The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

remember the reaction from London, the nature of corroboration where it existed. He could remember sums of money demanded and paid, the dates of the conscription of other agents into the network.

'I'm sorry,' said Peters at last, 'but I do not believe that one man, however well placed, however careful, however industrious, could have acquired such a range of detailed knowledge. For that matter, even if he had he would never have been able to photograph it.'

'He was able,' Leamas persisted, suddenly angry. 'He bloody well did and that's all there is to it.'

'And the Circus never told you to go into it with him, exactly how and when he saw all this stuff?'

'No,' snapped Leamas. 'Riemeck was touchy about that, and London was content to let it go.'

'Well, well,' Peters mused.

After a moment Peters said, 'You heard about that woman, incidentally?'

'What woman?' Leamas asked sharply.

'Karl Riemeck's mistress, the one who came over to West Berlin the night Riemeck was shot.'

'Well?'

'She was found dead a week ago. Murdered. She was shot from a car as she left her flat.'

'It used to be my flat,' said Leamas mechanically.

'Perhaps,' Peters suggested, 'she knew more about Riemeck's network than you did.'

'What the hell do you mean?' Leamas demanded.

Peters shrugged. 'It's all very strange,' he observed. 'I wonder who killed her.'

When they had exhausted the case of Karl Riemeck, Leamas went on to talk of other less spectacular agents, then of the procedure of his Berlin office, its communications, its staff, its secret ramifications— flats, transport, recording and photographic equipment. They talked long into the night and throughout the next day, and when at last Leamas stumbled into bed the following night he knew he had betrayed all that he knew of Allied Intelligence in Berlin and had drunk two bottles of whisky in two days.

One thing puzzled him: Peters' insistence that Karl Riemeck must have had help—must have had a high level collaborator. Control had asked him the same question—he remembered now—Control had asked about Riemeck's access. How could they both be so sure Karl hadn't managed alone? He'd had helpers, of course; like the guards by the canal the day Leamas met him. But they were small beer—Karl had told him about them. But Peters—and Peters, after all, would know precisely how much Karl had been able to get his hands on—Peters had refused to believe Karl had managed alone. On this point, Peters and Control were evidently agreed.

Perhaps it was true. Perhaps there was somebody else. Perhaps this was the special interest whom Control was so anxious to protect from Mundt. That would mean that Karl Riemeck had collaborated with this special interest and provided what both of them had together obtained. Perhaps that was what Control had spoken to Karl about, alone, that evening in Leamas' flat in Berlin.

Anyway, tomorrow would tell. Tomorrow he would play his hand.

He wondered who had killed Elvira. And he wondered why they had killed her. Of course—here was a point, here was a possible explanation—Elvira, knowing the identity of Riemeck's special collaborator, had been murdered by that collaborator...No, that was too farfetched. It overlooked the difficulty of crossing from East to West: Elvira had after all been murdered in West Berlin.

He wondered why Control had never told him Elvira had been murdered. So that he would react suitably when Peters told him? It was useless speculating. Control had his reasons; they were usually so bloody tortuous it took you a week to work them out.

As he fell asleep he muttered, 'Karl was a damn fool. That woman did for him, I'm sure she did.' Elvira was dead now, and serve her right. He remembered Liz.

9 The Second Day

Peters arrived at eight o'clock the next morning, and without ceremony they sat down at the table and began.

'So you came back to London. What did you do there?'

'They put me on the shelf. I knew I was finished when that ass in Personnel met me at the airport. I had to go straight to Control and report about Karl. He was dead—what else was there to say?'

'What did they do with you?'

'They said at first I could hang around in London and wait till I was qualified for a proper pension. They were so bloody decent about it I got angry—I told them that if they were so keen to chuck money at me why didn't they do the obvious thing and count in all my time instead of bleating about broken service? Then they got cross when I told them that. They put me in Banking with a lot of women. I can't remember much about that part—I began hitting the bottle a bit. Went through a bad phase.'

He lit a cigarette. Peters nodded.

'That was why they gave me the push, really. They didn't like me drinking.'

'Tell me what you do remember about Banking Section,' Peters suggested.

'It was a dreary setup. I never was cut out for desk work, I knew that. That's why I hung on in Berlin. I knew when they recalled me I'd be put on the shelf, but Christ!'

'What did you do?'

Leamas shrugged.

'Sat on my behind in the same room as a couple of women. Thursby and Larrett. I called them Thursday and Friday.' He grinned rather stupidly. Peters looked uncomprehending.

'We just pushed paper. A letter came down from Finance: 'The payment of seven hundred dollars to so and so is authorized with effect from so and so. Kindly get on with it'—that was the gist of it. Thursday and Friday would kick it about a bit, file it, stamp it, and I'd sign a check or get the bank to make a transfer.'

'What bank?'

'Blatt and Rodney, a chichi little bank in the City. There's a sort of theory in the Circus that Etonians are discreet.'

'In fact, then, you knew the names of agents all over the world?'

'Not necessarily. That was the cunning thing. I'd sign the check, you see, or the order to the bank, but we'd leave a space for the name of the payee. The covering letter or what have you was all signed and then the file would go back to Special Dispatch.'

'Who are they?'

'They're the general holders of agents' particulars. They put in the names and posted the order. Bloody clever, I must say.'

Peters looked disappointed.

'You mean you had no way of knowing the names of the payees?'

'Not usually, no.'

'But occasionally?'

'We got pretty near the knuckle now and again. All the fiddling about between Banking, Finance and Special Dispatch led to cockups, of course. Too elaborate. Then occasionally we came in on special stuff which brightened one's life a bit.'

Leamas got up. 'I've made a list,' he said, 'of all the payments I can remember. It's in my room. I'll get it.'

He walked out of the room, the rather shuffling walk he had affected since arriving in Holland. When he returned he held in his hand a couple of sheets of lined paper torn from a cheap notebook.

'I wrote these down last night,' he said. 'I thought it would save time.'

Peters took the notes and read them slowly and carefully. He seemed impressed.

'Good,' he said, 'very good.'

'Then I remember best a thing called Rolling Stone. I got a couple of trips out of it. One to Copenhagen and