Blood Relative

by David Thomas

  The stairwell was going by me in a blur of concrete and steel and the sliding and slapping of our shoes on the ground. It was all I could do just to keep my feet on the steps without getting them tangled or slipping as the descent raced on. I was barely conscious of the dark forms, barely registered as men, that suddenly appeared round the corner of the flight below, or the fact that Weiss had stopped dead so instantly that I careered into the back of him.

  I heard him mutter a curse: ‘Fick mich!’ which was followed immediately by a deafeningly sharp crack that reverberated round the stairwell. Weiss staggered back half a pace, uttered a pained, wincing grunt, fired his gun twice, shooting back down the stairs. Then he shouted, ‘Up! Go back up! Go! Go!’

  I turned round and hurtled back up the stairs, trying to ignore the screaming protests from my hopelessly unfit thigh muscles and the desperate heaving of my chest as my oxygen-deprived lungs gasped for breath. My hammering pulse blurred my vision, and sweat was trickling into my eyes, but somehow I managed to spot the shadow of a man, up ahead of me, cast on the stairwell wall. Just a few more steps and he would see me too.

  I’d just reached a landing. There was a door to my left. Without thinking, I lowered my shoulder and barged it open, yelling, ‘This way!’ at Weiss as I went.

  The door opened onto one of the stripped-out floors of the building. There were no walls, no floorboards, no doors, no glass in the windows: just the structural features that were keeping the building upright. A thin line of planks streaked across the bare floor joists to the wall facing the street and then ran along the length of the wall itself. A man was standing there repointing the brickwork. He can’t have heard us at first over the music from the radio he’d placed in one of the empty window frames. But then he turned, frowning in puzzlement at the sound of our footsteps. His expression changed in an instant, and a look of shocked surprise flashed across his face as Weiss fired two more shots at our pursuers, keeping their heads down and buying us a few seconds of time. The builder dropped his sharply pointed trowel and the board on which he’d been mixing the mortar. They clattered onto the planking as he scurried away and cowered in the far corner of the building.

  I raced onwards, the adrenalin rush of the chase banishing all my fear of falling. Barely stopping for a moment, I bent down, picked up the trowel and dashed through a gaping door frame that led out onto a small balcony.

  The wall of plastic sheeting stretched in front of me as far as the eye could see, blocking me off from the outside world.

  ‘What are you doing?’ shouted Weiss.

  He had taken cover to one side of the open door. As he darted out into the opening and fired another pair of rounds, I slashed at the nearest shiny green sheet with the sharp end of the trowel, desperately trying to pierce the building’s plastic skin.

  At the second attempt the trowel caught in the plastic and tore a small hole. I reached forward, squeezing the fingers of both hands into the hole and pulling them apart to tear a bigger rent in the fabric. There were more shots and a harsh metallic clang echoed just to one side of me as a bullet ricocheted away. The hole in the sheet was as wide as my shoulders now. I reckoned I could squeeze my body through.

  ‘Follow me!’ I shouted to Weiss.

  Then I pushed my way into the hole and flung myself out. And suddenly I was tumbling through the air, thirty feet above the paving stones of a Berlin street.

  41

  I landed on the rolled-up bales of loft insulation with an impact that caught me smack in the solar plexus, leaving me winded and gasping for air as I bounced and tumbled to the ground. Getting to my knees, I saw Weiss make a much smoother, more accomplished, landing. He ran across to me, wincing, and I saw for the first time that the left arm of his suit was torn and soaked in blood.

  ‘Get up! Keep moving!’ he said, dashing off towards the end of the street, barking out orders to whoever was on the other end of his communications link. From up above I heard the sound of more firing, but had no idea where the shots had gone. All I knew was that I had not been hit – not yet.

  Seconds later, a silver Mercedes appeared round the corner of the street, raced in our direction and then slewed round in a screeching turn so that it stopped broadsides to us, right across the road. Weiss ran up to it, flung open a passenger door and then grabbed me and shoved me onto the back seat. A moment later he too leapt in. The car was already moving, racing back the way it had come, by the time he’d closed the door behind him.

