by Alex Cugia
As they moved carefully towards the house there was a rustle of leaves in a dark part of the shrubbery to their right. They froze and Thomas could feel his heart hammering as they listened. Suddenly Bettina squealed, farted involuntarily, then laughed softly and picked up the cat which had begun making figures of eight by her feet, rubbing itself on her bare legs and purring.
“Not much of a guard tiger are you?” she said, dangling the cat in front of her and rubbing her nose affectionately to its own, then putting it down. The cat miaowed and made little scampering rushes ahead of them as they moved to the house.
They peered in through the kitchen window. The remains of a meal, complete with emptied bottle of wine and a used glass, stood by the sink but the room was empty and there was no one in the corridor which was partly visible through the open door.
They moved along the wall to the living room. The blinds on the windows looking to the front of the house were down but those on the side window were not. The room was dark but they could see outlines of the furniture, wooden cabinets and a large sofa, in the light coming through the open door from the kitchen. There appeared to be no one around.
“Let’s see if any of the windows are open.” Thomas whispered. “If we can find a way in, you go first and call out loudly to him. If he doesn’t respond I’ll follow you in. If the alarm system starts, well, we’ll just have to get the hell out of it and back to the car as fast as we can.”
This side window to the living room was firmly shut as were the large, white framed windows facing the front. They felt their way carefully to the far side, walking on the strips of grass by the house walls to avoid the gravel path in front. Behind them as they rounded the next corner was the main stretch of the garden, filled with ornamental flowers and long established trees. There was a French window in this wall leading into what looked like a smaller living room and when Bettina turned the handle and pushed the door it swung open silently into the room. She stepped inside and the cat scampered after her.
“Mr Henkel. Mr Henkel! It’s Bettina List. We’re due to meet and you didn't answer the phone. Mr Henkel. Are you there?”
She giggled to herself and whispered “So me and my hired gun, we jest nipped over your spikes, and broke into your house, overpowering your guard cat on the way. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do when the intercom don’t work!”
Racked with nervous laughter she stuffed the edge of a cushion into her mouth and collapsed, shaking and snorting, on to a sofa with its scarlet silk cushions. The cat twined round her legs. Thomas peered round the door and she waved her gun, gesturing to him to come in.
The house muffled the garden’s night sounds and the sudden silence felt oppressive, growing and looming more obtrusive. Even the noise of the scant traffic on the street hardly reached them but that there was no sound from the alarm system was disturbing. She could feel her heart pounding in the quietness. She wondered if the alarm was a silent one, alerting security staff at the Stasi offices without warning an intruder. They’d find that out soon enough and she’d have to talk fast to explain about her meeting with Henkel. The files described Henkel as meticulous and obsessive, almost paranoid in his approach to security. His alarm system was the most sophisticated of the three and it made no sense that they could enter so easily without anything happening.
Bettina felt cold and hot at the same time. Pearls of sweat formed on her forehead and her armpits felt damp. She could even hear her heart now, she thought. She stopped for a moment, supporting herself on the back of the sofa and breathed slowly and deeply to try to calm herself. She was about to mention the alarm but moved instead to the door as Thomas cautiously flashed his torch around the room. There was a whisky glass on an occasional table set beside a dark leather easy chair next to the sofa. The bottle beside it was almost empty.
“He probably just came home. There’s some whisky in the glass.” he said softly. Bettina nodded and breathed deeply again, this time getting it over the barrier in her lungs and relaxing a little. He led the way into the corridor. “Let’s check out the front living room, then the study down there. No fingerprints.” He pulled on his black leather gloves.
The tic tic of their slow and careful steps sounded extravagantly loud on the polished wooden floor although they tried, but without success, to walk in time with each other towards the hallway and the front door. He could remember the layout of the house exactly. The main living room with its locked windows opened off the hall to their right and on the opposite side there was an elegant staircase to the upper floors, curving away from the front. Beside the staircase was a short spur of corridor leading to the kitchen, a lavatory and some small utility rooms. A shaded lamp with a bulbous base of oriental porcelain which looked quite modern and which stood on an occasional table just inside the hallway lit the corridor faintly.
Thomas opened the door of the front room and flashed his torch over the furniture and then the rest of the area. The room gave the impression of being little used and everything looked in order, an under drawer of a rather solid chest incongruously standing open and empty, however. They searched the room thoroughly, moving softly from place to place.
As they were about to leave a sudden bell startled them and Bettina gripped Thomas hard on his arm, relaxing when she recognised it as a phone on a side table. They stood silently, holding each other, hardly breathing, listening for Henkel’s voice answering but there was nothing, and after nine rings it stopped and the silence weighed heavily on them again.
As they moved back down the corridor towards the study they noticed a faint light spilling from under the door and they stopped to listen. The silence was complete. Bettina gestured to Thomas to move back then knocked and again called out to Henkel twice. The silence thrummed on. She beckoned Thomas, opened the door, and peered in.
