The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

by John le Carré

  As I am not entirely free of my indisposition, I feel it would be unwise for me to accept their offer. Kindly convey this decision to Personnel.

  I am sure you will understand.

  Yours,

  George Smiley

  Dear Peter,

  I enclose a note on the Fennan Case. This is the only copy. Please pass it to Maston when you have read it. I thought it would be valuable to record the events – even if they did not take place.

  Ever,

  George

  THE FENNAN CASE

  On Monday, 2 January, I interviewed Samuel Arthur Fennan, a senior member of the Foreign Office, in order to clarify certain allegations made against him in an anonymous letter. The interview was arranged in accordance with the customary procedure, that is to say with the consent of the FO. We knew of nothing adverse to Fennan beyond communist sympathy while at Oxford in the thirties, to which little significance was attached. The interview was therefore in a sense a strictly routine affair.

  Fennan’s room at the Foreign Office was found to be unsuitable and we agreed to continue our discussion in St James’s Park, availing ourselves of the good weather.

  It has subsequently transpired that we were recognized and observed in this by an agent of the East German Intelligence Service, who had cooperated with me during the war. It is not certain whether he had placed Fennan under some kind of surveillance, or whether his presence in the park was coincidental.

  On the night of 3 January it was reported by Surrey police that Fennan had committed suicide. A typewritten suicide note signed by Fennan claimed that he had been victimized by the security authorities.

  The following facts, however, emerged during investigation, and suggested foul play:

  At 7.55 p.m. on the night of his death Fennan had asked the Walliston exchange to call him at 8.30 the following morning.

  Fennan had made himself a cup of cocoa shortly before his death, and had not drunk it.

  He had supposedly shot himself in the hall, at the bottom of the stairs. The note was beside the body.

  It seemed inconsistent that he should type his last letter, as he seldom used a typewriter, and even more remarkable that he should come downstairs to the hall to shoot himself.

  On the day of his death he posted a letter inviting me in urgent terms to lunch with him at Marlow the following day.

  Later it also transpired that Fennan had requested a day’s leave for Wednesday, 4 January. He did not apparently mention this to his wife.

  It was also noted that the suicide letter had been typed on Fennan’s own machine – and that it contained certain peculiarities in the typescript similar to those in the anonymous letter. The laboratory report concluded, however, that the two letters had not been typed by the same hand, though originating from the same machine.

  Mrs Fennan, who had been to the theatre on the night her husband died, was invited to explain the 8.30 call from the exchange and falsely claimed to have requested it herself. The exchange was positive that this was not the case. Mrs Fennan claimed that her husband had been nervous and depressed since his security interview, which corroborated the evidence of his final letter.

  On the afternoon of 4 January, having left Mrs Fennan earlier in the day, I returned to my house in Kensington. Briefly observing somebody at the window, I rang the front-door bell. A man opened the door who has since been identified as a member of the East German Intelligence Service. He invited me into the house but I declined his offer and returned to my car, noting at the same time the numbers of cars parked nearby.

  That evening I visited a small garage in Battersea to inquire into the origin of one of these cars which was registered in the name of the proprietor of the garage. I was attacked by an unknown assailant and beaten senseless. Three weeks later the proprietor himself, Adam Scarr, was found dead in the Thames near Battersea Bridge. He had been drunk at the time of drowning. There were no signs of violence and he was known as a heavy drinker.

  It is relevant that Scarr had for the last four years provided an anonymous foreigner with the use of a car, and had received generous rewards for doing so. Their arrangements were designed to conceal the identity of the borrower even from Scarr himself, who only knew his client by the nickname ‘Blondie’ and could only reach him through a telephone number. The telephone number is of importance: it was that of the East German Steel Mission.

  Meanwhile, Mrs Fennan’s alibi for the evening of the murder had been investigated and significant information came to light:

  Mrs Fennan attended the Weybridge Repertory Theatre twice a month, on the first and third Tuesdays. (N.B. Adam Scarr’s client had collected his car on the first and third Tuesdays of each month.)

  She always brought a music case and left it in the cloakroom.

  When visiting the theatre she was always joined by a man whose description corresponded with that of my assailant and Scarr’s client. It was even mistakenly assumed by a member of the theatre staff that this man was Mrs Fennan’s husband. He too brought a music case and left it in the cloakroom.

  On the evening of the murder Mrs Fennan had left the theatre early after her friend had failed to arrive and had forgotten to reclaim her music case. Late that night she telephoned the theatre to ask if the case could be called for at once. She had lost her cloakroom ticket. The case was collected – by Mrs Fennan’s usual friend.

  At this point the stranger was identified as an employee of the East German Steel Mission named Mundt. The principal of the Mission was Herr Dieter Frey, a wartime collaborator of our Service, with extensive operational experience. After the war he had entered Government service in the Soviet zone of Germany. I should mention that Frey had operated with me during the war in enemy territory and had shown himself to be a brilliant and resourceful agent.

