Another Kind of Country (34 page)

‘I still don’t see what Redgrave hoped to get out of it all.’

‘As General Reder said, Redgrave is an amateur.’ Dieter shrugged. ‘An
incompetent
amateur. Maybe he planned to have you renounce socialism after some years and parade you in the media like some born-again capitalist.’

Even Miller smiled. ‘You know I was carrying messages – still am.’

‘Yes, Herr Miller, we have always known that.’

Miller looked at Reder, at Dieter. He shook his head, let the smile come. ‘
You
write those messages – I mean, your people do.’

Reder nodded.

‘So what’s it all about?’ Miller couldn’t hide his exasperation. ‘Why have I spent all these years here?’

The coffee was burbling, popping against the glass dome of the percolator like questions in Miller’s brain.

He saw Dieter nod to Reder.

‘Redgrave had an important source in
East Berlin who was getting information out to the West. The idea was that you would be a cover for his source – you’d be more obvious, easily identified. And Redgrave had arranged for a more expendable source to feed you with unimportant material from the GDR. Redgrave calculated that we’d harm nobody, just let you and your source get on with carrying your low-grade information since we’d be able to keep an eye on everything.’

Miller stared hard at Reder. ‘Redgrave leaked the information that he was sending me to East Germany?’

‘Let’s say he made it easy for us to find out.’

‘But why was I never questioned?’

‘Simple, Herr Miller,’ Reder said. ‘You couldn’t give away any answers that we didn’t already know. And your commitment to this country was evident. At first, we wondered if your brand of socialism was just a badge of convenience but,’ the general shrugged, ‘it became clear very soon that you believed in this country, even though you had been forced to come here by the British.’

‘You belonged to this country, Herr Miller.’ Dieter was pouring cups of coffee; he spoke over his shoulder. ‘It was clear that you were one of our own.’

‘It was never clear to me where I belonged.’ Miller couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘Yours, Redgrave’s. I wanted to be my own man. And yet all these years . . .’

Overhead a door opened and closed. Light footsteps came tripping down the stairs.

‘You think your years in the GDR have been a waste of time, Herr Miller?’ Reder asked.

The kitchen door opened and Rosa came in. Miller looked at her, at the jet-black hair, still wet from the shower, framing the face he loved.

‘No,’ he
said, ‘the years haven’t been a waste at all.’

Rosa took the cup of fresh coffee that Dieter offered her and she sat beside Miller. Her smile made him forget about Redgrave.

Almost.

‘One other thing,’ he said.

‘Ask.’ Reder patted his daughter’s hand.

‘Redgrave’s “important source”.’ Miller shut his eyes. It was hard to concentrate with Rosa’s thigh next to his own. ‘What became of him?’

‘I’m still compiling important information for Warwick Redgrave.’ It was Dieter’s voice that Miller heard.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that Dieter was smiling his monk’s smile.

Miller felt Rosa’s fingers briefly, furtively, touch his own.

A twisted, twisting road of deceit and manipulation had brought him to a place of warmth, among people who cared for him. People he felt at home with. In that moment Miller felt the absence of his mother. Lady Miller took what comfort she could find in her title, her shining house, her bottles and sparkling crystal; she’d find little to impress in these untitled citizens of a workers’ state but maybe, just maybe, she might respond to their natural grace. Wishful thinking, he told himself. Yet the truth was, he missed her.

He was
glad when Rosa again put her hand in his – and this time she left it there.

Thursday, 2 November 1989

West Berlin

Redgrave took the stool at the counter beside Miller and ordered a beer. He took a long, almost angry pull at his drink, shook his newspaper open on the counter with a kind of violence.

‘What on earth are you playing at?’ He didn’t look at Miller as he spoke.

And good evening to you too, Mr Redgrave.

‘Got up on the wrong side of the Wall this morning, did we?’

‘I’m not in the mood, Miller.’ The African documentary on the TV was being ignored by everyone in the bar but the animal roaring and loud commentary covered their voices. ‘You were sent in to do a job but you’ve apparently decided to join the inmates in the asylum.’

‘Maybe I’ve seen the light.’ Miller was puzzled by Redgrave’s apparent anger. He wasn’t in the mood for Redgrave and his posturing. Rosa had driven him to Pankow station and they’d promised to meet that night.

Which isn’t going to work out, Miller thought, unless Redgrave gets a move on and lets me know why he’s summoned me to the Zoogarten Bar this evening. He’d been taken aback – although it was no more than normal procedure – when he’d spotted the empty tin on the
Imbiss
window
sill on his way to work that morning. The torn strip of newspaper stuffed with artful carelessness into the tin had carried an advertisement offering special weekend prices for Berlin Zoo; the figure ‘seven’ had been scrawled across the open jaws of a lion.

So, the Zoogarten Bar at seven.

It appeared Redgrave had demanded his presence to deliver some kind of reprimand – but for what? When – if – his apologia for an imperilled GDR appeared in the
Guardian
, Redgrave would go positively apoplectic.

Redgrave was in bureaucratic garb this evening: sober greysuit, restrained silver tie, a flash of double cuff. Miller watched warily as Redgrave snapped open his bureaucrat’s attaché case. He had to lean closer as Redgrave began to read, quietly, from the sheet of paper he took from the case.

Miller tried to hide his confusion. On the television behind the bar a bunch of chimpanzees were flailing their arms and screaming excitedly as if they shared Miller’s confusion: he’d handed over his article to General Reder only the previous evening, since when – as was
perfectly normal – Miller had received neither acknowledgement nor acceptance from the newspaper. So how in God’s name was Redgrave now reading – whispering – from the article in the Zoogarten Bar twenty-four hours later?

