Brandenburg (27 page)

‘And that didn’t ring any bells?’ asked Griswald.

‘Of course it did, but even in this affair I cannot believe the man who died in Trieste and this individual were associated.’

‘I’d put money on it,’ said Harland, ‘though I don’t know what it means. But let’s just get back to the main square in Leipzig, shall we? Who spotted you?’

‘It was Colonel Biermeier.’

‘Biermeier! Now there’s a coincidence.’

‘No coincidence. He’s in charge of my case for General Schwarzmeer. He needed to find me urgently because they wanted me in Berlin. The Stasi knew I was giving this lecture. That’s how they managed to track me down to Leipzig.’

‘Certainly,’ said Harland. ‘But if they were so desperate to apprehend you, why not go to the lecture theatre where you were due to speak at a certain hour, which they would have no difficulty in finding out from the local headquarters. Why wait until so late in the day? It doesn’t make sense.’

Rosenharte had to admit that it didn’t but he needed food and rest. He was not going to make this his worry.

Harland persisted when he gave no response. ‘There’s something here that none of us are seeing, Rudi. Both Alan and I feel there’s a hidden hand at work. We need to understand who it is and why. Someone is helping us.’

Rosenharte saw Vladimir’s elliptical expression in his mind.

Next morning Rosenharte awoke just after nine when Griswald brought him a cup of coffee. He then sat down in a chair at the end of the bed. Rosenharte felt awkward. He liked to be showered, shaved and dressed before facing the world.

‘I’m not good at this hour, Mr Griswald,’ he said. ‘It takes me time to find my . . .’

‘Equilibrium,’ Griswald offered with a smile. ‘Hey, don’t worry. I’m the same. It’s our age.’ He didn’t offer to leave but sat there beaming. ‘Jessie’s gone out to get you some new clothes and shoes,’ he said eventually. ‘We’ll need them to hide some money for you. Bobby is away talking to his people back in London.’

Rosenharte nodded and got out of bed, feeling rather foolish in the pair of oversized pyjamas provided by the American. He carried the cup and saucer over to the window and looked out on the view again.

‘We need that name, Rudi. We can’t take action unless we’re able to confirm your intelligence.’

Rosenharte turned to him. ‘But you’ve already taken action based on what she’s told you. You said so last night.’

Griswald conceded a nod. ‘Still, it would help my side to commit the necessary resources.’

‘I
am
your major resource. I am costing you very little money. You’ll have the name, don’t worry. When Else is out of the country and safely in the West with Christoph and Florian I will tell you and by that time we will know when the Arab is coming to Leipzig.’

The American shrugged as though he hadn’t really been expecting Rosenharte to move on this. He put his hands to his face in a brief attitude of prayer. ‘I have a question for you, Rudi.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘You’re an intelligent guy. You must have known you were making a mistake in Brussels. Surely all your training meant you knew the risks of not telling your side immediately about Annalise Schering’s death?’

Rosenharte was surprised. He sat down heavily on a covered bench by the window, lit a cigarette and used his saucer as an ashtray. ‘Why’re you asking about that now?’

‘You see, we have to consider the possibility that you did tell them; that they’ve known all the time and have been playing along realizing that the truth channel was exactly that.’ He stopped and leant forward. ‘That would explain why you have managed to live in relative peace and obscurity over the last dozen or so years. If this is the case, it would mean this whole damned thing is a Stasi con.’

‘There was very little time that night and I was genuinely shocked by her death. She was very young and I felt guilty about using such a trusting person. You see, I already felt bad about asking her to help us.’

Griswald had started shaking his head before Rosenharte finished. ‘But you were trained as a Romeo. You were trained to make love to women and use them. That was your sole purpose.’

‘No, that was not my sole purpose. I was sent to the West as an illegal with a false identity and background. I was destined for long-term work.’ He paused and looked Griswald in the eye. ‘And you know why I agreed to do this. Because it seemed the best hope I had of getting to the West. In the right circumstances I would have defected. But I was not just a Romeo.’

‘But you were schooled in the art of love back in the East. We know about these things. Your speciality was seducing lonely secretaries.’

‘It was not my speciality. It was part of the job of every agent sent as an illegal to the West.’

