The Helsinki Pact (2 page)

“A mounting wave of nationalism
is being used by local politicians to snatch power for themselves.
Requests for independence are cropping up everywhere: Hungary,
Georgia, Lithuania, now Kazakhstan. The USSR is ready to explode.
To hold it together you only have two options: repressive military
action or money.”

Herren waited, but still no
reaction. There was no doubt that the picture he had painted was
correct−the Soviet Union was close to the brink. In all likelihood
this was the main reason Gorbachev had been incessantly visiting
the Western capitals in the last few months. The biggest threat to
the USSR was coming not from its historical enemies but from within
itself.

“Military intervention against
the provinces would go against all of Gorbachev’s tenets and
compromise his credibility worldwide.” Herren continued. “The
rouble is non-convertible, and the internal savings rate abysmal.
So you need foreign capital. But no Western government believes in
your reforms enough to risk their own money. None except ours, that
is. We are ready to put fifty billion Deutsche Marks on the table
immediately. At a price, of course.”

“What price?” Lushev intervened,
in a thick Russian accent.

Herren moved toward the
whiteboard to draw a rough sketch. “You have a vast empire, the
biggest in the world in land area. The USSR stretches from Asia and
the Pacific Ocean in the east, here, just across the Bering Straits
from the US, and west to Europe, over 10,000 kilometres in
distance. But the DDR, the German Democratic Republic, East
Germany, call it as you will, is a Soviet creation. A puppet
country. It should return to being part of Germany. We want you to
cut the strings and let history take its natural
course.”

Pershev shot up from his chair.
“You have the nerve to propose we sell you the DDR for fifty
billion Deutsche Marks?” he shouted. He seized the cloth and wiped
Herren’s drawing in one swift move. “And this is what your
Chancellor meant by enhancing the Soviet-German
relationship?”

“Gentlemen, please.” Herren said,
noticing that Lushev was still sitting motionless in his chair.
“We’re all men of the political world here and we know how these
things work. A proposal of financial assistance scandalizes you?
Just over a hundred years ago, you sold Alaska to the United
States. What is the lesser evil? You need our money desperately.
And we can accomplish our mission with an invisible hand, so the
Soviet Union will not lose face. In fact it will gain further in
credibility. There is only one German nation, not two. Sooner or
later, they will reunite. But if you hold on for too long it will
be too late for the Soviet Union.”

Two hours later, the snow cut
slantingly through the freezing wind as Alfred Herren hurried back
toward his private jet. Part of him was elated, another extremely
worried. How long could negotiations be kept hidden from the DDR
informants? East Germany's despotic ruling elite would use every
means in its power to avoid being wiped away. The road to a new
Europe was likely to be paved with dead bodies. Would his be among
the first, he wondered, and he sat on the plane and took from his
wallet a picture of his wife and their new born baby. The serene
bliss of that moment during the summer holidays seemed ages away
and he felt a chilling premonition about what his own future might
be.

But first he had to report to
Kohl. Lushev and Pershev would report in turn to Gorbachev.
Assuming all went well, and he was certain that it would knowing
how desperate the USSR was for hard currency, they would all meet
again in a week, this time in Finland, neutral territory. He pulled
out a pad from his briefcase, wrote
The Helsinki Pact
neatly
at the top of a sheet, and began to make notes for his meeting with
Kohl first thing in the morning.

Chapter 1

Friday September 1
1989

ALWAYS when Thomas crossed he
felt adrift in a time he couldn’t quite grasp. Deceptively similar
to his own, this country was one where he was no longer able to
understand intuitively how things worked. "Make a simple mistake
here," he thought "even from ignorance, and you could find yourself
in jail."

