"He never did," Smiley said. "The place you"re thinking of was bombed."

Smiley still did not go. "I wonder," he said. "You"ll never tell me, will you? I just wonder." He was not looking at Control.

"My dear George, what has come over you?"

"We handed it to them. The pa.s.sport that was cancelled ... a courier service they never needed ... a clapped-out wireless set ... papers, frontier reports ... who told Berlin to listen for him? Who told them what frequencies? We even gave LeClerc the crystals, didn"t we? Was that just Christian charity too? Plain, idiot Christian charity?"

Control was shocked.

"What are you suggesting? How very distasteful. Whoever would do a thing like that?"

Smiley was putting on his coat.

"Good night, George," Control said; and fiercely, as if he were tired of sensibility: "Run along. And preserve the difference between us: your country needs you. It"s not my fault they"ve taken so long to die."

The dawn came and Leiser had not slept. He wanted to wash but dared not go into the corridor. He dared not move. If they were looking for him, he knew he must leave normally, not bolt from the hostel before the morning came. Never run, they used to say: walk like the crowd. He could go at six: that was late enough. He rubbed his chin against the back of his hand: it was sharp and rough, marking the brown skin.

He was hungry and no longer knew what to do, but he would not run.

He half turned on the bed, pulled the knife from inside the waistband of his trousers and held it before his eyes. He was shivering. He could feel across his brow the unnatural heat of incipient fever. He looked at the knife, and remembered the clean, friendly way they had talked: thumb on top, blade parallel to the ground, forearm stiff. "Go away," the old man had said. "You are either good or bad and both are dangerous." How should he hold the knife when people spoke to him like that? The way he held it for the boy?

It was six o"clock. He stood up. His legs were heavy and stiff. His shoulders still ached from carrying the rucksack. His clothes, he noticed, smelled of pine and leaf-mold. He picked the half-dried mud from his trousers and put on his second pair of shoes.

He went downstairs, looking for someone to pay, the new shoes squeaking on the wooden steps. There was an old woman in white overalls sorting lentils into a bowl, talking to a cat.

"What do I owe?"

"You fill in the form," she said sourly. "That"s the first thing you owe. You should have done it when you came."

"I"m sorry."

She rounded on him, muttering but not daring to raise her voice. "Don"t you know it"s forbidden, staying in town and not reporting your presence to the police?" She looked at his new shoes. "Or are you so rich that you think you need not trouble?"

"I"m sorry," Leiser said again. "Give me the form and I"ll sign it now. I"m not rich."

The woman fell silent, picking studiously among the lentils.

"Where do you come from?" she asked.

"East," Leiser said. He meant south, from Magdeburg, or west from Wilmsdorf.

"You should have reported last night. It"s too late now."

"What do I pay?"

"You can"t," the woman replied. "Never mind. You haven"t filled in the form. What will you say if they catch you?"

"I"ll say I slept with a girl."

"It"s snowing outside," the woman said. "Mind your nice shoes."

Grains of hard snow drifted forlornly in the wind, collecting in the cracks between the black cobbles, lingering on the stucco of the houses. A drab, useless snow, dwindling where it fell.

He crossed the Friedensplatz and saw a new, yellow building, six or seven stories high, standing on a patch of wasteland beside a new estate. There was washing hanging on the balconies, touched with snow. The staircase smelled of food and Russian petrol. The flat was on the third floor. He could hear a child crying and a wireless playing. For a moment he thought he should turn and go away, because he was dangerous for them. He pressed the bell twice, as the girl had told him. She opened the door; she was half asleep. She had put on her mackintosh over the cotton nightdress and she held it at the neck because of the freezing cold. When she saw him she hesitated, not knowing what to do, as if he had brought bad news. He said nothing, just stood there with the suitcase swinging gently at his side. She beckoned with her head; he followed her across the corridor to her room, put the suitcase and rucksack in the corner. There were travel posters on the walls, pictures of desert, palm trees and the moon over a tropical sea. They got into bed and she covered him with her heavy body, trembling a little because she was afraid. "I want to sleep," he said. "Let me sleep first."

The Russian captain said, "He stole a motorbike at Wilmsdorf and asked for Fritsche at the station. What will he do now?"

"He"ll have another schedule. Tonight," the sergeant replied. "If he"s got anything to say."

"At the same time?"

"Of course not. Nor the same frequency. Nor from the same place. He may go to Witmar or Langdorn or Wolken; he may even go to Rostock. Or he may stay in town but go to another house. Or he may not send at all."