  It took me a few seconds to get my breath back. Then I looked across at him. ‘Who …?’ I couldn’t complete the sentence. The adrenalin that had kept me going through the past few crazy seconds was ebbing away, leaving me stranded. My ears were ringing from the gunshots, my body ached from the fall and my brain had just ground to a halt.

  ‘Someone who fears what you know, or might find out. Fears it enough to kill Haller and try to kill you.’

  ‘But … but I don’t know anything!’

  ‘Not yet, maybe, but …’

  There was a woman in the front passenger seat. She gave me a flicker of a smile and said: ‘Karolin Gerber. We spoke earlier on the telephone.’

  ‘Oh, right … hi.’

  Weiss leaned forward and spoke to her in German. ‘Are we being followed?’

  She tilted her head to one side and glanced in the wing-mirror. ‘No. You OK?’

  Weiss glanced at the gaping hole of torn fabric, blood, skin and bare flesh with apparent disdain and said, ‘Just a flesh wound. Give me the first-aid kit. I will deal with it.’

  Gerber did as she was asked, then Weiss passed the kit on to me.

  ‘Open it,’ he said, reverting to English. ‘Inside you will find a bandage. Tie it round my arm, tight. This will stop the bleeding. I will have it seen to properly later.’

  As I was tying the knot I said, ‘So that day at the funeral, when you warned me to stay away from … from all of this. That really was a warning.’

  ‘Yes, what did you think?’

  ‘It sounded more like a threat.’

  ‘Ja, maybe … I wanted you to be a little scared. Clearly, you were not scared enough.’

  ‘But why did you steal my computer? Why did you wreck my brother’s study?’

  Weiss looked at me pensively, weighing up the pros and cons of what he was going to do next. When he’d reached his decision he said, ‘At the start of my career I worked for an agency called the Bundesnachrichtendienst …’

  ‘The intelligence service,’ I said, remembering what Haller had told me during our first meeting.

  Weiss raised his eyebrows in surprise, ‘Ah, so you have heard of it. Well, then you may know that we were involved in espionage and counter-espionage against the East and, in particular, the Stasi. That was where I first encountered a man called Rainer Wahrmann …’

  That name, Wahrmann: I’d seen it somewhere before. I wracked my brain trying to make the connection as Gerber went on. ‘Wahrmann had a daughter, who was registered with the name Maria-Angelika, although you know her better as Mariana, your wife.’

  Now I remembered: ‘That name … Maria-Angelika Wahrmann. It was on a list my brother made … girls born the same day as Mariana.’

  Weiss nodded. ‘Precisely. Several weeks ago, your brother came to Berlin, trying to find the truth about his sister-in-law. He was a good reporter, well trained in gathering information. He made enquiries at the appropriate official agencies. These enquiries came to my attention. I must say I was somewhat concerned because it was possible that your brother was – though I do not think he knew it – on the track to discovering your wife’s true identity. But, you see, there are very good reasons why it has been obscured …’

  ‘What reasons?’

  ‘I will come to that … When I have answered your first question.’ Weiss gave me a wry half-smile: ‘A little patience, huh? So … it bothered me that if I knew your brother was here, other people might also discover what he had been doing…’

  �
�You mean Wahrmann?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Or Tretow?’

  Weiss’s eyes narrowed: ‘You know about Tretow?’

  ‘He’s a property developer now. But in the old days he worked at the orphanage where my wife was sent. And someone was looking after him, warning off anyone who took an interest in what he was doing.’

  ‘And Haller, did he know all this, too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you do not need to ask me why he is dead or who was attacking us just now. And you will also understand why I was concerned about your brother. I feared he was walking blindfold into a minefield.’

  ‘And then he died …’

  ‘Yes,’ Weiss agreed, ‘and in very extreme circumstances. And then your wife was arrested. I needed to know what had happened, exactly what your brother had known. So I came to England …’

  ‘And you broke into his house.’

