The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

one to Helsinki. Just dumping money at banks.'

'How much?'

'Ten thousand dollars in Copenhagen, forty thousand D-Marks in Helsinki' Peters put down his pencil.

'Who for?' he asked.

'God knows. We work Rolling Stone on a system of deposit accounts. The Service gave me a phony British passport; I went to the Royal Scandinavian Bank in Copenhagen and the National Bank of Finland in Helsinki, deposited the money and drew a passbook on a joint account—for me in my alias and for someone else—the agent I suppose in his alias. I gave the banks a sample of the co-holder's signature, I'd got that from Head Office. Later, the agent was given the passbook and a false passport which he showed at the bank when he drew the money. All I knew was the alias.' He heard himself talking and it all sounded so ludicrously improbable.

'Was this procedure common?'

'No. It was a special payment. It had a subscription list.'

'What's that?'

'It had a code name known to very few people.'

'What was the code name?'

'I told you—Rolling Stone. The operation covered irregular payments often thousand dollars in different currencies and in different capitals.'

'Always in capital towns?'

'Far as I know. I remember reading in the file that there had been other Rolling Stone payments before I came to the Section, but in those cases Banking Section got the local Resident to do it.'

'These other payments that took place before you came: where were they made?'

'One in Oslo. I can't remember where the other was.'

'Was the alias of the agent always the same?'

'No. That was an added security precaution. I heard later we pinched the whole technique from the Russians. It was the most elaborate payment scheme I'd met. In the same way I used a different alias and of course a different passport for each trip.' That would please him, help him to fill in the gaps.

'These faked passports the agent was given so that he could draw the money: did you know anything about them—how they were made out and dispatched?'

'No. Oh, except that they had to have visas in them for the country where the money was deposited. And entry stamps.'

'Entry stamps?'

'Yes. I assumed the passports were never used at the border—only presented at the bank for identification purposes. The agent must have traveled on his own passport, quite legally entered the country where the bank was situated, then used the faked passport at the bank. That was my guess.'

'Do you know of a reason why earlier payments were made by the Residents, and later payments by someone traveling out from London?'

'I know the reason., I asked the women in Banking Section, Thursday and Friday. Control was anxious that —'

'Control? Do you mean to say Control himself was running the case?'

'Yes, he was running it. He was afraid the Resident might be recognized at the bank. So he used a postman: me.'

'When did you make your journeys?'

'Copenhagen on the fifteenth of June. I flew back the same night. Helsinki at the end of September. I stayed two nights there, flew back around the twenty-eighth. I had a bit of fun in Helsinki.' He grinned but Peters took no notice.

'And the other payments—when were they made?'

'I can't remember. Sorry.'

'But one was definitely in Oslo?'

'Yes, in Oslo.'

'How much time separated the first two payments, the payments made by the Residents?'

'I don't know. Not long, I think. Maybe a month. A bit more perhaps.'

'Was it your impression that the agent had been operating for some time before the first payment was made? Did the file show that?'

'No idea. The file simply covered actual payments. First payment early fifty-nine. There was no other date on it. That is the principle that operates where you have a limited subscription. Different files handle different bits of a single case. Only someone with the master file would be able to put it all together.'

Peters was writing all the time now. Leamas assumed there was a tape recorder hidden somewhere in the room but the subsequent transcription would take time. What Peters wrote down now would provide the background for this evening's telegram to Moscow, while at the Soviet Embassy in The Hague the girls would sit up all night telegraphing the verbatim transcript on hourly schedules.

'Tell me,' said Peters; 'these are large sums of money. The arrangements for paying them were elaborate and very expensive. What did you make of it yourself?'

Leamas shrugged. 'What could I make of it? I thought Control must have a bloody good source, but I never saw the material so I don't know. I didn’t like the way it was done—it was too high-powered, too complicated, too clever. Why couldn't they just meet him and give him the money in cash? Did they really let him cross borders on his own passport with a forged one in his pocket? I doubt it,' said Leamas. It was time he clouded the issue, let him chase a hare.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, that for all I know the money was never drawn from the bank. Supposing he was a highly placed agent behind the Curtain—the money would be on deposit for him when he could get at it. That was what I reckoned anyway. I didn't think about it all that much. Why should I? It's part of our work only to know pieces of the whole setup. You know that. If you're curious, God help you.'

'If the money wasn't collected, as you suggest, why all the trouble with passports?'

'When I was in Berlin we made an arrangement for Karl Riemeck in case he ever needed to run and couldn't get hold of us. We kept a bogus West German passport for him at an address in Düsseldorf. He could collect it any time by following a prearranged procedure. It never expired—Special Travel renewed the passport and the visas as they expired. Control might have followed the same technique with this man. I don't know—it's only a guess.'

'How do you know for certain that passports were issued?'

'There were minutes on the file between Banking Section and Special Travel. Special Travel is the section which arranges false identity papers and visas.'

'I see.' Peters thought for a moment and then he asked: 'What names did you use in Copenhagen and Helsinki?'

'Robert Lang, electrical engineer from Derby. That was in Copenhagen.'

'When exactly were you in Copenhagen?' Peters asked.

'I told you, June the fifteenth. I got there in the morning at about eleven-thirty.'

'Which bank did you use?'

'Oh, for Christ's sake, Peters,' said Leamas, suddenly angry, 'the Royal Scandinavian. You've got it written down.'

'I just wanted to be sure,' the other replied evenly, and continued writing. 'And for Helsinki, what name?'

'Stephen Bennett, marine engineer from Plymouth. I was there,' he added sarcastically, 'at the end of September.'

'You visited the bank on the day you arrived?'

'Yes. It was the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth, I can't be sure, as I told you.'

'Did you take the money with you from England?'

'Of course not. We just transferred it to the Resident's account in each case. The Resident drew it, met me at the airport with the money in a suitcase and I took it to the bank.'

'Who's the Resident in Copenhagen?'