Little Grey Mice

by Brian Freemantle

  He waited.

  She moved.

  ‘I want to understand what you’re saying,’ Elke insisted.

  ‘If I keep getting it wrong – in their opinion – I’ll no longer be the leading European political commentator for the magazines, will I?’

  ‘What would that mean?’

  ‘They’d replace me, I suppose.’

  ‘You’d have to leave Bonn!’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I don’t want you to leave Bonn.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave, either.’

  Günther Werle was unhappy that so far he and Elke were not personally closer, but professionally she had proved herself superbly. Not that he’d ever had the slightest doubt about Elke’s ability to rise to the challenge. It was just that it was never completely possible to gauge how a person would respond to promotional responsibility, and any failure would have reflected upon him, because he was the one who had sponsored her so strongly. But she hadn’t failed at all. She’d conducted herself with complete propriety in everything, deferential although not subservient, hardly a single minute or memorandum or report needing his slightest correction. No correction, he acknowledged: merely suggestions, a small shift of emphasis here, the simplest change of phrase there. So any – and every – reflection upon him had been favourable.

  She’d seen him in action, too. Seen how he was included in everything, deferred to by the most powerful men in the country: knew the influence he had at the very pinnacle of German politics. He was sure she admired it all, although she was far too controlled, far too composed, ever to show it. But she knew. He’d expected a much greater change, between them personally. He called her Elke all the time now, but she only called him by his Christian name occasionally, and then rarely unless he prompted her.

  He determined to make the outing to the Viennese recital different than before. Better. Their difficulty that first time had been predictable enough. But now they were closer: more personally familiar. He’d get some more recommendations and go to the restaurants first, so that he would know what to expect: behave as if he knew the place well. And order some champagne in the interval, even though he didn’t like it himself because it gave him embarrassing flatulence.

  He smiled up, as Elke entered for the day’s diary discussion. ‘I’ve been lucky,’ he announced. ‘I’ve managed to get some excellent stall seats for the Vienna Boys’ Choir.’

  Elke had completely forgotten. She said: ‘I’m extremely sorry, Herr Werle. But I won’t be able to join you.’

  ‘I see,’ said Werle. He tried to avoid swallowing heavily, in his disappointment, but couldn’t. Herr Werle, she’d said: not Günther.

  ‘Please forgive me. I should have spoken before.’

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ said the man, shortly. His throat moved, as he swallowed again. Why wouldn’t she come? he thought, desperately. Why?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Her period coming that Saturday evening was an advantage to be used. Anticipating her discomfort from his first inspection of her bathroom cabinet, Reimann cancelled the dinner reservation and prepared steak in her own kitchen with an expertise derived from Jutta’s indifference to cooking. He refused her help to clear away, settling her with her feet lifted upon the couch while he did it alone. He reappeared with coffee and a supply of analgesic pills, insisting she tell him the moment she felt she wanted more. He sat at one end of the couch, so that she could remain with her feet up, her back against his chest. Pointedly he watched every newscast on television, remarking with apparent casualness that he couldn’t afford to miss out on the slightest political development, and particularly not on any interpretation from another commentator. It was understood without it being discussed that he would sleep with her, but that night he let her go into the bedroom ahead of him. When he followed she was already in bed. She wore a high-necked nightdress.

  ‘You don’t mind do you? It’s just …’

  ‘Why should I mind?’ said Reimann.

  She fell asleep with both his arms around her. It was too uncomfortable to remain that way but he woke up ahead of her the following morning, so he was holding her again when she stirred. Her first act was to feel for his arm, for reassurance.

  Reimann made her stay in bed while he made the coffee. When Elke went into the kitchen, there were pills waiting beside her place.

  ‘It’s never too bad, the second day.’

  ‘Take them, just in case.’

  ‘Where did you learn to do everything right?’

  ‘I took lessons,’ said Reimann, in an unusual moment of truthfulness.

