Brandenburg (50 page)

She asked for a cigarette. Then she walked to the end of the jetty and began to speak without looking at him. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. I matriculated top from the language course at Humboldt University and was immediately taken up by the Stasi, just as you were. You see my father was well connected and he wanted this for me because he thought it was the best way I could serve the GDR. After training I was sent to Brussels undercover - false papers, references, everything.’ She glanced at him over her shoulder. ‘That’s when I first set eyes on you. I was just twenty-four years old.’

‘You! You in Brussels!’

‘Yes, as a translator.’

‘Like Annalise Schering!’

‘Yes,’ she paused. ‘I knew her.’

His mouth formed the first syllable of several questions before he managed to say, ‘How did you know her?’

‘By that I mean I knew the second Annalise, the one who took the place of the first. I still do, Rudi. I know Jessie. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

He remembered the strange remark Jessie had made in the cafe just before he crossed over to the East with the disks. She seemed to be telling him to pass on her regards to Ulrike. If he hadn’t immediately had to face the Stasi on the other side of the Wall and then fallen ill he would probably have thought more about it.

‘I was her contact at Nato. I passed the stuff back to Biermeier, who was the case officer. This was after you’d left, but I do remember seeing you twice.’ She smiled briefly. ‘You were something to see, Rudi - a most beautiful man.’

Rosenharte brushed this aside. ‘Surely you’re not suggesting that you fixed this whole thing up to get to know me?’

‘No, of course not. A lot of it was Biermeier’s idea.’

‘Biermeier! You would have needed Jessie’s cooperation. How the hell did he get that?’

‘He didn’t need her help. Don’t you see? The letters to you came from British Intelligence, not her.’

‘But somewhere along the way she must have been involved.’

‘He got word to her.’

‘I don’t believe you. She used to be a full-time employee of British Intelligence. You don’t find such people in the London phone book, even after they’ve left.’

‘She’s a member of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Stasi keep an eye on such people. In fact, the Stasi had close relations with one or two of the movement’s members in the UK. It proved no problem to discover her address and telephone number, and then it was simply a matter of Biermeier contacting her.’

‘But why would she trust an oaf like Biermeier?’

‘Because she trusted me. You see, I knew that she wasn’t the real Annalise Schering. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I knew, and I told no one in Brussels and no one on our side. You know why? Because we were both convinced members of the peace movement. That was our first loyalty. Jessie declared her feelings to me. She was worried by the rumours of the deployment of Cruise missiles in Western Europe and when that happened she supported the thousands of women at Greenham Common, the US base in England.’

‘The person I met in Trieste and Berlin is not the sort to get involved with a lot of well-meaning women who make an exhibition of themselves.’

Ulrike’s eyes flared. ‘Is that what you thought when you saw one hundred thousand people march for peace in Leipzig? Were they making an exhibition of themselves?’

He said nothing.

‘She felt the women at Greenham Common had found the only sensible answer. I shared her belief utterly. At the time I wasn’t a prisoner of the GDR’s propaganda machine: I read the free press in Europe and I could make up my own mind about such things. It was this issue that forged our friendship. We had our own secret pact.’ The breeze made her hair shimmer. He couldn’t help but be stirred by her beauty and bitterly regretted slapping her.

‘What was she telling the East? Why was she so valued?

‘Annalise was the truth channel. Everything she told us was true, but at that stage only I had guessed she was being used to tell the Soviet bloc the real intentions of the West.’

‘You’re not telling me she just blurted this out to you. There’d be no purpose in telling you a secret that so much of Western diplomatic planning relied on. The risk was far too great.’

‘She didn’t. I discovered it for myself.’

He shook his head. The thing still seemed highly improbable, another tier of lies. ‘She isn’t the sort of person to make mistakes.’

