Another Kind of Country (26 page)

Even a small wind, Miller thought, would blow you away.

He turned to Rosa. ‘Your coat . . .’

‘I can’t stay – Papa sent me.’ But she gave him
the leather coat anyway.

‘The general sent you?’ Miller tried to focus, but the nearness of her made it impossible to concentrate.

‘He has to go to Leipzig in the morning – he sent me to warn you.’

‘Why warn me about Leipzig?’ He didn’t care about distant Leipzig; he could taste her breath across the small space between them.

She shook her head. ‘Papa will be in Leipzig so he couldn’t warn you himself.’ She bit her lip. ‘It was cold out there.’ She nodded in the direction of the rear entrance, the dustbins, the place where you crouched until somebody didn’t close the door properly.

Miller wanted to touch her, hold her, warm her.

‘I’ll make you some tea,’ he said.

‘I can’t stay – he just wanted me to warn you.’

Warn me about black eyes I could drown in, soft skin that would scorch me
. Miller said, ‘Warn me about what?’

‘Papa said he thinks they’ll come for you soon, maybe even tomorrow – he’s afraid it’s his fault, that he’s exposed you to them.’

‘
Them? Who’s
coming for me?’

‘The Stasi, Patrick.’ Miller could barely hear her whispered words. ‘The Stasi, Papa thinks they’ll take you to Normannenstrasse.’

The Stasi
. A bad dream made flesh. A cold breath from a place you didn’t want to know about. But everybody knew about Normannenstrasse, the complex of tall buildings that everybody hoped never to be taken to.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Papa knows he’s being watched.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘He tells me very little, says it’s safer
not to know too much. But he’s hinted that there are factions in the state getting ready for what he calls the “endgame”. And some of them, he thinks, are also from outside the state.’

She leaned into Miller and he felt her tremble against him. Miller drew back from her, hoped she hadn’t felt his response.

Concentrate, he told himself. ‘But why me?’

‘Papa thinks they’ve come to you through him.’

Miller already knew that General Reder was being watched.

‘But who spies on a general, a hero of the state?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer, came tight against him, wrapped in his arms.

There was no need to answer. Generals were watched by other generals, marshals, Politburo bosses, captains of multinational industries.

‘I’m only small fry. What am I doing in the middle of all this – all these factions and endgames?’

She leaned back in his arms, smiled up at him. ‘Are you sorry?’

‘No.’ A hoarseness in his voice, the deep pools of her eyes inviting. ‘No,’ he said, ‘never.’

She drew his head down, kissed him fiercely. He felt her tongue, warm, sweet, filling his mouth. He drew her closer, pressed her to his groin.

‘No, not now.’ She drew away from him, her hand on his chest.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be, it’s just that I really must go.’ She kissed him quickly on the lips, smiled. ‘It’s not as if I’m leaving the country.’

‘No, me neither.’ He tried to smile, tried to forget his physical longing.

‘But why? You never told me why you came here, why you stay.’

‘It’s a long
story, Rosa.’

‘So give me the shortened version, Herr Patrick Miller.’

‘OK, I’ll try,’ he said.

He told her of London, of his studies, his left-wing articles for non-paying left-wing journals, his elevation to columnist with a national newspaper, his decision to ‘experience life in a practising socialist society’.

She listened attentively to his whispered words, listened as if she didn’t already know the story – the single page, marked CONFIDENTIAL, that General Reder, deliberately and wordlessly, had left lying on the table. She tried not to listen to the question thrown at her by her own heart: why do I dissemble so, act out a pretence, a lie, with this man?

‘And that was it, Patrick? Just a decision to throw up a career and move to East Berlin?’

She caught the sharp look he gave her, hated herself for this charade.

‘It was a bit more complicated than that, Rosa.’ He sounded tired, uncomfortable.

‘Can you tell me?’

And he knew he must. Part of him felt that he shouldn’t, that to tell was just one more betrayal in a maze of falsehood. Yet to conceal the truth was to leave another wall between himself and Rosa. And Miller was growing tired of walls.

He told her about Redgrave, about the woman, Dr Shearing, how they had pressurized him to give up his life.

‘But I don’t understand, Patrick.’ She hated herself but it was the missing link in the typed page. ‘How could they force you?’