  ‘I apologize, believe me, but I felt I had no choice.’

  ‘And you broke into my car and stole his computer.’

  ‘Again, it was unfortunate, but necessary.’

  ‘My house, the other night … was that you?’ I looked at Gerber: ‘Both of you?’

  Their silence told me everything.

  ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What was the point of it?’

  ‘Tell me, when you first discovered what had happened, could you believe it? For all the evidence against your wife, did it seem likely, or even possible that she was a killer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither, but I knew of people who would have killed your brother without a second thought. So I wanted to go to the scene of the crime and see for myself. It was not my intention to disturb or alarm you. I had not realized you would wish to move back to the scene of the crime so soon.’

  ‘And what did you conclude, then, from your re-enactment?’

  ‘That the police account of the killing made sense.’

  ‘To you maybe,’ I replied. ‘But then, I get the feeling you know a great deal that I don’t about my wife. So why don’t you tell me the truth … all of it? And if you do, I won’t go straight to the British Embassy and tell them exactly what an agent of the German government has been getting up to on UK soil. And then you won’t have a major diplomatic shitstorm to worry about. Does that sound like a fair deal to you?’

  Weiss gave me another one of his appraising looks. ‘You know, Mr Crookham, you are an interesting man. After the first times I saw you, I thought to myself, “He is a big man, physically, but he is soft. He is not a fighter.” Now I see you throw yourself from a window, ten metres from the ground because you have already calculated that the fall is safe, and plan your escape accordingly. I hear you making threats against me and your voice is different. I believe that you mean it. You would do what you say. I had wondered what the daughter of Rainer Wahrmann, with his blood in her veins, would see in a man such as you. I think now I understand …’

  ‘Well, that’s very flattering of you, Mr Weiss. But I asked you a question: does it sound like a deal?’

  Weiss grimaced again and sat back in his seat, his jaw clenched and his face ashen. With his good hand he gestured to me to hand him the first-aid box. He rested it on his lap, rummaged through it and pulled out a small blister pack that held two large white pills. He popped the blisters and swallowed the pills before sinking back into the seat.

  Only then did he look at me again and say, ‘Ja, we have a deal.’

  42

  ‘Stop the car,’ Weiss said. ‘I need to make a call, in private.’

  The Mercedes pulled up and Weiss got out, closing the car door behind him. I watched him pacing up and down on the pavement outside. Judging by the looks on his face and the tension in his clenched left fist he seemed to be having a hard time getting his point across, but evidently he got his way in the end, concluding the conversation with a decisive nod of the head.

  As Weiss got back in his seat, the driver leaned his head back and spoke over his right shoulder: ‘Where to, boss?’

  ‘Potsdam. Templiner See,’ Weiss replied.

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Gerber asked. ‘They need to be prepared, both of them. Otherwise it’s not fair…’

  ‘No, if we are going to do it, better to do it right away.’

  ‘But what about you? You should see a doctor.’

  ‘I’m OK. Let’s just get this over and done with. Go to Templiner See. It is time Mr Crookham met Rainer Wahrmann.’

  Weiss looked out of the window, but I doubt he was seeing any of the city we were passing through in the gathering dark of a winter late afternoon. His mind was elsewhere. I wanted to ask him about Wahrmann, the father-in-law whom I had never met, whose existence itself had been a mystery to me, but I hardly knew where to begin. Thankfully, Weiss saved me the trouble.

  ‘What did your wife tell you about her father? How they parted, I mean …’

  ‘She said he’d left home when she was a kid. He never even bothered to keep in touch with her, all the time she was growing up.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly like that. It was not the father who left. His daughter Mariana and his wife were taken from him – I was the agent who arranged the transfer. They were moved to a place of safety. He was forbidden any contact with them. To this day he knows nothing about his daughter’s life. He has no idea, therefore, of her current situation. The separation was total.’

  I thought of the things Wahrmann must have done to be denied any contact at all with his family.

