The Helsinki Pact (45 page)

"Perfect! I can drop you near the
Hofkirche, maybe twenty past. It's only a short walk from there and
I can go on to Georg's. It's busy so no one's likely to notice us.
And then I'll come and pick you up at the Dörfchen, what, nine
maybe, or a bit before?"

"Come earlier, 8.30, twenty to,
and you can have a drink with Stephan. He really likes you,
remember, and it would be good to meet up with him
again."

By five the report was finished
and checked and they spent some time sorting and packing their
things ready for an early start in the morning. They went to the
kitchen, settled their bill with Frau Dornbusch and drank some
coffee while she prepared supper for her family and then went
upstairs and got ready to go out. After the storm earlier in the
day the evening was quiet and still and the moon was a little
smaller and less bright than it had been the night before. Bettina
dropped Thomas by the Hofkirche, barely stopping, almost bundling
him out of the car, and around six forty, after following a
deliberately circuitous route and confident that she hadn't been
followed, she walked the last few hundred metres and rang Georg's
door bell.

Georg was tired and sweaty from
working in the small, airless darkroom and was busy drying with a
small, antiquated hair dryer a batch of prints pegged up on the
line. A pile of contact sheets and selected enlargements were
scattered on the table. The heat from the hair dryer made the room
unpleasantly stuffy, heightening the smell of the chemicals and the
acrid odour of the stop bath, and she immediately felt
claustrophobic and uncomfortable. She took a clutch of prints into
the hallway and as she waited glanced through them. Thomas had
taken very clear pictures and all the minor details were sharp. She
examined particularly closely the ones of Henkel’s letter and
decided that a calligraphy expert would be able to make a judgement
based on the prints rather than needing to see the
original.

This was useful information to
pass on to Dieterrich and she remembered that she needed to update
him anyway. For a brief moment she considered using Georg’s phone
then realised that with his background it was certain that his
private phone would be tapped. Later, once Georg had finished his
work on the prints, she would call from the public phone a few
streets away which Georg used when he needed to keep his
conversations private.

Of course the probability that
the Stasi had tapped this public phone as well was very high, she
thought, but it couldn't be helped and at least anything she said
there wouldn't directly incriminate Georg. She would nevertheless
have to be very careful in what she said to Dieter.

She turned and knocked on the
door to see how Georg was getting on.

"Turn off the hall light and come
in. Nearly finished. Sorry I've been longer than I'd
thought."

In the dull red light she could
see Georg fixing the last of the enlargements he'd made. He fished
the two sheets out of the tray, rinsed them in another bath, let
them drain for a few seconds and hung them up with perspex clips on
the line above his head. He switched on the white light, yawned and
then stretched.

"All done. I thought you might
like some really large prints of the handwritten note so I've added
these. Thomas did a good job with focus and exposure. They've all
come out pretty well."

He picked up the hair dryer, set
it going on low and waved it around in the general direction of the
wet sheets, gradually bringing it closer as he noticed Bettina
glance at her watch. He rubbed his fingers over the surface, gave
the prints a further few wafts of warm air then took them down and
put everything into a large envelope and handed it to
Bettina.

"Georg. That's wonderful. Thank
you so much. You've no idea how much this has helped us but I'll
tell you the whole story later when I'm able to."

She held him for a moment then
left the house and walked back to her car. It was later than she'd
expected but it didn't really matter as she'd plenty of time in
hand before collecting Thomas from the restaurant. She sat in the
car for a short while, thinking things over, and then drove to the
telephone box, waiting discreetly about 50 metres away until it
became empty.

An unfamiliar male voice
answered. She gave her code name and asked for Dieter and in a
moment he picked up the receiver.

“Hello Hyena. Anything urgent to
report?” Dieter’s voice was very controlled, almost bored, and she
was immediately alert. "He's got someone with him." she thought.
She chose her words carefully.

"The matter I was investigating
seems clear in its implications. I have very good copies of
Henkel's suicide letter and from those you'll be able to establish
his hand in writing it. There's also some documents about that and
about related matters involving other parties which I have, as well
as other very good copies of more materials which are interesting
and relevant. However, there's one additional issue I've come
across. It's probably nothing but a little puzzling. Are you aware
of any privatisation activity in East Germany, specifically in
Dresden, in the last few months?”

There was a silence before Dieter
answered. “No.” he said slowly."No. Not directly."

“Well, we seem to have ...
”

“We can examine your report and
discuss matters in more detail later. Henkel has confessed and
committed suicide. That seems all clear and straightforward and so
your mission is over." Dieter's voice was firm and brusque.
"However, I need you for another urgent matter which has only just
come up. Return to base immediately, tonight. We’ll meet in the
office in which we discussed the Prokov case.”

He hung up before Bettina could
say anything. He hadn’t even asked how Thomas’s investigation into
Phoenix was proceeding, she realised. She thought over the
exchange, now convinced that someone was in the office or perhaps
even listening on the line. She put down the receiver with a strong
sense of unease, wishing Dieter had told them openly whom they were
playing against. They’d discussed the Prokov case at Dieter’s
house, she remembered, so he probably now trusted no one at all.
Just what was going on here?

She hurried to her car, returned
to the Dornbusch farm where the older boy helped her load the car
with their things. She took a last look round the room, said her
goodbyes and hurried off to collect Thomas. At least he wouldn't be
hungry on the drive, she thought.

