"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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 h.e.l.l 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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? G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l 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."
"Did you mind?"
"Why should I?"
"He was your agent. You might not have liked him to meet other operators."
"Control isn"t an operator, he"s head of Department. Karl knew that and it tickled his vanity."
"Were you all three together, all the time?"
"Yes. Well, not quite. I left them alone for a quarter of an hour or so--not more. Control wanted that-- he wanted a few minutes alone with Karl, G.o.d knows why, so I left the flat on some excuse, I forget what. Oh--I know, I pretended we"d run out of Scotch. I actually went and collected a bottle from de Jong, in fact."
"Do you know what pa.s.sed between them while you were out?"
"How could I? I wasn"t that interested, anyway."
"Didn"t Karl tell you afterwards?"
"I didn"t ask him. Karl was a cheeky sod in some ways, always pretending he had something over me. I didn"t like the way he sn.i.g.g.e.red about ControL Mind you, he had every right to sn.i.g.g.e.r--it was a pretty ridiculous performance. We laughed about it together a bit, as a matter of fact. There wouldn"t have been any point in p.r.i.c.king Karl"s vanity; the whole meeting was supposed to give him a shot in the arm."
"Was Karl depressed then?"
"No, far from it. He was spoiled already. He was paid too much, loved too much, trusted too much. It was partly my fault, partly London"s. If we hadn"t spoiled him he wouldn"t have told that b.l.o.o.d.y woman of his about his network."
"Elvira?"
"Yes."
They walked on in silence for a while, until Fiedler interrupted his own reverie to observe: "I"m beginning to like you. But there"s one thing that puzzles me. It"s odd--it didn"t worry me before I met you."
"What"s that?"
"Why you ever came. Why you defected." Leamas was going to say something when Fiedler laughed. "I"m afraid that wasn"t very tactful, was it?" he said.
They spent that week walking in the hills. In the evenings they would return to the lodge, eat a bad meal washed down with a bottle of rank white wine, sit endlessly over their Steinhager in front of the fire. The fire seemed to be Fiedler"s idea--they didn"t have it to begin with, then one day Leamas overheard him telling a guard to bring logs. Leamas didn"t mind the evenings then; after the fresh air all day, the fire and the rough spirits, he would talk unprompted, rambling on about his Service. Leamas supposed it was recorded. He didn"t care.
As each day pa.s.sed in this way Leamas was aware of an increasing tension in his companion. Once they went out in the DKW--it was late in the evening-- and stopped at a telephone booth. Fiedler left him in the car with the keys and made a long phone call.
When he came back Leamas said, "Why didn"t you ring from the house?" but Fiedler just shook his head. "We must take care," he replied; "you too, you must take care."
"Why? What"s going on?"
"The money you paid into the Copenhagen bank-- we wrote, you remember?"
"Of course I remember."
Fiedler wouldn"t say any more, but drove on in silence into the hills. There they stopped. Beneath them, half screened by the ghostly patchwork of tall pine trees, lay the meeting point of two great valleys. The steep wooded hills on either side gradually yielded their colors to the gathering dusk until they stood gray and lifeless in the twilight.
"Whatever happens," Fiedler said, "don"t worry. It will be all right, do you understand?" His - voice was heavy with emphasis, his slim hand rested on Leamas" arm. "You may have to look after yourself a little, but it won"t last long, do you understand?" he asked again.
"No. And since you won"t tell me, I shall have to wait and see. Don"t worry too much for my skin, Fiedler." He moved his arm, but Fiedler"s hand stifi held him. Leamas hated being touched.
"Do you know Mundt?" asked Fiedler. "Do you know about him?"
"We"ve talked about Mundt."
"Yes," Fiedler repeated, "we"ve talked about him. He shoots first and asks questions afterwards. The deterrent principle. It"s an odd system in a profession where the questions are always supposed to be more important than the shooting." Leamas knew what Fiedler wanted to tell him. "It"s an odd system unless you"re frightened of the answers," Fiedler continued under his breath.
