The Spy Who Came in From The Cold

by Le Carre, John

  Leamas nodded.

  "I can tell you this now," Fiedler continued. "I nearly went there a few years back. I was going to replace Mundt on the Steel Mission--did you know he was once in London?"

  "I knew," Leamas replied cryptically.

  "I always wondered what it would have been like, that job."

  "Usual game of mixing with the other Bloc Missions, I suppose. Certain amount of contact with British business--not much of that." Leamas sounded bored.

  "But Mundt got about all right: he found it quite easy."

  "So I hear," said Leamas; "he even managed to kill a couple of people."

  "So you heard about that too?"

  "From Peter Guillam. He was in on it with George Smiley. Mnndt bloody nearly killed George as well."

  "The Fennan Case," Fiedler mused. "It was amazing that Mundt managed to escape at all, wasn't it?"

  "I suppose it was."

  "You wouldn't think that a man whose photograph and personal particulars were filed at the Foreign Office as a member of a Foreign Mission would have a chance against the whole of British Security."

  "From what I hear," Leamas said, "they weren't too keen to catch him anyway."

  Fiedler stopped abruptly. "What did you say?"

  "Peter Guillam told me he didn't reckon they wanted to catch Mundt, that's all I said. We had a different setup then--an Adviser instead of an Operational Control--a man called Maston. Maston had made a bloody awful mess of the Fennan Case from the start, that's what Guillam said. Peter reckoned that if they'd caught Mundt it would have made a hell of a stink--they'd have tried him and probably hanged him. The dirt that came out in the process would have finished Maston's career. Peter never knew quite what happened, but he was bloody sure there was no full-scale search for Mundt."

  "You are sure of that, you are sure Guillam told you that in so many words? No full-scale search?"

  "Of course I am sure."

  "Guillam never suggested any other reason why they might have let Mundt go?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Fiedler shook his head and they walked on along the path.

  "The Steel Mission was closed down after the Fennan Case," Fiedler observed a moment later, "that's why I didn't go." -

  "Mundt must have been mad. You may be able to get away with assassination in the Balkans---or here-- but not London."

  "He did get away with it though, didn't he?" Fiedler put in quickly. "And he did good work." - -

  "Like recruiting Kiever and Asbe? God help him."

  "They ran the Fennan woman for long enough."

  Leamas shrugged.

  "Tell me something else about Karl Riemeck," Fledler began again. "He met Control once, didn't he?"

  "Yes, in Berlin about a year ago, maybe a bit more."

  "Where did they meet?"

  'We all met together in my flat."

  "Why?"

  "Control loved to come in on success. We'd got a hell of a lot of good stuff from Karl--I suppose it had gone down well with London. He came out on a short trip to Berlin and asked me to fix it up for them to meet."

  "Did you mind?"

  "Why should I?"

  "He was your agent. You might not have liked him to meet other operators."

  "Control isn't an operator, he's head of Department. Karl knew that and it tickled his vanity."

  "Were you all three together, all the time?"

  "Yes. Well, not quite. I left them alone for a quarter of an hour or so--not more. Control wanted that-- he wanted a few minutes alone with Karl, God knows why, so I left the flat on some excuse, I forget what. Oh--I know, I pretended we'd run out of Scotch. I actually went and collected a bottle from de Jong, in fact."

  "Do you know what passed between them while you were out?"

  "How could I? I wasn't that interested, anyway."

  "Didn't Karl tell you afterwards?"

  "I didn't ask him. Karl was a cheeky sod in some ways, always pretending he had something over me. I didn't like the way he sniggered about ControL Mind you, he had every right to snigger--it was a pretty ridiculous performance. We laughed about it together a bit, as a matter of fact. There wouldn't have been any point in pricking Karl's vanity; the whole meeting was supposed to give him a shot in the arm."

  "Was Karl depressed then?"

  "No, far from it. He was spoiled already. He was paid too much, loved too much, trusted too much. It was partly my fault, partly London's. If we hadn't spoiled him he wouldn't have told that bloody woman of his about his network."

  "Elvira?"

  "Yes."

  They walked on in silence for a while, until Fiedler interrupted his own reverie to observe: "I'm beginning to like you. But there's one thing that puzzles me. It's odd--it didn't worry me before I met you."

