Blood Relative

by David Thomas

  ‘My God … and he was there for three years?’

  ‘No, just a little more than a year,’ said Weiss.

  ‘How come they let him out?’

  ‘A senior party official came to Wahrmann’s cell. He told him that while he was in prison his wife had given birth to a baby – his baby. Then he offered him a deal. There was a big international youth congress taking place in Leipzig with representatives from the youth movements of all the communist bloc countries, plus sympathizers from the West. The regime wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness and humanity of its justice system …’

  I gasped: ‘That’s grotesque.’

  Weiss just looked at me. He did not need to repeat himself: the whole system was grotesque.

  ‘So what was the deal?’

  ‘Simple. All Wahrmann had to do was go to the congress and give a speech describing the error of his ways and expressing the thanks he felt to the system for showing him where he had gone wrong. This had ensured that he would never make the same mistake again.’

  It was like something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four: a real-life Winston Smith proclaiming his love for Big Brother. ‘You mean, he was told to thank the people who had arrested him and, I presume, tortured him, and then sent him to prison for a conspiracy that had never even existed?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So what did he do?’

  ‘He took the deal. He made his speech – very brilliantly, by the way, I have read it – and went back home to his wife and baby.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then the golden boy became golden again. He was the living proof that the party was capable of redemption and forgiveness. He wrote a thesis on “The Superior Efficiency of Resource Allocation in Socialist Command Economies” that was published on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It put him on the fast track. He was given a job in the personal office of the finance minister, writing speeches and position papers. Still in his twenties, he was attending international trade negotiations, bilateral meetings with both communist and Western governments, always singing the praises of the communist system.’

  ‘How could he?’ I asked, to myself as much as anyone else.

  Weiss carried on regardless: ‘Rainer Wahrmann was a star. Official newspapers here carried his articles. Socialist parties in Western Europe used his economic reports as proof that the average worker in the East was far better off than those in the West. But what they did not know was that everything he wrote was a lie. It was all just propaganda. In truth the East German economy, along with all the Soviet-style economies, was a wreck. Wahrmann knew it, but he chose to lie anyway.’

  My sympathy and pity for Wahrmann’s position was rapidly disappearing, replaced by anger at the totality of his betrayal of principle. ‘You’re telling me that Mariana’s dad knew exactly how bad the system was, how it abused the people it controlled. And still he lied for it? What a scumbag!’

  Weiss looked at me with something approaching disdain. ‘Oh, so you would be different, huh? You would say, “No, I don’t want to see my wife and daughter. I don’t want to go back home. I don’t want to give them a better life, in a nicer apartment. I would rather stay in jail.” Is that your position?’

  ‘No, of course not, but …’

  ‘But what? That was the deal. Wahrmann took it. Think of your precious Mariana and what was best for her. Now answer me: do you think he did the right thing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you do. He did the only thing he could do. Or at least, the only thing that any ordinary man would do. But now let me ask you another question. Do you think your wife is an ordinary woman?’

  That was a much easier question to answer. ‘No. Not remotely.’

  ‘Well, neither is her father. He’s smarter than any guy I’ve ever met. He knew exactly what he was doing. But no one else did. Rainer Wahrmann fooled them all.’

  Before I could ask what he meant, Weiss turned away and looked out of the window again. We seemed to have left the city and for the past few minutes had been taking a dual carriageway through heavily wooded countryside or parkland.

  ‘Not too much further,’ he said. ‘Ten minutes, maybe, fifteen at the most. And then, I hope, your search will be at an end.’

  43

  We arrived at Wahrmann’s house – a smart lakeside villa, built in an early modernist style – at around a quarter past six. Wahrmann must have profited from his life of crime and spying because it had all the trademarks of a rich man’s residence: the heavy, impenetrable gates; the speakerphone box by the entrance; the crunching gravel of the drive past perfectly trimmed hedges up to the impeccable white façade. I wondered who would greet us at the door: a butler, perhaps, or maybe a pretty young trophy wife?

