The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Karden, Mundt’s representative, begins by accusing Fiedler of being so power-hungry that he fell for a British scheme to paint Mundt as a double agent, when Leamas’s whole trajectory was demonstrably fraudulent. The only other explanation is that Fiedler himself is a British agent. Karden reveals that he also has a witness, because Mundt, anticipating Fiedler’s betrayal, investigated the details of Leamas’s case as soon as he found out about his initial debrief in The Hague. He looked for inconsistencies in Leamas’s pattern of drunkenness and penury, and found it in the natural human desire for companionship. Before calling up the witness, Karden recalls Leamas to the stand. Karden asks Leamas about his financial situation, and Leamas insists that he has no money left, that no one is lending or giving him money, that no one even visited him in prison. Karden also asks where Leamas went after first meeting Ashe when he was acting like he was trying to evade surveillance. Leamas insists that he went to a pub. Leamas once again confirms that he was destitute and without friends or support, and forgot to pick up his remaining wages at the library, which may have forestalled his violent outburst at the grocer.