The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (24 page)

The youngish man at the table lifted his pencil,
and looking at Fiedler with his hard, cold eyes wide open he asked, “Then
why did Mundt liquidate Riemeck, if
Riemeck
was his agent?”

“He had no alternative. Riemeck was under
suspicion. His mistress had betrayed him by boastful indiscretion. Mundt gave
the order that he be shot on sight,
got
word to Riemeck to run, and the danger of betrayal was eliminated. Later, Mundt
assassinated the woman.

“I want to speculate for a moment on Mundt’s
technique. After his return to
Germany
in
1959, British Intelligence played a waiting game. Mundt’s willingness to
cooperate with them had yet to be demonstrated, so they gave him instructions
and
waited,
content to pay their money and hope for the best. At that time Mundt was not a senior
functionary of our
Service—nor of our Party—but
he saw
a good deal, and what he saw he began to report. He was, of course,
communicating with his masters unaided. We must suppose that he was met in
West Berlin
, that on his short journeys abroad to
Scandinavia
and elsewhere he was contacted and
interrogated. The British must have been wary to begin with—who would not be?
They weighed what he gave them with painful care against what they already
knew, but they feared that he would
play
a double game. But gradually they realized they had bit a gold mine. Mundt took
to his treacherous work with the systematic efficiency for which he is
renowned. At first—this is my guess, but it is based, Comrades, on long
experience of this work and on the evidence of Leamas—for the first few months
they did not dare to establish any kind of network which included Mundt. They
let him be a lone
wolf,
they serviced him, paid and
instructed him independently of their
Berlin
organization.
They established
in
London
,
under Guillam (for it was he who recruited Mundt in
England
), a tiny undercover section
whose function was not known even within the Service save to a select circle.
They paid Mundt by a special system which they called Rolling Stone, and no
doubt they treated the information he gave them with prodigious caution. Thus,
you see, it is consistent with Leamas’ protestations that the existence of
Mundt was unknown to him although—as you will see—he not only paid him, but in
the end
actually
received from Riemeck and passed to
London
the intelligence which Mundt obtained
.

“Toward the end of 1959, Mundt informed his
London
masters that he had found within the Präsidium
a man who would act as intermediary between them and Mundt. That man was Karl
Riemeck.

“How did Mundt find Riemeck? How did he dare to establish
Riemeck’s willingness to cooperate? You must remember Mundt’s exceptional
position: he had access to all the security files, could tap telephones, open
letters, employ watchers; he could interrogate anyone with undisputed right,
and had before him the detailed picture of their private life. Above all he
could silence suspicion in a moment by turning against the people the very
weapon” —Fiedler’s voice was trembling with fury—”which was designed
for their protection.” Returning effortlessly to his former rational
style, he continued:

“You can see now what
London
did. Still keeping Mundt’s identity a
close secret, they connived at Riemeck’s enlistment and enabled indirect
contact to be established between Mundt and the
Berlin
command. That is the significance of
Riemeck’s contact with de Jong and Leamas.
That
is how you should interpret
Leamas’
evidence,
that
is how you should measure Mundt’s treachery.”

He turned and, looking Mundt full in the face, he shouted:
“There is your saboteur, terrorist! There is the man who has sold the
people’s rights!

“I have nearly finished. Only one more thing
needs to be said. Mundt gained a
reputation
as a loyal and astute protector of the people, and he silenced forever those
tongues that could betray his secret. Thus he killed in the name of the people
to protect his fascist treachery and advance his own career within our Service.
It is not possible to imagine a crime more terrible than this. That is why—in
the end—having done what he could to protect Karl Riemeck from the suspicion
which was gradually surrounding him, he gave the order that Riemeck be shot on
sight. That is why he arranged for the assassination of Riemeck’s mistress.
When you come to give your judgment to the Präsidium, do not shrink from
recognizing the full bestiality
of
this man’s crime. For Hans-Dieter Mundt, death is a judgment of mercy.”