  He did not question the time she insisted on leaving Kaufmannstrasse, although he knew it would get them to Marienfels far too early. Elke sat half turned in the passenger seat, looking more at him than at anything outside the car. Please let it be one of Ursula’s good days! She’d considered calling Dr Schiller, but had been unable to phrase the question in a way that would not sound strange: perhaps what he regarded as Ursula’s good days wouldn’t be the same as hers anyway. Reimann didn’t seem to want to talk, so Elke didn’t either. She was quite content – more than contect – just to be with him, near him.

  Reimann recognized the layby on the final ascent towards the institution from the Russian photographs.

  ‘I usually stop here: let Poppi out for a run,’ said Elke, so he did. He gazed around the wooded hills, idly speculating where the surveillance team had concealed themselves. They had been long-lens shots: there was adequate tree cover and coppice all around.

  ‘Sometimes Ursula can be difficult,’ warned Elke, feeling there should be some preparation. ‘Resistant. She’s particularly strong: too strong for me, if she’s determined to do something. And she’s not very communicative.’

  Reimann smiled at her. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, kindly.

  ‘I just wanted you to know, before …’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  Elke introduced him to Dr Schiller as a friend. Reimann stood politely just slightly apart while Elke and the principal talked about Ursula, hearing the doctor say that Ursula had refused to come out into the grounds and seeing Elke’s immediate grimace of concern. The flower display in the foyer today was roses.

  Ursula appeared to have remained unmoved from Elke’s last visit: she was even wearing the same denim skirt and red sweater. One arm of the sweater was stained with food debris, potato maybe. Mozart played on the secured tape machine. Reimann held the chair for Elke, sitting himself upon the bed, which put him closer to the girl. Elke felt the discomfort she always knew, talking to the non-receptive girl in front of someone. She described Reimann as a friend again and talked about Georg and Doris, and, risking the rejection, said the day was beautiful and how nice it would be to go out in the grounds. She tried to hold Ursula’s fingers while she talked but the girl pulled away, sharply, so Elke did not try again.

  Reimann reached out, above five minutes afterwards. He did not try to grasp Ursula’s hand but gently stroked it, hardly making contact at first. Elke was immediately reminded how the male attendant had caressed to free Poppi from the crushing embrace that terrible Sunday. Ursula let herself be stroked. She even smiled and looked directly at Reimann and made a sound that did not make a recognizable word. Then there definitely was a word – ‘nice’, which emerged as a favourite – and Reimann smiled back and gently brushed the food debris from the arms of the sweater.

  ‘We’ll go outside,’ he said. He spoke more to Ursula than to Elke, rising from the bed but keeping hold of the child’s hand, to bring her up. Ursula rose obediently. Outside she let her hands be looped through their arms, either side, and said ‘nice’ several times and made a lot of unintelligible sounds. The dog danced and darted ahead of them and once, trying to turn, fell over its own scrabbling legs, yelping on to its back, and Ursula laughed and took her hand from Elke’s arm to point. ‘Silly dog’ was quite clearly understandable. Reimann talked to Ursula about the dog and pointed o
ut birds and played a game of holding up his fingers and making her knock them down as he counted, never going beyond three. When he spoke to Elke, it was never as if the girl could be ignored because of her disability. Elke thought it was all so natural: a couple walking with their child on a warm, bright day. All so completely natural.

  They got a lunch-table to themselves, which was how Elke liked it. It was Reimann who cut Ursula’s meat and diced the salad into smaller, more easily managed portions, and he halted Ursula before she started to eat, manoeuvring the spoon better for her to hold it and bring the food to her mouth. Elke only had to clean Ursula’s mouth twice during the meal.

  Afterwards Reimann showed no impatience to leave. They walked in the grounds again, so it was well into the afternoon – later than Elke normally left – before they settled Ursula back in her room and made their farewells to Dr Schiller.

  ‘She was very active today: enjoyed your being here,’ assured the doctor, saying what Elke was thinking.

  Elke did not try to talk as they descended the hill towards the main highway, knowing her voice would be clogged and uneven, and was glad that again Reimann did not force any conversation. They were heading directly towards Bonn before Elke believed she had sufficient control. She said: ‘Thank you. That’s not enough but it’s all I can think to say. I can’t remember the last time there was a day like this, with her. It was wonderful.’

