The Spy Who Came in from the Cold s-3

by John le Carré

  Leamas said nothing: he was breathing in sharp gasps, his head buried in his hands.

  "Answer this one question, then you can go. You shall have a bed. You can sleep if you want. Otherwise you must go back to your cell, do you understand? You will be tied up again and fed on the floor like an animal, do you understand? Tell me where you went."

  The wild pulsation of his brain suddenly increased, the room was dancing; he heard voices around him and the sound of footsteps; spectral shapes passed and repassed, detached from sound and gravity; someone was shouting, but not at him; the door was open, he was sure someone had opened the door. The room was full of people, all shouting now, and then they were going, some of them had gone, he heard them marching away, the stamping of their feet was like the throbbing of his head; the echo died and there was silence. Then like the touch of mercy itself, a cool cloth was laid across his forehead, and kindly hands carried him away.

  He woke on a hospital bed, and standing at the foot of it was Fiedler, smoking a cigarette.

  18

  Fiedler

  Leamas took stock. A bed with sheets. A single ward with no bars in the windows, just curtains and frosted glass. Pale green walls, dark green linoleum; and Fiedler watching him, smoking.

  A nurse brought him food: an egg, some thin soup and fruit. He felt like death, but he supposed he'd better eat it. So he did and Fiedler watched.

  "How do you feel?" he asked.

  "Bloody awful," Leamas replied.

  "But better?"

  "I suppose so." He hesitated. "Those sods beat me up."

  "You killed a sentry, you know that?"

  "I guessed I had...What do they expect if they mount such a damn stupid operation? Why didn't they pull us both in at once? Why put all the lights out? If anything was over organized, that was."

  "I am afraid that as a nation we tend to over organize. Abroad that passes for efficiency."

  Again there was a pause.

  "What happened to you?" Leamas asked.

  "Oh, I too was softened for interrogation."

  "By Mundt's men?"

  "By Mundt's men and Mundt. It was a very peculiar sensation!"

  "That's one way of putting it."

  "No, no; not physically. Physically it was a nightmare, but you see Mundt had a special interest in beating me up. Apart from the confession."

  "Because you dreamed up that story about—"

  "Because I am a Jew."

  "Oh Christ," said Leamas softly.

  "That is why I got special treatment. All the time he whispered to me. It was very strange."

  "What did he say?"

  Fiedler didn't reply. At last he muttered, "That's all over."

  "Why? What's happened?"

  "The day we were arrested I had applied to the Präsidium for a civil warrant to arrest Mundt as an enemy of the people."

  "But you're mad—I told you, you're raving mad, Fiedler! He'll never—"

  "There was other evidence against him apart from yours. Evidence I have been accumulating over the last three years, piece by piece. Yours provided the proof we need; that's all. As soon as that was clear I prepared a report and sent it to every member of the Präsidium except Mundt. They received it on the same day that I made my application for a warrant."

  "The day we were pulled in."

  "Yes. I knew Mundt would fight. I knew he had friends on the Präsidium, or yes-men at least, people who were sufficiently frightened to go running to him as soon as they got my report. And in the end, I knew he would lose. The Präsidium had the weapon it needed to destroy him; they had the report, and for those few days while you and I were being questioned they read it and reread it until they knew it was true and each knew the others knew. In the end they acted. Herded together by their common fear, their common weakness and their common knowledge, they turned against him and ordered a Tribunal."

  "Tribunal?"

  "A secret one, of course. It meets tomorrow. Mundt is under arrest."

  "What is this other evidence? The evidence you've collected."

  "Wait and see," Fiedler replied with a smile. "Tomorrow you will see."

  Fiedler was silent for a time, watching Leamas eat.

  "This Tribunal," Leamas asked, "how is it conducted?"

  "That is up to the President. It is not a People's Court—it is important to remember that— it is more in the nature of an inquiry—a committee of inquiry, that's it, appointed by the Präsidium to investigate and report upon a certain...subject. Its report contains a recommendation. In a case like this the recommendation is tantamount to a verdict, but remains secret, as a part of the proceedings of the Präsidium."

