew damn well I'd never come here unless I had to."

  Fiedler looked at his thin, strong fingers.

  "This is hardly the time to philosophize," he said, "but you can't really complain, you know. All our work—yours and mine—is rooted in the theory that the whole is more important than the individual. That is why a Communist sees his secret service as the natural extension of his arm, and that is why in your own country intelligence is shrouded in a kind of pudeur anglaise. The exploitation of individuals can only be justified by the collective need, can't it? I find it slightly ridiculous that you should be so indignant. We are not here to observe the ethical laws of English country life. After all," he added silkily, "your own behavior has not, from the purist's point of view, been irreproachable."

  Leamas was watching Fiedler with an expression of disgust.

  "I know your setup. You're Mundt's poodle, aren't you? They say you want his job. I suppose you'll get it now. It's time the Mundt dynasty ended; perhaps this is it."

  "I don't understand," Fiedler replied.

  "I'm your big success, aren't I?" Leamas sneered.

  Fiedler seemed to reflect for a moment, then he shrugged and said, "The operation was successful. Whether you were worth it is questionable. We shall see. But it was a good operation. It satisfied the only requirement of our profession: it worked."

  "I suppose you take the credit?" Leamas persisted, with a glance in the direction of Peters.

  "There is no question of credit," Fiedler replied crisply, "none at all." He sat down on the arm of the sofa, looked at Leamas thoughtfully for a moment and then said:

  "Nevertheless, you are right to be indignant about one thing. Who told your people we had picked you up? We didn't. You may not believe me, but it happens to be true. We didn't tell them. We didn't even want them to know. We had ideas then of getting you to work for us later—ideas which I now realize to be ridiculous. So who told them? You were lost, drifting around, you had no address, no ties, no friends. Then how the devil did they know you'd gone? Someone told them—scarcely Ashe or Kiever, since they are both now under arrest."

  "Under arrest?"

  "So it appears. Not specifically for their work on your case, but there were other things..."

  "Well, well."

  "It is true, what I said just now. We would have been content with Peters' report from Holland. You could have had your money and gone. But you hadn't told us everything; and I want to know everything. After all, your presence here provides us with problems too, you know."

  "Well, you've boobed. I know damn all—and you're welcome to it."

  There was a silence, during which Peters, with an abrupt and by no means friendly nod in Fiedler's direction, quietly let himself out of the room.

  Fiedler picked up the bottle of whisky and poured a little into each glass.

  "We have no soda, I'm afraid," he said. "Do you like water? I ordered soda, but they brought some wretched lemonade."

  "Oh, go to hell," said Leamas. He suddenly felt very tired.

  Fiedler shook his head.

  "You are a very proud man," he observed, "but never mind. Eat your supper and go to bed."

  One of the guards came in with a tray of food— black bread, sausage and cold green salad.

  "It is a little crude," said Fiedler, "but quite satisfying. No potato, I'm afraid. There is a temporary shortage of potatoes."

  They began eating in silence, Fiedler very carefully, like a man who counted his calories.

  * * *

  The guards showed Leamas to his bedroom. They let him carry his own luggage—the same luggage that Kiever had given him before he left England—and he walked between them along the wide central corridor which led through the house from the front door. They came to a large double door, painted dark green, and one of the guards unlocked it; they beckoned to Leamas to go first. He pushed open the door and- found himself in a small barrack bedroom with two bunk beds, a chair and a rudimentary desk. It was like something in prison camp. There were pictures of girls on the walls and the windows were shuttered. At the far end of the room was another door. They signaled him forward again. Putting down his baggage, he went and opened the door. The second room was identical to the first, but there was one bed and the walls were bare.

  "You bring those cases," he said. "I'm tired." He lay on the bed, fully dressed, and within a few minutes he was fast asleep.

  * * *

  A sentry woke him with breakfast: black bread and Ersatz coffee. He got out of bed and went to the window.

  The house stood on a high bill. The ground fell steeply away from beneath his window, the crowns of pine trees visible above the crest. Beyond them, spectacular in their symmet
ry, unending hills, heavy with trees, stretched into the distance. Here and there a timber gully or firebreak formed a thin brown divide between the pines, seeming like Aaron's rod miraculously to hold apart massive seas of encroaching forest. There was no sign of man; not a house or church, not even the ruin of some previous habitation—only the road, the yellow dirt road, a crayon line across the basin of the valley. There was no sound. It seemed incredible that anything so vast could be so still. The day was cold but clear. It must have rained in the night; the ground was moist, and the whole landscape so sharply defined against the white sky that Leamas could distinguish even single trees on the farthest hills.

