The Woman from Bratislava (43 page)

‘Not in your rich world, no. But here it does. Here it makes a lot of sense.’

‘But what do the mothers say?’ Toftlund ventured desperately.

‘Most of the children have been separated from their parents. Most of the men were killed, most of the women were raped and many of them are dead too, others fled up into the hills, still more could be in other refugee camps here or in Macedonia. All of them have lost everything. The old folk are the lucky ones. Some of them. Find your woman, Toftlund, and go back to your rich little country. You have no business here.’

André caught sight of Torsten Poulsen and with a nod to Teddy he walked over to the UN man and they strode off into the camp.

‘Your case does seem pretty trivial when you look at all this, doesn’t it, Per?’ Teddy said.

‘Shut up, Teddy.’

‘Oops, I hit a nerve there.’

‘So?’

‘Oh, nothing. First the secret agent shows a glimmer of human feeling, then cracks start to appear in the official armour, a little doubt as to the accepted belief that might is right, the necessity of bringing everything to light. The notion that wrongdoers must be punished.’

‘It’s not about that.’

‘Well, what is it about, Per?’

‘It’s about justice. Laws are meant to be obeyed.’

‘Ah yes. Justice. The laws. Very good. And revenge?’

‘There’s an element of revenge in all punishment.’

‘
Voilà
. But now you’re wondering whether it’s worth the trouble to go looking for this sister of mine, who was mixed up in some dirty business so long ago that no one is really interested any longer. And the reason you’re wondering is that the horrors of today, which you’re looking at here, make the sins of the past seem even less important.’

‘Oh, I can’t discuss this with you.’

‘No one’s asking you to.’

Teddy slapped Toftlund on the back. Per stared at him in amazement.

‘I like you, Toftlund, old man. You’re an inarticulate old sod, but somewhere inside that wooden chest beats a good heart. Now what we have here is a picture entitled:
Teddy Shows Affection with Manly Slap on Back.
’

Toftlund shook his head despairingly:

‘I’ll never understand you. You’re absolutely nuts. Try to find your sister. See if she’s here, and then we can go home. Because it really doesn’t matter much any more. Let’s just find out whether she’s here.’

Teddy smiled at Per and relished the look of surprise on his face when he said:

‘I already know she’s here. She was washing clothes over there. She ran off when she spied her darling little brother. Or maybe because she can smell a cop a mile off.’

TEDDY TRIED TO EXPLAIN
to Per about Dante’s
Inferno
, but gave up when it became obvious that the man had no idea what he was talking about. That, though, was how the refugee camp in the old, disused socialist tobacco factory at Shkodra seemed to him. Like an addendum to Dante’s description of the seven stages of Hell. It also reminded him of a concentration camp: the big,
redbrick
, four-and six-storey buildings with their barred windows. All those masses of people in the welter of black mud, and the curiously dead eyes of children peeking from under the plastic sheeting on the trucks that had carried them here from Kosovo’s unsown fields and burned-out houses. He had spotted Mira, or Maria, over by the water pump which the UNHCR fed from a long hose. She had been wearing a white jacket and black slacks, and her shorn hair was dyed chestnut-brown. The women were washing the few clothes they had been able to bring with them: as always it was the women who strove to make life as tolerable as possible even under the most intolerable conditions.
Children
big and small swarmed around them, fussing and whining, being comforted and given a little something to eat. The handful of grown men and youths stood looking on and chain-smoking. It was not cold, nor was it warm, but damp and clammy both outside and in. Per and Teddy stood for a moment, uncertain how to proceed. They heard the clatter of rotor blades and three NATO helicopters came over the mountains and flew across the valley. The children perked up at that. They sprang out into the mud, their hands up above their heads clenched into fists or forming V-signs, yelling in heavily accented English: ‘Go! Go! Go! Kill the Serbs. Kill the Serbs!’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Toftlund murmured.

‘I don’t think he’s anywhere around here,’ Teddy responded. ‘What do we do now?’

Toftlund thought for a moment:

‘We split up. It might be best if you found your sister. Tell her I only want to talk to her. Tell her she has nothing to fear.’

‘Okay.’

The helicopters swooped low over the tobacco factory. The children hopped and danced and cheered. The few men raised clenched fists and smiled without removing the cigarettes from their lips. The women bent their heads over their laundry,
averting
their eyes from the war machines, on which one could clearly see the heavy machine guns and the missiles attached to their undersides. They looked like huge, malevolent insects rattling and roaring their way across the refugee camp and on over Shkodra to the base at Dürres. Outside the fence were two stalls selling fruit, canned goods, chewing gum, chocolate, liquor and beer, but there were no customers because the refugees had no money, so the Albanian stallholders who had been hoping to make a bit extra here also looked up, grinning broadly and revealing mouthfuls of grey metal fillings, and waved at the helicopters until they had dwindled to the size of small hawks in the distance. A white jeep bearing the Red Cross symbol drove past the stalls and up to the main gate. There were two young men in white jackets in the front and through the smoked windows of the roughly painted vehicle the figure of another man could just be made out in the back.

