The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (29 page)

“Oh Liz,” he said desperately, “for
God’s sake believe me. I hate
it,
I hate it all, Fm
tired. But it’s the
world,
it’s mankind that’s gone
mad. We’re a tiny price to pay…but everywhere’s the same, people cheated and
misled, whole lives thrown away, people shot and in prison, whole groups and
classes of men written off for nothing. And you,
your
Party—God knows it was built on the bodies of ordinary
people. You’ve never seen men die as I have, Liz…”

As he spoke Liz remembered the drab prison
courtyard, and the wardress saying, “It is a prison for those who slow
down the march…for those who think they have the right to err.”

Leamas was suddenly tense, peering forward through
the windshield. In the headlights of the car Liz discerned a figure standing in
the road. In his hand was a tiny light which he turned on and off as the car
approached. “That’s him,” Leamas muttered; switched off the
headlights and engine, and coasted silently forward. As they drew up, Leamas
leaned back and opened the rear door.

Liz did not turn around to look at him as he got in.
She was staring stiffly forward, down the street at the falling rain.

“Drive at thirty kilometers,” the man
said. His voice was taut, frightened. “I’ll tell you the way. When we
reach the place you must get out and run to the wall. The
searchlight will be shining at the
point where you must climb. Stand in the beam of the searchlight. When the beam
moves away begin to climb. You will have ninety seconds to get over. You go first,”
he said to Leamas, “and the girl follows. There are iron rungs in the
lower part—after that you must pull yourself up as best you can. You’ll have to
sit on top and pull the girl up. Do you understand?”

“We understand,” said Leamas. “How
long have we got?”

“If you drive at thirty kilometers we shall
be there in about nine minutes. The
searchlight
will be on the wall at five past one exactly. They can give you ninety seconds.
Not more.”

“What happens after ninety seconds?”
Leamas asked.

“They can only give you ninety seconds,”
the man repeated; “otherwise it is too dangerous. Only one detachment has
been briefed. They think you are being infiltrated into
West
Berlin
. They’ve been told not to make it too easy. Ninety seconds
are enough.”

“I bloody well hope so,” said Leamas
drily. “What time do you make it?”

“I checked my watch with the sergeant in
charge of the detachment,” the man
replied. A light went on and off briefly in the back of the car.
“It is
twelve forty-eight
.
We must leave at five to one. Seven minutes to wait.”

They sat in total silence save for the rain
pattering on the roof. The
cobblestone
road reached out straight before them, staged by dingy streetlights every
hundred meters. There was no one
about. Above them the sky was lit with the unnatural glow of arclights.
Occasionally the beam of a searchlight flickered overhead,
and disappeared. Far to the left
Leamas caught sight of a fluctuating light just above the skyline, constantly
altering in strength, like the reflection of a fire.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing toward
it.

“Information Service,” the man replied.
“A scaffolding of lights.
It flashes news
headlines into
East
Berlin
.”

“Of course,” Leamas muttered. They were
very near the end of the road. “There is no turning back,” the man
continued. “He told you that? There is no second chance.”

“I know,” Leamas replied.

“If something goes wrong—if you fall or get
hurt— don’t turn back. They shoot on sight within the area of the wall. You
must
get over.”

“We know,” Leamas repeated; “he told
me.”

“From the moment you get out of the car you
are in the area.”

“We know. Now shut up,” Leamas retorted.
And then he added, “Are you
taking
the car back?”

“As soon as you get out of the car I shall
drive it away. It is a danger for
me,
too,” the man replied.

“Too bad,” said Leamas drily.

Again there was silence. Then Leamas asked,
“Do you have a gun?”

“Yes,” said the man, “but I can’t
give it to you; he said I shouldn’t give it to you…that you were sure to ask
for it.”

Leamas laughed quietly. “He would,” he
said.

Leamas pulled the starter. With a noise that
seemed to fill the street the car
moved
slowly forward.

They had gone about three hundred yards when the
man whispered excitedly,
“Go
right here, then left.” They swung into a narrow side street. There were
empty market stalls on either side so that the car barely passed between them.

“Left here, now!”

They turned again, fast, this time between two
tall buildings into what looked like a cul-de-sac. There was washing strung
across the street, and Liz wondered whether they would pass under
It
. As they approached what seemed to be the dead end the
man said, “Left again—follow the path.” Leamas mounted the curb,
crossed the pavement and they followed a broad footpath bordered by a broken
fence to their left, and a tall, windowless building to their right. They heard
a shout from somewhere
above
them, a woman’s voice, and Leamas muttered “Oh, shut up” as he
steered clumsily around a right-angle bend in the path and came almost
immediately upon a major road.

“Which way?” be demanded.

“Straight across—past the
chemist—between the chemist and the post office—there!”
The man was
leaning so far forward that his face was almost level
with theirs. He pointed now, reaching past Leamas, the tip of
his finger pressed
against the
windshield.

“Get back,” Leamas hissed. “Get
your hand away. How the hell can I see if you wave your band around like
that?” Slamming the car into first gear, he drove fast
across the wide road. Glancing to his
left, he was astonished to glimpse the plump silhouette of the Brandenburg Gate
three hundred yards away, and the sinister
grouping of military vehicles at the foot of it.

“Where are we going?” asked Leamas
suddenly.

“We’re nearly there. Go slowly now—left,
left, go
left!
”
he cried, and
Leamas jerked the
wheel in the nick of time; they passed under a narrow archway into a courtyard.
Half the windows were missing or boarded up; the empty doorways gaped
sightlessly at them. At the other end
of the yard was an open gateway. “Through there,” came the whispered
command, urgent in the darkness; “then hard right. You’ll see a streetlamp
on your right. The one beyond it is broken. When you reach the second lamp,
switch off the engine and coast until you see a fire hydrant. That’s the
place.”

