A Legacy of Spies

by John le Carré

  On reaching the car, however, they dropped the basket and ran back in alarm, followed by Loftus barking, to report that the driver’s door had been forced open by a burglar ‘who has completely stolen Daddy’s camera!’ – Lucy.

  The driver’s door had indeed been forced, and the handle broken, but the old Kodak camera, which I had inadvertently left in the glove compartment, had not been stolen, nor had my overcoat or the groceries and other provisions that we had picked up at the Naafi, which to our surprise was open on New Year’s Day, before crossing into East Berlin.

  Far from committing a burglary, it transpired, the intruder had left a Memphis tobacco tin next to my camera. Inside it was a small nickel cartridge, which I immediately identified as a standard Minox container for sub-miniature film.

  Since today is a public holiday, and I have recently attended an operational photography course, I decided there were insufficient grounds at this stage to call out the Station duty officer. On arriving home, I therefore immediately developed the film in our bathroom, which is windowless, using my Service-issue equipment.

  By 2100 hours, having examined some one hundred frames of developed negative under a magnifying glass, I alerted the deputy Head of Station [Leamas], who instructed me to bring the material forthwith to headquarters and prepare a written report, which I duly did.

  I fully accept, in hindsight, that I should have taken the undeveloped film directly to Berlin Station for processing by photographic section, and that it was insecure and potentially disastrous for me as a probationer to undertake the development in my own home. In mitigation I would like to repeat that 1 January was a public holiday and that I was reluctant to rouse the Station with what might have been a false alarm, plus I had passed my operational photography course at Sarratt with straight As. Nevertheless I sincerely regret my decision, and would like to state that I have learned my lesson.

  S de J

  And along the bottom of the letter, Alec’s enraged hand-scrawled note to his Head of Covert, Smiley:

  George – the stupid little bugger copied this lot to Joint before anyone had a chance to stop him. That’s education for you. Suggest you smooth-talk P. Alleline, B. Haydon, T. Esterhase and Roy bloody Bland and company into believing it was a bum steer: i.e. no further action required, second-rate pedlar material, etc.

  Alec

  But Alec was never one to sit on his thumbs, least of all when his future career was in the balance. His contract with the Circus was up for renewal, he was way past the age limit for fieldmen, with precious little prospect of a cosy desk job in Head Office, which explains Smiley’s somewhat untrusting account of what Alec did next:

  H/Covert Marylebone [Smiley] to Control. Eyes Only. Personal, hand-delivered.

  Subject: AL, H/Covert Berlin.

  And handwritten, in George’s own immaculate hand:

  C: You will be as surprised as I was that AL appeared unannounced on the doorstep of my Chelsea home at ten o’clock last night. Ann being away on a health cure, I was alone in the house. He smelt of drink, not unusual, but was not drunk. He insisted I unplug the phone in the drawing room before we speak, and that, despite the prevailing very cold weather, we sit at the conservatory end overlooking the garden on the grounds that ‘you can’t bug glass’. He then told me he had flown from Berlin by civilian plane that afternoon in order not to appear on the RAF flight list, which he suspects is routinely monitored by Joint Steering. For the same reason he no longer trusts Circus couriers.

  He first needed to know, had I put Joint off the scent, as he had asked, regarding the Köpenick material? I replied that I believed I had been able to achieve this, since it was well known that Berlin Station was besieged with offers of worthless pedlar intelligence.

  He then produced the attached folded sheet of paper from his pocket, explaining that it was a summary, prepared by himself alone, of the material contained in the Köpenick cassettes, but without benefit of collateral from any other covert or overt source.

  I have two visions simultaneously: the one of George and Alec huddled head to head in the chilly conservatory in Bywater Street; the second of Alec alone the night before, crouched over his ancient Olivetti and a bottle of Scotch in his smoke-filled basement office in the Olympic Stadium in West Berlin. The result of his labours lies before me: one grimy typewritten page, blotched by Tipp-Ex and encased in cellophane, text as follows:

  Minutes KGB conference East Bloc intelligence services, Prague, 21 Dec 1957.

  Name and rank home-based KGB officers on attachment to Stasi directorates, as of 5 July 1956.

