Lime's Photograph

by Leif Davidsen

  We agreed that if he wanted me he would leave a message at the Royal, and we said that it would be nice to have a couple of drinks together one evening and talk about the old days, when the whole world was his playground, but I got the feeling that he didn’t really want to. I didn’t fit in with his life any more, it seemed. Maybe I knew too much about the old him, and he didn’t want his new wife to hear any details. Who knows? We all change. I was probably just envious of his home life, his wanting to spend his free time with his family rather than with me.

  I went for a walk in sunny Copenhagen and ate a hot dog while I watched the bike couriers weaving dangerously in and out between cars and pedestrians. A grilled sausage with a bread roll seemed to bring back the taste of childhood and teenage years. Eaten in the sunshine and cool breeze it tasted of the Denmark I wanted to remember, which had a place in my heart. An efficient, unostentatious country which made the best of the few resources the Lord had given it. The newspapers told me that it was a country gripped by a fear that foreigners would overrun the Danes and turn them into Muslims and heathens, but looking around Copenhagen everything seemed as normal. On such a lovely summer’s day you could almost forget that November and March existed. The city was smiling, and the slow tempo and lack of noise in comparison with Madrid were balm to my soul. I would find it hard to live there permanently, but having eaten the sausage, wiped my mouth with the paper napkin and listened to the hot dog man chatting with his customers, I felt better than I had for a long time. I couldn’t explain why, but it was as if I felt a germ of hope that I would get through the crisis, not just survive it but also live life again.

  Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I looked forward to seeing Clara, her face and her smile, her melodious voice.

  She was rather businesslike with me as I sat in a small conference room on the top floor of an ugly concrete building that housed the National Security Service, while downstairs the ordinary police dealt with local, visible crimes. We were in a plain, white-walled, slightly cool room with pale, functional Danish furniture. She had only, apart from my two photographs, a notepad and a tape recorder. There were a couple of pleasant abstract reproductions on the walls. I might just as well have been sitting in any other modern Danish public office of a certain status. There was a younger man sitting at the far end of the table, whom Clara introduced to me as Detective Inspector Karl Jakobsen.

  The taxi driver who had taken me out to the meeting was a Kurd from Iraq who spoke rapid Danish with a heavy accent. He was in his 40s, and had the radio tuned to a local station playing old 1960s pop music, putting me in a pleasantly nostalgic mood.

  “You going to see the spies?” the Kurd had asked when I gave him the address of Bellahøj Police Station.

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said.

  “Big trouble, right.”

  “Trouble?”

  “You Danish, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. But I don’t live in Denmark,” I said.

  “Oh. Then you don’t know. The National Security Service has listened in on legal political parties on the left and now big trouble.”

  “They’ve always done that, haven’t they? Kept an eye on communists and Nazis and terrorists and Russians. That’s what they’re paid to do, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Well, now they’ve been caught at it. An agent told about it on television.”

  “Right. They’ve been caught with their fingers in the biscuit tin.”

  “No. Not biscuits. They’ve listened in and spied on legal Danish party. Listed legal Danish party in register. Spied on Kurds in Denmark. Kurds legal in Denmark, yeah? Big trouble.”

  “OK. I understand,” I said, even though I didn’t really.

  I had intended to ask Clara about it, but the atmosphere was formal, so I didn’t. Karl Jakobsen was wearing a grey-brown jacket and a muted tie. He stood up and we shook hands and he sat down again, studying me with his small, brown eyes. His eyebrows were in need of a trim.

  Clara reached out to the tape recorder and switched it on.

  “Peter Lime,” she said. “I would like to begin by saying …”

  I reached out, picked up the tape recorder and switched it off.

  “Before we start recording or do anything at all, I’d like to know what this is all about,” I said.

  “A few questions,” said Jakobsen, clearly annoyed. “That’s all. Clarification.”

  “I wasn’t speaking to you,” I said. “Clara …?”

  “OK, Peter …”

  Karl Jakobsen straightened up in his chair, looking surly, and cut her short.

  “Just a few questions,” he said. “No more to it than that.”

  I ignored him and turned to Clara.

  “Is this your boss?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Then I think you should tell him where to get off.”

  She smiled with her eyes.

  “What would you like to know?” she asked, ignoring the fact that Jakobsen was looking rather pissed off. It was a very elegant way to put the jerk in his place. I didn’t like him without really knowing why. He appeared trustworthy, but he had the cockiness of a typical cop who thought that his position gave him the power to do whatever he liked. He seemed to me to be the type who loved beating confessions out of people, not that I had any basis for that kind of misgiving.

  I looked at Clara.

  “What are you going to use this for?” I asked.

  “Well, really all you have to do is tell me what I already know. That you took the photographs. That they are Lime’s photographs, when you took them and if you can identify the individuals in the group photograph.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  She took a deep breath and glanced across at Jakobsen who scratched his bluish stubble, which he undoubtedly thought was macho, but which I found repellent.

