The Helsinki Pact (38 page)

“
... at the airport
... this as well ... driving ... ”

Their voices became clearer as
they approached along the corridor. It was the more senior one
talking. “ ... been stepping on a little too many toes these days.
He could soon become a thing of the past, if the rumours I heard
are true. He’s never been able to mind his own business, they tell
me. Too bad. Too bad for him anyway, I mean.”

The younger one made no comment
to this but Thomas heard him again after they’d sealed and lifted a
box each and were walking down the corridor, the voice strained
with the weight its owner was carrying.

“
... but the girl is
quite pretty. Roehrberg is always ... dinners ... ”

“Whatever these boxes contain,
they’re obviously very important if Roehrberg wants them shifted
out immediately,” Thomas thought “so I’d better work fast.” He
picked up a file from one of the other boxes. This was marked
‘Paula’ on the cover and appeared to be a contract. He picked up
another, ‘Omega’, and took more photographs but ran out of film as
he heard the footsteps returning. Grabbing the whole file he darted
behind the sofa only a split second before the door opened. “I need
to be more careful!” he thought. “That was much too close.” He
crouched behind the sofa trying hard not to breathe too
heavily.

They were still talking about the
girl, the older one this time.

“
... and did you see
those legs? I mean, the first day, when she showed up in that sexy
black dress with white dots? Knocked my pants right off.” He
laughed coarsely. "Bet she'd have liked to have gone somewhere and
helped me!" He stopped for a moment as he picked up a box. Thomas
realized they were talking about Bettina. This was the dress she’d
worn on one of the first times they’d met, and she’d worn it again
that first day she had gone over to the Stasi offices. His stomach
clenched as he struggled to grasp everything that was being said,
understand what he was listening to.

“I still don’t understand why
Dieter would send down someone so junior ... ” the voice continued.
“I guess he can’t trust anyone these days. Clever bastard.” Thomas
felt a chill down his spine as he realized they were talking of
Dieter as an antagonist. Possibly the earlier reference they’d made
was also about him. If so, Roehrberg was obviously dancing to a
different fiddle. Not that that was any great surprise from what
Bettina had told him.

He heard them leave the room and
waited until he was sure they were clear before racing over to the
boxes. He took another small file at random, not even looking at
the name or contents, then stepped back behind the sofa. This time
it was a good twenty seconds before they were in the room again.
Thomas could hear they were starting to breathe hard from the
exercise.

“Look, I’ll tell you whatOK
Thomas, the game’s over.” the voice boomed, less than a metre
away.

Thomas’s heart jumped at hearing
the name. They’d found him! He gripped the gun tightly, getting
ready to step out and shoot.

“
... you do these
last ones on your own. My muscles are aching.” He heard the heavy
footsteps of the older one coming in his direction. Thomas crouched
even farther behind the sofa, then felt the back of the sofa hit
him as the body fell heavily on to it.

“Did you check out this babe, the
pictures on the desk?” the man said as he slumped down. “This is
Roehrberg’s real girlfriend, the steady one. He’s got style, huh?
French. A real treat. Now move it, we’ve got fifteen minutes before
the boss gets back.”

Thomas held his breath. He could
feel the presence of the man as if he could touch him, and was
afraid the other felt his too. The minutes went by in a constant
agony, Thomas ready to pull the trigger any minute. Maybe this
sitting down was just a ruse. Maybe the other was getting ready to
act too. His breathing was regular, if still a little strong. A
smell of sweat came to him, acrid. Thomas could see the man's hairy
left arm lying across the back of the sofa. He kept staring at it,
watching as a mouse might look for the tensing muscles of a waiting
cat. Still, the arm seemed relaxed and if it remained in that
position, it was unlikely he could shoot.

The younger man came and went,
descended and mounted the stairs several times. Most of the time
the older man relaxed on the sofa, his breathing easing but then
during what was to be the last couple of trips got up to nose round
the room. Thomas heard him lift volumes from the bookshelves and
then move to stand in front of the fireplace. "Please God he
doesn't come to the windows." thought Thomas, and gripped his gun
tightly. At least he'd have the benefit of surprise on the older
man he thought and he wondered briefly what it would feel like to
shoot to kill. And then he'd have to deal with his namesake when
Thomas came running in to find out what had happened.

