The Helsinki Pact (40 page)

“Well, that's good." she said
flatly. "That could tie him in to Henkel’s death.”

He looked at her, wondering why
she wasn't giving him more credit for what he'd
achieved.

“Yes, but there’s more. The two
men were talking about stuff as they worked, this and that, not a
lot that meant much to me. But they mentioned someone getting just
what he deserved, and they were pleased about that. They also
mentioned Dieter, with hostility, and it sounded as if someone had
been killed or maybe was to be killed. Do you think Dieter ...
?”

Bettina stared at the ceiling for
a long moment, then turned to Thomas.

“It’s not Dieter. It was Herren.
He was on his way to a meeting, perhaps with Kohl although I don't
know, and his car was ambushed, blown up. Roehrberg had just
learned of it and told me tonight. He was killed instantly and that
there wasn't much left of the car.”

“Herren? Herren assassinated?!”
Thomas’s mind flew back to the interrogation at the Stasi HQ in
Berlin after his visit to Frankfurt. It made more sense now and he
realised how they'd used him and how the information he'd given had
led to this. His heart started to race and he could hardly breathe.
He stared at Bettina, enraged that it apparently meant little to
her.

“Jesus, Bettina. You’re a real
cunt." He was shouting now, not knowing what he was doing, heedless
that it was the middle of the night. He found himself grabbing
handfuls of her hair, pulling her down and towards him, shaking her
like a terrier with a rat. "You don't give a shit! You and Dieter
don’t give a shit about what happens to other people. Just so long
as you get the information you want. That's all that matters. I
told you what I'd learned. And you killed Herren because of that. I
killed Herren! How can you just lie there? It's got everything to
do with you. You’re in this as well.”

Sweat rushed down Thomas’s face
and he felt chilled then hit by a violent convulsion in his
stomach, acid filling his throat and spilling into his mouth. He
threw her back, tumbled from the bed and rushed to the bathroom,
kneeling by the lavatory pan to retch, the porcelain cold on his
face. Returning, his fury had changed to a cold anger at
Bettina.

“You and Dieter killed Herren.
And I killed himguided you! And now Stephan could be at risk of his
life. All because of what you made me do.”

“Thomas, I understand your
feelings but that's not ... ”

“Don’t patronise me. You don’t
understand the tiniest bit of my feelings here. You just play with
my feelings to control me. At one point I thought I could trust you
but I know now what a goddamn fool I’ve been.”

“It was nothing to do with
Dieter. Nothing to do with us. Nothing to do with the information
you gave us. Marcus Wolf and Mielke had already learned about
Herren. And it was the Red Army Fraktion, the Baader-Meinhof gang
as people call them, who did it. Nothing to do with us. Believe me.
Nothing to do with the Firm. Herren was hit by a West German
terrorist group just as they’ve hit other capitalists in the past
and will again.”

The noise of Thomas’s open hand
slapping Bettina’s cheek startled them both. She fell back on the
pillow, her cheek violently reddening as tears ran down her face.
Thomas raised his hand again and then slowly dropped it, overcome
with remorse, with a deep weariness and shame but lost as to what
to do next. His anger ebbed but making any gesture of apology or
reconciliation was beyond him. He turned away, buried his his face
in the pillow, his hands clasped on his head, his knees on his
chest and his body tightly curled.

As he sobbed desperately he
became aware that Bettina had moved close to him, spooned round his
back, and was gently stroking the nape of his neck, her other arm
lying over his waist and pressing on his knee. He pushed her
violently away and then later, as she persisted half turned towards
her, straightening his legs, his head pressed to her chest and lay
there, his despair and anger draining away.

After some considerable time,
each of them drifting in and out of sleep, he settled further on
her and feeling a nipple through the thin cotton of her nightdress
caught it with his lips and brushed it with his tongue, playing as
it stiffened to his touch and as she settled closer round him he
felt the touch of bone and hair on his hip. When he nipped her
breast lightly with his teeth she yelped and pushed him away and as
they smiled at each other settled down more closely, Bettina on her
back, Thomas further turned towards her with his upper arm now
resting on her belly, the back of his fingers lightly brushing her
inner thigh.

