by Bella Pollen
‘Instructions, map,’ she heard her father emphasize as she crept closer. ‘Take it,’ he’d urged. Then again, stronger, ‘My friend, time is running out.’ Two more steps and she could see him clearly. He was holding out an envelope, thrusting it insistently towards someone still hidden from Georgie’s view. Suddenly, there was a fumble, the ring of something metal dropping onto the stone and her father had started. ‘Dad!’ she called in a whisper, and only now as she moved closer did she catch sight of the second man behind the pillar, stooped, then rising quickly from the floor, the envelope already slipped into a pocket and whatever object her father had dropped enclosed by his hand. ‘Dad!’ she said again, but this time as the stranger reacted to her voice and turned to look in her direction, there had been no hiding the guilt on his face.
Neither Tom nor her mother spoke for a long moment, then Tom reached for the papers on top of the canvas and handed them to her. ‘Is it possible that this is the man you saw?’
Georgie frowned at the passport photograph. A stranger, his features flattened by over-exposure, his eyes dead-fish blank. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘but I only saw him for a second . . . Eugen Friedrich Schmidt.’ She read the name printed on the ID document. There were small tugs of memory attached to the name, but they dissipated before she could get hold of them. ‘Who is he?’ she looked up at Tom, but he shook his head.
‘I don’t know. I was hoping you might. His picture and papers were hidden in your father’s painting.’
‘Eugen Friedrich Schmidt,’ she repeated. She picked up the canvas and ran her hand over the thick paint. ‘Why in Dada’s painting?’
Tom looked at Letty.
‘Tell her,’ Letty said.
76
It was quiet in Jamie’s head. He was floating down the Rhine and the water felt as warm and protective as amniotic fluid. In the distance, the swells of the Siebengebirge were carpeted with the soft green of spring. He crossed his arms on his chest. He heard the cry of a seagull, the impatient horn of the barge, but after a while, nothing, just the persistent lapping of water around the edges of his consciousness. The silence spooked him. It was too quiet in his head. Something was missing and he decided it was the noise of the wind. Aye, the wind has moderated, a voice informed him. The wind has dropped.
‘The wind has moderated,’ Jamie whispered.
‘Jamie!’
And now his name was being called.
‘JAMIE!’
His eyes flew open. He was annoyed to find that the wind hadn’t moderated at all. He could feel it, stinging and raw against his face.
‘Jamie,’ the voice ordered. ‘Don’t move.’
Alba.
He stiffened and his knee exploded with pain. Nausea rolled through him. He turned his head to one side and to his terror, saw that he was lying on a ledge barely wide enough for his body. A thin boy’s body. Above him the sky was set hard as concrete. All around, black rocks were speckled with the white of nesting fulmars. He remembered the brush of wings against his head. He remembered letting go.
‘JAMIE!’ Alba’s shout echoed around the walls of the Kettle. ‘Can you hear me? Are you hurt?’ Her voice sounded tinny and far away.
Threads of mist floated through the air like mystical spore. Overhead a fulmar cawed a warning. Time slowed while Jamie focused on this important question. Was he hurt? And if so, how badly? Certainly, his skull felt heavy. He pressed his hands into his chest. If before his heart had been thumping in overdrive, now it could hardly summon the energy to beat at all. Above his head, two fulmars circled in a holding pattern.
‘Alba,’ he wailed.
‘Stay still! Don’t move.’
Jamie felt confused. Profoundly disorientated. It was as if someone had turned reality inside out as an unkind joke. His heart had stopped beating and the rain felt hot against his face. None of this was right. He lifted his head to protest.
‘Don’t look down!’
He looked down. Sixty feet below him, the bottom yawned. Above him the clifftop swayed. Rain was free-falling from the sky. It slicked down the rocks, pooling in the crevices of his ledge, seeping between every stitch of his clothing. One of the fulmars swooped. The hostile yellow beak was coming straight for his eyes. Jamie whimpered and turned his face to the cliff wall. ‘Dear Lord,’ he intoned numbly, ‘help me in these troublous times.’ He groped at the ledge but it crumbled under his fingers and now he began to cry in earnest.
