Elke shook her head and wished she hadn’t, because an ache had begun to settle, at the temples and down her neck. ‘It’s already tight. They’ll probably try to evolve some changes in the system.’
Not much guidance there, he decided. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he accepted, encouragingly. ‘Maybe she is a poor old lady.’
Elke smiled, faintly, at his agreeing with her. What would his reaction be to another, more personal disclosure? Not yet. No reason yet. She didn’t want to say or do anything to make him feel compromised or trapped. He wasn’t compromised or trapped. She would never have him be that: still no reason for despair. It would be all right, in a day or two. Didn’t matter if it went an entire month. If it did go an entire month she’d see a gynaecologist, though. Get something to adjust the cycle. Ingenuously she said: ‘I shouldn’t bring the problems of work home.’
Reimann came quite close to laughing openly. Instead, grabbing a possible advantage, he said: ‘Why not? Problems never seem so big when they’re talked through with someone else.’
‘There’s nothing more to talk about, not really. I can’t stop thinking of what might happen to her.’
Definitely the wrong direction! He didn’t want her agonizing over penalties for what he had to persuade her to do! He said: ‘If it’s only low-level stuff, like you say, it won’t be too bad.’
‘She’s all by herself: no one to look after her,’ said Elke. Like I had no one to look after me until I met you, she thought, smiling at him. She moved closer to him on the large, soft-leather couch, resting her head against his shoulder, needing the assurance of his arm around her: he’d poured brandy for her but she hadn’t risked drinking it, unsure how her stomach would react to the fumes if she brought it close enough to smell.
‘I suppose it’s going to be something I shall have to write about, this spy business,’ he said. ‘It’s the headline of the moment. It’ll be what they expect. How difficult is it going to be, finding out the full extent of what she’s done? I mean is there any way it can be proved what documents she did or did not handle? I suppose that will be impossible, won’t it?’
It was so good, having him hold her like this! She’d have to discover the name of the cologne he used – it had to be either in the bathroom or bedroom – and buy him some, as a present. She said: ‘I don’t know about the Foreign Ministry liaison. In the Secretariat I can identify everything she’s ever seen.’
She was finding it easier by the minute to tell him things! He pulled slightly away and said: ‘Everything! You’ve got to be joking!’
‘It’s a system I set up. Not just for something like this: so that I would know who had dealt with what.’
‘You, personally?’
Elke enjoyed the admiration from someone she adored. ‘You’d be amazed how important I am at the Chancellery!’
Hardly, my darling, Reimann thought. He said: ‘What are they like, these documents? Large, small? Always annotated by Top Secret? Always referenced, as you reference yours, so a check is easy? What about copies? Are they numbered and listed, for security? Is there a log, to record sender and recipient?’
Elke chanced the brandy snifter but her stomach heaved, so she just touched it to her lips, without properly drinking. She said: ‘All shapes and sizes. Always designated, at my level, although obviously not every one is designated Top Secret. Some are Eyes Only and they have to be logged. Top Secret, too. Secret and Classified don’t have to be recorded that way. They’re always numbered: copies, too.’
This was going incredibly well: far better than he had dared hope! He said: ‘I wonder if there’ll be any produced in facsimile, as evidence, for the eventual trial? Something that can be printed?’
Elke shrugged unknowingly beneath him. ‘They wouldn’t be the real thing, if it was for newspaper or magazine publication. It would only be a mock-up example.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Reimann accepted, not challenging, not tonight. How much further could he risk pressing? ‘The newpapers say she was arrested as she was leaving the Ministry with papers in a bag or a briefcase.’
‘A handbag, as far as I’m aware,’ offered Elke. She was paying attention to everything she said: she hadn’t been indiscreet in any way.
She’d respond to flattery, Reimann guessed. He said: ‘I don’t suppose you’re ever checked, not at your grade? Security must know how important you are.’
‘It’s always possible,’ said Elke. ‘Officially the Chancellor himself could be searched as he leaves.’
