He drove very slowly the rest of the way and missed his meeting with Karl.

He never drove again without some corner of his memory recalling the tousled children waving to him from the back of that car, and their father grasping the wheel like a farmer at the shafts of a hand plow.

Control would call it fever.

He sat dully in his seat over the wing. There was an American woman next to him wearing high-heeled shoes in polythene wrappers. He had a momentary notion of pa.s.sing her some note for the people in Berlin, but he discarded it at once. She"d think he was making a pa.s.s at her; Peters would see it. Besides, what was the point? Control knew what had happened; Control had made it happen. There was nothing to say.

He wondered what would become of him. Control hadn"t talked about that--only about the technique: "Don"t give it to them all at once, make them work for it. Confuse them with detail, leave things out, go back on your tracks. Be testy, be cussed, be difficult. Drink like a fish; don"t give way on the ideology, they won"t trust that. They want to deal with a man they"ve bought; they want the clash of opposites, Alec, not some half-c.o.c.k convert. Above all, they want to _deduce_. The ground"s prepared; we did it long ago, little things, difficult clues. You"re the last stage in the treasure hunt."

He"d had to agree to do it: you can"t back out of the big fight when all the preliminary ones have been fought for you.

"One thing I can promise you: it"s worth it. It"s worth it for our special interest, Alec. Keep him alive and we"ve won a great victory."

He didn"t think he could stand torture. He remembered a book by Koestler where -the old revolutionary had conditioned himself for torture by holding lighted matches to his fingers. He hadn"t read much but he"d read that and he remembered it.

It was nearly dark when they landed at Templehof. Leamas watched the lights of Berlin rise to meet them, felt the thud as the plane touched down, saw the customs and immigration officials move forward out of the half-light.

For a moment Leamas was anxious lest some former acquaintance should chance to recognize him at the airport. As they walked side by side, Peters and he, along the interminable corridors, through the cursory customs and immigration check, and still no familiar face turned to greet him, he realized that his anxiety had in reality been hope; hope that somehow his tacit decision to go on would be revoked by circ.u.mstance.

It interested him that Peters no longer bothered to disown him. It was as if Peters regarded West Berlin as safe ground, where vigilance and security could be relaxed; a mere technical staging post to the East.

They were walking through the big reception hail to the main entrance when Peters suddenly seemed to a!ter his mind, abruptly changed direction and led Leamas to a - smaller side entrance which gave on to a parking lot and taxi stand. There Peters hesitated a second, standing beneath the light over the door, then put his suitcase on the ground beside him, deliberately removed his newspaper from beneath his arm, folded it, pushed it into the left pocket of his raincoat and picked up his suitcase again. Immediately from the direction of the parking lot a pair of headlights sprang to life, were dipped and then extinguished.

"Come on," said Peters and started to walk briskly across the tarmac, Leamas following more slowly. As they reached the first row of cars the rear door of a black Mercedes was opened from the inside, and the courtesy light went on. Peters, ten yards ahead of Leamas, went quickly to the car, spoke softly to the driver, then called to Leamas.

"Here"s the car. Be quick."

It was an old Mercedes 180 and he got in without a word. Peters sat beside him in the back. As they pulled out they overtook a small DKW with two men sitting in the front. Twenty yards down the road there was a telephone booth. A man was talking into the telephone, and he watched them go by, talking all the time, Leamas looked out of the back window and saw the DKW following them. Quite a reception, he thought.

They drove very slowly. Leamas sat with his hands on his knees, looking straight in front of him. He didn"t want to see Berlin that night. This was his last chance, he knew that. The way he was sitting now he could drive the side of his right hand into Peters" throat, smashing the promontory of the thorax. He could get out and run, weaving to avoid the bullets from the car behind. He would be free--there were people in Berlin who would take care of him--he could get away.

He did nothing.

It was so easy crossing the sector border. Leamas had never expected it to be quite that easy. For about ten minutes they dawdled, and Leamas guessed that they had to cross at a prearranged time. As they approached the West German checkpoint, the DKW pulled out and overtook them with the ostentatious roar of a labored engine, and stopped at the police hut. The Mercedes waited thirty yards behind. Two minutes later the red and white pole lifted to let through the DKW and as it did so both cars drove over together, the Mercedes engine screaming in second gear, the driver pressing himself back against his seat, holding the wheel at arm"s length.