Leamas waited. After a moment Fiedler said, "He"s never taken on an interrogation before. He"s left it to me before, always. He used to say to me, "You interrogate them, Jens, no one can do it like you. I"ll catch them and you make them sing." He used to say that people who do counterespionage are like painters-- they need a man with a hammer standing behind them to strike when they have finished their work, otherwise they forget what they"re trying to achieve. "I"ll be your hammer," he used to say to me. It was a joke between us at first, then it began to matter; when he began to kill, kill them before they sang, just as you said: one here, another there, shot or murdered. I asked him, I begged him, "Why not arrest them? Why not let me have them for a month or two? What good to you are they when they are dead?" He just shook his head at me and said there was a law that thistles must be cut down before they flower. I had the feeling that he"d prepared the answer before I ever asked the question. He"s a good operator, very good. He"s done wonders with the Abteilung--you know that. He"s got theories about it; I"ve talked to him late at night. Coffee he drinks--nothing else--just coffee all the time. He says Germans are too introspective to make good agents, and it all comes out in counterintelligence. He says counterintelligence people are like wolves chewing dry bones--you have to take away the bones and make them find new quarry--I see all that, I know what he means. But he"s gone too far. Why did he kill Viereck? Why did he take him away from me? Viereck was fresh quarry, we hadn"t even taken the meat from the bone, you see. So why did he take him? Why, Lea.mas, why?" The hand on Leamas" arm was clasping it tightly; in the total darkness of the car Leamas was aware of the frightening intensity of Fiedler"s emotion.
"I"ve thought about it night and day. Ever since Viereck was shot, I"ve asked for a reason. At first it seemed fantastic. I told myself I was jealous, that the work was going to my head, that I was seeing treachery behind every tree; we get like that, people in our world. But I couldn"t help myself, Leamas, I had, to work it out. There"d been other things before. He was afraid--he was afraid that we would catch one who would talk too much!"
"What are you saying? You"re out of your mind," said Leamas, and his voice held the trace of fear.
"It all held together, you see. Mundt escaped so easily from England; you told me yourself he did. And what did Guillam say to you? He said they didn"t want to catch him! Why not? I"ll tell you why--he was their man; they turned him, they caught him, don"t you see, and that was the price of his freedom--that and the money he was paid."
"I tell you you"re out of your mind!" Leamas hissed. "He"ll kill you if he ever thinks you make up this kind of stuff. It"s sugar candy, Fiedler. Shut up and drive us home." At last the hot grip on Leamas" arm relaxed.
"That"s where you"re wrong. You provided the answer, you yourself, Leamas. That"s why we need one another." - "It"s not true!" Leamas shouted. "I"ve told you again and again, they couldn"t have done it. The Circus couldn"t have run him against the Zone without my knowing! It just wasn"t an administrative possibility. You"re trying to tell me Control was personally directing the deputy head of the Abteilung without the knowledge of the Berlin station. You"re mad, Fiedler, you"re just b.l.o.o.d.y well off your head!" Suddenly he began to laugh quietly. "You may want his job, you poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d; that"s not unheard of, you know. But this kind of thing went out with bustles." For a moment neither spoke.
"That money," Fiedler said, "in Copenhagen. The bank replied to your letter. The manager is very worried lest there has been a mistake. The money was drawn by your co-signatory exactly one week after you paid it in. The date it was drawn coincides with a twoday visit which Mundt paid to Denmark in February. He went there under an alias to meet an American agent we have who was attending a world scientists" conference." Fiedler hesitated, then added, "I suppose you ought to write to the bank and tell them everything is quite in order?"
* * 15 * Come to the Ball
Liz looked at the letter from Party Centre and wondered what it was about. She found it a little puzzling. She had to admit she was pleased, but why hadn"t they consulted her first? Had the District Committee put up her name, or was it Centre"s own choice? But no one in Centre knew her, so far as she was aware. She"d met odd speakers of course, and at District Congress she"d shaken hands with the Party Organizer. Perhaps that man from Cultural Relations had remembered her--that fair, rather effeminate man who was so ingratiating. Ashe, that was his name. He"d taken a bit of interest in her and she supposed he might have handed her name on, or remembered her when the Scholarship came up. An odd man, he was; took her to the Black and White for coffee after the meeting and asked her about her boy friends. He hadn"t been amorous or anything--she"d thought he was a bit queer, to be honest--but he asked her ma.s.ses of questions about herself. How long had she been in the Party, did she get homesick living away from her parents? Had she lots of boy friends or was there a special one she carried a torch for? She hadn"t cared for him much but his talk had gone down quite well--the worker-state in the German Democratic Republic, the concept of the worker-poet and all that stuff. He certainly knew all about eastern Europe, he must have traveled a lot. She"d guessed he was a schoolmaster, he had that rather didactic, fluent way with him. They"d had a collection for the Fighting Fund afterwards, and Ashe had put a pound in; she"d been absolutely amazed. That was it, she was sure now: it was Ashe who"d remembered her. He"d told someone at London District, and District had told Centre or something like that. It still seemed a funny way to go about things, but then the Party always was secretive--it was part of being a revolutionary party, she supposed. It didn"t appeal to Liz much, the secrecy, it seemed dishonest. But she supposed it was necessary, and heaven knows, there were plenty who got a kick out of it.
