Part 21 (1/2)

”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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” 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.