  That banned word, thought Reimann. He said: ‘There’s nothing to thank me for.’ He hadn’t expected the response from the child to be so positive: he’d been extraordinarily lucky.

  ‘Believe me, there is,’ said Elke, with deep sincerity.

  Now to present the carefully planned and supposed surprise, he calculated. ‘How long has she been there?’

  ‘Five years. Just over.’

  ‘Is she ever allowed home?’

  ‘At first she did come.’ The question made Elke feel guilty, neglectful. She went on: ‘It’s difficult now that she’s got stronger. She became upset, on the last occasion: I couldn’t calm her. Dr Schiller thinks she’s better in a regular environment.’

  ‘When’s her birthday?’ asked Reimann, who knew from the Moscow briefing and thought the coincidence could hardly be better.

  Elke turned in her seat, to look across the car as she had done on the way to Marienfels that morning. ‘Next month.’

  ‘Why don’t we have her out, for her birthday?’ suggested Reimann, smiling quickly across the car at her. ‘Those children you spoke about, Georg and Doris? They’re Ida’s kids?’

  Elke found her throat becoming thick again. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’ll have to be a weekend, of course, to fit in with both our jobs.’ Reimann spoke as if the idea was growing in his mind. ‘Why don’t we have a small party. Ursula, you and me? And Ida’s children? Ida, too. I’m sure I could calm Ursula; control her if she did get distressed. How does that sound?’

  ‘It sounds marvellous,’ said Elke, quietly. ‘Absolutely marvellous.’ How could anyone be so good: so kind!

  ‘Maybe you’d better talk it through with Dr Schiller. We’re doing it for Ursula. We’d better make sure there aren’t any medical reasons against it, before we plan any further.’

  That night, as she lay contentedly in bed, his arms familiarly around her, Elke said: ‘Could it really happen? Could you really be transferred if your magazines don’t accept your opinions?’

  Reimann smiled in the darkness. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I want to know,’ she insisted.

  ‘Yes,’ said Reimann. ‘That’s what will happen.’

  ‘No!’ broke in Elke, as her sister ordered the wine. ‘Bereich Nierstein is drier: we’ll have that instead.’

  ‘Forgive me!’ grinned Ida, unoffended.

  ‘Otto is very good with wines.’ She immediately wished she hadn’t shown off her growing personal confidence so strongly.

  ‘Is there anything he isn’t good at!’ There was no bite in the sarcasm: Ida was genuinely delighted at Elke’s happiness.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be,’ Elke giggled. ‘And he’s particularly good at that!’

  ‘You don’t have to give me any more details: I’m already wet with jealousy,’ Ida complained.

  Elke had discussed the sex with her sister, and for a reason. She wanted to know. She’d never thought of the coupling with Dietlef as being proper sex – not what she should have felt and experienced – although Ursula had been the result. It had not happened that many times anyway, and had always been hurried and usually painful, over in a moment for him, hurting and uncomfortable for her. And Dietlef had been the only one: she’d had no other lover with whom to compare. But now she had Ida’s opinion: Very special. Completely accurate, Elke accepted. Otto Reimann was very special, not just in bed but in every other way. It was exciting – she felt proud – that he was good in bed, though. Good in bed and all hers. Ida – everyone – had every reason to feel jealous. Wrong to go on as if she were boasting. Elke said: ‘What do you think about the party, for Ursula?’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Ida. ‘Of course we’ll all come.’

  ‘Dr Schiller thinks it would be all right.’

  ‘Should we meet first? You and Otto and Horst and me? The children too. Why don’t you come to lunch, like I suggested.’

  Elke wanted to show him off: display him and think here’s my very special man as everyone came automatically under his charm. She said: ‘I’ll talk to him about it. We speak most days now, even if we don’t always see each other. He has to work very hard, you know.’

  ‘Like Horst!’ said Ida. This time the sarcasm did have a bitterness.

  It had been weeks since the loan, without any reference to it. Elke said: ‘How are things?’

  Ida considered the question. ‘Dreary,’ she decided at last. ‘I don’t have much to talk to him about any more and he hasn’t much to talk to me about. Our relationship could be described as polite.’

