The Helsinki Pact (47 page)

Around an hour later they stopped
again, this time by a public phone to call Dieter at home once
more. Nobody answered.

“Where else could he be? Does he
have a Perhaps he’s at a girlfriend’s housewoman friend?” Thomas
asked as Bettina returned.

“Not that I know of. His wife
died a couple of years ago, and I'm pretty sure he hasn’t had a
relationship since. He focuses all his energies on
work.”

They set off again and again
drove in silence for some time.

“I’m sorry, this is a very
personal question, but I wondered if Dieter had ever made any
advances towards you? You’ve been working closely together for,
what, seven years now and you’re such an attractive womanso
attractive ... ” He trailed off, aware of inappropriate layers in
the question.

“Never. That’s one of the reasons
I respect him so much. When we first met, he could have taken
advantage of the situation. I was desperate. Hadn't had a shag for
months and the batteries on my Rabbit had run down. I was
desperate, I tell you, desperate.” She sensed Thomas staring at her
in astonishment. "Oops! Sorry, wrong script. Kind of segued into
Bad Mark, singular, without thinking. Right. Ah, yes, here we go.
As you were."

She glanced out of the window at
the rain now streaming down, beating rhythmically on the glass. “In
reality he offered to help me in all sorts of ways, all clearly
disinterestedly. He’s been the closest I’ve ever come to a father
figure.” She turned to look at him, her eyes glistening. “You
really are something special. We’ve only started making love and
you’re already jealous?”

“Damn right!” Thomas smiled.
“That's the Italian influence.”

“Well, I’m getting a little
worried that we can’t get hold of him.”

“Dieter? Come on, he’d outsmart
almost anyone, I think. He’s out, maybe called away to a meeting or
something. He'll know from when you called him in Dresden the
earliest we'd be back would be after midnight. We’ll try again
later. Did you have time to check the pictures? Are the documents
legible?”

“Yes, I looked through a few of
them. Georg printed out those with text on large sheets and they’re
all pretty clear.”

He felt around in the back seat
for his rucksack, hauled it over and passed it to her.

“Can you read in the car without
feeling sick? You might We need to find something in there that
would will compromise Roehrberg. We still don’t have any proof of a
link between him and Henkel, unfortunately, or just where the mill
fits in, and the better clearer the detail the easier it's going be
for himDieter to act.”

Bettina fished out the cardboard
box with the pictures, around fifty or sixty in all. “Let’s see
what we’ve got.” she said, turning on the interior light. “Hmmm.
This is just a whole lot of numbers. Looks like an accounting
report of some kind.”

“Any names written anywhere that
you can see?”

Bettina flipped through the
pictures. “Here’s one. It says Dresdner Mehl Kooperative. Looks
like some form of business plan.”

“I remember finding that. The
book itself should be there too - it's got a blue cover I think.
That might help establish a link. Roehrberg's got to be involved in
the privatisation, surely. Why else would he have had these
documents at home, particularly if they were taken from Henkel's
house as looks likely. What about the others?”

“There’s a couple of pages in
French.” Bettina continued. “Contrât d’acquisition ... first few
pages of a contract to buy a house in France by the look of it. In
Nice. Roehrberg seems to have had a lot of money to invest. Hang
on, there's a scribble here - can't quite read it, something about
this being personal, not a joint venture. What does that
mean?”

“I think his girlfriend is
French. I saw pictures in his study and the people moving the boxes
were talking about it. One of them was taken by the sea, looked
Mediterranean and so could have been Nice. Maybe that's where the
documents are going, somewhere they can't easily be
found.”

“He was supposed to fly to France
yesterday but cancelled to go to Berlin in the morning. I told you
he was furious and mentioned that some documents had gone astray.”
She laughed. "I guess that's your fault!"

“Do you think he stole the money
himself and then killed Henkel to shift blame?”