  Identity of current Stasi head agents in Sub-Saharan Africa.

  Names, rank and worknames of all Stasi officers undergoing KGB training in USSR.

  Location of six new covert Soviet signals installations in GDR and Poland, as of 5 July 1956.

  Turn a page and I am back to Smiley’s handwritten minute to Control, not a crossing-out:

  The rest of Alec’s story runs as follows. Regularly each week, after de Jong’s scoop, if such it was, Alec commandeered the de Jongs’ family Volvo and dog, put $500 in the glove compartment together with a children’s colouring book with the number of his direct line to Berlin Station scrawled in it, threw his fishing gear into the back (I did not till now know that Alec fished and am inclined to doubt it), drove to Köpenick and parked where de Jong had parked at the same hour. With the dog beside him, he went fishing and waited. On the third attempt, he struck lucky. The $500 had been replaced by two cassettes. The children’s colouring book with the phone number had gone.

  Two nights later, back in West Berlin, he received a call on the direct line from a man who refused to give his name, but said he fished in Köpenick. Alec instructed him to present himself outside a given house number on the Kurfürstendamm at seven-twenty the next evening carrying the previous week’s edition of Der Spiegel in his left hand.

  The resulting treff [i.e. covert meeting, as borrowed by Berlin hands from German espionage vernacular] took place in a Volkswagen people-carrier driven by de Jong, and lasted eighteen minutes. MAYFLOWER, as Alec has arbitrarily christened him, at first refused to reveal his name, insisting the cassettes came not from himself but from a ‘friend inside the Stasi’, whom he must protect. His own role was merely that of voluntary intermediary, he insisted, his motive not mercenary but ideological.

  But Alec wasn’t having this. Unsourced material delivered by an anonymous intermediary was a drug on the market, he said. So no deal. Finally – and only in response to Alec’s entreaties, we are asked to believe – Mayflower produced a card from his pocket with the name Dr med. Karl Riemeck and the address of the Charité Hospital in East Berlin on one side, and on the back, an address in Köpenick, handwritten.

  It is Alec’s conviction that Riemeck had only been waiting to get the measure of his man before revealing himself, and that after ten minutes he abandoned his reservations. But we should never forget the Irishman in Alec.

  So to the obvious questions:

  Even if Dr Riemeck is who he says he is, who is his magic sub-source?

  Are we dealing with yet another elaborate Stasi set-up?

  Or – though it pains me to suggest it – are we dealing with something a little more home-brewed by Alec himself?

  In conclusion:

  Alec is asking with some passion, I have to say, to be allowed to develop Mayflower to the next stage without subjecting him to any of the usual searches and background checks which as things stand could not be conducted without the knowledge and assistance of Joint Steering. His reservations are well known to us both, and I venture to suggest we cautiously share them.

  Alec however exhibits no such restraint regarding his suspicions. Last night after the third Scotch it was Connie Sachs he had cast as Moscow Centre’s double agent within the Circus, with Toby Esterhase running a close second. His theor
y, based on nothing but his own whisky-fuelled intuition, was that the pair of them had got themselves caught up in a sex-driven folie à deux, the Russians had found out and were blackmailing them. I finally got him to bed around 2.00 a.m., only to find him in the kitchen at 6.00 a.m., cooking himself bacon and eggs.

  The question is what to do. On balance, I am inclined to let him have one more run with his Mayflower (which means, effectively, with his mysterious alleged sub-source in the Stasi) on his own terms. As we both know, his days in the field are numbered, and he has every reason to extend them. But we also know that the hardest part of our work is to invest trust. Based on little more than instinct, Alec declares himself solidly convinced of Mayflower’s bona fides. This can be either the inspired hunch of a veteran, or the special pleading of an ageing field officer facing the natural end of his career.

  I respectfully recommend that we allow him to go forward in that knowledge.

  GS

  But Control is not so easily won over: see following exchange.

  Control to GS: Seriously concerned that Leamas is paddling his own canoe. Where are the other indicators? Surely we may test the intelligence in areas that in Leamas’s vision of things are not contaminated?