  "How does it work? Are there counsel and judges?"

  "There are three judges," Fiedler said; "and in effect, there are counsel. Tomorrow I myself shall put the case against Mundt. Karden will defend him."

  "Who's Karden?"

  Fiedler hesitated.

  "A very tough man," he said. "Looks like a country doctor, small and benevolent. He was at Buchenwald."

  "Why can't Mundt defend himself?"

  "It was Mundt's wish. It is said that Karden will call a witness."

  Leamas shrugged. "That's your affair," he said.

  Again there was silence. At last Fiedler said reflectively, "I wouldn't have minded—I don't think I would have minded, not so much anyway—if he had hurt me for myself, for hate or jealousy. Do you understand that? That long, long pain and all the time you say to yourself, 'Either I shall faint or I shall grow to bear the pain, nature will see to that' and the pain just increases like a violinist going up the E string. You think it can't get any higher and it does—the pain's like that, it rises and rises, and all that nature does is bring you on from note to note like a deaf child being taught to hear. And all the time he was whispering Jew...Jew. I could understand, I'm sure I could, if he — had done it for the idea, for the Party if you like, or if he had hated me. But it wasn't that; he hated—"

  "All right," said Leamas shortly, "you should know. He's a bastard."

  "Yes," said Fiedler, "he is a bastard." He seemed excited; he wants to boast to somebody, thought Leamas.

  "I thought a lot about you," Fiedler added. "I thought about that talk we had—you remember— about the motor."

  "What motor?"

  Fiedler smiled. "I'm sorry, that is a direct translation. I mean 'Motor,' the engine, spirit, urge; whatever Christians call it."

  "I'm not a Christian."

  Fiedler shrugged. "You know what I mean." He smiled again. "The thing that embarrasses you...I'll put it another way. Suppose Mundt is right? He asked me to confess, you know; I was to confess that I was in league with British spies who were plotting to murder him. You see the argument—that the whole operation was mounted by British Intelligence in order to entice us—me, if you like—into liquidating the best man in the Abteilung. To turn, our own weapon against us."

  "He tried that on me," said Leamas indifferently. And he added, "As if I'd cooked up the whole bloody story."

  "But what I mean is this: suppose you had done that, suppose it were true—I am taking an example, you understand, a hypothesis, would you kill a man, an innocent man—"

  "Mundt's a killer himself."

  "Suppose he wasn't. Suppose it were me they wanted to kill: would London do it?"

  "It depends. It depends on the need..."

  "Ah," said Fiedler contentedly, "it depends on the need. Like Stalin, in fact. The traffic accident and the statistics. That is a great relief."

  "Why?"

  "You must get some sleep," said Fiedler. "Order what food you want. They will bring you whatever you want. Tomorrow you can talk." As he reached the door he looked back and said, "We're all the same, you know, that's the joke."

  Soon Leamas was asleep, content in the knowledge that Fiedler was his ally and that they would shortly send Mundt to his death. That was something which he had looked forward to for a very long time.

  1
9

  Branch Meeting

  Liz was happy in Leipzig. Austerity pleased her—it gave her the comfort of sacrifice. The little house she stayed in was dark and meager, the food was poor and most of it had to go to the children. They talked politics at every meal, she and Frau Liiman, Branch Secretary for the Ward Branch of Leipzig-Neuenhagen, a small gray woman whose husband managed a gravel quarry on the outskirts of the city. It was like living in a religious community, Liz thought; a convent or a kibbutz or something. You felt the world was better for your empty stomach. Liz had some German which she had learned from her aunt, and she was surprised how quickly she was able to use it. She tried it on the children first and they grinned and helped her. The children treated her oddly to begin with, as if she were a person of great quality or rarity value, and on the third day one of them plucked up courage and asked her if she had brought any chocolate from "drüben"—from "over there." She'd never thought of that and she felt ashamed. After that they seemed to forget about her.

