Little Grey Mice (25 page)

So she was finally realizing her inferior position, Reimann thought. At last! He started climbing again, bringing her with him. It was lucky he'd insisted on the day out instead of going to the Nord-Stadt apartment: he would not have wanted Moscow to overhear the outburst. They would have been furious at the revelation of two contact meetings a month, all apparently in Vienna. If their Control was prepared to cross into the West to meet Jutta, why were his own meetings with the man in East Berlin? Maybe no reason at all: everything did not require a purpose or meaning. He said: ‘I don't think it's as bad as you're making out. There were lots of boring times in Berlin. Let's give this operation a chance.'

‘I've even thought of approaching the refugee agency in Munich, as they asked me to when I left Berlin,' Jutta disclosed. ‘Nothing full-time, of course. I could still make the Vienna meetings if I worked part-time. There could still be useful things to learn.'

She was trying to retreat into the past to recapture her old command, Reimann guessed at once. ‘That's nonsense. And I don't want you to do that.'

‘You
don't want me to do that!' she snapped, bridling.

The square, with its red-shuttered, flower-bedecked town hall, ballooned out in front of them. Reimann continued walking, looping to the left along the still-cobbled street towards a tiny oasis in the middle of the road, one tree and a tight round of seats, none of them occupied. He urged her to sit and did the same himself, at a corner where he could see anyone approaching to make their conversation impossible. ‘Not me,' he said. ‘Moscow wouldn't want it. You're here for a specific purpose. If you're bored, you've got to put up with it, like the trained officer you are supposed to be. There can be no contact, no association, with anyone we knew in the past. You know that.' It was good to feel – to
be
– the person in authority at last.

Jutta's face set hard and Reimann wondered if he had been too obvious. But she didn't fight back. Instead, inadequately for her, Jutta said: ‘It was only an idea.'

‘Have you said anything like this in Vienna?' he demanded, concerned. It would explain, beyond any recording devices at Nord-Stadt, the East Berlin conversation about how he and Jutta were working together.

She shook her head. ‘Not yet.'

‘Not yet!'

‘I was wondering whether to,' she admitted. ‘Not like I've talked about it to you. Maybe just suggest I should get something part-time, to give me a better cover.'

‘Don't! It would be a mistake: a very bad mistake,' insisted Reimann, careless of antagonizing her again. What about him! Jutta was showing a weakness that she shouldn't, a weakness he would not have expected from her, and he was surprised. As a professional and dedicated intelligence officer shouldn't he use the newly evoked contact system with the Russians to warn of a possible problem? They would recall her, he guessed. It would be more difficult for him to operate alone, having personally to maintain a regular, twice-monthly liaison, but another cut-out could be introduced easily enough. So what would her withdrawal actually mean? It would ensure the protection and safety of the Bonn operation, the first priority. Free him from her demanding and mostly imagined control. He paused, confronting a further realization. Free him in another way, too. Because it would mean the virtual end of their marriage. He'd been trained to think and act completely without emotion, in those long psychological sessions at Balashikha. And this was a simple, professional choice. Not even a choice. There was only one decision there could be. Jutta had to be discarded, abandoned, for the sake of the assignment.

But he wouldn't, Reimann decided.

He wouldn't abandon her or disclose the unexpectedly emerging weakness. He'd try to do the opposite – do what a husband was supposed to do – and protect her. He'd protect her from making this mistake and he'd protect her as best he could from making other blurted errors in her dangerous apartment.

Would Jutta do the same for him, if the situation were reversed? Reimann surprised himself with the question. And the doubt. Forcing the honesty, he concluded that she probably wouldn't. He'd always recognized that her professional commitment – her career – matched her commitment to their marriage. It was a further explanation, he supposed, for this utterly unexpected conversation between them, her awareness, despite the Soviet attempts to make it appear otherwise, that professionally she had been diminished.

What Jutta would or would not do didn't matter. He'd made his decision. And was satisfied with it.

‘I know you're right,' Jutta accepted.

She was deferring to him, Reimann realized, detecting a further change. The beginning-of-the-day lightness between them had gone now, but it had not been replaced by her frequent combativeness, for which he was glad. As insistently as he could, Reimann said: ‘Moscow mustn't suspect anything is wrong: that there is any uncertainty at all.'

