coming in from the cold

[watchesthewatchers]

He's gone for a month, and then he's back again, sitting on Tony's balcony, lighting one cigarette off the next, eyes closed.

Comments

[profiteering]

He shakes his head slightly.

"What happened to him?"

[watchesthewatchers]

"He was shot getting out of Berlin."

He admits, eyes closing.

[profiteering]

"Peter..."

He squeezes his shoulder.

"The girl? Is she...?"

[watchesthewatchers]

"Dead."

Eyes closing tighter.

"He was going back for the body. If you're ever in a situation where you want to go back for my body, don't."

[profiteering]

Tony pulls him close, like he could just wrap himself around him and protect him from these decisions.

"Promise."

He murmurs, because it's what he needs to hear.

[watchesthewatchers]

"I've never done anything so close to being evil."

Peter explains, quietly.

"Outright evil, I mean."

[profiteering]

"You aren't evil."

Tony says firmly, and he turns to face Peter, holding him from the front.

"Tell me why you did it?"

[watchesthewatchers]

He looks up at him, thoughtfully.

"This is a story about spies who have been killed for falling in love. I shouldn't tell it to you. I'm sure Elvira swore to Karl she'd never breathe a world, and now Karl is dead and she is too."

[profiteering]

"I'm not a spy. I never will be. My only allegiance is to me."

He's always been very clear about that, even when he had worked for the US government.

"You can tell me anything, Peter. You're one of the only people I do care about."

[watchesthewatchers]

"I don't know what you know about my career."

He admits, looking up at the sky.

"But it hasn't always been successful. Under the last administration, though, I turned a man who made me invaluable. A German, when I was working the Dresden desk. He was high enough up in the strata of things that it should have been impossible, but he made a mistake and I caught it, and I was able to offer him two options; arrest and torture, or information for us."

[profiteering]

Tony loops his arms around Peter's waist and lets him talk. He strokes hs back sometimes, encouraging him to keep going.

[watchesthewatchers]

"The problem with a turn like that is that it's too obvious. The information we got from him was too good, the moment he'd slipped and I'd pegged him too public. But for a source like him, we had to protect him, no matter what."

Breathing in and out, slowly.

"We had to give him some gold in return. We made a call, let him roll Berlin. Leamas, our chief of operations, lost all of his men."

[profiteering]

"Lost them how?"

Tony asks, swallowing, mouth gone dry.

[watchesthewatchers]

"Their names were given up."

He explains.

"It secured my man a promotion. He became Chief of Intelligence. The man in charge of the entire place. Every single one of our men in the country was suddenly protected, promoted. But doubts were still circling, so when Leamas came back we set him to work a long sting. He faked a disgrace for us, alcoholism, a dramatic departure, under the promise that he'd be able to kill the man who rolled Berlin. My informant." Looking up at him, adding because he's in for a penny already, "Mundt."

[profiteering]

"Why would he be out to kill Mundt? This rolling Berlin...does that mean the same thing here as there?"

[watchesthewatchers]

"It means they're dead." He says, bluntly. "Shot in streets, shot at border crossings. Car accidents, bar fights. Leamas worked it out and came home when Karl died, and he knew Mundt was the one that ordered them all, so he was far too happy to kill him. You always want to, when someone you're handling dies, particularly in a bloody way. There was a bike girl, just a messenger, brains all over the pavement."

A little disjointed, so he swallows and rallies.

[profiteering]

Tony's following well enough that he doesn't nitpick on the details. Let Peter work it out, let him talk. That's what matters right now.

"Where were you in all this?"

[watchesthewatchers]

"Working Mundt. Keeping him at bay. He was trying to get as much out of us as possible."

Explaining, quietly.

"I had Control and Smiley step in to run Leamas. I ran Mundt, they orchestrated his disgrace, firing, nervous breakdown, and had him work a temp agency. We got him a job as an assistant at a library, where he met a young girl. A German immigrant. He fell in love with her. Honestly, we didn't need him to, it would have been enough that they'd worked together, but it certainly helped."

[profiteering]

He makes it sound like love is a perk--a tool they can choose to affix to a mission. Which is amusing for Tony, who can barely control his passions, let alone think of them as tools.

"Helped who? I mean, why roll Berlin anyway?"

[watchesthewatchers]

"I'll get to that."

He takes a deep breath, reminds himself that this is not self-evident to Tony.

"By giving Mundt our Berlin network, we kept him a credible operative. A lauded operative, with the continued faith of his government and greater power over Intelligence there. Otherwise, if we outstripped them too abruptly, it would be obvious what had happened. The key with a mole like that is to use them effectively while keeping their government thinking they're useful. Leamas didn't know Mundt was ours, didn't know we'd given Berlin to him. So, when we asked him to, he was happy to try to kill Mundt for us."

[profiteering]

"Oh, I follow."

He nods, and kisses Peter's neck, just grateful that he's here and alive. He'd meant it to be a quick little peck, but somehow it becomes more intimate.

"Keep talking."

[watchesthewatchers]

"People in Germany were suspicious. As I said, the way I'd cornered him- it was a big mistake on Mundt's part, there were ripples all through the system."

Explaining, leaning into him.

"So, Leamas. A year later, alcoholic, working in a library with a pretty German girl who he happens to love. He says goodbye to her and then is arrested the next day for punching a bank manager over a refusal for credit. He's released from jail a few months later, desperate and with a record and miserably bitter against our country, and Germany steps in. They offer him a great deal of money for information about us, and he takes it and is brought over for debriefing." Adding, because Tony is normal; "They think he's theirs, he thinks he's ours, trying to kill Mundt."

[profiteering]

Tony is glad to have him responding at all, but he whispers softly.

"Jesus."

There's no way that could have ended well for Leamas. Or Mundt, clearly. His heart skips a little when he wonders what danger Peter is in.

"What does he do in the debriefing then?"

[watchesthewatchers]

"He gives, reluctantly. He drinks like a fish, he snarls, he's suspicious. He plays it long."

He explains, stretching out.

"I've done this before, it isn't easy, planting misinformation. You let them fixate on something you've told them, you fill the space around it with details and snarls, you disagree vehemently with the conclusions they try to draw from what you've spoken. Control and I briefed Leamas in this, in the pace of each give. He talked to them about an operation to pay a high ranking German mole out of foreign banks, he talked to them about the utter failure of our men to prosecute Mundt, his disappearance the week I turned him. He talked about the ease with which Mundt had taken Berlin. He insisted until he was blue in the face that Mundt could not possibly be one of ours because Leamas would have known, running Berlin. I never would have done that to him."

[profiteering]

Tony pulls him back and holds him.

He doesn't want Peter putting distance between them right now, not while he's talking about this horrible thing that has happened. That he helped cause.