Little Grey Mice

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Why a mess?’ demanded Elke. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’ Not as what happened to her had seemed at the time to be the end of the world: sometimes, when she couldn’t halt the self-pity, still did.

  ‘It just is.’ Ida lifted her empty brandy glass to the passing waitress. ‘I don’t want to lose the house, wreck though it is. I don’t want to have to change the kids’ school.’

  There was more, guessed Elke. ‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you? It’s gone beyond telephone calls.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What good is it going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ida, listlessly. ‘It’s an escape, for a while.’

  The conversation was already disturbing Elke on several levels and suddenly she isolated another. She’d never known Ida helpless before, not like this. Ida had always been the dominant one: Ida the leader, Elke the follower. It was the way it had always been, the way Elke felt comfortable. Safe. She didn’t want it to change.

  ‘You’ll have to take the money.’

  ‘What about getting it back?’

  ‘I don’t care about getting it back.’ She didn’t, Elke told herself. Just as long as she had some left. She’d always been frightened of not having any money to rely upon: she saved four hundred marks a month, sometimes more.

  ‘Thank you.’ Ida spoke with the returned brandy glass to her lips, as if she wanted something to hide behind.

  ‘Wouldn’t you do the same for me?’ Elke insisted. ‘Haven’t you done the same for me, in other ways?’ Had Ida sensed, as she had, the reversal of roles, surrendering her customary dominance by disclosing the financial crisis? With further prescience, Elke said: ‘You’re comparing, aren’t you? Comparing Horst with …’ She waved her hand as if she were trying to grasp the name out of the air.

  ‘Kurt,’ supplied Ida. ‘Kurt Vogel. I suppose so.’

  ‘So it’s no longer fun? No longer just an adventure?’

  Ida gave another shrug, without answering.

  ‘Have you been to bed with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  There was another snorted laugh. ‘How do I know?’

  ‘This is the real mess, isn’t it? Not being broke or losing the house or the upheaval of having to change the children’s school?’

  Ida smiled across the table at her, a shy expression. ‘Wise little sister!’ she said.

  ‘Hardly,’ said Elke. ‘And if this is the way you feel then I agree, it is a mess.’ There was an unexpected surge of emotion that Elke could not recognize, a feeling she couldn’t identify. Just as quickly a thought came into her mind – not one man but two – but that had no meaning, either, apart from jealousy, and how could there be that?

  Ida straightened, a positive action. ‘It’s been good to talk,’ she said.

  ‘What about the problem we can solve?’ pressed Elke. ‘How are you going to bring it into the open, with Horst?’

  ‘Make him discuss it,’ said Ida, with further determination. ‘Refuse to let it go when he says everything is under control and that he’ll handle it.’

  It sounded as if Ida was reciting resolutions already made: as if she’d expected Elke to make the offer and decided to accept it, after an initial refusal. Elke felt confused, uncomfortably distanced from her sister, from whom she’d never before had that impression. Had Ida come with her today because she’d genuinely wanted to see Ursula? Or to manoeuvre this encounter? Elke hurried the doubt away, disgusted with herself.

  ‘Let’s get it settled as quickly as possible. Get one worry out of the way at least.’

  ‘I’ll see that he pays you back. All of it. I promise.’

  ‘Let’s not worry about that, not now.’

  Ida was silent for several moments, looking down at the table. Then, with the honesty there always was between them, she said: ‘It was difficult today, darling, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t …’ started Elke before understanding. Showing the same truthfulness she said: ‘I don’t know why it was like it was.’

  ‘Why do you go every week?’ asked Ida, brutally. ‘Ursula’s not aware of it: it doesn’t mean anything to her.’

  ‘It’s my …’ Elke stumbled to a halt again. ‘… what I want to do.’

  ‘Duty? Or guilt?’

  ‘Guilt! That’s preposterous!’

  ‘Exactly!’ seized Ida. ‘How Ursula is … how she was born … is nobody’s fault. It’s …’ There was a splayed arm waving. ‘… I don’t know! Genetic fault. An accident of nature. Whatever. But there was nothing you could have done about it. No mistake you made except going to bed with the bastard in the first place, but that’s not what we’re talking about. So you don’t have to feel guilty: exact a penance from yourself, every week.’

  Oddly – incredibly – Elke was reassured by the lecture, hurtful though it was. This was how it should be – how she wanted it to be – with Ida back in control. A leader, to be followed. Elke said: ‘I don’t go because of any guilt. I go because I want to.’

  ‘She’s not going to get better, darling,’ said Ida, even more brutally. ‘She was worse today than I can ever remember.’

  ‘It was a bad day,’ said Elke, desperately, the lie like glue in her throat. If Ida hadn’t made the visit with her Elke knew she would have thought of today as a good one. Ursula had been placid, unresisting, even aware of her new clothes. Elke wished the cardigan had not been so quickly stained at the lunch table.

  ‘Isn’t every visit a bad day?’

  ‘Why are you doing this? Saying this?’

