The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (28 page)

And suddenly he had stopped, was thrusting a key
into the keyhole of a dingy
metal
door. She waited, panic-stricken. He pushed the door savagely outwards and the
sweet, cold air of a winter’s evening
blew against her face. He beckoned to her again,
still with the same urgency, and she followed him down two
steps onto a gravel path
which
led through a rough kitchen garden.

They followed the path to an elaborate Gothic
gateway which gave on to the road beyond. Parked in the gateway was a car.
Standing beside it was Alec Leamas.

“Keep your distance,” Mundt warned her
as she started to move forward. “Wait here.”

Mundt went forward alone and for what seemed an
age she watched the two men standing together, talking quietly between
themselves
. Her heart was beating madly, her whole body
shivering with cold and fear. Finally Mundt returned.

“Come with me,” he said, and led her to
where Leamas stood. The two men looked at one another for a moment.

“Good-bye,” said Mundt indifferently.
“You’re a fool, Leamas,” he added. “She’s trash, like
Fiedler.” And he turned without another word and walked quickly away into
the twilight.

She put her hand out and touched him, and he half
turned from her, brushing her hand away as he opened the car door. He nodded to
her to get in, but she
hesitated.

“Alec,” she whispered, “Alec, what
are you doing? Why is he letting you go?”
“Shut up!” Leamas hissed. “Don’t
even,
think about it, do you hear? Get in.”
“What was it he said about
Fiedler? Alec, why is he letting us go?”

“He’s letting us go because we’ve done our
job. Get into the car; quick!”

Under the compulsion of his extraordinary will she
got into the car and closed the door. Leamas got in beside her.

“What bargain have you struck with him?”
she persisted, suspicion and fear rising in her voice. “They said you had
tried to conspire against him, you and Fiedler.
Then why is he letting you go?”

Leamas had started the car and was soon driving
fast along the narrow road. On either side, bare fields; in the distance, dark
monotonous hills were mingling with the gathering darkness. Leamas looked at
his watch.

“We’re five hours from
Berlin
,” he said. “We’ve got to
make Kopenick by
quarter to one.
We should do it easily.”

For a time Liz said nothing; she stared through
the windshield down the
empty
road, confused and lost in a labyrinth of half-formed thoughts. A full moon had
risen and the frost hovered in long
shrouds across the fields. They turned onto an
autobahn.

“Was I on your conscience, Alec?” she
said at last. “Is that why you made Mundt let me go?”

Leamas said nothing.

“You and Mundt are enemies, aren’t you?”

Still he said nothing. He was driving fast now,
the speedometer showed a hundred and twenty kilometers; the autobahn was pitted
and bumpy. He had his headlights on full, she noticed, and didn’t bother to dip
for oncoming traffic on the other lane. He drove roughly, leaning forward, his
elbows almost on the wheel.

“What will happen to Fiedler?” Liz asked
suddenly and this time Leamas answered.

“He’ll be shot.”

“Then why didn’t they shoot you?” Liz
continued quickly. “You conspired with Fiedler against Mundt, that’s what
they said. You killed a guard. Why has Mundt let you go?”

“All right!”
Leamas shouted suddenly. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what you were
never, never to know, neither you nor I. Listen: Mundt is
London
‘s man, their agent; they bought him
when he was in
England
.
We are witnessing the lousy end to a filthy, lousy operation to save Mundt’s
skin. To save him from a clever little Jew in his own Department who had begun
to suspect the truth. They made us kill him, do you see, kill the Jew. Now you
know, and God help us both.”

“If that is so, Alec,” she said at last,
“what was my part in all this?” Her voice was quite calm, almost
matter-of-fact.

“I can only guess, Liz, from what I know and
what Mundt told me before we left. Fiedler suspected Mundt; had suspected him
ever since Mundt came back from
England
;
he thought Mundt was playing a double game. He hated him, of course—why
shouldn’t he—but he was right, too: Mundt was
London
‘s man. Fiedler was too
powerful for Mundt to eliminate
alone, so
London
decided to do it for him. I can see them working it out, they’re so damned
academic; I can see them sitting around a fire
in one of their smart bloody clubs. They knew it was no good
just eliminating Fiedler—he might have told friends, published accusations:
they had to eliminate suspicion. Public rehabilitation, that’s what they
organized for Mundt.”