  He dressed slowly, drinking the sour coffee meanwhile. He had nearly finished dressing and was about to start eating the bread when Fiedler came into the room.

  "Good morning," he said cheerfully. "Don't let me keep you from your breakfast." He sat down on the bed. Leamas had to hand it to Fiedler; he had guts. Not that there was anything brave about coming to see him—the sentries, Leamas supposed, were still in the adjoining room. But there was an endurance, a defined purpose in his manner which Leamas could sense and admire.

  "You have presented us with an intriguing problem," Fiedler observed. "I've told you all I know."

  "Oh no." He smiled. "Oh no, you haven't. You have told us all you are conscious of knowing."

  "Bloody clever," Leamas muttered, pushing his food aside and lighting a cigarette—his last.

  "Let me ask you a question," Fiedler suggested with the exaggerated bonhomie of a man proposing a party game. "As an experienced intelligence officer, what would you do with the information you have given us?"

  "What information?"

  "My dear Leamas, you have only given us one piece of intelligence. You have told us about Riemeck: we knew about Riemeck. You have told us about the dispositions of your Berlin organization, about its personalities and its agents. That, if I may say so, is old hat. Accurate—yes. Good background, fascinating reading, here and there good collateral, here and there a little fish which we shall take out of the pool. But not— if I may be crude—not fifteen thousand pounds' worth of intelligence. Not," he smiled again, "at current rates."

  "Listen," said Leamas, "I didn't propose this deal— you did. You, Kiever and Peters. I didn't come crawling to your sissy Mends, peddling old intelligence. You people made the running, Fiedler; you named the price and took the risk. Apart from that, I haven't had a bloody penny. So don't blame me if the operation's a flop." Make them come to you, Leamas thought.

  "It isn't a flop," Fiedler replied, "it isn't finished. It can't be. You haven't told us what you know. I said you had given us one piece of intelligence. I'm talking about Rolling Stone. Let me ask you again—what would you do if I, if Peters or someone like us, had told you a similar story?"

  Leamas shrugged. "I'd feel uneasy," he said. "It's happened before. You get an indication, several perhaps, that there's a spy in some department or at a certain level. So what? You can't arrest the whole government service. You can't lay traps for a whole department. You just sit tight and hope for more. You bear it in mind. In Rolling Stone you can't even tell what country he's working in."

  "You are an operator, Leamas," Fiedler observed with a laugh, "not an evaluator. That is clear. Let me ask you some elementary questions."

  Leamas said nothing.

  "The file—the actual file on operation Rolling Stone. What color was it?"

  "Gray with a red cross on it—that means limited subscription."

  "Was anything attached to the outside?"

  "Yes, the Caveat. That's the subscription label. With a legend saying that any unauthorized person not named on this label finding the file in his possession must at once return it unopened to Banking Section."

  "Who was on the subscription list?"

  "For Rolling Stone?"

  "Yes."

  * * *

  "P.A. to Control, Control, Control's secretary; Banking Section, Miss Bream of Special Registry and Satellites Four. That's all, I think. And Special Dispatch, I suppose—I'm not sure about them."

  "Satellites Four? What do they do?"

  "Iron Curtain countries excluding the Soviet Union and China. The Zone."

  "You mean the GDR?"

  "I mean the Zone."

  "Isn't it unusual for a whole section to be on a subscription list?"

  "Yes, it probably is. I wouldn't know—I’ve never handled limited subscription stuff before. Except in Berlin, of course; it was all different there."

  "Who was in Satellites Four at that time?"

  "Oh, God. Guillam, Haverlake, de Jong, I think. De Jong was just back from Berlin."

  "Were they all allowed to see this file?"

  "I don't know, Fiedler," Leamas retorted irritably, "and if I were you..."

  "Then isn't it odd that a whole section was on the subscription list while all the rest of the subscribers are individuals?"

  "I tell you I don't know—how could I know? I was just a clerk in all this."

  "Who carried the file from one subscriber to another?"

  "Secretaries, I suppose—I can't remember. It's bloody months since..."

  "Then why weren't the secretaries on the list? Control's secretary was." There was a moment's silence.

