Edge of Eternity (17 page)

George had seen only one interracial couple in the ballroom: Percy Marquand and Babe Lee. He felt outraged. So the liberal president was scared to be photographed with them!

Dave Powers was an amiable middle-aged man with a big nose and a bald head, about as different from his boss as could be imagined. He said to the President: ‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Get them out of there!’

Dave was a personal friend, and not scared to let Kennedy know when he was irritated. ‘What am I going to tell them, for Christ’s sake?’

Suddenly George stopped being angry and started to think. Was this an opportunity for him? Without forming any definite plan, he said: ‘Mr President, I’m George Jakes, I work for the Attorney General. May I take care of this problem for you?’

He watched their faces and knew what they were thinking. If Percy Marquand was going to be insulted in the White House, how much better it would be if the offender were black.

‘Hell, yes,’ said Kennedy. ‘I’d appreciate that, George.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said George, and he went back into the ballroom.

But what was he going to do? He racked his brains as he crossed the polished floor towards where Percy and Babe stood. He had to get them out of the room for fifteen or twenty minutes, that was all. What could he tell them?

Anything but the truth, he guessed.

When he reached the conversational group, and touched Percy Marquand gently on the arm, he still didn’t know what he was going to say.

Percy turned, recognized him, smiled, and shook his hand. ‘Everybody!’ he said to the people around him. ‘Meet a Freedom Rider!’

Babe Lee grabbed his arm with both hands, as if afraid someone was going to steal him. ‘You’re a hero, George,’ she said.

At that moment George realized what he had to say. ‘Mr Marquand, Miss Lee, I work for Bobby Kennedy now, and he would like to talk to you for a few minutes about civil rights. May I take you to him?’

‘Of course,’ said Percy, and a few seconds later they were out of the room.

George regretted his words immediately. His heart thumped as he walked them to the West Wing. How was Bobby going to take this? He might say
Hell, no, I don’t have time.
If an embarrassing incident resulted, George would be to blame. Why had he not kept his mouth shut?

‘I had lunch with Verena,’ he said, making small talk.

Babe Lee said: ‘She loves her job in Atlanta. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference has a small headquarters organization, but they’re doing great things.’

Percy said: ‘Dr King is a great man. Of all the civil rights leaders I’ve met, he’s the most impressive.’

They reached the Cabinet Room and went in. The half-dozen men there were sitting at one end of the long table, chatting, some smoking. They looked in surprise at the newcomers. George located Bobby and watched his face. He looked puzzled and irritated. George said: ‘Bobby, you know Percy Marquand and Babe Lee. They would be happy to talk to us about civil rights for a few minutes.’

For a moment Bobby’s face darkened with rage. George realized this was the second time today he had surprised his boss with an uninvited guest. Then Bobby smiled. ‘What a privilege!’ he said. ‘Sit down, folks, and thank you for supporting my brother’s election campaign.’

George was relieved, for the moment. There would be no embarrassment. Bobby had switched to automatic charm. He asked Percy and Babe their views, and talked candidly about the difficulties the Kennedys were having with Southern Democrats in Congress. The guests were flattered.

A few minutes later the President came in. He shook hands with Percy and Babe, then asked Dave Powers to take them back to the party.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Bobby rounded on George. ‘Never do that to me again!’ he said. His face showed the strength of his pent-up fury.

George saw Dennis Wilson smother a grin.

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ Bobby stormed.

George thought Bobby was going to hit him. He balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to dodge a blow. He said desperately: ‘The President wanted them out of the room! He didn’t want to be photographed with Percy and Babe.’

Bobby looked at his brother, who nodded.

George said: ‘I had thirty seconds to think of a pretext that wouldn’t insult them. I told them you wanted to meet them. And it worked, didn’t it? They’re not offended – in fact, they think they got VIP treatment!’

The President said: ‘It’s true, Bob. George here got us out of a tight situation.’

George said: ‘I wanted to make sure we didn’t lose their support for the re-election campaign.’

Bobby looked blank for a moment, taking it in. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you told them I wanted to talk to them, just as a way of keeping them out of the presidential photographs.’

‘Yes,’ said George.

The President said: ‘That was quick thinking.’

Bobby’s face changed. After a moment he started to laugh. His brother joined in, then the other men in the room followed suit.

