Sorokin hesitated. ‘Your wife has been found work, in a Ministry. We don’t want you away from Bonn, not at a time like this. But you’ll be permitted to visit her, soon.’
‘Thank you,’ said Reimann, mechanically. He’d loved Jutta once, he reflected. Or thought he had. But not any more. His attitude towards her was the attitude he would have had about a friend he’d once been close to and whose company he had enjoyed, but from whom he had drifted apart – someone he rarely thought about any more. Making himself confront his own behaviour, he recognized that he could have avoided what had happened to Jutta if he’d challenged her away from her apartment. It was pointless now, to recriminate. He had openly challenged her. Now there was nothing he could do to help her. She had never relied upon him, after all. Never depended upon him. Never included him – not properly included – in either her professional life or their married life. Friend, he thought again. That was absolutely what Jutta had been. They had been friends, not husband and wife.
‘It will only be a temporary parting,’ Sorokin assured.
‘Of course.’
‘We don’t expect it to have any effect or influence at all upon what you’re doing.’
‘It won’t have,’ came Reimann’s own assurance.
Life in Bonn with Elke actually settled – when they thought about it – into a pattern which satisfied them both. She spent more time with him at Rochusplatz than he did at Kaufmannstrasse. On the weekend of his return from the hand-shakes and congratulations, Reimann suggested alternating the habitual lunch, so Ida and the family came to eat with them. On that very first Saturday, while the men were across the other side of the room with a fresh contribution from Kissel, Ida volunteered quietly: ‘I said no to Kurt. When it came to it, I couldn’t abandon the children. But I’m not happy about it. In fact I’m downright fucking miserable, with nothing to look forward to except boredom.’
Elke wasn’t happy about it either, not as she should have been after all the preaching. Just relieved, for Doris and Georg, who were also Ida’s excuse. Elke decided that Ida was submerged in self-pity now. Everything had turned the complete circle: on the roundabout, off the roundabout, on – off, on – off. The thing to remember was never to become giddy: never to lose your head.
Despite the regular – very regular – absences, Reimann became even more attentive, which Elke had hardly imagined possible. There were always presents; flowers every week, music tapes she only had once to mention she would like, tickets for concerts or theatre productions she might have commented upon from advance publicity. Staying in – usually at Rochusplatz – became settled as a preference, but they also went out, visiting every recommended restaurant not just in Bonn but in Cologne: the Maternus remained their favourite. Elke still carefully preserved that first-night rose within the pages of a poetry book.
They did not go to Marienfels every Sunday, as Elke had once done. The visits averaged once a fortnight, although there were occasionally longer gaps, but whenever Elke went Reimann accompanied her. Ursula appeared to recognize him, and was usually more amenable and easier to control in his presence. Once, at Reimann’s suggestion, they tried to have her home at Kaufmannstrasse for an entire weekend, beginning on the Friday evening. The error, they later decided, was to include Ida and the family for Saturday lunch. Unlike the birthday party, so many people disorientated the child, confusing her. Despite the soothing, continuous tape music and Reimann’s hours-long attempts to placate her, Ursula grew angry, resistant to everything, and particularly to sleeping on the Saturday night in the apartment. They did stay there, but no one had any sleep and Ursula suddenly began to cry, which was something she rarely did, whatever her mood. Early on the Sunday morning, because of her distress, they took her back to Marienfels. Reimann broke their silent return to apologize: it had been his idea and it had been a mistake. Elke told him not to be silly, that it was no one’s fault. It was just the way Ursula was: would always be.
And the leaking of documents continued: increased, after that first time, and grew more sensational with each disclosure. There appeared to emerge a Cabinet committee concern to allay any Soviet objection or suspicion of a united Germany while at the same time continuing as an active NATO participant. Two documents actually referred to suggested protocols as secret. Five successive memoranda that Elke smuggled from the Chancellery were predominantly concerned with military planning. The last was an actual framework for the covert protocol. It recommended the presentation to NATO Foreign Ministers of a never-to-be-revealed proposal for the retention on German soil of all existing short-range nuclear missiles, together with the upgraded missiles being urged upon the Alliance by Washington. All the missiles were to be housed, however, in mobile transporters belonging to the armed forces of those other NATO countries, allowing a united Germany to claim that it had no knowledge of the transporters’ contents.
