No, mused Reimann: you won’t. He said: ‘It should all be straightforward now. And again, I’m sorry.’ Come on! he thought: ask the question I want.
Elke had not encountered anyone who looked so directly at her as he did. She said: ‘What do I do now?’
Exactly on cue, Reimann decided, satisfied. ‘Give that to your insurance company. Withdraw any claim against them. Tell the garage to go ahead with the repairs and send the bill to me …’ He let the sentence hang.
‘What?’ queried Elke.
Reimann wondered if it would be as easy to train the bloody dog. He said: ‘Something that just occurred to me, as I was talking … whether the garage will accept instructions from you to bill someone else for the work. It might sound odd.’
‘It might, mightn’t it?’ Her concern began to rise.
‘No problem!’ said Reimann, forcefully. ‘I’ll do it. I have to authorize the repairs to the Mercedes. I’ll simply tell them to fix both and let me have the bill. Simple.’
‘You always seem to make it so,’ said Elke. The response had been automatic and she wished she’d thought it out before speaking; it had sounded like obvious flattery.
‘Anyway,’ said Reimann, guessing her regret from her colouring and talking over it as if he hadn’t thought the sentence strange. ‘It’ll save you the hassle of dealing or arguing with garages, won’t it?’
‘Will there be arguments?’ asked Elke, at once.
‘There will be, if the work isn’t done properly,’ said Reimann. Playing his personal anticipatory game, he thought: look Elke, my glass is empty.
‘You’re extremely kind. I’ll never know …’ She stopped, then finished: ‘I’ve already said that, haven’t I?’
Glass, Elke; look at my glass! He said: ‘I’m sure I’ve more spare time than you: I literally decide my own hours.’
‘Would you like more whisky?’
‘Thank you,’ said Reimann. Fractionally slow, stupid woman, he thought. He’d train her, quickly enough.
Elke was more adept at the door, managing to prevent the dog getting past her into the living-room. Alone, Reimann gazed back towards the hallway and the adjoining doors he had isolated as he’d entered. He would have to explore, minimally: edge slightly further into her life. He smiled his thanks when Elke returned with the drink and said: ‘You are allowed to receive telephone calls at work, aren’t you? There might be something we have to talk about, during the day.’
‘I try to avoid them,’ said Elke, cautiously. ‘But if it’s urgent …’
‘I won’t call unless it’s absolutely necessary,’ promised Reimann, easily. It would provide another encroaching opportunity.
Elke crossed to the bureau and quickly scribbled her personal number on to a reminder pad. As she handed it to the man she said, unthinking: ‘That’s my private number: it’ll come directly to my desk.’
‘Private number!’ exclaimed Reimann, pretending surprised although vaguely mocking admiration. ‘You didn’t tell me you were important enough in the government to qualify for private extensions!’
Elke’s colour returned. ‘I’m attached to the Chancellery,’ she admitted.
Reassure her, he quickly decided: make no comment to indicate any interest whatsoever. ‘I’ll telephone you here, of course: let you know what they say at the garage. And you can tell me the reaction of the insurance company.’
‘Yes,’ Elke agreed. ‘I’ll see to it tomorrow.’ She knew already that the diary was not particularly heavy. And Günther would allow her time off, if it were necessary. How much more comfortable she felt with this man in her apartment than she had the night Günther had taken her to the Philharmonic concert.
Reimann edged his glass on to the low table between them, fixing what he hoped was a shy smile. ‘I wonder if I might use your bathroom.’
Not imagining the need, she hadn’t checked the bathroom for tidiness. But it was never untidy: she never permitted anything to remain untidy. ‘It’s on the right, as you go out,’ she said, gesturing towards the hallway.
