The Helsinki Pact (12 page)

He opened the door silently and
pushed Kai into the corridor where he chased after the
woman.

“Frau Schwinewitz! Frau
Schwinewitz!”

He caught up with her just as she
reached her apartment door.

“I’m sorry Frau Schwinewitz. I
think I heard you shouting but I’d fallen asleep. I’ve been working
extra hours, cutting out some designs down in the basement to make
a bit more money. Look, is it about my rent? I called round a
couple of time to pay you but we never seemed to meet and I didn’t
want to just push it under the door.”

She stared at him for a moment.
“Really, Herr Rumpel? How strange. And I’d somehow had got the
impression you were trying to avoid me. But that's OK. I can take
the money now.” She held out her hand.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have it right
now. I left it with a friend for safekeeping – you remember Klaus,
he was helping me move some things a couple of weeks ago. I need to
get it back from him and when I do I’ll bring it straight round.
You’ll have it Monday, Monday evening, I promise. I’ll go and see
him after work, on my way home.”

“You know, Herr Rumpel, I don’t
think I believe you. What’s wrong with tomorrow? Or
Sunday?”

“He’s away. He’s gone to, to
Leipzig. To see, to see a friend. A girlfriend. Driving. In his
van. He’ll drive back just in time for work on Monday morning,
early. But I’ll catch him on Monday evening. He’ll be home by
seven. Or maybe half past. I promise. And I’ll bring it to your
flat. Will that be alright?”

She narrowed her eyes and stared
at him.

“I’ll expect you absolutely not
later than nine.” she said. “And let me warn you - make sure this
is the last time you’re late. I’ve had enough. I’ll make sure
you’re evicted if you’re as much as a day late in future. Do you
understand?”

“Thank you, Frau Schwinewitz. It
will be the very last time. I promise you that. Yes, I can most
certainly promise you that.”

Chapter 9

Friday September 15
1989

THE Deutsche Staats Oper, the
East Berlin opera house, was brilliantly lit and streams of people,
some in fine overcoats and expensive furs, were flowing towards it
from both directions along Unter den Linden. As Thomas approached
he saw Bettina standing by the main entrance. She was wearing a
deceptively simple and very elegant black dress with a discreet
pattern of small white flowers and over it a slim grey coat,
falling open in front. Her blonde hair, loosely tied and cascading
over her shoulders, caught and reflected the light as if burnished.
Despite his new detestation of her he found himself imagining the
pleasures of lifting and running her hair through his fingers as
she smiled up at him. He acknowledged her style and beauty and how
marvellous she looked and saw from the lingering glances of others
that he was not alone in his appreciation.

“Hi there!”

Ordinarily Thomas would have
revelled in being the man accompanying someone so beautiful and
elegant but now he barely acknowledged her greeting, looking around
for Stephan and Camille. He thought back to his visit with Bettina
to the Ephraim Palais and felt ridiculous and ashamed. He should
never have taken her to such an expensive restaurant so soon after
meeting her and he should certainly not have drunk so much that
he’d become expansive and indiscreet about what he was doing. That
he’d been strongly attracted to her, wanted to impress her, was no
excuse for such juvenile behaviour. He’d been like the worst kind
of amateur, playing at being in the black market money big league
but being caught by the oldest kind of trap there was. He felt sick
at the realisation that she’d been using him. He felt pain at the
thought that the scene by the river, the memory of which he’d
relied on to keep him going in jail, had been a mere act on her
part, counterfeit and fake. Despite this he realised, seeing her
standing there, that he still wanted her. That was going to be
difficult.

“Perhaps by force." he thought
with a savage flash of emotion. "She's not the only one who can
betray trust. Pay back time!” Then he returned to his senses and
acknowledged how much he was now in her power and how much worse it
could still get for him if she chose.

The first bell rang but there was
still no sign of Stephan and Camille.

“We should go in. I’ll leave
their tickets at the box office and they can find us when they get
here.”