  Instead we were met by a nurse in a uniform as immaculate as the house itself. She looked at us sternly, gave a nod of recognition to Weiss and then let us in.

  ‘Do not be too long,’ she said to Weiss, walking with him across the hall. ‘I meant what I said. He is tired. He cannot concentrate for very long.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’ Weiss asked.

  ‘He knows this is his daughter’s husband, yes,’ the nurse said. ‘But that is all.’ Then her voice changed and her cool professionalism gave way to a note of genuine, affectionate concern for her patient. I wasn’t sure whether she was addressing Weiss or me when she said, ‘Please, be very careful. He has suffered a very great deal in his life. He should not have to suffer now.’

  I had no idea what to expect. From the moment I decided to go to Berlin I had been preparing little speeches in my head for the time I’d come face to face with Mariana’s father, whoever he might be. I had always known that he had deserted her, but beyond that my picture of him had been in a constant state of flux. Haller had reminded me not to jump to the assumption that her father had been the source of all Mariana’s problems, but what was I supposed to think instead? To judge by Weiss’s description, Rainer Wahrmann was a brilliant but completely unscrupulous survivor. But the nurse was describing an invalid victim of tragic circumstances.

  She led us across a tiled entrance hall to a heavy wooden door. ‘Just him,’ she said, pointing at me.

  ‘I need to speak to him,’ Weiss insisted.

  The nurse raised her hand to stop him. ‘No, one person only, I insist.’

  She opened the door and I went into what must once have been an elegant reception room, furnished in keeping with the Bauhaus style of the villa itself, but was now Rainer Wahrmann’s entire universe. A hospital-style bed had been placed at one end, with a side table beside it, but he was sitting in a black leather and chromed-steel Barcelona chair by the windows that took up almost all the far wall and looked out over the black night-time waters of the lake. It was, I suddenly realized, just like being at home. The room a neutral white: the visual drama provided by the landscape beyond. And here, too, I had found a man making his acquaintance with death.

  Wahrmann must once have been very handsome. That was clear from the elegant bone-structure of his face – the strong jawline, arrow-straight nose and patrician forehead – and the presidential sweep of his steel-grey hair. But the flesh of his face and the muscles of his body had withered away, leaving a shrunken, desiccated husk, little more than a scarecrow on which his clothes were hung.

  A breathing tube was plugged into his nostrils and ran from there to an oxygen tank on a wheeled trolley beside his chair. He gave a feeble wave in the direction of a second chair, also a Barcelona, opposite his.

  ‘Please,’ Wahrmann said. ‘Sit down.’

  He paused while I settled myself, then added, ‘I apologize for not being able to greet you properly. Unfortunately, I am somewhat indisposed.’

  He smiled, and though he radiated barely a fraction of the charm that he must once have possessed, I could suddenly see Mariana in the corners of his mouth and the tawny, feline glint of his eyes.

  ‘I am so sorry you are ill.’

  ‘Leukae
mia,’ he said, in a calm, matter-of-fact way. ‘Another little gift from the Stasi. I am not the only one to have received it. They used radioactive spray as a means of keeping track of those they suspected of subversive activity. Then, after the Wall came down, when old scores were being settled, I was poisoned with thallium. I recovered from the radiation sickness at the time, but who knows, maybe it tipped the balance …’

  Wahrmann gave a shrug of his bony shoulders, then fixed me with eyes that still burned with the life and energy that was fast deserting his body.

  ‘Tell me about Mariana, my little girl. Something has happened to her, hasn’t it? Magda, my nurse, wouldn’t say anything. Bless her, she only wants to protect me. But my brain still functions, even though the rest of me does not. You have made considerable efforts to track me down. So this must be serious. You have come alone, without Mariana. Therefore she is either unable or unwilling to meet me. Yet you are here anyway. Tell me, what is the reason?’

