The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (17 page)

To Leamas
that,
was the
most difficult question of all.

“What do you mean, a philosophy?” he
replied. “We’re not Marxists, we’re nothing.
Just
people.”

“Are you Christians then?”

“Not many, I shouldn’t think. I don’t know
many.”

“What makes them do it, then?” Fiedler
persisted: “They must have a philosophy.”

“Why must they? Perhaps they don’t know;
don’t even care. Not everyone has
a
philosophy,” Leamas answered, a little helplessly.

“Then tell me what
is your philosophy
?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Leamas snapped,
and they walked on in silence for a
while.
But Fiedler was not to be put off.

“If they do not know what they want, how can
they be so certain they are right?”

“Who the hell said they were?” Leamas replied
irritably.

“But what is the justification then? What is
it? For us it is easy, as I said to you last night. The Abteilung and
organizations like it are the natural extension of the Party’s arm. They are in
the vanguard of the fight for Peace and Progress. They are to the Party what
the Party is to socialism: they
are
the vanguard. Stalin said so—”
he smiled drily, “it is not fashionable to quote Stalin—but he said once
‘Half a million liquidated is a statistic, and one man killed in a traffic
accident is a national
tragedy.’
He was laughing, you see, at the bourgeois sensitivities of the mass. He was
a great cynic. But what he meant is
still true: a movement which protects itself against counterrevolution can
hardly stop at the exploitation—or the elimination,
Leamas—of a few individuals. It is all
one,
we have never pretended to be wholly just in the process of rationalizing
society. Some Roman said it, didn’t he, in the Christian Bible—it is expedient
that one man should die for the benefit of many?”

“I expect so,” Leamas replied wearily.

“Then what do you think? What is your philosophy?”

“I just think the whole
lot of you are
bastards,” said Leamas savagely.

Fiedler nodded. “That is a viewpoint I
understand. It is primitive, negative and very stupid—but it is a viewpoint, it
exists.
But what about the rest of the Circus?”
“I don’t know. How should I know?”

“Have you never discussed philosophy with
them?”

“No. We’re not Germans.” He hesitated,
then
added vaguely: “I suppose they don’t like Communism.”

“And that justifies, for instance, the taking
of human life? That justifies the bomb in the crowded restaurant; that
justifies your write-off rate of agents—all
that?”

Leamas shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“You see, for us it does,” Fiedler
continued. “I myself would have put a bomb in a restaurant if it brought
us farther along the road. Afterwards I would draw the balance—so many women,
so many children; and so far along the road. But Christians—and yours is a
Christian society—Christians may not draw the balance.”

“Why not?
They’ve got to defend
themselves, haven’t they?”

“But they believe in the sanctity of human
life. They believe every man has a
soul
which can be saved. They believe in sacrifice.”

“I don’t know. I don’t much care,”
Leamas added. “Stalin didn’t either, did he?”
Fiedler smiled. “I like the English,” he said, almost
to himself; “my father did too. He was very fond of the English.”

“That gives me a nice, warm feeling,”
Leamas retorted and lapsed into silence.

They stopped while Fiedler gave Leamas a cigarette
and lit it for him. -

They were climbing steeply now. Leamas liked the
exercise, walking ahead with long strides, his shoulders thrust forward.
Fiedler followed, slight and agile, like a terrier behind his
master.
They must have been walking for an hour, perhaps more, when
suddenly the trees broke above them and the sky appeared. They had reached
the top of a small hill, and could
look down on the solid mass of pine broken only
here and there by gray clusters of beach. Across the valley
Leamas could glimpse the hunting lodge, perched below the crest of the opposite
hill, low and dark against the trees. In the middle of the clearing was a rough
bench beside a pile of logs and the damp remnants of a charcoal fire.

“We’ll sit down for a moment,” said
Fiedler, “then we must go back.” He paused. “Tell me: this
money, these large sums in foreign banks—what did you think they were
for?”