An unspoken, unarranged understanding arose between Elke and Reimann. Always, after what he knew to be the day of a Cabinet special committee meeting, he would suggest staying in for the evening at Rochusplatz. Always Elke would agree. She would produce the papers, talking with intentional vagueness of guidance. He would read through whatever she offered, never showing excessive interest. That night he would keep awake, far into the night, until she slept. Only with the framework document did the photography take him longer than a few minutes. Within two days of copying the documents he would operate within the required time schedule and warn Elke that he had an out-of-town assignment to work on. Sometimes he did the round trip to Berlin within the day, leaving early in the morning and returning by mid-evening, so they did not have to be apart even for a night.
The regularity extended beyond his situation with Elke, to include his encounters with the increasingly frantic Russians. Never any longer was it a meeting with just the fat one. The balding, bearded man attended every time now, always demanding more, always insisting on the final, positive decision on the secret protocol which still, from what they understood, amounted only to a suggested proposal.
It was almost three months after Elke had first provided a document that the idea began to germinate in Reimann’s mind. At first he considered it with positive amusement, seeing the nonsense of it, self-critical that so smoothly and so easily was everything finally working that his very reasoning was being affected, tilted off balance just as he had tried, so long ago now, to tilt Elke’s reasoning and emotions off balance. But then he began seriously to reflect, although not upon all of it. Just the important parts, the parts that could – and should – be resolved. Jutta particularly. There was no purpose – and certainly no reason – for them to remain officially married. So why didn’t he divorce her? He supposed it would be complicated, because of the particular and even bizarre circumstances, but the Russian authorities who were prepared to grant him any favour could sort that out: decide jurisdiction and arrange the formalities. He told himself at once that Elke Meyer formed no part of his consideration. All he was contemplating was tidying up a situation that needed tidying: sensibly freeing himself from an unnecessary, unwanted encumbrance. But not just like that: he wouldn’t do it in absentia. He’d tell Jutta to her face.
At the meeting with Sorokin and Turev at which he delivered the paper suggesting consultation with NATO Foreign Ministers on keeping missiles in Germany, Reimann said: ‘I’d like to talk soon about myself and Jutta.’
‘We’ve other things to talk about first,’ refused Sorokin.
Chapter Forty-Three
‘I never believed it,’ said Sorokin, distantly. ‘Despite all the expectations that there would be some subterfuge, I never really thought they would do it!’ He sat gazing down at the single-sheet document that Reimann had produced, lost in thought. But they had to believe it, of course. From the never acted upon but provably genuine Vienna material they knew that everything that Reimann had provided was authentic. The format of the Gerda Pohl documents, their creation and even the wording accorded absolutely wi
th the material leaked by Elke Meyer: everything from Bonn was now being forwarded directly to the President, with the impressions that Reimann gained from his conversations with Elke forming a separate file.
‘It’s still only a recommendation,’ warned Turev, cautiously. ‘No decision has positively been made, by full Cabinet.’
‘Will it be?’ Sorokin demanded of Reimann.
Reimann rarely hesitated any more, when asked an opinion. ‘Inevitably, I would think,’ he said. ‘I’m sure of getting the decision, when it’s reached.’
‘You’ve actually asked the woman?’ Turev pressed.
‘Not in any specific words,’ sighed Reimann. ‘I thought I made it clear that’s not how I work her. We’ve talked in general terms, and I asked if this was a genuine proposal, or was Bonn trying to take a stance, to impress the other NATO members? She says it isn’t a stance. And we know, from all the other material we have seen, that posturing isn’t the way the sub-committee operate. They’re serious: they leave the politicking to Bundestag debates.’