  GS to Control: Have separately consulted FO and Defence under a pretext. Both speak well of material, do not believe it is fabrication. Chickenfeed as a prelude to a major deception always a possibility.

  Control to GS: Puzzled why Leamas does not consult his Berlin Head of Station. Backstage manoeuvrings of this sort do Service no good.

  GS to Control: Unfortunately Alec regards his H/Stn as anti-Covert and pro-Joint.

  Control to GS: I cannot divest myself of a galère of top-notch officers on the unproven supposition that one of them is a bad apple.

  GS to Control: I’m afraid Alec sees Joint as a bad orchard.

  Control to GS: Then perhaps it’s he who should be pruned.

  Alec’s next written offering is of a different order altogether: immaculately typed and in a prose style far superior to his own. My immediate suspect as Alec’s amanuensis is Stas de Jong, first-class honours in modern languages. So this time it’s the six-foot-three Stas I see crouched at the Olivetti in the smoke-filled basement in Berlin Station while Alec prowls the room, puffing at one of his vile Russian cigarettes and dictating raucous Irish obscenities that de Jong discreetly omits.

  Encounter Report, 2 February 1959. Location: Berlin Safe House K2. Present: DH/Station Berlin Alec Leamas (Paul) and Karl Riemeck (MAYFLOWER).

  Source MAYFLOWER. Second Treff. Beyond Secret, Personal & Private from AL to H/Covert Marylebone.

  Source Mayflower, known to the GDR’s elite as ‘The Doctor of Köpenick’ after Carl Zuckmayer’s play of similar title, is physician of choice to a select coterie of ranking SED [Socialist Unity (i.e. Communist) Party] and Stasi prominenz and their families, several of whom reside in Köpenick’s lakeside villas and apartments. His leftist credentials are impeccable. His father Manfred, a Communist since the early thirties, fought with Thälmann in the Spanish Civil War and later joined the Red Orchestra network against Hitler. During 1939–45 war Mayflower smuggled messages for his father, who was hanged by the Gestapo at Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944. Manfred did not therefore live to see the coming of the revolution to East Germany, but his son Karl, for love of his father, was determined to be its devoted comrade. After excelling at high school, he studied medicine in Jena and Prague. Qualified magna cum laude. Not content with working long hours at East Berlin’s one teaching hospital, he opened up his family house in Köpenick, which he shares with ageing mother Helga, as an informal surgery for selected patients.

  As a natural-born member of the GDR’s elite, Mayflower is also tasked with medical missions of a sensitive nature. A ranking SED official contracts VD while on a visit to distant parts and doesn’t wish his superiors to know. Mayflower obliges with a false diagnosis. A Stasi prisoner has died of heart failure under interrogation, but the death certificate must tell a different story. A high-value Stasi prisoner is about to be subjected to harsh treatment. Mayflower is required to check the prisoner’s psychological and physical condition and assess tolerance.

  In view of these responsibilities, Mayflower has been awarded the status of Geheime Mitarbeiter (secret collaborator) or GM for short, which requires him to report monthly to his Stasi controller, one Urs ALBRECHT, a ‘functionary of no great imagination’. Mayflower says his reports to Albrecht are ‘selective, mostly invented, of no possible consequence’. Albrecht in return has told him that he is ‘a good doctor but a lousy spy’.

  Exceptionally, Mayflower has also been granted a pass to the ‘Little City’, otherwise the Majakowskiring in East Berlin, where many of the GDR’s elite are accommodated, while being rigorously protected from the general public by the Dzerzhinsky Brigade, a specially trained unit. Although the ‘Little City’ boasts its own medical centre – not to mention privilege shop, kindergarten, etc. – Mayflower is permitted to enter the hallowed area for the purpose of attending his illustrious ‘private’ patients. Once inside the cordon, he reports, rules of discretion are relaxed, gossip and intrigue are rife, tongues loosened.

  Motivation:

  Mayflower’s claimed motivation is disgust with GDR regime, father’s Communist dream seen as betrayed.