He turned away from her, went to stand by the windows, parted the blinds a little. She watched him staring out at the darkness, pitied him, hated herself for this act of betrayal.

‘I’ve never told anyone about this.’ He went on looking out at the darkness
as he spoke and she heard the darkness in his halting words. She saw the dark at the top of the stairs, felt the dark in a boy’s heart, the dark in the dark house in a place called Wolverhampton.

She felt the dark in her own heart, in her pretence.

She went to him, touched his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Thank you for trusting me.’

‘Trusting you with my sordid story.’

‘It’s not
your
sordid story, Patrick.’

‘Maybe I should have told my mother.’ He let the blinds fall, turned to her. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing any more.’

‘You’re here with me,’ she said, ‘and I’m here with you.’

He looked at her. ‘You’re here because General Reder sent you.’

‘I should have left,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t.’ She kissed him. ‘Papa said to remember that they don’t know about the messages.’

‘The messages I carry.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you hate me for it?’ He forced himself to meet her eyes. ‘For the messages?’

She shook her head, smiled at him.

Then they clung to each other. Mouths, tongues, hands touching, exploring. Obscuring the ponytail and the birthmark; stilling the moaning behind the door at the top of the stairs.

This time Miller drew back, held her from him.

‘Rosa, it’s late, you should go.’

‘I know.’ Her voice husky. ‘We’ll have to be quick.’

‘But—’

For a moment they stalled, caught in anticipation. Then a fumble with buttons, underwear on the floor, hands searching, the carpet hard and rough against their skin. And for a longer moment – the briefest moment – their bodies fused, lost in one another, moving
together on the rough carpet.

You could hold the night and the world outside at bay for only so long.

He stood, helped her to her feet. She took the tiny underpants from his hands. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t bother – they’re not exactly going to keep me warm, are they?’ She laughed. ‘Still, General Reder wouldn’t approve, so . . .’ She stepped into the knickers, drew them over her hips.

He wanted to tell her she was wonderful, that her irreverence made him giddy.

‘I’m terrible, aren’t I?’ Rosa said. ‘Those South American genes.’ Laughter in her whispering.

‘It’s late, how will you get home?’ White noise and flickering black and white from the TV.

‘I parked the car a couple of streets away, just in case.’

‘You have the general’s car?’

She shook her head. ‘My very own Trabi.’ The smile left her face. ‘I knew I shouldn’t take it but Papa insisted.’ For a moment she looked shamefaced. ‘People wait half a lifetime to get one but for people like the general . . .’ She shrugged.

Miller watched her button the overcoat, draw the collar around her throat. ‘I’ll walk with you to your car.’

‘No, Patrick, it’s not far, just a few streets.’ She kissed him quickly. ‘It’s safer if I go alone.’ Her words hung between them like a shadow of the world outside.

She came into his arms and he felt her heart beating against his own.

‘Until tomorrow,’ he said.

‘But remember,’ she touched his face, ‘why I came here.’

Maybe they’ll come for you tomorrow – the Stasi.

‘I would’ve come anyway, Patrick.’ Her words nuzzling in his ear with the tip of her tongue.

He opened the door
quietly and she tiptoed past him into the dark, empty corridor. At the top of the stairs she turned, blew him a kiss, a smile. He waited with the door ajar but only the building’s silence came back to him. He thought of her hurrying through the night-time streets of the sleeping city and he smiled to himself.
I’m still not sure why you forced me to come here, Redgrave, but I’m truly glad you did
.

October 1989

East Berlin

‘Reder’s daughter was a long time in there.’ Herbert Dover sipped at the hot coffee, fingered his birthmark with his other hand. ‘Too goddamn long. When she parked the Trabi I tailed her on foot, watched her hide for damn near thirty minutes at the back entrance to an apartment block on Hermann Strasse until someone left the door open and then I had to sit in that shitty Polski Fiat for another couple of hours until she came back. The heater in that damned excuse-for-an-auto is pretty useless but I couldn’t use it anyway – it sounds like a fucking tractor – and we don’t want any more over-enthusiastic Vopos crossing our paths, do we, Redgrave?’

