The Helsinki Pact

Alex Cugia

The Helsinki
Pact

eBook first published
June 2016 by The Chesil Press, Dorset, UK

at and distributed by
Smashwords

Cover design by Nicole
Anderson

Copyright 2016 Alex
Cugia

The moral rights of the
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fiction

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Table of
Contents

Prologue: March 1989
Herren does a deal with General Lushev

Chapter 1: Friday September 1
1989
Thomas smuggles in the maps, meets and falls for
Bettina

Chapter 2: Friday September 1 and Saturday
September 2 1989
Kai and Bernhard plan their
escape

Chapter 3: Sunday September 3 through to
Saturday September 9 1989
The dig
begins

Chapter 4: Thursday September 14
1989
Thomas takes Bettina to dinner, meets Mark
later, car crashes

Chapter 5: Thursday September 14 and Friday
September 15 1989
Stephan learns details of the
project

Chapter 6: Friday September 15
1989
Thomas wakes up in a dungeon, meets Colonel
Dieter

Chapter 7: Friday September 15
1989
Dieter offers Thomas a deal, then brings in
Thomas's handler

Chapter 8: Friday September 15
1989
The dig continues, Schwinewitz becomes
suspicious

Chapter 9: Friday September 15
1989
A night at the opera with Stephan and
Camille

Chapter 10: Saturday September 16 through
Sunday September 17 1989
The diggers break
through

Chapter 11: Sunday September 17
1989
Kai, Bernhard and Ulrike take to the
tracks

Chapter 12: Monday September 18
1989
Bettina briefs Thomas, tells him some home
truths

Chapter 13: Monday October 2 1989
Thomas meets Stephan in Frankfurt, learns of the
project

Chapter 14: Tuesday October 3
1989
Thomas lies at his debriefing and gets beaten
up

Chapter 15: Sunday October 8 1989
High level Party meeting at Honecker's house to discuss the
protests

Chapter 16: Thursday October 12
1989
Thomas meets Stephan again, discusses
opportunites for gain

Chapter 17: Thursday November 9
1989
The Wall opens; Thomas makes his way to
Bettina

Chapter 18: Friday November 10
1989
Bettina and Thomas have a meeting with
Dieter

Chapter 19: Saturday January 13
1990
Dieter tells Bettina and Thomas of the theft in
Dresden

Chapter 20: Sunday January 14
1990
Bettina and Thomas drive to Dresden and find a
room

Chapter 21: Sunday January 14 1990,
evening
Thomas and Bettina break into Henkel's
house

Chapter 22: Sunday January 14 1990,
evening
Phoenix Securities' meeting in
Frankfurt

Chapter 23: Sunday January 14 1990, evening
and on to early morning
Thomas and Bettina discuss
Henkel's death

Chapter 24: Monday January 15 1990, morning
onwards
Bettina visits Dresden Stasi HQ, meets
Roehrberg

Chapter 25: Monday January 15 1990, morning
onwards
Thomas tries to find out about
Phoenix

Chapter 26: Monday January 15 1990, morning
onwards
High level meeting with Helmut Kohl about the
project

Chapter 27: Monday January 15 1990,
afternoon
Bettina has a prickly meeting with
Georg

Chapter 28: Tuesday January 16
1990
Bettina interrogates Spitze about the Dresden
Stasi

Chapter 29: Tuesday January 16 1990,
evening
Thomas breaks into Roehrberg's
house

Chapter 30: Tuesday January 16 1990,
evening
Thomas is nearly caught in Roehrberg's
office

Chapter 31: Tuesday January 16 1990,
evening
Patrick and Klaus fight at the Phoenix
Securities' meeting

Chapter 32: Wednesday January 17 1990, early
hours of the morning
Thomas and Betta fight, then get
it on

Chapter 33: Wednesday January 17
1990
Bettina gets useful background information from
Georg

Chapter 34: Wednesday January 17 1990,
afternoon
Vladimir Putin decides to blackmail
Roehrberg

Chapter 35: Wednesday January 17 1990,
afternoon, evening and night
Thomas breaks into the
archives

Chapter 36: Thursday January 18 1990, early
hours
Georg appears unexpectedly, finds the document
for them

Chapter 37: Thursday January 18
1990
Bettina visits Georg to collect the photo
prints

Chapter 38: Thursday January 18 1990,
evening
Thomas and Stephan have dinner in
Dresden

Chapter 39: Thursday January 18 1990,
evening and on past midnight
Thomas and Bettina rush
back to Berlin

Chapter 40: Friday January 19 1990, early
hours of the morning
Thomas rushes Bettina to Kai's
flat to hide

