Brandenburg (2 page)

‘I’ll be the only one listening. Anyway, when it comes to that part of the evening you go to the bathroom and take it off. It’s the conversation before that interests me, not your lovemaking, Rosenharte.’

Schaub tested the microphone and transmitter, then Rosenharte removed his shirt and submitted with mild protests as Schaub towelled the perspiration from his skin and taped the equipment to his chest and back.

‘Some part of you must feel pride,’ Biermeier told him. ‘After all, you’re going back into harness for the state.’

‘Nothing could be further from the truth,’ said Rosenharte. ‘I was never any good at this kind of work.’

The colonel exhaled impatiently. ‘Ah well, of course now you count yourself a member of the intelligentsia. You speak fancily and affect an air of superiority, but remember, I know the man behind the facade. I read your file. What was it one of your many girlfriends said? “A clever, selfish bastard.”’

Schaub smirked then got up and left.

‘You mean she didn’t mention my lovable sense of humour?’ said Rosenharte. ‘My skills as a cook, my steadfastness, my sobriety, my modesty . . .’

Biermeier shook his head disdainfully.

‘Well,’ said Rosenharte, ‘at least I’m a clever bastard who knows himself. How many of us can say that, Colonel?’

Biermeier shook his head and sat down.

‘I’d like a shower before I meet her.’ God, he was talking as if she was actually going to be there.

‘Not possible,’ the colonel said. ‘Use that queer aftershave you bought for yourself.’

Before leaving Biermeier looked over the transmitter once more and fiddled with some tiny wires at the back of the microphone while Rosenharte held his arms up and looked out on the veranda. ‘Remember to press the button at the side once you see her,’ he said. ‘It’s easily forgotten.’

Just before six Rosenharte dressed, checked himself in the mirror and then left the hotel. He crossed the Piazza dell’Unità feeling the heat of the day still pulse from the stones beneath him and noticing the wheel of swifts in the sky. Did the Stasi know? Had they faked the letters from Annalise Schering to expose his great lie? No, no one in the GDR could possibly know that she had killed herself fifteen years before; that he was as likely to find her at the end of Molo IV that evening as Greta Garbo.

He saw Annalise now, as he walked. The little apartment in Brussels on a winter’s evening, he picking his way through the plants and the clutter of holiday trophies, finding her in the bath surrounded by candles and roses, her head resting on one arm lying along the side of the tub. Dead. Bloodied water. Vodka bottle. Pills. Needle of the overheated stereo clicking round the centre of Mahler’s Fifth. His feelings then, as now, were guilt and a kind of horror at the operatic bathos of her death scene. Annalise always overdid things, that was for sure.

He passed through a series of parallel streets that led down to the sea, and reached Via Machiavelli where he paused, mopped his forehead and unstuck the back and front of his shirt from his skin. He set off again, never obviously glancing back, and made for the deserted quays where the big-hearted seaport opened its arms to the steamers of another century. There he looked at his watch - he was early - and, laying his jacket across the back of a bench, sat down to smoke a cigarette and stare across the flat calm of the Gulf of Trieste. Some way out to sea a ship lay at anchor, the only point of reference in the haze that had been building up through the long, hot afternoon. As he absently tried to determine where sea and sky met, it came to him that he had reached the edge of the void that separated East and West, a decorous no man’s land of grand cafes and squares that looked like ballrooms, which was every bit as treacherous as the killing zone between the two Germanys.

Konrad would relish the ambiguity of Trieste, a frontier town that tried to forget the communist world at its back; and he’d shake with laughter at the idea of his brother’s tryst with a dead woman. Rosenharte allowed himself a quick, rueful smile, as though his brother was sitting on the bench beside him. It had the effect of briefly lessening his agitation but then he thought of his twin’s plight as the Stasi’s hostage. To ensure his cooperation and that he wouldn’t defect, they were holding Konrad in prison. For good measure, they’d taken his wife Else in for questioning and placed Konnie’s two boys in the care of the state. He wondered what Konrad would do in his situation and knew his brother would proceed with all caution and wait to see how things unfolded. There were always openings, he had said once. Even in the GDR no situation was ever hopeless.