‘Yes, but the training included techniques of seduction, guidance about the right psychological moment to broach the subject of espionage.’

Rosenharte snorted a laugh and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘You’re like Biermeier. You’re exaggerating the effort the Stasi put into this. Do you imagine there was some kind of love school where we were taught about sending flowers and the multiple orgasm? No, there were just a few talks, one to one, on certain techniques and signs.’

Rosenharte almost smiled at the memory of the anonymous man with the air of a black marketeer who came to the spy school at Potsdam-Eiche and gave each member of the class a tutorial. He described it all to Griswald. Watch their feet, the man would say. When a woman’s feet are pointing in your direction, she wants you. If she is sitting down opposite you and her legs are crossed with one foot moving, she is already anticipating the rhythmic movements of the act of love. If her gaze shifts from your eyes to your mouth, if she toys with her hair or brushes her chin she is sending out an invitation. If she places her hand on her hips, touches her mouth or even looks down at her own cleavage, she is drawing attention to her most attractive features and is signalling that she is available. On the other hand, if she keeps her arms folded across her breasts, looks away when she speaks or smiles at the wrong moment when you are speaking, she is not interested.

It had all seemed ridiculously literal to Rosenharte but the Stasi treated it no less seriously than the sessions about building the woman’s psychological dependence on her agent and introducing the idea of passing the odd piece of intelligence to a friendly agency - usually Sweden or Denmark. Only when sufficient intelligence had been gained and the woman was too compromised to tell her own side would they reveal that the true destination was East Germany. Rosenharte had pretty much done everything by the book and he thought things were going well. Then Annalise had kicked up when he’d asked her about the private lives of three men in the Commission. She knew immediately that he was working for the East Germans. After that, things had deteriorated quickly and before very long he was looking at her body in the bath.

Griswald listened intently to all this, then asked him once more for the name before eventually leaving Rosenharte to get dressed.

It was agreed later when Harland returned that there might be the need for one more meeting with Annalise, though they would wait to see how things went with Konrad before this was arranged. Rosenharte would tell the Stasi the next rendezvous was set for the middle of October in the West. After that he would make it plain that she was willing to undertake the trip to East Germany.

At eleven Jessie returned with a new jacket, a pair of shoes and two shirts. The Bird set about making neat incisions along the line of the front seam and the collar of the short blue overcoat and inserted the $2,000-worth of high denomination Deutschmarks. He dissected the insoles of the new shoes and padded each with five $100 bills. The remaining $2,000 was stitched into the backing of a broad leather belt. While this went on Harland schooled him in the new procedure to make contact with them, which involved a code that changed each week.

At the end of the morning, Rosenharte was introduced to two men and a woman - all citizens of the Federal Republic - who would slip into East Germany and find their way to Leipzig over the coming weeks. They were on loan from the West German intelligence service, the BND. For the moment, the three were known as Red, White and Orange. They were already familiar with the procedure for contacting Kafka. Rosenharte knew it was only a matter of time before they identified her, but he had no choice but to go along with the arrangement.

Before they set off to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the Germans showed him a photograph of a pleasant-looking apartment block in a small town near the BND’s headquarters in Pullach. There was a play area for the boys, plenty of room and a view of the Alps from the back of the building. This was where Else would be housed until Konrad arrived. A local school had already agreed to take the boys in, and most of the neighbours worked for the BND and would be able to keep an eye on them.

Just past one o’clock, Tudor drove Jessie and Rosenharte to Friedrichstrasse where they got out and entered the Cafe Adler. The place was already under surveillance by Griswald’s people, but as yet no known Stasi faces had been spotted. Jessie was subdued. He looked at her with an interrogative raise of the eyebrows. She avoided his gaze and looked out at the traffic passing through the checkpoint. Gradually her hands moved across the table to touch his. Their eyes met. ‘What I’m going to say now is me,’ she whispered.

‘The real you?’

‘Yes, the person inside Annalise.’ She looked down. ‘I want you to understand that I wish you all the luck in the world with this, Rudi; I want it to work for you. Really! And I hope your brother recovers when he gets out.’ She stopped and stirred her hot chocolate. ‘With this information, you never know, they may let him go.’

