The Helsinki Pact (39 page)

“Don’t you dare say I’m a thief
ever again. You arsehole. I’ll have you properly next time. You'll
find out just what Ossies are capable of.”

“Just stop it. Stop it! Both of
you. I didn’t get you here to watch a fight between raging dogs.
We’re trying to get a multimillion deal closed, for Christ’s sake.
You can kill yourselves afterwards, for all I care, but right now
we’ve got some serious stuff to work out. You’re acting like
fucking children. Just remember, I control this – pull another
stunt like that, either of you, and you’re out of Phoenix for
good.”

“That’s not ... ” began Klaus,
the rest unsaid as Erwin grabbed him by the shirt at the neck,
twisted it tight, dragging Klaus’s face centimetres from his own,
and said with quiet menace, “Shut it! I make the decisions. You
follow them.”

Erwin sat down, breathing hard
and thinking how things risked falling apart without
him.

“Patrick, sort the table. Klaus,
get us fresh drinks from the bar. The same as before.
Now!”

Erwin sat stiffly, glaring at
each in turn until everything was arranged to his
satisfaction.

“Patrick. You told us about
internal difficulties in the Stasi. Is it a formal investigation?
Isn’t your contact high enough not to care?”

“He’s one of the higher ranking
officers in The Firm and directly in charge of all the regional
headquarters and of covert operations. Earlier that would have
meant that he could do pretty much what he liked. He and his
colleagues just made the law to suit them. But things are different
now. There's even talk of prosecuting Mielke. Mielke! Mielke was
the Stasi. So he’s got to be more careful and a lot of this is
pretty dodgy – utilising the Stasi network for private gain, for
instance.”

“
So is he afraid of
someone below him, or of someone from outside? A judge, maybe, or
magistrate? Where's the problem?”

“He didn’t say, but knowing the
system I’d doubt that a magistrate would get involved. They’re too
busy fixing political trials to be interested in chasing corruption
cases. They’ve always been well trained in minding their own
business and doing as they were told. Could be someone getting
their own back, now things have changed after all this time, of
course.”

“Hmmm.” Erwin thought out loud.
“I guess there’s no way we can easily check if our Stasi contact is
telling the truth or just trying to screw us. Probably a bit of
both. The fact remains, he’s asking for a lot more money. Tell him
I need to meet him personally, in Berlin. Arrange a meeting for two
day’s time. I guess it’s too late now to try to activate the second
group, right?”

Patrick shook his head. “There’s
no way we could get something set up in such a short time with the
SED. And their power and reach is now pretty much non-existent
anyway. We’re stuck with the Stasi and the problem is they know it.
Too many people are in the loop now. They’d make it their business
to destroy us if we cut them out. But they’re armed and they can be
ruthless. Anyone exchanging money will think twice about trying any
funny games. We can count on that at least.”

“Well, this money will have to
come from somewhere. What would a good businessman do in this
case?” He waited, a slight smile on his face, but neither Klaus nor
Patrick made any comment.

“Well, then, I’ll tell you. A
good chief executive would cut his incidental costs.”

The two others looked at him,
puzzled. Costs looked as it they had just gone up by three or four
million Deutsche Marks, possibly more, and Erwin was talking about
cutting them.

“There are three places where
we’ll do that.” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “I kept
telling you to make sure everything was properly tied up, Patrick,
and you should have done this earlier. You haven’t delivered as I
wanted and now even if I can salvage something when I meet this guy
we’re still going to be out several million from the figure we
expected to pay. That’s your responsibility and because you haven’t
delivered fully your percentage will go down from 10% to 7%.
However, given the state we’re in with the numbers and the new
exchange rate that’s still pretty reasonable, probably even a bit
more than the 10% at the beginning would have brought.”

Klaus had been grinning in
triumph during this speech as he watched Patrick’s discomfiture and
irritation with the changed percentage. As Erwin turned to him the
grin vanished and he looked wary.