  Once again I ran through the events of the past days as clearly and concisely as I could, ending with Haller’s death and my escape from his office. Wahrmann listened patiently, occasionally asking sharp, pertinent questions designed to clarify or amplify particular aspects of my story. I could almost feel the power of his intelligence forcing my own thoughts into a sharpness and coherence I would never have managed by myself.

  ‘So you see,’ I concluded, ‘if I can only find out what happened to her at that orphanage, maybe I can give Wray the clue he needs to unlock Mariana’s mind and give her lawyers something they can use in her defence. I know you’ve not seen Mariana in years. I know you’ve not played any part in her upbringing. But you must care about her a little bit, surely. So can you tell me what the answer is?’

  Warhmann took a small glass jug of water from a table by his chair, poured some of it into a glass and sipped it thoughtfully. Then he looked at me with eyes haunted by overwhelming guilt and loss as he said, ‘I don’t know. As God is my witness, I do not know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know? You’re her father. You must know!’

  ‘No, I swear that I do not. My own daughter’s life is a mystery to me, one that I have never been able to solve. And it is my fault, I freely admit it. I was the one who deserted her. In my little girl’s hour of need, I left her in the hands of a monster.’

  The confession seemed designed to win him a little sympathy. But I wasn’t going to let him get away that easily. ‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ I said, ‘from everything Weiss has told me about you.’

  Wahrmann’s eyes narrowed: ‘How much, exactly, has he told you?’

  ‘He said you were a criminal, a traitor and a spy.’

  I expected Wahrmann to make an indignant denial. Instead he burst out in laughter that soon descended into a breathless confusion of wheezes, gasps and coughs.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘I’ll get the nurse.’

  Wahrmann held up a hand to stop me, shaking his head between coughs. ‘No, I’ll be fine. Excuse me one moment.’

  He composed himself with the help of another sip of water. Finally, he could talk again: ‘And what did Weiss tell you about himself?’

  ‘He said he used to work for the BND. That’s where he got to know you.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Wahrmann nodded. ‘But since unification, he has been an officer in the federal office for the protection of the constitution: domestic intelligence, in other words. In both cases, however, he has been involved in combating the Stasi, or its former members, and their attempts to undermine the Federal Republic.’

  ‘So he knew you when you worked for the Stasi?’

  Wahrmann smiled. ‘On the contrary, he knew me when I spied for the West.’

  44

  Trying to grasp the truth about Mariana’s father was like trying to grab an eel: every time I thought I’d finally got it, reality seemed to slip away through my fingers. ‘Hang on. Weiss said that you had written lies and propaganda for the East German finance ministry. You were on their side.’

  ‘That’s right. In public I did everything I could to sing the praises of our glorious socialist state.’

  ‘And in private …?’

  Warhmann sighed. ‘How do I explain this? Let’s see … When I was sent to Bautzen …’

  ‘After you told the Honecker joke?’

  ‘Exactly … And by the way, it has always been my contention that the real reason I was convicted had nothing to do with any conspiracy against the state. I think the problem was that I told the joke very badly. I was letting down the standard of Marxist–Leninist comedy.’

  I frowned in complete bafflement. Would they really have imprisoned a man for that? By now, anything seemed possible.

  ‘Please,’ said Wahrmann, ‘could you not manage a polite smile at least? That was supposed to be another joke.’

  I summoned up an embarrassed chuckle. ‘Sorry … I’m finding it hard to know what to believe …’

  ‘That’s all right. It takes a while, I find, for people to grasp the reality of life in the old Soviet bloc. Myself included, by the way. I had grown up believing in the state and the need to defend our revolution. Then I experienced the reality of dictatorship and injustice, and I had my conversion. The road to Bautzen was my road to Damascus. I became determined to do whatever I could to undermine the state and the party.’

  ‘But you gave a speech praising the way you had been treated in prison.’