Their seats were close to the
stage and as Thomas led the way, brusquely and deliberately
preceding Bettina, he realised too late that that meant she would
be sitting next to Stephan or Camille, a closeness he’d wanted to
avoid. He tried to change seats but she simply smiled sweetly and
remained where she was. As the lights dimmed his friends arrived,
slipping into their seats as the orchestra began playing the
Overture to Fidelio. To his irritation and growing resentment,
Thomas realised that Bettina was spending a good deal of time
talking animatedly with Camille next to her and often also with
Stephan, both of whom appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely.
He felt morose and out of place, unable even to lose himself as he
ordinarily would in the opera, and at one point felt a surge of
conflicting emotions as Camille laughed delightedly at something
Bettina had said and Bettina turned to Thomas, placing her hand
with apparent fondness over his for a moment and smiling up at
him.

“Fantastic!” Stephan said as they
exited, the crowd slowly dispersing in the nearby streets. “It’s
the first time I didn’t fall asleep in one of these opera
thingies!”

“Probably because you didn’t
listen.” Thomas snapped. “You seemed to spend the whole time
talking. Didn’t you notice the people behind you? They’d have
killed you gladly, given the chance.”

Bettina and Camille were chatting
chatting animatedly but as the men followed them Stephan, surprised
by Thomas's mood, glanced over and stopped in
astonishment.

“Jesus! What’s happened to your
face?” Thomas, initially resisting, let Stephan turn him round so
that the light fell better on his lacerated forehead and swollen
nose while Camille and Bettina strolled ahead. “You look like Jimmy
Durante – Schnoz Wundart, that’s what we’ll call you now.” He
laughed and lowered his voice. “Look, I know how you like to get
right into things with a new girlfriend but ... ” he opened his
eyes wide in mock surprise, sucked in his breath noisily, and spoke
in a stagy whisper “ ... did you really turn her on that much?
Wow!”

Thomas jerked Stephan’s hands
from his hunched shoulders with a brusque shrug. “Well, funny you
should say that, because ... ” he started, then, “Oh, just leave
it, will you? It was a stupid acquaintance of mine who crashed his
car when I was in it.”

“I couldn’t work out why Fidelio
seemed to be a woman until Bettina told me it was really Larana, I
think that was her name, pretending to be a man to get her husband
out of jail. Imagine that!" said Camille as Thomas and Stephan
caught up with them. "And she made all these snarky comments about
how all these big ideas like freedom and liberty get spoilt when
some people have too much power and that really brought it all to
life for me.”

She turned to Bettina. “And I
loved that story you told me about the swan.”

“What story?” Stephan asked. “I
didn’t hear that.”

Bettina smiled. “Something that
happened in a performance of Lohengrin. The tenor had just finished
his aria and was supposed to be spirited away by this mechanical
swan. But the swan wasn’t there. By mistake it had been moved
during the aria and had disappeared off stage. No sign of it! So
there he was, standing around, meant to leave the stage but not
knowing how to manage it. Finally he turns to the soprano and asks
‘Excuse me, but when’s the next swan?’”

Stephan and Camille roared with
laughter and even Thomas chuckled despite himself.

“So, where next?” Stephan asked,
wiping his eyes. “I think we should avoid Thomas’s nouveau riche
traps and head for a real local place. Bettina, any
ideas?”

“Sure. I know a good place. But
we’ll be better accepted if you two take your ties and jackets
off.” She caught Thomas’s eye. “Your face won’t be out of place
anyway.”

“Oh, and before I forget, Thomas,
I’ve talked to the personnel department.” Stephan added.

“It’s called Unter den Linden
because of the lime trees lining each side of the street." Thomas
broke in wildly, gesturing around him. "They were planted sometime
in the 17th century. Look how regular and even they are. People
walk under them, you see.” He walked over and smacked the trunk of
one a couple of times proprietorially and gazed up into the crown.
"Come and look at this Stephan."

“I do know that, Thomas! We
learned it in school, for heaven's sake. Anyway, there’s a couple
of dates available for your interviews, though not immediately I'm
afraid – either a fortnight today, Friday 29 it must be, or the
following Monday, 2 October.”

