And I, Peter Guillam: where am I? Not in Prague with Alec, though I might just as well have been. I am sitting in an upstairs room of Covert’s headquarters in Marylebone, listening to the tape that has been rushed to London by RAF plane, and I am thinking to myself: it’s my turn next.
AL: It’s eight below on the steps of the Olympic Stadium, ball-breaking easterly blowing fine snow, ice on the roads. I reckon the foul weather’s all to the good. Foul weather’s escape weather. Land Rover’s standing by, Ben’s at the wheel. Stas de Jong comes marching down the steps in full army battledress, squeezes himself into the floor cavity, all six foot three of him, army boots and all. Me and Ben lower the lid on him, I sit up front with Ben. I’m wearing an officer’s cap and greatcoat, three pips, East German working clothes underneath. Scruffy shoulder bag under the seat for documents. Rule of mine. Keep your documents separate for the jump. Nine-twenty a.m., we’re going through the official Friedrichstrasse crossing point for military personnel, showing our passes to the Vopos through the closed windows, not letting the buggers get their hands on them, which the diplomats tell us is the current way of doing it. Soon as we’re through we pick up the usual tail: two Vopos in a Citroën. So it’s a normal day. They need to know we’re just another British military vehicle asserting our rights under the quadripartite agreement, and that’s what we’re keen to tell them. We pass through Friedrichshain and I’m hoping to Christ that Tulip has hit the road by now because if she hasn’t, she’s dead or worse and so’s the network. We head north towards Pankow till we reach the Soviet military perimeter, then turn east. Same Citroën on our tail, which is fine by us. We don’t need a changing of the guard and fresh eyes on us. I’m leading them a bit of a dance, which is what they expect us to do: the odd sudden turning, backtrack, slow to a crawl, put your foot down. We’re turning south into Marzahn. We’re still inside Berlin city limits, but it’s forest, flat roads and flying snow. We pass the old Nazi radio station which is our first marker. The Citroën’s a hundred yards behind us, not enjoying the icy roads. We go into the dip, gathering speed. There’s a sharp left coming up and a white factory chimney poking out of the trees which is our second marker: an old sawmill. We make the left turn fast, hold it, skid to a near-halt next to the sawmill. I roll out, plus shoulder bag, minus greatcoat, which is Stas’s cue to get out of his box and into the passenger seat and look like me. I’m flat in a ditch with snow all over me so I must have rolled a yard or two. When I take a look, the Land Rover’s climbing up the other side of the dip and the Citroën’s scrambling after it, trying to catch up.
[A pause, punctuated by the chink of glass and sounds of pouring liquid.]
AL [contd]: Back of the old sawmill there’s a disused lorry park and a tin shed full of sawdust. And behind the sawdust there’s a brown-and-blue Trabant with a load of steel tubing strapped to the roof. Ninety thousand on the clock and stinks of rat shit, but the tank’s full, and there’s a couple of spare cans in the back and the tyres have even got a bit of tread to them. Maintained by a trusted patient of Mayflower’s who won’t even give his name. Only problem is, Trabis hate the cold. It takes me an hour to thaw her out and all the time I’m thinking: Tulip, where are you, have they got you, and are you talking? Because if you’re talking, we’re all fucked.
JO [Jerry Ormond]: And your identity?
AL: Günther Schmaus. Welder from Saxony. I give good Saxon. My mother was Chemnitz. My dad was County Cork.
JO: And Tulip? When you meet up with her, who will she be?
AL: My own dear wife. Augustina.
JO: And she’s where at this minute? All being well?
AL: Rv, north of Dresden. Deep countryside. She’ll have tried to bike despite the weather, gone a distance, then ditched her bike because they know she bikes. Then taken the local train, then hiked or bummed a ride to the rv with orders to hunker down for as long as it takes.
JO: And the crossing from East Berlin into the GDR? What are you expecting?
AL: It’s random. No checkpoints, roving patrols. You’re lucky or you’re not.
JO: And were you lucky?
AL: Wasn’t a big deal. Two police cars. They cut you up, frighten the shit out of you, have you out of the car, shake you down. But if your papers hold, on you go.