He took a last drag on the cigarette and flicked it across the paving stones into the sea. A fish rose to the butt then darted away beneath the oily film of the harbour water. From the rear of the opera house behind him came the sound of a soprano warming up for the evening’s performance. Rosenharte turned and listened with his head cocked and recognized Violetta’s part from the first act of
La Traviata
. He looked up to the mountains that pressed Trieste to the sea and noticed columns of white cloud quite distinct from the haze that veiled the city.

His attention moved to a German-speaking couple, stout and sunburnt, who were sitting on a bench not far away swinging their legs like happy children. Stasi officers? He thought not: too well fed, too content. Austrian tourists, most likely. He watched them openly and the woman smiled back with a hint of admiration in her eyes. Then he rose and, hooking the jacket over his shoulder, he walked past, nodding to them both.

Ahead of him was Molo IV, a broad stone structure that protruded into the harbour with quays on both sides and a huge single-storey warehouse along its spine. He passed through a gate near the old seaplane terminal, lifting a hand to a man reading a paper in a little cabin, and turned left to walk up the pier. On the way, he noted the few people around - two workmen stripping something from a roof, a man rigging a fishing rod, and some teenagers kicking a ball in the vast abandoned marshalling yard. They all looked plausibly engrossed. He walked on twenty yards, rounded a temporary fence that protected some pumping machinery and trudged up the pier, picking his way through the rusting iron debris and tufts of dead weeds that grew in cracks between the stones.

‘Here he is,’ said Macy Harp, nudging Robert Harland with his elbow. ‘Bang on schedule like the bleeding Berlin Express.’

They both moved back from the doorway that led onto one of the heavy iron walkways running along outside the disused warehouse. This huge nineteenth-century complex lay at a right angle to Molo IV. They were about 200 yards from Rosenharte, who was moving away from them. Harland trained his binoculars on Rosenharte and reflected that both he and his quarry had much to lose if this went wrong. He had only been British Secret Intelligence Service station chief in Berlin for a year, and he was still on probation. This operation was one hell of a risk to take when he knew that most of the senior people at Century House regarded him as a field man without the necessary reserves of prudence. They couldn’t deny he always got results but these were attributed to flair and boldness, two characteristics less favoured in M16 than either the public or the intelligence service imagined. The head of the European desk had given him a certain amount of support together with Macy Harp - the best odd-job man and, when required, all-round creator of mayhem that the service had to offer - but Harland knew as well as anyone that many in Century House were actively hoping for the operation to fail. Harebrained, wild, impetuous - those would be the words murmured by his superiors across the lunch table at the Travellers Club - and his career would effectively be over.

He shook himself and concentrated on Rosenharte. He was every bit the specimen that the Stasi had deployed in Brussels all those years ago. At the time of the Schering operation his fake passport had put him at thirty-two, which would make him about forty-seven now. He had looked after himself: he was tanned, still slim and there wasn’t a trace of grey in the sandy hair. But he betrayed a certain edginess and Harland could see he was moving without enthusiasm to the rendezvous point, glancing back and to his side every few paces. ‘How many Stasi have we got?’ he asked quietly.

Harp’s habitually cheerful face squinted into a notebook. ‘About a dozen. Our Italian friends think there are more, as many as twenty, but that’s based on the crossings from Yugoslavia over the last forty-eight hours, not on observation in Trieste.’

‘And what do we make of the character with the straw hat?’

‘At first we thought he was Stasi because we’ve seen him a couple of times. Jamie Jay took a look at him this morning, followed him to a fleapit hotel in the New Port.’

‘But how does he manage to be here ten minutes before Rosenharte?’

Macy Harp withdrew one of a ration of five cigarettes from a slender silver case and lit up. ‘It’s simple. He saw Rosenharte out here when he did his recce this morning, realized he had started off on the same route this evening and decided to get here ahead of him.’

‘Right,’ said Harland doubtfully. ‘But what the hell’s he doing here?’

‘Steady on, old chap. All will be revealed soon enough.’

‘Where’s Cuth?’

‘Having a drink over there on the seafront. He can see everything from where he is. The Italians have taken pictures, so we’ve got a complete gallery back at his place.’

‘He’s too far away. Get him nearer.’ Harland couldn’t help showing his irritation.

