The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  The tiger cages have no furnishings apart from a plank bed, and the toilet is separated from the cell by an iron-barred gate that can only be opened from the corridor.

  “Push this button if you need to go to the toilet,” says the witch. “A lamp will come on in the corridor, which will alert the guard. The guard does not like to be disturbed too often.”

  The first day, the guard does not come for twenty-four hours. “Look at you, Prisoner Reinsch,” says the witch. “You dirty pig.”

  It’s not your fault that you’ve soiled your cell. But your face burns as the witch clangs shut the door marked ‘Forbidden Zone’.

  The witch really does look like a witch, and during your imprisonment at Malschwitz you have sometimes amused yourself by picturing her flying through the sky on a broom stick with a big black hat on her head, shouting one of her favourite slogans: “The victory of Socialism is assured!” Once you made a drawing of her for Gisela and the two of you laughed yourselves silly.

  You try to summon that image now and fail.

  During the twenty-one days you spend in that windowless cell, you come close to madness. Not simply because of the privations and petty humiliations. But because you saw what was written on the Kassiber before the witch snatched it out of your hand. Kerstin has had no contact with Marek. She knows of no plans to get you out. You are entirely alone now. Marek has forgotten you. Where will you find love now? You think of what the second interrogator said at the remand prison. Every day you spend in here you’ll lose a little bit of your beauty. It won’t come back. You don’t want to lose your good looks but you know that you will. The last time you caught your reflection in the window it was already happening.

  On your final day in the isolation tract, the witch visits you again. “So you wanted to make contact with your friends,” she says. “It wasn’t worth it, was it, Prisoner Reinsch? He’s in the West, you know. Your special friend. The Jew. He’s forgotten all about you.”

  When she’s gone you weep silently for what feels like hours. And for the very first time, you wonder if what she said might be true.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Much to my surprise, I fitted in well at Liebermann Brothers Asset Management. I was from the wrong kind of background, but Americans don’t care about stuff like that. I was good at my job. They cared about that. And I was funny. A lot of my best successes at Liebermann Brothers were scored in the Bunch of Grapes round the corner from our European headquarters on Ironmonger Lane. Guys who ran portfolios worth millions of dollars were always thumping me on the back at the horseshoe bar and saying, “Christ, Bob, you’re so fucking funny!”

  One of my most notable successes in the Bunch of Grapes was Annabel, the younger sister of Jeremy Richardson, a rising star in the European equities team. She often used to come over from her job in Mayfair to join us for a drink on Friday evenings.

  Annabel was blonde and glossy with plummy vowels and a light, easy laugh – the kind of girl who used to look through me at St Andrews. But now I had a job and money and I was a right laugh, and Annabel rather took to me. One Friday evening, we were sitting next to each other at the bar. As the punters piled in and the noise rose, we got pushed closer and closer together. I let my hand rest on her shapely stockinged thigh. She didn’t push it away, and so I let my fingers creep up her leg. It was as I’d thought. She was wearing stockings and suspenders, and I knew they were for me. I leant across and whispered an invitation in her ear.

  Back at my flat, I tore off her blouse, unhooked her bra and pushed her down on the sofa.

  “Bob. Goodness,” she whispered as I nuzzled her neck and fumbled with her pants.

  Now I had a beautiful girlfriend as well as a job and money and lots of mates. Well, drinking buddies from the trading floor. The traders were just a sea of faces to me, as anonymous as the numbers that scrolled down their computer screens, and I interchanged them the way a farmer rotates his crops.

  But there was a dark side to my new life in London – my drinking. One Friday night about six months after I’d started seeing Annabel it all came to a head.

  I left the office around eight with a couple of bond traders. It had been a bitch of a day. Corrections had come through from Jens Müller, the new VP in charge of Germany and Eastern Europe, and he wanted the file back before the weekend. It was a relief to collapse on to a bar stool in the Bunch of Grapes beside John or Dave or whatever their names were. We were drinking pints, but I was having whisky chasers too – one of my little ruses. The pub was rammed. It stank of booze and fags. Beetroot-faced traders bellowed obscenities. Girls in silky work blouses, a couple of extra buttons undone for the pub, downed G&Ts. The jukebox vied with the Nine O’Clock News.