  "What's that?"

  "Why you ever came. Why you defected." Leamas was going to say something when Fiedler laughed. "I'm afraid that wasn't very tactful, was it?" he said.

  They spent that week walking in the hills. In the evenings they would return to the lodge, eat a bad meal washed down with a bottle of rank white wine, sit endlessly over their Steinhäger in front of the fire. The fire seemed to be Fiedler's idea--they didn't have it to begin with, then one day Leamas overheard him telling a guard to bring logs. Leamas didn't mind the evenings then; after the fresh air all day, the fire and the rough spirits, he would talk unprompted, rambling on about his Service. Leamas supposed it was recorded. He didn't care.

  As each day passed in this way Leamas was aware of an increasing tension in his companion. Once they went out in the DKW--it was late in the evening-- and stopped at a telephone booth. Fiedler left him in the car with the keys and made a long phone call.

  When he came back Leamas said, "Why didn't you ring from the house?" but Fiedler just shook his head. "We must take care," he replied; "you too, you must take care."

  "Why? What's going on?"

  "The money you paid into the Copenhagen bank-- we wrote, you remember?"

  "Of course I remember."

  Fiedler wouldn't say any more, but drove on in silence into the hills. There they stopped. Beneath them, half screened by the ghostly patchwork of tall pine trees, lay the meeting point of two great valleys. The steep wooded hills on either side gradually yielded their colors to the gathering dusk until they stood gray and lifeless in the twilight.

  "Whatever happens," Fiedler said, "don't worry. It will be all right, do you understand?" His - voice was heavy with emphasis, his slim hand rested on Leamas' arm. "You may have to look after yourself a little, but it won't last long, do you understand?" he asked again.

  "No. And since you won't tell me, I shall have to wait and see. Don't worry too much for my skin, Fiedler." He moved his arm, but Fiedler's hand stifi held him. Leamas hated being touched.

  "Do you know Mundt?" asked Fiedler. "Do you know about him?"

  "We've talked about Mundt."

  "Yes," Fiedler repeated, "we've talked about him. He shoots first and asks questions afterwards. The deterrent principle. It's an odd system in a profession where the questions are always supposed to be more important than the shooting." Leamas knew what Fiedler wanted to tell him. "It's an odd system unless you're frightened of the answers," Fiedler continued under his breath.

  Leamas waited. After a moment Fiedler said, "He's never taken on an interrogation before. He's left it to me before, always. He used to say to me, 'You interrogate them, Jens, no one can do it like you. I'll catch them and you make them sing.' He used to say that people who do counterespionage are like painters-- they need a man with a hammer standing behind them to strike when they have finished their work, otherwise they forget what they're trying to achieve. 'I'll be your hammer,' he used to say to me. It was a joke between us at first, then it began to matter; when he began to kill, kill them before they sang, just as you said: one here, another there, shot or murdered. I asked him, I begged him, 'Why not arrest them? Why not let me have them for a month or two? What goo
d to you are they when they are dead?' He just shook his head at me and said there was a law that thistles must be cut down before they flower. I had the feeling that he'd prepared the answer before I ever asked the question. He's a good operator, very good. He's done wonders with the Abteilung--you know that. He's got theories about it; I've talked to him late at night. Coffee he drinks--nothing else--just coffee all the time. He says Germans are too introspective to make good agents, and it all comes out in counterintelligence. He says counterintelligence people are like wolves chewing dry bones--you have to take away the bones and make them find new quarry--I see all that, I know what he means. But he's gone too far. Why did he kill Viereck? Why did he take him away from me? Viereck was fresh quarry, we hadn't even taken the meat from the bone, you see. So why did he take him? Why, Lea.mas, why?" The hand on Leamas' arm was clasping it tightly; in the total darkness of the car Leamas was aware of the frightening intensity of Fiedler's emotion.

  "I've thought about it night and day. Ever since Viereck was shot, I've asked for a reason. At first it seemed fantastic. I told myself I was jealous, that the work was going to my head, that I was seeing treachery behind every tree; we get like that, people in our world. But I couldn't help myself, Leamas, I had, to work it out. There'd been other things before. He was afraid--he was afraid that we would catch one who would talk too much!"