“Not sure. Possibly. More likely
they were in it together and then Roehrberg got rid of Henkel.
Maybe Spitze’s also involved, although I think he’s possibly clean.
But Roehrberg had me followed the whole time I was in Dresden and I
think the only reason he invited me to dinner was to be sure I
wouldn’t be around when he moved his files.” She smiled and
caressed Thomas’s neck softly. “Except that Dieter was smarter and
had sent you too.”

“We make a good team!” He smiled
at her, resisting the urge to stop the car again.

“There’s quite a few more.”
Bettina said, resuming her working tone of voice. “This one is ...
wait, it’s hard to understand, it’s the middle of a contract of
some sort ... oh, another house purchase. In Munich this
time.”

“Seems our friend had a fair bit
of money to invest, didn’t he? How much do you think someone like
him earns, more or less?”

“No idea. I would guess no more
than seventy thousand Ost Marks a year, though.”

“There’s no way he could buy a
house in Munich earning that kind of money, or Nice for that
matter. The Ost Mark was worth hardly anything out of the country
so that’s equivalent to a salary of, what, maybe five or six
thousand DM. That wouldn’t even get him the front door, let alone a
whole house or two. You read something about a joint venture
earlier. Maybe Roehrberg is the treasurer and it goes a lot higher,
a high level Stasi syndicate doing deals and creaming off funds for
themselves, putting that into houses and the like. Remember what
Georg said about Wolfgang's warning him not to meddle. But what
about the Omega Mills contract from the archives? Are the pictures
OK?”

Bettina leafed through the
pictures and pulled a few out.

“Yes, here it is. Let’s see … the
sale price is set at 35,000 Ost Marks.”

"That's ridiculous! Maybe half
what you said Roehrberg might earn in a year and even if it was
supposedly five year ago. I bet if we got hold of the balance sheet
we'd find the net worth a whole lot higher, the building itself for
a start let alone what the nominal cash balance probably shows.
Just reinforces the case that the whole transaction was
rigged.”

“We still have the problem that
Roehrberg doesn’t appear in this document.”

“Probably because he’s too smart
to sign documents himself unless he really has to, like the
contracts for the houses.” Thomas said. “He could be involved in
Omega Mills but not appear as a signatory, particularly if this is
a syndicate venture. We need to find who owns that company and who
the shareholders are. If it’s registered in West Germany that
shouldn’t be that hard to do.”

“What if he doesn't show
up?”

“We’d need to find a link between
the shareholders and Roehrberg. He could be using proxies. They all
could be.Then Or we’d need to show that Roehrberg was involved in
Henkel’s murder. And to do that proving that the documents I
photographed in Roehrberg’s study came from Henkel’s house would
really help. Henkel’s study certainly contained a lot more files
than were there when we came in. The dust tracks showed that. Two
days later we find boxes of incriminating documents in Roehrberg’s
home, including the Omega stuff. The coroner estimated the death at
around six in the evening, you said, so probably an hour after
Henkel left the office. We were there from nine thirty. This would
mean Roehrberg or someone he sent was in Henkel’s house between
those times and took the material. How would they know that was a
suitable time? Unless they casually happened to assist in a
suicide, I think it’s pretty obvious they killed him, or at least
arranged the killing.”

“We don’t have proof and we don’t
really have the motive either.”

“Roehrberg knew you needed a
culprit for the investigation. Maybe he had Henkel steal the money
for both of them, perhaps telling him they would somehow lay the
blame on Spitze. Then, once the money was theirs he killed Henkel
instead.”

“Why not use Spitze as a culprit
then?”

“Roehrberg is clever. We now know
Henkel was compromised and that he was much more dangerous for
Roehrberg than Spitze could ever be. Once unification occurs, a lot
of Stasi top brass will get interrogated. The West German services
will try to nail them any way they can to make them pay for what
they’ve done for the last forty years. Henkel would have been a
weak link in the chain of Roehrberg’s defence. He would probably
have cracked. And maybe Spitze was involved in the killing
anyway.”