JO: And they held. Yes?
AL: I wouldn’t fucking be here if they hadn’t, would I?
[Change of tape, corrupted passage forty-five seconds. Rejoin. Leamas is describing the drive between East Berlin and Cottbus.]
AL: Best thing about traffic in the GDR, basically there isn’t any. A few horses and carts. Cyclists, mopeds, sidecars, the odd clapped-out lorry. A bit of autobahn, then small roads. I’m alternating. If a small road is snowed up, cut back to the autobahn. Steer clear of Wünsdorf whatever you do. There’s a bloody great Nazi camp there and the Sovs took it over wholesale: three tank divisions, serious rocketry and a king-sized listening station. We’ve been spying the shit out of it for months. I make a detour north for safety’s sake, not an autobahn, just a straight flat country road. There’s heavy snow coming at me, and lines of bare trees chock-a-block with bunches of mistletoe, and me thinking, one day I’ll come back and cut down that lot and flog it at Covent Garden market. Then – am I dreaming this? – I’m in the middle of a fucking great Soviet military convoy, and I’m going the wrong way. Lorries packed with troops, T-34 tanks on low-loaders, six or eight artillery pieces, and me in my piebald Trabi dodging between them, trying to get off the fucking road, and them just not bloody looking, rolling straight on. I didn’t even have time to take their fucking numbers!
[Laughter, shared by Ormond. Pause. Resumes at a slower pace.]
AL: Four in the afternoon, I’m five kilometres west of Cottbus. I’m looking for an abandoned Karosserie works at the roadside. That’s the rv. And a baby’s mitten jammed on a bit of fencing, which is the safety signal to tell me Tulip’s inside. And it was there. The mitten was. Pink. Stuck up there like a fucking flag in the middle of nowhere. And it scares me, don’t know why. The mitten does. It’s too fucking conspicuous. Maybe it’s not Tulip inside the shed, it’s the Stasi. Or maybe it’s Tulip and the Stasi. So I pull up and think about it. And while I’m thinking, the barn door opens and there she is, standing in the doorway with a grinning six-year-old kid on her hand.
[Twenty-second pause.]
AL: I’d never even met the bloody woman, Christ’s sake! Tulip worked to Mayflower. That was the deal. Knew her from photographs, that’s all. So I say, how d’you do, Doris, my name’s Günther and I’m your husband for this journey, and who the fuck’s this? Except that I know too bloody well who this is. And she says, it’s Gustav my son, and he’s coming with me. And I say, like fuck he’s coming with you, we are a childless couple, and there’s not going to be any hiding him under a bloody blanket when we reach the Czech frontier. So what are we going to do about it? She says in that case she’s not coming, and the boy chirps up and says he’s not either. So I tell Gustav to get back inside the shed and grab her by the arm and take her round the back and tell her what she knows but doesn’t want to hear: there’s no ID for him, they’ll pull us in and run a check on us, and if we don’t get rid of him, you’re fucked and so am I, and so is the good Dr Riemeck, because once they’ve got you and Gustav in their hands, they’ll squeeze his name out of you in five minutes. No answer and it’s growing dark and the snow’s coming on again. So we go back inside the shed, which is big as a bloody aircraft hangar and full of busted machinery, and Gustav, the little bugger, has laid for dinner, if you can believe it: dug out whatever she’s got for provisions and set them out on the ground: sausage, bread, a thermos of hot cocoa, boxes to sit on, let’s all have a party. So we sit in a ring and have our family picnic and Gustav sings us a patriotic song, and the two of them bed down together under coats and whatever they’ve got, and I sit smoking in a corner, and as soon as it’s half light I shov
e them in the Trabi and we drive back to the village I passed through the night before, because I’d seen a bus stop there. And by the grace of God there are these two old nellies standing there in black hoods and white skirts, and baskets of cucumbers on their backs, and God bless them they’re Sorbs.
JO: Sorbs? What the hell . . .
AL [outburst]: Sorbs, for Christ’s sake! You’ve heard of fucking Sorbs! Sixty-fucking-thousand of them. Protected species, even in the GDR. Slavic minority, scattered up and down the Spree, been there for centuries, growing bloody cucumbers. Try recruiting one. Jesus!