The President turned to the little man in the black
suit sitting directly opposite Fiedler.

“Comrade Karden, you are speaking for Comrade
Mundt. Do you wish to
examine
the witness Leamas?”

“Yes, yes, I should like to in one
moment,” he replied, getting laboriously to his feet and pulling the ends
of his gold-rimmed spectacles over his ears. He was a benign figure, a little
rustic, and his hair was white.

“The contention of Comrade Mundt,” he
began— his mild voice was rather pleasantly modulated—”is that Leamas is
lying; that Comrade Fiedler either by design or ill chance has been drawn into
a plot to disrupt the Abteilung, and thus bring into
disrepute the organs for the defense of our socialist state. We
do not dispute that
Karl Riemeck
was a British spy— there is evidence for that. But we dispute that
Mundt was in league with him, or
accepted money for betraying our Party. We say there is no objective evidence
for this charge, that Comrade Fiedler is intoxicated by dreams of power and
blinded to rational thought. We maintain that from the moment
Leamas returned from Berlin to London
he lived a part; that he simulated a swift decline into degeneracy, drunkenness
and debt, that he assaulted a tradesman in full public view and affected
anti-American sentiments—all solely in order to attract the attention of the
Abteilung. We believe that British Intelligence has deliberately spun around
Comrade Mundt a mesh of circumstantial evidence— the payment of money to
foreign banks, its withdrawal to coincide with Mundt’s presence in this or that
country, the casual hearsay evidence from Peter Guillam, the secret meeting
between Control
and Riemeck at
which matters were discussed that Leamas could not hear: these all provided a
spurious chain of evidence and Comrade Fiedler, on whose ambitions the
British so accurately counted,
accepted it; and thus he became party to a monstrous plot to destroy—to murder
in fact, for Mundt now stands to lose his life—one of the most vigilant
defenders of our Republic.

“Is it not consistent with their record of
sabotage, subversion and human trafficking that the British should devise this
desperate plot? What other course lies open to them now that the rampart has
been built across
Berlin
and the flow of Western spies has been checked? We have fallen victim to their
plot; at best Comrade Fiedler is guilty of a most serious error; at worst of
conniving with imperialist spies
to
undermine the security of the worker state, and shed innocent blood.

“We also have a witness.” He nodded
benignly at the court. “Yes. We too have a witness. For do you really
suppose that all this time Comrade Mundt has been in
ignorance of Fiedler’s fevered plotting? Do you really suppose
that? For months he has been aware of the sickness in Fiedler’s mind. It was
Comrade Mundt himself who authorized the approach that was made to Leamas in
England
: do you
think he would
have taken such
an insane risk if he were himself to be implicated?

“And when the reports of Leamas’ first
interrogation in The Hague reached the Präsidium, do you suppose Comrade Mundt
threw his away unread? And when, after Leamas had arrived in our country and
Fiedler embarked on his own interrogation, no further reports were
forthcoming,
do you suppose Comrade Mundt was then so obtuse
that he did not know what Fiedler was hatching? When the first reports came in
from Peters in The Hague, Mundt had only to look at the dates of Leamas’ visits
to Copenhagen and Helsinki to realize that the whole thing was a plant—a plant
to discredit Mundt himself. Those dates did indeed coincide with
Mundt’s visits to
Denmark
and
Finland
: they
were chosen by
London
for that very reason. Mundt had known of those ‘earlier indications’ as well as
Fiedler—remember that. Mundt too was looking for a spy within the ranks of the
Abteilung…

“And so by the time Leamas arrived in
Democratic Germany, Mundt was
watching
with fascination how Leamas nourished Fiedler’s suspicions with hints and
oblique indications—never overdone,
you understand, never emphasized, but dropped
here and there with perfidious subtlety. And by then the ground
had been prepared—the man in the
Lebanon
, the miraculous scoop to
which Fiedler referred, both seeming to confirm the presence of a highly placed
spy within the Abteilung…

“It was wonderfully well done. It could have
turned—it could still-turn—the defeat which the British suffered through the
loss of Karl Riemeck into a remarkable
victory.