"House? Who would harbour a spy?"

The sergeant shrugged as if to say he might himself. Stung, the captain asked, "How do you know he"s sending from a house? Why not a wood or a field? How can you be so sure?"

"It"s a very strong signal. A powerful set. He couldn"t get a signal like that from a battery, not a battery you could carry around alone. He"s using the mains."

"Put a cordon around the town," the captain said. "Search every house."

"We want him alive." The sergeant was looking at his hands. "You want him alive."

"Then tell me what we should do?" the captain insisted.

"Make sure he transmits. That"s the first thing. And make him stay in town. That is the second."

"Well?"

"We would have to act quickly," the sergeant observed.

"Well?"

"Bring some troops into town. Anything you can find. As soon as possible. Armour, infantry, it doesn"t matter. Create some movement. Make him pay attention. But be quick!"

"I"ll go soon," Leiser said. "Don"t let me stay. Give me coffee and I"ll go."

"Coffee?"

"I"ve got money," Leiser said, as if it were the only thing he had. "Here." He climbed out of bed, fetched the wallet from his jacket and drew a hundred-mark note from the wad.

"Keep it."

She took the wallet and with a little laugh emptied it out on the bed. She had a ponderous, kittenish way which was not quite sane; and the quick instinct of an illiterate. He watched her indifferently, running his fingers along the line of her naked shoulder. She held up a photograph of a woman; a blond, round head.

"Who is she? What is her name?"

"She doesn"t exist," he said.

She found the letters and read one aloud, laughing at the affectionate pa.s.sages. "Who is she?" she kept taunting him. "Who is she?"

"I tell you, she doesn"t exist."

"Then I can tear them up?" She held a letter before him with both hands, teasing him, waiting for him to protest. Leiser said nothing. She made a little tear, still watching him, then tore it completely, and a second and a third.

She found a picture of a child, a girl in spectacles, eight or nine years old perhaps, and again she asked, "Who is it? Is it your child? Does she exist?"

"n.o.body. n.o.body"s kid. Just a photograph." She tore that too, scattering the pieces dramatically over the bed, then fell on him, kissing him on the face and neck. "Who are you? What is your name?"

He wanted to tell her When she pushed him away.

"No!" she cried. "No!" She lowered her voice. "I want you with nothing. Alone from it all. You and me alone. We"ll make our own names, our own rules. n.o.body, no one at all, no father, no mother. We"ll print our own newspapers, pa.s.ses, ration cards; make our own people." She was whispering, her eyes shining.

"You"re a spy," she said, her lips in his ear. "A secret agent. You"ve got a gun."

"A knife is quieter," he said. She laughed, on and on, until she noticed the bruises on his shoulders. She touched them curiously, with respect, as a child might touch a dead thing.

She went out carrying a shopping basket, still clutching the mackintosh at her neck. Leiser dressed, shaving in cold water, staring at his lined face in the distorted mirror above the basin. When she returned it was nearly midday and she looked worried.

"The town"s full of soldiers. And army trucks. What do they want here?"

"Perhaps they are looking for someone."

"They are just sitting about, drinking."

"What kind of soldiers?"

"I don"t know what kind. Russian ... How can I tell?"

He went to the door. "I"ll come back in an hour."

She said, "You"re trying to get away from me." She held his arm, looking up at him, wanting to make a scene.

"I"ll come back. Maybe not till later. Maybe this evening. But if I do ..."

"Yes?"

"It will be dangerous. I shall have to ... do something here. Something dangerous."

She kissed him, a light, silly kiss. "I like danger," she said.

"Four hours," Johnson said. "If he"s still alive."

"Of course he"s alive," Avery said angrily. "Why do you talk like that?"

Haldane interrupted. "Don"t be an a.s.s, Avery. It"s a technical term. Dead or live agents. It has nothing to do with his physical condition."

LeClerc was drumming his fingers lightly on the table.

"He"ll be all right," he said. "Fred"s a hard man to kill. He"s an old hand." The daylight had revived him apparently.

He glanced at his watch. "What the devil"s happened to that courier, I wonder?"

Leiser blinked at the soldiers like a man emerging from the dark. They filled the cafes, gazed into shop-windows, looked at the girls. Trucks were parked in the square, their wheels thick with red mud, a thin surface of snow on their hoods. He counted them and there were nine. Some had heavy couplings at the rear for pulling trailers; some a line of Cyrillic script on their battered doors, or the imprint of unit insignia and a number. He noted the emblems of the drivers" uniforms, the colour of their shoulder-boards; they came, he realized, from a variety of units.

