Leamas waited. After a moment Fiedler said, “He’s never taken on an interrogation before. He’s left it to me before, always. He used to say to me, ‘You interrogate them, Jens, no one can do it like you. I’ll catch them and you make them sing.’ He used to say that people who do counterespionage are like painters– they need a man with a hammer standing behind them to strike when they have finished their work, otherwise they forget what they’re trying to achieve. ‘I’ll be your hammer,’ he used to say to me. It was a joke between us at first, then it began to matter; when he began to kill, kill them before they sang, just as you said: one here, another there, shot or murdered. I asked him, I begged him, ‘Why not arrest them? Why not let me have them for a month or two? What good to you are they when they are dead?’ He just shook his head at me and said there was a law that thistles must be cut down before they flower. I had the feeling that he’d prepared the answer before I ever asked the question. He’s a good operator, very good. He’s done wonders with the Abteilung–you know that. He’s got theories about it; I’ve talked to him late at night. Coffee he drinks–nothing else–just coffee all the time. He says Germans are too introspective to make good agents, and it all comes out in counterintelligence. He says counterintelligence people are like wolves chewing dry bones–you have to take away the bones and make them find new quarry–I see all that, I know what he means. But he’s gone too far. Why did he kill Viereck? Why did he take him away from me? Viereck was fresh quarry, we hadn’t even taken the meat from the bone, you see. So why did he take him? Why, Lea.mas, why?” The hand on Leamas’ arm was clasping it tightly; in the total darkness of the car Leamas was aware of the frightening intensity of Fiedler’s emotion.
“I’ve thought about it night and day. Ever since Viereck was shot, I’ve asked for a reason. At first it seemed fantastic. I told myself I was jealous, that the work was going to my head, that I was seeing treachery behind every tree; we get like that, people in our world. But I couldn’t help myself, Leamas, I had, to work it out. There’d been other things before. He was afraid–he was afraid that we would catch one who would talk too much!”
“What are you saying? You’re out of your mind,” said Leamas, and his voice held the trace of fear.
“It all held together, you see. Mundt escaped so easily from England; you told me yourself he did. And what did Guillam say to you? He said they didn’t want to catch him! Why not? I’ll tell you why–he was their man; they turned him, they caught him, don’t you see, and that was the price of his freedom–that and the money he was paid.”
“I tell you you’re out of your mind!” Leamas hissed. “He’ll kill you if he ever thinks you make up this kind of stuff. It’s sugar candy, Fiedler. Shut up and drive us home.” At last the hot grip on Leamas’ arm relaxed.
“That’s where you’re wrong. You provided the answer, you yourself, Leamas. That’s why we need one another.” –
“It’s not true!” Leamas shouted. “I’ve told you again and again, they couldn’t have done it. The Circus couldn’t have run him against the Zone without my knowing! It just wasn’t an administrative possibility. You’re trying to tell me Control was personally directing the deputy head of the Abteilung without the knowledge of the Berlin station. You’re mad, Fiedler, you’re just bloody well off your head!” Suddenly he began to laugh quietly. “You may want his job, you poor bastard; that’s not unheard of, you know. But this kind of thing went out with bustles.” For a moment neither spoke.
“That money,” Fiedler said, “in Copenhagen. The bank replied to your letter. The manager is very worried lest there has been a mistake. The money was drawn by your co-signatory exactly one week after you paid it in. The date it was drawn coincides with a twoday visit which Mundt paid to Denmark in February. He went there under an alias to meet an American agent we have who was attending a world scientists’ conference.” Fiedler hesitated, then added, “I suppose you ought to write to the bank and tell them everything is quite in order?”