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

"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 Steinhäer 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 still 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 good 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, Leamas, 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 two day 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?"