‘But she did. At the end of 1980 she gave me an advance copy of Nato’s annual communiqué and I realized that she could not have acquired the sensitive sections about the arms race
without
official help. I didn’t say anything. Then the following February she went on holiday for ten days in the Caribbean and came back with a glorious suntan. On her wedding finger there was a band of white skin. She had worn an engagement ring during her holiday. I knew then she was hiding another part of her life, because she had never worn a ring on that finger in my presence. I told her I knew and - to cut a long story short - she implored me to allow the truth channel to continue. And why not? It served the interests of peace. That was our shared priority.’

‘The Stasi must have suspected something.’

‘No, the British and Americans did a good job. Everything she passed to us was good material, so there was no reason to question her motives. They were pleased with what they could pass on to the Soviet Union.’

‘And Biermeier? When did he get into the picture?’

‘Much later. By ’86 I’d told him everything. At that time I was back in Leipzig and out of the Stasi. The baby - all that had happened by then. Biermeier was working on the Middle East, keeping an eye on the various Arab factions in the GDR and relating it to the information we were receiving from abroad. That’s how he got to hear about Lomieko and Abu Jamal’s plans, though Misha always kept him in the dark.’

‘Who did he think was sanctioning this stuff?’

‘Schwarzmeer and his predecessor, maybe Erich Mielke too. Biermeier never knew who was running things. That’s why he arranged for me to get the job of looking after Abu Jamal; he had to find out what they were planning on GDR soil. It fitted in well with my other work in youth research and I had clearance, though I was still in disgrace for my
immoral behaviour
. But Biermeier argued that only a woman of loose morals would be prepared to befriend the Arab and so I got the job.’ She stopped. ‘Look, the only way we could get this information out was through an intermediary like you. We had to improvise as we went along. It wasn’t any great plan to punish you or put your brother in Hohenschönhausen. We both thought that you’d be perfect. The fact that you’d never told them about the death of the first Annalise would mean that you’d have to go along with it.’

‘And you call this an improvisation? Look what happened! Konrad lost his life. Else and the boys lost a husband and a father. That’s what your improvisation did. Konrad would be alive today if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘I know, I know. I understand how bitter you must feel. A lot of what you say is true.’

‘Understanding’s not good enough. That doesn’t help Else or me.’

She nodded and looked down. He never knew with her: these signals of remorse seemed genuine but how could he believe her? ‘And Biermeier was put in charge of the operation in Trieste because . . .’

‘Because he knew her. He could verify that she was the same woman who had been their number one agent in Nato. Remember she had very little contact with the Stasi. She kept her distance and would only see a few handlers: me, Biermeier and a man codenamed François.’

‘The gardener at Nato headquarters who was arrested?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Were the British involved?’ he asked. ‘Did they understand any of this?’

‘Of course not. They didn’t need to know about the collaboration between Annalise and me. It would have served no purpose whatsoever. Anyway, our plan meant that Annalise didn’t have to do anything except what they asked her to do.’

‘And who was the person you first used to take your message to British intelligence from Leipzig? Was that Annalise, too?’

‘No, a friend of hers called Mary Scott - she’s in CND and a Christian. Biermeier had the material inserted in her luggage before she crossed into West Berlin. It was all very simple.’ She screwed up her face against the light and looked at him. It was an expression he found very endearing, though he held himself back. ‘Rudi, I know there are things that you can’t forgive, but you must believe me when I say that if I’d known what would happen to your family, we would have found another way of getting the information out.’

They were silent for a few minutes.

‘You’re in touch with Biermeier?’ he said, focusing on a grebe that had surfaced near the coots.

‘Yes, I’ve spoken to him several times since we’ve been here.’

‘He can help me find Zank.’

‘Zank’s under investigation,’ she said. ‘Biermeier doesn’t know what happened, but two weeks ago Zank disappeared on sick leave. He has been questioned several times. You don’t have to bother with Zank any more. Zank’s finished.’

Rosenharte shook his head. Zank wasn’t finished.