‘What do you mean? I’ve told you, they were
payments to an agent.”
“An agent from behind the Iron Curtain?”

“Yes, I thought so,” Leamas replied
wearily.

“Why did you think so?”

“First, it was a hell of a lot of money.
Then the complications of paying him; the special security.
And of course, Control being mixed up in it.”

“What do you think the agent did with the
money?”

“Look, I’ve told you—I don’t know. I don’t
even know if he collected it. I didn’t know anything—I was just the bloody
office boy.”

“What did you do with the passbooks for the
accounts?”

“I handed them in as soon as I got back to
London
—together with my
phony
passport.”

“Did the
Copenhagen
or
Helsinki
banks ever write to you in
London
—to your alias, I
mean?”

“I don’t know. I suppose any letters would
have been passed straight to
Control
anyway.”

“The false signatures you used to open the
accounts—Control had a sample
of them?”

“Yes. I practiced them a lot and they had samples.”

“More than one?”

“Yes.
Whole pages.”

“I see. Then letters could have gone to the
banks after you had opened the
accounts.
You need not have known. The signatures could have been forged and the
letters sent without your
knowledge.”

“Yes. That’s right. I suppose that’s what
happened. I signed a lot of blank sheets too. I always assumed someone else
took care of the correspondence.”

“But you never did actually
know
of
such correspondence?”

Leamas shook his head. “You’ve got it all
wrong,” he said, “you’ve got it all out of proportion. There was a
lot of paper going around—this was just part of the day’s work. It wasn’t
something I gave much thought to. Why should I? It was hush-hush, but I’ve been
in on things all my life where you only know a little and someone else knows
the rest. Besides, paper bores me stiff. I didn’t lose any sleep over it. I
liked the trips of course—I drew operational subsistence which helped. But I
didn’t sit at my desk all day, wondering about Rolling Stone. Besides,” he
added a little shamefacedly, “I was hitting the bottle a bit.”

“So you said,” Fiedler commented,
“and of course, I believe you.”

“I don’t give a damn whether you believe me
or not,” Leamas rejoined hotly.
Fiedler
smiled.

“I am glad. That is your virtue,” he
said, “that is your great virtue. It is the virtue of indifference. A
little resentment here, a little pride there, but that is nothing: the
distortions of a tape recorder. You are objective. It occurred to me,”
Fiedler continued after a slight pause, “that you could still help us to
establish whether any of
that
money was ever drawn. There is nothing to stop you writing to each bank and
asking for a current statement. We could say you were staying in
Switzerland
;
use an
accommodation address. Do
you see any objection to that?”

“It might work. It depends on whether Control
has been corresponding with the bank independently, over my forged signature.
It might not fit in.”

“I do not see that we have much to
lose.”

“What have you got to win?”

“If the money has been drawn, which I agree
is
doubtful,
we shall know
where the agent was on a certain day. That seems to be a useful
thing to know.”

“You’re dreaming. You’ll never find him,
Fiedler, not on that kind of information. Once he’s in the West he can go to
any consulate, even in a small town and get a visa for another country. How are
you any the wiser? You don’t even know
whether
the man is East German. What are you after?”

Fiedler did not answer at once. He was gazing
distractedly across the valley.

“You said you are accustomed to knowing only a
little, and I cannot answer your question without telling you what you should
not know.” He hesitated: “But
Rolling Stone was an operation against us, I can assure you.”

“Us?”

“The GDR.”
He
smiled. “The Zone if you prefer. I am not really so sensitive.”
He was watching Fiedler now, his
brown eyes resting on him reflectively.

“But what about me?”
Leamas asked. “Suppose I don’t write the letters?” His voice was
rising. “Isn’t it time to talk about me, Fiedler?”

Fiedler nodded.
“Why
not?” he replied, agreeably.