  In the evenings there was Party work. They distributed literature, visited Branch members who had defaulted on their dues or lagged behind in their attendance at meetings, called in at District for a discussion on "Problems Connected with the Centralized Distribution of Agricultural Produce" at which all local Branch Secretaries were present, and attended a meeting of the Workers' Consultative Council of a machine tool factory on the outskirts of the town.

  At last, on the fourth day, a Thursday, came their own Branch Meeting. This was to be, for Liz at least, the most exhilarating experience of all; it would be an example of all that her own Branch in Bayswater could one day be. They had chosen a wonderful title for the evening's discussions—"Coexistence After Two Wars"—and they expected a record attendance. The whole ward had been circularized; they had taken care to see that there was no rival meeting in the neighborhood that evening; it was not a late shopping day.

  Seven people came.

  Seven people and Liz and the Branch Secretary and the man from District. Liz put a brave face on it but she was terribly upset. She could scarcely concentrate on the speaker, and when she tried he used long German compounds that she couldn't work out anyway. It was like the meetings in Bayswater, it was like midweek evensong when she used to go to church—the same dutiful little group of lost faces, the same fussy self-consciousness, the same feeling of a great idea in the hands of little people. She always felt the same thing—it was awful really but she did—she wished no one would turn up, because that was absolute and it suggested persecution, humiliation—it was something you could react to.

  But seven people were nothing: they were worse than nothing, because they were evidence of the inertia of the uncapturable mass. They broke your heart.

  The room was better than the schoolroom in Bayswater, but even that was no comfort. In Bayswater it had been fun trying to find a room. In the early days they had pretended they were something else, not the Party at all. They'd taken back rooms in pubs, a committee room at the Ardena Café or met secretly in one another's houses. Then Bill Hazel had joined from the Secondary School and they'd used his classroom. Even that was a risk—the headmaster thought Bill ran a drama group, so theoretically at least they might still be chucked out. Somehow that fitted better than this Peace Hall in pre-cast concrete with the cracks in the corners and the picture of Lenin. Why did they have that silly frame thing all around the picture? Bundles of organ pipes sprouting from the corners and the bunting all dusty. It looked like something from a fascist funeral. Sometimes she thought Alec was right—you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function. What did he say? "A dog scratches where it itches. Different dogs itch in different places." No, it was wrong, Alec was wrong—it was a wicked thing to say. Peace and freedom and equality—they were facts, of course they were. And what about history—all those laws the Party proved? No, Alec was wrong: truth existed outside people, it was demonstrated in history, individuals must bow to it, be crushed by it if necessary. The Party was the vanguard of history, the spear point in the fight for Peace...She went over the rubric a little uncertainly. She wished more people had come. Seven was so few. They looked so cross; cross and hungry.

  The meeting over, Liz waited for Frau Liiman to collect the unsold literature from the heavy table by the door, fill in her attendance book and put on her coat, for it was cold that evening. The speaker had left— rather rudely, Liz thought—before the general discussion. Frau Liiman was standing at the door with her hand on the light switch when a man appeared out of the darkness, framed in the doorway. Just for a moment Liz thought it was Ashe. He was tall and fair and wore one of those raincoats with leather buttons.

  "Comrade Liiman?" he inquired.

  "Yes?"

  "I am looking for an English Comrade, Gold. She is staying with you?"

  "I'm Elizabeth Gold," Liz put in, and the man came into the hall, closing the door behind him so that the light shone full upon his face.

  "I am Holten from District." He showed some paper to Frau Liiman who was still standing at the door, and she nodded and glanced a little anxiously toward Liz.

  "I have been asked to give a message to Comrade Gold from the Präsidium," he said. "It concerns an alteration in your program; an invitation to attend a special meeting."

  "Oh," said Liz rather stupidly. It seemed fantastic that the Präsidium should even have heard of her.

  "It is a gesture," Holten said. "A gesture of goodwill."

  "But I...but Frau Liiman..." Liz began, helplessly.

  "Comrade Liiman, I am sure, will forgive you under the circumstances."