“Great!” said Thomas, trying to
sound enthusiastic, as he noticed Bettina’s interested gaze and
slight smile. “Thanks very much. I’ll, I'll let you know soon. As I
can.”

Stephan’s new BMW 7 looked
increasingly out of place as they left the town centre and headed
north through the generally unlit streets. Ruined buildings stood
next to others which had been rebuilt carefully after the war.
There was very little traffic and the roads were a mix of potholed
streets with broken pavements and stretches of sometimes irregular
asphalt. Thomas realized they were in Prenzlauer Berg, formerly an
elegant residential area of the city. Eventually Bettina told
Stephan to pull in and park.

"It’s maybe half a kilometre away
from here but it’s probably better not to park too close. Generally
people here are alright, but sometimes they resent seeing a West
German luxury car and things can happen. Especially if they’ve had
one beer too many!”

The building was old, built of
stone and with a raked roof of thick grey tiles. The sign on the
wall above the door read ‘Restauration 1900’. The room they entered
was stiflingly hot and packed with people and Thomas’s eyes stung
in the pall of smoke which hit them. There was a strong smell of
beer and sauerkraut laced with occasional sharp aromas of fruit
schnapps.

Bettina eased their way through
the crowd, stopping every few paces to greet one person or another,
people of all ages and sizes. "Heinz, Ingrid, good to see you." She
smiled and shook hands, sometimes introducing the others. "Klaus,
these are my friends Camille and Stephen, from Frankfurt, and
Thomas is a student in West Berlin. Klaus was an economics student
as well, Leipzig wasn't it, Klaus?" The hubbub of chatter and the
background music made it difficult to make any sense of the
conversations and Thomas stared gloomily around as they jolted
their way through. They squeezed into a second and larger room
which was somewhat emptier.

“This is the restaurant part.
There’s another room downstairs which is usually quieter. Used to
be a bomb shelter so it’s maybe a bit bleak, though. Best stay
here, I think.”

The smell of beer and the
vinegary tang of sauerkraut remained but were now muted, overlaid
by the scent of roasted meat and baked potatoes which made Thomas
realise how hungry he was.

“I hope no one’s vegetarian –
this place is noted for its pork.” Bettina said as she managed to
find some unoccupied space at one of the long refectory tables with
their plain wooden benches.

"Just so long as the pigs don't
come in." Thomas muttered morosely. "I've had it up to here with
that lot."

The waitress brought them beers
and returned shortly with steaming plates of roast pork and
crackling and for a time no one spoke, being too occupied in eating
heartily.

Stephan turned to Bettina. “So,
are you from East Berlin?”

“No, I moved here about four
years ago. My dad was from a small town near Dresden, so that’s
where we lived. And you’re from Frankfurt, aren’t you? Like
Thomas.” She snapped off a piece of crackling, dipped it in apple
sauce and crunched a bite.

“That’s right. We were at school
together. Known each other since this high.” He held his hand maybe
half a metre above the table surface. “Our families were good
friends and lived fairly close so that’s how we got to know each
other. Are your parents still in Dresden? And what does your dad
do?”

“He was in the export business,
electronics, and he had to travel a lot, including in the West, the
Ruhr mainly I think it was. That got more difficult when the Wall
went up, 1961, but because of his work he could still get permits.
Then after one trip in 1970, I’d just turned five, he was away for
a long time and almost immediately he came back he went off again.
That was the last we saw of him. He wrote to my mother on different
occasions saying each time he had to stay a bit longer and then a
few months later told her that he’d decided to settle in Essen and
that he’d find a way to get us there. What is Essen like anyway?
It’s close to Frankfurt, I think, isn’t that right?”

“Not too far. Industrial, coal
and steel. Not really my kind of town though there are parts that
are OK. I sometimes have to go there to visit one or other
corporation to discuss things. So, what happened? Didn't your dad
send for you? Could you not get out? Have you ever been there at
all?”