  “No. It wasn’t. Your replies will be entered into a report, several reports, in fact. Within a relatively short period of time we have to make a summary of the NSS’s activities over the last 20 years. One report will be made available to the public, an expanded version will go to the Security Affairs Committee and an even more detailed report will be made to the Justice Department. Your information will be included in the latter.”

  “Why is it so interesting?” I asked.

  Again she looked at Jakobsen, and I realised that he was her superior, but that they had some kind of arrangement for dealing with me. I was familiar with the manoeuvre from Don Alfonzo. These people were incapable of saying anything straight out.

  “It just is,” said Clara.

  “Why?”

  “Peter. You don’t have any particular links to Denmark. You obviously don’t keep up with what goes on here. One of our former sources has stated publicly that the NSS has kept legal political parties under surveillance. We want to tell our political masters that there was a reason for it. But it’s of no concern to the public. We’re not being put to the vote. We’re not up for an election.”

  “OK. You’ve had a defector?”

  She smiled.

  “That’s a splendid interpretation, Peter,” she said.

  “And now I am to tell you, so you can tell your political watchdogs, that you might well have monitored parties illegally, but there was a reason for it. Because this Lime chap, he’s actually got proof in a photograph that a member of parliament, in his young revolutionary days, had coffee with German terrorists? So it was a good thing you kept tabs, even though nothing came of it. No bombs, at least. Is that how it fits?”

  “We ask the questions, Lime,” said Karl Jakobsen.

  “I can just leave,” I said. “Is that how it fits, Clara?”

  “More or less,” she said.

  “OK. Last question.”

  “Yes, Peter.”

  “Is there a file on me?” I said.

  Clara glanced across at Jakobsen before answering.

  “No. There was nothing on you.”

&
nbsp; “You can switch on your tape recorder,” I said.

  “Thank you, Peter.”

  It didn’t take long. She asked me straightforward questions: my name, why I had taken the two photographs, and about the identity of the people in the pictures. She was especially interested in the man who later became a left-wing member of parliament. Jakobsen took notes and stared at me. It was clear that he liked neither my ponytail, nor what I represented – which was everything he wasn’t.

  It didn’t take long, and when we had finished Jakobsen got up and left with a brief nod. He took the tape recorder with him.

  “Nice lad,” I said.

  “His manner possibly works against him,” said Clara. “Can you come by tomorrow and give it your signature?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” She looked worried. “We’re a bit pressed for time.”

  “I want you to do something for me,” I said.

  “I’d like to go out to dinner with you. That’s got nothing to do with all this.” She placed her hand on top of mine and looked me straight in the eyes, making me feel confused and nervous, as if I was 17 again. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but I knew I couldn’t control my feelings.

  “It’s not that,” I said.

  “Then what?”

  I told her that I wanted to see my file in Berlin, but that I didn’t know how to go about it and that I hoped she could help.

  “I’d be happy to try, Peter. But there’s not much I can do,” she said.

  “Surely you could ring your colleagues in Germany and get me in.”

  “No. I’d like to, but I can’t do it just like that. But you can get access yourself. The old Stasi archives are open to the public, but the demand is crazy. There’s a huge waiting list. They’ve got 180 kilometres of shelves filled with files. The Stasi employed 280,000 people and countless numbers of informers. The whole GDR was one big nest of singing canaries. Everyone reported on everyone and a lot of people want to see what’s in their files.”

  Clara paused and took her hand from mine.

  “I can give you the address, I can help you write the letter. I can ring a couple of contacts and get them to try to speed up your right of access, but I can’t promise to get you in ahead of everyone else. Why do you want to see your file?”

  “Maybe there’s an answer there, maybe there isn’t. But I have to look,” I said.

  She tore off a sheet of paper from her notepad and smiled at me.

  “It’s Germany, right? Do you speak German?”

  I nodded.

  “OK. The place is called Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. It’s in the old Stasi headquarters on Normannenstrasse. The Stasi had the most enormous office complex sprawling over more than just one street. They tried to shred and burn as much as they could at the time the Wall fell, and angry demonstrators destroyed other material. But there are still millions of files open to the public. But – and this is the crucial thing – they’re open to everyone and anyone, and people who are registered have first claim. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not as if I can come along and get you in first, even though I work for the intelligence service of a friendly country. It’s democratic but it’s agonising.”

  I nodded again.

  “That long, German name is colloquially called the Gauck Authority. They’re the ones you have to write to. The whole idea of providing an insight into what went on has been named after Joachim Gauck. He was a priest in the GDR and now he’s in charge of this colossal evidence of the GDR’s paranoia”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “You write to them and say you think you’re registered. They check to see if you are and if so, you receive a letter giving a date on which you can go along and read your file. It’s as simple as that. But first they screen your case, to ensure that innocent third parties don’t have their private lives exposed. It’s unique. No democratic country or socialist state has ever gone so far in opening up their archives for anyone to look at as die ehemaligen DDR, the former GDR. In a way it pleases me. In a way it scares me.”