[Ten-second pause. Cools down.]
AL: I pull up, tell Tulip and Gustav to stay put in the car. Don’t move. I get out, the first old nellie watches me, the other one doesn’t bother. I pull the charm. Does she speak German: that’s respect. She speaks German but she’d rather speak Sorbian, she says. Joke. I ask where she’s heading. Bus into Lübbenau, then train to the Ostbahnhof in Berlin to flog the cucumbers. They get a better price in Berlin. I pitch her a cock-and-bull story about Gustav: family upset, mother distraught, boy’s got to get back to his father in Berlin, and can they take him? She puts the proposition to her pal and they have a debate about it in Sorbian. And I’m thinking, any minute the fucking bus is going to come over the hill and they won’t have made up their minds. Then the first one says, we’ll take your boy if you buy our cucumbers, and I say, what all of them? And she says, yes, all of them. And I say, if I buy all your cucumbers you won’t have any fucking cucumbers to sell in Berlin, so why would you want to go there? They have a good laugh about this in Sorbian. I shove a wad of cash into her hand, so much for the cucumbers, but keep them. And so much for the boy’s train fare, and here’s some more for his onward journey to Hohenschönhausen. And here’s the bus coming, and I’ll get the boy. I go back to the car, and tell Gustav to get out, but his mother just sits frozen in the car with her hand across her eyes so he won’t budge either. So I order him out, bark at him, and he obeys. And I tell him, you march with me to the bus, and these two kind comrades will escort you to the Ostbahnhof. And from the Ostbahnhof you go home to Hohenschönhausen and wait till your father shows up. And that’s an order, Comrade. Then he asks me where his mother’s going and why he’s not going with her, so I say your mother’s got important secret work to do in Dresden, and it’s your duty as a good soldier for Communism to go back to your father and continue the struggle. And he goes. [Five-second silence.] Well, what the fuck else was he supposed to do? He’s a Party kid with a Party father and he’s six years old, for fuck’s sake!
JO: And Tulip meanwhile?
AL: Sitting in the fucking Trabi staring out of the windscreen in a trance. I get in, drive a kilometre, then stop again and haul her out. There’s a helicopter buzzing overhead. Fuck knows what he thinks he’s doing. Fuck knows where he got a helicopter from. Borrowed it from the Russians? Listen, I tell her. Just fucking listen because we need each other. Sending your kid back to Berlin is not the end of a problem. It’s the beginning of a new one. Two hours from now, the entire Stasi will know that Doris Quinz née Gamp was last seen in the vicinity of Cottbus, heading east with her male friend. They’ll have a description of the car, the lot. So goodbye to any ideas we had about driving this load of shit into Czecho on false papers, because from now on every Stasi and KGB unit and every frontier post from Kaliningrad to Odessa is going to be on the lookout for a piebald plastic Trabi with a pair of Fascist spies in it. And she takes it on the chin, I’ll give her that. No more dramatics, just asks me straight out what the fallback is and I say: one out-of-date smugglers’ map that I brought along as an afterthought, which with luck and a prayer might just possibly get us over the border on foot. So she thinks hard about this, and then she asks me – it’s like the clincher for her – ‘If I come with you, when will I see my son again?’ Which suggests to me that she is seriously considering turning herself in for the boy’s sake. So I grab her by the shoulders and swear blind into her face that I’ll get her boy traded in an agent-swap if it’s the last thing I do on earth. And I know as well as you do that there’s as much chance of that ever happening as . . . [three-second pause] . . . fuck it.