  ‘Yes. How else was I to be released? The more I appeared to be a reformed character, the more I was trusted and thus the greater damage I could do.’

  ‘So what was the damage, then?’

  ‘In 1985 I was sent to a bilateral trade negotiation in Bonn, the capital of West Germany. On the evening before the talks began there was a grand reception for all the people involved. I saw one of the Western guys I knew from other economic summits, a man called Dienst, go to the men’s room. I followed him in. There was nobody else there. So then I handed him an envelope, turned full circle and walked out of the men’s room without saying a word.’

  ‘What was in the envelope?’

  ‘Accurate East German industrial production figures for the past four quarters.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But what if he just ignored them?’

  ‘There was no chance of that. Dienst was a smart guy. One look at the numbers would tell him that our economy was performing far more poorly than anyone in the West had imagined. Since East Germany was by far the most advanced communist economy, the others must be even worse. Dienst took my figures directly to the BND and told them who I was and what I could potentially provide. Naturally, the BND were very suspicious at first. Many of the Easterners who volunteered to spy for the West were Stasi double-agents. So, of course, were many BND officers: my greatest risk was that one of them would expose me. But finally we agreed terms and set up a system of dead-drops, and I started passing information over to the West on a regular basis.’

  ‘Did your wife, Bettina, know about any of this?’

  ‘No. She knew nothing at all. I wanted to keep her safe.’

  ‘But you were taking a hell of a risk. And you had a family to think about. What about Mariana?’

  Wahrmann closed his eyes. I knew he was imagining Mariana, conjuring her up in his mind’s eye. For both of us, that was as close as we came to her any more.

  ‘She was the most wonderful child,’ he said, opening his eyes again and giving a sad, wistful smile. ‘So beautiful, just like her mother. People used to say Bettina should have been a movie star, and Mariana had the same quality. She was sweet-natured, happy, always laughing, and so bright: all the time asking questions, noticing things, wanting to know more. Everyone loved her. Bettina used to call her “My little ray of sunshine”. To have a wife like that and a child like that, well, I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.’

  As I had done to be Mariana’s husband.

  ‘And ye
t …?’ I asked.

  ‘And yet I deserted her. I betrayed her. I did not mean to, but I did.’

  ‘Now my brother’s dead, Mariana’s in a psychiatric unit and I’m here, trying to pick up the pieces. All because you betrayed your country. Is that what we’re saying?’

  ‘Do you really think I was betraying my country? You have been to Hohenschönhausen. You know what sort of a country this was. I was not betraying it. I was trying to save it.’

  ‘But you had a duty to your family. Surely that came first?’

  Wahrmann grimaced. ‘That was my dilemma, the argument in my head that kept me awake at nights. Of course a man has a duty to his family. But does he not have a moral duty to fight tyranny and oppression also? Should he turn his eyes away from what is happening? Yes, that might be the safe, sensible choice. But if everyone makes the sensible choice, tyranny continues without any challenge. And then what happens to all the families? Are they any safer? Someone has to make a stand.’

  ‘But you made it at the expense of the people you loved.’

  ‘And I have paid for that ever since, as have they.’

  I realized that I was being unfair. When Weiss had told me about Wahrmann’s deal with the Eastern system, I had accused him of betraying his principles. Now that he was demonstrating that he had not sold out to the Stasi, I was accusing him of betraying his family. Which proved his point: either way he could not win. In that system, no decent man ever could.

  ‘I assume you got caught,’ I said, getting back to the story.

  ‘Ja … it was inevitable. I lasted less than a year. And then … well, you heard what they did to me for telling a joke. For treason it was far, far worse. I was sentenced to life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole.’

  I tried to imagine what it must have been like to watch that steel door slam shut, believing that the rest of your life would be spent in such crushing confinement.

  ‘How did you handle it?’

  ‘Oh, I knew how bad things were. I told myself the system would collapse eventually: ten years, maybe, twenty at most.’