"Blatt and Rodney, a chichi little bank in the City. There"s a sort of theory in the Circus that Etonians are discreet."
"In fact, then, you knew the names of agents all over the world?"
"Not necessarily. That was the cunning thing. I"d sign the check, you see, or the order to the bank, but we"d leave a s.p.a.ce for the name of the payee. The covering letter or what have you was all signed and then the file would go _back_ to Special Dispatch."
"Who are they?"
"They"re the general holders of agents" particulars. They put in the names and posted the order. b.l.o.o.d.y clever, I must say."
Peters looked disappointed.
"You mean you had no way of knowing the names of the payees?"
"Not usually, no."
"But occasionally?"
"We got pretty near the knuckle now and again. All the fiddling about between Banking, Finance and Special Dispatch led to c.o.c.kups, of course. Too elaborate. Then occasionally we came in on special stuff which brightened one"s life a bit."
Leamas got up. "I"ve made a list," he said, "of all the payments I can remember. It"s in my room. I"ll get it."
He walked out of the room, the rather shuffling walk he had affected since arriving in Holland. When he returned he held in his hand a couple of sheets of Imed paper torn from a cheap notebook.
"I wrote these down last night," he said. "I thought it would save time."
Peters took the notes and read them slowly and carefully. He seemed impressed.
"Good," he said, "very good."
"Then I remember best a thing called Rolling Stone. I got a couple of trips out of it. One to Copenhagen and one to Helsinki. Just dumping money at banks."
"How much?"
"Ten thousand dollars in Copenhagen, forty thousand D-marks in Helsinki"
Peters put down his pencil.
"Who for?" he asked.
"G.o.d knows. We work Rolling Stone on a system of deposit accounts. The Service gave me a phony British pa.s.sport; I went to the Royal Scandinavian Bank in Copenhagen and the National Bank of Finland in Helsinki, deposited the money and drew a pa.s.sbook on a joint account--for me in my alias and for someone else--the agent I suppose in his alias. I gave the banks a sample of the coholder"s signature, I"d got that from Head Office. Later, the agent was given the pa.s.sbook and a false pa.s.sport which he showed at the bank when he drew the money. All I knew was the alias." He heard himself talking and it all sounded so ludicrously improbable.
"Was this procedure common?"
"No. It was a special payment. It had a subscription list."
"What"s that?"
"It had a code name known to very few people."
"What was the code name?"
"I told you--Rolling Stone. The operation covered irregular payments often thousand dollars in different currencies and in different capitals."
"Always in capital towns?"
"Far as I know. I remember reading in the file that there had been other Rolling Stone payments before I came to the Section, but in those cases Banking Section got the local Resident to do it."
"These other payments that took place before you came: where were they made?"
"One in Oslo. I can"t remember where the other was."
"Was the alias of the agent always the same?"
"No. That was an added security precaution. I heard later we pinched the whole technique from the Russians. It was the most elaborate payment scheme I"d met. In the same way I used a different alias and of course a different pa.s.sport for each trip." That would please him, help him to fill in the gaps.
"These faked pa.s.sports the agent was given so that he could draw the money: did you know anything about them--how they were made out and dispatched?"
"No. Oh, except that they had to have visas in them for the country where the money was deposited. And entry stamps."
"_Entry stamps?_"
"Yes. I a.s.sumed the pa.s.sports were never used at the border--only presented at the bank for identification purposes. The agent must have traveled on his own pa.s.sport, quite legally entered the country where the bank was situated, then used the faked pa.s.sport at the bank. That was my guess."
"Do you know of a reason why earlier payments were made by the Residents, and later payments by someone traveling out from London?"
"I know the reason., I asked the women in Banking Section, Thursday and Friday. Control was anxious that--"
"_Control?_ Do you mean to say Control himself was running the case?"
"Yes, he was running it. He was afraid the Resident might be recognized at the bank. So he used a postman: me."
"When did you make your journeys?"
"Copenhagen on the fifteenth of June. I flew back the same night. Helsinki at the end of September. I stayed two nights there, flew back around the twentyeighth. I had a bit of fun in Helsinki." He grinned but Peters took no notice.
"And the other payments--when were they made?"
"I can"t remember. Sorry."
"But one was definitely in Oslo?"
"Yes, in Oslo."
"How much time separated the first two payments, the payments made by the Residents?"
"I don"t know. Not long, I think. Maybe a month. A bit more perhaps."
"Was it your impression that the agent had been operating for some time before the first payment was made? Did the file show that?"
"No idea. The ifie simply covered actual payments. First payment early fifty-nine. There was no other date on it. That is the principle that operates where you have a limited subscription. Different files handle different bits of a single case. Only someone with the master file would be able to put it all together."
Peters was writing all the time now. Leamas a.s.sumed there was a tape recorder hidden somewhere in the room but the subsequent transcription would take time. What Peters wrote down now would provide the background for this evening"s telegram to Moscow, while at the Soviet Emba.s.sy in The Hague the girls would sit up all night telegraphing the verbatim transcript on hourly schedules.
"Tell me," said Peters; "these are large sums of money. The arrangements for paying them were elaborate and very expensive. What did you make of it yourself?"
