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

and one to Helsinki . Just dumping money at banks.”
    “How much?”
    “Ten thousand dollars in Copenhagen , forty thousand D-Marks in Helsinki ”Peters put down his pencil.
    “Who for?” he asked.
    “God knows. We work Rolling Stone on a system
of deposit accounts. The Service gave me a phony British passport; I went to
the Royal Scandinavian Bank in Copenhagen and the National Bank of Finland in Helsinki ,
deposited the money and drew a passbook on a joint account—for me in my alias
and for someone else—the agent I suppose in his alias. I gave the banks a
sample of the co-holder’s signature, I’dgot that from Head Office. Later, the
agent was given the passbook and a false passport which he showed at the bank
when he drew the money. All I knew was the alias.” He heard himself
talking and it all sounded so ludicrously improbable.
    ‘Was this procedure common?”
    “No. It was a special payment. It had a subscription
list.”
    “What’s that?”
    “It had a code name known to very few
people.”
    “What was the code name?”
    “I told you—Rolling Stone. The operation
covered irregular payments often thousand dollars in different currencies and
in different capitals.”
    “Always in capital
towns?”
    “Far as I know. I
remember reading in the file that there had been otherRolling Stone payments before I came to the Section, but in
those cases Banking Section got the local Resident to do it.”
    “These other payments that took place before
you came: where were they made?”
    “One in Oslo . I can’t remember where the other
was.”
    “Was the alias of the agent always the
same?”
    “No. That was an added security precaution. I
heard later we pinched the whole technique from the Russians. It was the most
elaborate payment scheme I’d met. In the same way I used a different alias and
of course a different passport for each trip.” That would please him, help him to fill in the gaps.
    “These faked passports the agent was given so
that he could draw the money:did
you know anything about them—how they were made out and dispatched?”
    “No. Oh, except that they had to have visas
in them for the country where the money was deposited. And entry stamps.”
    “ Entry stamps? ”
    “Yes. I assumed the passports were never used
at the border—only presented at the bank for identification purposes. The agent
must have traveled on hisown
passport, quite legally entered the country where the bank was situated, then
used the faked passport at the bank. That was my guess.”
    “Do you know of a reason why earlier payments
were made by the Residents,and
later payments by someone traveling out from London ?”
    “I know the reason., I asked the women in Banking Section, Thursday and Friday. Control was anxious
that—”
    “ Control? Do you mean to
say Control himself was running the case?”
    “Yes, he was running it. He was afraid the
Resident might be recognized at the bank. So he used a postman: me.”
    “When did you make your journeys?”
    “ Copenhagen on the fifteenth of June. I
flew back the same night. Helsinki at the
end of September. I stayed two nights there, flew back around the twenty-eighth.
Ihad a bit of fun in Helsinki .” He
grinned but Peters took no notice.
    “And the other payments—when were they
made?”
    “I can’t remember. Sorry.”
    “But one was definitely in Oslo ?”
    “Yes, in Oslo .”
    “How much time separated the first two
payments, the payments made by the Residents?”
    “I don’t know. Not long, I think. Maybe a month. A bit more perhaps.”
    “Was it your impression that the agent had
been operating for some time before the first payment was made? Did the file
show that?”
    “No idea. The file simply covered actual
payments. First payment early fifty-nine. There was no
other date on it. That is the principle that operates where you have a limited
subscription. Different files handle different bits of a single case. Only
someone with the master