Reimann laughed, knowing it was expected. ‘But he never has been, has he? Nut any Chancellor.’
‘Not that I’ve heard.’
‘Or you?’ he persisted.
‘No,’ agreed Elke at last. ‘I’ve never been checked. I suppose the security officers do know me.’
Reimann judged it to be a good evening’s work: she was loosening up exactly as she had to. He said: ‘I’m very proud of you. And I admire you, very much.’
‘I …’ began Elke and stopped. No one had ever said they were proud of her before. She said: ‘You’re embarrassing me. But thank you.’
The critical cable had already arrived through the press bureau, and he was impatient for the more critical letter: he planned to produce both at the same time. Soon, he decided: maybe even as soon as tomorrow.
Later in bed, when he started to move his hand over her, Elke said: ‘Not tonight.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I just don’t feel like it tonight.’
The three of them met immediately after the official Soviet statement denying receipt of any German documents at their Vienna embassy and dismissing the claims of the Bonn government as fantasy manufactured to harm hopefully improving relations between the two governments.
‘So they were genuine!’ said Cherny. He felt vindicated.
‘Still insufficient as they are,’ said Turev.
‘In content, perhaps,’ the soldier agreed. ‘But they prove one thing conclusively. There’s a lot of military thinking and military planning going on that isn’t being publicly admitted.’
‘We’ve been getting that guidance from Reimann,’ Turev pointed out. ‘This confirms it.’
‘It confirms something more,’ said Sorokin. ‘It means we can rely absolutely on Reimann.’
‘Let’s get rid of the distraction of that damned wife.’ Cherny had been listening to the tape of the confrontation over the restaurant surveillance, which had arrived the previous night.
‘Shouldn’t we talk it over with Reimann first?’ wondered Sorokin.
Turev shook his head. ‘I don’t think he’ll feel strongly about it. Object greatly, I mean.’
‘I don’t want her to suspect anything, until we’ve got her here,’ Sorokin decided. ‘I don’t want her doing anything more stupid than she has at the moment.’
‘The next regular meeting?’ suggested Turev.
‘Why wait?’ demanded Cherny.
‘The next regular meeting will be fine,’ Sorokin agreed, enjoying his authority.
Chapter Thirty-Five
That morning Elke was sick for the first time. She managed to reach the bathroom and turn on the taps to blur any sound and clung to the toilet bowl, dry-heaving even when she couldn’t vomit any more. Several weeks earlier, encouraged by Reimann because of the impression of her greater permanence with him, Elke had left some clothes and fresh underwear at Rochusplatz so that after staying overnight during the week she did not have to get up earlier than usual to stop at her own apartment to change on her way to the Chancellery. She’d liked the idea, accepting it exactly as Reimann had intended, but that morning she wished she could have got back to Kaufmannstrasse to be alone for a while. Elke felt wretched: as if she were going to be sick again, which she knew she couldn’t, her head and stomach aching, her limbs heavy and lethargic. To have been alone for only a short while, just until she felt better, would have been such relief.
If she went back
to bed he’d imagine she wanted sex, because they hadn’t made love last night, as they normally did, just as they normally did in the morning when they stayed together overnight. Often it was at Elke’s urging: she knew, unashamed, that under his guidance she had become almost lascivious, enjoying and wanting to do things to each other she’d only half guessed at or not fully understood when she read a cloaked description in a book. She couldn’t have had him touch her that morning: didn’t want anyone or anything to touch her. She put a plug into the bath to trap the running water and got in when it was practically too hot to bear, telling herself it had nothing to do with the long ago advice from Ida (a near scalding bath can bring you ons) but that it might ease the ache in her arms and legs. It did. The sensation of nausea receded, too. When she finally got out her body was pink, as if her skin were burned. Her face was pink, as well, although the tearful redness the sickness had brought to her eyes had gone. She decided to wait before making up: there was a lot of time. She felt herself, just in case. There was nothing. He was awake when she went back into the bedroom.
