-
Alec Leamas: I'm a man, you fool. Don't you understand? A plain, simple, muddled, fat-headed human being. We have them in the West, you know.
-
Alec Leamas: Mundt was a Nazi, wasn't he?
Fiedler: He was a member of the Hitler Youth... as a boy.
Alec Leamas: Now he's a grown-up Communist. He's what I would call... available.
Fiedler: Like you!... Shall we begin? Let me start by asking you an amusing question.
Alec Leamas: Let me start by asking you one! Make you laugh your head off! Where's my money? When can I go wherever... wherever home is? I mean, Carleton's gone home! Peters has gone home! What about me?
Fiedler: The agreement was...
Alec Leamas: Agreement!... You've broken the bloody agreement and barring miracles you've broken my bloody neck too! The agreement was that I should be interrogated for two weeks in Holland, paid, and allowed to slip quietly back to England without anyone knowing I'd ever been away. And nobody would have known if you hadn't broken the story.
Fiedler: Just who the hell do you think you are? How dare you come stepping in here like Napoleon ordering me about? You are a traitor! Does it occur to you? A wanted, spent, dishonest man, the lowest currency of the Cold War? We buy you - we sell you - we lose you - we even can shoot you! Not a bird would stir in the trees outside. Not a single pheasant would turn his head to see what fell.
Beatrix Lehmann
Extended Reading
Related articles
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold quotes