  Offer of service:

  Mayflower claims that sub-source TULIP, a female patient and Stasi employee, not only provided the catalyst for his self-recruitment, but is the source of the original sub-miniature cassettes that he deposited on her behalf in de Jong’s Volvo. He describes Tulip as neurotic but extremely controlled, and highly vulnerable. He insists that she is his patient, and nothing more. He reiterates that neither he nor Tulip requires financial reward.

  Resettlement in the West in the event of compromise not yet discussed. See below.

  But we don’t see below. Next day Smiley himself flies to Berlin to take a look at this Riemeck for himself, and orders me to accompany him. Yet source Mayflower is not the primary reason for our journey. Of much greater interest to him is the identity, access and motivation of the neurotic but extremely controlled female sub-source, codename Tulip.

  *

  Dead of night in an unsleeping West Berlin swept by freezing winds of sleet and snow. Alec Leamas and George Smiley sit cloistered with their new prospect Karl Riemeck aka Mayflower over a bottle of Talisker, Alec’s favourite, and for Riemeck a first. I sit at Smiley’s right shoulder. Berlin safe house K2 lies in the Fasanenstrasse, at No. 28, and is a stately and unlikely survivor of Allied bombing. It is built in the Biedermeier style with a pillared doorway, a bay window and a good back exit leading on to the Uhlandstrasse. Whoever chose it had a taste for imperial nostalgia and an operational eye.

  Some faces, try as they may, cannot conceal the good heart of their owners, and Riemeck’s is such a face. He is balding, bespectacled – and sweet. The word is simply not to be denied. Never mind the medic’s studious frown: humanity breathes out of him.

  Recalling now that first encounter, I have to remind myself that in 1959 there was no great drama to an East Berlin doctor coming across to West Berlin. Many did, and a lot never went back, which was why the Wall was built.

  The file’s opening serial is typed and unsigned. It is not a formal report, and I can only assume that the author is Smiley; and that, since no addressee is indicated, he is writing for the file – in other words, to himself.

  Asked to identify the process by which he entered what he describes as the ‘chrysalis’ stage of his opposition to the GDR regime, Mayflower points to the moment when the Stasi’s interrogators ordered him to prepare a woman for ‘investigative confinement’. The woman was a GDR citizen in her fifties allegedly working for the CIA. She suffered from acute claustrophobia. Solitary confinement had already driven her half mad. ‘Her screams as they nailed her into a box are w
ith me still’ – Mayflower.

  In the wake of this experience, Mayflower, who claims he is not given to rash decisions, says he ‘reappraised his situation from every angle’. He had heard the Party’s lies at first hand, observed its corruption, hypocrisies and abuse of power. He had ‘diagnosed the symptoms of a totalitarian state posing as its opposite’. Far from the democracy his father had dreamed of, East Germany was ‘a Soviet vassal run as a police state’. With this perception made, he says, only one course was open to the son of Manfred: resistance.

  His first thought was to establish an underground cell. He would select one or other elite patient who from time to time had given signs of dissatisfaction with the regime, and proposition him or her. But to do what? And for how long? Mayflower’s father Manfred had been betrayed by his comrades. In that regard at least, the son did not propose to follow in the father’s footsteps. So whom did he trust enough, in all circumstances and all weathers? Answer, not even his mother Helga, an avowed Communist come what may.

  Very well, he reasoned, he would remain what he already was: ‘a terrorist cell of one’. He would emulate, not his father but a boyhood hero, Georg Elser, the man who in 1939, without benefit of accomplice or confidant, had made, planted and detonated a bomb in the Munich beer cellar where minutes before the Führer had been addressing his faithful. ‘Only infernal luck had saved him’ – Mayflower.

  But the GDR, he reasoned, was not a regime that could be blown away with a single blast, any more than Hitler’s was. Mayflower was first and last a doctor. A rotten system must be treated from within. How to do that would reveal itself in due course. Meanwhile, he would confide in no one, trust in no one. He would be himself alone, sufficient to himself, answerable to himself. He would be ‘a secret army of one’.

  The ‘chrysalis’ burst open, he maintains, when at 2200 hours on 18 October 1958, a distraught young woman who was unknown to him rode her bicycle to Köpenick in the eastern suburbs of Berlin and presented herself at Mayflower’s surgery, demanding an abortion.