  "Of course," said Frau Liiman quickly.

  "Where is the meeting to be held?"

  "It will necessitate your leaving tonight," Holten replied. "We have a long way to go. Nearly to Gorlitz."

  "To Gorlitz...Where is that?"

  "East," said Frau Liiman quickly. "On the Polish border."

  "We can drive you home now. You can collect your things and we will continue the journey at once."

  "Tonight? Now?"

  "Yes." Holten didn't seem to consider Liz had much choice.

  A large black car was waiting for them. There was a driver in the front and a flag post on the hood. It looked like a military car.

  20

  Tribunal

  The court was no larger than a schoolroom. At one end, on the mere five or six benches which were provided, sat guards and warders and here and there among them spectators—members of the Präsidium and selected officials. At the other end of the room sat the three members of the Tribunal on tall-backed chairs at an unpolished oak table. Above them, suspended from the ceiling by three loops of wire, was a large red star made of plywood. The walls of the courtroom were white like the walls of Leamas' cell.

  On either side, their chairs a little forward of the table and turned inwards to face one another, sat two men: one was middle-aged, sixty perhaps, in a black suit and a gray tie, the kind of suit they wear in church in German country districts; the other was Fiedler.

  Leamas sat at the back, a guard on either side of him. Between the heads of the spectators he could see Mundt, himself surrounded by police, his fair hair cut very short, his broad shoulders covered in the familiar gray of prison uniform. It seemed to Leamas a curious commentary on the mood of the court—or the influence of Fiedler—that he himself should be wearing his own clothes, while Mundt was in prison uniform.

  Leamas had not long been in his place when the President of the Tribunal, sitting at the center of the table, rang the bell. The sound directed his attention toward it, and a shiver passed over him as he realized that the President was a woman. He could scarcely be blamed for not noticing it before. She was fiftyish, small-eyed and dark. Her hair was cut short like a man's, and she wore the kind of functional dark tunic favored by Soviet wives. She looked sharply around the room, nodded to a sentry to close the door, and began at once without ceremony to address
the court.

  "You all know why we are here. The proceedings are secret, remember that. This is a Tribunal convened expressly by the Präsidium. It is to the Präsidium alone that we are responsible. We shall hear evidence as we think fit." She pointed perfunctorily toward Fiedler. "Comrade Fiedler, you had better begin."

  Fiedler stood up. Nodding briefly toward the table, he drew from the briefcase beside him a sheaf of papers held together in one corner by a piece of black cord.

  He talked quietly and easily, with a diffidence which Leamas had never seen in him before. Leamas considered it a good performance, well adjusted to the role of a man regretfully hanging his superior.

  * * *

  "You should know first, if you do not know already," Fiedler began, "that on the day that the Präsidium received my report on the activities of Comrade Mundt I was arrested, together with the defector Leamas. Both of us were imprisoned and both of us...invited, under extreme duress, to confess that this whole terrible charge was a fascist plot against a loyal Comrade.

  "You can see from the report I have already given you how it was that Leamas came to our notice: we ourselves sought him out, induced him to defect and finally brought him to Democratic Germany. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate the impartiality of Leamas than this: that he still refuses, for reasons I will explain, to believe that Mundt was a British agent. It is therefore grotesque to suggest that Leamas is a plant: the initiative was ours, and the fragmentary but vital evidence of Leamas provides only the final proof in a long chain of indications reaching back over the last three years.

  "You have before you the written record of this case. I need do no more than interpret for you facts of which you are already aware.

  "The charge against Comrade Mundt is that he is the agent of an imperialist power. I could have made other charges—that he passed information to the British Secret Service, that he turned his Department into the unconscious lackey of a bourgeois state, that he deliberately shielded revanchist anti-Party groups and accepted sums of foreign currency in reward. These other charges would derive from the first; that Hans-Dieter Mundt is the agent of an imperialist power. The penalty for this crime is death. There is no crime more serious in our penal code, none which exposes our state to greater danger, nor demands more vigilance of our Party organs." Here he put the papers down.