  "No, you're right; I remember now," Leamas said, a note of surprise in his voice. "We passed it by hand."

  "Who else in Banking dealt with that file?"

  "No one. It was my pigeon when I joined the Section. One of the women had done it before, but when I came I took it over and they were taken off the list."

  "Then you alone passed the file by hand to the next reader?"

  "Yes...yes, I suppose I did."

  "To whom did you pass it?"

  "I...I can't remember."

  "Think!" Fiedler had not raised his voice, but it contained a sudden urgency which took Leamas by surprise.

  "To Control's P.A., I think, to show what action we had taken or recommended."

  "Who brought the file?"

  "What do you mean?" Leamas sounded off balance.

  "Who brought you the file to read? Somebody on the list must have brought it to you."

  Leamas' fingers touched his cheek for a moment in an involuntary nervous gesture.

  "Yes, they must. It's difficult, you see, Fiedler; I was putting back a lot of drink in those days." His tone was oddly conciliatory. "You don't realize how hard it is to..."

  "I ask you again. Think. Who brought you the file?"

  Leamas sat down at the table and shook his head.

  "I can't remember. It may come back to me. At the moment I just can't remember, really I can't. It's no good chasing it."

  "It can't have been Control's girl, can it? You always handed the file back to Control P.A. You said so. So those on the list must all have seen it before Control."

  "Yes, that's it, I suppose."

  "Then there is Special Registry, Miss Bream."

  "She was just the woman who ran the strong room for subscription list files. That's where the file was kept when it wasn't in action."

  "Then," said Fiedler silkily, "it must have been Satellites Four who brought it, mustn't it?"

  "Yes, I suppose it must," said Leamas helplessly, as if he were not quite up to Fiedler's brilliance.

  "Which floor did Satellites Four work on?"

  "The second."

  "And Banking?"

  "The fourth. Next to Special Registry."

  "Do you remember who brought it up? Or do you remember, for instance, going downstairs ever to collect the file from them?"

  In despair, Leamas shook his head. Then suddenly he turned to Fiedler and cried: "Yes, yes I do! Of course I do! I got it from Peter!" Leamas seemed to have waked up: his face was flushed, excited. "That's it: I once collected the file from Peter in his room. We chatted together about Norway. We'd served there together, you see."

  "Peter Guillam?"

  "Yes, Peter—I'd forgotten abou
t him. He'd come back from Ankara a few months before. He was on the list! Peter was—of course! That's it. It was Satellites Four and PG in brackets, Peter's initials. Someone else had done it before and Special Registry had glued a bit of white paper over the old name and put in Peter's initials."

  "What territory did Guillam cover?"

  "The Zone. East Germany. Economic stuff; ran a small section, sort of backwater. He was the chap. He brought the file up to me once too, I remember that now. He didn't run agents though. I don't quite know how he came into it—Peter and a couple of others were doing some research job on food shortages. Evaluation really."

  "Did you not discuss it with him?"

  "No, that's taboo. It isn't done with subscription files, I got a homily from the woman in Special Registry about it—Bream—no discussion, no questions."

  "But taking into account the elaborate security precautions surrounding Rolling Stone, it is possible, is it not, that Guillam's so-called research job might have involved the partial running of this agent, Rolling Stone?"

  "I've told Peters," Leamas almost shouted, banging his fist on the desk, "it's just bloody silly to imagine that any operation could have been run against East Germany without my knowledge—without the knowledge of the Berlin organization. I would have known, don't you see? How many times do I have to say that? I would have known!"

  "Quite so," said Fiedler softly, "of course you would." He stood up and went to the window.

  "You should see it in the autumn," he said, looking out. "It's magnificent when the beeches are on the turn."

  13

  Pins or Paper Clips

  Fiedler loved to ask questions. Sometimes, because he was a lawyer, he asked them for his own pleasure alone, to demonstrate the discrepancy between evidence and perfective truth. He possessed, however, that persistent inquisitiveness which for journalists and lawyers is an end in itself.

  They went for a walk that afternoon, following the gravel road down into the valley, then branching into the forest along a broad, pitted track lined with felled timber. All the time, Fiedler probed, giving nothing. About the building in Cambridge Circus, and the people who worked there. What social class did they come from, what parts of London did they inhabit, did husbands and wives work in the same Departments? He asked about the pay, the leave, the morale, the canteen; he asked about their love-life, their gossip, their philosophy. Most of all he asked about their philosophy.