Another Kind of Country (32 page)

‘Like to
explain that?’

‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. You had a couple of Vopos take that woman – General Reder’s daughter! – out of her classroom in broad daylight and then you attempt to rape her in some godforsaken shed in the middle of nowhere.’ Redgrave shook his head, almost speechless. ‘Are you out of your mind, Dover? We’re trying to find out what Reder is up to, not assault his daughter!’

‘A little R’n’R is good for us all, Redgrave.’
So the broad must be gone, the bird flown
. ‘This was on CBS News?’

‘This is not a joke, Dover. Somebody spotted you on your little excursion and some army general got involved. It’s all supposed to be hush-hush but I have my own sources.’
And even though I’m obliged to work with you, Dover, I’ll be damned if I’m going to reveal all our British contacts in Normannenstrasse to a randy American
.

‘Pity,’ Dover said. He smiled bleakly. ‘And now she owes me for more than two busted knees.’

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘It’s personal, Redgrave, intimately so.’

Redgrave glared at the American. ‘Get your stuff – we can’t be sure this place is safe any more.’

Dover clicked his heels, saluted. ‘
Jawohl, mein General
.’

The road north from Dresden seemed unfamiliar to General Reder. It was a road he’d travelled umpteen times, in wartime and in the years since; he’d even driven it that very morning, he reminded himself. Now, heading north through the night, he felt he was journeying in a foreign land. Even the darkness seemed edgy, as if it were waiting for a deeper darkness.

There was little
traffic. They passed through villages shuttered into silence. Lights in distant farmhouses seen across the fields seemed lost, ghostly. They skirted Hoyerswerda, heard only silence from the town. Later, further north in the cloudless dark, they could see the factory smokestacks of Cottbus; even the factories seemed dead, the smokeless chimneys on strike.

‘Jesus.’ Dieter broke a silence that had lasted too long. ‘You’d think the whole country was dead or asleep.’

Reder glanced at him, saw the pale face paler in the dashboard light.

‘It’s not dead,’ Reder said, ‘but we both know it’s dying.’

Berlin was different. They could hear the city as soon as they caught sight of the city glow, like a pale canopy in the night. A kind of hum seemed to rise above the roads and buildings, a living sound that you couldn’t break down into voices or shouts or traffic – just a mixed-together hum that was the growl of a city that was up past its bedtime but couldn’t – or wouldn’t – go to sleep.

Reder drove slowly through the streets of the city. Groups of men and women stood on street corners, anoraks zipped up against the night cold. Hooded heads bobbed in animated conversation. Cigarette ends glowed, pale knuckles bony in the red glow. Boots and shoes stomped on pavements. Someone laughed, a group joined in.

Heads turned to follow the progress of the big car.

They saw a hand raised, a bottle brandished. In the rear-view mirror Reder watched the beer bottle somersault through the night air, heard it smash on the road behind them.

A pair of Vopos on the opposite corner saw and heard it too. Reder watched them come charging along the street towards the group. He slammed on the brakes, squealed to a halt in front of the policemen. They would have run round the car but Reder put the heel of his palm on the horn, left it there, the siren noise braying in the street, almost forcing the policemen to halt.

Through the open
window of the car they looked at Reder, faces angry.

‘Leave it,’ Reder said.

‘Who the fuck—’

Dieter leaned forward in his seat, wagged a finger at the angry Vopo.

‘This is General Reder,’ Dieter said.

Reder flashed his ID.

‘Leave it,’ Reder said again. ‘We don’t need trouble on the streets.’

‘There’s plenty of trouble on the streets tonight, sir.’ The Vopo was stooped, his countryman’s face almost pushed into the car. ‘All over the city.’

‘Well, let’s not make more.’ Reder was feeling his years; home was what he needed now.

‘Be careful, sir, nobody knows what to expect after the resignation.’

Reder wanted to be gone; the Vopo’s breath, foul with stale garlic, was filling the car.

‘Yes,’ Reder said, ‘but General Mielke’s successor will soon take charge.’

The Vopo’s rough face grew darker. He drew back from the car as if to study Reder, then leaned closer again.