That afternoon they dug out the car, which had sunk into a boggy patch near a spring where they’d hidden it, and took the long route around the lake to Schwarzmeer’s compound. They knew Dürrlich was still in Berlin because that morning he had sent word to Flammensbeck telling him to carry out some running repairs to a light and a broken cistern. When he pulled up outside the shelter where he’d been questioned and beaten in the middle of the night, he saw that it had been disguised to look like an aircraft hangar. The half-barrel shape was covered with soil and grassed over. Beech saplings sprouted from the roof.

‘The old man said there’s enough stuff in here to equip a small army,’ he said to Ulrike.

She nodded.

He placed the crowbar Flammensbeck had given him to the first of two padlocks, jerked upwards and the lock fitting burst from the door. For the caretaker’s sake it needed to look like a breakin.

Cool air, laden with the smell of oil and earth, rushed towards them. Rosenharte threw a light switch and they both exclaimed at the same moment. When he had been interrogated there with the beam of a single light shining in his face, he’d had little sense of what was in the store, but now they saw a hoard of equipment and luxury goods - bio-hazard suits, hoses, ropes, coils of wire, rubber boots, new tyres were jumbled up with boxes containing tape decks, cameras, video recorders, electric kettles and steam irons. ‘What could the Stasi want with half a dozen steam irons?’ asked Ulrike.

Rosenharte thought. ‘To stop anyone else having them.’

Deep in the interior of the shelter was a cage illuminated by a naked bulb, which contained a dozen wine racks, two televisions, several shortwave radio sets and a case of shotguns, hunting rifles and pistols which hung from their trigger guards on hooks.

Ulrike hunted round for a paint sprayer and the tins of paint Flammensbeck said were there, while Rosenharte approached the cage and rattled its side. ‘It’d be good to drink some of the bastard’s wine,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a few bottles for this evening.’

‘Come on, Rudi, keep your mind on the job. We shouldn’t stay here long.’

He didn’t pay any attention to this and started attacking the locks on the cage with the crowbar. When he failed to make any impression on them he resorted to a long spiked pole, which he drove with some relish into the hinges. After a few blows they gave way and he went along the wine racks, picking up bottles randomly and examining them against the light. Many of the labels had disintegrated, but he saw enough to understand that this was a very fine collection of wine from before the war. The earliest bottle of Cognac came from 1928 and the Armagnac 1924. He called out to Ulrike: ‘This must all have belonged to my family. There’s no way a Stasi officer, even Schwarzmeer, could lay his hands on this. It would go for tens of thousands of Deutschmarks at auction in the West.’

‘You don’t need that,’ Ulrike said despairingly.

‘Nonsense,’ he said, gathering up several bottles of French wine and some vintage champagne. ‘Besides, it’s rightfully mine.’

He placed the drink in the car, returned to the gun case and smashed the glass, selecting a SIG-Sauer pistol and a box of two dozen 9 mm shells. He put these in his pockets and returned to her.

‘You don’t need a gun,’ she said.

‘I’ll tell you when I want advice at every turn.’

She looked as if he had slapped her again. ‘Really, you don’t have to be so unpleasant. Look, Rudi, we don’t have to be lovers but can’t we be friends?’

‘Friends! Men and women are never friends. They want too much from each other to be friends. They fall in love or they make alliances, but they’re never friends.’

‘That’s simply not true. I have male friends.’

‘I don’t believe you. I’ve had countless relationships with women that didn’t end in bed and they never lasted because basically women are as interested in sex and finding a mate as men are supposed to be.’

Her arms fell down to hit the tops of her thighs in a gesture of irritation. ‘No wonder you didn’t stay married long,’ she said and picked up the spray gun.

‘Ah well, there you have the advantage over me; I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading your Stasi file.’

He could see that that had hurt her but she said nothing and turned to finish the job of painting the car. He unscrewed the number plates and replaced them with a pair from a pile just inside the door. They worked in silence for about half an hour before removing the masking tape and scraping at the missprays. Eventually they stood back and looked at the matt black Wartburg.

‘You can be a real bastard when you want,’ she said without looking at him.

‘Maybe it’s the Nazi in me.’

She shook her head, dropped the spray gun and walked into the woods. He didn’t see her for several hours.