The Spy Who Came in From the Cold: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

The Tribunal takes place in a small courtroom. Leamas sits in the back, in his own clothes, while Mundt is in the front of the room, in prison clothing. Fiedler presents his case by saying that he and Leamas were arrested on the day he submitted his report about Mundt to the Praesidium and pressured to confess to having plotted to frame Mundt. Fiedler says that the fact that Leamas, a defector, will refuse to accept that Mundt is a British agent proves Leamas’s impartiality. Fiedler says he will interpret the report he already prepared in his remarks and that Mundt has committed the worst possible crime, and the penalty is death.

Fiedler continues his speech, giving a summary of Mundt’s career. He describes Mundt as having been a talented and successful agent in Norway, Sweden, and Finland early in his career. Later, when Mundt became a British agent, he would travel to these countries to collect payments from the British. Fiedler fervently says that Mundt’s greed was what got him caught, which should be a lesson to other enemies of the state. From 1956, Mundt worked in London, where he exposed himself to great dangers. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but he managed to fly from London to Berlin.

Mundt’s brilliant escape from London, Fiedler contends, would never have been possible if Mundt had not been allowed to leave by the British authorities after they captured him and turned him into their agent. After this, the British promoted Mundt’s career, and they may have even helped Mundt to kill their own less-important agents to help him succeed. Fiedler also presents other evidence suggesting that Mundt may have given intelligence about the British to the Abteilung to keep his organization’s trust.

Fiedler then calls Leamas to the witness stand. Leamas testifies that he heard from Peter Guillam that there was no full search for Mundt when he was in London, but that it would have been impossible for Mundt to have been a British agent without his knowing about it. Leamas also testifies about the logistics surrounding Rolling Stone, and Fiedler draws attention to the fact that money was pulled from the bank in Helsinki during a period when Mundt was there.

Leamas also testifies that Riemeck and Control met alone in his apartment in Berlin. Fiedler explains that the documents that the British received from Riemeck were not included in the files that Riemeck had access to. Instead, Fiedler says, Mundt passed the information to Riemeck to give to Leamas. Mundt also promoted Riemeck’s career every year after his return from Britain in 1959. Fiedler says that Riemeck could not have found De Jong’s car in the woods, unless someone higher up in the chain of command ordered the Security police to follow De Jong’s car and someone told Riemeck De Jong’s whereabouts. One of the three members of the Tribunal asks why Mundt killed Riemeck, if he was his agent, and Fiedler responds that once Riemeck was under suspicion, Mundt had him killed to protect himself.

Fiedler describes Mundt’s technique. He says that the British were likely hesitant to trust Mundt at first, fearing that he would become a double agent. At first, he had no network. But by the end of 1959, Mundt informed London that he had found Riemeck, a man in the Praesidium who could be his intermediary to London. In Mundt’s position, he had access to all personnel files, could tap phones, and read mail. This, Fiedler says, allowed him to determine who on the Praesidium might be open to spying for the British. Fiedler concludes, saying that for Mundt’s crime, death would be a merciful punishment.