He had been entering through the
Friedrichstrasse crossing for months now but invariably he would
feel apprehensive and uneasy until he was safely through. Even when
he’d escaped to the city streets this feeling of wariness as to
what might happen persisted for at least an hour, often longer.
Each time the city's drabness struck him, marking the contrast with
the determined jollity of the western sector. The brutalist
architecture of the new buildings casually thrown down, it seemed,
among the elegant constructions of the past didn't help, but there
was also a general strangeness to the country, something at the
same time familiar but also quite foreign to him.

Twice already he had stopped
suddenly, wheeled round and walked rapidly back in the direction
he’d come, scanning carefully the people on all sides, convinced
that he was being followed. He’d been on edge from the moment he’d
woken up, and the slow shuffle to the immigration desk had made
things worse. He wished he hadn't learned of the soundproofed room
deep in the building. Kai had joked about it but Thomas couldn’t
get it out of his mind, wondering if he’d end up there, wondering
how he would cope if he did.

He’d been making regular
crossings for months now but previously he’d had nothing more
incriminating with him than some excess currency. This crossing was
different.

Convinced he’d overlooked some
detail which would have him suspected and given a full body search,
his nerves at breaking point as a result of the stuttering
movements of the queue and the menace brought by the armed guards
round the stuffy hall, he’d nearly abandoned the attempt in order
to return to the safety of his apartment. And then he’d thought
that his risk was nothing to that of Kai, who was risking his life.
He’d breathed slowly and deeply to steady his nerves, tried not to
think of the soundproofed room, had shuffled forward with the rest
trying to look a bit bored, a bit annoyed with the delays, and then
suddenly he was through, out in the open.

Now on the streets of East
Berlin, hurrying towards Kai’s apartment, he couldn’t shake off the
feeling that something would go wrong, that he’d be stopped and
invited - that was the word they used, although it was no use
declining – to visit a drab, anonymous office hidden away somewhere
where he would have to explain to the police or Stasi officers just
what he'd been up to.

This time when he wheeled round
and walked back he’d stopped on the corner, looked ostentatiously
at his watch and exaggerated his gesture of annoyance as if whoever
he was due to meet there was very late. He then spent several
minutes scrutinising the passers-by, checking to see if there were
any faces he’d seen recently or if anyone seemed to be paying him
particular attention. There were two men in identical belted
raincoats approaching him on the crossing who had looked at him and
said something to each other. As he idly turned he saw one glancing
back.

“Damn this!” he thought. “I’m
getting paranoid!” He took a final scan of the streets, turned, and
set off on the last few hundred metres towards Kai’s
apartment.

He crossed the wide
Alexanderplatz, next to the towering TV antenna which had become
the world recognised symbol of East Berlin. A closed subway
station, now unused, faced him on the right. He recognised the
landmarks and remembered that Kai’s apartment block was just round
the corner.

Visiting East Germans at home was
not actually prohibited but it was strongly discouraged. Thomas had
visited Kai only once before, shortly after he’d moved in, and he
wondered if he was pushing his luck. People trying to escape were
usually shot, if caught in the attempt, and anyone helping escapees
could expect pretty much an indefinite jail sentence.

The building was old, unlovely,
and not especially well maintained but its location, close to the
now abandoned subway station, was exactly what Kai had been seeking
for some time. Kai’s apartment was right at the top but had a
private utility room in the basement. This was the last of a row of
such rooms, separated from the others by a noisy boiler room which
the caretaker rarely visited, and on the closest side of the
building to the Alexanderplatz.

The street door was unlocked and
as Thomas entered he felt rather than saw a movement to his left
and noticed the door to the only apartment on the ground floor,
presumably that of the caretaker, standing very slightly ajar and
then clicking shut as he crossed the hall to the stairs.

He climbed slowly to Kai’s
apartment, thinking of the woman who managed the cleaning and
collected the rents and who, Kai was certain, was one of East
Germany’s multitude of Stasi informers. He was annoyed at being
seen but realised that one could hardly avoid that in East Germany
where, so some said, at least one in ten people were informers
under Stasi control. At least it was gloomy in the hallway and he’d
instinctively turned away as soon as he’d realised he was being
watched. Kai had said he'd sometimes come across the woman
unexpectedly, including once when he’d stormed out of the apartment
following a furious quarrel with Ulrike and surprised her
apparently tying her shoelaces right outside his door.

