“Why the hell didn’t you drive yourself?”
“He said you should drive; he said it was safer.”
They passed through the gate and turned sharply to the right. They were in a narrow street, pitch-dark.
“Lights out!”
Leamas switched off the car lights, drove slowly forward toward the first streetlamp. Ahead, they could just see the second. It was unlit. Switching off the engine they coasted silently past it, until, twenty yards ahead of them, they discerned the dim outline of the fire hydrant. Leamas braked; the car rolled to a standstill.
“Where are we?” Leamas whispered. “We crossed the Leninallee, didn’t we?”
“Greifswalder Strasse. Then we turned north. We’re north of Bernauerstrasse.”
“Pankow?”
“Just about. Look.” The man pointed down a side street to the left. At the far end they saw a brief stretch of wall, gray-brown in the weary arclight. Along the top ran a triple strand of barbed wire.
“How will the girl get over the wire?”
“It is already cut where you climb. There is a small gap. You have one minute to reach the wall. Goodbye.”
They got out of the car, all three of them. Leamas took Liz by the arm, and she started from him as if he had hurt her.
“Good-bye,” said the German.
Leamas just whispered, “Don’t start that car till we’re over.”
Liz looked at the German for a moment in the pale light: she had a brief impression of a young, anxious face; the face of a boy trying to be brave.
“Good-bye,” said Liz. She disengaged her arm and followed Leamas across the road and into the narrow street that led toward the wall.
As they entered the street they heard the car start up behind them, turn and move quickly away in the direction they had come.
“Pull up the ladder, you bastard,” Leamas muttered, glancing back at the retreating car.
Liz hardly heard him.
* * 26 * In from the Cold
They walked quickly, Leamas glancing over his shoulder from time to time to make sure she was following. As he reached the end of the alley he stopped, drew into the shadow of a doorway and looked at his watch.
“Two minutes,” he whispered.
She said nothing. She was staring straight ahead toward the wall, and the black ruins rising behind it.
“Two minutes,” Leamas repeated.
Before them was a strip of thirty yards. It followed the wall in both directions. Perhaps seventy yards to their right was a watchtower; the beam of its searchlight played along the strip. The thin rain hung in the air, so that the light from the arc lamps was sallow and chalky, screening the world beyond. There was no one to be seen; not a sound. An empty stage.
The watchtower’s searchlight began feeling its way along the wall toward them, hesitant; each time it rested they could see the separate bricks and the careless lines of mortar hastily put on. As they watched the beam stopped immediately in front of them. Leamas looked at his watch.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
Taking her arm he began walking deliberately across the strip. Liz wanted to run but he held her so tightly that she could not. They were halfway toward the wall now, the brilliant semicircle of light drawing them forward, the beam directly above them. Leamas was determined to keep Liz very close to him, as if he were afraid that Mundt would not keep his word and somehow snatch her away at the last moment.
They were almost at the wall when the beam darted to the north, leaving them momentarily in total darkness. Still holding Liz’s arm, Leamas guided her forward blindly, his left hand reaching ahead of him until suddenly he felt the coarse, sharp contact of the cinder brick. Now he could discern the wall and, looking upward, the triple strand of wire and the cruel hooks which held it. Metal wedges, like climbers’ pitons, had been driven into the brick. Seizing the highest one, Leamas pulled himself quickly upward until he had reached the top of the wall. He tugged sharply at the lower strand of wire and it came toward him, already cut.