Chapter 38

Thursday January 18
1990, evening

THOMAS arrived at the Semper Oper
a few minutes after the half hour to find Stephan already waiting,
punctual as always. As he approached he saw that Stephan was
looking preoccupied and wondered if meeting so soon after Herren's
assassination was really such a good idea. "We've known each other
for ever, though," he thought "so I guess we can talk about things
in ways that Stephan might find difficult with his
colleagues."

They greeted each other warmly
and hugged, Stephan seeming to prolong the contact a little longer
than usual. They separated and Thomas held Stephan by the shoulders
at arms’ length, looking him over.

“You look well, Stephan, older
but more authoritative and mature. And tired, you look tired." They
looked at each other for a moment and then Thomas dropped his arms.
"And Herren. I guess, are you, have you, that was a huge shock to
me so I can't think what it must have been like for you, so close
to him."

Stephan nodded without speaking
and they turned and walked in silence towards the nearby restaurant
in the Theaterplatz where they intended eating.

"It was a huge shock to me, to
everyone." said Stephan after a while. "You know how sometimes
things happen and although you know they've happened part of you
doesn't believe it. Maybe that's because it's just too big to take
in. Even though I knew what had happened I expected to see Herren
yesterday. There were things we had to talk about, important
things, and I was kind of waiting to be summoned to his office but
of course that never happened. I can't believe I shan't see him
again."He turned away and passed his hand quickly over his eyes and
shook his head slightly.

Thomas touched him lightly on the
shoulder and they continued walking in silence for some
minutes.

"I had a call from that guy I'd
got to know at university, Richard Köpp, you remember? I found out
later he'd gone into the BNG but we've not seen each other for a
while. We talked on the phone. I know he was after information that
I could give him, anything that might give a lead, but he was so
sympathetic, Thomas. And that really helped, you know, like he
cared and I could say things to him, like how much Herren meant to
me. You know. Just that. It really helped. Just ... "

He shrugged and they walked on,
saying nothing.

"BNG?"

"BNG? Did I say that? Sorry, I
meant BND, of course."

They stopped for a moment and
stood looking out over the river, saying nothing.

“But things are otherwise going
well, Thomas. I’m frantically busy travelling all over the place,
analysing potential joint ventures between Deutsche Bank and the
local Eastern ones, the project that Herren asked me to take on
earlier. It was dreadful when he was killed and there was chaos,
still is chaos obviously and I guess that will continue for a bit.
Of course the bank had backup structures in place but because of
Herren’s position and the fact that so much of his work was secret,
commercially and politically, things have got pretty awkward and
confused. Now there are people jockeying for position, pushing
their own agendas, that sort of thing. No one's asked me about what
I'm doing so I decided to just keep quiet, get on with everything,
make sure that it's only me that knows in full detail what's going
on with the project. In any case it's too far advanced and too good
for us to pull out and if things work out I’ll be in a pretty good
position now.”

There was an odd note in
Stephan's voice, almost of pleasure and of satisfaction with
events, Thomas thought, and he glanced sharply at his friend. They
stopped for a moment on the river bank to admire the baroque façade
and colonnaded front of the Italienisches Dörfchen Restaurant ahead
of them, before climbing the wide steps into the foyer, now ablaze
with light. Neither had visited before.

"Bettina comes from Dresden, as
you know I think, and so she recommended this place. It's
apparently quite special not only for its food and atmosphere but
also its history. It's mid-eighteenth century. The Elector of
Saxony, I think she said it was, was offered the Polish crown but
first had to convert to Catholicism. The Pope asked the Elector to
seal the deal by building an outstandingly beautiful church in the
heart of the city - that's the Hofkirche, right here in front -
which had to be designed by an Italian architect and built by
specialist Italian workers. They all lived here, hence the name of
the building, the little Italian village. Then in the early 1900s
the Elbe overflowed and damaged it badly and when it was rebuilt it
becameNow it’s a restaurant specialising in both Italian cooking,
as you might expect, but also local Saxon food."

“So what’s the speciality, Polish
pizza with potato dumplings?”

Thomas laughed, and followed
Stephan as the waiter led them to their table in the baroque and
somewhat stuffy grandeur of the main dining area.

“How are things going with
Bettina? She seemed a great girl, very bright, I thought. What are
you doing here, other than maybe going to museums?”

"Oh, just that I'd never been to
Dresden, I had some time free and Bettina thought she'd show me
around. Her mother doesn't live here any longer but Bettina
expected some of her old friends might be about. She's seen one or
two and I've really just wandered around looking at things both
with her and on my own. We're going back tomorrow or Saturday.
She'll be along later to pick me up so you'll see her
then."

"And what about Berlin? You're
still there and still studying, right? How's that
going?"

“I’m working on my thesis at the
moment. I wasn't quite sure what direction to take but I've now
selected ‘The calculation of the monetary mass in East Germany' as
the topic. My supervisor is quite excited by that because of all
the political changes. If monetary union does go ahead I’ll work in
something on the effects of unification on the DM.” He looked at
Stephan. “That's your area isn't it? You probably know more about
what is being discussed right now than anybody else.”

“Well, maybe. I was in some of
the early meetings with the Bundesbank but as things heated up the
numbers became much smaller and Herren decided I needn’t attend.
But I do know a lot of people in high places, of course, and I keep
myself informed. I'll be glad to help if I can.”

“So what’s the latest on
unification?”

Before Stephan could answer the
waiter appeared with their beers, setting a brimming mug clumsily
in front of Stephan so that the liquid slopped out on the table and
over the trousers of Stephan's dark Alpaca wool suit.

“Damn it!” he said, moving back
hurriedly, and staring at the waiter who was now dabbing casually
at the beer on the table cloth after a perfunctory
apology.