The Helsinki Pact (52 page)

"She really safer back at the
apartment." he decided and then he remembered his last minute
glimpse of the sinister figure of Frau Schwinewitz. "She's
deteriorated badly since my first visit there." he thought, not
unsympathetically, although he shivered. "Maybe that smack on the
head and the long coma she was in has permanently damaged
her."

He made himself comfortable on
the seat. He had hardly slept in the last thirty-six hours, and his
head was starting to ache. He closed his eyes for a moment and
waited for the plane to take off and level into its flight
path.

"I must be careful not to give
too much away before I know we've definitely got a deal." he
thought, jotting down a few notes on a piece of paper loosened from
his pad. "Does Richard Köpp have sufficient authority to agree a
deal, I wonder? Probably not. So I need to make sure that I only
say enough to reassure him that I'm for real and can provide useful
intelligence. Then I can ask for a meeting with his superior or
with whoever it is that handles this sort of stuff."

The issue of Bettina’s brother
was particularly tricky, he realised. But most importantly, he
needed to avoid being identified and to minimize his own
involvement. There was still a remote chance that he could find his
file in the East and eliminate all proof of his collaboration. If
he confessed his role to the BND agents and they then reached no
agreement, he would have condemned himself with his own hands. He
needed to be very careful. He dozed off and the biro slipped from
his hand.

It was a hard landing. The plane
bounced once and Thomas jerked awake from his sleep filled with
visions of Dieter’s assassination. Three men had entered through
the front door as Thomas stood watching from the garden window.
They had started searching the house as Thomas desperately looked
for the gun that Dieter had given him. Then Dieter had come in the
room, and two of the men immediately drew their guns and shot him.
He saw the body falling heavily to the floor, face first. Thomas
shouted, and the other man looked over at him, hatred suffusing his
face. He tried desperately to escape but as he ran his feet would
only move slowly and he felt as if he were wading through treacle.
He had his hand on the gate, almost escaping, when he felt a hand
grasping his shirt and holding him back. He turned, and over his
shoulder saw that it was Bettina, smiling slowly, turning her head
and leaning closer, her mouth gaping to bite, traces of blood on
her hair and teeth.

He shuddered, shook the image
away, passed his hand behind his neck and noticed he'd been
sweating profusely. He felt so washed out he was tempted to make
straight for Stephan's flat and immediate bed, leaving it till the
next day to call Richard to confirm their meeting, then thought of
the risks to Bettina back in Berlin and realised that he had no
time to waste. Although late, Richard suggested meeting immediately
but Thomas, conscious that he had to be at his most alert, refused
and they settled for 10.00 the next morning. Within the half hour
he'd reached Stephan's flat by taxi, collected the key, strewn his
clothes on the floor, set an alarm clock, stumbled into the large
and comfortable double bed, thought again how he would have liked
Bettina with him, and immediately fell into a deep
sleep.

The alarm dragged him awake, this
time from an apparently dreamless sleep. He felt refreshed and
capable of beating the BND at whatever game they chose to play with
him. He'd still need to be careful and very much always on his
guard, he thought, but he felt much more confident and while lying
there for a few minutes updated the approach he planned to
follow.

He'd travelled light from Berlin
and as he and Stephan were roughly the same size, Thomas a little
better built, perhaps, and had frequently worn each other's clothes
during the many holidays they'd spent together he decided to raid
Stephan's wardrobe. He needed to look as impressive as he could for
the meeting, he decided, and selected an Armani suit of navy blue
lightweight wool the severity offset with thin pin stripes of light
grey, which fitted him perfectly. He added a light cream linen
shirt, very slightly starched, and a fairly sober silk tie with,
nevertheless, a riot of subdued colours seen when looked at more
closely. He added casually to his top pocket a matching
handkerchief and saw, looking at himself in the mirror, a confident
young man, reliable and sober but with clear sparks of intelligence
and individuality showing through. He twirled a point of an
imaginary moustache, winked at his reflection and left the flat,
eager for the meeting.

