The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (19 page)

“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?”

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 Secretaries 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 Liiman,
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 all right, no doubt of
that. She’d seen it at the bottom of notices masses of times.
And the letter had that
awkward,
semi-bureaucratic, 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.

Liz gave a rather exaggerated shrug, the kind of
overstressed gesture people
make
when they are excited and alone. It was abroad anyway, it was free and it sounded
interesting. She had never been abroad, and she certainly couldn’t afford the
fare herself. It would be rather fun.
She had reservations about
Germans, that
was true. She
knew, she had been told, that
West
Germany
was militarist and
revanchist
,
and that
East Germany
was democratic and
peace loving. But she doubted whether all
the good Germans were on one side and all the bad ones on the other. And
it was the
bad ones who had
killed her father. Perhaps -that was why the Party had chosen
her—as a generous act of
reconciliation. Perhaps that was what Ashe had
bad
in
mind when he asked her all those questions. Of course—that was the explanation.
She was suddenly filled with a feeling of warmth and gratitude toward the
Party. They
really were decent
people and she was proud and thankful to belong. She went to the
desk and opened the drawer where, in
an old school satchel, she kept the Branch stationery and the dues stamps.
Putting a sheet of paper into her old Underwood typewriter—they’d sent it down
from District when they heard she could type; it
jumped a bit but otherwise was fine—she typed a neat, grateful
letter of acceptance.
Centre was
such a wonderful thing—stern, benevolent, impersonal, perpetual. They were-
good, good people.
People who fought for peace.
As she
closed the drawer she
caught
sight of Smiley’s card.

She remembered that little man with the earnest,
puckered face, standing at the doorway of her room and saying, “Did the
Party know about you and Alec?” How silly she was. Well, this would take
her mind off it.

Fiedler and Leamas drove back the rest of the way
in silence. In the dusk the hills were black and cavernous, the pinpoint lights
struggling against the gathering
darkness
like the lights of distant ships at sea.

Fiedler parked the car in a shed at the side of
the house and they walked together to the front door. They were about to enter
the lodge when they heard a shout from the direction of the trees, followed by
someone calling Fiedler’s name. They turned, and Leamas distinguished in the
twilight twenty yards away three men
standing,
apparently waiting for Fiedler.

“What do you want?” Fiedler called.

“We want to talk to you. We’re from
Berlin
.”