Redgrave nodded but said nothing. Like many of his foulmouthed countrymen, Herbert Dover was a cross to be borne. Still, the Americans had their uses, especially their surveillance hardware and their dollars. It was their dollars that were financing this operation behind the Wall and their minuscule equipment that ensured that this safe house in Köpenick was bug-free.

The price you paid was the company of louts like Dover.

‘I checked the names at the front door. None of them meant anything to me but there was one name that could be Kraut or
English – a P. Miller on the fourth floor.’

‘He’s English,’ Redgrave said. ‘Or used to be, he works at the censorship office, travels on an East German passport now.’

‘A fucking Commie renegade!’

Redgrave smiled. The Americans had never learned to button their lip, play their cards close.

‘We hear,’ Redgrave said, ‘that Miller has the task of checking General Reder’s memoirs for orthodoxy in all things Marxist.’

‘Jesus H! What a country – a goddamn limey gets the job of vetting a German general’s life story.’ Dover shook his head. ‘So this guy Miller is ballin’ the general’s daughter to spice up the boring job of proof-reading – that about it?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Redgrave said. It was essential to give the Americans something – you didn’t want them to pick up the football and piss off home in a sulk – but it was always advisable to keep some of your cards up your sleeve. Besides, maybe Miller
was
servicing the general’s brat. It was something to find out, maybe something with which to rein in Master Miller, who seemed to be getting just a little frisky of late.

‘You know this Miller guy?’ Dover asked.

The sound of a car froze both men. It was almost 3 a.m.; even in daylight there was little traffic on this back street in Köpenick, not far from the Wall. The car chugged past – the unmistakable chugging of a Trabi – and both men relaxed. You could sweep a safe house daily for bugs, you could keep your neighbours at arm’s length, you could try to be invisible, but in this city behind the Wall you never really knew when eyes were watching, when ears were listening. And you could never legislate for simple bad luck.

Redgrave switched off the light and crossed to the window. He edged the curtains apart, looked at the street below. The
street was silent, unlit. He fixed the curtains carefully before sitting down.

‘So, you know much about this Miller guy?’

Redgrave nodded. ‘He used to be a rather well-known English journalist of the pink variety, took it into his head some years ago to move to the land of socialist milk-and-honey.’

‘You Brits have a knack for producing guys like that – like Burgess and Maclean and Philby.’

Redgrave was nettled. ‘Or even your dear Dean Reed,’ he said.

‘Oh, yeah, our Red Elvis.’ Dover chuckled. ‘I’m sure Dean took just
volumes
of intelligence across the Wall.’ Americans, Redgrave thought, are not even ashamed of their own inadequacies. Any failure is interpreted and presented as ‘a learning experience’. And for their dollars we have to kowtow to them.

‘Is the funding in place for the next twelve months?’ Redgrave asked.

‘Yeah, old Uncle Sam has come through with the dollars,’ Dover said. ‘No expense spared in our struggle to share democracy with the downtrodden masses of Eastern Europe.’

‘Do I detect a note of cynicism?’

‘What you probably detect, Redgrave, is the pain in my knees. They trouble me in cold weather.’

‘You hurt your knees playing football?’

‘Some football.’ Dover grimaced. ‘A difference of opinion while we were taking out Allende back in seventy-three.’

‘You were in Chile?’ Redgrave looked at Dover with renewed interest.
You never knew where you were with these Americans
.

‘I was there all right. Trouble is I came out of it on a stretcher with both kneecaps missing.’

‘At least you came out of it – not
like Allende.’

‘Pinko fucker.’

‘Bit of a coincidence though,’ Redgrave said.

‘What?’

‘You helped bring down Allende and here you are tonight keeping a friendly eye on the general’s daughter.’

Redgrave saw the puzzlement on Dover’s face. ‘You don’t know?’

‘What the fuck’re you talking about?’

‘General Reder’s daughter – she’s his stepdaughter, Rosa Rossman. Her father was a minister in Allende’s government.’

‘What did you say her name was?’ Dover’s voice was a whisper.

‘Rossman. Her father—’

‘Yeah, I know who he was. He died in the shootout.’ Dover felt Redgrave’s eyes on him. Time to be cool, give nothing away; you only worked with these Brits when you had no choice. ‘Nice of you to let me know.’ The sarcasm drooled around his words.