Reimann bolted the door before going first to the most obvious, the mirrored wall cabinet. There was a container of tooth floss, a tube of antiseptic cream alongside a bottle of liquid antiseptic, deodorants – a body stick and a separate vaginal deodorizer – and two flasks of bath oils. Her toothbrush was capped with a small plastic top, to keep the head clean. The toothpaste promised to prevent plaque. The female razor was electric, packed neatly in its plastic case: there was no stubble detritus to indicate its recent use. There were tampons in an already opened box in the cupboard beneath the sink, with two bottles of pain-killing pills adjacent. He moved the bottles and found a third, its label actually promising relief from menstrual cramps: he would have to be particularly solicitous every month. A third cupboard contained bathroom cleaning equipment. Reimann flushed the unused toilet and splashed water noisily into the sink, actually washing his hands to dampen a towel if she checked. So what had he learned? That she was painstakingly neat: a characteristic he already knew. That she was careful about personal hygiene, which until now had been a fairly obvious surmise but not positively confirmed. And the analgesic pills next to the sanitary protection: that alone justified the exercise. He would have liked very much to investigate her bedroom. Where did the remaining door lead? To what had been the child’s bedroom, he supposed. He wondered what the woman used it for now.
Elke strained for conversation – for anything to talk about – when Reimann emerged from the bathroom. ‘I want you to know how very much I appreciate all you’re doing,’ was the best she could manage.
‘The whole silly business has dragged on long enough,’ said Reimann. He looked past her, to the bookshelves, realizing how he could manoeuvre another visit to Kaufmannstrasse, even beyond whatever excuse he felt necessary to invent from the car repairs.
‘It’ll be so good, to get my car back,’ said Elke. The taxi to and from Marienfels the previous Sunday had cost almost a hundred and fifty marks.
‘I’ll get it done as fast as possible,’ Reimann promised. ‘Don’t forget my number, if something occurs to you that we haven’t discussed. Any time.’
‘I won’t,’ said Elke. ‘Although I can’t imagine your forgetting anything.’ It sounded overly flattering, like the earlier remark she had regretted: fortunately he didn’t seem to consider it misplaced, any more than he had before.
Reimann had the impression – and felt, self-satisfied, that his impressions about her had so far been remarkably accurate – that Elke would have welcomed his staying. Which made it important for him to get out, hopefully to leave her feeling she could not hold a man’s attention. He finish his whisky in a gulp and said: ‘I certainly can’t think of anything at this moment.’
‘Would you like another drink?’ offered Elke, hurriedly.
Right again! thought Reimann, the self-satisfaction growing. ‘No thank you,’ he said, rising from the chair. ‘There are things I have to do. I’ll be in touch.’
The following day Günther Werle said it was good there appeared to be some progress at last over the accident and agreed at once, as she’d guessed he would, to EIke taking time off to visit the insurance company offices. She was glad she did. It only took an hour, and she utilized the inspector’s secretary to dictate her withdrawal-of-claim letter.
Reimann telephoned the Chancellery in the afternoon to intrude as soon as possible into another section of Elke Meyer’s personal territory, particularly a section where he had no right. But which, if she thought about it later, he would be entering with her permission. It was going to be an essential acceptance for her to develop. He apologized for calling, the excuse already prepared. One tyre needed replacing. The three remaining tyres, undamaged in the accident, would nevertheless show greater wear than the new one, creating a small risk of imbalance on the road. Small though that risk was, he had therefore told the garage to fit a complete new set.
‘You’re being extremely helpful,�
�� said Elke. It was not a problem she would have known about, to raise with the garage. She doubted whether her evasive insurers would have bothered, either.
‘They said the work would take a fortnight,’ Reimann lied. ‘I told them I would like it done in a week.’ A week had been the work period the garage had promised.
‘A week! Can it really be done as quickly as that?’
‘I’ll do all I can to see that it is.’ Reimann had given the foreman a hundred marks to ensure the Volkswagen got preferential attention in the workshop, with the hint there would be more if everything was completed on schedule.
‘That would be absolutely wonderful!’ Excited as she was, Elke realized that the telephone conversation was going on for a long time, and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She’d checked all the correspondence and reports, ready for Günther Werle’s signature, so the call wasn’t keeping her from any outstanding work. She certainly didn’t want to cut Reimann short.
