The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

A Bantam Book / published by Arrangement
with Coward. McCann & Geoghegan; Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY

Coward, McCann edition published January
1964 Bantam edition / January 1975

17 printings through March 1989
Cover type design by R. D. Scudellari.

All rights reserved.
Copyright 1963 by Victor Gollancz Limited.

No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address: Coward, McCann,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

ISBN 0-553-26442-7

The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee
and said, “Why don’t you go back and sleep? We can ring you if he shows
up.”

Leamas said nothing, just stared through the
window of the checkpoint, along
the
empty street.

“You can’t wait forever, sir. Maybe he’ll
come some other time. We can have the
Polizei
contact the Agency: you can be
back here in twenty minutes.”

“No,” said Leamas, “it’s nearly dark now.”

“But you can’t wait forever; he’s nine hours over
schedule.”

“If you want to go, go. You’ve been very
good,” Leamas added. “I’ll tell
Kramer you’ve been damn good.”

“But how long will you wait?”

“Until he comes.”
Leamas walked to the observation window and stood
between the two motionless policemen. Their binoculars were
trained on the Eastern
checkpoint.

“He’s waiting for the dark,” Leamas muttered, “I
know he is.”

“This morning you said he’d come across with the
workmen.”

Leamas turned on him.

“Agents aren’t airplanes. They don’t have
schedules. He’s blown, he’s on the run,
he’s
frightened. Mundt’s after him, now, at this moment. He’s got only one
chance. Let him choose his
time.”

The younger man hesitated, wanting to go and not finding the
moment.

A bell rang inside the hut. They waited, suddenly
alert. A policeman said in
German,
“Black Opel Rekord,
Federal
registration.”

“He can’t see that far in the dusk, he’s
guessing,” the American whispered and
then he added: “How did Mundt know?”

“Shut up,” said Leamas from the window.

One of the policemen left the hut and walked to
the sandbag emplacement two
feet
short of the white demarcation which lay across the road like the base line of
a tennis court. The other waited until his companion was crouched behind the
telescope in the emplacement, then put down his binoculars, took his black
helmet from the peg
by the door
and carefully adjusted it on his head. Somewhere high above the checkpoint the
arclights sprang to life, casting theatrical beams onto the road in front
of them.

The policeman began his commentary. Leamas knew it by heart.

“Car halts at the first control.
Only one occupant, a woman.
Escorted to
the
Vopo
hut for document check.”
They waited in silence.

“What’s he saying?” said the American.
Leamas didn’t reply. Picking up a spare pair of binoculars, he gazed fixedly
toward the East German controls.

“Document check completed.
Admitted to the
second control.”

“Mr. Leamas, is this your man?” the
American persisted. “I ought to ring the
Agency.”

“Wait.”

“Where’s the car now? What’s it doing?”

“Currency
check
,
Customs,” Leamas snapped.

Leamas watched the car. There were two
Vopos
at the driver’s door, one doing the talking, the other standing off,
waiting
. A third was sauntering around the car. He stopped
at the trunk,
then
walked back to the driver. He
wanted the key. He opened the trunk, looked inside, closed it, returned the key
and walked thirty yards up
the
road to where, midway between the two opposing checkpoints, a solitary East
German sentry was standing, a squat silhouette in boots and baggy trousers. The
two
stood together talking, self-conscious
in the glare of the arclight.

With a perfunctory gesture they waved the car on.
It reached the two sentries in the middle of the road and stopped again. They
walked around the car, stood off and talked again; finally, almost unwillingly,
they let it continue across the line to the
Western sector.

“It is a man you’re waiting for, Mr.
Leamas?” asked the American.
“Yes,
it’s a man.”

Pushing up the collar of his jacket, Leamas
stepped outside into the icy October wind. He remembered the crowd then. It was
something you forgot inside the hut, this group of puzzled faces. The people
changed but the expressions were the same. It was like the helpless crowd that
gathers around a traffic accident, no one knowing how it happened, whether you
should move the body. Smoke or dust rose through the beams of the arc lamps, a
constant shifting pall between the margins of
light.

Leamas walked over to the car and said to the woman, “Where
is he?”

“They came for him and he ran. He took the
bicycle. They can’t have known
about me.”

“Where did he go?”

“We had a room near
Brandenburg
, over a pub. He kept a few
things there, money, papers. I think he’ll have gone there. Then he’ll come
over.”

“Tonight?”

“He said he would come tonight. The others
have all been caught—Paul, Viereck, Ländser, Salomon. He hasn’t got long.”

Leamas stared at her for a moment in silence.

“Ländser too?”

“Last night.”

A policeman was standing at Leamas’ side.

“You’ll have to move away from here,” he
said. “It’s forbidden to obstruct the
crossing point.”

Leamas half turned. “Go to hell,” he snapped.

The German stiffened, but the woman said,
“Get in. We’ll drive down to the
corner.”

He got in beside her and they drove slowly until they reached a
side road.

“I didn’t know you had a car,” he said.

“It’s my husband’s,” she replied
indifferently. “Karl never told you I was married, did he?” Leamas
was silent. “My husband and I work for an optical firm.
They let us over to do business. Karl
only told you my maiden name. He didn’t want me to be mixed up with…you.”

Leamas took a key from his pocket.

“You’ll want somewhere to stay,” he
said. His voice sounded flat. “There’s an
apartment in the Albrecht-Dürer-Strasse, next to the Museum.
Number 28A.
You’ll find
everything you want. I’ll telephone you when he comes.”