‘Not General Mielke, sir.’ The Vopo almost stuck his head in the car. ‘Herr Honecker, sir. The Party accepted Herr Honecker’s resignation as leader a couple of hours ago, sir.’

‘What?’

‘Erich Honecker is gone, General, the Central Committee told him it was time to go.’ The Vopo straightened, nodded to his waiting partner. ‘Goodnight, sir.’

It was Dieter
who broke the silence in the car.

‘Honecker gone.’ He shook his head. ‘I can hardly believe it.’

‘Me neither.’ Reder was staring at his own reflection in the windscreen:
like a ghost, you look like a ghost that is even older than Honecker
. ‘I know we agreed on ten days,’ he said without looking at Dieter, ‘but it’s possible that none of us will last ten days.’

‘So we need to move,’ Dieter said.

Reder nodded. He put his foot on the accelerator pedal and the big car moved north towards his home in Pankow.

Wednesday, 1 November 1989

East
Berlin

Miller was up and
dressed by six o’clock but when he opened the bedroom door he could hear the murmur of voices from the kitchen.

General Reder and the
man who’d been introduced the night before as Dieter Jessen were seated at the small kitchen table with coffee mugs in their hands. Dieter – was he German, Russian or some kind of blend? – looked almost as tired as the general, who must be a good ten years older.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Dieter was smiling.

Miller said good morning. He waited until General Reder told him to help himself to coffee and cereal and whatever he could find in the cupboards. The general’s daughter had been assaulted and hospital waiting rooms were full of bloodied heads and broken limbs but good manners never went amiss – or so his mother would remember to remind him, even if she were drunk. Especially if she were drunk.

General Reder’s expression had been a mix of puzzlement bordering on outraged fatherhood when he’d arrived home with the German/Russian long after midnight and found Patrick Miller in his kitchen only a few paces from his sleeping daughter.

Miller had put General Reder in the picture as quickly and as succinctly as he could. And as gently. How do you tell a father that his daughter had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted? Miller emphasized General Krug’s intervention and the doctor’s assurance that Rosa was OK but it was Dieter’s presence that stopped Reder from driving immediately to Normannenstrasse to the Stasi kidnappers, and demanding a manhunt for this fellow with the birthmark who’d tried to rape Rosa.

‘Wait, Hans.’ Dieter
had stood close to Reder, laid his hand on his sleeve. ‘Wait until the morning when Rosa is awake.’ Miller had noticed the narrow-eyed look he’d given Reder. ‘And General Krug will be in touch – we need to be as sure of our ground as possible.’

Something was going on.
And maybe it’s better you don’t know what
.

Miller finished his breakfast. He felt the eyes of the other men watching him as he washed his cup and plate.

‘I have to go to work,’ he said.

‘Please.’ Reder shook his head. ‘I’m sure it would be helpful to Rosa if you were here when she wakes up.’

‘I’m expected at the office.’

‘Please,’ Reder said again. ‘I’ll phone and clear it with your boss – Hartheim, isn’t it?’

‘Of course.’ The things you could do when you were a general in the GDR.

Miller didn’t say that. You’ve earned your East German passport, he told himself; you’re better than most of them at keeping your mouth shut.

He told Reder he’d spend a little time in the garden, if that was OK.

The garden was a wide, rectangular space. It faced southwest; at this hour of the morning the grass was rimed with a frost. It’s the first day of November, Miller reminded himself; in less than two months it will be Christmas. The way things were going, it might be the last Christmas in the life of the GDR; still, it might be a Christmas – a
first
Christmas – that he could spend with Rosa. A religious Christmas was actively discouraged in East Germany but the workers took their break and decorated trees in their flats; carols were sung as only German voices can sing them; some even went to church.

And there was, on this frosty November morning, birdsong in the garden. Tall trees, still half-dressed with yellowing leaves, were ranged inside the high back-garden wall; the warbling song from the winter trees seemed like a whistling act of defiance.

Miller walked through the frosted garden and stood under the trees. Overhead, the defiant song trilled on.

Christmas with Rosa
: who d’you think you’re kidding? The general is going to smile cheerfully while you stroll into a yuletide dreamland with his only daughter? Have you forgotten the scowl on his face when he walked into his house last night and saw you sitting there within reach of his daughter? Don’t you remember the way his liver-spotted fist clenched when you started to speak of the assault on Rosa – how it seemed, for just a moment, as if that pensioner-fist was about to explode in your face because yours was the only face within fisting range?