“Why the hell didn’t you drive
yourself?”

“He said you should drive; he said it was
safer.”

They passed through the gate and turned sharply to
the right. They were in a
narrow
street, pitch-dark.

“Lights out!”

Leamas switched off the car lights, drove slowly forward
toward the first streetlamp. Ahead, they could just see the second. It was
unlit. Switching off the engine they coasted silently past it, until, twenty
yards ahead of them, they discerned the dim outline of the fire hydrant. Leamas
braked; the car rolled to a standstill. “Where are we?” Leamas
whispered. “We crossed the Leninallee, didn’t we?”
“Greifswalder
Strasse.
Then we turned north. We’re north of Bernauerstrasse.”
“Pankow?”

“Just about.
Look.” The man pointed down a side street to the left. At the far end they
saw a brief stretch of wall, gray-brown in the weary arclight. Along the top
ran a triple strand of barbed wire.

“How will the girl get over the wire?”

“It is already cut where you climb. There is
a small gap. You have one minute to reach the wall. Goodbye.”

They got out of the car, all three of them. Leamas
took Liz by the arm, and she started from him as if he had hurt her.

“Good-bye,” said the German.

Leamas just whispered, “Don’t start that car
till we’re over.”

Liz looked at the German for a moment in the pale
light: she had a brief impression of a young, anxious face; the face of a boy
trying to be brave.

“Good-bye,” said Liz. She disengaged her
arm and followed Leamas across the
road
and into the narrow street that led toward the wall.

As they entered the street they heard the car
start up behind them, turn and move quickly away in the direction they had
come.

“Pull up the ladder, you bastard,”
Leamas muttered, glancing back at the retreating car.

Liz hardly heard him.

They walked quickly, Leamas glancing over his shoulder from time
to time to make sure she was following. As he reached the end of the alley he
stopped, drew into the shadow of a doorway and looked at his watch.

“Two minutes,” he whispered.

She said nothing. She was staring straight ahead
toward the wall, and the black ruins rising behind it.

“Two minutes,” Leamas repeated.

Before them was a strip of thirty yards. It followed the wall in
both directions. Perhaps seventy yards to their right was a watchtower; the
beam of its searchlight played along the strip. The thin rain hung in the air,
so that the light from the arc lamps was sallow and chalky, screening the world
beyond. There was no one to be seen; not a sound.
An empty
stage.

The watchtower’s searchlight began feeling its way
along the wall toward
them,
hesitant; each time it rested they could see the separate bricks and the
careless lines of mortar hastily put on. As they watched the beam stopped
immediately in front of them. Leamas looked at his watch.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

Taking her arm he began walking deliberately
across the strip. Liz wanted to
run
but he held her so tightly that she could not. They were halfway toward the
wall now, the brilliant semicircle of light drawing them forward, the beam
directly above them. Leamas was determined to keep Liz very close to him, as if
he were afraid that Mundt would not keep his word and somehow snatch her away
at the last moment.

They were almost at the wall when the beam darted
to the north, leaving them momentarily in total darkness. Still holding Liz’s
arm, Leamas guided her forward blindly, his left hand reaching ahead of him
until suddenly he felt the coarse, sharp contact of the cinder brick. Now he
could discern the wall and, looking upward, the triple strand of wire and the
cruel hooks which held it. Metal wedges, like climbers’ pitons, had been driven
into the brick. Seizing the highest one, Leamas pulled himself quickly upward
until he had reached the top of the wall. He tugged sharply at the
lower strand of wire and it came
toward him, already cut.

“Come on,” he whispered urgently,
“start climbing.”

Laying himself flat he reached down, grasped her
upstretched hand and began
drawing
her slowly upward as her foot found the first metal rung.

Suddenly the whole world seemed to break into
flame; from everywhere, from above and beside them, massive lights converged,
bursting upon them with savage
accuracy.

Leamas was blinded, he turned his head away,
wrenching wildly at Liz’s arm. Now she was swinging free; he thought she had
slipped and he called frantically, still drawing her upwards. He could see
nothing—only a mad confusion of color dancing in his eyes.

Then
came
the hysterical
wail of sirens, orders frantically shouted. Half
kneeling astride the wall he grasped both her arms in his, and
began dragging her to
him inch
by inch, himself on the verge of falling.

Then they fired—single rounds, three or four, and
he felt her shudder. Her
thin
arms slipped from his hands. He heard a voice in English from the Western side
of the wall:

“Jump, Alec!
Jump,
man!”

Now everyone was shouting, English, French and
German mixed; he heard
Smiley’s
voice from quite close:

“The girl, where’s the girl?”

Shielding his eyes he looked down at the foot of
the wall and at last he managed to see her, lying still. For a moment he
hesitated,
then
quite slowly he
climbed back down the same rungs, until he was standing beside
her. She was dead; her face was turned away, her black hair drawn across her
cheek as if to protect her
from
the rain.

They seemed to hesitate before firing again;
someone shouted an order, and
still
no one fired. Finally they shot him, two or three shots. He stood glaring
around him like a blinded bull in the arena. As he fell, Leamas saw a small car
smashed between great
lorries
, and the children waving
cheerfully through the window.

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR

JOHN LE CARRÉ is the pseudonym of David Cornwell.
Born in 1931, he
attended the
universities of
Berne
and
Oxford
, taught at
Eton
and later entered the British Foreign Service. He has been described in
The New York Times
as belonging to the select company of such spy and detective story writers as
Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. His
first two novels were
Call for the Dead
(1961) and
A Murder of Quality
(1962). His
third novel,
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
(1963), was greeted with
great enthusiasm and secured his worldwide reputation.