As he reached the towering
building in the city centre which housed the BND headquarters,
Thomas could feel his heart beating faster while a prickly edginess
made him realise how much of their futures were at stake. He stood
on the pavement some metres from the main entrance, breathed deeply
and slowly several times, then walked through the sliding glass
doors into the main vestibule. It was approaching
10.00am.

"Richard Köpp, please. He's
expecting me." The young man at the desk looked through the
computer directory, dialled a number and had a brief, discreet
conversation. He wrote out a pass, led Thomas across the entrance
hall and through a metal detector, then accompanied him into the
lift. At the eleventh floor the metal doors opened of themselves
and Thomas stepped out into a small reception area walled on all
sides with reflecting dark brown glass. On the right an open panel
revealed a small meeting room with two men present. Thomas guessed
that the younger of these, a tall man of about his own age with
dark, slicked-back hair was the man he’d arranged to
meet.

“Richard Köpp. How do you do?”
the young man said, holding out his hand as he walked over. “I
didn’t catch your name when you called ... ”

“Wilhelm Schultz.” Thomas said,
holding Richard’s gaze and noting the fleeting smile which
acknowledged that it would be useless to insist on Thomas’s
disclosing his real name. “How do you do?”

“OK, Wilhelm.” He turned and
indicated the other man. “This is Ulrich Bockmann, responsible for
the anti-terrorist department here. I thought it would be useful to
have someone senior present at the meeting so we can cut right to
the chase if necessary.”

Thomas nodded and shook hands
with Bockmann. He realised this was primarily a tactic to
intimidate him and so better extract information, but in any case
Richard was probably too junior to be able to strike a deal without
authorisation from someone more senior. Bockmann was shorter than
Köpp, about 50 Thomas judged, had neatly groomed short, white hair,
and was dressed formally in a dark suit with a deep blue tie. He
had very cold grey eyes, a tanned complexion and a muscular face
with a particularly bulky neck. “He looks like an old sailor,”
Thomas thought “the kind that hunts sharks in the
Caribbean.”

Bockmann led Thomas into the
small meeting room and Köpp closed the glass door behind him. The
room was rectangular with the wall opposite the door almost a
complete picture window giving a spectacular view over the
Frankfurt’s west end. On the side of the table facing the winter
glare from the window there was a single chair and as Bockmann laid
a hand on the back to pull it out and invite Thomas to sit Thomas
deliberately moved to the head of the table instead, taking a
position where he would now be able to watch the expressions of the
other two while more easily hiding his own. Köpp glanced at
Bockmann but neither man said anything.

Bockmann’s voice was dark and
deep and he spoke slowly. “So, Mr Schlitz, how long is it that ...
”

“Schultz.” Thomas said. “My name
is Schultz.”

“I’m so sorry! I must have
misheard you. It’s such a common name, of course. How long is it
that you’ve been in the service? I mean the Stasi. You look so very
young.”

Thomas glanced at Köpp and saw
that he was looking firmly towards Bockmann. It was clear that the
older man was in charge and that Köpp had no intention of
interrupting.

“Wait a minute.” Thomas said.
“This is not an interrogation. I came here of my own accord to
discuss ... ”

“We know why you came, Mr
Schultz. You’re not the first Stasi agent to knock on our door, and
you certainly won’t be the last. In fact, there’s so many of you I
think we should set up a special division. We could call it the
Rapture Division, something commemorating the end of your world.”
He stared at Thomas and smiled thinly. “Realise that you’re in a
buyer’s market, not a seller’s. You really have very little to
offer. We already know most of what you have to say and as for the
rest, well, we’ll find that out on our own in a couple of months.”
He took a few strands of tobacco from a leather pouch, put them in
his mouth and chewed, staring reflectively at Thomas.

