The Helsinki Pact (57 page)

Thomas brushed his hand down
Bettina’s cheek and across her lips, pushed her lightly forward,
crossed quickly to the far wall and then ran as silently as he
could manage round the corner and along the following
straight.

Behind them, and despite their
care, Hanno heard their steps and smiled to himself. He’d chosen
the right direction and his luck was still with him. There were no
witnesses here so he could kill them both and run no risk of a
police investigation. He'd kill Thomas first, he thought, and then
play with Bettina. Or, no, perhaps he'd incapacitate Thomas, let
him watch beyond endurance and then finish him off once he'd
finished with Bettina. He’d let Sponden know discreetly of the
execution, to be praised and rewarded in turn. He reloaded his gun
and set off at a steady pace, fast enough to be certain of catching
them up but one which allowed him to move more quietly so that he
might take them by surprise.

As Thomas and Bettina stood
opposite each other they realised that the sound of the following
footsteps had gone. The silence continued and with it their
nervousness grew. They didn’t dare whisper across the space and in
their isolation their fear grew and the sweat broke out on their
foreheads as they waited for something to happen.

Then Thomas felt something, a
mere sensation, an intuition rather than anything approaching a
certainty, as if air were moving through the tunnel towards him but
without the force, and certainly without the vibration or noise of
an approaching train. Perhaps, he thought, it was an unreliable
feeling deriving from the intense tension of their situation but as
his nervousness increased and the feeling grew that something was
approaching he decided to make the first move.

After they’d rounded the corner
the tunnel had run straight and if something was now there it must
have come along between the tracks – there was hardly any space to
the side and in any case any movement there would have produced
inevitable sounds from the gravel and stones which lined the track.
He stepped silently out from the wall to the middle of the track,
bent on one knee, held his arm as parallel to the ground and to the
direction of the rails as he could judge, steadied his arm and
fired.

The tunnel was lit up for a brief
instant by the flash and noise of the shot hammered off the walls,
the echoes repeating and then dying away. Initially startled by the
shot, Bettina had noticed in the brief flash a shadowy bulk less
than fifty metres away and instinctively shot at it.

There was a low grunt of pain,
amplified by the tunnel, followed by the thud of a body collapsing
to the ground as Bettina’s bullet hit Hanno's right shin and
continued its trajectory to skip off the brickwork in turn. A blip
of light from their pursuer’s location and the muffled sound of a
shot barely clearing Thomas’s head as he crouched and then singing
off the metal cables to the side showed that Hanno was alive and
still dangerous.

Thomas reacted automatically,
shooting three bullets, none of which hit their target. A moment
later Bettina fired from his left, two shots in rapid sequence
evoking an almost instant response from Hanno whose three muffled
shots were followed by a sharp cry from Bettina and the crunch of
gravel as she fell to the ground.

There was silence, the dark
weighed in on Thomas and he couldn't tell whether she was even
still alive. And now, he realised, he had only two bullets left. He
had to get across to her, check her condition and help as
necessary, but also get the ammunition he knew she would carry with
her as an agent.

He lay flat between the tracks,
feet towards his pursuer in case of shots, and tried reaching out
for her with his hand but couldn’t find her, although he knew she
must be close. He eased himself in Bettina’s direction, constantly
alert to any movement or sound down the track. His anguish now
threatened to overcome him completely and he realised he was
squeezing the gun so hard his hand hurt and was shaking wildly. He
breathed in and out slowly, in and out, seeking to relax. Seconds
passed as he waited for the movement of a shadow, a greater
solidity in the darkness or some sense, some other clue that Hanno
was closing in.

Then there was a soft moaning
slightly ahead and he realised that Bettina was regaining
consciousness. But as he reached her he became aware of a rush of
air and of another sound, a now familiar low rumbling and a singing
of metal wheels on metal tracks, growing louder and with the
faintest of light just starting to outline the corner. She was
almost certainly partly on the track he reckoned and he had to get
her out of danger. Careless of danger from Hanno he caught her
under her shoulders lifting her and trying to drag her to the tiny
space by the tunnel wall, putting her down again to free her foot
from where it was awkwardly trapped by the rail as she'd fallen and
twisted, the roar of the train reverberating louder and louder in
the tunnel.

Then the light brightened as the
train approached the final bend and he saw a dim outline of Hanno,
perhaps thirty metres away, standing with one leg inside the rail
and leaning for support against the tunnel wall, his hand holding
the pistol towards them, wavering as he balanced and aimed. There
was a flash and he felt the passage of the bullet past him, perhaps
only a centimetre away only, and in that same instant Hanno made
towards them, stumbling and hopping on his good leg, now suddenly a
strong silhouette in the blinding headlight of the train as it
rounded the corner. There was a huge hiss of air as the brakes went
on, a scream of metal as the wheels locked, and a juddering as the
train began to slow, its bulk still sliding towards the man,
sliding faster than he could possibly move to escape and with no
refuge to the side.

The wild screeching of the locked
wheels on the rails reverberated through the tunnel but as the
train caught up with Hanno there was a soft crack and something
heavy lashed Thomas violently knocking him to the ground with
Bettina as the train finally screamed and stopped less than a metre
from them. In the sudden silence and with the realisation that they
were both alive Thomas felt for the object which had knocked him
over and now pressed on his leg. It felt warm and sticky and when
he withdrew his hand it was drenched in blood. As his eyes focussed
in the brightness of the train’s headlamp, moments before he passed
out, he found himself staring into Hanno's face, the rest of the
man nowhere to be seen.