‘Why so early?’
‘I felt like getting up.’
‘You all right?’
‘You asked me that last night.’ Elke regretted the hint of impatience.
‘You were a long time in the bathroom.’
‘I’m fine, really.’ Dear God, how much she wished that were true! She shouldn’t become irritated with him. He hadn’t done anything wrong – nothing they hadn’t done knowingly together – and he was only showing he loved her, and she was going to need his support and love a great deal very soon. She was going to need a lot of things.
‘You’d tell me if there were, wouldn’t you?’ he insisted. Reimann realized he was genuinely concerned for Elke, not for any difficulty an illness or indisposition in a manipulated victim might cause him.
‘I’d tell you,’ Elke promised, looking into the wardrobe with her back to him, so he could not see her face. There’s going to be a lot to tell you, my darling, she thought: I hope it isn’t too much.
‘Come back to bed.’
‘I’ve bathed.’
‘Bath again.’
‘I don’t feel like it.’
‘You didn’t feel like it last night.’
‘The curse is hanging around.’ How fervently she hoped that were true!
‘I’m sorry,’ Reimann said, immediately contrite. He realized he hadn’t kept the careful note of monthly dates he’d once determined to do. It had scarcely been possible, being called more often than he had expected to East Berlin, in addition to the times he’d felt it necessary to be away from Elke. ‘Can I get you something? Some pills: I’ve got some that might help.’
‘No. But thank you.’ She really was feeling better. She didn’t ache any more. Or feel tired, either. She smiled at him as he finally got out of bed. He did love her, she knew: truly loved her. She didn’t have any reason to fear his reaction. It was pointless to worry: to worry as completely as she was worrying, that is.
The day began working as well as Reimann wanted it to – as most things had worked out on this operation – with the arrival of the morning mail. He recognized the Australian postmark before opening the letter, of course, so he was able to position himself by his desk and prepare the outburst.
‘Shit!’ he exploded. ‘The bastards!’
‘What is it!’ demanded Elke, alarmed, from across the room.
‘Nothing!’ Reimann’s voice was loud, the rudeness of a man preoccupied with a private crisis. In feigned anger he threw the letter down, open, on his desk.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘I said it was nothing!’ Forceful enough, he thought: no more.
‘I’m sorry.’ Elke felt crushed.
‘I didn’t mean that: I’m sorry,’ said Reimann, apologetically. ‘It’s … maybe we’ll talk about it later. Sorry.’ Urgently, clearly wanting to change the subject and the embarrassment, Reimann said: ‘Are you coming tonight?’
‘Yes,’ Elke said at once. Unsure how she would physically feel, she said: ‘Maybe we could stay in again: I’ll cook.’ She hoped cooking food wouldn’t disgust her.
‘Whatever you say,’ Reimann agreed. He’d always intended that they should remain in the flat again: she had worrying news to learn.
The normal and established routine of the Cabinet Secretariat was still disrupted by the intelligence investigators. There was a mid-morning meeting that Elke attended with Werle at which the senior intelligence officer reported that Gerda Pohl remained adamant during an overnight interview that she could not remember the contents or the amount of the material she had sent to the Soviet embassy. The man dismissed the Russian denial that they had received anything and Werle again talked of a disaster. At the further request of the intelligence officer, who said it was necessary to make the damage assessment as comprehensive as possible, Elke initiated a further search of her reference system for documents handled by Gerda Pohl two years prior to the period already processed by the investigators. That afternoon Werle was summoned, alone, by the Chancellor to give a personal report of what potentially could have been lost. When he returned Werle was more distressed than Elke had known him to be during any previous government emergency.
‘It’s impossible to calculate, with any accuracy!’ insisted the Cabinet Secretary.
‘Jail, obviously,’ said Werle, bitterly.
‘At her age!’
‘Age hasn’t got anything to do with it.’
‘What’s being done, positively?’