Teddy’s heart sank as he wandered around the vast factory grounds, in and around the crumbling red buildings. On every floor people lay or sat in the gloom on the frame bunks which the UN had had installed. Row upon row of them. Beds stacked one on top of another. Men, women and children packed in like factory-farmed cattle. But even in such dire conditions people still tried to create their own little space with the aid of small personal touches: a coloured blanket, a couple of pillows, a picture or two of
their missing kin, another blanket hung up in order to screen off a corner and give at least a semblance of privacy, however false. The UN had put in a row of chemical toilets. A heavy reek of urine and excrement rose from them, but the silent, blank-faced individuals in the queue outside the small metal cubicles seemed inured to it. This smell was nothing compared to the sickening stench that hit Teddy when he stepped inside the first building. This had been used as a toilet by the first few thousand refugees, until the
chemical
toilets had arrived a few days earlier. In a refugee camp he had confirmed the truth of man’s most basic need. He felt his stomach turn and hurried out. He scoured building after building, finding them harder and harder to tell apart as he systematically worked his way up and down stairways, looking into identical factory halls filled with identical bunk beds and the smell of unwashed bodies emanating from the huddled figures and the chill, grey, grimy concrete walls. So he could not believe what his nose was telling him when – so suddenly that he was instantly transported back to his earliest childhood – he caught the aroma of fresh-baked bread. Or at any rate the unmistakable smell of bread, making his mouth water and crowding out the stench of shit and piss. His heart began to beat faster and he sniffed the air like a dog, so strong was the memory of his father’s bakery, which he had completely forgotten until that scent hit him. All at once he was there again and could plainly see his father’s white back as he bent down to the oven and pulled out a long-handled tray of freshly baked French loaves.

Teddy stepped into the room. It was almost completely bare, but along one wall was a long table piled high with loaves of white and brown bread. In front of this was another, equally long table. Between the bread-laden table and the empty one two women were working. A queue of people was inching forwards. Mostly older children and women. A few toddlers. Everyone was given two loaves which they bore off like precious trophies. The scent of the bread drowned out the smell of bodies. A teenage girl in a pair of tight, trendy blue jeans and a sweatshirt printed, quite
absurdly, with an advert for the Hard Rock Café in Los Angeles, took the loaves from the piles behind and passed them to another woman who handed them to the next refugee. Teddy regarded her still slim figure in the black slacks, and the narrow, melancholy face framed by the chestnut hair. The whole exercise was carried out quietly and mechanically with no fuss, no hint of unrest, and when the last loaf was gone those still in the queue simply went on standing there, patiently waiting. The teenager said something in Albanian, Teddy assumed she was telling them just to wait, that fresh supplies were on the way. They obviously believed her, because there were no signs of any build-up to the sort of frantic tussles for a single loaf of bread which he had seen on the TV at home in Denmark a month ago. Teddy walked up to the head of the queue. He stopped in front of his half-sister and said:

‘
Dobryj den, moja sestra
.’

She smiled at him and said, also in Russian:

‘Hello, Teddy. I had a feeling you would find me. Let’s go outside. It’s going to be an hour or so anyway before the next shipment of bread arrives and is unloaded.’

They sat down on a couple of small stools with their backs against a white wall and the scent of bread in their nostrils. They were alone, a little apart from everything in a spot where, Teddy assumed, the staff took a break now and again. They sat there smoking their cigarettes and soaking up the sun which had miraculously broken through, as if the Almighty, like a great stage manager, had pulled back the cloud curtains. The sun was warm and they turned up their faces to the light which made the snow on the distant mountaintops sparkle like crystal. They carried on talking in Russian, as if with this language they created their own private little world, assuming as they did that no one else would understand what they were saying to one another. She took a long drag on her cigarette and narrowed her eyes against the dazzling spring light.

‘It’ll soon be May, and then it will be summer here. It doesn’t
happen gradually the way it does where you come from. From one moment to the next the season changes,’ she said. ‘And with the summer will come peace.’

‘That’s what you believe.’

‘It’s what I want to believe.’

Teddy swept out a hand, causing the smoke from his cigarette to describe a narrow greyish-white band in the air, like a
miniature
version of the exhaust trail from one of NATO’s high-flying fighters.

‘Then they can all go home.’

‘Yes. And they will. Home to their burned-out houses, their unsown fields, missing papers, devastated country. Home with all their hate. And another fresh problem for you lot.’

‘I thought you were on the Serbs’ side.’

‘This is my fourth war in ten years, Teddy. I’m not on anyone’s side any more. There’s no one to side with. It’s all over. Everything is in ruins. If I’m on anyone’s side then it’s that of good people everywhere. Those too you find in Serbia. Maybe they will have a chance now.’