Walking back to the main street he pushed his way into a cafe and ordered a drink. Half a dozen soldiers sat disconsolately at a table, sharing three bottles of beer. Leiser grinned at them; it was like the encouragement of a tired wh.o.r.e. He lifted his fist in a Soviet salute and they watched him as if he were mad. He left his drink and made his way back to the square; a group of children had gathered around the trucks, and the drivers kept telling them to go away.

He made a tour of the town, went into a dozen cafes, but no one would talk to him because he was a stranger. Everywhere the soldiers sat or stood in groups, aggrieved and bewildered, as if they had been roused to no purpose.

He ate some sausage and drank a Steinhager, walked to the station to see if anything was going on. The same man was there, watching him, this time without suspicion, from behind his little window; and somehow Leiser knew, though it made no difference, that the man had told the police.

Returning from the station, he pa.s.sed a cinema. A group of girls had gathered around the photographs and he stood with them, pretending to look. Then the noise came, a metallic, irregular drone, filling the street with the piping rattling of engines, metal and war. He drew back into the cover of the foyer, saw the girls turn and the ticket seller stand up in her box. An old man crossed himself; he had lost one eye, and wore his hat at an angle. The tanks rolled through the town; they carried troops with rifles. The gun barrels were too long, marked white with snow. He watched them pa.s.s, then made his way across the square quickly.

She smiled as he came in; he was out of breath.

"What are they doing?" she asked. She caught sight of his face. "You"re afraid," she whispered, but he shook his head. "You"re afraid," she repeated.

"I killed the boy," he said.

He went to the basin, examined his face with the great care of a man under sentence. She followed him, clasped him around the chest, pressing herself against his back. He turned and seized her, wild, held her without skill, forced her across the room. She fought him with the rage of a daughter, calling some name, hating someone, cursing him, taking him, the world burning and only they alive; they were weeping, laughing together, falling, clumsy lovers clumsily triumphant, recognizing nothing but each himself, each for that moment completing lives half-lived, and for that moment the whole d.a.m.ned dark forgotten.

Johnson leaned out of the window and gently drew on the aerial to make sure it was still fast, then began looking over his receiver like a racing driver before the start, needlessly touching terminals and adjusting dials. LeClerc watched him admiringly.

"Johnson, that was n.o.bly done last time. n.o.bly done. We owe you a vote of thanks." LeClerc"s face was shiny, as if he had only recently shaved. He looked oddly fragile in the pale light. "I propose to hear one more schedule and get back to London." He laughed. "We"ve work to do, you know. This isn"t the season for continental holidays."

Johnson might not have heard. He held up his hand. "Thirty minutes," he said. "I shall be asking you for a little hush soon, gentlemen." He was like a conjurer at a children"s party. "Fred"s a devil for punctuality," he observed loudly.

LeClerc addressed himself to Avery. "You"re one of those lucky people, John, who have seen action in peacetime." He seemed anxious to talk.

"Yes. I"m very grateful."

"You don"t have to be. You"ve done a good job, and we recognize that. There"s no question of grat.i.tude. You"ve achieved something very rare in our work. I wonder if you know what it is?"

Avery said he did not.

"You"ve induced an agent to like you. In the ordinary way- Adrian will bear me out-the relationship between an agent and his controllers is clouded with suspicion. He resents them, that"s the first thing, for not doing the job themselves. He suspects them of ulterior motives, inept.i.tude, duplicity. But we"re not the Circus, John: that"s not the way we do things."

Avery nodded. "No, quite."

"You"ve done something else, you and Adrian. I would like to feel that if a similar need arose in the future we could use the same technique, the same facilities, the same expertise- that means the Avery-Haldane combination. What I"m trying to say is"-LeClerc raised one hand and with his forefinger and thumb lightly touched the bridge of his nose in an unusual gesture of English diffidence-"the experience you"ve made is to our mutual advantage. Thank you."

Haldane moved to the stove and began warming his hands, rubbing them gently as if he were separating wheat.

"That Budapest thing," LeClerc continued, raising his voice, partly in enthusiasm and partly perhaps to dispel the atmosphere of intimacy which suddenly threatened them: "It"s a complete reorganization. Nothing less. They"re moving their armour to the border, do you see. The Ministry is talking about forward strategy. They"re really most interested."

Avery said, "More interested than in the Mayfly area?"

"No, no," LeClerc protested lightly. "It"s all part of the same complex-they think very big over there, you know-a move here and a move there-it all has to be pieced together."