  ‘What kind of a sick bastard is he?’ I asked

  ‘Not what you think, maybe,’ Weiss replied. ‘But Rainer Wahrmann is certainly a most unusual man. In his time he has been a spy, a criminal and a traitor in the eyes of his country. At the time of your wife’s birth he was in prison, sentenced to three years in jail.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘A crime, naturally. His particular offence, however, was unusual. He was found guilty of telling a joke.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Back in the late 1970s, Rainer Wahrmann was a student, a very brilliant one of whom great things were expected, working on his doctorate in economics at Humboldt University. For two hundred years this has been the leading university of Berlin, but when the city was divided it was in the East. It became the place where the country’s elite students were sent, chosen both for their aptitude and for their allegiance to the SED – the ruling communist party.’

  ‘So Wahrmann was a communist?’

  ‘At that time, yes. Any ambitious young man was obliged to be, and he was very ambitious, a veritable golden boy: handsome, an academic prodigy, just married to a beautiful young wife. But one night he went to a party at another student’s apartment. He had too much to drink and he told a joke about Erich Honecker, the leader of the country. That is how it was: the East Germans had jokes about Honecker, like the Russians had jokes about Khrushchev and Brezhnev … I mean, they were actually the same jokes, just with the names changed.’

  ‘What was the joke?’

  ‘You want to hear it?’

  ‘If it put my father-in-law in jail, yes.’

  Weiss paused, like any other amateur trying to remember a joke, his ultra-competent mask momentarily disturbed.

  ‘OK,’ he began, ‘so Honecker is riding in his limousine through the countryside, way out in the sticks. Suddenly a pig wanders out into the road. Bam! The car hits the pig and kills it, instantly. The driver does not know what to do, so he asks Honecker, “Do you want me to drive on, sir?” Honecker says, “No, you’d better go to the nearest farmhouse and offer to pay damages for their pig.” So the driver goes off to pay the damages. Fifteeen minutes go by … thirty … an hour, and still he has not returned. Finally, the driver comes back. He is walking unsteadily, singing a song. He has obviously been drinking. In his arms he carries a huge pile of gifts and packages: loaves of bread, fresh vegetables, jars of pickle, cuts of meat – everything farmers can provide. Hone
cker cannot believe what he is seeing. He asks the driver, “What happened?” The driver says, “I don’t know. All I said to them was: I have Honecker in my car and I have killed the pig.”’

  I did my best to summon a polite laugh. ‘That’s it?’

  Weiss did not appear to be upset by the absence of hilarity on my part. ‘Yes. Wahrmann told the joke, someone reported him to the Stasi and he was jailed for conspiracy to undermine the state.’

  ‘How can telling a joke be a conspiracy?’

  ‘Very simple. For you to tell a joke, someone has to tell it to you first. Then you must pass it on to other people. Therefore it is a conspiracy. Therefore, also, Wahrmann was a conspirator against the state, a subversive. The official term at that time was Diversant. In English, that means “saboteur”.’

  ‘That’s madness!’

  ‘The whole system was madness. Is that not obvious to you yet?’

  I thought of the trivial irritations of my own society’s mania for health and safety, political correctness and the requirement to spout acceptable platitudes that no one really believed. Then I considered an entire system in which those niggling absurdities were magnified a thousandfold; in which truth and honesty were abolished by law; where the slightest deviation could lead to imprisonment and torture. That had been the world of Rainer Wahrmann.

  ‘Where did they send him?’ I asked.

  ‘First to Hohenschönhausen for interrogation, then to a jail called Bautzen, in Lower Saxony, near the Czech border. The inmates called it The Yellow Misery, because it was made from yellow bricks. But you were at Hohenschönhausen this afternoon, yes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Bautzen was worse.’

  I tried to imagine how a pampered young student, a golden boy accustomed to privilege and entitlement, would cope with the U-boat, and struggled to imagine something even more degrading. Wray had talked about multigenerational trauma being passed on from parent to child. Mariana’s father must have been traumatized all right. I could only imagine the hurt that she had inherited from him.