by Craig Thomas
The lawyer nodded for him to continue with the bribery. Margarethe Schröder watched Zimmermann from beneath heavy eyelids. Her anger and outrage were evident, making her face appear too young for its surmounting thatch of white hair. She shrugged, as if Zimmermann bored her, but there was a gleam of calculation and alert cunning in her eyes. She had spent the last two years in prison, in her home city so that relatives might conveniently visit her, awaiting a trial that might never come. She had been a guard at Maidanek camp. The depositions that had been presented against her recited her deeds. She had killed babies, children, women as a matter of course, of routine — something more chilling to Zimmermann when he had first read the depositions than the gratuitous, hideous way her activities had reached above and beyond the call of duty; the dashing out of brains on concrete floors or against the wooden walls of huts, the rumours of the lampshades of skin, the collection of lingering enlargements that decorated her quarters.
Zimmermann had met them before — the survivors of the SS and the Gestapo. There was still no other emotion he could feel than sick, quiet horror, at history and at their nationality.
The woman had been on holiday with a party of similarly retired women in Florida when a survivor of Maidanek had seen and recognised her. Margarethe Schröder had never denied the charges; merely dismissed them as unimportant. She did not acknowledge their criminality. Zimmermann, however, believed she wished to end her imprisonment. She resented the sense of blame, of accusation that surrounded her — resented it deeply and bitterly. He could offer her a speedy and innocuous trial, even if he hoped he did not mean it, preferred to think that he would renege on any deal. However, all that was for later.
"I would undertake," he continued, breaking the silence that had held only the slight noise of the humming striplight, "to ensure that the trial was brought forward — dealt with this year…" Schröder's eyes watched him, burning and suspicious and afraid. Zimmermann tried to smile reassuringly: "We could ensure a very light sentence, thanks to some new depositions that contradict those held by the Federal Prosecutor's office — a sentence which, in view of your incarceration for the past two years, Frau Schroder, would ensure your release before next Christmas."
He waited then. Schröder looked at her lawyer, who appeared to carefully consider the offer that had been made. He removed his spectacles, becoming at once little more than a boy in appearance, wiped them with a silk handkerchief, then replaced them and his learned air with a flourish.
"There will be no notes," he observed. "At the moment, this is not to be considered a statement of any kind."
"Of course not."
"You will not ask Frau Schröder any questions concerning the period 1941-45. Do you agree to this?"
"Naturally. That part of Frau Schröder's life does not interest me — it is not important to me," he corrected himself, unwilling to antagonise the woman. Again, he essayed a smile in her direction. She was looking at her lawyer, who nodded to her. She turned to Zimmermann. Her voice was deep and hoarse. Her hands, spread on the bare, formica-covered table, were large, the nails unmanicured. Zimmermann might almost have called them a man's hands had he not realised the easy platitude for what it was, and recognised the way in which he was making her fit a stereotype. In reality, there was nothing with which to compare Schroder and all the others.
"What do you want to ask me?" she said grudgingly.
"Thank you, Frau Schröder." Zimmermann sat down on the opposite side of the table. Schröder lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the humming striplight. The interview room was warm, drily stale and unused like the aseptic corridors he had followed to reach it. The prison was modern, clean and spacious, like a huge office building, suggesting that crime and criminals were not to be found there. Like most of those built in Germany since the war, the prison always appeared to Zimmermann like a grim pastiche of a Costa Brava hotel.
"I wish to take you back to 1974, when you worked…" She nodded dismissively. She knew why he had come. "… for an officer in British Intelligence during his residence in Bonn. You were the secretary of a man named Andrew Babbington?"
"Yes."
"I want to ask you some questions about him."
"I was always a good secretary — very efficient. There were no accus—" She coloured slightly, but mostly in anger at herself. "No reports of inefficiency, I am certain."
"Of course, Frau Schröder. Of course not. I know that Mr Babbington was very pleased. It is not you I wish to discuss, but him. You understand that I cannot tell you why at this moment?"
She weighed his statement while Zimmermann looked at the lawyer, who eventually nodded his complicity. There was no need for Zimmermann to warn either of them of the security aspects of his enquiries. He returned his attention to Margarethe Schröder. She was grinding out the first cigarette, lighting a second almost at once. She nodded. Evidently, she had accepted that it was not some subtle trick, an indirect and overland route to Maidanek and her crimes, even if she could not understand the importance attached to an Englishman in 1974.
"I believe that Mr Babbington had an affair — with a married woman who has since died of cancer — while he was in Bonn?" He studied Schröder. "You knew of this affair, of course?" His tone was carefully calculated. It implied a vague bond between them, a similarity of attitude to the business of their discussion, but it was clipped and authoritative, suggesting that Zimmermann was some kind of senior officer in the same organisation in which Schröder served. She nodded abruptly in reply. "Good. Now — how often did they meet? Where did they meet?" There was guilt, at once, a sense of complicity that might now endanger her. The cigarette wobbled between her lips. She coughed. "Come now, Schröder — you have done nothing wrong. Where did they meet?"
"In — my flat," she admitted in a small voice. "Usually in my flat." The repetition was more defiant. She had lifted her head.