He swung into the left-hand lane to overtake a
lorry and trailer. As he did so
the
lorry unexpectedly pulled out in front of him, so that he had to brake
violently on the pitted road to avoid being forced into the crash fence on his
left.

“They told me to frame Mundt,” he said
simply, “they said he had to be
killed,
and I was game. It was going to be my last job. So I went to seed, and
punched the grocer —
You
know all that.”

“And made love?” she asked quietly.

Leamas shook his head. “But this is the
point, you see,” he continued. “Mundt knew it all, he knew the plan,
he had me picked up, he and Fiedler. Then he let Fiedler take over, because he
knew in the end Fiedler would hang himself. My job was to let them think what
in fact
was the truth
: that Mundt was a British
spy.” He hesitated. “Your job was to discredit me. Fiedler was shot
and Mundt was saved, mercifully delivered from a fascist plot. It’s the old
principle of love on the rebound.”

“But how could they know about me; how could
they know we would come together?” Liz cried. “Heavens above, Alec,
can they even tell when people will fall in
love?”

“It didn’t matter—it didn’t depend on that.
They chose you because you were
young
and pretty and in the Party, because they knew you would come to
Germany
if they
rigged an invitation. That man in the Labour Exchange, Pitt, he sent me up
there,
they knew I’d work at the
library. Pitt was in the Service during the war and they squared him, I
suppose. They only had to put you and me in contact, even for a day, it didn’t
matter, then afterwards they could call on you, send you the money, make it
look like an affair even if it wasn’t, don’t you see? Make it look like an
infatuation, perhaps. The only material point was that after bringing us
together they should send you money as if it came at my request. As it was, we
made it very easy for them.
..”

“Yes, we did.” And then she added,
“I feel dirty, Alec, as if I’d been put out to stud.”

Leamas said nothing.

“Did it ease your Department’s conscience at
all? Exploiting…somebody in
the
Party, rather than just anybody?” Liz continued.

Leamas said, “Perhaps. They don’t really
think in those terms. It was an operational convenience.”

“I might have stayed in that prison, mightn’t
I? That’s what Mundt wanted, wasn’t it? He saw no point in taking the risk—I
might have heard too much, guessed too much. After all, Fiedler was innocent,
wasn’t he? But then he’s a Jew,” she added
excitedly, “so that doesn’t matter so much, does it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”
Leamas exclaimed.

“It seems odd that Mundt let me go, all the
same—even as part of the bargain with you,” she mused. “I’m a risk
now, aren’t I? When we get back to
England
, I mean: a Party member
knowing all this….It doesn’t seem logical that he
should let me go.”

“I expect,” Leamas replied, “he is
going to use our escape to demonstrate to the Präsidium that there are other
Fiedlers in his Department who must be hunted
down.”

“And other Jews?”

“It gives him a chance to secure his position,” Leamas
replied curtly.

“By killing more innocent
people?
It doesn’t seem to worry you much.”

“Of course it worries me. It makes me sick
with shame and anger and…But I’ve been brought up differently, Liz; I can’t
see it in black and white. People who
play
this game take risks. Fielder lost and Mundt won.
London
won—that’s the point. It was a foul,
foul operation. But it’s paid off, and that’s the only rule.” As he spoke
his voice rose, until finally he was nearly shouting.