  I now decided to conduct a third interview with Mrs Fennan. She broke down and confessed to having acted as an intelligence courier for her husband, who had been recruited by Frey on a skiing holiday five years ago. She herself had cooperated unwillingly, partly in loyalty to her husband and partly to protect him from his own carelessness in performing his espionage role. Frey had seen Fennan talking to me in the park. Assuming I was still operationally employed, he had concluded that Fennan was either under suspicion or a double agent. He instructed Mundt to liquidate Fennan, and his wife had been compelled into silence by her own complicity. She had even typed the text of the suicide letter on Fennan’s typewriter over a specimen of her husband’s signature.

  The means whereby she passed to Mundt the intelligence procured by her husband is relevant. She placed notes and copied documents in a music case, which she took to the theatre. Mundt brought a similar case containing money and instructions and, like Mrs Fennan, left it in the cloakroom. They had only to exchange cloakroom tickets. When Mundt failed to appear at the theatre on the night in question, Mrs Fennan obeyed standing instructions and posted the ticket to an address in Highgate. She left the theatre in order to catch the last post from Weybridge. When later that night Mundt demanded the music case she told him what she had done. Mundt insisted on collecting the case that night, for he did not wish to make another journey to Weybridge.

  When I interviewed Mrs Fennan the following morning, one of my questions (about the 8.30 call) alarmed her so much that she telephoned Mundt. This accounts for the assault upon me later that day.

  Mrs Fennan provided me with the address and telephone number she used when contacting Mundt – whom she knew by the cover name of Freitag. Both led to the apartment of a ‘Lufteuropa’ pilot who often entertained Mundt and provided accommodation for him when he required it. The pilot (presumably a courier of the East German Intelligence Service) has not returned to this country since 5 January.

  This, then, was the sum of Mrs Fennan’s revelations, and in a sense they led nowhere. The spy was dead, his murderers had vanished. It only remained to assess the extent of the damage. An official approach was now made to the Foreign Office
and Mr Felix Taverner was instructed to calculate from Foreign Office schedules what information had been compromised. This involved listing all files to which Fennan had had access since his recruitment by Frey. Remarkably, this revealed no systematic acquisition of secret files. Fennan had drawn no secret files except those which directly concerned him in his duties. During the last six months, when his access to sensitive papers was substantially increased, he had actually taken home no files of secret classification. The files he took home over this period were of universally low grade, and some treated subjects actually outside the scope of his section. This was not consistent with Fennan’s role as a spy. It was, however, possible that he had lost heart for his work, and that his luncheon invitation to me was a first step to confession. With this in mind he might also have written the anonymous letter which could have been designed to put him in touch with the Department.

  Two further facts should be mentioned at this point. Under an assumed name and with a fake passport, Mundt left the country by air on the day after Mrs Fennan made her confession. He evaded the notice of the airport authorities, but was retrospectively identified by the air hostess. Secondly, Fennan’s diary contained the full name and official telephone number of Dieter Frey – a flagrant breach of the most elementary rule of espionage.

  It was hard to understand why Mundt had waited three weeks in England after murdering Scarr, and even harder to reconcile Fennan’s activities as described by his wife with the obviously unplanned and unproductive selection of files. Re-examination of the facts led repeatedly to this conclusion: the only evidence that Fennan was a spy came from his wife. If the facts were as she described them, why had she been allowed to survive the determination of Mundt and Frey to eliminate those in possession of dangerous knowledge?

  On the other hand, might she not herself be the spy?

  This would explain the date of Mundt’s departure: he left as soon as he had been reassured by Mrs Fennan that I had accepted her ingenious confession. It would explain the entry in Fennan’s diary: Frey was a chance skiing acquaintance and an occasional visitor to Walliston. It would make sense of Fennan’s choice of files – if Fennan deliberately chose un-classified papers at a time when his work was mainly secret there could be only one explanation: he had come to suspect his wife. Hence the invitation to Marlow, following naturally upon our encounter the previous day. Fennan had decided to tell me of his apprehensions and had taken a day’s leave to do so – a fact of which his wife was not apparently aware. This would also explain why Fennan denounced himself in an anonymous letter: he wished to put himself in touch with us as a preliminary to denouncing his wife.

  Continuing the supposition it was remarkable that in matters of tradecraft Mrs Fennan alone was efficient and conscientious. The technique used by herself and Mundt recalled that of Frey during the war. The secondary arrangement to post the cloakroom ticket if no meeting took place was typical of his scrupulous planning. Mrs Fennan, it seemed, had acted with a precision scarcely compatible with her claim to be an unwilling party to her husband’s treachery.

  While logically Mrs Fennan now came under suspicion as a spy, there was no reason to believe that her account of what happened on the night of Fennan’s murder was necessarily untrue. Had she known of Mundt’s intention to murder her husband she would not have taken the music case to the theatre, and would not have posted the cloakroom ticket.

  There seemed no way of proving the case against her unless it was possible to reactivate the relationship between Mrs Fennan and her controller. During the war Frey had devised an ingenious code for emergency communication by the use of snapshots and picture postcards. The actual subject of the photograph contained the message. A religious subject such as a painting of a Madonna or a church conveyed a request for an early meeting. The recipient would send in reply an entirely unrelated letter, making sure to date it. A meeting would take place at a prearranged time and place exactly five days after the date on the letter.

