“Always remember to dislike them”

“Always remember to dislike them” is Control’s instruction to Alec Leamas, turning apparent resentment into an instrument of deception. The phrase gives Leamas a rule for performing his betrayal: the more convincingly he despises his own service, the more readily his interrogators may believe what he tells them—and value what they obtain.

The instruction and its immediate use

During Leamas’s interrogation, he accuses Fiedler of having used a Russian because Leamas would not trust his own service. When Fiedler denies the charge, Leamas recalls Control’s maxim: “Always remember to dislike them.” The remembered instruction makes his anger legible as part of a role. It is not simply a private judgment about the Circus; it is also a tactic intended to influence what the East Germans believe about him and the intelligence he supplies.

The maxim’s companion thought, “Then they will treasure what they get out of you,” makes the calculation explicit. Suspicion and contempt are useful because they can make information appear costly and authentic. Leamas’s hostility is therefore both an emotion he voices and a signal his handlers have taught him to send.

From source material to suspicion

The interrogation’s material gives that performance a concrete basis. Leamas describes how information attributed to Karl Riemeck was passed through a book and a tobacco tin containing three rolls of film. The films held minutes of the Praesidium, a draft concerning East Germany’s relationship to COMECON, and a breakdown of its intelligence service. Peters questions whether Riemeck could have obtained everything alone, and later presses Leamas on the possibility that the agent had high-level help.

Leamas recognizes that the question echoes one Control had asked about Riemeck’s access. He considers whether a protected “Special Interest” had collaborated with Riemeck, and whether that was what Control discussed with him privately. This unresolved suspicion links the maxim to the wider design: Leamas must sound like a disgruntled defector while trying to work out which parts of his own account have been constructed to protect someone else.

Rolling Stone and the evidentiary performance

Fiedler argues that Leamas’s disclosures about the Berlin organization are accurate but not valuable enough to justify the promised fifteen thousand pounds. The real issue, he says, is Rolling Stone. Leamas responds that indications of a spy do not establish where the spy works or permit the arrest of an entire service; investigators must wait for further evidence. The exchange shows how a controlled appearance of candor can become a test of whether Leamas understands the limits of the evidence he has presented.

Fiedler then sets out the banking trail. A Copenhagen account opened under the name Robert Lang contained ten thousand dollars, withdrawn by its co-signatory a week after Leamas deposited it on June 15. The withdrawal coincided with Mundt’s visit to Denmark on June 21. Fiedler also connects Leamas’s later Helsinki deposit, around September 24, with Mundt’s clandestine journey to Finland on October 3. In the Tribunal, Fiedler revisits the restricted file, the two banks’ letters, and the unanswered Helsinki inquiry. The dates and documents turn a general suspicion into a pattern implicating Mundt.

Meaning and reversal

The maxim’s sharpest irony is that Leamas’s hostility is both manufactured leverage and a response to real betrayal. At the Tribunal, after Liz’s arrest is announced and Mundt watches Fiedler with the impassive attention of an executioner, Leamas suddenly understands the deception. The revelation changes the force of Control’s instruction: dislike has helped make Leamas convincing, but it has not given him control of the operation or protected him from its consequences.

As a recurring expression, the maxim joins character performance to the book’s larger problem of evidence. The interrogators assess whether Leamas’s words are credible; Leamas assesses why they doubt Riemeck could have acted alone; Fiedler assembles dates and records into a case against Mundt. Each judgment depends on signals that may be sincere, staged, or deliberately arranged. Control’s brief instruction captures the method’s moral cost: even genuine feeling can be recruited as evidence in a deception whose full design remains hidden from the person carrying it out.