The moment once more to tilt you off centre, thought Reimann. He said: ‘I suppose I’d better have the letter back, from the company?’
‘I have it ready,’ said Elke. She smiled, expectantly: for his third visit it would not be out of place to offer some cocktail snacks. But better than she’d got for Günther. And maybe a fresh bottle of whisky. She was not sure if what remained in the existing bottle was sufficient.
‘You’ve got my address, on the card I gave you,’ said Reimann. ‘Put it in the post, will you?’
There was an almost imperceptible gap before Elke said: ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll do it tonight.’
‘No hurry. Whenever,’ said Reimann, dismissivcly. Even more casually, wanting to finish on his terms, he said: ‘I have to go. I’ll call, when there’s anything.’
Elke’s feeling of well-being, the satisfaction she’d known at the ease with which everything had been settled, and which had grown into something like happiness at Reimann’s call, evaporated at the curt farewell and she went solemn-faced into Werle’s office for their end-of-day meeting.
The man detected her depression at once and said, concerned: ‘Didn’t it go well?’
Elke, who hadn’t told Werle in detail why she was going to the insurers when she’d asked for the time off, decided she shouldn’t appear distracted again by things occurring outside the Chancellery. ‘Very well indeed,’ she insisted. Trying to stress an impression of satisfaction at the outcome, she explained the settlement.
‘His firm’s insurers have accepted complete liability?’ queried Werle, frowning.
‘Absolutely,’ said Elke. ‘The inspector I spoke to this morning thought I was very lucky.’
‘I think so, too,’ said Werle. He was suddenly worried.
The security officer was the moustached man who had delivered the last warning lecture Elke had attended at the Chancellery. He listened with hunched concentration, making an occasional note. ‘Paying her damage entirely!’ he exclaimed when Werle finished.
‘That’s what she told me,’ confirmed the Cabinet Secretary.
‘I wouldn’t have thought leaving keys in the ignition constituted absolute liability.’
‘Neither would I. And because of the inquiries I have already had your department make into Elke Meyer I want to be thoroughly sure about this.’
‘Otto Reimann, you said?’
‘That was the name on the card she showed me. Recently appointed here as a correspondent, for Australian interests.’ Werle hoped so much that Elke had not become involved in an embarrassing problem. He’d been about to make the announcement he was sure would have brought about a great difference in their relationship. And he wanted that difference to come as quickly as possible. He felt very strongly about her.
The second bombshell – with the first still echoing – created a positive panic within Sorokin’s Dzerzhinsky Square office.
‘There was nothing … no indication at all from the woman?’ Sorokin demanded.
‘I would have reported it, if there had been,’ said Turev. If the Bonn operation had failed – had even come under the slightest suspicion – almost before it began, then everyone associated with it would be brought down as well. At least there was no provable connection with them here in Moscow, but penalties would still be exacted, privately. The publicly declared changes within the KGB were only cosmetic, for external consumption and belief; internally a lot remained as it always had been, from the time of Beria and Stalin. Turev didn’t think the word purge would ever disappear from the KGB vocabulary.
‘What can he have done?’ said Cherny, careless of a facile question none of them could possibly answer. A man whose world was literally regimented, the soldier was uncomfortable with the constantly blurred situations of espionage.
‘When was the meeting arranged, anyway?’ asked Sorokin.
‘The day after tomorrow,’ said Turev. ‘This could mean he won’t ever make it: that he could be arrested.’
‘Or they might let him run. We’ll have to be incredibly careful, against hostile surveillance,’ cautioned Sorokin. ‘We don’t control East Berlin any more.’
‘Despite that risk, I think you should handle it personally, considering the level at which the operation was ordered,’ said the soldier to the KGB deputy. ‘We’ve still got secure military installations on East German territory: one in East Berlin itself. I could guarantee your safety that far.’
Sorokin was very frightened at the risk of detection, but more frightened of something going wrong if he did not personally supervise the encounter. To Turev he said: ‘Is it too late to get any sort of warning through to Reimann?’