Forty feet above him, Alba stood, immobilized by panic. Jamie’s sobbing sounded like the bleating of a lost sheep. Monotone, unstoppable, hopeless. She could barely see him through the mist. She needed to get help, but how could she leave him? Christ, if she could only trust him to stay still.
But Jamie could not stay still. He needed to move his leg away from the grinding ache of his pain. Another sliver of rock crumbled and fell. And now Jamie’s body, his thin boy’s body was wider than the ledge supporting it.
‘Alba, help me!’ he screamed.
There was a reciprocal yell but the desperation in it frightened him more than anything and this fear caused a seismic shift in his mind. His powers of logic began to shutter down and a feral, more animal thinking took hold. Instinct told him it was only a matter of time before the ledge gave way. Instinct told him he was going to die. Blood was roaring in his ears. He searched for breath as a black film slowly began to wash the colour from his vision. He was so tired of hoping, of not knowing. It was easier to accept – and accepting was easier than he had ever imagined. He looked down again, this time with something approaching resignation, and suddenly there he was. Oh dear God, there he was, waiting at the bottom. Jamie’s vision cleared. A slow smile broke across his face.
‘Hello, bear,’ he whispered.
‘Hello, Jamie,’ the bear replied. And at the sound of his father’s voice, Jamie felt all the fear and tension, all the misery, doubt, confusion and longing, bleed slowly from his body.
77
Georgie touched her hand to the scratched paintwork of the Peugeot’s boot and felt a corresponding prickle on the back of her neck. She was scarcely aware of Tom waiting next to her, shoulders hunched, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. It was raining but she felt so disconnected from the present that she was oblivious both to the cold and the bitter wind augmenting it. Overhead the clouds were darkening, suddenly it was nightfall and they were driving away from East Germany, the atmosphere in the car thick with unease. In Berlin it had felt as though every eye in the city was turned to them and still she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling they were being watched. Well, they were being watched. I should never have brought you, her father had said. And suddenly she gave a short laugh.
‘Georgie?’ Tom stepped forward and laid a hand on her shoulder.
She shook her head, unable to articulate her feelings, even to herself. Her skin was damp with sweat, as though she’d been in the grip of a prolonged fever which had only just broken, and strangely, she felt better.
It had been complicated and confusing to piece together but as Tom had worked through his theory, changing details, bending time lines, a story emerged that Georgie began to recognize as one that suited her father. It was the kind of story he would have liked. A fake report, an attempted defection, the very cloak-and-dagger, finger-to-lips drama of it all. And had it not been for the ending, it was precisely the kind of story he might himself have told his children. She laughed again, except this time she couldn’t quite control her voice and hot tears rolled down her face.
‘Come on.’ Tom wrapped his coat around her shoulders and Georgie let herself be guided back into the house.
‘I believe your father found out that the MoD had plans to build a missile firing-range on Clannach and I think he wanted to stop it,’ Tom had said earlier, and Georgie thought she could almost see his brain slotting it together, a mental crossword puzzle with cryptic clues. ‘As you know, he was already shuttling backwards and forwards to East Germany as part of the Schyndell clea
n-up, and I suspect he came into contact with someone at Schyndell who he thought could help him, someone who had a compelling reason to help him.’
Eugen Friedrich Schmidt. The name flitted through her head again and suddenly she found herself transported out of the kitchen and back to the big white chaise longue with her father’s arm around her. What about you, my George? he’d said. What has caught your attention today?
Berlin, she said, without hesitation. Berlin has caught my attention. And her brain unlocked. Her memory of the visit, the smallest needling details, the very smell of it opened up to her as chemically preserved and meticulously recorded as any Stasi cloth or file.
