John Le Carré - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

This book belongs to Carla Riemeck, born December 10, 1945, in Bideford, North Devon. Signed Moonspacewoman29012 , and underneath he added, Applicants wishing to make space flights should present themselves for instruction to C. Riemeck in person. An application form is enclosed. Long Live the People's Republic of Democratic Space!

He ruled some lines on a sheet of writing paper, made columns for name, address and age, and wrote at the bottom of the page:

Each candidate will be interviewed personally. Write to the usual address stating when and where you wish to be met. Applications will be considered in seven days.

C.R.

He put the sheet of paper inside the book. Leamas drove to the usual place, still in de Jong's car, and left the book on the passenger seat with five used one hundred dollar bills inside the cover. When Leamas returned, the book was gone, and there was a tobacco tin on the seat instead. It contained three rolls of film. Leamas developed them that night: one film contained as usual the minutes of the Präsidium's last meeting; the second showed a draft revision of the East German relationship to COMECON; and the third was a breakdown of the East German Intelligence Service, complete with functions of departments and details of personalities.

Peters interrupted. "Just a minute," he said. "Do you mean to say all this intelligence came from Riemeck?"

"Why not? You know how much he saw."

"It's scarcely possible," Peters observed, almost to himself. "He must have had help."

"He did have later on; I'm coming to that."

"I know what you are going to tell me. But did you never have the feeling he got assistance from above as well as from the agents he afterwards acquired?"

"No. No, I never did. It never occurred to me."

"Looking back on it now, does it seem likely?"

"Not particularly."

"When you sent all this material back to the Circus, they never suggested that even for a man in Riemeck's position the intelligence was phenomenally comprehensive?"

"No."

"Did they ever ask where Riemeck got his camera from, who instructed him in document photography?"

Leamas hesitated.

"No...I'm sure they never asked."

"Remarkable," Peters observed drily. "I'm sorry— do go on. I did not mean to anticipate you."

Exactly a week later, Leamas continued, he drove to the canal and this time he felt nervous. As he turned into the gravel road he saw three bicycles lying in the grass and two hundred yards down the canal, three men fishing. He got out of the car as usual and began walking toward the line of trees on the other side of the field. He had gone about twenty yards when he heard a shout. He looked around and caught sight of one of the men beckoning to him. The other two had turned and were looking at him too. Leamas was wearing an old mackintosh; he had his hands in the pockets, and it was too late to take them out. He knew that the men on either side were covering the man in the middle and that if he took his hands out of his pockets they would probably shoot him; they would think he was holding a revolver in his pocket. Leamas stopped ten yards from the center man.

"You want something?" Leamas asked.

"Are you Leamas?" He was a small, plump man, very steady. He spoke English.

"Yes."

"What is your British national identity number?"

"PRT stroke L 58003 stroke one."

"Where did you spend VJ night?"

"At Leiden in Holland in my father's workshop, with some Dutch friends."

"Let's go for a walk, Mr. Leamas. You won't need your mackintosh. Take it off and leave it on the ground where you are standing. My friends will look after it." Leamas hesitated, shrugged and took off his mackintosh. Then they walked together briskly toward the wood.

"You know as well as I do who he was," said Leamas wearily, "third man in the Ministry of the Interior, Secretary to the S.E.D. Präsidium, head of the Coordinating Committee for the Protection of the People. I suppose that was how he knew about de Jong and me: he'd seen our counterintelligence files in the Abteilung. He had three strings to his bow: the Präsidium, straightforward internal political and economic reporting, and access to the files of the East German Security Service."

"But only limited access. They'd never give an outsider the run of all their files," Peters insisted.

Leamas shrugged.

"They did," he said.

"What did he do with his money?"

"After that afternoon I didn't give him any. The Circus took that over straightaway. It was paid into a West German bank. He even gave me back what I'd given him. London banked it for him."

"How much did you tell London?"

"Everything after that. I had to; then the Circus told the Departments. After that," Leamas added venomously, "it was only a matter of time before it packed up. With the Departments at their backs, London got greedy. They began pressing us for more, wanted to give him more money. Finally we had to suggest to Karl that he recruit other sources, and we took them on to form a network. It was bloody stupid, it put a strain on Karl, endangered him, undermined his confidence in us. It was the beginning of the end."

"How much did you get out of him?"

Leamas hesitated. "How much? Christ, I don't know. It lasted an unnaturally long time. I think he was blown long before he was caught. The standard dropped in the last few months; think they'd begun to suspect him by then and kept him away from the good stuff."

"Altogether, what did he give you?" Peters persisted.

Piece by piece, Leamas recounted the full extent of all Karl Riemeck's work. His memory was, Peters noted approvingly, remarkably precise considering the amount he drank. He could give dates and names, he could remember the reaction from London, the nature of corroboration where it existed. He could remember sums of money demanded and paid, the dates of the conscription of other agents into the network.

"I'm sorry," said Peters at last, "but I do not believe that one man, however well placed, however careful, however industrious, could have acquired such a range of detailed knowledge. For that matter, even if he had he would never have been able to photograph it."

"He was able," Leamas persisted, suddenly angry. "He bloody well did and that's all there is to it."

"And the Circus never told you to go into it with him, exactly how and when he saw all this stuff?"

"No," snapped Leamas. "Riemeck was touchy about that, and London was content to let it go."

"Well, well," Peters mused.

After a moment Peters said, "You heard about that woman, incidentally?"

"What woman?" Leamas asked sharply.

"Karl Riemeck's mistress, the one who came over to West Berlin the night Riemeck was shot."

"Well?"

"She was found dead a week ago. Murdered. She was shot from a car as she left her flat."

"It used to be my flat," said Leamas mechanically.

"Perhaps," Peters suggested, "she knew more about Riemeck's network than you did."

"What the hell do you mean?" Leamas demanded.

Peters shrugged. "It's all very strange," he observed. "I wonder who killed her."

When they had exhausted the case of Karl Riemeck, Leamas went on to talk of other less spectacular agents, then of the procedure of his Berlin office, its communications, its staff, its secret ramifications— flats, transport, recording and photographic equipment. They talked long into the night and throughout the next day, and when at last Leamas stumbled into bed the following night he knew he had betrayed all that he knew of Allied Intelligence in Berlin and had drunk two bottles of whisky in two days.

One thing puzzled him: Peters' insistence that Karl Riemeck must have had help—must have had a high level collaborator. Control had asked him the same question—he remembered now—Control had asked about Riemeck's access. How could they both be so sure Karl hadn't managed alone? He'd had helpers, of course; like the guards by the canal the day Leamas met him. But they were small beer—Karl had told him about them. But Peters—and Peters, after all, would know precisely how much Karl had been able to get his hands on—Peters had refused to believe Karl had managed alone. On this point, Peters and Control were evidently agreed.