“Comrade Mundt took one precaution while the
British, with Fiedler’s aid, planned his murder. He caused scrupulous inquiries
to be made in
London
.
He examined every tiny detail of that double life which Leamas led in
Bayswater. He was looking, you see, for some human error in a scheme of almost
superhuman subtlety. Somewhere, he thought, in Leamas’ long sojourn in the
wilderness he would have to
break
faith with his oath of poverty, drunkenness, degeneracy, above all of solitude.
He would need a companion, a mistress perhaps; he would long for the warmth of
human contact, long to reveal a part of the other soul within his breast.
Comrade
Mundt was right, you
see. Leamas, that skilled, experienced operator, made a mistake
so elementary, so human that—”
He smiled. “You shall hear the witness, but not yet. The witness is here;
procured by Comrade Mundt. It was an admirable precaution. Later I shall call—that
witness.” He looked a trifle arch, as if to say he must be allowed his
little joke. “Meanwhile I should like, if I may, to put one or two
questions to this reluctant incriminator, Mr. Alec Leamas.”

“Tell me,” he began, “are you a man
of means?”

“Don’t be bloody silly,” said Leamas
shortly. “You know howl was picked up.”
“Yes, indeed,” Karden declared, “it was
masterly. I may take it, then, that you have no money at all?”

“You may.”

“Have you friends who would lend you money,
give it to you perhaps? Pay your debts?”

“If I had I wouldn’t be here now.”

“You have none? You cannot imagine that some
kindly benefactor, someone
perhaps
you have almost forgotten about, would ever concern himself with putting you
on your feet…settling with
creditors and that kind of thing?”

“No.”

“Thank you. Another question: do you know
George Smiley?”

“Of course I do. He was in the Circus.”

“He has now left British Intelligence?”

“He packed it up after the Fennan Case.”

“
An
yes—the case in
which Mundt was involved. Have you ever seen him
since?”

“Once or twice.”

“Have you seen him since you left the Circus?”

Leamas hesitated. “No,” he said.

“He didn’t visit you in prison?”

“No. No one did.”

“And before you went to prison?”

“No.”

“After you left prison—the day of your
release, in fact—you were picked up, weren’t you,
by
a
man called Ashe?”

“Yes.”

“You had lunch with him in
Soho
.
After the two of you had parted, where did
you go?”

“I don’t remember. Probably I went to a pub.
No idea.”

“Let me help you. You went to Fleet Street
eventually and caught a bus. From
there
you seem to have zigzagged by bus, tube and private car—rather inexpertly for a
man of your experience—to
Chelsea
.
Do you remember that? I can show you the report if you like, I have it
here.”

“You’re probably right.
So
what?”

“George Smiley lives in
Baywater Street
, just off the King’s
Road, that is my point. Your car turned into
Baywater Street
and our agent reported
that you were dropped at number nine. That happens to be Smiley’s house.”

“That’s drivel,” Leamas declared.
“I should think I went to the Eight Bells; it’s a favorite pub of
mine.”

“By private car?”

“That’s nonsense too. I went by taxi, I
expect. If I have money I spend it.”
“But why all
the running about beforehand?”

“That’s just cock. They were probably
following the wrong man. That would be bloody typical.”

“Going back to my original question, you
cannot imagine that Smiley would have taken any interest in you after you left
the Circus?”

“God, no.”

“Nor in your welfare after you went to
prison, nor spent money on your
dependents,
nor wanted to see you after you had met Ashe?”

“No. I haven’t the least idea what you’re
trying to say, Karden, but the
answer’s
no. If you’d ever met Smiley you wouldn’t ask. We’re about as different as we
could be.”