Thomas knocked and the door
opened immediately, bringing with it the sounds of Strauss's Horn
Concerto No 1. Thomas spoke formally and in a voice firm enough to
carry downstairs rather than merely to the young man facing
him.

“Good morning, Mr Schulz, I’d
hoped to learn more about music in East Berlin. Is this a
convenient time? And isn't that Baumann with the Leipzig orchestra,
with Masur?”

Kai had raised a sardonic
eyebrow, bringing a tremor to Thomas’s voice which he’d had
difficulty controlling.

“Of course, Mr Schmidt, of
course. I’ve been looking forward to your visit. I thought that
today we might look at going below the surface, exploring some of
the hidden depths of the art for which we’re so
renowned.”

He ushered Thomas in with a
flourish, kicked the door shut, switched tracks on the tape deck
and turned up the volume, filling the apartment with the full punk
rock blast of God Save the Queen.

"Great guy Masur, especially the
way he's moving now, but this is more like it." He moved to the
music for a moment or two then turned to embrace Thomas.

“God, Kai, you do push things. My
nerves are already shot bringing this stuff over.” They hugged each
other.

“You have to. It’s the only way
to remain sane. Anything else and you become one of them, or give
up, stop living. They've hauled me in a couple of times, complained
about my choice of music, but I just play dumb and they shout at me
and nothing happens. They think I'm a half-wit. I guess you found
what you were looking for. That’s great! Let’s see. Let’s
see!”

Thomas cut away the false lining
of his jacket, removed the papers hidden there and spread them out
on the table. Kai pored over them, tracing the lines with a finger
and reading the station names with pure pleasure, a smile creasing
his face.

“This is wonderful! Wonderful.
Far more detailed than I’d ever hoped possible. This is going to
make all the difference to us. Just wonderful!” He hugged Thomas
hard again.

Thomas unfolded the construction
plans of the now closed Alexanderplatz station and he and Kai pored
over them, identifying the apartment block, measuring distances and
checking angles. One of the documents was a blueprint on
translucent paper showing the area’s geology on the same scale as
the construction plans and this confirmed what Kai had earlier been
able to establish through talking casually to engineers and
builders. The project was audacious but realistic, they could both
see that now. Kai became serious. “I really think you’ve saved our
lives with this.”

Later at Kai’s door they again
shook hands formally. The album had come round to Anarchy in the UK
for the second time, the volume now less of a full throated
roar.

“Thank you again, Mr Schulz. That
was very helpful and informative.”

“My pleasure Mr Schmidt. I
believe I learned from you in turn. I look forward to our next
meeting, perhaps in a week or two if things go to plan.” There was
the slightest of smiles on Kai’s face as he shut the
door.

As Thomas clattered downstairs
and crossed the hallway there was again a slight click from the
door on his right. He scowled at it then opened the street door and
walked away from the building. He should get something to eat, he
felt, but decided first to make a business visit to the Ephraim
Palais, an old French restaurant which many considered among the
best in East Berlin. Perhaps Axel Gutwein, the restaurant manager
he'd come to know well, would feed him.

Like most students in West Berlin
Thomas lived hand to mouth. After his father had died relations
with his mother had deteriorated. He’d finally had enough and,
partly on account of following a girlfriend, partly because of its
reputation as a party city, he’d moved from his family home in
Frankfurt to Berlin and found a flat. He’d enrolled in the
university to study economics, a course chosen less through a love
of the subject than as a calculated assessment that an economics
degree might help if he ever decided to return to Frankfurt and
join the Bundesbank in the shadow of his illustrious father. His
real love was opera and although he couldn’t afford it he’d found
ways of hustling money for occasional singing lessons even if that
too often meant dodging his landlord.