She read the letter again. It was on Centre"s writing paper, with the thick red print at the top and it began "Dear Comrade." It sounded so military to Liz, and she hated that; she"d never quite got used to "Comrade."
Dear Comrade, We have recently had discussions with our Comrades in the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic on the possibility of effecting exchanges between party members over here and our comrades in democratic Germany. The idea is to create a basis of exchange at the rank and file level between our two parties. The S.U.P. is aware that the existing discriminatory measures by the British Home Office make it unlikely that their own delegates will be able to come to the United Kingdom in the immediate future, but they feel that an exchange of experiences is all the more important for this reason. They have generously invited us to select five Branch Secre- taries with good experience and a good record of stimulating ma.s.s action at street level. Each selected comrade will spend three weeks attending Branch discussions, studying progress in industry and social welfare and seeing at first hand the evidence of fascist provocation by the West. This is a grand opportunity for our comrades to profit from the experiences of a young socialist system.
We therefore asked District to put forward the names of young Cadre workers from your areas who might get the biggest advantages from the trip, and your name has been put forward. We want you to go if you possibly can, and carry out the second part of the scheme--which is to establish contact with a Party Branch in the GDR whose members are from similar "industrial backgrounds and have the same kind of problems as your own. The Bayswater South Branch has been paired with Neuenhagen, a suburb of Leipzig. Freda Luman, Secretary of the Neuenhagen branch, is preparing a big welcome. We are sure you are just the Comrade for the job, and that it will be a terrific success. All expenses will be paid by the GDR Cultural Office.
We are sure you realize what a big honor this is, and are confident you will not allow personal considerations to prevent you from accepting. The visits are due to take place at the end of next month, about the 23rd, but the selected Comrades will travel separately as their invitations are not all concurrent. Will you please let us know as soon as possible whether you can accept, and we will let you have further details.
The more she read it, the odder it seemed. Such short notice for a start--how could they know she could get away from the library? Then to her surprise she recalled that Ashe had asked her what she did for her holidays, whether she had taken her leave this year, and whether she had to give a lot of notice if she wanted to claim free time. Why hadn"t they told her who the other nominees were? There was no particular reason why they should, perhaps, but it somehow looked odd when they didn"t. It was such a long letter, too. They were so hard up for secretarial help at Centre they usually kept their letters short, or asked Comrades to ring up. This was so efficient, so well typed, it might not have been done at Centre at all. But it was signed by the Cultural Organizer; it was his signature all right, no doubt of that. She"d seen it at the bottom of notices ma.s.ses of times. And the letter had that awkward, semibureaucratic, semi-Messianic style she had grown accustomed to without ever liking. It was stupid to say she had a good record of stimulating ma.s.s action at street level. She hadn"t. As a matter of fact she hated that, side of party work-- the loudspeakers at the factory gates, selling the _Daily_ at the street corner, going from door to door at the local elections. Peace work she didn"t mind so much, it meant something to her, it made sense. You could look at the kids in the street as you went by, at the mothers pushing their prams and the old people standing in doorways, and you could say, "I"m doing it for them." That really was fighting for peace.
