“Look,” said Leamas suddenly, “from now on I can do without the goodwill, do you follow me? We both know what we’re about; both professionals. You’ve got a paid defector–good luck to you. For Christ’s sake don’t pretend you’ve fallen in love with me.” He sounded on edge, uncertain of himself.
Peters nodded. “Kiever told me you were a proud man,” he observed dispassionately. Then he added without smiling, “After all, why else does a man attack tradesmen?”
Leamas guessed he was Russian, but he wasn’t sure. His English was nearly perfect, he had the ease and habits of a man long used to civilized comforts.
They sat at the table.
“Kiever told you what I am going to pay you?” Peters inquired.
“Yes. Fifteen thousand pounds to be drawn on a Bern bank.”
“Yes.”
“He said you might have follow-up questions during the next year,” said Leamas. “You would pay another five thousand if I kept myself available.”
Peters nodded.
“I don’t accept that condition,” Leamas continued. “You know as well as I do it wouldn’t work. I want to draw the fifteen thousand and get clear. Your people have a rough way with defected agents; so have mine. I’m not going to sit on my fanny in St. Moritz while you roll up every network I’ve given you. They’re not fools; they’d know who to look for. For all you and I know they’re on to us now.”
Peters nodded. “You could, of course, come somewhere. . . safer, couldn’t you?”
“Behind the Curtain?”
“Yes.”
Leamas just shook his head and continued: “I reckon you’ll need about three days for a preliminary interrogation. Then you’ll want to refer back for a detailed brief.”
“Not necessarily,” Peters replied.
Leamas looked at him with interest. “I see,” he said, “they’ve sent the expert. Or isn’t Moscow Centre in on this?”
Peters was silent; he was just looking at Leamas, taking him in. At last he picked up the pencil in front of him and said, “Shall we begin with your war service?”
Leamas shrugged.
“It’s up to you.”
“That’s right. We’ll begin with your war service. Just talk.”
“I enlisted in the Engineers in 1939. I was finishing my training when a notice came around inviting linguists to apply for specialist service abroad. I had Dutch and German and a good deal of French and I was fed up with soldiering, so I applied. I knew Holland well; my father had a machine tool agency at Leiden; I’d lived there for nine years. I had the usual interviews and went off to a school near Oxford where they taught me the usual monkey tricks.”
“Who was running that setup?”
“I didn’t know till later. Then I met Steed-Asprey, and an Oxford don called Fielding. They were running it. In forty-one they dropped me into Holland and I stayed there nearly two years. We lost agents quicker than we could find them in those days–it was bloody murder. Holland’s a wicked country for that kind of work–it’s got no real rough country, nowhere out of the way you can keep a headquarters or a radio set. Always on the move, always running away. It made it a very dirty game. I got out in forty-three and had a couple of months in England, then I had a go at Norway–that was a picnic by comparison. In forty-five they paid me off and I came over here again, to Holland, to try and catch up on my father’s old business. That was no good, so I joined up with an old friend who was running a travel agency business in Bristol. That lasted eighteen months, then we went bankrupt. Then out of the blue I got a letter from the Department: would I like to go back? But I’d had enough of all that, I thought, so I said I’d think about it and rented a cottage on Lundy Island. I stayed there a year contemplating my stomach, then I got fed up again so I wrote to them. By late forty-nine I was back on the payroll. Broken service, of course–reduction of pension rights and the usual crabbing. Am I going too fast?”