The Helsinki Pact (25 page)

He inhaled deeply, then let out a
thick plume of smoke. Thomas coughed as the cloud hit him and,
admiration and horror mixing, tried to imagine how Dieter's lungs
must have felt.

“Who signed the documentation for
receipt?” Bettina asked.

“As is customary, an officer of
the central bank and the director of the branch. For security
reasons the agents escorting the van are not let into the special
vault. Funds of this kind are taken by them to the outer vault,
checked there, and then moved into the special vault by a bank
employee under the close watch and control of the director or
someone nominated by him.”

“Could it have been stolen
afterwards? Who else besides the director is aware of the security
measures protecting the vault? And how do these work anyway? Who
has keys, for instance?”

“There were no signs of burglary.
Apart from Henkel, half a dozen people have limited access, meaning
they can execute written orders on the account. But Henkel, the
Treasurer of the Dresden operation, Modrow nominally, of course,
Roehrberg, his Deputy Spitze, and possibly one other have unlimited
access ...”

“Unlimited … ?” Bettina
interjected.

“I'm waiting to learn the exact
security details but I understand that these four, possibly five,
each have a set of keys and separately know different parts of the
combination. The entry keys are all the same and so anyone with a
set can get as far as the outer vault. However, to enter the
special vault itself two separate combination locks need to be
opened and this then needs two of that highest level group to
attend the opening.”

“Or for one person to learn a
second combination element from another … ?”

“Yes, that's probably true. There
could be collusion or pressure, threats perhaps. As far as I know,
however, although the combination part is sophisticated so that any
two parts will work together to open the lock there's no record of
which parts are used on any one occasion.”

Thomas and Bettina remained
silent, watching as Dieter stretched out his legs and puffed on his
cigar.

“There are several possibilities.
Two people might have acted together or just one, as we considered.
It's unlikely, but there might even have been further collusion
quite outside any of the inner circle. Perhaps the money was never
even deposited in the first place. However, that's not very likely,
I think, as it has to be checked and signed for by senior
officials. The security measures to enter the bank are not
particularly sophisticated, especially for someone working for the
organization. The special vault itself really is supposed to
another matter. But perhaps the security there is not as good as we
thought.”

“Any suspicions?”

“No. The only thing which I find
improbable is that an ordinary bank officer would try to steal
money from the Stasi. If he wanted to steal money he could have
found easier and less dangerous clients to steal from.”

“So you think it’s an inside
job?”

“Yes. That’s the reason I’ve been
charged with the investigation. I want you to go down and find out
what happened, Bettina. You know your way around Dresden, and
hopefully the fact that you’re a young, attractive girl with,
they’ll imagine, very little experience will disarm them, maybe
make them overconfident that they're getting away with it. This
also depends on how you decide to play it, Bettina.”

He gave her a sideways glance.
Thomas felt suddenly nervous at the thought of Bettina getting
friendly with dangerous men.

“If you find out something, don’t
take any action, but report direct to me, and to me alone. You have
to be extremely careful. Whoever stole the money could be acting
with others, even people really high up in the organisation. This
file contains all the documentation I have. You will leave
immediately and return within a week. Don’t forget, we have very
little time left before we lose our jurisdiction completely, before
chaos ensues. That’s probably what the criminals are counting on.
Once we become a single nation and every last trace of the Stasi
disappears, it will become almost impossible for anyone to find out
exactly what happened or trace the culprits.”

“Thomas, your role will be
twofold. You will travel with Bettina to Dresden. She will be
acting in the open and her mission could be very dangerous. You
will be her shadow and follow her whenever and wherever possible.
No one knows you within the organisation and so provided you don't
acknowledge her in public no one will realise your role as
protector. That could be very useful." He again drew deeply on his
cigar and waved away the cloud of smoke round his head. "And I’ve
heard very complimentary remarks about your growing ability to
handle a gun.”

Bettina looked the other way, a
little embarrassed.

“Now, to the second matter. I
want you, Thomas, to find out everything you can about an
organisation called Phoenix Securities. There seems to be someting
of a focus on Dresden though I'm unclear about details. Phoenix is
promoting loans and a number of our informers all over the country
have been contacted. It’s very strange. Western banks don’t use
untrained personnel and are very selective about who they grant
loans to. This company isn’t properly registered, seems to promise
loans to anyone who wants them, and uses unskilled staff, all of it
local. I’m pretty sure it’s a pyramid scheme. I want to avoid
having thousands of people here deprived of their
savings.”

Thomas wasn’t quite sure he’d
understood. He knew the principle of pyramid schemes, scams where
the pyramid base needed to grow constantly larger to meet
commission obligations further up the chain. But what Dieter was
telling him didn't make sense. “But you said these people offer
loans, not take people's savings. They’re the only ones who have
something to lose if things collapse, surely?”

“Maybe. That’s what I don’t
understand. I’m certain there’s some kind of currency fraud going
on but I’m unclear about the mechanism. Maybe they’re promoting
loans in Ost marks which will be repaid in DMs once unity happens.
Maybe their interest rates are exorbitant. It’s impossible to tell
since to our knowledge they still haven’t yet completed a single
transaction. They seem only to be getting things ready, but their
network is expanding very rapidly. We've had over fifty reports in
the last week. Word is spreading fast. We're getting reports from
even the tiniest towns, even from a few villages.”

“Are there any charges you could
stick on them?”

“Not yet, not until we find out
exactly what they are up to − and that’s what I need you to do.
They’re based in Frankfurt, which is why I thought you were well
placed to look into it. I also thought it could be to your
advantage should the BND find out about you in the future. If there
is effectively some element of fraud, they might be interested,
assuming unification happens. Maybe your friend Stephan can help
you out too?”

