The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by Carré John le

Author:Carré, John le [Carré, John le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thrillers, thriller, Classics, Mystery, Historical, Fiction, Suspense, Crime, Espionage
ISBN: 9780143124757
Google: lg1qpwAACAAJ
Amazon: 0143124757
Goodreads: 17707596
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1963-09-01T08:00:00+00:00

It must have been after midnight.

For some time they had been travelling an unmade road, partly through a wood and partly across open country. Now they stopped and a moment later the DKW drew up beside them. As he and Peters got out Leamas noticed that there were now three people in the second car. Two were already getting out. The third was sitting in the back seat looking at some papers by the light from the car roof, a slight figure half in shadow.

They had parked by some disused stables; the building lay thirty yards back. In the headlights of the car Leamas had glimpsed a low farmhouse with walls of timber and whitewashed brick. They got out. The moon was up, and shone so brightly that the wooded hills behind were sharply defined against the pale night sky. They walked to the house, Peters and Leamas leading and the two men behind. The other man in the second car had still made no attempt to move; he remained there, reading.

As they reached the door Peters stopped, waiting for the other two to catch them up. One of them carried a bunch of keys in his left hand, and while he fiddled with them the other stood off, his hands in his pockets, covering him.

“They’re taking no chances,” Leamas observed to Peters, “what do they think I am?”

“They are not paid to think,” Peters replied, and turning to one of them he asked in German:

“Is he coming?”

The German shrugged and looked back towards the car.

“He’ll come,” he said; “he likes to come alone.”

They went into the house, the man leading the way. It was got up like a hunting lodge, part old, part new. It was badly lit with pale overhead lights. The place had a neglected, musty air as if it had been opened for the occasion. There were little touches of officialdom here and there—a notice of what to do in case of fire, institutional green paint on the door, and heavy spring-cartridge locks; and in the drawing-room, which was quite comfortably done, dark, heavy furniture, badly scratched, and the inevitable photographs of Soviet leaders. To Leamas these lapses from anonymity signified the involuntary identification of the Abteilung with bureaucracy. That was something he was familiar with in the Circus.

Peters sat down, and Leamas did the same. For ten minutes, perhaps longer, they waited, then Peters spoke to one of the two men standing awkwardly at the other end of the room.

“Go and tell him we’re waiting. And find us some food, we’re hungry.” As the man moved towards the door Peters called, “And whisky—tell them to bring whisky and some glasses.” The man gave an uncooperative shrug of his heavy shoulders and went out, leaving the door open behind him.

“Have you been here before?” asked Leamas.

“Yes,” Peters replied, “several times.”

“What for?”

“This kind of thing. Not the same, but our kind of work.”

“With Fiedler?”

“Yes.”

“Is he good?”

Peters shrugged. “For a Jew, he’s not bad,” he replied, and Leamas, hearing a sound from the other end of the room, turned and saw Fiedler standing in the doorway.

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