Chapter 48

Saturday July 28
1990, evening

IN the Frankfurt suburbs the sun
was setting in a mackerel sky, the blood red rays streaking the
sky’s azure and turning the clouds into bunches of candy floss in a
variegated salmon hue. It was starting to get cooler. Thomas
swithered over whether they should eat on the tiny patio with its
view of the rose garden or whether he should set the large dining
table in the living room. He decided that it was too good an
opportunity not to show off the patio and garden. If anyone felt
cold, well, there were sweaters he could lend them.

His left arm still felt a little
stiff and he could lift it only halfway. The physiotherapy helped –
he did the exercises regularly for over an hour a day – but the
improvement was still too slow for his liking. Bettina’s operation
had been more complex. Two bullets had hit her, one fracturing a
kneecap and the other passing through her right thigh but without
hitting the bone. As soon as she regained some consciousness she
had realised her perilous position and the risk of being run over
by a train and with an extraordinary force of will had attempted to
move herself out of danger but without success. Swirling in and out
of consciousness she'd felt Thomas lifting her under her arms and
then putting her down again to try to free her foot, the noise of
the train getting steadily louder. When Thomas thought back to how
close she’d come to death, indeed how close they’d both come, he
shivered. They were so much a part of each others' lives now that
the idea of her not being there with him was
intolerable.

Thomas knocked on the bathroom
door. “Bettina, have you fallen asleep? Stephan and Camille will
arrive any moment, and I could do with some help if you don’t
mind.” he shouted, pitching his voice above the noise of the
hair-dryer. There was no reply and he walked back to the kitchen to
decant the wine. The occasion was nominally a house warming, a
dinner to inaugurate their new accommodation in Frankfurt, funded
by the BND and furnished with some money he'd negotiated from his
mother. The security agency had found Bettina a job teaching
history at one of the better high schools in town. They had also
offered her a position as an agent, but she had refused. It was too
early, she’d said. She needed time to recover and to reflect on
what she wanted to do with her life.

The documents Thomas had stolen
from Roehrberg's house had given the BND valuable information,
including the address of the house in Provence. Working with their
French counterparts they'd organised a covert operation to search
for other materials. Köpp had refused to tell Thomas anything about
what they'd found, confirming only that it was Roehrberg’s
archive.

Searches had revealed that Omega
Mills GmbH was the fully owned subsidiary of a Dutch financing
company, Omega NV. Getting through the legal smoke screen had taken
longer but after putting pressure on the ABN Amro officer who
served as legal representative they’d discovered that the shares
were held equally by Henkel, Roehrberg and Sponden and now, with
Henkel's death, by the two survivors. The vehicle was an old shell
company, incorporated in 1975 but dormant until a year earlier when
a West German subsidiary had been incorporated. This helped to
confirm that the document of the sale of the mill, dated 1984, had
been falsified and that the accounting documentation was also
false.

Roehrberg had caved in when he
realised that the BND had found incriminating documents. He agreed
to collaborate in exchange for a reduced sentence and had provided
most of the evidence incriminating the other two. Sponden, in his
turn, believed himself relatively safe and had incriminated
Roehrberg as the agent of Henkel’s murder. He further confirmed the
forging of the will in Roehrberg’s favour. Thomas laughed as he
imagined Bockmann presenting first Roehrberg and then Sponden with
offers they'd feel unable to refuse and shuttling urbanely between
them encouraging each to bury the other in an even deeper hole with
vague hints of leniency for themselves.

Apart from the fifteen million
marks which Omega Mills had exchanged at two to one, none of them
had confessed to other financial frauds. The investigations were
still proceeding.

Putin, who in any case was not
named on any of the documents, was now safely back in Russia and
beyond easy reach.

The doorbell rang just as Thomas
finished the delicate operation of decanting a bottle of Ch.
Beychevelle 1986. It had cost a fortune but Thomas had seen how
Stephan was developing expensive tastes and knew how much he
appreciated good French wine. He was looking forward to pleasing
and surprising him. He went to the front door and opened it. A
beaming Stephan, dressed in a green polo shirt and blue jeans,
greeted him warmly. Camille looked more beautiful than ever in her
pearl grey silk with matching earrings and high heeled evening
shoes in iridescent magenta satin. It looked as if they were going
to different parties. Thomas smiled thinking of all the times
Stephan had complained to him about her dress habits, one of the
few irreconcilable differences between them. The other had been
East Germany.

“Hey, this is a great place.”
said Stephan as they entered and looked around with
interest.

“Isn’t it just?” added Camille.
“Wow, look at the colours – and the blue and brick in that carpet
is lovely, just right for those walls. You are clever!”

“We found it in the flea market
last weekend.” said Bettina, finally emerging from the bathroom,
still limping. “It’s a kelim, from eastern Turkey, we think. It’s a
bit worn and so it was cheap. But we really like it.”

Bettina had dressed with care and
was wearing a dark red silk shirt, open at the neck, and a black
linen skirt which she had bought just that afternoon and which set
off her figure to advantage and complemented her hair. Thomas had
never seen her looking so beautiful and stood mesmerised for a
second, admiring her.

Stephan noticed his expression
and laughed. “Come on, Camille, I think we should leave them alone
for a bit. And I guess dinner's going to be pretty
late!”

A tall white candle flickered
behind the decanter, layering the tablecloth with intermittent
splashes of dark red. Stephan and the two women settled themselves
in bamboo chairs on the patio and admired the still striking
sunset. Thomas arrived a moment later, carrying a steaming dish of
pasta with one hand and in the other the empty wine bottle wine
which he handed over to Stephan with a small, mock serious
bow.

“Wow! What a bottle!” Stephan
exclaimed. “Do you have an important announcement to make?” he
asked, looking slyly towards Bettina.

Thomas smiled to himself. Stephan
had been extremely inquisitive ever since he’d heard they were both
settling down in Frankfurt about how things with Bettina were
proceeding. Stephan poured wine as Thomas served the
pasta.