‘Yes,’ said Turev.
‘We’ve got to go,’ Sorokin accepted, dully. ‘Both of us.’
Chapter Sixteen
Quite confident it was an unnecessary precaution, Reimann still travelled by a circuitous, time-consuming route to avoid leaving any detectable trail. From Cologne, the airport serving Bonn, he flew on the opening flight of the morning to Munich. There was only an hour’s wait to catch his connection to Frankfurt. There he actually went into the city – by airport bus, so that he could study the other passengers for any particular interest in him – and briefly wandered the streets in the city centre, making absolutely sure there was no pursuit. He was back at the airport with time enough to eat an excellent lunch of goulash before completing the final leg of his journey into West Berlin, arriving in the late afternoon before the following day’s appointment.
Reimann felt comfortable, at home, back in a city where he had spent five years of his operational life. There was, of course, not the slightest temptation to return to the old districts, to Lichterfelde or Lankwitz, where he was so familiar with all the bars and restaurants but where there would have been the risk of a chance encounter with an old acquaintance. He stayed instead in the tourist-thronged heart of the place, booking into the Am-Zoo and taking an early evening drink in a pavement cafe on the Kurfürstendamm. Along here the clown-dwarfs paraded at Christmas, he reflected, remembering his imagery of the Russian he was to meet. What would he have to report from his side the following day? Little more than impressions, beyond what Jutta had already passed on, he decided. OK, his impression was that he had succeeded very well: certainly he believed that Elke Meyer welcomed his presence and would not be averse to his contacting her further, after the car excuse was exhausted. Honestly objective, Reimann further decided everything was progressing at the pace it should. Although he wasn’t permitting it to affect his judgement, he thought he had every reason to feel confident.
He crossed through the remains of the torn-down Wall into East Berlin promptly the next morning, remembering the old money-changing, passport-checking hindrances that had been swept away with the communist regime that imposed them. But the scaffolded, half-finished buildings still remained immediately upon the other side, looking as suspended in mid-construction as they had when he had last walked by, months ago. There were still no signs of any workers engaged in any activ
ity.
Intentionally Reimann took a route along Normannenstrasse, past the grime-coated Ministry of State Security, the former East German intelligence service building from which he’d originally worked, before his transfer to full KGB control. The Stasi headquarters was patched with rings of scoured whiteness, making it look strangely pockmarked, a diseased building. At its base – and on the window-ledges too – were thousands of linked but smaller black scorch rings, where the candles, which they had called freedom lights, had been lit by protesters against the regime of Erich Honecker. Even now, Reimann remained astonished that it had been allowed to happen: it should have been stopped, as so much else should have been stopped. The corruption at the top and the protests at the bottom.
There was no obvious security around the safe house on Johannisstrasse, just a plainclothes, grunting attendant who opened the door to admit him, but Reimann was sure there would be hidden but extensive protection. The bubble-fat, white-haired Turev was standing apprehensively in front of a bare desk. Already behind it was a bearded man, tending to middle-aged plumpness, whom Reimann had not met before.
‘What is it!’ Turev demanded at once, his own panic spurred by Sorokin’s brooding presence. ‘Do you know the mistake you made?’
Reimann was dumbfounded. ‘Mistake? What mistake?’ The Russian he knew was grey-faced and sweating, and seemed to defer to the man behind the desk. For once there was no cigarette.
‘There’s a security check being run on you!’ announced Sorokin, deceptively quiet-voiced but inwardly as nervous as Turev. ‘By-Australian counter-intelligence. But obviously at Bonn’s request!’
Reimann felt a sweep of cold numbness, but his training had erased the sort of panic that the other two men were showing, over an unexplained uncertainty. He had to think: find an explanation.
‘What exactly – and I mean exactly – was the inquiry?’
‘Whether the insurers had accepted responsibility for the accident,’ Turev disclosed. Bitterly he added: ‘It was a bad idea, arranging the encounter like that. That was the mistake, in fact!’
Little Grey Mice Page 17