Spy Novel

I finished up The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and it was excellent.

The basic plot follows Alec Leamas, who ran a group of agents in East Germany. When the last one is killed trying to escape, he is recalled to HQ, and to his surprise, is offered one last dangerous mission - fake his defection and plant a story that the East German head of counter-intelligence (Mundt) is a British spy. Thus, he would get revenge against Mundt as his own agency arrests and executes him.

So he goes about faking disillusionment - he pretends to steal money from his agency, he starts to drink a lot, and is finally let go, only to have a string of odd jobs. He pretends to be behind on bills and then finally gets in a fight with the grocer over credit and is sent to jail for three months. Upon his release, the East Germans make contact... and he agrees to defect.

From there, he spills a little info, just enough to be believable, but not enough to make it seem all planned. He claims there was a high level spy HQ was running, but he didn't know who it was. He just was the courier for cash deposits at various banks, which were timed to coincide with Mundt's travels. Everything goes well, until his story unravels just a bit...

SPOILER

As it turns out, Mundt is a British spy after all. Leamas is sent over with the intent that his initial story fails a close examination, so that Mundt can expose his deputy Fielder instead, and arrest him to save his own skin. Then, Mundt would help Leamas escape, and also implicate Fielder in the attempt.

Ealier in London, Leamas meets Liz at one of his odd jobs, and she is a member of the Communist Party. Their love affair is incidental, but her presence isn't - she is unknowingly part of the plot. The British send some agents to question her after Leamas vanishes, and they count on the fact the East Germans will bring her over to answer questions. When she says that some people showed up asking about Leamas, Mundt will use that to prove it was all an elaborate hoax meant to implicate him. So Alec and Liz just had to become friends for this to work.

ENDING TWIST

But, Alec and Liz fall in love. After the trial, when Mundt exposes Leamas as a spy, he releases them from the camp and gives them a car. Alec and Liz drive off, needing to make East Berlin by a certain time - Mundt says he briefed one regiment of his border guards that there would be an infiltration attempt at precise hour. The two inflitrators will be a man and a women, they'll be at a certain spot, stand in the searchlight, and climb up a ladder over the wall. So the guards will let them over, thinking they are spies headed into the West.

Along the drive, Alec explains to Liz what happened, and privately he is worried that she knows too much already. After all, during the trial and subsequent escape attempt, she now knows Mundt is a British spy.

They arrive at the spot, make the proper signals, and climb the ladder. At the top, suddenly an alarm goes off and Liz is shot several times. Alec hears his associates on the other side, screaming for him to crawl forward and drop into the safety of West Berlin. But Leamas looks back and sees Liz dying on the east side, and he realizes that Mundt had her shot because she was a risk of exposing him. So he lets himself drop on the east side, and is shot alongside her.

Now, I think I can make another go of Life of Pi.