  “What if we got the chance to go through your drawers, you mean?” I said.

  Now she laughed outright.

  “Yes. Good grief. That wouldn’t be at all pleasant.”

  I leant towards her.

  “Have you got the addresses and everything?”

  “I can write the letter for you, Peter. And then you can just sign it. If you’re sure you want to, that is?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “People don’t always come away from the archive in a happy frame of mind.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because – and now I’m speaking against the very nature of my job – the truth isn’t always essential. One doesn’t have to lie, but sometimes it’s not necessary to be free with the truth. Some things are actually better left unsaid. It’s just like a patient’s case notes. Is it really always best to know everything?”

  I saw something else in her face. A shadow passed over it. In her job she was used to concealing her true motives, but I thought I could see exasperation or confusion in her eyes. I put my hand over hers.

  “You want me to look, don’t you?” I said.

  “It’s your decision.”

  “But you want me to, don’t you?”

  “It could be interesting.”

  “And if I find something that could be of interest to you and your review, then you’d like to know about it.”

  “Peter,” she said. “Our review has to be submitted in a couple of days and the waiting time to be processed by the Gauck Authority can be several months. So it’s not really a matter of urgency.”

  “But anyway?”

  “But yes anyway,” she said and smiled again.

  I let go of her hand and looked into her eyes.

  “OK. It’s a deal. But on one condition.”

  “What time and where, Peter,” she said and laughed aloud. I seemed to have that knack with her. I could make her laugh, and I got the feeling that she didn’t really find all that much to laugh about. There was pain behind her confident bearing, but I could tell that she did everything she could to conceal the blow she had suffered at some point.

  17

  I went into town and bought some summer clothes, a shirt, a tie and a pair of shoes, got the hotel to book a limousine and picked Clara up at her address on Vesterbrogade, in the west of the city. She had changed into a light-coloured summer dress and was nicely made-up. She nodded with irony, but I could tell she was also a little flattered when I got out and held the door for her. She was wearing a simple gold necklace with a small snake charm on it.

  “You look like a million dollars,” she said in English.

  “And you like a billion,” I replied, making her laugh at my extravagant compliment, but the summer evening seemed to set a light and breezy tone.

  I wasn’t familiar with any particular restaurants in Copenhagen and had first thought about going to the Tivoli Gardens, but I followed the advice of the hotel and made a reservation at the Regatta Pavilion north of the city. It proved to be a good choice. We had a table in the corner of the restaurant, with a view across the lake. First we followed the waiter’s suggestion and had a drink on the terrace. It was the kind of evening which the Danish Tourist Board could have sold all round the world. A beautiful, unusually warm evening with the scents of mellow, late summer drifting from the lake and mingling with the appetising aromas of the kitchen. Bagsværd Lake was as glossy as a old-fashioned silver platter, only the boats of various sizes being rowed back and forth broke the smooth, looking-glass surface. People were out strolling in couples, alone or with the ever-present canine companion, and you could hear laughter from the lakeside where a group of youngsters had installed themselves on a rug with their picnic hampers. It seemed that I wasn’t the only one the Royal sent out there, bec
ause the other diners were mainly solemn men in dark suits talking business-English, but Clara and I sat undisturbed, facing one another in our corner, and continued the conversation we had begun on the terrace as the lake slowly turned red in the evening light.

  We had got off to a rather awkward start, as if suddenly we didn’t know what to say to one another, like a couple of teenagers on our first date. But it also seemed as though we both knew that silence didn’t have to be uncomfortable. The lovely, summer’s evening made it easier. And the fact that we were, after all, of an age where we didn’t have to cover up our insecurity with words. When we got the menu, we chatted easily about what to order, the wine, how nicely the restaurant was decorated, and we invented stories about the businessmen in their sober outfits.

  “Maybe one of them is a spy you once stalked during the cold war,” I said.

  “You don’t have to say ‘once’,” she said. “I’m not out of a job. We have certain elements in this country, we still have a particular kind of Russian in the embassy, we have Kurds who are in the PKK, there are other risks to national security.”

  She smiled as she said those last words, as if they sounded out of place in the idyllic snapshot of Denmark we could see through the window.

  “I wasn’t trying to pump you for information about your job. I’m not terribly interested in that cloak and dagger stuff.”

  “It’s not always that easy to be terribly interested in.”

  “How did you end up in the NSS?”

  She broke off a piece of bread, put it in her mouth and chewed before answering.

  “After police college I served on the west coast, in Esbjerg, but then I was lucky enough to get a job with the Copenhagen police. There weren’t so many women in the force back then, so maybe that helped me a little. Then there was a chance of promotion to the national force and I took it. The job was interesting, and I got to learn Russian for free.”

  “So you caught the tail end of the cold war, the golden age of spying.”