‘They only let people go when they are
gleichgeschaltet.
How do you say that?’

‘Pulled into line - straightened out.’

‘And he will never be pulled into line.’

‘Have you got your story straight? Everything ordered in your head for the other side?’

‘Absolutely.’

She raised her head, then bent down even lower. ‘Give my regards to the other woman. I feel a connection with her. Be sure to do that when it is appropriate.’

It was an extremely odd request but he nodded. ‘I will. Look, I should go.’

‘Yes. Got the package?’

‘Yes.’

He leant forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘I won’t come out with you.’

He left the Adler, showed his passport at the checkpoint, then began the walk through the Death Zone to the Eastern border control.

The Stasi were full of surprises. On the other side of the eastern checkpoint they were waiting for him - six men in two cars - yet not with the usual sullen superiority. Now they were all grins and murmured congratulations. Even Biermeier’s face had cracked to express a rough pleasure. Rosenharte noted that there was no sign of Zank, and gave his hand to Biermeier. ‘I’ve got it in my inside pocket. Do you want it now?’

‘Wait until you get in the car. They’re very pleased with the material. Very pleased. It’s everything we hoped for.’ He opened the car door, but Rosenharte didn’t climb in.

‘What the hell were they playing at, coming to the park armed like that? She thought they were going to abduct her. Were those your orders?’

‘Later,’ said Biermeier stiffly. ‘We’ll talk later. You will stay in Berlin tonight for a debriefing, then you will be allowed to go home. We’ll talk at your hotel. Nice coat. Did she give you that?’

‘No, I bought it with the ministry’s money.’

Biermeier looked stricken.

‘Relax. It was a present from Annalise, and nothing in the world is going to persuade me to take it off because some bastard will steal it.’ Rosenharte was feeling optimistic. If they were pleased with the disks, they might just give Konrad back to him.

Biermeier permitted himself another smile. ‘Get in, Rosenharte, we’ve got a lot to do.’

Twenty-five minutes later the two cars pulled into Normannenstrasse and drove straight to the HVA block, which Rosenharte took as another good sign. They were shown to a meeting room adjacent to General Schwarzmeer’s office, where coffee and cakes were laid out. Five minutes later the general appeared at the head of a group of half a dozen men and one woman.

‘Ah, Rosenharte. Welcome back. Good work, good work. These people are from the Department of Cryptology and the Department of Political Espionage Two, which, as you know, deals with Nato and the rest come from various sections in the armed forces. They are interested in what you have brought with you - very interested.’ He was in an ebullient mood; the Caesar in him was to the fore.

Biermeier handed over the second package of disks with a certain amount of ceremony.

‘And there is another delivery to be made soon, I understand,’ said Schwarzmeer. ‘Sit down, sit down, we haven’t got all day. These people have questions to ask you. For security purposes, we will not use names in this discussion and I do not have to remind you, Rosenharte, that you should not reveal any operational details.’ Rosenharte fleetingly wished Harland and Griswald were as mindful of security. ‘Now tell us when we can expect the final delivery.’ He placed his hands squarely on the table and leant forward like a fighting dog - shoulders massive and square, chin thrust upwards, eyes consumed with anticipated triumph.

‘We can expect the remaining six disks in a few weeks - by mid-October at the latest. Then our informant wishes to come to the East to clear up any matters outstanding. That will be in November. The informant does not believe there is much more that can be passed to you. This is the limit of our access to these secrets. I believe the process of copying these disks places our informant at great risk, but once duplicated there is no trace left on the original. They will never know we have them.’

Schwarzmeer made an encouraging noise.

‘And the last six disks will complete the code?’

‘As I understand it, you will then have the source code for the whole system.’

There were many questions, chiefly from the armed services - about the costs to Nato, when Nato would go live with the system and the amount of new hardware and training involved. Plainly all that Annalise had said to Fleischhauer in the Tiergarten had sunk in, and there was every sign they understood the grave implications for the Warsaw Pact military, though there was some hopeful conjecture about the chaos of the new system. Rosenharte deferred to their knowledge, but offered his impression that the system would sort out more problems than it would create.