Sorokin smiled, nodding across the desk. ‘I trust and believe you. I think you have performed brilliantly.’
‘Thank you,’ said Reimann, too quickly, so that he cut the other man off.
Sorokin was unoffended. ‘… Which has been recognized,’ he continued. ‘I am authorized to inform you that you have been promoted to the rank of colonel, within the Soviet service.’
‘That’s …’ tried Reimann and stopped, not able to complete the sentence. ‘Thank you … I’m honoured. Gratified,’ he finished, inadequately. Why was it so difficult for him to feel any emotion about anything these days? This was everything he’d ever dreamed about, from the days of being Jutta’s dutiful subordinate – or had it been servant?-in West Berlin. This was the moment he achieved the proper recognition in his own right: his acceptance as a superbly professional intelligence officer.
Sorokin’s smile dimmed, to become as near as the man could ever achieve to a sympathetic expression. ‘And we can now start thinking of your making a visit to Moscow, to see your wife.’
‘I would like that,’ said Reimann, quickly. ‘I’ve decided to divorce her. It’s right that she should hear it from me.’
Sorokin’s face changed completely, into a frown of curiosity. ‘Why?’ he demanded, shortly.
‘It was never a completely successful marriage,’ Reimann told him. ‘There doesn’t seem any purpose in continuing it.’
‘That must be your decision,’ said the Russian, still doubtfully.
‘Do you have any official objection?’
‘None,’ said the man.
After Reimann had left, Turev said: ‘It would seem we went to a lot of trouble for very little, trying to keep them together.’
‘There was the point, in initially distancing any Soviet involvement,’ reminded Sorokin. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s all worked out magnificently.’
Always, before, Sorokin and Cherny had met with members of the Politburo or of the Presidential Secretariat, but for this meeting the President himself took the chair and every member of the Presidential Council attended, as well.
‘So we are being tricked!’ the President accepted. ‘But I don’t want any miscalculation. Throughout the time this man has been in place in Bonn, obtaining this material, how many times has he been wrong?’
Confronted with the need for a positive statement, Cherny deferred to the KGB deputy. ‘Never,’ said Sorokin. ‘Until we started getting actual copies of documents, the information has sometimes been incomplete. There was the need to interpret. But what has come from him has always been totally reliable.’
‘So we can challenge them: defeat them! Would these transporters be difficult to monitor?’
It was a military question, posed to Cherny. The soldier shifted, uncomfortably. ‘They shouldn’t be: mobile missile carriers are tracked: highly visible from satellite reconnaissance. We could be positive, if we negotiated on-site inspection.’
‘We can put NATO into complete disarray,’ declared the President. ‘And put a unified Germany in disarray, too.’
The move was made within a week. The Soviet Union dropped its demand for any Warsaw Pact link with NATO, and pledged within six months to withdraw all Russian military forces from the former Warsaw Pact countries, most particularly from East Germany. Such a gesture, the statement insisted, made quite unnecessary the continued existence of NATO and the need for US missiles or troops to remain anywhere in Western Europe. Therefore, every concession being offered by Moscow was conditional upon there being on-site inspection of any weaponry remaining in Germany. Timed to coincide precisely with the declaration was a further Russian statement at the Vienna Conventional Arms Conference of substantial across-the-board cuts in the Soviet Union’s conventional weapons arsenal.
‘We’ve given away nothing!’ declared the President, at a full meeting of the Politburo. ‘Whenever we choose we can disclose our knowledge of the secret protocol and show the West to be the aggressors. And keep our troops where we like and abandon any conventional weapon agreement.’
The same day Dimitri Sorokin was appointed chairman of the KGB. Nikolai Turev was confirmed as deputy. Anticipating the ironic comments about General Cherny’s appointment as Minister of Defence in a supposed climate of demilitarization, a statement was added that Cherny’s promotion was regarded by the Kremlin as being more political than military.