As they crossed the fifty yards which separated the two checkpoints, Leamas was dimly aware of the new fortification on the eastern side of the wall--dragons" teeth, observation towers and double ap.r.o.ns of barbed wire. Things had tightened up.

The Mercedes didn"t stop at the second checkpoint; the booms were already lifted and they drove straight through, the Vopos just watching them through binoculars. The DKW had disappeared, and when Leamas sighted it ten minutes later it was behind them again. They were driving fast now--Leamas had thought they would stop in East Berlin, change cars perhaps, and congratulate one another on a successful operation, but they drove on eastward through the city.

"Where are we going?" he asked Peters.

"We are there. The German Democratic Republic. They have arranged accommodation for you."

"I thought we"d be going further east."

"We are. We are spending a day or two here first. We thought the Germans ought to have a talk with you.", "I see."

"After all, most of your work has been on the German side. I sent them details from your statement."

"And they asked to see me?"

"They"ve never had anything quite like you, nothing quite so . . . near the source. My people agreed that they should have the chance to meet you."

"And from there? Where do we go from Germany?"

"East again."

"Who will I see on the German side?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not particularly. I know most of the Abteilung people by name, that"s all. I just wondered."

"Who would you expect to meet?"

"Fiedler," Leamas replied promptly, "deputy head of security. Mundt"s man. He does all the big interrogations. He"s a b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Why?"

"A savage little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I"ve heard about him. He caught an agent of Peter Guillam"s and b.l.o.o.d.y nearly killed him."

"Espionage is not a cricket game," Peters observed sourly, and after that they sat in silence. So it is Fiedler, Leamas thought.

Leamas knew Fiedler, all right. He knew him from the photographs on the ifie and the accounts of his former subordinates. A slim, neat man, quite young, smooth-faced. Dark hair, bright brown eyes; intelligent and savage, as Leamas had said. A lithe, quick body containing a patient, retentive mind; a man seemingly without ambition for himself but remorseless in the destruction of others. Fiedler was a rarity in the Abteilung----he took no part in its intrigues, seemed content to live in Mundt"s shadow without prospect of promotion. He could not be labeled as a member of this or that clique; even those who had worked close to him in the Abteilung could not say where he stood in its power complex. Fiedler was a solitary; feared, disliked and mistrusted. Whatever motives he had were concealed beneath a cloak of destructive sarcasm.

"Fiedler is our best bet," Control had explained. They"d been sitting together over dinner--Leamas, Control and Peter Guillam--in the dreary little sevendwarfs" house in Surrey where Control lived with his beady wife, surrounded by carved Indian tables with bra.s.s tops. "Fiedler is the acolyte who one day will stab the high priest in the back. He"s the only man who"s a match for Mundt--" here Guillam had nodded--"and he hates his guts. Fiedler"s a Jew of course, and Mundt is quite the other thing. Not at all a good mixture. It has been our job," he declared, indicating Guillam and himself, "to give Fiedler the weapon with which to destroy Mundt. It will be yours, my dear Leamas, to encourage him to use it. Indirectly, of course, because you"ll never meet him. At least I certainly hope you won"t."

They"d all laughed then, Guillam too. It had seemed a good joke at the time; good by Control"s standards anyway.

It must have been after midnight.

For some time they had been traveling an unpaved road, partly through a wood and partly across open country. Now they stopped and a moment later the DKW drew up beside them. As he and Peters got out Leamas noticed that there were now three people in the second car. Two were already getting out. The third was sitting in the back seat looking at some papers by the light from the car roof, a slight figure half in shadow.

They had parked by some disused stables; the building lay thirty yards back. In the headlights of the car Leamas had glimpsed a low farmhouse with walls of timber and white-washed brick. The moon was up, and shone so brightly that the wooded hills behind were sharply defined against the pale night sky. They walked to the house, Peters and Leamas leading and the two men behind. The other man in the second car had still made no attempt to move; he remained there, reading.

As they reached the door Peters stopped, waiting for the other two to catch up. One of the men carried a bunch of keys in his left hand, and while he fiddled with them the other stood off, his hands in his pockets, covering him.