  "What are you saying? You're out of your mind," said Leamas, and his voice held the trace of fear.

  "It all held together, you see. Mundt escaped so easily from England; you told me yourself he did. And what did Guillam say to you? He said they didn't want to catch him! Why not? I'll tell you why--he was their man; they turned him, they caught him, don't you see, and that was the price of his freedom--that and the money he was paid."

  "I tell you you're out of your mind!" Leamas hissed. "He'll kill you if he ever thinks you make up this kind of stuff. It's sugar candy, Fiedler. Shut up and drive us home." At last the hot grip on Leamas' arm relaxed.

  "That's where you're wrong. You provided the answer, you yourself, Leamas. That's why we need one another." -

  "It's not true!" Leamas shouted. "I've told you again and again, they couldn't have done it. The Circus couldn't have run him against the Zone without my knowing! It just wasn't an administrative possibility. You're trying to tell me Control was personally directing the deputy head of the Abteilung without the knowledge of the Berlin station. You're mad, Fiedler, you're just bloody well off your head!" Suddenly he began to laugh quietly. "You may want his job, you poor bastard; that's not unheard of, you know. But this kind of thing went out with bustles." For a moment neither spoke.

  "That money," Fiedler said, "in Copenhagen. The bank replied to your letter. The manager is very worried lest there has been a mistake. The money was drawn by your co-signatory exactly one week after you paid it in. The date it was drawn coincides with a twoday visit which Mundt paid to Denmark in February. He went there under an alias to meet an American agent we have who was attending a world scientists' conference." Fiedler hesitated, then added, "I suppose you ought to write to the bank and tell them everything is quite in order?"

  * * 15 * Come to the Ball

  Liz looked at the letter from Party Centre and wondered what it was about. She found it a little puzzling. She had to admit she was pleased, but why hadn't they consulted her first? Had the District Committee put up her name, or was it Centre's own choice? But no one in Centre knew her, so far as she was aware. She'd met odd speakers of course, and at District Congress she'd shaken hands with the Party Organizer. Perhaps that man from Cultural Relations had remembered her--that fair, rather effeminate man who was so ingratiating. Ashe, that was his name. He'd taken a bit of interest in her and she supposed he might have handed her name on, or remembered her when the Scholarship came up. An odd man, he was; took her to the Black and White for coffee after the meeting and asked her about her boy friends. He hadn't been amorous or anything--she'd thought he was a bit queer, to be honest--but he asked her masses of questions about herself. How long had she been in the Party, did she get homesick living away from her parents? Had she lots of boy friends or was there a special one she carried a torch for? She hadn't cared for him much but his talk had gone down quite well--the worker-state in the German Democratic Republic, the concept of the worker-poet and all that stuff. He certainly knew all about eastern Europe, he must have traveled a lot. She'd guessed he was a schoolmaster, he had that rather didactic, fluent way with him. They'd had a collection for the Fighting Fund afterwards, and Ashe had put a pound in; she'd been absolutely amazed. That was it, she was sure now: it was Ashe who'd remembered her. He'd told someone at London District, and District had told Centre or something like that. It still seemed a funny way to go about things, but then the Party always was secretive--it was part of being a revolutionary party, she supposed. It didn't appeal to Liz much, the secrecy, it seemed dishonest. But she supposed it was necessary, and heaven knows, there were plenty who got a kick out of it.

  She read the letter again. It was on Centre's writing paper, with the thick red print at the top and it began "Dear Comrade." It sounded so military to Liz, and she hated that; she'd never quite got used to "Comrade."

  Dear Comrade,

  We have recently had discussions with our Comrades in the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic on the possibility of effecting exchanges between party members over here and our comrades in democratic Germany. The idea is to create a basis of exchange at the rank and file level between our two parties. The S.U.P. is aware that the existing discriminatory measures by the British Home Office make it unlikely that their own delegates will be able to come to the United Kingdom in the immediate future, but they feel that an exchange of experiences is all the more important for this reason. They have generously invited us to select five Branch Secre- taries with good experience and a good record of stimulating mass action at street level. Each selected comrade will spend three weeks attending Branch discussions, studying progress in industry and social welfare and seeing at first hand the evidence of fascist provocation by the West. This is a grand opportunity for our comrades to profit from the experiences of a young socialist system.