But she never quite saw the fighting for votes and the fighting for sales in the same way. Perhaps that was because it cut them down to size, she thought. It was easy when there were a dozen or so together at a Branch meeting to rebuild the world, march at the vanguard of socialism and talk of the inevitability of history. But afterwards she"d go out into the streets with an armful of _Daily Worker"s_, often waiting an hour, two hours, to sell a copy. Sometimes she"d cheat, as the others cheated, and pay for a dozen herself just to get out of it and go home. At the next meeting they"d boast about it--forgetting they"d bought them themselves--"Comrade Gold sold eighteen copies on Sat.u.r.day night--eighteen!" It would go in the Minutes then, and the Branch bulletin as well. District would rub their hands, and perhaps she"d get a mention in that little panel on the front page about the Fighting Fund. It was such a little world, and she wished they could be more honest. But she lied to herself about it all, too. Perhaps they all did. Or perhaps the others understood more _why_ you had to lie so much.
It seemed so odd they"d made her Branch Secretary. It was Mulligan who"d proposed it--"Our young, vigorous and attractive comrade... ." He"d thought she"d sleep with him if he got her made Secretary. The others had voted for her because they liked her, and because she could type. Because she"d do the work and not try and make them go canva.s.sing on weekends. Not too often anyway. They"d voted for her because they wanted a decent little club, nice and revolutionary and no fuss. It was all such a fraud. Alec had seemed to understand that; he just hadn"t taken it seriously. "Some people keep canaries, some people join the Party," he"d said once, and it was true. In Bayswater South it was true anyway, and District knew that perfectly well. That"s why it was so peculiar that she had been nominated; that was why she was extremely reluctant to believe that District had even had a hand in it. The explanation, she was sure, was Ashe. Perhaps he had a crush on her; perhaps he wasn"t queer but just looked it.
Liz gave a rather exaggerated shrug, the kind of overstressed gesture people make when they are excited and alone. It was abroad anyway, it was free and it sounded interesting. She had never been abroad, and she certainly couldn"t afford the fare herself. It would be rather fun. She had reservations about Germans, that was true. She knew, she had been told, that West Germany was militarist and _revanchist_, and that East Germany was democratic and peace loving. But she doubted whether all the good Germans were on one side and all the bad ones on the other. And it was the bad ones who had killed her father. Perhaps -that was why the Party had chosen her--as a generous act of reconciliation. Perhaps that was what Ashe had bad in mind when he asked her all those questions. Of course--that was the explanation. She was suddenly filled with a feeling of warmth and grat.i.tude toward the Party. They really were decent people and she was proud and thankful to belong. She went to the desk and opened the drawer where, in an old school satchel, she kept the Branch stationery and the dues stamps. Putting a sheet of paper into her old Underwood typewriter--they"d sent it down from District when they heard she could type; it jumped a bit but otherwise was fine--she typed a neat, grateful letter of acceptance. Centre was such a wonderful thing--stern, benevolent, impersonal, perpetual. They were- good, good people. People who fought for peace. As she closed the drawer she caught sight of Smiley"s card.
She remembered that little man with the earnest, puckered face, standing at the doorway of her room and saying, "Did the Party know about you and Alec?" How silly she was. Well, this would take her mind off it.
* * 16 * Arrest
Fiedler and Leamas drove back the rest of the way in silence. In the dusk the hills were black and cavernous, the pinpoint lights struggling against the gathering darkness like the lights of distant ships at sea.
Fiedler parked the car in a shed at the side of the house and they walked together to the front door. They were about to enter the lodge when they heard a shout from the direction of the trees, followed by someone calling Fiedler"s name. They turned, and Leamas distinguished in the twilight twenty yards away three men standing, apparently waiting for Fiedler.
"What do you want?" Fiedler called.
"We want to talk to you. We"re from Berlin."
Fiedler hesitated. "Where"s that d.a.m.n guard?" Fledler asked Leamas. "There should be a guard on the front door."
Leamas shrugged.
"Why aren"t the lights on in the hail?" he asked again; then, still unconvinced, he began walking slowly toward the men.