"They"re taking no chances," Leamas observed to Peters. "What do they think I am?"

"They are not paid to think," Peters replied, and turning to one of them he asked in German, "Is he coming?"

The German shrugged and looked back toward the car. "He"ll come," he said; "he likes to come alone."

They went into the house, the man leading the way. It was got up like a hunting lodge, part old, part new. It was badly lit with pale overhead lights. The place had a neglected, musty air as if it had been opened for the occasion. There were little touches of officialdom here and there--a notice of what to do in case of fire, inst.i.tutional green paint on the door and heavy spring-cartridge locks; and in the drawing room, which was quite comfortably done, dark, heavy furniture, badly scratched, and the inevitable photographs of Soviet leaders. To Leanias these lapses from anonymity signified the involuntary identification of the Abteilung with bureaucracy. That was something he was familiar with in the Circus.

Peters sat down, and Leamas did the same. For ten minutes, perhaps longer, they waited, then Peters spoke to one of the two men standing awkwardly at the other end of the room.

"Go and tell him we"re waiting. And find us some food, we"re hungry." As the man moved toward the door Peters called, "And whisky--tell them to bring whisky and some gla.s.ses." The man gave an uncooperative shrug of his heavy shoulders and went out, leaving the door open behind him.

"Have you been here before?" asked Leamas.

"Yes," Peters replied, "several times."

"What for?"

"This kind of thing. Not the same, but our kind of work."

"With Fiedler?"

"Yes."

"Is he good?"

Peters shrugged. "For a Jew, he"s not bad," he replied, and Leamas, hearing a sound from the other end of the room, turned and saw Fiedler standing in the doorway. In one hand he held a bottle of whisky, and in the other, gla.s.ses and some mineral water. He couldn"t have been more than five foot six. He wore a dark blue single-breasted suit; the jacket was cut too long. He was sleek and slightly animal; his eyes were brown and bright. He was not looking at them but at the guard beside the door.

"Go away," he said. He had a slight Saxonian tw.a.n.g. "Go away and tell the other one to bring us food."

"I"ve told him," Peters called; "they know aheady. But they"ve brought nothing."

"They are great sn.o.bs," Fiedler observed drily in English. "They think we should have servants for the food."

Fiedler had spent the war in Canada. Leamas remembered that, now that he detected the accent. His parents had been German Jewish refugees, Marxists, and it was not until 1946 that the family returned home, anxious to take part, whatever the personal cost, in the construction of Stalin"s Germany.

"h.e.l.lo," he added to Leamas, almost by the way, "glad to see you."

"h.e.l.lo, Fiedler."

"You"ve reached the end of the road."

"What the h.e.l.l do you mean?" asked Leamas quickly.

"I mean that contrary to anything Peters told you, you are not going farther east. Sorry." He sounded amused. - Leamas turned to Peters.

"Is this true?" His voice was shaking with rage. "Is it true? Tell me!"

Peters nodded. "Yes. I am the go-between. We had to do it that way. I"m sorry," he added.

"Why?"

"_Force majeure_," Fiedler put in. "Your initial interrogation took place in the West, where only an emba.s.sy could provide the kind of link we needed. The German Democratic Republic has no emba.s.sies in the West. Not yet. Our liaison section therefore arranged for us to enjoy facilities and communications and immunities which are at present denied to us."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," hissed Leamas, "you lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You knew I wouldn"t trust myself to your rotten Service; that was the reason, wasn"t it? That was why you used a Russian."

"We used the Soviet Emba.s.sy at The Hague. What else could we do? Up till then it was our operation. That"s perfectly reasonable. Neither we nor anyone else could have known that your own people in England would get onto you so quickly."

"No? Not even when you put them on to me your selves? Isn"t that what happened, Fiedler? Well, isn"t it?" Always remember to dislike them, Control had said. Then they will treasure what they get out of you.

"That is an absurd suggestion," Fiedler replied shortly. Glancing toward Peters he added something in Russian. Peters nodded and stood up.

"Good-bye," he said to Leamas. "Good luck."