The door opened and the older man
turned from the fireplace and walked in front of the sofa. “I’ll
help you bring these last two down. You take the heavier one on the
left and turn off the light before you leave.” he said. “Will you
be flying the plane tomorrow morning?”

“Yes. We’re supposed to be taking
off at seven ,eleven but it won't surprise me if it's later.
Roehrberg's going to call me at eight thirty, let me know the
plan.” He turned off the light and closed the door.

His nerves stretched and now
sweating profusely Thomas waited with growing relief as he heard
their voices fade and their steps disappear in the distance. He
looked at his watch. It was twenty-five past nine. He had to leave
the house quickly if he didn’t want to risk Roehrberg coming back
and finding him there. He hoped Bettina would keep him at the
restaurant until nine-thirty, but then Roehrberg was probably an
important client and they would be served quickly. He moved from
behind the sofa, placed the documents in his rucksack and slowly
opened the door. There was silence again. He heard the sound of a
nearby van leaving and decided it was now safe to get out. He ran
down the stairs two steps at a time. He had just reached the door
to the basement stairs by the kitchen when he heard the front door
being opened. There were two voices, Roehrberg’s deep one and
another much quieter one which, he realised with a sickening jolt,
was Bettina’s. What was she doing here? Why had she come in with
him?

Something the older man had said
in the room upstairs came back to him, troubling him, the phrase ‘a
thing of the past’. From what they said later they were almost
certainly talking of Dieter, who was clearly at risk, perhaps
already even in danger. They had to get out of here. It was obvious
why Roehrberg had persuaded Bettina to come in but why was she
wasting time coming back with him? And why was she behaving like
that anyway?

Bettina’s clear laugh from the
living room was followed by Roehrberg’s deeper voice saying
something with a chuckle but it was too indistinct to let Thomas
distinguish the words. Then music started to play softly. He went
cold, jealousy gnawing at him. He thought for a moment of
confronting Roehrberg, rescuing Bettina and carrying her away but
that made no sense. Bettina would certainly find it pathetic and
Roehrberg would have him arrested and jailed for breaking in. He
walked down the basement steps and across the room, lashing out
incautiously with his foot as he passed an old sideboard, rattling
the dishes on it dangerously and forcing him to catch one as it
nearly smashed. His earlier triumph now felt like defeat. As he
trudged into the garden and walked past the living room window he
saw the blinds were down and the lights dimmed. He could hear
nothing but soft music playing and he tried not to think of what
what might be going on in the room. He felt sick and very
alone.

Chapter 31

Tuesday January 16
1990, evening

AT six-thirty on a Tuesday
evening in min-January 1990 Erwin Hammer was sipping a piña colada
at Frankfurt's Café Hauptwache while waiting for two of his Phoenix
colleagues to show up. Klaus joined him a couple of minutes later
followed shortly by a sweaty Patrick.

“I had a hard time finding my way
here.” Patrick grumbled as he sat down. “None of the taxi drivers
had heard of it or seemed to know the alley by name. The guy I got
drove for hours and then dropped me off miles away. What made you
choose this place?”

"Bloody foreigners!" sneered
Klaus. "Think everything has to be done for their
benefit."

“I like it here. It’s discreet.
The guy who runs it knows how to shut his eyes and his ears." Erwin
looked at Patrick and laughed. "As you discovered it’s hard to find
if you don't know where it is. Get yourselves drinks from the bar.
I've told the waiters not to disturb us. ”

Patrick grunted and helped
himself to a Campari soda which he topped up with couple of vodka
shots from the freezer. Klaus looked at him with distaste as he
poured himself a generous gin and tonic and added ice and
lemon.

