The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

13

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Fiedler loved to ask questions. Sometimes, because he was a lawyer, he asked them for his own pleasure alone, to demonstrate the discrepancy between evidence and perfective truth. He possessed, however, that persistent inquisitiveness which for journalists and lawyers is an end in itself.

They went for a walk that afternoon, following the gravel road down into the valley, then branching into the forest along a broad, pitted track lined with felled timber. All the time, Fiedler probed, giving nothing. About the building in Cambridge Circus, and the people who worked there. What social class did they come from, what parts of London did they inhabit, did husbands and wives work in the same Departments? He asked about the pay, the leave, the morale, the canteen; he asked about their love-life, their gossip, their philosophy. Most of all he asked about their philosophy.

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