A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré — Read

There were about fifty keys and only half a dozen were labelled. He stood in the first-floor corridor where Leo had stood, drawn back into the shadow of a pillar, staring at the cypher-room door. It was about seven thirty, Leo’s time, and he imagined Jenny Pargiter coming out with a bundle of papers in her arms. The corridor was very noisy now, and the steel trap on the cypher-room door was rising and falling like a guillotine for the Registry girls to hand in telegrams and collect them; but that Thursday night had been a quiet time, a lull in the mounting crisis, and Leo had spoken to her here, where Turner stood now. He looked at his watch and then at the keys again and thought: five minutes. What would he have done? The noise was deafening; worse than day; not only the voices but the very pounding of the machines proclaimed a world entering emergency. But that night was calm, and Leo was a creature of silence, waiting here to draw his quarry and destroy. In five minutes.

He walked along the corridor as far as the lobby and looked down into the stair well and watched the evening shift of typists slip into the dark, survivors from a burning ship, letting the night recover them. Brisk but nonchalant would be his manner, for Jenny would watch him all the way till here; and Gaunt or Macmullen would see him descend these stairs; brisk but not triumphant.