“You’re trying to convince yourself,”
Liz cried. “They’ve done a wicked thing.
How can you kill Fiedler? He was good, Alec; I know he was. And
Mundt—”

“What the hell are you complaining
about?” Leamas demanded roughly. “Your
Party’s always at war, isn’t it?
Sacrificing
the individual to the mass.
That’s what it says. Socialist reality:
fighting night and day—the relentless battle-that’s what they say, isn’t it? At
least you’ve survived. I never heard that Communists preached the sanctity of
human life—perhaps I’ve got it wrong,” he added sarcastically. “I
agree, yes I agree, you might have been destroyed. That was in the cards.
Mundt’s a vicious
swine; he saw
no point in letting you survive. His promise-I suppose he gave a
promise to do his best by you—isn’t
worth a great deal. So you might have
died—today,
next year or twenty years from now—in a prison in the worker’s
paradise. And so might I. But I seem
to remember the Party is aiming at the
destruction
of a whole class. Or have I got it wrong?” Extracting a packet of
cigarettes from his jacket he handed her two, together with a box of matches.
Her fingers trembled as she lit them and passed one back to Leamas.

“You’ve thought it all out, haven’t
you?” she asked.

“We happened to fit the mold,” Leamas
persisted, “and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for
the others too—the others who fit the mold. But don’t complain
about the terms, Liz; they’re Party terms.
A small price for
a big return.
One sacrificed for many. It’s not pretty, I know, choosing
who it’ll be—turning the plan into people.”

She listened in the darkness, for a moment
scarcely conscious of anything except the vanishing road before them, and the
numb horror in her mind.

“But they let me love you,” she said at
last. “And you let me believe in you and love you.”

“They used us,” Leamas replied
pitilessly. “They cheated us both because it was necessary. It was the
only way. Fiedler was bloody nearly home already, don’t you see? Mundt would
have been caught; can’t you understand that?”

“How can you turn the world upside
down?” Liz shouted suddenly. “Fiedler was kind and decent, he was
only doing his job, and now you’ve killed him. Mundt is a
spy and a traitor and you protect
him. Mundt is a Nazi, do you know that? He hates Jews. What side are you on?
How can you…”

“There’s only one law in this game,”
Leamas retorted. “Mundt is their man; he
gives them what they need. That’s easy enough to understand,
isn’t it?
Leninism—the
expediency of temporary alliances.
What do you think spies are:
priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools,
traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists
and
drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.
Do you think they sit like monks in
London
,
balancing the rights and wrongs? I’d have killed Mundt if I could, I hate his
guts; but not now. It so happens that they need
him. They need him so that the great moronic mass you admire
can sleep soundly in their beds at night. They need him for the safety of
ordinary, crummy people like you
and me.”

“But what about Fiedler—don’t you feel
anything for him?”

“This is a war,” Leamas replied.
“It’s graphic and unpleasant because it’s fought on a tiny scale, at close
range; fought with
a wastage
of innocent life sometimes,
I admit. But it’s nothing, nothing at all beside other wars—the last or the
next.”

“Oh God,” said Liz softly. “You
don’t understand. You don’t want to. You’re trying to persuade yourself. It’s
far more terrible, what they are doing; to find the humanity in people, in me
and whoever else they use, to turn it like a weapon in their
hands, and use it to hurt and kill—”

“Christ Almighty!” Leamas cried.
“What else have men done since the world
began? I don’t believe in anything, don’t you see—not even destruction
or anarchy. Fm sick, sick of killing but I don’t see what else they can do.
They don’t proselytize; they don’t stand in pulpits or on party platforms and
tell us to fight for Peace or for God or whatever it is. They’re the poor sods
who try to keep the preachers from blowing each other sky high.”

“You’re wrong,” Liz declared hopelessly;
“they’re
more wicked
than all of us.”
“Because I made love to you when
you thought I was a tramp?” Leamas asked
savagely.

“Because of their contempt,” Liz replied;
“contempt for what is real and good;
contempt for love, contempt for…”

“Yes,” Leamas agreed, suddenly weary.
“That is the price they pay; to despise
God and Karl Marx in the same sentence. If that is what you
mean.”

“It makes you the same,” Liz continued;
“the same as Mundt and all the rest…I should know,
I
was the one who was kicked about, wasn’t I?
By them, by you
because you don’t care.
Only Fiedler didn’t. But the rest of you…you
all treated me as if I was…nothing…just currency to pay with… You’re all
the same, Alec.”