‘And blah-blah-blah.’ Redgrave folded the page, replaced it in his attaché case. ‘Have you gone stark raving mad, Miller?’

‘Some things need saying.’ Even to Miller’s own ears it sounded lame.

‘And some things do
not
need saying by a foreigner employed at a senior level in an important government agency.’

‘Who’s to say I wrote it?’ You’re spouting gibberish, Miller told himself, just like the chimps who were still jumping up and down and squawking on the TV. ‘I have a
feeling the byline above that piece is “Our Special Correspondent in East Germany”.’

‘You’re pathetic, Miller.’ Redgrave glared at him. ‘Even if I didn’t know it was yours, I can see your fingerprints all over the piece – anybody could.’

‘It’s called a recognizable style, Redgrave.’

‘Everything about you is recognizable, Miller.’ Redgrave nodded at the television. ‘You’re like those chimps. Dangle a banana in front of your “liberal” eyes and you’ll scream and shout and cry capitalist mayhem. At least the chimp has the good sense to take the banana and eat it. We gave you a chance when we sent you here, Miller, the chance to make something of yourself. We offered you a big, juicy banana, and you don’t have the wit to take it.’

‘Maybe I don’t like bananas.’
And what the fuck does that mean?

‘Miller, I’m losing patience with you – and so are my superiors. You were sent here to do a job. It’s more important than ever right now, when the situation is more . . .’ Redgrave paused, searched for a precise word, ‘more fluid than it’s been for forty years. It’s precisely now that you need to remember why you were sent here.’

Miller gestured at the screen. ‘What am I, a fucking chimpanzee?’

‘You are a man under orders, Miller, always have been.’

‘Such orders to be always obeyed? Even when I don’t understand them?’

‘Especially,’ Redgrave said, ‘when you don’t understand them.’

‘What d’you think I am? A fucking Communist?’

‘A poor joke, Miller, and a dangerous one.’ Redgrave sipped his drink thoughtfully. ‘Your UK passport is out of date and you’ve opted for East German citizenship, right?’

‘You
should know, Redgrave, it was your idea.’

‘Just suppose,’ Redgrave said, ‘that there is a regime change on the other side of the Wall. Suppose that new regime might not be Eastward-looking, might even be hostile to whatever kind of Soviet Union survives under friend Gorbachev, where d’you think you’d stand with your GDR passport then?’

‘Exactly where I’m standing now.’ Miller tried to affect a jauntiness he didn’t feel. ‘Why should anything change?’

‘Because,’ Redgrave said, ‘the new zookeepers might not like their old chimpanzees, they might think their bad habits were too deeply ingrained.’

‘I did no more and no less than what I was ordered to do – ordered by you.’

‘You’re a fool, Miller, just like all the rest of you leftie clowns.’ Redgrave was still whispering into the pages of his newspaper but his voice was animated with an edge of enjoyment. ‘Let me explain it to you like the
Telegraph
or the
Mail
would. You moved to East Berlin with a touch of fanfare. The authorities didn’t exactly greet you with a similar fanfare but they took you to their socialist bosom and gave you important work at the heart of their intellectual apparatus. You repaid them by spying on them, betraying them.’ Redgrave turned a page of his newspaper. ‘Nobody likes a traitor, Miller.’

‘I wrote an account of my so-called recruitment,’ Miller said. ‘Word for word, all that guff from you and Dr What’s-her-name. It’s in a safe place. I can tell the truth. My newspaper will publish it.’

‘Like they’re going to publish this piece of propaganda?’ Redgrave tapped the briefcase on the floor with his toe.

‘How—’ Miller stopped.
Don’t give him the satisfaction of asking
.

Redgrave didn’t need to hear the question.

‘Your
girlfriend’s father is a leftover dinosaur, Miller, and his communication methods are prehistoric. It’s not difficult to intercept whatever he sends out.’

Miller didn’t buy it. General Reder, for all his years, was a most modern conspirator, the sort of conspirator whose secret communications were intercepted only when he wished them to be.
So there’s someone else beating our drum in the English media; once more I am the decoy
.

He smiled at Redgrave; it didn’t feel so bad to be the distraction in a cause you believed in.

The TV chimps were gone. On the small screen a perfectly shaped model was demonstrating how a new cream concealed the non-existent lines in her improbably perfect face.

‘Have your friends developed new agencies to hide their preparations for thieving, their looting?’ Miller said.

‘You can’t control an avalanche.’ Redgrave shrugged. ‘You’re talking about those book contracts, right? A few books – nobody gives a damn, Miller.’

‘And what about looting the assets of a country? Should anybody give a damn about that?’

On the TV a fellow in a suit was preening himself while he luxuriated in the new car he was cruising in on the autobahn. It wasn’t a Trabi.

‘Has the old general been telling you fairy tales?’ Redgrave had turned on his stool to look directly at Miller. ‘What’s important is that the country belongs to people who are friends of ours.’

The fellow in the TV car smiled as he shifted the gear lever, his manicured fingers tantalizingly close to the shapely leg of the smiling blonde in the passenger seat.

Miller blinked and the blonde was gone; he saw Rosa’s wounded face, her bruised eye. ‘Are
these “friends of ours” allowed a little attempted rape now and again, just to keep their hand in?’

The look of disgust on Redgrave’s face was enough.
He knows
.

‘Ask your “associate” with the purple birthmark about his assault on Rosa Rossman,’ Miller went on. ‘Dover – isn’t that his name? Next time you meet up with him to play supervisor with the Vopos, tell him that if he’s picked up on the other side of the Wall he’s going to face charges of kidnap and attempted rape.’

Redgrave’s shoulders drooped. ‘Obviously I do not condone such behaviour. You know that.’