Control crossed to the door, opened it and talked to some unseen girl in the outer room. As he returned he said: “I really think we _ought_ to get rid of him if we can manage it.”
“Why? We’ve got nothing left in East Germany, nothing at all. You just said so–Riemeck was the last. We’ve nothing left to protect.”
Control sat down and looked at his hands for a while.
“That is not altogether true,” he said finally; “but I don’t think I need to bore you with the details.”
Leamas shrugged.
“Tell me,” Control continued, “are you tired of spying? Forgive me if I repeat the question. I mean that is a phenomenon we understand here, you know. Like aircraft designers . . . metal fatigue, I think the term is. Do say if you are.”
Leamas remembered the flight home that morning and wondered.
“If you were,” Control added, “we would have to find some other way of taking care of Mundt. What I have in mind is a little out of the ordinary.”
The girl came in with the coffee. She put the tray on the desk and poured out two cups. Control waited till she had left the room.
“Such a _silly_ girl,” he said, almost to himself. “It seems extraordinary they can’t find good ones any more. I do wish Ginnie wouldn’t go on holiday at times like this.” He stirred his coffee disconsolately for a while.
“We really must discredit Mundt,” he said. “Tell me, do y6u drink a lot? Whisky and that kind of thing?”
Leamas had thought he was used to Control.
“I drink a bit. More than most, I suppose.”
Control nodded understandingly. “What do you know about Mundt?”
“He’s a killer. He was here a year or two back with the East German Steel Mission. We had an adviser here then: Maston.”
“Quite so.”
“Mundt was running an agent, the wife of an F.O. man. He killed her.”
“He tried to kill George Smiley. And of course he shot the woman’s husband. He is a very distasteful man. Ex Hitler-Youth and all that kind of thing. Not at all the intellectual kind of Communist. A practitioner of the cold war.”
“Like us,” Leamas observed drily.
Control didn’t smile. “George Smiley knew the case well. He isn’t with us any more, but I think you ought to ferret him out. He’s doing things on seventeenthcentury Germany. He lives in Chelsea, just behind Sloane Square. Bywater Street, do you know it?”
“Yes.”
“And Guillam was on the case as well. He’s in Satellites Four, on the first floor. I’m afraid everything’s changed since your day.”
“Yes.”
“Spend a day or two with them. They know what I have in mind. Then I wondered if you’d care to stay with me for the weekend. My wife,” he added hastily, “is looking after her mother, I’m afraid. It will be just you and I.”
“Thanks. I’d like to.”
“We can talk about things in comfort then. It would be very nice. I think you might make a lot of money out of it. You can have whatever you make.”
“Thanks.”
“That is, of course, if you’re sure you want to no mental fatigue or anything?”
“If it’s a question of killing Mundt, I’m game.”
“Do you really feel that?” Control inquired politely. And then, having looked at Leamas thoughtfully for a moment, he observed, “Yes, I really think you do. But you mustn’t feel you have to say it. I mean in our world we pass so quickly out of the register ol hate or love–like certain sounds a dog can’t hear. All that’s left in the end is a kind of nausea; you never want to cause suffering again. Forgive me, but isn’t that rather what you felt when Karl Riemeck was shot? Not hate for Mundt, nor love for Karl, but a sickening jolt like a blow on a numb body. . . . They tell me you walked all night–just walked through the streets of Berlin. Is that right?”
“It’s right that I went for a walk.”
“All night?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to Elvira?”
“God knows. . . . I’d like to take a swing at Mundt,” he said.