The Helsinki Pact (28 page)

“He probably just came home.
There’s some whisky in the glass.” he said softly. Bettina nodded
and breathed deeply again, this time getting it over the barrier in
her lungs and relaxing a little. He led the way into the corridor.
“Let’s check out the front living room, then the study down there.
No fingerprints.” He pulled on his black leather gloves.

The tic tic of their slow and
careful steps sounded extravagantly loud on the polished wooden
floor although they tried, but without success, to walk in time
with each other towards the hallway and the front door. He could
remember the layout of the house exactly. The main living room with
its locked windows opened off the hall to their right and on the
opposite side there was an elegant staircase to the upper floors,
curving away from the front. Beside the staircase was a short spur
of corridor leading to the kitchen, a lavatory and some small
utility rooms. A shaded lamp with a bulbous base of oriental
porcelain which looked quite modern and which stood on an
occasional table just inside the hallway lit the corridor
faintly.

Thomas opened the door of the
front room and flashed his torch over the furniture and then the
rest of the area. The room gave the impression of being little used
and everything looked in order, an under drawer of a rather solid
chest incongruously standing open and empty, however. They searched
the room thoroughly, moving softly from place to place.

As they were about to leave a
sudden bell startled them and Bettina gripped Thomas hard on his
arm, relaxing when she recognised it as a phone on a side table.
They stood silently, holding each other, hardly breathing,
listening for Henkel’s voice answering but there was nothing, and
after nine rings it stopped and the silence weighed heavily on them
again.

As they moved back down the
corridor towards the study they noticed a faint light spilling from
under the door and they stopped to listen. The silence was
complete. Bettina gestured to Thomas to move back then knocked and
again called out to Henkel twice. The silence thrummed on. She
beckoned Thomas, opened the door, and peered in.

Henkel, dressed in a dark brown
well-tailored suit with a surprisingly exuberant tie and matching
silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, was sitting leaning back in
his chair at the study desk. He’d slid forward and down a little,
legs stretched out in front. His head was sideways to the door and
was slumped forward not quite hiding the mouth's twisted rictus of
grinning welcome overlaid with a hint of surprise. The light from
the green shaded lamp on the desk on the angled head made dark
shadows of the eye sockets and under the man's chin.

“He’s drunk, passed out.” thought
Thomas and then took in the neat hole ringed with blackened marks
on Henkel’s temple, his hand languid on the arm of the chair and a
small service revolver lying on the floor under it and by his feet.
There were a few spots of blood on the chair and a larger,
coagulating patch on the floor. Bettina stood in the doorway and
Thomas turned to her, gathering her in his arms and standing in
front to shield her. His body felt numb, his stomach churned and he
felt sick. As they clung to each other the cat arrived in the room
and wound itself round their feet causing Thomas to shriek in
surprised terror and kick out blindly.

“Jesus! Jesus Christ! We've got
to get out here. Someone might be around. Someone could come, find
us.”

He turned to look at Henkel,
looked away quickly then moved away from Bettina and looked again
at Henkel's body. He breathed hard, pressed his hand hard to his
mouth, swallowed, and again clung to Bettina who gently kissed him
on the forehead and disengaged herself to examine Henkel more
closely and pick up in her gloved hands an unsealed envelope lying
on the far edge of the table. She took out the single typewritten
sheet and scanned it carefully.

“Listen. It’s a confession: 'I,
Gerd Henkel, have stolen money from the Firm in order to repay
accumulated personal debts. My shame in having betrayed the faith
of my colleagues has led to this, my final decision. I hope that my
colleagues and friends will be able to forgive me and that they
will spare my memory from ignominy.’ He's signed it at the foot,
scribbled another comment which I can't quite read, something about
'testament', I think, and it's dated today.”

“That explains a lot of things, I
suppose, at least if everything is as it seems. Poor man." She
glanced over at Henkel for a moment. "We've got to leave soon but
there's stuff to do first.” She spread the document on the table
for Thomas to photograph then returned it to its envelope and
replaced it on the table. “Take Henkel from different angles and
get some general shots of the room plus anything else we find
interesting. Then we can work through things and get out of here
quickly.”

Thomas, now calmer, photographed
Henkel and the surroundings carefully then looked round the room
and began opening desk drawers. All were empty other than one
holding typing paper of the kind used for the letter. He glanced at
the half-empty bookshelves with a few scattered volumes, mainly
classic communist titles, took more shots from different angles,
then looked closely at the shelves and beckoned Bettina.

“Look at this. Look at the dust
traces. Look at the variations on the shelves – here and then here,
there and there, here, and now over there. Someone's cleared out a
lot of material pretty recently. Looking at the smudges and the
traces I'd say they were probably box files rather than ordinary
books. What do you think?"

The phone rang again, the study
extension quieter and more pleasant than the one which had startled
them earlier. Again they stood immobile while it rang then
instinctively they both looked at their watches. It was just past
ten o’clock.

“Let’s get out of here before
anything happens.” Bettina said. “And we’ll leave by the front
door. If anyone see us we can say we had this appointment, arrived,
found the door open but with no sign of Henkel so we shouted,
waited a bit and then left. If we're seen climbing over the wall
and a dead body found in the house there's no saying what might
happen. And tomorrow, if anyone asks about my meeting, I'll say
there was no answer.”

Chapter 22

Sunday January 14
1990, evening

SUNDAY evenings were always quiet
at the Churrasco restaurant, situated as it was in Frankfurt's
financial district. As the five young men, mostly dressed in
expensive casual wear and with an exuberance of gold cuff-links and
luxury watches - a couple of the timepieces not quite what they
superficially seemed - variously arrived and made their way between
the tables to the private room at the back there was hardly anyone
present to pay them attention. Most of the arrivals immediately
helped themselves to vodkatinis from the private bar in the corner
before sitting down at the long dining table in the middle of the
room.