“As for you, Klaus, you’ve done a
good enough job building up the agents but you haven’t thought
things through, have you? You don’t know the difference between
turnover and profit. You don't know enough about costs and marginal
returns. Sure, there’s now lots of agents and that helps with loans
and the amount we can convert but there’s greatly increased costs,
proportionately increased as well, in servicing all those out of
the way borrowers and that’s going to hit our percentage profits.
Wouldn't surprise me if some even came in at a loss. Part of that
is this extra millions we’ve heard about. So I’m cutting your
percentage as well, knocking the same proportion off. But as I said
to Patrick, you’re still going to do pretty well out of
it.”

It was Patrick’s turn to smile
slightly but each realised they were in a corner, unable to move.
There was nothing either could do about it. There was no document
setting out the formal division of profits or the percentages each
could expect and so they were ultimately in Erwin’s hands. And he’d
made it very clear that he’d act fairly but expected a great deal
from them.

“That’s 6% so far” added Erwin
“and if we’re talking about 20 to 30 million that’s still too
little, maybe a million and a bit, approaching two million
max.”

He drew out from his briefcase a
sheet of paper on which he’d earlier drawn a pyramid to explain to
an agent how everything worked. With a deliberate motion Erwin drew
a big X over the pyramid. He looked at it for a moment. “Bye, bye,
agents’ commissions.” he said. “Bye, bye. That’s an expense just
too far.”

Chapter 32

Wednesday January 17
1990, early hours of the morning

IT was well past midnight when
the door opened and Bettina crept into the bedroom, her clothes
bringing a whiff of cigar smoke from her evening with Roehrberg.
Thomas lay stiffly in bed as he had done for an hour or more since
he’d given up in despair waiting for Bettina’s return.

He had tried to sleep but his
brain churned with thoughts and vivid, painful imaginings of
Bettina and Roehrberg together. He’d drifted into a half sleep but
then jerked awake as he’d seemed to hear again her laugh through
the living room door as he’d moved carefully to escape. Her music
had been overlaid with inaudible words in Roehrberg’s deep growl
and which ended in a chuckle. Then there had been silence, a
silence almost impossible to bear. What were they doing? There was
soft music playing but otherwise the silence continued. Why had she
not made excuses and left? The voices stopped but there were other
sounds which repeated and quickened then died away to more silence.
He drifted in and out of consciousness.

Then, as on a screen, he watched
stubby fingers caress Bettina’s neck and saw her stretch and arch
her neck then nuzzle like a cat, smiling with pleasure. The fingers
undid a button and then a second, ran their backs lightly over the
smooth, swelling skin now partly exposed and showing white with
veins repeating the deep blue of her shirt, then moved lower and
although he looked away the screen followed, lurched into his line
of vision even with his eyes shut, though now the picture was
shifting and fragmenting, now swirling into nothing, now showing
disordered fabric, the hem of a dress or the edge of a shirt and
always those stubby fingers moving and lightly stroking. Then a
knee appeared at the foot of the screen and moved slowly upwards as
it bent and rose, widely separating from its fellow across the
whole width and always those stubby fingers, now stroking and
caressing with more urgency, a soft moaning returning. He had a
flash of pain and with that the screen vanished, leaving him half
awake, the taint of cigar smoke in his nostrils and with a feeling
of immense sadness.

“Thomas. Are you
awake?”

He lay there, still, nursing his
feelings, keeping his jealousy and fury warm. After a moment she
pulled the curtains a small distance apart and the moonlight
streamed in.

Now fully awake he watched as she
undressed, her back turned to him, the soft rays highlighting her
breasts as she turned and walked to retrieve her nightdress then
stretched and raised her arms to slip it on, but shadowing under
them and failing to penetrate lower and deeper. The thought that
she’d been in Roehrberg’s arms filled him with a turmoil of
emotion, of sadness and anger and despair.

