The Spy Who Came in From The Cold

“Yes?”

“We have facilities here for people who . . . for people who are spending some time with us. Facilities for diversion and so on.”

“Are you offering me a woman?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“No thank you. Unlike you, I haven’t reached the stage where I need a pimp.”

Fiedler seemed indifferent to his reply. He went on quickly.

“But you had a woman in England didn’t you– the girl in the library?”

Leamas turned on him, his hands open at his sides.

“One thing!” he shouted. “Just that one thing– don’t ever mention that again, not as a joke, not as a threat, not even to turn the screws, Fiedler, because it won’t work, not ever; I’d dry up, do you see, you’d never get another bloody word from me as long as I lived. Tell that to them, Fiedler, to Mundt and Stammberger or whichever little alley-cat told you to say it– tell them what I said.”

“I’ll tell them,” Fiedler replied. “I’ll tell them. It may be too late.”

In the afternoon they went walking again. The sky was dark and heavy, and the air warm.

“I’ve only been to England once,” Fiedler observed casually. “That was on my way to Canada, with my parents before the war. I was a child then of course. We were there for two days.”

Leamas nodded.

“I can tell you this now,” Fiedler continued. “I nearly went there a few years back. I was going to replace Mundt on the Steel Mission–did you know he was once in London?”

“I knew,” Leamas replied cryptically.

“I always wondered what it would have been like, that job.”

“Usual game of mixing with the other Bloc Missions, I suppose. Certain amount of contact with British business–not much of that.” Leamas sounded bored.

“But Mundt got about all right: he found it quite easy.”

“So I hear,” said Leamas; “he even managed to kill a couple of people.”

“So you heard about that too?”

“From Peter Guillam. He was in on it with George Smiley. Mnndt bloody nearly killed George as well.”

“The Fennan Case,” Fiedler mused. “It was amazing that Mundt managed to escape at all, wasn’t it?”

“I suppose it was.”

“You wouldn’t think that a man whose photograph and personal particulars were filed at the Foreign Office as a member of a Foreign Mission would have a chance against the whole of British Security.”

“From what I hear,” Leamas said, “they weren’t too keen to catch him anyway.”

Fiedler stopped abruptly. “What did you say?”

“Peter Guillam told me he didn’t reckon they wanted to catch Mundt, that’s all I said. We had a different setup then–an Adviser instead of an Operational Control–a man called Maston. Maston had made a bloody awful mess of the Fennan Case from the start, that’s what Guillam said. Peter reckoned that if they’d caught Mundt it would have made a hell of a stink–they’d have tried him and probably hanged him. The dirt that came out in the process would have finished Maston’s career. Peter never knew quite what happened, but he was bloody sure there was no full-scale search for Mundt.”

“You are sure of that, you are sure Guillam told you that in so many words? No full-scale search?”

“Of course I am sure.”

“Guillam never suggested any other reason why they might have let Mundt go?”

“What do you mean?”

Fiedler shook his head and they walked on along the path.

“The Steel Mission was closed down after the Fennan Case,” Fiedler observed a moment later, “that’s why I didn’t go.” –

“Mundt must have been mad. You may be able to get away with assassination in the Balkans—or here– but not London.”

“He did get away with it though, didn’t he?” Fiedler put in quickly. “And he did good work.” – –

“Like recruiting Kiever and Asbe? God help him.”

“They ran the Fennan woman for long enough.”

Leamas shrugged.

“Tell me something else about Karl Riemeck,” Fledler began again. “He met Control once, didn’t he?”

“Yes, in Berlin about a year ago, maybe a bit more.”

“Where did they meet?”

‘We all met together in my flat.”

“Why?”

“Control loved to come in on success. We’d got a hell of a lot of good stuff from Karl–I suppose it had gone down well with London. He came out on a short trip to Berlin and asked me to fix it up for them to meet.”

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