"What a dim cunt that Patrick
is." remarked Klaus to no one in particular, looking at the
youngest member who had been rooting around the bottles before
returning with a tall glass of fizzy red liquid he'd carefully
decorated with a slice of orange, a cherry, a lurid bendy straw and
a small plastic umbrella. "Got your cherryade, then?" he added
loudly as Patrick reached the table, then dug Ralph in the ribs and
guffawed, "Not lost his cherry either, I 'd guess!"

Patrick coloured, sat down almost
on his own and took a long sip of Campari. Roughly opposite him at
the head of the table Erwin Hammer was working through figures on a
typed sheet he'd taken from a loose leaf file and was writing notes
on a pad. Hammer was the public face of Phoenix Securities, second
in command to the reclusive figure who was the driving force of the
organisation, the brains behind it and unknown to everyone
else.

The door opened and Günther
Pilsern wandered in, helped himself to a drink and slumped down
opposite Klaus. He pushed his legs under the table, leaned back and
stretched, then took a long drink before setting the glass down
hurriedly. He looked at Erwin who was resting his chin on the edge
of his fist and staring silently at him. "Sorry Boss. Phones were
frantic tonight and I couldn't get away. At least news of Phoenix
is spreading and there's lots of people wanting to sign
up."

“Okay, we’re all here now.
Finally! Except Brains, obviously. He's elsewhere sorting things
out for us. Let's get things going. Günther, now that you've
finally turned up, let us know how … ”

“Before we start I want to know
something.” Rainer interrupted. “You keep talking about Brains.
Brains this, Brains that. But no one ever sees him. He never comes
to any meetings. I've never even heard his voice. Does he really
exist?" He stared at Erwin then leant his pursed mouth on his newly
steepled fingers for a moment. "Or perhaps it's a way that you get
a bigger slice of cake?"

Erwin stared him out and as
Rainer's gaze dropped he said very carefully, "Oh, he exists all
right. Damn right, he exists. All this set-up was his idea. He's a
finance hotshot, knows where the gaps and the opportunities are,
and he's the one who thought it all up." He looked round the table.
"Don't ever, ever, make any mistake about that."

He was silent, looking down at
the scribblings on his pad and adjusting some figures. No one
moved.

Suddenly he smashed the heavy
bottomed glass which had held his drink so hard on the table that a
crack spread through it. He again looked coldly at each member in
turn. A piece of glass fell off under his hand and tinkled on the
table.

"Brains is the one we can thank
for what we're each going to get out of this. But that's OK. If you
don't like the slice you're getting ... " He paused and again
outstared Rainer. "If you don't like the slice you're getting, just
fuck off out of Phoenix. We don't want you. We don't need you.
We're better off without you. I'm not holding anyone against their
will. And I absolutely don't want any passengers. Go on, just piss
off. Now." He pointed theatrically at the door.

Erwin looked round the immobile
group, staring at each person in turn, all of whom looked down at
the table or otherwise glanced away as soon as he caught their
eye.

"Rainer! Vodkatini." He swept the
remains of his glass with the back of his hand towards his
colleague without a glance, returned to his scribblings on the pad
in silence while the others waited, then accepted his drink without
thanks or comment.

"So, if you've all finished
wasting our time with stupid questions, and if everyone realises
just what a good deal this is for them, maybe we can finally get on
with why we're here."

He turned to Ralph, a fat
red-haired man on his left, at 34 the oldest of the group and a
highly successful forex trader with Raiffeisenbank. "Let's start
with the raw stuff, the money. Where do we stand. How is account
5409 doing?" He waved his hand round the table. "Give a little
background to these guys while you're at it."

“We’re doing great!” Ralph said
in his thick Hamburg accent and trader growl. “No one seems to have
noticed that this account is usually on the right side of the
trade, and that the losers, and the occasional winners, are always
the same three, four accounts - ones we also happen to control
through proxies, of course. We take the money we gain on one hand
…” he said while taking the salt cellar from in front of him, “and
we move it to cover the losses on the other accounts.” He moved the
shaker close to Klaus’s beer glass. “It’s a zero sum game, sure,
but what have you created in the process? A reputation. The bank
loves Phoenix Securities now. The credit limit on 5409 was upped
from one million to five last week. That should be enough for what
we'll need, according to our latest projections. Right?”

“We’ll get to that in a moment,”
Erwin said. “Let’s finish with the money first. At what average
rate have we bought the Ost Marks futures?”

“We have five million DM’s
nominal worth of contracts at an average of just over twelve to
one. We bought the first million at a rate of eighteen to one just
after the Wall came down, when all the Easterners kept pouring in
and selling, then the next at ... ”

“Spare us the details, Ralph,”
Erwin interrupted. “We’ve got a lot to cover. Twelve to one is all
I need to know. When do the contracts expire?”

“They’re nine-month contracts, so
they expire between August and November. But we can renew them if
we need ... ”

“Yeah, we know finance as well as
you do, Ralph. We could renew the contracts, but the exchange rate
has moved to less than eight to one in the meantime. Which means
the terms on new contracts will be very different. It also means
we’re already earning a lot of money on the contracts we have if we
sold them on the open market. How much are we making?”

“We’d be making more than two
million marks … in a perfect market. Instead, according to the
bank’s quote, we’re in the money only to the tune of around eight
hundred thousand. That’s mainly because the market is illiquid, but
also because of fears that the Bundesbank will limit the amount of
Ost Marks they’ll let in when they’re eventually converted to DMs.
And because the traders at Salomon are fucking greedy. They know
they’re the market. No one else trades the stuff.”