  We therefore asked District to put forward the names of young Cadre workers from your areas who might get the biggest advantages from the trip, and your name has been put forward. We want you to go if you possibly can, and carry out the second part of the scheme--which is to establish contact with a Party Branch in the GDR whose members are from similar 'industrial backgrounds and have the same kind of problems as your own. The Bayswater South Branch has been paired with Neuenhagen, a suburb of Leipzig. Freda Lüman, Secretary of the Neuenhagen branch, is preparing a big welcome. We are sure you are just the Comrade for the job, and that it will be a terrific success. All expenses will be paid by the GDR Cultural Office.

  We are sure you realize what a big honor this is, and are confident you will not allow personal considerations to prevent you from accepting. The visits are due to take place at the end of next month, about the 23rd, but the selected Comrades will travel separately as their invitations are not all concurrent. Will you please let us know as soon as possible whether you can accept, and we will let you have further details.

  The more she read it, the odder it seemed. Such short notice for a start--how could they know she could get away from the library? Then to her surprise she recalled that Ashe had asked her what she did for her holidays, whether she had taken her leave this year, and whether she had to give a lot of notice if she wanted to claim free time. Why hadn't they told her who the other nominees were? There was no particular reason why they should, perhaps, but it somehow looked odd when they didn't. It was such a long letter, too. They were so hard up for secretarial help at Centre they usually kept their letters short, or asked Comrades to ring up. This was so efficient, so well typed, it might not have been done at Centre at all. But it was signed by the Cultural Organizer; it was his signature al
l right, no doubt of that. She'd seen it at the bottom of notices masses of times. And the letter had that awkward, semibureaucratic, semi-Messianic style she had grown accustomed to without ever liking. It was stupid to say she had a good record of stimulating mass action at street level. She hadn't. As a matter of fact she hated that, side of party work-- the loudspeakers at the factory gates, selling the _Daily_ at the street corner, going from door to door at the local elections. Peace work she didn't mind so much, it meant something to her, it made sense. You could look at the kids in the street as you went by, at the mothers pushing their prams and the old people standing in doorways, and you could say, "I'm doing it for them." That really was fighting for peace.

  But she never quite saw the fighting for votes and the fighting for sales in the same way. Perhaps that was because it cut them down to size, she thought. It was easy when there were a dozen or so together at a Branch meeting to rebuild the world, march at the vanguard of socialism and talk of the inevitability of history. But afterwards she'd go out into the streets with an armful of _Daily Worker's_, often waiting an hour, two hours, to sell a copy. Sometimes she'd cheat, as the others cheated, and pay for a dozen herself just to get out of it and go home. At the next meeting they'd boast about it--forgetting they'd bought them themselves--"Comrade Gold sold eighteen copies on Saturday night--eighteen!" It would go in the Minutes then, and the Branch bulletin as well. District would rub their hands, and perhaps she'd get a mention in that little panel on the front page about the Fighting Fund. It was such a little world, and she wished they could be more honest. But she lied to herself about it all, too. Perhaps they all did. Or perhaps the others understood more _why_ you had to lie so much.

  It seemed so odd they'd made her Branch Secretary. It was Mulligan who'd proposed it--"Our young, vigorous and attractive comrade... ." He'd thought she'd sleep with him if he got her made Secretary. The others had voted for her because they liked her, and because she could type. Because she'd do the work and not try and make them go canvassing on weekends. Not too often anyway. They'd voted for her because they wanted a decent little club, nice and revolutionary and no fuss. It was all such a fraud. Alec had seemed to understand that; he just hadn't taken it seriously. "Some people keep canaries, some people join the Party," he'd said once, and it was true. In Bayswater South it was true anyway, and District knew that perfectly well. That's why it was so peculiar that she had been nominated; that was why she was extremely reluctant to believe that District had even had a hand in it. The explanation, she was sure, was Ashe. Perhaps he had a crush on her; perhaps he wasn't queer but just looked it.