‘Poor old Bertolt Brecht,’ she said slowly.
Tom looked at her quizzically.
‘Bertolt Brecht was going to be made to scrub toilets for the rest of his life. It was the nickname Dada and Torsten gave one of the environmental scientists at the plant. Torsten said the Schyndell investigation had turned into a witch-hunt and that this trip was probably the last time they’d see him.’ Georgie reached for the passport photo and ID documents. ‘Yes.’ She stabbed her finger at the printed name. ‘Don’t you see? Eugen Friedrich Schmidt!’
‘I’m afraid I’m not with you, Georgie,’ Tom said.
‘Bertolt Brecht’s real name, the playwright’s full name was Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht.’
‘Georgie!’ Letty exclaimed.
‘BB.’ Tom nodded. For a while he sat smoking silently, then he cleared his throat and leant forward. ‘Letty, if this Schmidt fellow was being blamed for the accident he’d have been desperate to get out. The trouble is, unless he was important or senior enough, well . . . we, i.e. the British government, wouldn’t have helped him and his situation would have been impossible. Nicky must have been a godsend for him, his defection facilitated in return for providing credible scientific and environmental data of a toxic spill on Gebraith . . .’
‘So Dada hid him in the car,’ Georgie said. Her mind clattered over the potholes of the road. Her father, stopping the Peugeot, retching out his fear into the grass verge.
‘Schyndell had already dragged on for so long. I imagine your father thought he had more time,’ Tom said, his eyes trained on Letty. ‘I’m sure he never intended the trip with Georgie to be anything but a dry run, but then Torsten tells him that Schmidt is about to disappear and, realizing it’s now or never, he decides to take action.’
Letty said nothing.
Tom looked at her shrewdly. ‘My guess is it started out as a business arrangement, but then Nicky got to know this man, liked him. The idea that he would be persecuted, turned into a scapegoat, would have been unconscionable to him.’
‘I still don’t understand how he could even contemplate doing something so risky,’ Letty said tightly.
‘It was less risky than it sounds,’ Tom said slowly. ‘As part of the delegation, Nicky would have had a degree of diplomatic immunity. Allied personnel are not supposed to be stopped in any zone, but that doesn’t mean to say they aren’t, from time to time. Nicky was working with no official cover. He understood the thinking of the East German government better than anyone. As far as they were concerned he was an interesting fish. He knew how closely they watched him on these trips, so he had to come up with some kind of insurance – an extra safety measure of sorts. He drives to Berlin in his conspicuous western model, which, with the aid of Alick’s distributor switch, he breaks down in full view of his Stasi tails, knowing it would be towed to a garage, and knowing perfectly well that once it was, the Stasi would lose no time in bugging it. He hands over a key to Schmidt in the church – Georgie heard something metal drop – along with a map of the garage and instructs the scientist to get himself into the car that night. “It’s your only chance,” your father told him.’ Tom turned to Georgie and she nodded. ‘By the time the Peugeot is delivered back to the hotel the next morning, once again in full view of Stasi watchers, Schmidt is safely installed in the secret compartment.’
‘But if the Stasi were bugging the car, then wouldn’t they have heard him getting in?’ It was surreal, Georgie thought, to be talking about her father as though he were the protagonist of a film they had all been to see but not quite understood.
‘A Stasi listening device would most likely be fitted behind the dashboard or heater grill and powered by the battery. It would only be activated by the car being started. The point is, having bugged the car, the Stasi would never suspect that it would then become the means of exfiltra-tion. As a rather ingenious example of hiding in plain sight, it was probably the least risky way to cross the border.’
‘Except that we were stopped at the checkpoint.’
‘And quickly released after a phone call. The last thing the Stasi would want would be some oafish Grenzer dislodging their handiwork, but it must have been a terrible moment for your father.’
Georgie bowed her head. Forgive me, my little George, please forgive me, he’d said.