There was a moment’s silence,
then
Leamas said, “I’ve done my bit, Fiedler. You and Peters between you have
got all I know. I never agreed to write letters to banks-it could be bloody
dangerous, a thing like that. That doesn’t worry you, I know. As far as you’re
concerned I’m expendable.”

“Now let me
be
frank,” Fiedler replied. “There are, as you know, two stages in the
interrogation of a defector. The first stage in your case is nearly complete:
you
have told us all we can
reasonably record. You have not - told us whether your
Service favors pins or paper clips because we haven’t asked
you, and because you did
not
consider the answer worth volunteering. There is a process on both sides of
unconscious selection. Now it is always possible—and this is the worrying
thing, Leamas—it is always entirely possible that in a month or two we shall
unexpectedly and quite desperately need to know about the pins and paper clips.
That is normally
accounted for
in the second stage— that part of the bargain which you refused to accept in
Holland
.” -

“You mean you’re going to keep me on
ice?”

“The profession of defector,” Fiedler
observed with a smile, “demands great
patience. Very few are suitably qualified.”

“How long?”
Leamas insisted.

Fiedler was silent.

“Well?”

Fiedler spoke with sudden urgency. “I give
you my word that as soon as I possibly can, I will tell you the answer to your
question. Look—I could lie to you, couldn’t I? I could say one month or less,
just to keep you sweet. But I am telling
you I don’t know because that is the truth. You have given us some
indications: until we have run them to earth I cannot listen to talk of letting
you go. But afterwards, if things are as I think they are, you will need a
friend and that friend will be me. I
give
you my word as a German.”

Leamas was so taken aback that for a moment he was silent.

“All right,” he said finally, “I’ll
play, Fiedler, but if you are stringing me along,
somehow I’ll break your neck.”

“That may not be necessary,” Fiedler
replied evenly.

A man who lives a part, not to
others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers.
In
itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting; it
is a matter of experience, of
professional
expertise
, it is a facility most of us can acquire. But while
a confidence trickster, a play-actor or a gambler can return from his
performance to the ranks of his admirers, the secret agent enjoys no such relief.
For him, deception is first a matter of self-defense. He must protect himself
not only from without but from within, and against the most natural of
impulses: though he earn a fortune, his role may forbid him the purchase of a
razor; though he be erudite, it can befall him to mumble nothing but
banalities; though be an affectionate husband
and father, he must under all circumstances withhold himself
from those in whom he should naturally confide.

Aware of the overwhelming temptations which assail
a man permanently isolated in his deceit, Leamas resorted to the course which
armed him best; even when he was alone, he compelled himself to live with the
personality he had assumed. It is said that Balzac on his deathbed inquired
anxiously after the health and prosperity
of characters be had created. Similarly Leamas, without relinquishing
the power of invention, identified himself with what he had invented. The
qualities he exhibited to
Fiedler,
the restless uncertainty, the protective arrogance concealing shame, were not
approximations but extensions of
qualities he actually possessed; hence also the slight
dragging of the feet, the aspect of personal neglect, the
indifference to food, and an increasing reliance on alcohol and tobacco. When
alone, he remained faithful to these habits. He would even exaggerate them a
little, mumbling to himself about the iniquities of his Service.

Only very rarely, as now, going to bed that evening, did he allow
himself the dangerous luxury of admitting the great lie he lived.

Control had been phenomenally right. Fiedler was
walking, like a man led in his sleep, into the net which Control had spread for
him. It was uncanny to observe the growing identity of interest between Fiedler
and Control: it was as if they had agreed on the same plan, and Leamas had been
dispatched to fulfill it.

Perhaps that was the answer. Perhaps Fiedler was the
special interest Control was fighting so desperately to preserve. Leamas didn’t
dwell on that possibility. He did not want to know. In matters of that kind he
was wholly uninquisitive: he knew that no conceivable good could come of his
deductions. Nevertheless, he hoped to God it
was true. It was possible, just possible in that case, that he
would get home.