“Later.” she said, turning the
light off. “Later, Thomas. Now we must sleep. We've so much to do
tomorrow. Good night.” But in the darkness she lay there as before,
still.

He moved and kissed her lightly
on the chin before brushing his lips over hers then lay back, his
arm lying as before, feeling the warmth of her lower thigh on his
hand. She clasped her free hand with his and drew it upwards
leaving him to curl and uncurl his fingers in slow glissandi, his
courting finger now dipping and stroking and easing open the
moistened, tumescent surfaces, sliding it gently upwards and and
curvingly towards him, upwards and back, as her breathing quickened
and, moving her hand cupped and grasped and stroked him in turn
until with an urgency new to each of them they joined fully
together.

Chapter 33

Wednesday January 17
1990

“GOOD morning! I hope you both
slept well.”

"Thank you, yes." said Thomas. "I
had a wonderful night. Both of us, I think."

Thomas glanced at Bettina and
they smiled complicitly at each other as Frau Dornbusch welcomed
them with a jug of steaming coffee and set a large plate of toasted
bread on the table.

“There was a call early this
morning for you, Fräulein.” she added. “He called himself Georg and
said he needed to talk with you urgently. He said to come to his
office, if possible.”

Thomas looked enquiringly at
Bettina but she ignored him, giving her attention to the butter and
conserve she was spreading on the toast in front of her. They
chatted with Frau Dornbusch about trivial matters for a few minutes
before quickly finishing breakfast and returning to their
room.

"Stop it!" she said, trying to
sound severe but spoiling the effect with her smile as Thomas slid
his arms round her waist and pulled her towards him. "I have to ...
mmmhhh .... get ready .... mmmmmhhhhh ... to see ... " She finally
pulled away from his embrace. " ... Georg." It sounded like a
command as she skipped out his reach.

"I'll see him on my own and you
can stay here and check through those documents you stole from
Roehrberg, find out if they're interesting. We'll catch up later on
back here."

In half an hour she was at
Georg’s office finding him again oblivious to interruption, working
on a pile of documents. Again she watched him for a few moments
before she knocked softly, then more loudly, on the door. He
glanced up, shook his head very slightly, waved her away and
gestured that they should meet outside in a few minutes. When he
appeared round the corner of the building he looked grave and
serious and with an air quite different to the one he’d had at the
previous meeting.

“What’s up, Georg? You look like
something terrible has happened.”

“Let’s take a walk a bit further
away, shall we? It’s about the mill. Yesterday I asked some of my
older colleagues if they knew of any registrations of sales of
state-held industrial assets in recent months. A couple of them
seem to know everything that goes on here. Let's find somewhere
quiet, somewhere no one can hear us, and I'll tell you what I've
learned.”

He took her arm and they walked
in silence for some minutes, crossing the Elbe and making for a
small park on the other side of the river. A narrow footpath
wandered over the grass and Georg selected an isolated bench set
some distance back from the track and away from bushes and
trees.

“I managed to find the
approximate date yesterday through a friend who used to work at the
mill. Apparently the restructuring was announced and approved a
month and a half ago. I assume if the mill was sold it must have
been at the same time. So yesterday afternoon I started checking
the archives within the last couple of months for the sale details.
I even went back to three months before, but there was nothing
there.”

“That’s very strange.”

“Listen, Bettina. While I was
there, Wolfgang, one of the older colleagues I mentioned - we call
him the walking archive as he seems to know so much - came in to
look for something. So I asked him if he knew of any documents
relative to the privatisation of a flour mill. He immediately
looked startled, then fearful and turned around to check if there
was anyone else in the room. He closed the door, came over to me,
put his finger to his lips and whispered, in a tone I’d never heard
him use: ‘Why are you poking around in this, Georg? Don’t get
yourself in a mess. Forget about it. Just forget all about it if
you care for your life and your family.’ He looked seriously
worried. I think you’ve hit on something very suspicious and very
ugly.”