  “What do you think of that?” one of the traders asked me. The lead story was about the killing of three unarmed IRA suspects by British soldiers having been ruled lawful by a Gibraltar jury.

  “Fucking IRA scum,” I said, though I hadn’t followed the story in any detail.

  “But they were unarmed. I mean – ” He launched into a long, theoretical argument.

  “Who the fuck cares?” I said. “Let’s get another fucking drink.”

  I got down from my stool and banged into a bloke holding a full pint. A girl got covered in beer. I tried to daub it off her blouse, and her boyfriend objected. There was a brawl and the last thing I remember is Annabel’s brother Jeremy pushing through the pub’s engraved glass doors with a shocked expression on his handsome, public-schoolboy face.

  I woke up the next morning in Chiswick Police Station. I’d been picked up on Chiswick High Road and charged with drink driving.

  “What was I doing there?” I asked the sergeant on duty. Then I remembered: Annabel lived in Chiswick.

  It was my first blackout. A warning.

  The following Monday, Gerard Kelly came to see me. Liebermann Brothers was a US firm, and Americans are pragmatists. Gerard had been detailed to tell me that if I wanted to get blind drunk and have a punch-up I should do it somewhere further away from the Liebermann Brothers’ office than the Bunch of Grapes.

  “It wasn’t a fight, Gerry,” I said.

  “That’s not what I heard.” He met my gaze. There was a flash of anger in his eyes but also a beat of concern. “Everything all right, eh, generally?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I piped. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Because, you know, there are, um, resources available.”

  “Resources?” I said.

  “Yes. You know, uh, assistance. Help.”

  The crease on his trousers was razor-sharp, and his black brogues were polished to a gleam. He hadn’t shone at school or university, but he was soaring through the ranks at Liebermann Brothers. He expected to be made VP soon, he’d told me the previous week in the company restaurant (always a restaurant, never a canteen).

  “Assistance?” I said. “What, you mean, like, secretarial assistance?”

  “You know what I mean,” he snapped. “Think about it, Bob. You don’t want to lose your job. Not now you’ve got a company mortgage.”

  Ah yes, the preferential-rate company mortgage: that was a honey trap and no mistake. I’d used it to buy an expensive little pad overlooking the canal in Maida Vale.

  Gerard was right. I did not want to lose my job. And so I thought about it, and I decided I need to curb my drinking. Annabel had been on at me about it too. She said the one thing she didn’t like about me was how much I drank. But assistance. Help. Resources. There was no need for that. All I had to do was cut down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  One Saturday morning in December, the witch unlocks your cell door at 4.30 in the morning. You stare at her. She never opens up, and anyway it’s too early.

  “I’m sorry the beds are not made, Madam Lieutenant,” simpers Margit. “I had no idea it was so late.”

  The witch ignores her and hands you a cardboard box. Inside the box are the clothes you were wearing when the Stasi picked you up at
Shakespeare Street. They are neatly pressed and smell of prison detergent.

  “Put them on, Prisoner Reinsch,” says Blondie.

  “But – ” you begin. It was summer when you were arrested. The clothes are not warm enough.

  “Put them on!”

  You pull off your prison clothes, step into your old jeans and T-shirt and stand by the bed, shivering. Margit stares as Blondie hands you a buff-coloured envelope and tells you to put your personal items in it. Already inside the envelope are all your mother’s letters to you in prison that you had to hand back a month after you received them.

  The witch grabs the envelope and says, “Follow me, Prisoner Reinsch.”

  “Is something happening, Madam Lieutenant?” Margit asks.

  Because of her special position among the prisoners, she is sometimes allowed to ask questions or make comments. But not today. “Stand by your bed, Prisoner Fahl,” says the witch.

