The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré Read Free Book Online Page A

barged
from one side, while from the other an obliging hand descended on his forearm,
and the thing was done. Leamas said nothing, lookedthoughtfully at the- two men on either side of him, and
accepted in silence the filthyrebuke
of a warder who knew quite well what had happened.
    Four days later, while working with a hoe on the
prison flower bed, he seemed to stumble. He was holding the hoe with both hands
across his body, the end of the handle protruding about six inches from his
right fist. As he strove to recover his balance the prisoner to his right
doubled up with a grunt of agony, his arms acrosshis stomach. There was no more crowding after that.
    Perhaps the strangest thing of all about prison
was the brown paper parcel when he left. In a ridiculous way it reminded him of
the marriage service—with this ring I thee wed, with
this paper parcel I return thee to society. They handed it to him and made him
sign for it, and it contained all he had in the world. There was nothingelse. Leamas felt it the most
dehumanizing moment of the three months, and he determined to throw the parcel
away as soon as he got outside.
    He seemed a quiet prisoner. There had been no
complaints against him. TheGovernor,
who was vaguely interested in his case, secretly put the whole thing down to
the Irish blood he swore he could detect in Leamas.
    “What are you going to do,” he asked,
“when you leave here?” Leamas replied,without a ghost of a smile, that he thought he would make a new
start, and theGovernor said
that was an excellent thing to do.
    “What about your family?” he asked.
“Couldn’t you make it up with your wife?”
    “I’ll try,” Leamas had replied indifferently; “but
she’s remarried.”
    The probation officer wanted Leamas to become a
male nurse at a mental home in Buckinghamshire and Leamas agreed to apply. He
even took down the addressand
noted the train times from Marylebone.
    “ The rail’s electrified as far as Great Missenden, now,” the probation officeradded, and Leamas said that would be
a help. So they gave him the parcel and he left.He took a bus to Marble Arch and walked. He had a bit of money
in his pocket and he intended to give himself a decent meal He thought he would
walk through Hyde Park to Piccadilly, then through Green Park and St. James’s
Park to Parliament Square,then
wander down Whitehall to the Strand where he could go to the big cafe near Charing
Cross Station and get a reasonable steak for six shillings.
    London was beautiful that day. Spring was late and the parks were filled withcrocuses and daffodils. A cool,
cleaning wind was blowing from the south; he could have walked all day. But he
still had the parcel and he had to get rid of it. The little baskets were too
small; he’d look absurd trying to push his parcel into one of those. He
supposed there were one or two things he ought to take out, his wretched pieces
of paper—insurance card, driving license and his E.93 (whatever that was) in a
buff OHMS envelope—but suddenly he couldn’t be bothered. He sat down on a bench
and put the parcel beside him, not too close, and moved a little away from it.
After acouple of minutes he
walked back toward the footpath, leaving the parcel where it lay.He had just reached the footpath when
he heard a shout; he turned, a little sharply perhaps, and saw a man in an army
mackintosh beckoning to him, holding the brown paper parcel in the other hand.
    Leamas had his hands in his pockets and he left
them there, and stood,looking
back over his shoulder at the man in the mackintosh. The man hesitated,
evidently expecting Leamas to come to him or give some sign of interest, but
Leamasgave none. Instead, he
shrugged and continued along the footpath. He heard anothershout and ignored it, and he knew the
man was coming after him. He heard thefootsteps
on the gravel, half running, approaching rapidly, and then a voice, a little
breathless, a little aggravated:
    “Here you—I say!” and then