Bettina sat looking at him,
intrigued by this new twist. “But then ... why didn’t you find the
document? Did you check everywhere?”

“I went through everything, file
by file. There was absolutely no sign of it.”

"What about Wolfgang? Can you
trust him? Maybe he was warning you off because it's something he's
involved in."

"Trust?!" he said sharply, and
laughed. "I should have thought you would know you can fully trust
almost no one in this place. No one. Nearly everyone's a spy of
some sort. Even family members." He glared at Bettina and then
after a moment took her hand and patted it. He shook his head
slightly and sighed.

"I'm sorry. That was unkind. I do
believe what you told me earlier. It's just. This place. It gets to
you and you can't think straight. The police and the Stasi watch
everybody. Everybody's told it's their duty watch others, to report
anything suspicious. It's to reduce crime and anti-social
behaviour, they say. They tap telephones, listen to people,
photograph people, keep records, note who meets whom and where and
for how long." He laughed shortly, without humour. "They say it's
for state security, for everyone's security, that if you've nothing
to hide you've nothing to fear. And they wonder why people go mad,
why they try to escape, why they kill themselves. That's the
corrosive effect on society, on any society, of spying on
everyone."

They sat in silence, George still
holding Bettina's hand then got up and they walked slowly across
the grass towards the river.

"Wolfgang is sound. At least, as
far as I can tell, and I have no choice but to trust
him."

Abruptly Georg stopped walking
and stood motionless staring at the distant ruins of the
Frauenkirche across the river and just visible through the trees
along the banks. Bettina held her breath, waiting.

“Unless, ... unless they forged
the dates and the protocols.” he said slowly. “That would explain
why the matter is so sensitive and dangerous. If Wolfgang knew that
had happened that would explain his alarm. It’s a serious
infraction of Court procedure. Falsification of public documents is
a serious crime in law. Sure, the Party just changes the law when
it wants to keep tabs on people's communications but this is
different. That’s it! That’s what must have happened.”

“But how is that possible? Aren’t
the documents registered one by one, with all sorts of signatures
from different people?”

Georg was again silent, thinking
over the issues. He spoke slowly and carefully.

“The various parties involved
sign the documents at earlier stages and these are certified by the
public notary. Then there are only two signatures required for the
registration of all public documents. One is that of a state
notary, the other that of the president of the Court. So unless
they counterfeited these signature it means the notary or the
president, or quite possibly both, are involved. But the documents
also need to be assigned a protocol number and registered in the
relevant archives. That’s the job Wolfgang does. Someone must have
told him to add a document to the existing protocol lists. That
could only be someone very senior within the Court – well, unless
Wolfgang’s part of it and did it on his own initiative, and I’d
find that very hard to believe.”

“But why wouldn’t they have just
registered it now? Why would they backdate something like
this?”

“I guess they’d want to protect
themselves in case anyone decided to investigate the sale. Properly
done, it would be extremely difficult for anyone to prove that the
sale didn’t take place a long time ago and that the procedure
followed wasn’t regular according to the law at the
time.”

"Could someone other than
Wolfgang assign a number and register the document so that he
wouldn't know?" asked Bettina.

"Yes, possibly. Particularly if
the insertion in the archives was supposedly some years ago." He
thought for some moments the shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not.
Well, yes, they could, but Wolfgang's meticulous and sooner or
later he'd find the cuckoo and wonder why it was there. That's
what's happened, I'm sure of it. He's followed it through and been
told in no uncertain terms that he'd better forget what he saw. So
it must be someone really high up. Poor Wolfgang. He's the one in
danger. No wonder he was terrified when I mentioned it."