Leamas waited a moment, then, hearing nothing, made his way through the unlit house to the annex behind it. This was a shoddy barrack hut attached to the back of the building and hidden from all sides by close plantations of young pine trees. The hut was divided into three adjoining bedrooms; there was no corridor. The center room had been given to Leainas, and the room nearest to the main building was occupied by two guards. Leamas never knew who occupied the third. He had once tried to open the connecting door between it and his own room, but it was locked. He had only discovered it was a bedroom by peering through a narrow gap in the lace curtains early one morning as he went for a walk. The two guards, who followed him everywhere at fifty yards" distance, had not rounded the corner of the hut, and he looked in at the window. The room contained a single bed, made, and a small writing desk with papers on it. He supposed that someone, with what pa.s.ses for German thoroughness, watched him from that bedroom. But Leamas was too old a dog to allow himself to be bothered by surveillance. In Berlin it had been a fact of life--if you couldn"t spot it, so much the worse: it only meant they were taking greater care, or you were losing your grip. Usually, because he was good at that kind of thing, because he was observant and had an accurate memory--because, in short, he was good at his job--he spotted them anyway. He knew the formations favored by a shadowing team, he knew the tricks, the weaknesses, the momentary lapses that could give them away. It meant nothing to Leamas that he was watched, but as he walked through the improvised doorway from the lodge to the hut and stood in the guards" bedroom, he had the distinct feeling that something was wrong.
The lights in the annex were controlled from some central point. They were put on and off by an unseen hand. In the mornings he was often awakened by the sudden blaze of the single overhead light in his room. At night he would be hastened to bed by perfunctory darkness. It was only nine o"clock as he entered the annex, and the lights were already out. Usually they stayed on till eleven, but now they were out and the shutters had been lowered. He had left the- connecting door from the house open, so that the pale twilight from the hallway reached, but scarcely penetrated, the guards" bedroom, and by it he could just see the two empty beds. As he stood there peering into the room, surprised to find it empty, the door behind him closed. Perhaps by itself, but Leamas made no attempt to open it. It was pitch-dark. No sound accompanied the closing of the door, no click nor footstep. To Leanias, his instinct suddenly alert, it was as if the sound track had stopped. Then he smelled the cigar smoke. It must have been hanging in the air but he had not noticed it till now. Like a blind man, his senses of touch and smell were sharpened by the darkness.
There were matches in his pocket but he did not use them. He took one pace sideways, pressed his back against the wall and remained motionless. To Leamas there could only be one explanation----they were waiting for him to pa.s.s from the guards" room to his own and therefore he determined to remain where he was. Then from the direction of the main building whence he had come he heard clearly the sound of a footstep. The door which had just closed was tested, the lock turned and made fast. Stifi Leamas did not move. Not yet. There was no pretense: he was a prisoner in the hut. Very slowly, Leamas now lowered himself into a crouch, putting his hand in the side pocket of his jacket as he did so. He was quite calm, almost relieved at the prospect of action, but memories were racing through his mind. "You"ve nearly always got a weapon: an ashtray, a couple of coins, a fountain pen-- anything that will gouge or cut." It was the favorite dictum of the mild little Welsh sergeant at that house near Oxford in the war: "Never use both hands at once, not with a knife, a stick or a pistol; keep your left arm free, and hold it across the belly. If you can"t find anything to hit with, keep the hands -open and the thumbs stiff." Taking the box of matches in his right hand, he clasped it longways and deliberately crushed it, so that the small, jagged edges of boxwood protruded from between his fingers. This done, he edged his way along the wall until he came to a chair which be knew was in the corner of the room. Indifferent now to the noise he made, he shoved the chair into the center of the floor. Counting his footsteps as he moved back from the chair, he positioned himself in the angle of the two walls. As he did so, he heard the door of his own bedroom flung open. Vainly he tried to discern the figure that must be standing in the doorway, but there was no light from his own room either. The darkness was impenetrable. He dared not move forward to attack, for the chair was now in the middle of the room; it was his tactical advantage, for he knew where it was, and they did not. They must come for him, they must; he could not let them wait until their helper outside had reached the master switch and put onthelights.
"Come on, you windy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," he hissed in German. "I"m here, in the corner. Come and get me, can"t you?" Not a move, not a sound.
"I"m here, can"t you see me? What"s the matter then? What"s the matter, children, come on, can"t you?"
And then he heard one stepping forward, and another following; and then the oath of a man - as he stumbled against the chair, and that was the sign that Leamas was waiting for. Tossing away the box of matches he slowly, cautiously crept forward, pace by pace, his left arm extended in the att.i.tude of a man warding off twigs in a wood until, quite gently, he had touched an arm and felt the warm p.r.i.c.kly cloth of a military uniform. Stifi with his left hand Leamas deliberately tapped the arm twice--two distinct taps--and heard a frightened voice whisper close to his ear in German: "Hans, is it you?"