“I’ll try calling him. He’s
travelling often in the East now, helping set up Deutsche Bank’s
branch network.”

“Well, he can surely be of help
anyway. I’m sure he travels back and forth, and maybe he can find
something out through his connections. Act as if one of your
Eastern friends had asked you about it. He’s met Bettina, right?”
He glanced through the file, handing it over to Thomas after a
brief moment.

The phone started ringing. Dieter
sighed. “Call me up as soon as you have discovered something. And
don’t talk to anyone else … no one but me, not even to my
superiors.”

He picked up the receiver and
waved them out of the room.

Chapter 20

Sunday January 14
1990

IT was late morning and Bettina
was driving her Trabant at full tilt to Dresden. Running at close
to the speed limit of sixty-two miles per hour, the engine was
raging and juddering as if it would fall off any moment. The road,
like most East German roads, was made of prefabricated concrete
slabs and as the car raced and leaped down it the rhythmic clunking
of the wheels hitting the ends of the slabs turned the vehicle into
an ominous metronome. This had droned on for over an hour, as the
landscape changed from sparse forest to rolling countryside and
back again.

Thomas, unused to Bettina’s
exuberant driving and to the unfamiliar road surface, had passed
the first part of the journey anxiously expecting the Trabant to
roll into the ditch on a corner or to break an axle with one jar
too many. The steady thud of the wheels eventually relaxed him, his
nervous grip on the door handle relaxed, and he passed into a
comatose state, his mind wandering here and there erratically but
always returning to Bettina and whether he’d ever be able to be
with her as he wanted. He was drowsily enjoying an increasingly
passionate and loving embrace with her when she raised her head
from his lap and he found himself staring at Frau Schwinewitz
smiling grotesquely up at him. A particularly severe bump jolted
him fully awake and to banish the vision he scrabbled for something
to say, anything to bring him back to reality.

“Bettina, what are you going to
do if unification really happens? Any plans? Will you travel,
perhaps? Are you worried at all?”

They travelled at least a further
kilometre without response and Thomas thought at first she hadn’t
heard.

“Of course I'm fucking worried!
Yes! Yes, I've been thinking about it a great deal, about lots of
things. Like Dieter, I'm pretty sure now that unification's likely.
So I'm worried about how I'll manage for money. Between the museum
job and my Stasi stipend I was OK, just. But with unification
they'll both go. It's the victors that write history, isn't that
what they say, and the version we give in the museum won't suit the
West."

They were both silent as the car
thumped monotonously over the slabs.

“But I'm more worried about how
we’re going to manage when we’re dragged into joining a country
that’s so different from ours. People keep saying how good it will
be but that's bullshit, self deluding bullshit. Prices will rise.
We’ll be the poor relations. Things are difficult here but at least
people have jobs and houses and get enough to eat. I just don’t
like the way the West is saying that what matters is buying,
buying, buying things, buying things all the time, supermarkets
with tins of this and packets of that. That’s not what life should
be about. You're not a proper citizen unless you spend money all
the time it seems.”

“Oh, come on, Bettina. I live in
the West and it’s not like that at all. That’s just more lies from
the Party to keep people from trying to leave. You’ve been
brainwashed. Sure, we make more money in the West than people do
here but we have choices. You have none.”

“What the hell has choice got to
do with anything worthwhile, with living? Choice! That's a
capitalist marketing slogan. I don’t want to be able to choose
between 57 different kinds of baked beans. Who the hell wants to
eat rubbishy food anyway? You talk about the Party and the Stasi
controlling people’s lives but I’ll tell you this, in the West it’s
big business that controls people's lives and the people have been
so mesmerised by this fucking choice you say is so good, this
buying of stuff all the time, that they just lie down and let big
business piss all over them and then they say, Oh, thank you, sir,
thank you very much sir, please piss on me a bit more, sir. They
don't have lives any more, they're just drones. Give me the honesty
of a socialist approach any time even if we sometimes do have
problems with supplies.”

Right on cue the engine coughed
and died and Bettina steered the slowing car on to the verge. She
sat for a moment leaning forward, her hands covering her face then
threw open the door, pulled hard on the bonnet release, marched to
the front and with a noisy clatter hauled the bonnet up and jammed
it on the support. Thomas struggled out of the car to join
her.

“Do you know about engines?" He
shook his head. "No, I thought not! Well, just get the hell out of
it. Piss off! Go away!”

Thomas scurried back to the
passenger seat thinking that Bettina was probably quite capable of
pulling the engine off its mounting and hurling at him if he got in
her way. He sat watching her through the half moon of the opened
bonnet, her mouth working and her face scowling as she explored the
engine components. Finally she reached down, apparently wriggling
some hidden pipe back into place, slammed the bonnet down, returned
to her seat and turned the key. The starter groaned, turning the
engine ineffectually until it suddenly coughed, died, caught again,
roared into life, and died, the starter motor now groaning slower,
and slower, then giving up completely.

“Aaaaarghhh. These bastard
batteries that can never hold a charge.”

She caught Thomas’s eye and
laughed. “They’re from the West.” she lied. “We had a
choice!”

“Out!” she shouted and with
Thomas behind and Bettina pushing on the frame of the open driver’s
door they got the Trabant rolling until she scrambled in, threw the
car into gear and shuddered it into life, hiding Thomas in a pall
of blue, oily smoke as he staggered up to where she was now
waiting, racing the engine, and slumped into his seat, almost
tumbling out again as she bumped off the verge and roared away,
high-revving without a glance behind her, making an obscene gesture
out of the window to the angry scream of a horn from a now sharply
swerving Zil, and showing not the slightest hint of contrition that
Thomas could see. He stared at her, his emotions flickering between
horror and admiration, and settled himself deeply into his
seat.