He drove very slowly the rest of the way and missed his meeting with Karl.
He never drove again without some corner of his memory recalling the tousled children waving to him from the back of that car, and their father grasping the wheel like a farmer at the shafts of a hand plow.
Control would call it fever.
He sat dully in his seat over the wing. There was an American woman next to him wearing high-heeled shoes in polythene wrappers. He had a momentary notion of passing her some note for the people in Berlin, but he discarded it at once. She’d think he was making a pass at her; Peters would see it. Besides, what was the point? Control knew what had happened; Control had made it happen. There was nothing to say.
He wondered what would become of him. Control hadn’t talked about that–only about the technique:
“Don’t give it to them all at once, make them work for it. Confuse them with detail, leave things out, go back on your tracks. Be testy, be cussed, be difficult. Drink like a fish; don’t give way on the ideology, they won’t trust that. They want to deal with a man they’ve bought; they want the clash of opposites, Alec, not some half-cock convert. Above all, they want to _deduce_. The ground’s prepared; we did it long ago, little things, difficult clues. You’re the last stage in the treasure hunt.”
He’d had to agree to do it: you can’t back out of the big fight when all the preliminary ones have been fought for you.
“One thing I can promise you: it’s worth it. It’s worth it for our special interest, Alec. Keep him alive and we’ve won a great victory.”
He didn’t think he could stand torture. He remembered a book by Koestler where -the old revolutionary had conditioned himself for torture by holding lighted matches to his fingers. He hadn’t read much but he’d read that and he remembered it.
It was nearly dark when they landed at Templehof. Leamas watched the lights of Berlin rise to meet them, felt the thud as the plane touched down, saw the customs and immigration officials move forward out of the half-light.
For a moment Leamas was anxious lest some former acquaintance should chance to recognize him at the airport. As they walked side by side, Peters and he, along the interminable corridors, through the cursory customs and immigration check, and still no familiar face turned to greet him, he realized that his anxiety had in reality been hope; hope that somehow his tacit decision to go on would be revoked by circumstance.
It interested him that Peters no longer bothered to disown him. It was as if Peters regarded West Berlin as safe ground, where vigilance and security could be relaxed; a mere technical staging post to the East.
They were walking through the big reception hail to the main entrance when Peters suddenly seemed to a!ter his mind, abruptly changed direction and led Leamas to a – smaller side entrance which gave on to a parking lot and taxi stand. There Peters hesitated a second, standing beneath the light over the door, then put his suitcase on the ground beside him, deliberately removed his newspaper from beneath his arm, folded it, pushed it into the left pocket of his raincoat and picked up his suitcase again. Immediately from the direction of the parking lot a pair of headlights sprang to life, were dipped and then extinguished.
“Come on,” said Peters and started to walk briskly across the tarmac, Leamas following more slowly. As they reached the first row of cars the rear door of a black Mercedes was opened from the inside, and the courtesy light went on. Peters, ten yards ahead of Leamas, went quickly to the car, spoke softly to the driver, then called to Leamas.
“Here’s the car. Be quick.”
It was an old Mercedes 180 and he got in without a word. Peters sat beside him in the back. As they pulled out they overtook a small DKW with two men sitting in the front. Twenty yards down the road there was a telephone booth. A man was talking into the telephone, and he watched them go by, talking all the time, Leamas looked out of the back window and saw the DKW following them. Quite a reception, he thought.