‘Was that why you got mixed up in that oil deal?’

‘The big oil scam,’ she said in English and smiled before
switching
back to Russian: ‘That was what they called it in the headlines. Was that why? I suppose it was. The old alliances no longer seemed to make sense. No one cared about anything but themselves and their pensions. It started as an extension of my work. Well, we were having to finance ourselves more and more. We weren’t being paid, either. It was too good an opportunity to miss. When you’ve lost out on the ideological front there’s nothing for it but to try to make a winning on the capitalist side. If you want to judge me, go ahead. It’s been years since I could afford to have scruples.’

‘Teddy doesn’t judge anyone. Teddy doesn’t throw stones in his own glasshouse.’

He tried to meet her gaze, but she stared straight ahead:

‘What’s your real name?’ he asked.

She turned to face him, looked him straight in the eye and smiled again. When she smiled she reminded Teddy of Irma. They had the same features and the same sparkling, intelligent green eyes:

‘Mira. My name is Mira.’

‘And you’re my sister?’

‘That part of the story is true enough, Teddy. We have the same father.’

Teddy sat quietly for a moment. He tossed away his fag-end and promptly lit another smoke before holding out the pack to her, but Mira shook her head.

Then: ‘How did you find Irma?’ he asked.

Mira put her arms behind her head and considered the question:

‘As a young girl Irma was an all-out revolutionary. She attended a PLO training camp in Lebanon. I spotted her there. According to my own cover story I was a Yugoslavian revolutionary eager to assist our Palestinian comrades in their righteous struggle against Zionism. The kids today would have little clue what I was talking about. I saw her as good raw material, although in some ways she was too radical, too much of a Maoist. But education would fix that.’

‘Did you know she was your sister?’

‘Not when I first met her in Lebanon. But I soon found out, when we checked her background and Berlin gave me the green light to recruit her. And I asked my father.’

Teddy straightened up, looking flabbergasted:

‘Berlin! What the hell does Berlin have to do with all this!’

‘Teddy, my boss throughout all those years was Markus Wolf. I worked for the HVA – East German foreign intelligence – within Stasi. That was why I knew I was in trouble when rumours began to circulate that the Americans had cracked the code which
protects
us. There are at least three hundred of us. We thought we were safe. We knew that Wolf would never reveal our names.’

‘The Devil …’ Teddy breathed.

‘Yes, it has all the marks of his work, doesn’t it,’ she commented, still in Russian. Her voice was cool, low and businesslike, but Teddy was in a ferment; he almost stumbled over his words as he said:

‘And now you’re worried that just about everybody is after you?’

She laughed:

‘Just about. Serbs, Croats, NATO, the Russians and now the Danes, not to mention a seriously pissed off division of the mafia. I have betrayed everybody and anybody. I am the absolute, and absolutely the last, double or triple agent. Or no, more: I’m the very last specimen of a race of prehistoric creatures which evolved and died out during the century we’re about to leave behind.’

Surprisingly she laughed, as if she found the whole situation very funny:

‘It’s no wonder that I’ve been thinking a lot about Australia over the past couple of years. I don’t think anyone down there cares – it’s so far away from Europe. But it’s too dangerous for me to go crossing borders at the moment, what with the war …’

‘I don’t get it, Mira. How did you wind up in the GDR? And how did Irma wind up there,
if
she wound up there?’

‘It’s very simple, Teddy. The fact is that personal alliances are everything. After the Second World War the Russians, and later Stasi, took over part of Nazi Germany’s Gestapo and SS network. The new enemies were the capitalists and the imperialists. The past ceased to matter so much. If your old enemies now happened to be your new enemy’s enemies then that mattered more than some bygone war. It was the same thing in the West. Several of my father’s old comrades from the Eastern Front served under the sword and shield of the GDR secret services. They knew the trade. In actual fact there was probably little to choose between the two systems. That was how I was contacted, courted and recruited. That was how I learned about Irma, Fritz and you, although Irma was clearly the most likely to be persuaded that socialism also requires discipline. And that such discipline is found not in small, sectarian left-wing
parties, but only in the Communist Party, which knows that at the end of the day Lenin’s fatherland must lead the way. I arranged to meet her again at a so-called seminar in Rostock which was attended by a lot of Danes. The rest, as they say, is history.’

Teddy shook his head helplessly, threw away his cigarette butt, lit up again and this time when he held the pack out to Mira she accepted. Around them the clear sounds of the refugee camp had become no more than a backcloth of voices, shouts, cries, sobs, splashing water and boots squelching through the mud. The sun had come out completely and with the sunlight came new smells, carried across the camp fence by the breeze: the scent of damp grass and what might have been budding flowers, a distinct,
indefinable
sensation of warmth from the crumbling brick which reminded him of summer, and above the voices of the people Teddy thought he could hear birds singing.