*
Was it purely for reasons of economy that in my later transcript, which I am now reading, I departed from Alec’s spoken words at this point, preferring to paraphrase them for greater – shall we say objectivity? From the moment of leaving Gustav in the care of the two Sorbs, Alec clung to minor roads wherever the snow permitted. His problem, he explained, was ‘knowing too bloody much’ about the perils of the terrain they were crossing. The whole area was awash with Military Intelligence and KGB listening stations, and he knew them all by heart. He spoke of traversing empty, dead-straight minor roads with six inches of virgin snow on them, only the tree-lines to guide him; of his relief at entering forest until Tulip gave a yell of horror. She had spotted the former Nazi hunting lodge where the GDR elite brought visiting dignitaries to shoot deer and wild boar and get drunk. They made a hasty detour, lost their bearings and saw a light burning in a remote farmhouse. Leamas thumped on the door. It was opened by a terrified peasant woman clutching a knife. Having obtained directions from her, he persuaded her to sell him bread, sausage and a bottle of slivovitz, and on his way back to the Trabant tripped over a sagging telephone cable, he assumed for sounding a fire alarm. He cut it anyway.
The day was darkening, the snow thickening, the piebald Trabant was on her last legs: ‘clutch shot, heater shot, gearbox shot, smoke belching out of the bonnet’. He reckoned that they were about ten kilometres from Bad Schandau and fifteen from the crossing point on the smugglers’ map. Having confirmed their position as best he could by compass, he selected an eastbound timber track and drove until they hit a snowdrift. Huddled together in the Trabi in freezing cold, they ate the bread and Wurst, drank the slivovitz, froze and watched the deer go by while Tulip, half asleep with her head on Alec’s shoulder, languidly described her hopes and dreams for her new life with Gustav in England.
She would not wish Gustav to go to Eton. She had heard that English boarding schools were run by pederasts like his father. She would prefer a proletarian State school with girls, much sport, not too strict. Gustav would start learning English from the day he arrived. She would see to that. For his birthday she would buy him an English bicycle. She had heard Scotland was beautiful. They would bicycle together in Scotland.
She was still talking in this vein, dozing, when Alec became aware of four silent male figures with Kalashnikovs standing like sentinels round the car. Ordering Tulip to remain where she was, he opened the door and slowly got out while they watched him. None was above seventeen, he reckoned, and they seemed as scared as he was. Seizing the initiative, he demanded to know what they thought they were doing, sneaking up on a courting couple. At first nobody answered. Then the boldest explained that they were poachers, looking for meat. To which Alec replied that, if they kept their mouths shut, he would do the same. They sealed the bond by shaking hands all round, after which the four men silently vanished.
The day dawns clear, no snow. Soon a pale sun is shining. Together, they tip the piebald Trabant down a slope, and chuck snow and branches over it. It’s a walk from here on. Tulip has only light leather boots, knee length, no tread. Alec’s workman’s boots are little better. They set out, grabbing each other’s hands as they slide and slip. They are in ‘Saxon Switzerland’, a wonderland of steep, undulating snowfields and forest. On the hillsides, old houses fallen to ruin or turned into summer orphanages. If the map is to be believed, they are walking parallel to the border. Hand in hand they battle their way up a rise and skirt a frozen pond. They are in a mountain village of small wooden houses.
AL: If the map was right, we were either dead or in Czecho.
[Chink of glass. Sounds of pouring liquid.]
But the story has barely begun: see accompanying Circus telegrams. See also the reason why
, having listened to Alec’s tape, I am still sitting tensely on the top floor of Covert’s HQ in Marylebone in the small hours, waiting any minute to be summoned to Head Office.
*
Sally Ormond, deputy Head of Station Prague, wife to Head of Station Jerry, is the type of upper-class female go-getter the Circus blindly adores: Cheltenham Ladies’ College, father in SOE in the war, couple of aunts at Bletchley. Also claims a mysterious kinship-by-marriage with George, which to my mind he bears a little too nobly.
Report by Sally Ormond, DH/Station Prague, to H/Covert [Smiley]. Personal and Private. Priority: CRASH.
Station orders from Covert were to receive, support and securely accommodate one disguised officer, Alec Leamas, and one escaping woman agent travelling on East German papers in an East German registered Trabant, registration supplied, expected to arrive in the early hours of darkness.
The Station was NOT however informed that the operation was being carried out contrary to Joint Steering’s instructions. We could only assume that once it was known that Leamas had taken matters into his own hands, HO decided to afford operational support.
A Legacy of Spies Page 13