Two ancient men, stooped and whiskered, emerged bowed from a fronting tobacconist: one already had a pipe lighted, trailing smoke like a cartoon steam engine. Reimann moved before their arrival at the oasis, taking Jutta's arm once more to bring her up from her seat to retrace their way along the cobbles.

‘I've spoiled the day,' Jutta apologized. ‘I shouldn't have talked as I have.'

‘Let's always talk things through: get difficulties out of the way.' But not at Nord-Stadt, he thought, in private warning. Despite his earlier decision, he hoped that Jutta's depression was not going to become an intrusive complication.

She looked up at him again, smiling gratefully. ‘I promise,' she said. ‘I really do.'

Reimann had noted several attractive restaurants during their ascent from the river valley. He chose one on the steepest part of the hill, angled to seem practically lopsided, an inn of foot-scuffed wooden floors and worn, ponderous carved furniture. They drank wine – Jutta with seemingly urgency, so a second bottle was necessary before their meal arrived – and Reimann restored the professionalism by explaining the increase in the car repair estimate, to justify the expenses he was submitting to Australia.

‘What now?' she asked.

‘I carefully make the next move,' said Reimann.

‘I see,' said Jutta, repeating the earlier acceptance.

Reimann was caught by the flatness in her voice. He wouldn't question it.

As if aware of his thoughts Jutta said, with abrupt forcefulness: I'm sorry. You mustn't worry about me.' She seemed embarrassed.

Strangely, Reimann felt embarrassed, too.

Reimann was sure of the schedule, to within five minutes or so, but he was still in position early at the alleyway junction with the Münsterplatz, only just able to see through the intervening throng into the flower market square for Elke's arrival. She was ahead of her usual time, by about three minutes. He allowed her to get settled at the Bonner, completely relaxed, before even moving: when he entered the cafe Elke was already at her table, her coffee poured, the apple cake without cream or custard set out before her.

Reimann stood blinking in the doorway, someone having difficulty adjusting from the outer brightness, his face opening in surprise when she finally looked up to see him. He smiled and approached hesitantly, as if uncertain of intruding.

‘Hello!' he said.

‘Hello.' Elke felt an absurd delight at his totally unexpected presence, a numbed, tingling sensation as if she'd knocked into an obstruction and jarred a nerve: maybe several nerves.

Poppi darted from his concealment beneath the second chair, tail fluttering in recognition, yapping up against Reimann's leg. Reimann leaned down, to fondle its ears. He said: ‘What a coincidence!' I come here quite often,' Elke conceded.

‘How's the car?'

‘Wond …' began Elke but stopped the too familiar word. ‘As good as new, like you said it would be.'

She saw him look searchingly around the interior of the cafe, then fleetingly at the spare chair at her table. He said: ‘Well, I'd better …'

‘Why don't you join me?' Elke invited. She was sure the darkness of the cafe would conceal any blush that might have come to her face.

‘I wouldn't like to impose …' said Reimann, in weak protest.

‘Please! I'm not expecting anyone.'
Please!
she thought.

Reimann pulled out the chair, shifting the dog out of his way, and sat down. ‘I'd like to,' he accepted. Clara, the dutiful waitress, was at his side immediately. Reimann chose only coffee.

‘What brings you to the flower market?' said Elke. Clumsy maybe, but good enough in the circumstances.

‘Not flowers,' smiled Reimann. He made a vague gesture away from the outside stalls, towards the commanding cathedral. ‘I've been browsing in the bookshop. I particularly wanted a Graham Greene compendium:
The Heart of the Matter, A Burnt-out Case
and
The Power and the Glory.
They didn't have it: I know it exists but they weren't very helpful. It's a nuisance. I suppose I'll have to look elsewhere.'

Elke sat with her cup suspended before her. ‘This really is a coincidence!'

‘I don't follow,' said Reimann, who did, because he was pointing out the pathway to her.

‘I have it!' announced Elke.

I know, thought Reimann: that's where I saw it, in your bookshelf. He sat back, in faked astonishment. ‘I don't believe it!'

Elke laughed, unsurely. ‘Isn't that strange?'

‘You must tell me where you bought it,' said Reimann, who knew from the KGB's briefing where Elke Meyer maintained her account.

Now she gestured, in the same direction as he had minutes earlier. ‘The bookshop near the Münster,' she said.

Reimann let his face fall into disappointment. ‘So much for that,' he said, resigned. Come on, woman! Come on!