  It was just possible that Frey, whose tradecraft had evidently altered so little since the war, might have clung to this system – which, after all, would only seldom be needed. Relying on this I therefore posted to Elsa Fennan a picture postcard depicting a church. The card was posted from Highgate. I hoped somewhat forlornly that she would assume it had come to her through the agency of Frey. She reacted at once by sending to an unknown address abroad a ticket for a London theatre performance five days ahead. Mrs Fennan’s communication reached Frey, who accepted it as an urgent summons. Knowing that Mundt had been compromised by Mrs Fennan’s ‘confession’ he decided to come himself.

  They therefore met at the Sheridan Theatre, Hammersmith, on Tuesday, 14 February.

  At first each assumed that the other had initiated the meeting, but when Frey realized they had been brought together by a deception he took drastic action. It may be that he suspected Mrs Fennan of luring him into a trap, that he realized he was under surveillance. We shall never know. In any event, he murdered her. His method of doing this is best described in the coroner’s report at the inquest: ‘a single degree of pressure had been applied on the larynx, in particular to the horns of the thyroid cartilage, causing almost immediate death. It would appear that Mrs Fennan’s assailant was no layman in these matters.’

  Frey was pursued to a houseboat moored near Cheyne Walk, and while violently resisting arrest he fell into the river, from which his body has now been recovered.

  18

  Between Two Worlds

  Smiley’s unrespectable club was usually empty on Sundays, but Mrs Sturgeon left the door unlocked in case any of her gentlemen chose to call in. She adopted the same stern, possessive attitude towards her gentlemen as she had done in her landlady days at Oxford, when she had commanded from her fortunate boarders more respect than the entire assembly of dons and proctors. She forgave everything, but somehow managed to suggest on each occasion that her forgiveness was unique, and would never, never happen again. She had once made Steed-Asprey put ten shillings in the poor box for bringing seven guests without warning, and afterwards provided the dinner of a lifetime.

  They sat at the same table as before. Mendel looked a shade sallower, a shade older. He scarcely spoke during the meal, handling his knife and fork with the same careful precision which he applied to any task. Guillam supplied most of the conversation, for Smiley, too, was less talkative than usual. They were at ease in their companionship and no one felt unduly the need to speak.

  ‘Why did she do it?’ Mendel asked suddenly.

  Smiley shook his head slowly: ‘I think I know, but we can only guess. I think she dreamt of a world without conflict, ordered and preserved by the new doctrine. I once angered her, you see, and she shouted at me: “I’m the wandering Jewess,” she said; “the no-man’s land, the battlefield for your toy soldiers.” As she saw the new Germany rebuilt in the image of the old, saw the plump pride return, as she put it, I think it was just too much for her; I think she looked at the futility of her suffering and the prosperity of her persecutors and rebelled. Five years ago, she told me, they met Dieter on a skiing holiday in Germany. By that time the re-establishment of Germany as a prominent western power was well under way.’

  ‘Was she a communist?’

  ‘I don’t think she liked labels. I think she wanted to help build one society which could live without conflict. Peace is a dirty word now, isn’t it? I think she wanted peace.’

  ‘And Dieter?’ asked Guillam.

  ‘God knows what Dieter wanted. Honour, I think, and a socialist world.’ Smiley shrugged. ‘They dreamt of peace and freedom. Now they’re murderers and spies.’

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ said Mendel.

  Smiley was silent again, looking into his glass. At last he said: ‘I can’t expect you to understand. You only saw the end of Dieter. I saw the beginning. He went the full circle. I don’t think he ever got over being a traitor in the war. He had to put it right. He was one of those world-builders who seem
to do nothing but destroy: that’s all.’

  Guillam gracefully intervened: ‘What about the 8.30 call?’

  ‘I think it’s pretty obvious. Fennan wanted to see me at Marlow and he’d taken a day’s leave. He can’t have told Elsa he was having a day off or she’d have tried to explain it away to me. He staged a phone call to give himself an excuse for going to Marlow. That’s my guess, anyway.’

  The fire crackled in the wide hearth.

  He caught the midnight plane to Zurich. It was a beautiful night, and through the small window beside him he watched the grey wing, motionless against the starlit sky, a glimpse of eternity between two worlds. The vision soothed him, calmed his fears and his doubts, made him fatalistic towards the inscrutable purpose of the universe. It all seemed to matter so little – the pathetic quest for love, or the return to solitude.

  Soon the lights of the French coast came in sight. As he watched, he began to sense vicariously the static life beneath him; the rank smell of Gauloises Bleues, garlic and good food, the raised voices in the bistro. Maston was a million miles off, locked away with his arid paper and his shiny politicians.

  Smiley presented an odd figure to his fellow passengers – a little fat man, rather gloomy, suddenly smiling, ordering a drink. The young, fair-haired man beside him examined him closely out of the corner of his eye. He knew the type well – the tired executive out for a bit of fun. He found it rather disgusting.

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