"Shut up, you fool," Leamas whispered in reply, and in that same moment reached out and grasped the man"s hair, pulling his head forward and down, then in a terrible cutting blow drove the side of his right hand into the nape of the neck, pulled him up again by the arm, hit him in the throat with an upward thrust of his open fist, then released him to fall where the force of gravity took him. As the man"s body hit the ground, the lights went on.
In the doorway stood a young captain of the People"s Police smoking a cigar, and behind him two men. One was in civilian clothes, quite young. He held a pistol in his hand. Leamas thought it was the Czech kind with a loading lever on the spine of the b.u.t.t. They were all looking at the man on the floor. Somebody unlocked the outer door and Leamas turned to see who it was. As he turned, there was a shout--Leamas thought it was the captain--telling him to stand still. Slowly he turned back and faced the three men.
His hands were still at his side as the blow came. It seemed to crush his skull. As he fell, drifting warmly into unconsciousness, he wondered whether he had been hit with a revolver, the old kind with a swivel on the b.u.t.t where you fastened the lanyard.
He was wakened by the lag singing and the warder yelling at him to shut up. He opened his eyes and like a brilliant light the pain burst upon his brain. He lay quite still, refusing to close them, watching the sharp, colored fragments racing across his vision. He tried to take stock of himself: his feet were icy cold and he was aware of the sour stench of prison denims. The singing had stopped and suddenly Leamas longed for it to start again, although - he knew it never would. He tried to raise his hand and touch the blood that was caked on his cheek, but his hands were behind him, locked together. His feet too must be bound: the blood had left them, that was why they were cold. Painfully he looked about him, trying to lift his head an inch or two from the floor. To his surprise he saw his own knees in front of him. Instinctively he tried to stretch his legs and as he did so his whole body was seized with a pain so sudden and terrible that he screamed out a sobbing agonized cry of self-pity, like the last cry of a man upon the rack. He lay there panting, attempting to master the pain, then through the sheer perversity of his nature he tried again, quite slowly, to straighten his legs. At once the agony returned, but Leamas had found the cause: his hands and feet were chained together behind his back. As soon as he attempted to stretch his legs the chain tightened, forcing his shoulders down and his damaged head onto the stone floor. They must have beaten him up while he was unconscious, his whole body was stifi and bruised and his groin ached. He wondered if he"d killed the guard. He hoped so.
Above him shone the light, large, clinical and fierce. No furniture, just whitewashed wails, quite close all around, and the gray steel door, a smart charcoal gray, the color you see on clever London houses. There was nothing else. Nothing at all. Nothing to think about, just the savage pain.
He must have lain there hours before they came. It grew hot from the light; he was thirsty- but he refused to call out. At last the door opened and Mundt stood there. He knew it was Mundt from the eyes. Smiley had told him about them.
* * 17 * Mundt
They untied him and let him try to stand. For a moment he almost succeeded, then, as the circulation returned to his hands and feet, and as the joints of his body were released from the contraction to which they had been subject, he fell. They let him lie there, watching him with the detachment of children looking at an insect. One of the guards pushed past Mundt and yelled at Leamas to get up. Leamas crawled to the wall and put the palms of his throbbing hands against the white brick. He was halfway up when the guard kicked him and he fell again. He tried once more and this time the guard let him stand with his back against the wall. He saw the guard move his weight onto his left leg and he knew he would kick him again. With all his remaining strength Leamas thrust himself forward, driving his lowered head into the guard"s face. They fell together, Leamas on top. The guard got up and Leamas lay there waiting for the payoff. But Mundt said something to the guard and Leamas felt himself being picked up by the shoulders and feet and heard the door of his cell close as they carried him down the corridor. He was terribly thirsty.
They took him to a small comfortable room, decently furnished with a desk and armchairs. Swedish blinds half covered the barred windows. Mundt sat at the desk and Leamas in an armchair, his eyes half closed. The guards stood at the door.
"Give me a drink," said Leamas.
"Whisky?"