‘You could borrow mine,' she offered.

Reimann adopted his uncertain, not-wanting-to-impose attitude again. ‘You're sure you wouldn't mind?'

‘Of course not. I've read it.' There'd be a meeting to hand it over and a meeting to retrieve it.

‘That really would be extremely good of you,' said Reimann. ‘I'd take the greatest care of it, of course. Greene's one of my favourite foreign authors. He was once a journalist too, you know?'

‘I think I read that somewhere,' said Elke. It was all being so easy: so easy and so natural. Her nerves still tingled.

‘How could I collect it?' said Reimann. ‘I don't want to put you to any inconvenience.'

‘I'm doing something today. And tomorrow,' said Elke. It would have been possible for him to come to Kaufmannstrasse when she returned later from Bad Godesberg, or tomorrow, after visiting Ursula, but Elke enjoyed conveying the impression of full days.

Posturing cow, thought Reimann. He said: ‘Could I telephone some evening next week? Tuesday perhaps?'

‘Tuesday would be fine,' Elke accepted, too quickly. ‘Why bother to telephone? Why don't we agree here and now that's when you'll come by to pick it up?'

She was making it simple for him, Reimann reflected. But then he'd never seriously doubted that she wouldn't.

The third anonymous and disguised document that arrived in Vienna was an instruction to West German diplomats in former Soviet satellites for a country-by-country assessment of any remaining allegiance to Moscow. Coupled with it was a request for any available guidance about the likely secession of Soviet republics, and indications of Soviet troop movements to quell such fresh dissent.

‘What the hell do they want that for?' queried Sorokin.

‘What reason makes any potential enemy force want military information about other countries?' said Cherny. ‘Inconclusive and difficult though it is to explain, we've got to forward reports about this information soon.'

‘No!' Sorokin would not budge. ‘It
is
inconclusive. We'd be raising more questions than we can provide answers, which isn't intelligence. It's
got
to come from Reimann.'

‘Nothing
is
coming from Reimann,' argued Cherny, equally insistent.

‘It will,' said Sorokin. ‘In time it will.'

Chapter Eighteen

They each made a consummate effort, and with contrasting irony for the identical reason, to impress the other.

It was acceptable, at last, for Reimann to take a gift. He initially disdained the obvious flowers or chocolates, but everything else he considered, in an attempt to be original, seemed upon examination to be kitsch. In the end he reverted to flowers, imagining a way to introduce them that was gauche but which he believed would appeal to her. And he bought a chewing toy for the dog, which was so appallingly kitsch that he was hot from discomfort as he made the purchase but reassured himself it was just the sort of gesture that Elke would appreciate, and use words like ‘sweet' and ‘thoughtful' when she thanked him. On Monday, considerately, he telephoned to ask if the following evening's arrangement was still convenient. Elke, stomach tight at the instant apprehension that he intended cancelling, gabbled that it was fine and that she was expecting him. There's so much more you don't expect, thought Reimann: so very much more.

Elke had happily begun disturbing her established routine immediately she got home from being with Ursula at Marienfels on the Sunday afternoon, starting to vacuum and polish and rearrange the apartment. It was not until Monday evening, just before Reimann's courtesy call (so polite, but then what else has she come to expect?) that Elke attended to her own bedroom. It was here that she kept Ursula's photographs, three individual pictures in separate frames and a collage of several different snapshots arranged in one composite group. Elke stood looking at them for a long time, easily recognizing the occasions when each one had been taken. Two when Ursula had been a newly born baby, before they'd known anything was wrong, at her mother's house across the river, at Oberkassel; at birthdays, the second and the third, when the warnings had started but she hadn't really believed them, Ursula still seeming so normal, so beautiful; she'd been eight when the picture had been taken of her near the roundabout in the play park, not smiling like the other children in the background, the blankness in her eyes obvious, as everything else had been obvious by then. Slowly, studying them as she did it, Elke dusted the frames and the glass. Having cleaned them, Elke remained staring down at the assembled images of her daughter. Without any positive, reasoning thought she put them all in the underwear drawer of her dressing table. ‘Don't want to share you,' said Elke, in one of her private conversations. ‘Just the two of us.' There was no question – it was inconceivable – of the man seeing into the room in any case, but she didn't want Ursula on display: it had something to do with the child's dignity.