Leamas shrugged. "What could I make of it? I thought Control must have a b.l.o.o.d.y good source, but I never saw the material so I don"t know. I didn"tlike the way it was done--it was too high-powered, too complicated, too clever. Why couldn"t they just meet him and give him the money in cash? Did they really let him cross borders on his own pa.s.sport with a forged one in his pocket? I doubt it," said Leamas. It was time he clouded the issue, let him chase a hare.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, that for all I know the money was never drawn from the bank. Supposing he was a highly placed agent behind the Curtain--the money would be on deposit for him when he could get at it. That was what I reckoned anyway. I didn"t think about it all that much. Why should I? It"s part of our work only to know pieces of the whole setup. You know that. If you"re curious, Clod help you."
"If the money wasn"t collected, as you suggest, why all the trouble with pa.s.sports?"
"When I was in Berlin we made an arrangement for Karl Riemeck in case he ever needed to run and couldn"t get hold of us. We kept a bogus West German pa.s.sport for him at an address in Dusseldorf. He could collect it any time by following a prearranged procedure. It never expired--Special Travel renewed the pa.s.sport and the visas as they expired. Control might have followed the same technique with this man. I don"t know--it"s only a guess."
"How do you know for certain that pa.s.sports were issued?"
"There were minutes on the file between Banking Section and Special Travel. Special Travel is the section which arranges false ident.i.ty papers and visas."
"I see." Peters thought for a moment and then he asked: "What names did you use in Copenhagen and Helsinki?"
"Robert Lang, electrical engineer from Derby. That was in Copenhagen."
"When exactly were you in Copenhagen?" Peters asked.
"I told you, June the fifteenth. I got there in the morning at about eleven-thirty."
"Which bank did you use?"
"Oh, for Christ"s sake, Peters," said Leamas, suddenly angry, "the Royal Scandinavian. You"ve got it written down."
"I just wanted to be sure," the other replied evenly, and continued writing. "And for Helsinki, what name?"
"Stephen Bennett, marine engineer from Plymouth. I was there," he - added sarcastically, "at the end of September."
"You visited the bank on the day you arrived?"
"Yes. It was the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth, I can"t be sure, as I told you."
"Did you take the money with you from England?"
"Of course not. We just transferred it to the Resident"s account in each case. The Resident drew it, met me at the airport with the money in a suitcase and I took it to the bank."
"Who"s the Resident in Copenhagen?"
"Peter Jensen, a bookseller in the University bookshop."
"And what were the names which would be used by the agent?"
"Horst Karlsdorf in Copenhagen. I think that was it, yes it was, I remember. Karlsdorf. I kept on wanting to say Karlshorst."
"Description?"
"Manager, from Klagenfurt in Austria."
"And the other? The Helsinki name?"
"Fechtmann, Adolf Fechtmann from St. Gallen, Switzerland. He had a t.i.tle--yes, that"s right: Doctor Fechtmann, archivist."
"I see; both German-speaking."
"Yes, I noticed that. But it can"t be a German."
"Why not?"
"I was head of the Berlin setup, wasn"t I? I"d have been in on it. A high-level agent in East Germany would have to be run from Berlin. I"d have known." Leamas got up, went to the sideboard and poured himself some whisky. He didn"t bother about Peters.
"You said yourself there were special precautions, special procedures in this case. Perhaps they didn"t think you needed to know."
"Don"t be b.l.o.o.d.y silly," Leamas rejoined shortly; "of course I"d have known." This was the point he would stick to through thick and thin; it made them feel they knew better, gave credence to the rest of his information. "They will want to deduce _in spite of you_," Control had said. "We must give them the material and remain skeptical to their conclusions. Rely on their intelligence and conceit, on their suspicion of one another--that"s what we must do."
Peters nodded as if he were confirming a melancholy truth. "You are a very proud man, Leamas," he observed once more.
Peters left soon after that. He wished Leamas good day and walked down the road along the seafront. It was lunchtime.
* * 10 * The Third Day
Peters didn"t appear that afternoon, nor the next morning. Leamas stayed in, waiting with growing irritation for some message, but none -came. He asked the housekeeper but she just smiled and shrugged her heavy shoulders. At about eleven o"clock the next morning he decided to go out for a walk along the front, bought some cigarettes and stared dully at the sea.
There was a girl standing on the beach throwing bread to the sea gulls. Her back was turned to him. The sea wind played with her long black hair and pulled at her coat, making an arc of her body, like a bow strung toward the sea. He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England: it was the caring about little things--the faith in ordinary life; that simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess; whether it was bread for the sea gulls or love, whatever it was he would go back and find it; he would make Liz find it for him. A week, two weeks perhaps, and he would be home. Control had said he could keep whatever they paid--and that would be enough. With fifteen thousand pounds, a gratuity and a pension from the Circus, a man--as Control would say--can afford to come in from the cold.
He made a detour and returned to the bungalow at a quarter to twelve. The woman let him in without a word, but when he had gone into the back room he heard her lift the receiver and dial a telephone number. She spoke for only a few seconds. At half-past twelve she brought his lunch, and, to his pleasure, some English newspapers which he read contentedly until three o"clock. Leamas, who normally read nothing, read newspapers slowly and with concentration. He remembered details, like the names and addresses of people who were the subject of small news items. He did it almost unconsciously as a kind of private Pelmanism, and it absorbed him entirely.
At three o"clock Peters arrived, and as soon as Leamas saw him he knew that something was up. They did not sit at the table; Peters did not take off his mackintosh.
"I"ve got bad news for you," he said. "They"re looking for you in England. I heard this morning. They"re watching the ports."
Leamas replied impa.s.sively, "On what charge?"
"Nominally for failing to report to a police station within the statutory period after release from prison."
"And in fact?"