won't take action on your
report. Just that.
And continue to work.
You can go.
A counterintelligence man must
always know, as no one else,
that in our time
he can believe no one,
sometimes even...
himself.
Though you can believe me.
Well, enough of lyricism.
Send immediately
my order to Bern
to stop further work
on the connection man,
organize his kidnapping,
take him in an embassy car trunk
across the border to the Reich
and deliver him at the disposal
of Gruppenfuhrer Mueller.
At my personal disposal.
That's all.
Pleischner was on his way to
the secret apartment.
He had deliberately left
90 minutes early,
to be able to walk about that zoo,
located on the bank of the Aare.
Pleischner was going to a secret
rendezvous.
Lately he had been
in a state elation.
He had carried out Stirlitz's
assignment,
he was ready
for any other assignment.
He expected now
nothing but good from life.
In fact, all last night and today's
morning he had worked
on the manuscript of his new book.
He had very little money, but he
didn't think of what happens next.
Sheets of white paper
were waiting for him on the table.
And that was making his life
orderly and meaningful.
Flower Street.
He was pleased
with his visual memory.
This time he found
the street right away.
Now straight on, to the house 9.
Oh, my God...
Suddenly he recalled clearly
what Stirlitz had told him:
"You'll go to the street
named Flower Street.
You should walk down
the even-number side of the street
and, passing by house No.9,
look at the window
on the second floor,
to the left of the entrance.
Flower Street, 9.
The second-floor window
on the left side of the entrance.
You'll go up to the apartment
only if
there's no flowerpot in the window.
The flowerpot will mean the apartment
has been compromised."
The day before yesterday
he didn't do it.
Oh, my God...
It was the signal of failure.
The Russian agent, sensing he was
shadowed, had managed to put out
that signal of alarm.
Now he understood everything.
He remembered entering
the apartment the day before yesterday,
without even hearing the counter-
password.
Now he knew it.
Only he didn't understand
could he,
an experienced man,
have not done two simple things
about which Stirlitz
told him several times,
and thus he had crossed out
not only his own life,
but, perhaps,
Stirlitz's life, too.
You've missed your door, pal.
You've missed your door.
You're wrong.
Yes.
I'm wrong.
03.16.1945
(09 hours 00 minutes)
The 16th of March.
The armies of the 1st Byelorussian
Front
on the Stettin direction
were fighting with the aim
of liquidating the enemy's bridgehead
on the eastern bank of the Oder
and wiping out
the enemy grouping
blockaded in the town of Aldam.
The armies of the right wing
of the 3rd Ukrainian
and the left wing of the 2nd Ukrainian
Fronts
have launched
the Vienna offensive
with the aim of crushing the main
forces
of the SS 6th Tank Army.
Another blow has been struck on
Dierre, with the aim of demolishing
the Estergom-Tavoros
grouping of the enemy.
Guard on duty speaking.
Yes, sir.
I got you.
Wait a second.
Stirlitz is walking down the hallway.
- What hallway?
- Your hallway.
Stirlitz's walking down your hallway.
Where's he going?
Stirlitz was going to Mueller.
He knew that though he'd figured out
Mueller and Holtoff's maneuver,
the decisive battle was still ahead.
Holtoff came very close
to the most vulnerable aspects
of his operation with the physicists.
And if Runge's point
of view had won over,
the Germans would have gotten down
to building the atomic bomb
as early as 1944.
It happened in 1943.
Stirlitz got information
that one of the leading nuclear
physicists, Runge, was at the Gestapo.
He got there as a result of a squabble
between groups of physicists
working in the laboratories
managing ammunition,
at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
and at the medical institute.
Stirlitz knew