‘Letty.’ Tom took her hand. She had not spoken for some time. ‘It’s entirely supposition. It might never have happened.’
‘Except for the compartment in the car. Except for the report.’
‘The report, yes.’ He sighed. ‘For poor old Bertolt Brecht it was the perfect quid pro quo, but for Nicky . . .’
‘He hated bullies,’ Georgie said suddenly. ‘He always backed the underdogs.’
‘Yes.’ Tom smiled faintly. ‘Commendably British in that respect but still, I cannot over-exaggerate the phobia our people have about dealing with anyone from the GDR. I still don’t understand, why take any risk? There are plenty of silent protestors, some in our own government even, who are virulently against the building of further military sites. Nicky could have convinced one of them to write it.’
No,’ Letty said quietly. ‘He would never have done that. That he would have considered a betrayal of his principles, a betrayal of his country. Nicky was no pacifist. He was motivated by personal not political gain.’
‘But if the report is fake,’ Georgie said, ‘then why does it matter? Why does anyone care?’
‘The MoD have a number of scientists contracted to them. When the report came in, they had these scientists look at the written characterization of the sand, soil and sediment samples. In other words, their particle size, pH, water-holding capacity, all technical details like that – and all of these were exactly as one might predict for the region.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning that the samples tested did indeed come from the Gebraith site. Moreover, and here is where it gets interesting – I think I mentioned this before, Letty – an earlier MoD document shows a reported incident of incorrect storage of the missiles, which apparently resulted in a leak of some sort. The vulnerability of the Gebraith site is clearly an issue the MoD have known about for some time and failed to act on.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it wouldn’t have suited their agenda for expansion.’
‘So the land, the beaches . . . are they contaminated?’
‘That’s the MoD’s dilemma. They’d chosen not to investigate it before, but this report changes everything. They might not know by whose authority it was commissioned, but if so much of the data that it’s based on is genuine, then there is a very real possibility that the results could also be genuine. In other words, yes, the Gebraith site could very well be contaminated. Faced with this possibility, the MoD would have no option but to commission their own safety report to check for certain. At least, my strong guess is that this is what Nicky was banking on. He knew the MoD had already suppressed information about the leak. He knew, therefore, that any kind of civil protest would be pointless. Forcing the MoD’s hand was his best, if not only, option. If there were proven instances of toxic spillage in Gebraith, then, surely, not even the government would risk it happening again at Clannach.’
‘So did it work?’ Letty asked eagerly. ‘Have they commissioned a report?’
Tom flicked h
is lighter on and off then laid it carefully back down on the table.
‘Tom?’
‘It seems that once again, Nicky set too much store by the principles of our government,’ he replied grimly. ‘I’m afraid the MoD intend to suppress it.’
78
She had surely not heard him correctly. The words floated up, barely audible, jumbled and rewritten by the wind. ‘It’s okay,’ he had shouted. ‘He’s here now. Dada’s here.’
Alba forced herself to breathe, to respond calmly. ‘Jamie, listen to me. I’m going to get help. I need to find Alick and bring a rope.’
‘Alba, I’m going to jump.’
‘Jamie, no!’ she shrieked.
‘Dada will catch me.’
‘Jamie, please. No!’ She was sobbing now, running this way and that, trying for a better sight of him but there was only the thinnest scrap of his anorak wedged between the dark rocks. Holy God, what was he thinking? She looked down. Through the dense mist, she could just make out a near-solid brown mass at the bottom of the ravine, yes . . . moving, gently swaying on top of the water.
‘Oh, Jamie,’ her voice rose, then broke with understanding. ‘No, it’s just seaweed. It’s seaweed.’
‘It’s okay, Alba. The bear will catch me. Dada will catch me.’ Jamie no longer felt the rain or the cold or the ache in his knee. A delicious warmth had enveloped him. He was dimly aware of the fade of Alba’s voice, pleading, yelling, but it was no longer the voice he was listening to.