Henkel, dressed in a dark brown well-tailored suit with a surprisingly exuberant tie and matching silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, was sitting leaning back in his chair at the study desk. He’d slid forward and down a little, legs stretched out in front. His head was sideways to the door and was slumped forward not quite hiding the mouth's twisted rictus of grinning welcome overlaid with a hint of surprise. The light from the green shaded lamp on the desk on the angled head made dark shadows of the eye sockets and under the man's chin.
“He’s drunk, passed out.” thought Thomas and then took in the neat hole ringed with blackened marks on Henkel’s temple, his hand languid on the arm of the chair and a small service revolver lying on the floor under it and by his feet. There were a few spots of blood on the chair and a larger, coagulating patch on the floor. Bettina stood in the doorway and Thomas turned to her, gathering her in his arms and standing in front to shield her. His body felt numb, his stomach churned and he felt sick. As they clung to each other the cat arrived in the room and wound itself round their feet causing Thomas to shriek in surprised terror and kick out blindly.
“Jesus! Jesus Christ! We've got to get out here. Someone might be around. Someone could come, find us.”
He turned to look at Henkel, looked away quickly then moved away from Bettina and looked again at Henkel's body. He breathed hard, pressed his hand hard to his mouth, swallowed, and again clung to Bettina who gently kissed him on the forehead and disengaged herself to examine Henkel more closely and pick up in her gloved hands an unsealed envelope lying on the far edge of the table. She took out the single typewritten sheet and scanned it carefully.
“Listen. It’s a confession: 'I, Gerd Henkel, have stolen money from the Firm in order to repay accumulated personal debts. My shame in having betrayed the faith of my colleagues has led to this, my final decision. I hope that my colleagues and friends will be able to forgive me and that they will spare my memory from ignominy.’ He's signed it at the foot, scribbled another comment which I can't quite read, something about 'testament', I think, and it's dated today.”
“That explains a lot of things, I suppose, at least if everything
is as it seems. Poor man." She glanced over at Henkel for a moment. "We've got to leave soon but there's stuff to do first.” She spread the document on the table for Thomas to photograph then returned it to its envelope and replaced it on the table. “Take Henkel from different angles and get some general shots of the room plus anything else we find interesting. Then we can work through things and get out of here quickly.”
Thomas, now calmer, photographed Henkel and the surroundings carefully then looked round the room and began opening desk drawers. All were empty other than one holding typing paper of the kind used for the letter. He glanced at the half-empty bookshelves with a few scattered volumes, mainly classic communist titles, took more shots from different angles, then looked closely at the shelves and beckoned Bettina.
“Look at this. Look at the dust traces. Look at the variations on the shelves – here and then here, there and there, here, and now over there. Someone's cleared out a lot of material pretty recently. Looking at the smudges and the traces I'd say they were probably box files rather than ordinary books. What do you think?"
The phone rang again, the study extension quieter and more pleasant than the one which had startled them earlier. Again they stood immobile while it rang then instinctively they both looked at their watches. It was just past ten o’clock.
“Let’s get out of here before anything happens.” Bettina said. “And we’ll leave by the front door. If anyone see us we can say we had this appointment, arrived, found the door open but with no sign of Henkel so we shouted, waited a bit and then left. If we're seen climbing over the wall and a dead body found in the house there's no saying what might happen. And tomorrow, if anyone asks about my meeting, I'll say there was no answer.”
Chapter 22
Sunday January 14 1990, evening
SUNDAY evenings were always quiet at the Churrasco restaurant, situated as it was in Frankfurt's financial district. As the five young men, mostly dressed in expensive casual wear and with an exuberance of gold cuff-links and luxury watches - a couple of the timepieces not quite what they superficially seemed - variously arrived and made their way between the tables to the private room at the back there was hardly anyone present to pay them attention. Most of the arrivals immediately helped themselves to vodkatinis from the private bar in the corner before sitting down at the long dining table in the middle of the room.
"What a dim cunt that Patrick is." remarked Klaus to no one in particular, looking at the youngest member who had been rooting around the bottles before returning with a tall glass of fizzy red liquid he'd carefully decorated with a slice of orange, a cherry, a lurid bendy straw and a small plastic umbrella. "Got your cherryade, then?" he added loudly as Patrick reached the table, then dug Ralph in the ribs and guffawed, "Not lost his cherry either, I 'd guess!"
Patrick coloured, sat down almost on his own and took a long sip of Campari. Roughly opposite him at the head of the table Erwin Hammer was working through figures on a typed sheet he'd taken from a loose leaf file and was writing notes on a pad. Hammer was the public face of Phoenix Securities, second in command to the reclusive figure who was the driving force of the organisation, the brains behind it and unknown to everyone else.
The door opened and Günther Pilsern wandered in, helped himself to a drink and slumped down opposite Klaus. He pushed his legs under the table, leaned back and stretched, then took a long drink before setting the glass down hurriedly. He looked at Erwin who was resting his chin on the edge of his fist and staring silently at him. "Sorry Boss. Phones were frantic tonight and I couldn't get away. At least news of Phoenix is spreading and there's lots of people wanting to sign up."