  You follow the witch down the central iron staircase to the administration wing, where she shows you into a room. The curtains are drawn and standing by the window is a man.

  “A man!” you gasp. You haven’t seen a man since you arrived at Malschwitz. Men and women are strictly segregated in the prison, just as the West Germans prisoners are kept apart from the East Germans.

  “Follow the comrade’s instructions,” says the witch, slamming the door as she leaves.

  The man is about fifty with thinning, slicked-back hair. He’s wearing a cheap brown suit and a padded overcoat and in his hand is a camera. A good one. A Praktica MTL3 with a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second. He tells you to stand against the back wall and puts the Praktica MTL3 on a tripod.

  “Look at my thumb,” he says, “and now keep looking where my thumb was.”

  He presses the shutter. The camera is almost noiseless. “Look at the window,” he says, “and now look at me.” When he’s done, he knocks twice on the door.

  “All done, Comrade,” he says to the witch.

  “Thank you, Comrade Martin.” She shakes his hand and smiles. Have you ever seen her smile before?

  “Perhaps you should get her a coat,” he says, nodding in your direction. “She’s freezing in those clothes. This building isn’t, eh, very warm.”

  The witch’s smile fades, but she shouts down the corridor for someone to bring you a coat.

  “And maybe some socks,” the man says, glancing at your bare feet which are turning blue in the Bulgarian leather sandals you were wearing when you left Shakespeare Street. Then, to your astonishment, he winks at you.

  Something is wrong. That is very clear.

  You put on the coat and socks, and the witch leads you down the corridor to a small, unheated room that contains a single table and chair.

  “Sit down and wait here, Prisoner Reinsch,” she says. You wrap the coat around you and thank God for the photographer. The curtains are drawn and you briefly consider getting up and peeking behind them. But it’s dangerous. The witch will know and then there will be trouble.

  When the witch returns several hours later, she gives you a sandwich. “Eat,” she says. Then she takes you to the staff toilets.

  “You are going on a journey, Prisoner Reinsch,” she says. “Use the lavatory.”

  Unlike the toilets the prisoners use, the doors in these toilets have bolts, but you don’t dare bolt the door. The witch will go mad if you do.

  “Hurry up, Prisoner Reinsch,” she shouts through the door. “I haven’t got all day.”

  She taps her foot impatiently as you wash your hands at a basin where, presumably, she has washed her own hands many times. Above it is a sign that reads: Together we will secure Peace and Socialism!

  She leads you then to the prison entrance. The door is open, and you can smell the cold outside air. A warder comes up to you and shoves two buff-coloured envelopes into your hands.

  “Get a move on,” the witch says, pushing you down the steps to where a van is waiting.

  When you step down from the van many hours later and slip on an icy pavement, you are in Berlin. You know this because you glimpse the red light at the top of the Television Tower blinking above the 1970s’ apartment block in front of which the van is parked.

  A guard steadies you. “You go that way,” he says, pointing to the apartment building entrance where a tall man in a sheepskin hat and coat is waiting in the shadows.

  You follow him up two flights of stairs. Home Sweet Home, reads the doormat in front of the apartment door where he comes to a stop. Inside, the apartment is stuffy and crammed with ornaments. Among the glass animals and porcelain ladies you spot a number of Party gongs. Perhaps this is what is known as a safe house: a normal apartment loaned to the Stasi by its owner for meetings. Probably this one belongs to a Stasi widow.

  “Please go through,” the tall man says, holding open the living room door.

  On the brown vinyl sofa sits Pankowitcz. Next to him is your father.

  Your father stands up. “My dear,” he says. Pankowitcz shifts in his seat and coughs.

  “Please sit down, Frau Reinsch,” says the tall man, indicating a free armchair.

  Please. It’s the second time he’s said that. You drop into the vinyl armchair, which feels unbelievably soft and comfortable. He called you ‘Frau’. You smile. Frau. It sounds so friendly, so nice. And you know then that it’s true. What you suspected when the photographer winked at you. You are no longer a prisoner. You are to be released.