Fuck it, Miller thought. You’ve survived worse, come this far, to this garden north of Pankow in a country that surrounds itself with walls and invents new ways to fuel its own paranoia. You just might have to include General Reder in your Christmas plans.

It made him smile, the thought of an East German general sitting down to Christmas dinner in the mausoleum in Wolverhampton.

He
was still smiling when he heard his name called.

Rosa wasn’t smiling, waving to him from an upstairs window, but Miller sensed that she was at least trying to.

He stood beneath the window, felt his heart melt as he looked up at her: a pale-blue towelling dressing gown buttoned up to her neck, the thick, dark hair falling across her bruised face.

‘You OK?’
Great line, some Romeo
.

And yet she didn’t seem to mind his inadequacy in their personal balcony scene: her face flowered into a full smile.

‘It’s a lovely morning.’

You make it lovely
. But he said, ‘There’s even a bird singing.’

Her face grew serious. ‘Is General Krug still here?’ Almost a whisper.

‘He left as soon as we got you to bed.’ That didn’t sound right – but too late now. ‘Your father got back after midnight.’

She pushed the hair away from her face and he could see the half-closed eye, the stain of purple on her skin. ‘My father is here?’

‘He’s in the kitchen.’ Now they were both whispering. ‘A friend is with him – German or Russian, I’m not sure. Dieter – Dieter Jessen, I think.’

Was that sorrow or joy that flashed across her face? Excitement? Or just a cascading jumble of emotions?

‘Dieter is here?’ No doubting the excitement now. ‘Oh, Dieter . . .’ Inexplicably, she was crying.

And then smiling.

She closed the window and was gone.

Something of her smile hung in the frosty air above him. And the bird was still singing.

She
was in Dieter’s embrace when Miller got to the kitchen. She was laughing, crying, leaning back in Dieter’s arms, holding his face between her hands. She reached a hand for her father’s, turned again to Dieter, kissed his face.

It dawned upon Miller that this was the Dieter who had spirited her to safety from Santiago. This was the Dieter who had failed to save her father, who had comforted her when her mother died in a jeep in the Andes. There was something of the medieval ascetic about him – the pale skin almost translucent, stretched tight over the sharp Slav cheekbones; the face, hollow-eyed, almost cadaverous. And yet, when Dieter laughed, holding Rosa, his features lit up with an infectious warmth. Even a KGB spymaster, Miller thought, can show his heart when he is among people he cares about.

General Reder broke it up.

‘Rosa.’ He handed her a cup of coffee, spoke gently. ‘Can you tell me what happened to you?’

She sipped her coffee. When she lowered the cup the purple stain around her eye seemed to have been made uglier by the heat.

Miller watched her watching him, the other two men.

‘I can go, Rosa,’ he hesitated, ‘if it makes it easier for you.’

He was glad when she shook her head. She touched his hand briefly, motioned for him to sit beside Dieter and her father. Opposite them, alone, she seemed small, fragile.

There was nothing small or fragile about her voice. She told her story simply, without hysterics or exaggeration – almost, Miller thought, as if she were reading an academic paper to a gathering of academic peers. Distance, he told himself, it’s a way of putting distance between herself and what she had survived.

Only when she was done did Rosa lower her gaze from the spot above the cooker that she had studied while she told her tale. Only then did she look into Miller’s eyes, into the faces of Dieter and her father.

‘I know him.’ She was trembling now.

‘The
man who attacked you?’

She ignored her father’s question. She was looking directly at Dieter.

‘I know him,’ she said again. ‘That purple mark on his neck – I’ll never forget him. Anyway, he took pleasure in reminding me of his name.’

Dieter leaned across the kitchen table, took her hand in his.

‘Dover.’ His voice a whisper.

Rosa nodded.

‘I should have killed him then.’

Rosa shook her head, wiped her eyes.

‘We’ve all had enough killing,’ she said.

Miller was remembering the tale she’d told him, how she’d begged this Dieter for Dover’s life.
Have we really had enough killing when this maniac is still walking around?