Liz gave a rather exaggerated shrug, the kind of overstressed gesture people make when they are excited and alone. It was abroad anyway, it was free and it sounded interesting. She had never been abroad, and she certainly couldn’t afford the fare herself. It would be rather fun. She had reservations about Germans, that was true. She knew, she had been told, that West Germany was militarist and _revanchist_, and that East Germany was democratic and peace loving. But she doubted whether all the good Germans were on one side and all the bad ones on the other. And it was the bad ones who had killed her father. Perhaps -that was why the Party had chosen her–as a generous act of reconciliation. Perhaps that was what Ashe had bad in mind when he asked her all those questions. Of course–that was the explanation. She was suddenly filled with a feeling of warmth and gratitude toward the Party. They really were decent people and she was proud and thankful to belong. She went to the desk and opened the drawer where, in an old school satchel, she kept the Branch stationery and the dues stamps. Putting a sheet of paper into her old Underwood typewriter–they’d sent it down from District when they heard she could type; it jumped a bit but otherwise was fine–she typed a neat, grateful letter of acceptance. Centre was such a wonderful thing–stern, benevolent, impersonal, perpetual. They were- good, good people. People who fought for peace. As she closed the drawer she caught sight of Smiley’s card.
She remembered that little man with the earnest, puckered face, standing at the doorway of her room and saying, “Did the Party know about you and Alec?” How silly she was. Well, this would take her mind off it.
* * 16 * Arrest
Fiedler and Leamas drove back the rest of the way in silence. In the dusk the hills were black and cavernous, the pinpoint lights struggling against the gathering darkness like the lights of distant ships at sea.
Fiedler parked the car in a shed at the side of the house and they walked together to the front door. They were about to enter the lodge when they heard a shout from the direction of the trees, followed by someone calling Fiedler’s name. They turned, and Leamas distinguished in the twilight twenty yards away three men standing, apparently waiting for Fiedler.
“What do you want?” Fiedler called.
“We want to talk to you. We’re from Berlin.”
Fiedler hesitated. “Where’s that damn guard?” Fledler asked Leamas. “There should be a guard on the front door.”
Leamas shrugged.
“Why aren’t the lights on in the hail?” he asked again; then, still unconvinced, he began walking slowly toward the men.
Leamas waited a moment, then, hearing nothing, made his way through the unlit house to the annex behind it. This was a shoddy barrack hut attached to the back of the building and hidden from all sides by close plantations of young pine trees. The hut was divided into three adjoining bedrooms; there was no corridor. The center room had been given to Leainas, and the room nearest to the main building was occupied by two guards. Leamas never knew who occupied the third. He had once tried to open the connecting door between it and his own room, but it was locked. He had only discovered it was a bedroom by peering through a narrow gap in the lace curtains early one morning as he went for a walk. The two guards, who followed him everywhere at fifty yards’ distance, had not rounded the corner of the hut, and he looked in at the window. The room contained a single bed, made, and a small writing desk with papers on it. He supposed that someone, with what passes for German thoroughness, watched him from that bedroom. But Leamas was too old a dog to allow himself to be bothered by surveillance. In Berlin it had been a fact of life–if you couldn’t spot it, so much the worse: it only meant they were taking greater care, or you were losing your grip. Usually, because he was good at that kind of thing, because he was observant and had an accurate memory–because, in short, he was good at his job–he spotted them anyway. He knew the formations favored by a shadowing team, he knew the tricks, the weaknesses, the momentary lapses that could give them away. It meant nothing to Leamas that he was watched, but as he walked through the improvised doorway from the lodge to the hut and stood in the guards’ bedroom, he had the distinct feeling that something was wrong.