  ‘I’m trying to be kind.’

  ‘It’s none …’ blurted Elke, another false start. ‘It’s what I want to do.’

  Ida reached across the table, squeezing the other woman’s hand. ‘You know something? I’ve lost count of the number of times I imagined how much I would have liked to castrate with a very blunt, very rusty knife the bastard who made you pregnant. Haven’t you?’

  No, thought Elke. She said: ‘He just couldn’t face it.’

  ‘So he ran away, leaving you to face everything!’

  Elke’s entry in her diary that night read: A bad day.

  Reimann was discomfited by the thought of being ill-prepared. He studied the dossiers and the files and clicked his way through the freeze frames and watched the video films – always at Arbat Ulitza, never allowed to remove them to the apartment on Neglinnaya – but Elke Meyer never became a person to him. He was aware of everything about her: how she looked and how she dressed and how she conducted her contained and insular life. He knew, from afar, the few people she knew. Yet she remained as lifeless as the frozen pictures on the projector screen. Because his information was frozen. Even the video films did not properly show how her face developed an expression. How she actually walked: held herself. What little signs – body language, the instructors had called it – hinted a feeling or an attitude. The looks and emotions that came into her eyes. He didn’t know her: not properly know her. But maybe he shouldn’t, he reflected, following the objectivity that had also been instilled in training. For whatever mainipulation was necessary, shouldn’t he have to learn about her himself, by being with her? Just as he would if he were a normal, ordinary person and their encounter was going to a meeting of normal, ordinary people?

  Reimann’s general feeling of dissatisfaction was furthered by the unreality of their existence at Neglinnaya and his awareness that they were literally under a microscope. It had been instinctive bravado not to ask for a different, unmonitored apartment: fleetingly he wished now that he had, until he realized that anywhere else they might have been allocated would have been eavesdropped just as extensively.

  He was surprised, too, at how Jutta was treated. They had both expected her to be briefed immediately after her arrival in Moscow, but she wasn’t. Each day a driver took Reimann to study the Elke Meyer file at Arbat Ulitza, but
there were never any instructions for Jutta. And there was no opportunity to question the Control known as Alexandr. After the first extensive interview the white-haired Russian did not appear again. On his following visits Reimann was greeted by a series of hurrying, unsmiling escort clerks who took him to and from the tobacco-stinking viewing room and the dossier tables and responded at once to every buzzer request for more files.

  ‘This has no point,’ Jutta protested.

  ‘I would not have been briefed if there had been any change in the planning,’ insisted Reimann, professionally. He had said nothing to identify Elke Meyer to his wife and she had not asked. Aware of the microphones and cameras, he would not have told her anything, if she had questioned him about the target.

  ‘Why haven’t I been instructed, then?’

  Jutta had always reacted with outraged indignation to imagined slights. ‘There must be some reason.’

  There was, of course.

  On the third day of monitoring both the sound and film recordings at Neglinnaya, the psychologist said: ‘They’ve both been extremely professional: she hasn’t asked him anything about the mission and he hasn’t volunteered anything.’

  ‘He knows the apartment is wired: you told me to admit it if he asked,’ Turev reminded.

  Panin nodded. ‘He knows. But she seems altogether too confident of herself: there’s not the slightest indication of her having any suspicion that we might be monitoring them. I’m glad we staged this test. It’s helped a lot to confirm what I’m thinking about their relationship.’

  ‘Time to see her?’ Turev suggested.

  ‘Most definitely,’ Panin agreed.

  Chapter Eight

  The exclusive and guarded country dachas of the Soviet government elite are dotted discreetly among the hills that surround Moscow. The one to which Jutta was finally taken was actually at the beginning of the ascent, a sort of halfway house between privilege and practicality. It had its own woodland, however, which gave it seclusion. It was a rather stark, square building, with a shingle roof and rough timbered walls. As they approached, Jutta couldn’t decide whether it was a completely new structure built to appear traditional or a genuine old cottage that had been renovated. There was another car already parked outside. The driver was leaning against the nearside wing, smoking the cheapest sort of cigarette available in the Soviet Union, the type where only half the tube contains tobacco, leaving the other part like a hollow filter. He watched with smirking interest when a woman got out of the car.

  Jutta had prepared herself carefully. The fine check suit was severely cut but also accentuated her full-busted, slim-hipped figure. Her pale brown hair was strained back into its usual style, which she kept because she knew it was fitting for her height, just short of six feet. There was no embarrassment at the chauffeur’s interest. Jutta remained by her car, staring back until the man looked away.

  Turev, at the door of the dacha, was aware of the exchange. The Russian stood with odd formality, his body stiff, all three buttons of his suit fastened around his bulging body, as if he wanted to look immaculate for an official photograph. ‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said, gesturing the woman inside.

  Jutta entered unhurried and unsmiling. The main room was simply but functionally furnished, with a central table, a couch beneath the main window and two easy chairs, either side of a dead fire. On top of a small sideboard close to the table were bottles – vodka and brandy and wine – and Thermos servers of tea and coffee.