  She had the right to ask, Elke decided. ‘What about money?’

  ‘He’s given in on that, which I suppose sums up the character of Horst Kissel. At least it’s allowed me to take over the finances of the family. We’re getting straight but it’s going to take a long time.’

  So the repayment of the loan was ever distant: the salary increase had come at the right time. Elke said: ‘What about the great book?’

  ‘There’s what he calls his manuscript, on the table in the bedroom,’ said Ida. ‘I asked to read it a while back – thought I should show some interest – but he insisted it wasn’t ready yet. That it needed a lot of reworking.’

  ‘You haven’t spoken about Kurt for a long time,’ Elke reminded her sister. She felt no criticism any more: although the circumstances of her affair with Otto were quite different, with no deceit of a marriage, Elke considered that she and Ida were complete equals now.

  Ida shrugged, apathetically. ‘We meet about twice a week. He tells me how unhappy he is with his wife. I tell him how unhappy I am, with Horst. We fuck. He goes home to his wife. I go home to Horst.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like an awful lot of fun,’ said Elke, and wished at once she hadn’t talked of fun, which had been how Ida had described it when it first began: it might have sounded as if she were mocking.

  Ida didn’t appear to notice. She said: ‘Believe me, darling, it isn’t!’

  Elke regretted asking about Kurt at all. It had started as a happy lunch – with herself the focus of it – but now it had become depressive. She said: ‘I’d like to be able to do something. Suggest something.’

  It was Ida who regained the earlier mood. ‘You could gift-wrap Otto and give him to me!’

  ‘No way!’ said Elke. ‘I don’t intend letting anyone else have him! Not ever!’

  ‘If he’s as good as you say he is, in and out of bed, I can hardly blame you!’ Ida smiled, fondly. ‘My sheltered little sister suddenly has a very full and active life, hasn’t she?’

  After so long
believing – and accepting – herself to be invisibly cloaked in Ida’s shadow, Elke suddenly wanted to tell her sister everything. And there wouldn’t be any danger, she decided. Ida was utterly trustworthy, and she would not be contravening any secrecy if she phrased it properly. She said: ‘As a matter of fact it’s become extremely full.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve been promoted,’ Elke disclosed proudly, glad at last to tell someone. ‘I’ve got a particular responsibility, far beyond what I used to have.’

  ‘Why so mysterious?’

  ‘It’s got the highest possible security classification.’

  ‘So you can’t tell me about it?’

  ‘Not beyond what I’ve said.’

  Ida sighed. ‘You don’t have to: it sounds terrific. You wouldn’t like to swap my life for yours, would you?’

  ‘No!’ said Elke, definitely. ‘I wouldn’t like to swap my life with anyone.’ Not any more, she reflected: not any more.

  ‘We’ve wasted enough time!’ said General Cherny. ‘If the woman has an increased responsibility, let’s take advantage of it, now that he’s got her.’

  ‘She isn’t passing information, not yet,’ warned Turev.

  ‘Because he isn’t pressing her for it!’ the soldier insisted.

  ‘What would you suggest?’ asked Dimitri Sorokin mildly. Any mistakes had to be provable against the person who made them. Sorokin didn’t intend making any, certainly not through impatience.

  ‘A list,’ Cherny decided. ‘I think we should set out in writing everything we want to know. Everything the Politburo and the leadership want to know.’

  ‘Do you think that’s wise?’ lured the KGB deputy.

  ‘Essential,’ the General insisted. ‘And I will personally prepare the military demands. I want to know whether that stuff coming through Vienna is genuine or not! It’s been weeks now!’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was a logical assumption that if the Nord-Stadt apartment was bugged there had to be listening apparatus attached to its telephone too. But Reimann concluded there was no risk of arousing Soviet suspicion by suggesting they should meet away from the flat and its attentive ears. He proposed a river trip, like the one they’d enjoyed before And when she baulked at that he talked of going to Cologne (imagining the Leberkäse as he spoke), or of maybe exploring some of the tourist spots along the Rhine conveniently adjacent to Bonn. Frustratingly she adamantly vetoed each idea.