Part 11 (1/2)

One of the guards came in with a tray of food-- black bread, sausage and cold green salad.

”It is a little crude,” said Fiedler, ”but quite satisfying. No potato, I'm afraid. There is a temporary shortage of potatoes.”

They began eating in silence, Fiedler very carefully, like a man who counted his calories.

The guards showed Leamas to his bedroom. They let him carry his own luggage--the same luggage that Kiever had given him before he left England--and he walked between them along the wide central corridor which led through the house from the front door. They came to a large double door, painted dark green, and one of the guards unlocked it; they beckoned to Leamas to go first. He pushed open the door and- found himself in a small barrack bedroom with two bunk beds, a chair and a rudimentary desk. It was like something in prison camp. There were pictures of girls on the walls and the windows were shuttered. At the far end of the room was another door. They signaled him forward again. Putting down his baggage, he went and opened the door. The second room was identical to the first, but there was one bed and the walls were bare. - ”You bring those cases,” he said. ”I'm tired.” He lay on the bed, fully dressed, and within a few minutes he was fast asleep.

A sentry woke him with breakfast: black bread and _ersatz_ coffee. He got out of bed and went to the window.

The house stood on a high bill. The ground fell steeply away from beneath his window, the crowns of pine trees visible above the crest. Beyond them, spectacular in their symmetry, unending hills, heavy with trees, stretched into the distance. Here and there a timber gully or firebreak formed a thin brown divide between the pines, seeming like Aaron's rod miraculously to hold apart ma.s.sive seas of encroaching forest. There was no sign of man; not a house or church, not even the ruin of some previous habitation--only the road, the yellow dirt road, a crayon line across the basin of the valley. There was no sound. It seemed incredible that anything so vast could be so still. The day was cold but clear. It must have rained in the night; the ground was moist, and the whole landscape so sharply defined against the white sky that Leamas could distinguish even single trees on the farthest hifis.

He dressed slowly, drinking the sour coffee meanwhile. He had nearly finished dressing and was about to start eating the bread when Fiedler came into the room.

”Good morning,” he said cheerfully. ”Don't let me keep you from your breakfast.” He sat down on the bed. Leamas had to hand it to Fiedler; he had guts. Not that there was anything brave about coming to see him--the sentries, Leamas supposed, were still in the adjoining room. But there was an endurance, a defined purpose in his manner which Leamas could sense and admire.

”You have presented us with an intriguing problem,” Fiedler observed.

”I've told you all I know.”

”Oh no.” He smiled. ”Oh no, you haven't. You have told us all you are _conscious_ of knowing.”

”b.l.o.o.d.y clever,” Leamas muttered, pus.h.i.+ng his food aside and lighting a cigarette--his last.

”Let me ask _you_ a question,” Fiedler suggested with the exaggerated bonhomie of a man proposing a party game. ”As an experienced intelligence officer, what would _you_ do with the information you have given us?”

”What information?”

”My dear Leamas, you have only given us one piece of intelligence. You have told us about Riemeck: we knew about Riemeck. You have told us about the dispositions of your Berlin organization, about its personalities and its agents. That, if I may say so, is old hat. Accurate--yes. Good background, fascinating reading, here and there good collateral, here and there a little fish which we shall take out of the pool. But not-- if I may be crude--not fifteen thousand pounds' worth of intelligence. Not,” he smiled again, ”at current rates.”

”Listen,” said Leaxnas, ”I didn't propose this deal-- you did. You, Kiever and Peters. I didn't come crawling to your sissy Mends, peddling old intelligence. You people made the running, Fiedler; you named the price and took the risk. Apart from that, I haven't had a b.l.o.o.d.y penny. So don't blame me if the operation's a flop.” Make them come to you, Leamas thought.

”It isn't a flop,” Fiedler replied, ”it isn't finished. It can't be. You haven't told us what you _know_. I said you had given us one piece of intelligence. I'm talking about Rolling Stone. Let me ask you again--what would _you_ do if I, if Peters or someone like us, had told _you_ a similar story?”

Leamas shrugged. ”I'd feel uneasy,” he said. ”It's happened before. You get an indication, several perhaps, that there's a spy in some department or at a certain level. So what? You can't arrest the whole government service. You can't lay traps for a whole department. You just sit tight and hope for more. You bear it in mind. In Rolling Stone you can't even tell what country he's working in.”

”You are an operator, Leamas,” Fiedler observed with a laugh, ”not an evaluator. That is clear. Let me ask you some elementary questions.”

Leamas said nothing.

”The file--the actual file on operation Rolling Stone. What color was it?”

”Gray with a red cross on it--that means limited subscription.”

”Was anything attached to the outside?”

”Yes, the Caveat. That's the subscription label. With a legend saying that any unauthorized person not named on this label finding the file in his possession must at once return it unopened to Banking Section.”

”Who was on the subscription list?”

”For Rolling Stone?”

”Yes.”

”P.A. to Control, Control, Control's secretary; Banking Section, Miss Bream of Special Registry and Satellites Four. That's all, I think. And Special Dispatch, I suppose--I'm not sure about them.”

”Satellites Four? What do they do?”

”Iron Curtain countries excluding the Soviet Union and China. The Zone.”

”You mean the GDR?”

”I mean the Zone.”

”Isn't it unusual for a whole section to be on a subscription list?”

”Yes, it probably is. I wouldn't know--Fve never handled limited subscription stuff before. Except in Berlin, of course; it was all difierent there.”

”Who was in Satellites Four at that time?”

”Oh, G.o.d. Guillam, Haverlake, de long, I think. De Jong was just back from Berlin.”

”Were they _all_ allowed to see this file?”

”I don't know, Fiedler,” Leamas retorted irritably, ”and if I were you. . .”

”Then isn't it odd that a whole section was on the subscription list while all the rest of the subscribers are individuals?”

”I tell you I don't know--how could I know? I was just a clerk in all this.”

”Who carried the file from one subscriber to another?”

”Secretaries, I suppose--I can't remember. It's b.l.o.o.d.y months since.. .”

”Then why weren't the secretaries on the list? Control's secretary was.” There was a moment's silence.

”No, you're right; I remember now,” Leamas said, a note of surprise in his voice. ”We pa.s.sed it by hand.”

”Who else in Banking dealt with that ifie?”

”No one. It was my pigeon when I joined the Section. One of the women had done it before, but when I came I took it over and they were taken off the list.”

”Then you alone pa.s.sed the file by hand to the next reader?”

”Yes. . . yes, I suppose I did.”

”To whom did you pa.s.s it?”