“Okay, we’re all here now. Finally! Except Brains, obviously. He's elsewhere sorting things out for us. Let's get things going. Günther, now that you've finally turned up, let us know how … ”
“Before we start I want to know something.” Rainer interrupted. “You keep talking about Brains. Brains this, Brains that. But no one ever sees him. He never comes to any meetings. I've never even heard his voice. Does he really exist?" He stared at Erwin then leant his pursed mouth on his newly steepled fingers for a moment. "Or perhaps it's a way that you get a bigger slice of cake?"
Erwin stared him out and as Rainer's gaze dropped he said very carefully, "Oh, he exists all right. Damn right, he exists. All this set-up was his idea. He's a finance hotshot, knows where the gaps and the opportunities are, and he's the one who thought it all up." He looked round the table. "Don't ever, ever, make any mistake about that."
He was silent, looking down at the scribblings on his pad and adjusting some figures. No one moved.
Suddenly he smashed the heavy bottomed glass which had held his drink so hard on the table that a crack spread through it. He again looked coldly at each member in turn. A piece of glass fell off under his hand and tinkled on the table.
"Brains is the one we can thank for what we're each going to get out of this. But that's OK. If you don't like the slice you're getting ... " He paused and again outstared Rainer. "If you don't like the slice you're getting, just fuck off out of Phoenix. We don't want you. We don't need you. We're better off without you. I'm not holding anyone against their will. And I absolutely don't want any passengers. Go on, just piss off. Now." He pointed theatrically at the door.
Erwin looked round the immobile group, staring at each person in turn, all of whom looked down at the table or otherwise glanced away as soon as he caught their eye.
"Rainer! Vodkatini." He swept the remains of his glass with the back of his hand towards his colleague without a glance, returned to his scribblings on the pad in silence while the others waited, then accepted his drink without thanks or comment.
"So, if you've all finished wasting our time with stupid questions, and if everyone realises just what a good deal this is for them, maybe we can finally get on with why we're here."
He turned to Ralph, a fat red-haired man on his left, at 34 the oldest of the group and a highly successful forex trader with Raiffeisenbank. "Let's start with the raw stuff, the money. Where do we stand. How is account 5409 doing?" He waved his hand round the table. "Give a little background to these guys while you're at it."
“We’re doing great!” Ralph said in his thick Hamburg accent and trader growl. “No one seems to have noticed that this account is usually on the right side of the trade, and that the losers, and the occasional winners, are always the same three, four accounts - ones we also happen to control through proxies, of course. We take the money we gain on one hand …” he said while taking the salt cellar from in front of him, “and we move it to cover the losses on the other accounts.” He moved the shaker close to Klaus’s beer glass. “It’s a zero sum game, sure, but what have you created in the process? A reputation. The bank loves Phoenix Securities now. The credit limit on 5409 was upped from one million to five last week. That should be enough for what we'll need, according to our latest projections. Right?”
“We’ll get to that in a moment,” Erwin said. “Let’s finish with the money first. At what average rate have we bought the Ost Marks futures?”
“We have five million DM’s nominal worth of contracts at an average of just over twelve to one. We bought the first million at a rate of eighteen to one just after the Wall came down, when all the Easterners kept pouring in and selling, then the next at ... ”
“Spare us the details, Ralph,” Erwin interrupted. “We’ve got a lot to cover. Twelve to one is all I need to know. When do the contracts expire?”
“They’re nine-month contracts, so they expire between August and November. But we can renew them if we need ... ”
“Yeah, we know finance as well as you do, Ralph. We could renew the contracts, but the exchange rate has moved to less than eight to one in the meantime. Which means the terms on new contracts will be very different. It also means we’re already earning a lot of money on the contracts we have if we sold them on the open market. How much are we making?”
“We’d be making more than two million marks … in a perfect market. Instead, according to the bank’s quote, we’re in the money only to the tune of around eight hundred thousand. That’s mainly because the market is illiquid, but also because of fears that the Bundesbank will limit the amount of Ost Marks they’ll let in when they’re eventually converted to DMs. And because the traders at Salomon are fucking greedy. They know they’re the market. No one else trades the stuff.”
The faces around the room were grim. Eight hundred thousand was roughly twice what most of them got as bonuses each year. Split between them, it was peanuts.
Erwin laughed. “Let’s not worry about the market value. We're not chasing money from futures. We’ll get the real currency and exchange it at whatever official exchange the government sets. I promise you, we’ll get each pfennig of our theoretical value. Two million marks could start being worth the effort, but I think we’re all convinced the exchange rate will move further down. I heard the government is under a lot of pressure, especially to set up a fixed exchange rate for Eastern travellers.”
He turned to Rainer, tall and balding, who looked considerably older than his thirty-three years. Working at the Bundesbank seemed to have this effect on people.
“Anything new on the exchange rate and the ceiling?”
“The situation keeps changing every day.” Rainer said. “The politicians are arguing with the Bundesbank for a very low exchange rate, assuming unification happens. They want to create consensus in the East, worry that too punitive an exchange rate could cost them votes. On the other hand, the Bundesbank is scared stiff of the consequences that uniting the currencies will have on the DM. Too high an exchange rate could lead to devaluation of the DM and hyperinflation. And inflation is what the BuBa has been fighting against all these years. It depends on who gets the upper hand.”