  ‘Sit. Be comfortable,’ urged Turev. ‘I thought it would be better for us to meet informally like this. We have to become friends.’ She had the palest blue eyes he had ever seen.

  Jutta decided the white-haired Russian was uneasy as a social host. His discomfort pleased her. ‘This has taken a long time.’

  ‘There is much for us to discuss,’ said Turev, not responding to the obvious complaint. The Russian had become dependent upon the American cigarettes he’d chain-smoked during an espionage posting to the United Nations in New York, early in his career. He could remember a lot of aloof women like Jutta, on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. He’d seen them described once as ‘business bitches’. He’d always been curious about them. Slightly nervous, too.

  ‘I want to know what my responsibilities are going to be,’ Jutta insisted.

  ‘Which is why you have been brought here today,’ smiled Turev. ‘But first let’s make ourselves comfortable.’ The Russian insisted on personally serving drinks from the sideboard – vodka for himself, coffee for Jutta – wondering if the effort was necessary. The dacha meeting was upon the guidance of Yuri Panin, to convey the ready inclusion of the woman into a special group for a special operation. Only when they were sitting in the easy chairs, their drinks between them, did Turev outline what that operation was to be. He provided only minimal details about Elke Meyer and did not offer any description, beyond her position in the West German Cabinet Secretariat. Neither did he offer a photograph and Jutta did not ask for one.

  ‘I am to be in charge, as I was before?’ she demanded, when Turev finished his explanation. For five years, until early 1990, Jutta Höhn had headed a cell of four East German intelligence officers, one her husband, which had successfully infiltrated a West German rehabilitation charity for East European refugees crossing either legally or illegally into the West. It had enabled the KGB, through the East German Ministry of State Security, to create a vast bureau of detailed files complete with addresses and occupations and possibly useful intelligence access upon thousands of emigres who remained totally unaware how closely their movements and activities were monitored. As the result of information provided by Jutta’s cell over those five years, twenty separate emigre men and women had been suborned either through threats against relatives still in the East or through open blackmail into becoming agents for the KGB or the now disbanded East German intelligence.

  ‘You did brilliantly well in the past,’ said Turev, again avoiding a direct response. ‘Now the focus has to change. Your part in this new operation is extremely important.’

  ‘Am I still to have field control?’ Jutta persisted.

  ‘Yes.’ Turev lied. ‘But you must realize that the situation now is very different from what it was in West Berlin. The division will not be so easily defined. But you will always be the liaison, between your husband and myself.’

  There was an expression that could have been doubt on Jutta’s face. ‘This has been explained to Otto?’

  ‘In great detail.’

  ‘What did he say about it?’

  ‘Nothing specifically,’ Turev replied. ‘He seemed to expect it. The system worked very well in the past, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jutta agreed. She seemed contemplative.

  ‘It is obvious why you must maintain separate apartments,’ continued Turev, briskly but with a purpose. ‘Do not establish any regular pattern with his visits to you, for him to become familiar to neighbours or tradesmen. And never go to his apartment, to become established by anyone who might see you as another woman.’ He stopped, waiting curiously.

  ‘That would be an elementary precaution, wouldn’t it?’

  She had responded as the psychologist predicted. ‘This could be a protracted operation,’ Turev warned.

  ‘I accept that.’

  She appeared willing to accept a great deal, reflected Turev. It made it easier to propose the second reason for her inclusion, beyond the ease of abandonment if either she or Reimann were detected by West German counter-intelligence. He said: ‘You have proven yourself to be an extremely dedicated and efficient officer.’

  ‘So?’ There was a curious suspicion in the question.

  ‘No one knows Otto better than you.’

  ‘So?’ she said again.

  ‘Enormous importance is attached to this operation. Nothing can be allowed to endanger it. So we want you always to watch him carefully.’

  ‘For what?’ demanded Jutta.

  ‘Anything,’ said Turev
. ‘If anything occurs to you to be out of character – some change you find unusual – you must tell me …’ He hesitated. Then he said: ‘It will not be spying upon your husband. It will be guarding the success of a vital assignment.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jutta, at once.

  The Russian waited for her to say more. When she didn’t, he said: ‘You’ll use a different name, of course. Sneider: Jutta Sneider. Your work will supposedly be that of travelling salesperson of office equipment. All the necessary documentation has been prepared for you, in that name. I will decide the date and place of our first meeting after you have both settled into your separate apartments and established yourselves …’ The Russian allowed a pause. ‘Any questions?’

  ‘No,’ said Jutta, at once.

  That night, at the Neglinnaya apartment, Jutta said to Reimann: ‘Operationally we are to continue as we were in West Berlin. I am to be field supervisor.’

  ‘I know,’ said the expectant Reimann.

  ‘Good,’ said Jutta. It was how it should be.

  Turev returned to the Arbat Ulitza to view what had been recorded on the extensive equipment with which the dacha was equipped.