Harp turned to him. ‘Come on, Bobby, we’re all doing this for the love of it - and you. Jay’s taken leave to help out and Cuth Avocet’s given up a week on the Tweed.’

‘It’s an official operation.’

‘I know, I know. Still, you can’t deny that the Office hasn’t exactly given you all the support you need.’

Harland said nothing. Was it that obvious?

‘Ah, I’ve got Jay,’ said Harp a few moments later. ‘He’s lurking in one of the ruined sheds in the centre of the pier. You see him?’

‘Right . . . look, I appreciate you giving your time, Macy, but I want you to understand that this does have the chief’s blessing. It’s very important. Could save a lot of lives.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Bobby,’ said Harp amenably. He looked around and sniffed the air. ‘Christ, this place smells. What the hell was stored in here?’

‘Hides. Uncured leather, I imagine.’

Harp looked around. ‘You know the port machinery was entirely powered by water? Every crane, pulley, lift was powered by compressed water. Hydrodynamic power. Bloody amazing what they got up to in the nineteenth century.’

‘Yes,’ said Harland without interest. ‘Are we certain Rosenharte didn’t make any calls from his hotel phone once he had found the note?’

‘Can’t be sure,’ said Harp. ‘We know the place is crawling with Stasi and they’re likely to have set up a way of communicating with him without us knowing. The hotel is not the easiest place to watch.’

‘I bloody well hope they don’t think we’re here. The idea is that it’s just Annalise. If they get any hint of us we’re finished.’

Harp nodded. ‘Tell me about chummy down there. How come he’s going to meet a woman he knows is dead?’

‘Because the Stasi have forced him.’

‘But why didn’t he tell them she was dead?’

‘Because he couldn’t - not back in 1974 and especially not now. Suffice to say we put him in—’

‘An impossible position. I see that, but how - the girl’s death? Was he compromised? Has he been working for you?’

Harland remained motionless behind his binoculars.

‘There’s something I’m not getting,’ said Harp.

‘That’s right, Macy.’ He wasn’t about to tell him everything, and anyway it was far too complicated.

Harp nodded. He knew better than to press the point. ‘Christ, I’m not sure how long I can take this smell.’

Rosenharte caught sight of the man with the straw hat issuing from a ruined building on his right and coming down the pier towards him. Rosenharte slowed, then stopped and pressed the little button on the side of the device taped to his chest. The man was weaving like a drunk. As he got closer Rosenharte was able to get a measure of him. The little round beer paunch and poorly cut suit jacket unambiguously announced a citizen of the German Democratic Republic. His gaze was fixed on Rosenharte and there was little doubt that he was making straight for him.

For a few seconds he expected some kind of violence, but then the man seemed to stumble, clutched at his thorax and cursed before brushing off the hat and rushing the few feet to where Rosenharte was standing. At the last moment he tried to dodge out of his path, but the man lunged to the right, snatched at his shirt and gripped it with such force that Rosenharte instinctively lashed out. The man looked aghast, and only then did Rosenharte understand that the face below him was contorted with pain and fear. He kept putting one hand to his throat and was searching wildly about him. A part of Rosenharte registered disgust at his breath and the foam that had gathered at the corners of his mouth, but he gripped him by the shoulders and told him in German to be still and he would try and find him some help. As he said it, he took in a lined brow beaded with sweat, two indentations on the nose where a pair of spectacles habitually rested, a filthy, frayed shirt collar and a day’s growth of stubble. He shook him, looked into his eyes - there was no malevolence in the expression, merely panic - and told him again that he must help himself by calming down. He tried his halting Italian, but reverted to German and lowered his voice.

In Dresden he had once seen a man’s eye poked out with an umbrella. People stood around as the blood gushed from the socket and the young man went into shock. A woman knelt down and held him and he calmed down almost immediately. So Rosenharte touched the man on the cheek and held him gently. This seemed to work for a little while, but then his eyes began to stare and his body shook with a series of convulsions that forced them both towards the edge of the quay. They staggered in a drunken waltz for a few seconds, kicking up swirls of dust and snapping the dried weeds around them, until the man suddenly collapsed into his arms and pushed him against a large iron mooring bollard.