“I’ll stay here with you.”

“I’m not staying here. Go to the flat. I’ll
ring you. There’s no point in waiting here now.”

“But he’s coming to this crossing point.”

Leamas looked at her in surprise.

“He told you that?”

“Yes. He knows one of the
Vopos
there, the son of his landlord. It may help.
That’s why he chose this route.”

“And he told
you
that?”

“He trusts me. He told me everything.”

“Christ.”

He gave her the key and went back to the
checkpoint hut, out of the cold. The policemen were muttering to each other as
he entered; the larger one ostentatiously turned his back.

“I’m sorry,” said Leamas. “I’m
sorry I bawled you out.” He opened a tattered
briefcase and rummaged in it until he found what he was looking
for: a half bottle of whisky. With a nod the elder man accepted
it,
half filled each coffee mug and topped them up with
black coffee.

“Where’s the American gone?” asked Leamas.

“Who?”

“The
CIA
boy.
The one who was with me.”

“Bedtime,” said the elder man and they all laughed.

Leamas put down his mug and said, “What are
your rules for shooting to protect a man coming over?
A man
on the run.”

“We can only give covering fire if the
Vopos
shoot into our sector.”
“That
means you can’t shoot until a man’s over the boundary?”

The older man said, “We can’t give covering fire, Mr…”

“Thomas,” Leamas replied.
“Thomas.” They shook hands, the two policemen
pronouncing their own names as they did so.

“We can’t give covering fire. That’s the
truth. They tell us there’d be war if
we did.”

“
It’s
nonsense,” said the younger policeman, emboldened by the whisky. “If
the allies weren’t here the Wall would be gone by now.”

“So would
Berlin
,”
muttered the elder man.

“I’ve got a man coming over tonight,” said Leamas
abruptly.

“Here?
At this crossing point?”

“It’s worth a lot to get him out. Mundt’s men
are looking for him.”
“There
are still places where you can climb,” said the younger policeman.

“He’s not that kind. He’ll bluff his way through; he’s got
papers, if the papers are still good. He’s got a bicycle.”

There was only one light in the checkpoint, a
reading lamp with a green shade, but the glow of the arclights, like artificial
moonlight, filled the cabin.
Darkness
had fallen, and with it silence. They spoke as if they were afraid of being
overheard. Leamas went to the window
and waited, in front of him the road and to either side the Wall, a dirty, ugly
thing of breeze blocks and strands of barbed wire,
lit with cheap yellow light, like the backdrop for a
concentration camp. East and west of the Wall lay the unrestored part of
Berlin
, a half-world of
ruin, drawn in two dimensions, crags of war.

That damned woman, thought Leamas, and that fool Karl, who’d lied
about her. Lied by omission, as they all do, agents the world over. You teach
them to cheat, to cover their tracks, and they cheat you as well. He’d only
produced her once, after that dinner in the Schürzstrasse last year. Karl had
just had his big scoop and Control had wanted to meet him. Control always came
in on success. They’d had dinner together — Leamas, Control and Karl. Karl
loved that kind of thing. He turned up looking like a Sunday school boy,
scrubbed and shining, doffing his hat and all respectful.

Control had shaken his hand for five minutes and said: “I
want you to know how pleased we are, Karl, damn pleased.” Leamas had
watched and thought, that’ll cost us another couple of hundred a year.

When they’d finished dinner Control pumped their
hands again, nodded significantly and, implying that he had to go off and risk
his life somewhere else, got back into his chauffeur-driven car. Then Karl had
laughed, and Leamas had laughed with him, and they’d finished the champagne,
still laughing about Control. Afterwards they’d gone to the
Alter Fass
;
Karl had insisted on it and there Elvira was waiting for
them, a forty-year-old blonde,
tough
as nails.

“This is my best kept secret, Alec,” Karl had said, and
Leamas was furious. Afterwards they’d had a row.

“How much does she know? Who is she? How did you meet
her?” Karl sulked and refused to say. After that things went badly. Leamas
tried to alter the routine, change the meeting places and the catchwords, but
Karl didn’t like it. He knew what lay behind it and he didn’t like it.

“If you don’t trust her it’s too late
anyway,” he’d said, and Leamas took the hint and shut up. But he went
carefully after that, told Karl much less, used more of the hocus-pocus of
espionage technique. And there she was, out there in her car, knowing
everything, the whole network, the safe house, everything; and Leamas swore,
not for the first time, never to
trust an agent again.

He went to the telephone and dialed the number of
his flat. Frau Martha
answered.

“We’ve got guests at the Dürer Strasse,”
said Leamas, “a man and a woman.”

“Married?” asked Martha.

“Near enough,” said Leamas, and she
laughed that frightful laugh. As he put
down the receiver one of the policemen turned to him.

“Herr Thomas! Quick!” Leamas stepped to the observation
window.

“A man, Herr Thomas,”
the younger policeman whispered, “with a bicycle.”
Leamas
picked up the binoculars.

It was
Karl,
the figure
was unmistakable even at that distance, shrouded in an
old Wehrmacht mackintosh, pushing his bicycle. He’s made it,
thought Leamas, he must
have
made it,
he’s
through the document check, only
currency and customs to go. Leamas watched Karl lean his bicycle against the
railing, walk casually to the customs
hut.
Don’t overdo it, he thought. At last Karl came out, waved cheerfully to the man
on the barrier, and the red and white pole swung slowly upwards. He was
through, he
was coming toward
them,
he
had made it.
Only the
Vopo
in
the middle of the road, the line and safety.