“How do we prove it?”

“What about the confession? Was
it authenticated?” Thomas asked.

“Roehrberg said they’d done a
handwriting analysis and it proved positive. But he would say that
wouldn't he! Dieter has a couple of people he normally uses for
such things so by tomorrow we should know if the the confession is
authentic. If it turns out that Henkel didn’t write it, then that’s
another things against Roehrberg. He would have to prove that the
test was actually done and that no pressure was exerted on the
expert. I wouldn’t think that these guys generally make
mistakes.”

It was almost 12.30, early
morning, when they reached East Berlin. The city was deserted and
looked eerily beautiful, wreathed in wisps of fog from the Spree.
Bettina took the wheel as they crossed a large part of the city
before entering one of the residential areas in the north east,
Niederschönhausen.

“Dieter lives in one of these
houses here.” she said as she swerved left into a winding road. “I
had to bring him some urgent documents once. It was a breach of
protocol but he trusted me enough and we always met there when
there was something particularly secretive to discuss. The house is
hard to recognize as they all look pretty much alike but it should
be farther along and to the left, toward the end of the road, in
Wolffstrasse ...” she said, wiping the fogged up window with the
back of her hand. She opened the window slightly, letting in the
chilly night air. “I guess it’s just about ... What are all those
cars doing there?”

Two police cars were in front of
one of the houses, their red lights flashing, painting the façade
of the white house with regular splashes of a dark red hue. Another
one, its lights turned off, stood a few metres further
on.

“Keep driving. Don’t stop here.
Are you sure it’s Dieter’s house they’re in?”

“Yes, it’s his. I’m
certain.”

“Shit!”

Bettina swerved into the next
side street and found a parking spot. As they hurried back Thomas
took Bettina’s hand and slowed her down as they approached the
house.

“We have to be careful. Casual
passers-by. Let me speak, OK?”

They opened the small gate and
walked up the path towards the front door which was standing open.
Thomas, ahead of Bettina, saw the policemen clustered inside, one
of them kneeling and examining a body crumpled on the floor. Part
of the face, by the left temple and forehead, was badly damaged,
blown away by a large calibre bullet from short range Thomas
guessed. Blood matted the hall carpet and pooled on the floor
boards. It lay stickily in the body's hair and had run down and
congealed over much of the face. Despite the distortion to the
features Thomas was certain it was Dieter, killed as he answered
the door by the look of things. He stopped in the doorway and
turned, taking Bettina in his arms to try to to block her
view.

“We need to get away from here.
Fast.”

Despite his efforts she glanced
over his shoulder, became rigid then shuddered and screamed in
anguish, thrusting him aside to look. “Oh no! NO!” She clung to
Thomas, burying her face in his shoulder, sobbing. A senior
policemen turned and moved swiftly towards them.

“Who are you? Why are you here?
Do you know the victim?Get out of here! This is a crime scene and
you're no right to intrude.”

Thomas staggered slightly,
affecting inebriation. “My fiancée and I were at a dinner party
down the road and saw the door open. What's happened? Is anything
wrong? Can we help.”

“What does it look like? Get out
of here or you'll be arrested. Go home.”

Thomas nodded, glancing round as
best he could. Everything seemed orderly and with no sign of a
struggle. Dieter had probably known who killed him, he
thought.

“
Let’s go.” he said to
Bettina softly as he turned and guided her, still sobbing
convulsively, to the gate. “We’ve no time to lose. They got Dieter.
We’re probably next on the list. We have to disappear.”

Chapter 40

Friday January 19
1990, early hours of the morning

BACK in the car they sat
thinking, mulling over the recent developments. Bettina had stopped
sobbing but kept suddenly breaking down as grief overwhelmed her
without warning. Thomas sat in the driving seat, one arm round her,
holding her close, and the other stroking her hair but all the
while alert and wary in case of any danger outside.