“Let’s check where we are.” said
Erwin. “Klaus, you told me the network was continuing to expand
well. We’ll talk about that and any problems there shortly but
first let’s get an update from you, Patrick. You told me you’d run
into some problems in securing the support we need to keep control
of the individual loans once they’ve been changed into Deutsche
Marks. Bring me up to date with the situation.”

“There are problems in two areas.
As our network expanded more and more areas of the country were
brought in and so we now need pretty much total geographic coverage
in terms of keeping control. At the beginning we were talking about
having agents and borrowers only in the seven main cities but now
they’re everywhere, even in the smallest towns, even in villages
for Chrissakes.”

“What’s the problem?” Klaus
interrupted. “What difference does that make? The Stasi’s got its
fingers everywhere, right down to the tiniest hamlet. They can keep
tabs on everything.”

“Makes a big, big difference.”
Patrick retorted. “Before this the Stasi's cut could be kept small.
The cake was being divided into a few slices for the big boys and a
few crumbs for their city helpers. Now thalf the country's involved
so they need a great mass of crumbs and those aren't coming from
the big boys' slices. So the cake needs to be much bigger because
everyone’s hungry and there’s now so many of them.”

“How much bigger?” Erwin
asked.

“My contact is talking three or
four million DMs to get it done.”

Erwin stared at him.

“Shit, that’s ridiculous! That's
eight times what they first asked for, half a mil. We can't pay
that!”

“I know.” Patrick said. “But
they’re not stupid and they know the kind of numbers we’re playing
with. That the exchange rate has dropped dramatically is no
mystery. I obviously didn’t give them any figures about borrowers
but if I say we now need country wide coverage they can work out
why. They know that even paying them this amount, we’ll still make
enough money to make it worthwhile. I don’t see that we have any
choice. Sure, we could haggle a bit but they've got our bollocks in
the vice and they know just how hard to squeeze. We’re stuffed if
we don’t get an agreement with them and they know that.”

“OK, we’ll talk about that in
detail later. What’s the other problem?”

“Our contact is meeting internal
resistance.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”
asked Klaus. “You keep talking in riddles. No one can get sense
from you. What the hell is ‘internal resistance’ and why does that
need more of our money?”

Erwin placed a calming hand on
Klaus’s arm as Klaus and Patrick glared at each other. “Jesus!” he
thought “They’re like two mad dogs around bitches in heat. I wish
to God I’d never brought Patrick into this, the trouble he’s
causing. And Klaus isn’t any better – Brains was right saying that
he’d be trouble. ”

“Exactly what I say.” said
Patrick. “Our contact is being pressured by a senior colleague. The
Stasi no longer exists, at least not in its old form. It’s been
turned into the ANFS and everyone’s busy covering their tracks from
the past, dumping evidence, sanitising everything, that sort of
thing. So everything's more difficult and costs more to make it
worth the risk. That’s the justification anyway.”

“He’s just getting greedier.”
Klaus said. “Or maybe you are." he added. "These figures don’t add
up. Maybe you're splitting the money with them? You can fix things
with more money, you say, but how do we know it's not just sticking
to you? You said they could work things out but it’s not as easy as
that so just how do they know how much money we stand to make? For
all we know you could be ... ”

Patrick stood up and shoved the
solid table violently in Klaus’s direction, following it with his
body and trapping him against the wall of the room. The edge hit
Klaus in the solar plexus and he doubled over, the air violently
expelled from his lungs and his words cut off in mid sentence.
Seeing his advantage Patrick kept pushing on table with all his
strength while Klaus kept trying to escape, feebly unable to get
the leverage he needed to push the table back and fighting to
breathe

The sudden rush of the table had
caught Erwin, knocking him off his chair to the floor. He scrambled
up and rushed to pull off Patrick, hooking his elbow round
Patrick’s throat and kneeing him in the back. Despite his strength
he had no effect, such was the force of Patrick’s rage. Clark Kent
had suddenly become his alter ego. Eventually Patrick let go of the
table and shook off Erwin casually in turn. He glared at Klaus and
shook a finger at him.