  “Ahem,” says Pankowitcz. “We have some important information to convey to you, Frau Reinsch.” He forces his big, ugly face into a neutral expression, then tells you what you already know.

  The interview is brief. There are documents to sign. The tall man explains what each one is before you sign it. Confirmation that your personal items have been returned to you. Confirmation that you agree not to disclose any information regarding the location and conditions of your detention in return for your early release.

  Your father smiles encouragingly. He has organised this, pulled strings at the Ministry for State Security. That is very clear. “Sometimes western journalists – ” he begins.

  “The enemies of socialism are cunning,” says Pankowitcz. “Therefore, silence is mandatory.”

  Silence is mandatory. Your father looks nervous. Perhaps he thinks you will resist this demand. If so, he has no idea what you’ve been through.

  “I understand,” you say and sign the paper. The tall man picks it up carefully and places it in a file.

  “For that same reason there can be no question of an exit permit,” Pankowitcz says, shifting his thick lips into a smile. “In case any such notion had entered your head.”

  You shrug. Leave. Stay. What does it matter? The conversation you had with Dieter in Café Riquard is like a whisper from another world. You no longer dream of visiting Paris or London. A walk in the park, a cup of good coffee, a warm soak at the public baths: those are the things you dream of now.

  The tall man slides another document on to the coffee table. “Your new identity card,” he says.

  You stare at the photograph. It was taken this morning. Perhaps they developed it while you were waiting in the unheated room. You haven’t seen a photograph of yourself in a long time. You wonder if you recognise the girl in the picture. Yes and no. Then you notice a mark in the top right-hand corner of your new ID card: M12.

  Pankowitcz follows your eye. “This particular kind of identity card must be renewed every twelve months,” he explains.

  You nod slowly. Your father looks at the carpet then at you. “It’s a small matter.”

  “Quite so,” says Pankowitcz. “If everything is in order, it will be a straightforward procedure.”

  You look across at the imitation fireplace that dominates the room. It’s crammed with photographs of a young man, presumably the Stasi widow’s son. As a small boy. In the uniform of the National People’s Army. In a lounge suit with a girl in a white dress on his arm. You’ll never g
et a job with this ID card. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. What kind of job could you do anyway?

  “That’s it,” says Pankowitcz. “You may go home.”

  “Home?” You stare at him.

  “I have the car with me, Magda,” your father says.

  So they expect you to go with your father to the villa in Lichtenberg where you grew up. You look across at him. It’s wonderful to hear him say your name. Really it is. But can you go to Lichtenberg with him?

  Pankowitcz stands up and stretches out his hand. The interview is over.

  “Stand up, Magda,” your father whispers, and you scramble to your feet.

  Pankowitcz grasps your hand and shakes it. “Goodbye,” he says and walks out of the room.

  “Frau Reinsch?” The tall man is standing in the doorway. It’s time to go home with your father.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Perhaps you think that I forgot about Magda when I moved to London? Not so. Though Liebermann Brothers could have been a wonderful place to forget.

  By the late 1980s, Liebermann Brothers was riding high. It was in tune with the Zeitgeist. Thatcher had crushed the unions. Mining and shipbuilding were the past; tinkering cleverly with money was the future. The Black Monday stock market crash was, as Gerard Kelly liked to put it to clients, ‘in the rear-view mirror’. A flight to quality was underway that could only benefit a pedigree Wall Street firm such as Liebermann Brothers. We were hiring and building a new European headquarters on Cheapside. It was a glitzy tower with a vast glass atrium: empty space that told the world how little we needed to worry about money.

  As an investment writer, I wasn’t part of the cut and thrust. I was just a Putzerfisch feeding on the fringes. But I put in the hours and reaped the benefits. A salary my parents could only have dreamt of. The pad in Maida Vale. Exotic holidays and big nights out.