Chapter 41: Friday January 19 1990, early
morning
They listen to the clandestine tapes to learn
more

Chapter 42: Friday January 19
1990
Bettina tells Thomas all she knows about Stasi
dealings

Chapter 43: Friday January 19, evening, then
Saturday January 20 1990
Thomas meets with BND
agents

Chapter 44: Sunday January 21
1990
Bettina decides to risk leaving the
flat

Chapter 45: Sunday January 21 1990,
evening
She bumps into Hanno, later runs for her life
to the flat

Chapter 46: Sunday January 21 1990,
evening
Thomas returns to the empty flat, Bettina
rushes in

Chapter 47: Sunday January 21 1990,
evening
They escape through the tunnel chased by
Hanno

Chapter 48: Saturday July 28 1990,
evening
Great changes for everyone

End notes

Prologue

March 1989

IT was a strange setting in which
to discuss the future of a nation.

Alfred Herren rubbed his gloved
hand over the room window to clear it and watched as the dark grey
Tupolev jet rebounded twice on the icy air field and ground to a
halt. The Soviet officials were fifty minutes late. "In all
likelihood deliberately," he thought "a crude negotiating tactic."
But calling this meeting on Soviet ground, in an abandoned military
base on the Finnish border, was at least an admission of interest.
Chancellor Kohl had confided to him that his overture to President
Gorbachev had struck a chord. Now it was time to lay all the cards
on the table. If the information he had received on the economic
situation in the Soviet Union was correct then the deck was stacked
in his favour.

Herren removed a glove, blew on
his numbed fingers and pondered the potential outcomes. As CEO of
Deutsche Bank he had lived through countless business negotiations
and had generally been able to pull off the expected result. But
businessmen were by definition rational beings, even if they didn't
always act that way. Seen from the Soviet side, where it would be
viewed as a political move, his proposal could seem a provocation,
an insult to a ruling superpower. The meeting could last a few
minutes and officially would never have taken place. No trace would
exist in the records. Or the lives of millions of people and the
very shape of Europe would later change forever as a result of the
processes started by their discussions.

Through the whirlwind of snow and
ice fragments raised by the jet’s exhausts he could make out the
silhouettes of two men leaving the plane. Herren immediately
identified the first, tall, well-built and in military uniform, as
General Lushev, Commander of the Warsaw Pact forces. "The man
behind him is probably a political emissary." he thought. He
glanced through the dossier prepared by the German Interior
Ministry. "Ah. Undersecretary Pershev." he realised as the men came
closer. Pershev was a rising star, educated in the United States
and young to have reached the eminence he had. A little younger
than Herren at just over forty he was the former head of one of the
country’s largest conglomerates and now one of Gorbachev’s most
influential advisors.

Herren shut the report with a wry
smile. "They mean business," he mused to himself "if they’re
sending a Herren clone to negotiate."

The door at the far end of the
now abandoned training room opened loudly and the noise of General
Lushev’s boots on the cement floor resonated across the bare walls.
He looked considerably older than the picture in Herren’s file but
no less imposing. He was over six feet tall with vivid green eyes
that betrayed intelligence and suspicion and that contrasted with
his grey-white hair. Herren sensed their intensity as the eyes
scanned him, searching for a weak spot. A massive hand took his a
moment later and gripped hard.

Lushev broke off, turned to
Pershev and spoke a long sentence in Russian. There was a long,
awkward silence before Pershev nodded, taking three chairs from a
stack in the corner and gesturing to everyone to sit
down.

“Mr Herren, please take a seat.”
he said in fluent English. His tone was pleasant yet firm. “I hope
you’ll forgive us the discomfort of this deserted air base as a
meeting place, but we understood that confidentiality was of the
utmost importance.” He was dressed elegantly: and with his dark
grey suit, starched white shirt and yellow tie he could have easily
passed as a successful Western European businessman. “Now, we
understood from President Gorbachev that your Chancellor has a
proposal aimed at enhancing German-Soviet cooperation. I’m afraid
we’ve only been given a very sketchy outline but I’m sure you won’t
mind expanding.”

Herren looked at him and then at
Lushev. “If you’ll forgive my lack of diplomacy I’ll go straight to
the point. We each have something the other needs. The Soviet Union
is on the verge of economic collapse. Gorbachev’s perestroika
reforms so far have had a disastrous effect on the economy. Trying
to keep up with President Reagan’s increase in military spending,
his so-called Star Wars Program, has caused your engine to melt
down. The queues for food have never been longer. Social unrest is
mounting.”

He paused for effect, as Pershev
translated. He tried to read some form of reaction in General
Lushev’s eyes, but could see no trace of agreement or
denial.