Leamas was watching Fiedler with an expression of disgust.
“I know your setup. You’re Mundt’s poodle, aren’t you? They say you want his job. I suppose you’ll get it now. It’s time the Mundt dynasty ended; perhaps this is it.”
“I don’t understand,” Fiedler replied.
“I’m your big success, aren’t I?” Leamas sneered.
Fiedler seemed to reflect for a moment, then he shrugged and said, “The operation was successful. Whether you were worth it is questionable. We shall see. But it was a good operation. It satisfied the only requirement of our profession: it worked.”
“I suppose you take the credit?” Leamas persisted, with a glance in the direction of Peters. –
“There is no question of credit,” Fiedler replied crisply, “none at all.” He sat down on the arm of the sofa, looked at Leamas thoughtfully for a moment and then said:
“Nevertheless, you are right to be indignant about one thing. Who told your people we had picked you up? We didn’t. You may not believe me, but it happens to be true. We didn’t tell them. We didn’t even want them to know. We had ideas then of getting you to work for us later–ideas which i now realize to be ridiculous. So who told them? You were lost, drifting around, you had no address, no ties, no friends. Then how the devil did they know you’d gone? Someone told them–scarcely Ashe or Kiever, since they are both now under arrest.”
“Under arrest?”
“So it appears. Not specifically for their work on your case, but there were other things. . . .”
“Well, well.”
“It is true, what I said just now. We would have been content with Peters’ report from Holland. You could have had your money and gone. But you hadn’t told us everything; and I want to know everything. After all, your presence here provides us with problems too, you know.”
“Well, you’ve boobed. I know damn all–and you’re welcome to it.”
There was a silence, during which Peters, with an abrupt and by no means friendly nod in Fiedler’s direction, quietly let himself out of the room.
Fiedler picked up the bottle of whisky and poured a little into each glass.
“We have no soda, I’m afraid,” he said. “Do you like water? I ordered soda, but they brought some wretched lemonade.”
“Oh, go to hell,” said Leamas. He suddenly felt very tired.
Fiedler shook his head.
“You are a very proud man,” he observed, “but never mind. Eat your supper and go to bed.”
One of the guards came in with a tray of food– black bread, sausage and cold green salad.
“It is a little crude,” said Fiedler, “but quite satisfying. No potato, I’m afraid. There is a temporary shortage of potatoes.”
They began eating in silence, Fiedler very carefully, like a man who counted his calories.
The guards showed Leamas to his bedroom. They let him carry his own luggage–the same luggage that Kiever had given him before he left England–and he walked between them along the wide central corridor which led through the house from the front door. They came to a large double door, painted dark green, and one of the guards unlocked it; they beckoned to Leamas to go first. He pushed open the door and- found himself in a small barrack bedroom with two bunk beds, a chair and a rudimentary desk. It was like something in prison camp. There were pictures of girls on the walls and the windows were shuttered. At the far end of the room was another door. They signaled him forward again. Putting down his baggage, he went and opened the door. The second room was identical to the first, but there was one bed and the walls were bare. –
“You bring those cases,” he said. “I’m tired.” He lay on the bed, fully dressed, and within a few minutes he was fast asleep.
A sentry woke him with breakfast: black bread and _ersatz_ coffee. He got out of bed and went to the window.
The house stood on a high bill. The ground fell steeply away from beneath his window, the crowns of pine trees visible above the crest. Beyond them, spectacular in their symmetry, unending hills, heavy with trees, stretched into the distance. Here and there a timber gully or firebreak formed a thin brown divide between the pines, seeming like Aaron’s rod miraculously to hold apart massive seas of encroaching forest. There was no sign of man; not a house or church, not even the ruin of some previous habitation–only the road, the yellow dirt road, a crayon line across the basin of the valley. There was no sound. It seemed incredible that anything so vast could be so still. The day was cold but clear. It must have rained in the night; the ground was moist, and the whole landscape so sharply defined against the white sky that Leamas could distinguish even single trees on the farthest hifis.