“Definitely an old shark hunter!”
Thomas thought. He waited for the man to say more but the silence,
and the steady chewing, continued. Finally Bockmann spat the
tobacco into a small ashtray without taking his eyes off Thomas,
leant back and vaguely waved his hand in a gesture which seemed to
suggest that it was Thomas’s turn to speak, that he, Bockmann, was
waiting and that Thomas had better not waste their time.

“Then I guess it was a waste of
time coming over.” Thomas said as he got up from his chair. “I’d
thought stuff like, oh, the real story of why Herren was
assassinated the other day and who actually did it might have
interested you but I guess if you know all that stuff already ...
Thanks for the coffee anyway.” He gestured to the Thermos flasks
and the three clean cups at the end of the table and made to
leave.

He reached the glass door,
pulling at it and finding it locked, before Bockmann spoke. “Not so
quick, Mr Schulz. I’ll decide whether what you have to say is worth
listening to.”

Thomas turned slowly and they
looked at each other for a couple of seconds without speaking,
Bockmann smiling in the way Thomas imagined a cat smiles with
pleasure at a mouse about to be played with and duly eaten. “I’ve
got him!” he thought, and walked back to his chair and sat down. He
had to control the conversation, he realised, and to do that he had
to attack from the start.

“Let’s lay our cards on the
table, shall we?” Thomas said matter-of-factly. “I’m here on behalf
of an agent who’s been in the service for nine years and was privy
to high-level detail. We can provide privileged information about a
lot of events - terrorist attacks in West Germany, Herren’s
assassination as I mentioned, criminal behaviour on the part of
senior Stasi officers, and a great deal more. We have hard evidence
which will allow you to nail many of the people responsible,
including for other stuff you don’t even know about yet.” He looked
around the table to see the effect his words had produced. Each man
was listening attentively.

Bockmann grunted. "Go
on."

“You’ll find this is all valuable
stuff, not even suspected in the Weast in some cases. We have three
requirements in return: one, the agent needs a new identity and a
suitable new job; two, the file of an informer who was coerced
through blackmail into helping the Stasi needs to be cleared; and
thirdly, an unjust prison sentence passed on a relative of the
agent needs to be reviewed and quashed or, at least, reduced
considerably to time already served.”

“What is your role in all this,
Mr Schultz? An innocent bystander, perhaps – or something more? Why
would you be negotiating on this other person’s behalf?” Bockmann’s
voice rose and he slapped the table in front of him fiercely and
suddenly. “You talk about putting your cards on the table but I
don’t see any real cards there, merely hints about what they might
be. You must think we’re gullible fools, eager to buy anything
trivial! We'll decide what the information is worth and therefore
what we’ll pay for it. And as far as this prison sentence is
concerned, we have no power to ... ”

“It’s a package deal. Everything
All or nothing. This person was given fifteen years for killing an
attacker in a fight in a bar. Here in West Germany he would likely
not have been convicted or at most would have got maybe five to
seven years for inadvertent manslaughter. It was a miscarriage ...
”

“What would you know about the
West German legal system?” Bockmann interrupted. Then he looked at
Thomas and smiled slightly. “Ah, but going by your accent I’d say
you’re from somewhere close to here, close to Frankfurt. Well, this
makes matters possibly more interesting ... Go on.”

“I, this informer was
blackmailed, as I said. If he hadn’t cooperated he would have been
jailed for an indeterminate period. He really had no choice but
what he then did do was spy on the Stasi in turn. He accumulated
information he knew would be of value to the West and he did this
to prove what side he really was on. That, added to what the agent
knows through day to day activity, is material you will certainly
be interested in.”

“What do you mean, ‘spy on the
Stasi’?” Bockmann asked. The deep voice was languid but the doubt
and the amusement were clear. He glanced at his watch in a staged
gesture of impatience.

“He bugged Colonel Dieter’s
private office in the Stasi operational building. He placed a
microphone in a hidden corner of Dieter’s desk and captured the
conversations wirelessly in a nearby location.”