He smiled wearily, nodded to Fiedler, then walked to the door. He put his hand on the door handle, then turned and called to Leamas again: "Good luck." He seemed to want Leamas to say something, but Leamas might not have heard. He had turned very pale, he held his hands loosely across his body, the thumbs upwards as if he were going to fight. Peters remained standing at the door.

"I should have known," said Leamas, and his voice had the odd, faulty note of a very angry man. "I should have guessed you"d never have the guts to do your own dirty work, Fiedler. It"s typical of your rotten little half-country and your squalid little Service that you get big uncle to do your pimping for you. You"re not a country at all, you"re not a government, you"re a fifthrate dictatorship of political neurotics." Jabbing his finger in Fiedler"s direction he shouted: "I know you, you s.a.d.i.s.tic b.a.s.t.a.r.d, it"s typical of you. You were in Canada in the war, weren"t you? A b.l.o.o.d.y good place to be then, wasn"t it? I"ll bet you stuck your fat head into Mummy"s ap.r.o.n any time an airplane flew over. What are you now? A creeping little acolyte to Mundt and twenty-two Russian divisions sitting on your mother"s doorstep. Well, I pity you, Fiedler, the day you wake up and find them gone. There"ll be a killing then, and not Mummy or big uncle will save you from getting what you deserve."

Fiedler shtugged.

"Regard it as a visit to the dentist, Leamas. The sooner it"s all done, the sooner you can go home. Have some food and go to bed."

"You know perfectly well I can"t go home," Leamas retorted. "You"ve seen to that. You blew me sky high in England, you had to, both of you. You knew d.a.m.n well I"d never come here unless I had to."

Fiedler looked at his thin, strong fingers.

"This is hardly the time to philosophize," he said, "but you can"t really complain, you know. All our work--yours and mine--is rooted in the theory that the whole is more important than the individual. That is why a Communist sees his secret service as the natural extension of his arm, and that is why in your own country intelligence is shrouded in a kind of _pudeur anglaise_. The exploitation of individuals can only be justified by the collective need, can"t it? I find it slightly ridiculous that you should be so indignant. We are not here to observe the ethical laws of English country life. After all," he added silkily, "your own behavior has not, from the purist"s point of view, been irreproachable."

Leamas was watching Fiedler with an expression of disgust.

"I know your setup. You"re Mundt"s poodle, aren"t you? They say you want his job. I suppose you"ll get it now. It"s time the Mundt dynasty ended; perhaps this is it."

"I don"t understand," Fiedler replied.

"I"m your big success, aren"t I?" Leamas sneered.

Fiedler seemed to reflect for a moment, then he shrugged and said, "The operation was successful. Whether you were worth it is questionable. We shall see. But it was a good operation. It satisfied the only requirement of our profession: it worked."

"I suppose you take the credit?" Leamas persisted, with a glance in the direction of Peters. - "There is no question of credit," Fiedler replied crisply, "none at all." He sat down on the arm of the sofa, looked at Leamas thoughtfully for a moment and then said: "Nevertheless, you are right to be indignant about one thing. Who told your people we had picked you up? We didn"t. You may not believe me, but it happens to be true. We didn"t tell them. We didn"t even want them to know. We had ideas then of getting you to work for us later--ideas which i now realize to be ridiculous. So who told them? You were lost, drifting around, you had no address, no ties, no friends. Then how the devil did they know you"d gone? Someone told them--scarcely Ashe or Kiever, since they are both now under arrest."

"Under arrest?"

"So it appears. Not specifically for their work on your case, but there were other things. . . ."

"Well, well."

"It is true, what I said just now. We would have been content with Peters" report from Holland. You could have had your money and gone. But you hadn"t told us everything; and I want to know everything. After all, your presence here provides us with problems too, you know."

"Well, you"ve b.o.o.bed. I know d.a.m.n all--and you"re welcome to it."

There was a silence, during which Peters, with an abrupt and by no means friendly nod in Fiedler"s direction, quietly let himself out of the room.

Fiedler picked up the bottle of whisky and poured a little into each gla.s.s.

"We have no soda, I"m afraid," he said. "Do you like water? I ordered soda, but they brought some wretched lemonade."

"Oh, go to h.e.l.l," said Leamas. He suddenly felt very tired.

Fiedler shook his head.

"You are a very proud man," he observed, "but never mind. Eat your supper and go to bed."