As he’d escaped from Roehrberg’s
house and pedalled furiously back to the farm he’d felt resentment
towards her and an intense jealously of the older man. This had
given way to self-pity and despair and at the bottom of the hill he
swung round the corner too fast and wide, for a moment dragging
himself intentionally into the path of a fast approaching car until
the blare of its horn brought him to his senses and he returned to
the proper side.

As Bettina slipped into bed he
knew that he wanted her with a passion beyond mere animal lust, a
feeling that went beyond what he felt when he'd thought of her with
Roehrberg, and he realised that he’d fallen in love with her,
something he’d not earlier been prepared to admit. It had taken
seeing her with another man, a man he both feared and despised, to
make the wall he’d built around his heart crumble. But he had to
accept he’d lost her, as he had with Olga, and then his despair
gave way to anger and he hated her.

“How often has she done this
before?” he thought. And then “I suppose that’s just what she does
to get information out of people.”

He could feel the warmth of her
body next to him, drawing him towards her. He thought back to the
different times he’d felt close to her, that first evening when
he’d tried to impress at the French restaurant and the night the
Wall fell and he stayed in her apartment. There had seemed then to
be a growing attachment. He’d felt her close enough to reach her,
to develop love between them, but had lacked the courage to try. If
he did then that might confirm his worst fears, remove any
remaining hope. Maybe his instinct had been correct. It seemed to
him now that it was all in his imagination, that she’d been using
him, just as she did everyone, playing with his emotions the better
to control him. He was her responsibility within the organisation
Thomas reminded himself. He had been a fool to think anything true
could ever happen between them.

She turned, and was facing him
now, her head resting on the pillow. He could feel her breath on
his face and the familiar smell of her skin had replaced the cigar
smoke of her clothes.

“Are you awake?” she
breathed.

He lay for a moment, pretending
sleep, but it was too much for him to bear. He opened his eyes and
stared at her in the darkness as he might at an unwelcome stranger.
He didn’t recognise his own voice when he spoke.

“I’ve not slept. Not properly
anyway. Did you enjoy yourself at Roehrberg’s? At Rudolf's. Or is
there a pet name you use now?”

She turned and reached for the
side light, fumbling for a moment then finding the switch and
turning it on. She glanced at him but then looked away almost
immediately and lay down, turned away from him and burrowed into
the bedclothes. He blinked in the light and sat up a little in the
bed, leaning on his elbow towards her. Her voice became
increasingly muffled.

“You think I went to bed with
him, do you? You think I just went out for a good time, and eine
gute Ficke to complete the evening. ... think I’m a whore ... I’m
an easy lay ... you bastard ... "

He grabbed her shoulders and
wrenched her round to face him.

“If you’ve got something to tell
me, say it to my face.”

“He asked me to give him a lift
back up the hill from the restaurant and when I was about to drop
him at his gate I noticed your bicycle nearby and realised you were
probably still inside. That's why I accepted his invitation in,
because I thought maybe you could do with not having him prowling
around while you escaped. But I don’t have to justify
myself!”

She wrenched herself away,
turning from him, and they lay in sullen silence for some
minutes.

Thomas sighed then stretched out
his hand and at his touch on her shoulder she shrugged him off and
burrowed deeper away from him. Once more he stretched out, this
time cupping his hand on her shoulder, pressing firmly, not forcing
her to turn but making it clear what he wanted. Then he removed his
hand and lay back and after a moment she turned partly towards him
and lay on her back in turn looking at the ceiling, now breathing
more calmly. Neither spoke. Shortly afterwards, as she settled, he
felt her knuckles brushing his knee in what might have been an
accident had it not been for the moment of hesitation in contact.
He glanced at her.

“Roehrberg’s study was full of
documents packed in cartons." he said. "Remember those things we
thought had gone missing from Henkel’s shelves. Looks like they
ended up with Roehrberg. I managed to take some pictures and grab a
few documents before a couple of men arrived to remove them and I
nearly got caught. Roehrberg’s taking them with him, wherever he’s
going.”