The NATO reaction was bewildered confusion, which had been Moscow’s intention.
Elke Meyer attended the specially convened Cabinet session from which, at Washington’s urging, no public communique was afterwards issued.
‘Moscow are behaving as if they have knowledge that no one else has,’ said Werle, after the meeting.
Chapter Forty-Four
It had been the conversation with the Russians that had made Reimann finally confront how he did feel about Elke Meyer. He’d known, he supposed, for several weeks: maybe several months. But there’d been a hundred different reasons to avoid even considering the absurdity of it: indeed, his initial feeling at the half-formed, shadowy possibility was one of positive astonishment that he could even be thinking like that. Love never entered the training or indoctrination of a raven. There wasn’t a word powerful enough fully to express the nonsense of it. Despite which, despite all the self-warnings, he accepted at last that he deeply and sincerely loved her.
Reimann knew the precise moment when the recognition came to him: when he eventually let himself think the unthinkable. He was on his way home (which was how he now always regarded that part of the journey, returning to Bonn) from Berlin, looking down from about 25,000 feet at the scattered lights of unknown towns and villages of West Germany after the meeting at which he had disclosed the NATO decision. And began, logically enough, with his reflections about Jutta. There was no purpose in seeking any legal dissolution of his marriage: it was practically laughable for him, in intelligence parlance referred to as much as an illegal as a raven, to consider something legal! What he’d had – what little he’d had – with Jutta was over. Finished. He was a free man. Unencumbered, as he’d already decided.
Except that, still being legally married to Jutta, he couldn’t legally marry Elke. After all the shadowy half-thoughts and avoidance the awareness – the true awareness that had set everything in motion in the beginning – came to mind suddenly and complete. He still tried to argue with himself, to produce more excuses and more avoidance. They could marry, of course. It had been little more than instinct to dodge the Russian’s question. So well established was he with them now that it would be simple to argue that he would get more from her if he did go through the ceremony.
So did he want to?
Certainly – admitting it finally – he loved her. And she loved him. She’d never know the deceit at the beginning; the falseness with which everything had started, so there would never be the danger of her being hurt. They were virtually living together all the time, alt
hough they retained separate apartments. What were the professional dangers of their being together permanently in a situation where she was likely to become aware of things happening around her? There were the postcards from Rome, demanding contact. That could be simply resolved with a new meeting system: he could establish specific meeting dates and times and merely keep the card summons as the device with which to alert the Russians if he wanted to see them. What else? Nothing, Reimann told himself, positively.
So accustomed was he by now to the arrival procedure at Cologne that Reimann passed through with scarcely any consciousness of his surroundings, his concentration still absolute upon himself and Elke.
What about Elke? Every speculation, every consideration, had so far been from his viewpoint. If he cared for her so much, shouldn’t he look from the other side, from Elke’s side?
Reimann guessed she would move in with him permanently if he asked her, because she did whatever he wanted now. But he knew for them to live together wasn’t what Elke really hoped for: what she really expected was for them to get properly, officially married. Which they couldn’t do. Not properly. It would always be a bigamous union. But it wouldn’t be the sort of deceit that he’d been showing, all these months. This was for Elke. For himself, as well, but it would make her happy, make everything perfect, for her as well. It could work, he determined, happily. Would work.
Or would it? Reimann was sure he could settle with Elke and create a home with her, and live without the lies he couldn’t avoid becoming a barrier between them. And she would never know, never guess. But what about the time when the Russians decided, as they inevitably would at some stage in the future, that his usefulness – her usefulness – was over? Reimann didn’t believe they would let him go: thank him lor work well done in the past, accord him his colonel’s pension to live upon, and let him retire contentedly in Bonn. They’d move him on. Or maybe take him protectively back to the dreary greyness of Moscow: back, even, to Jutta. What was he expected to do then, simply turn his back and abandon Elke?
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