‘There’s little that can be done. The Chancellor has decided to make a statement this afternoon, rejecting the Soviet denial. He’s going to insist that the leakage is of low level. There are going to be a series of individual briefings, to Western ambassadors. And to NATO ambassadors. We’re hoping they’ll accept the reassurance. The problem is that this isn’t our first spy scandal, is it?’
‘It’s difficult to get the Secretariat functioning properly,’ said Elke.
‘It’s difficult to get anything functioning properly.’
Just before she was preparing to leave the Chancellery Ida telephoned, checking on their regular weekly lunch, and Elke used the continuing investigation as an excuse to avoid it. She didn’t think she would be able to deflect Ida as successfully as she had deflected Reimann that morning. Ida knew her too well: was too responsive to the almost telepathic sixth sense between them. When the moment came to tell Ida (if, she corrected, desperately) there wouldn’t be the need to say a lot.
‘It must be hell,’ said Ida, with unintentional irony.
‘It is,’ agreed Elke, sincerely.
‘The weekend, then? With Otto?’
‘I hope so,’ said Elke. She was still reluctant to commit him to anything without his agreeing it first. Particularly now.
Elke was grateful she was experiencing no discomfort – no aching, no sickness, no lassitude – when she reached Rochusplatz that night. She had the urge to fuck – mentally using the word he’d taught her to use and which they did together, always – and was sure they would later. She’d only said her period was hanging around, not that she had it: even that hadn’t been a bar, a few times. He still seemed subdued, when he admitted her. They kissed and sat without need to talk and he suggested an aperitif which she refused, not prepared to risk any change in the way she felt.
Reimann regretted the refusal, not having intended to begin the production until several drinks had mellowed her into being as receptive as he’d planned. He said: ‘I want to apologize again for how I was this morning. It was very rude. Unforgivable.’
‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ Elke lied. The letter he had so angrily discarded remained lying on his desk in the corner, near the still unfilled bookshelves. It looked strangely upright, held up by the way it had been folded inside its envelope.
If her assurance was true, which he doubted, it wouldn’t stay that way much longer. He got up from where they were sitting side b
y side, picked up the letter and the preceding cable and brought it over to her. ‘Look at that!’ he said, exasperation replacing the supposed anger. ‘What in the name of Christ do they expect! Fucking miracles! I work my ass off for them and that’s all the thanks I get!’
Elke read the cable first. It said: Greatly disappointed your continuing inability properly to grasp and refect enormity of situation in which you’re placed. Yet again unwilling to use your assessment, which unreflected by any other observer.
The letter was much longer. It began with apparent friendliness, addressing him by his Christian name, but the complaints followed in mounting succession: Greatly disappointed was repeated. One phrase talked of constant embarrassment, compared with our competitors. He was accused of absence of depth and necessary detail. The concluding paragraph read: After so much hope and expectation we must reluctantly warn you that unless there is a major and sustained improvement in the next and immediate six months we will have no alternative but to reconsider your appointment as our Bonn-based chief European correspondent.
Elke handed back both to him, her hands shaking. The feeling of sickness was back, although not the same as it had been that morning. She said: ‘I think they’re being very unreasonable.’
‘Unreasonable! They’re being assholes!’
‘What can you do?’
‘What can I do, more than I am already doing at the moment?’
‘You could resign if they tried to reassign you,’ said Elke eagerly, pitifully anxious to help but even more anxious to keep him in Bonn. ‘Try to get a position here with some other organization.’
Reimann nodded, seeming to consider the suggestion. He said: ‘Every worthwhile news outlet has a person here in Bonn, after all that’s happened. It’s one of the major news capitals in the world, and it will remain so for a long time. So there aren’t openings left any more. And Australia would appoint someone to replace me and the word would very quickly get around that they’d dumped me because I wasn’t good enough. So even if an opening were to arise, I wouldn’t get it. No one wants to employ a political commentator who’s been dismissed for not being able to do the job.’
Little Grey Mice Page 36