"Why — for security?" he asked nonchalantly.
"Of course," she answered scornfully. "The woman was the wife of a civil servant, someone he worked with here in Bonn." Zimmermann was nodding, staring at the table-top and its faint geology of coffee stains and pencil scribbles, doodles and cigarette burns. "They had to be careful. I was asked — I helped." The implication was that she had been paid, too. Babbington had evidently won her over by charm and bribery. She flicked a lock of frizzy white hair from her forehead. "They met there two, maybe three times a week."
"Can you remember exactly when this was?"
"1974, of course." And then her anger burst out. "When Guillaume, the traitor, was arrested. Now he is back in the East, after what he did to betray Germany, and I am here—!" Zimmermann reached towards her, but she snatched her manlike hands from the table. "Why do they still care about all that?" she wailed. There was iron in the self-pity, however. "It was forty years ago — everyone has forgotten — people don't know and don't want to know! Why am I here?" she screamed.
Zimmermann stood up, leaning his knuckles on the table. "It is to help you get out of here that you must answer my questions, Frau Schröder. A little more help, if you please. I am a very busy man, and I have no time to waste with these — demonstrations of self-pity."
She turned from her lawyer to him, sniffed and wiped her eyes. The tone had stung and impressed her. Bribed her, too. She nodded her head, vigorously.
"What can I tell you? Two or three times a week, there was never mess, the sheets were always changed on the bed, there were champagne glasses washed up, any food… all was washed up, put away when they had finished. I was never inconvenienced. The flat was always empty when I returned."
"Did you know this woman?"
"Yes. By name — I had seen her once or twice."
"But never at the flat?"
"No. They were — discreet."
Zimmermann pondered. At last he had been able to dehumanise the situation, purge it of its associations. Margarethe Schröder was now no more than a possible witness to events in 1974 — a retired secret
ary with a high security clearance. The recipient of a civil service pension.
"Can you be specific, as to dates? When did this affair begin — when did they begin using your flat for their meetings?"
"I went to work for Mr Babbington — oh, in March, or perhaps the beginning of April. I am not certain. At first, I did not wish to be seconded, but he was very charming, very considerate…"
"Of course. And the flat?"
"Perhaps two weeks later — at first, it was to be only for one time, then he pressed me, with such apologies… and so…" She raised her hands, almost smiling. "Then two or three times a week." She chuckled throatily.
"I see. They could not use hotels?"
"The woman was, as you know, well known in Bonn. She might have been recognised by women in her circle?" To Schröder, it was self-evident that such precautions had been needed.
Zimmermann paused for a moment, then he said: "You had a telephone installed in your apartment, of course?"
"Naturally."
"The week of the traitor Guillaume's arrest — Mr Babbington used your flat?"
"Often. He persuaded me that I had been working too hard, that I should take a few days' leave. I went to Bavaria — it was beautiful in the spring. He — he bought the train tickets and booked the hotel… a good hotel."
Zimmermann contained his rising sense of excitement. The apartment with its untapped, unsuspicious telephone, had been in Babbington's possession for the crucial few days. Babbington's periods of disappearance had been accounted for because of the affair — they even knew where he was, so the surveillance reports and recollections claimed. Babbington had disarmed them by indulging in an affair and finding a hiding place for himself and the woman. It had excused any and all of his actions, giving them the gloss of adultery, not criminality. The telephone calls to Guillaume had begun on April 22nd.
"You returned to Bonn — when?"
"On the 25th of April."
"And Mr Babbington continued to use your apartment for his meetings with — this woman now dead?"
Margarethe Schroder shook her head. She even appeared saddened by the recollection. "No. Mr Babbington was very upset. He told me that her husband was becoming suspicious — they had to part, even though he begged her—"
"You believed him?"
"You think I don't recognise unhappiness when I see it?" she challenged.
"So, the affair was over — and, of course, Mr Babbington's new work took up all his time. He was able to lose himself in his responsibilities."
"Luckily for him. Slowly, he seemed to mend, to recover his spirits."
"Did he settle your very high telephone bill before he returned to England, Frau Schröder?" Zimmermann asked quickly, startling and confusing the woman.
"How did you…?" Then she dismissed the suspicion that this was the thrust of Zimmermann's enquiries, and said, "Yes, he did. Every mark and pfennig."
"It was a high bill. Did most of the calls — local ones — come while you were on holiday?"
"Yes… I think so, anyway—"
"But before that there were many calls — long-distance, even international?" She nodded. "But the mainly local ones were while you took your holiday?"
"There was never any attempt to deceive me — Mr Babbington explained that he took work to the apartment, that he had to talk to London a great deal — before the bill arrived he told me all this."
"Ah. Of course. It was nothing." He looked at his watch. One in the morning. He felt a tired, jumpy excitement tightening his chest. This was, at the very least, a satisfactory beginning. He had method and opportunity now — perhaps he might discover motive, too, given time? He stood up. He shook hands with Margarethe Schröder perfunctorily. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you. I — shall be in touch with your lawyer, Herr Ganzer, within a matter of days. I am sure we can do something to make your next Christmas something to remember!" He tried to smile once more, and almost achieved the expression of sincerity. It was a reflection of his own self-satisfaction that she witnessed.
"Thank you," she said bemusedly. Zimmermann shook hands briefly with Ganzer, nodding an assurance as he did so, and left. His footsteps clattered along the brightly lit, tiled corridor.
As he passed through the corridors and levels of the prison towards the main gates and his car, beneath the long striplights, he began to escape the pervasive, constricting sense of imprisonment that the interview room had contained. It had radiated from the woman, Schröder. She was the past that imprisoned him and his country.
He accepted what he recognised as his own internment within his talents. He was a spy and an interrogator, and always had been. That he accepted as a willed life sentence. But her — Schröder — she represented those who had made Germany and most of Europe a prison and a charnel-house. He wanted to distance himself from them and what they had done. In part, his whole life had been such a distancing process. But now, his debt to Aubrey had returned him like a planet in a long, elliptical orbit to the moment of Germany's greatest shame. He had come face to face, in that warm, dry, interview room, with the horror of the past.
He hurried into the cold air of the courtyard, turning up the collar of his overcoat. He climbed thankfully into the Mercedes, started the engine and drove to the gates. He showed his pass and the gates opened. He was free.
He had almost reached the slip-road to the Cologne-Bonn autobahn before he realised he was being followed.
* * *
Babbington took the telephone call from Bonn and for once envisaged the town at the other end of the connection. He remembered, quite clearly, Margarethe Schröder's small, cramped, neat apartment and the telephone — and the dozens, even hundreds of calls he had made. Sometimes the woman had been there — poor Use, who had died of cancer so painfully — but mostly he had been alone. Use had been a good cover, a good lover, but a luxury he had had to abandon as time ran out for Guillaume. He had covered his tracks, but Teardrop had been bound to raise the ghosts of '74, and now he was forced to exorcise them a decade later.
"It is done — everything as you ordered. Do you want to look at the stuff?" The accent was American. The KGB officer had, like so many of them, learned his English in the United States, probably as a student.
"What is it?"
"He had all the right files pulled. He was getting close. The woman in Cologne — he's seen her."
"You're certain?"
"Yes."
"Then let's hope tonight will be a lesson to him. Many thanks."
Babbington put down the receiver and rubbed his nose between thumb and forefinger, as if easing his sinuses. Oleg, his contact, sat opposite him in a dowdily covered chair, a tumbler of malt whisky balanced on its wide arm. He appeared at ease. Babbington considered. It would be well — would yet be well…
Zimmermann had, however, moved quickly, with insight and talent.
"OK," Babbington announced casually. "It's been done. Zimmermann is due for a shock. It should keep him quiet — at least temporarily."
"What do you gain by that?"
"Time. Just as we gain time when Massinger and his wife fall into my hands tomorrow. They will be removed from the board."
"And Aubrey?"
"My reply to that, Oleg, is — and Hyde?"
"Don't worry. He's alone — he can't get out."
"Petrunin is dead?"
Oleg nodded. Fair hair flopped across his forehead. He flicked it aside. "Yes. They're certain."
"Two years too late."
"Perhaps."
"I have the right to complain — I'm coming behind with the broom, Oleg."
"The Centre has ordered me to inform you as to the dangers of too great a degree of ruthlessness in this matter."
"Too great — how?"
"What do you intend doing with the Massinger couple, for example? And Aubrey, when you locate him?"
"Have them brought back. What else?"
Babbington felt himself studied through a microscope of distrust. The
y were wary of the very ruthlessness that had attracted them to him, that had guaranteed his seniority with the passage of time. With an effort, he kept his face bland and reassuring while his thoughts raged. A slight tic began at the corner of his mouth, and he masked it with his tumbler, sipping at the whisky.
"It would be too easy, too simple, to use your enormous powers," Oleg said. "Like swatting flies. The problem is, the squashed flies remain on the window-pane or the white wall, marking it."
"I don't need a lecture in caution. This is your test for me — I shall pass it." He saluted his companion with the tumbler, and drank again as the tic recommenced.
He would swat them — if they knew, any or all of them, rather than just guessed or suspected or were blundering around, blindfold at the party and trying desperately to touch someone they could not see. If they knew, then he would swat them. If they knew, or acted upon knowledge, at any time, then he would have them eliminated — Massinger, Margaret, Aubrey, Zimmermann, Shelley, Hyde. The whole little gang. Every one of them. He would have to be careful, of course. If they behaved, they had to be allowed to live because their deaths would be a messy and unnecessary complication…
But if they knew, and they acted—?
Dead.
"Another dead one," he said, picking up the bottle of whisky and finding it empty.
* * *
Zimmermann inserted his key in the lock, and the door swung open at once, before he had turned the key. Immediately, he knew he had been burgled. There was no one in the corridor, he had passed no one on the stairs, no one had been using the lift…
He listened. Nothing. Silence. The smell of liquor, of broken bottles. He stepped into the hall and felt for the switch. When the light came on, he could see the door of the lounge ajar. Furniture was overturned — a small piece of Meissen broken near the door, a headless shepherdess — and the smell of the broken whisky and gin bottles increased. Still he heard nothing.