Bobby put his arm around George’s shoulders.

George still felt shaky. He had feared he would be fired.

Bobby said: ‘Georgie boy, you’re one of us!’

George realized that he had been accepted into the inner circle. He slumped with relief.

He was not as proud as he might have been. He had carried out a shabby little deception, and helped the President to pander to racial prejudice. He wanted to wash his hands.

Then he saw the look of rage on Dennis Wilson’s face, and he felt better.

10

That August, Rebecca was summoned to secret police headquarters for a second time.

She wondered fearfully what the Stasi wanted now. They had already ruined her life. She had been tricked into a sham marriage, and now she could not get a job, no doubt because they were ordering schools not to hire her. What else could they do to her? Surely they could not put her in jail just because she had been their victim?

But they could do anything they liked.

She took the bus across town on a hot Berlin day. The new headquarters building was as ugly as the organization it represented, a rectilinear concrete box for people whose minds were all straight edges. Once again she was escorted up in the lift and along the sickly yellow corridors, but this time she was taken to a different office. Waiting for her there she found her husband, Hans. When she saw him, her fear was displaced by even stronger rage. Even though he had the power to hurt her, she was too angry to kowtow to him.

He was wearing a new blue-grey suit that she had not seen before. He had a large room with two windows and new modern furniture: he was more senior than she had thought.

Needing time to gather her wits, she said: ‘I was expecting to see Sergeant Scholz.’

Hans looked away. ‘He was not suitable for security work.’

Rebecca could see that Hans was hiding something. Presumably Scholz had been fired, or perhaps demoted to the traffic police. ‘I suppose he made a mistake in interviewing me here, rather than at the local police station.’

‘He should not have interviewed you at all. Sit there.’ He pointed to a chair in front of his big, ugly desk.

The chair was made of metal tubing and hard, orange plastic – designed to make his victims even more uncomfortable, Rebecca guessed. Her suppressed fury gave her the strength to defy him. Instead of sitting, she went to the window and looked out over the car park. ‘You wasted your time, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘You went to all that trouble to watch my family, and you didn’t find a single spy or saboteur.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Your bosses must be angry with you.’

‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘this is considered one of the most successful operations the Stasi has ever conducted.’

Rebecca could not imagine how that could be possible. ‘You can’t have learned anything very interesting.’

‘My team has produced a chart showing every Social Democrat in East Germany, and the links between them,’ he said proudly. ‘And the key information was obtained in your house. Your parents know all the most important reactionaries, and many came to visit.’

Rebecca frowned. It was true that most of the people who came to the house were former Social Democrats: that was only natural. ‘But they’re just friends,’ she said.

Hans let out a mocking hoot of laughter. ‘Just friends!’ he jeered. ‘Please, I know you think we’re not very bright – you said so, many times, when I was living with you – but we’re not completely brainless.’

It occurred to Rebecca that Hans and all secret policemen were obliged to believe – or at least, to pretend to believe – in fantastic conspiracies against the government. Otherwise their work was a waste of time. So Hans had constructed an imaginary network of Social Democrats based on the Franck family house, all plotting to bring down the Communist government.

If only it were true.

Hans said: ‘Of course, it was never intended that I should marry you. A flirtation, just enough to get me into the house, was all that we planned.’

‘My proposal of marriage must have presented you with a problem.’

‘Our project was going so well. The information I was getting was crucial. Each person I saw at your house led us to more Social Democrats. If I declined your proposal the tap would have been turned off.’

‘How brave you were,’ Rebecca said. ‘You must be proud.’

He stared at her. For a moment she could not read him. Something was going on in his mind, and she did not know what it was. It crossed her mind that he might want to touch her or kiss her. The thought made her flesh creep. Then he shook his head as if to clear it. ‘We’re not here to talk about the marriage,’ he said with irritation.

‘Why are we here?’

‘You caused an incident at the employment exchange.’

‘An incident? I asked the man standing in front of me in the line how long he had been unemployed. The woman behind the counter stood up and yelled at me. “There is no unemployment in Communist countries!” she screeched. I looked at the queue in front of me and behind, and I laughed. That’s an incident?’

‘You laughed hysterically and refused to stop, and you were ejected from the building.’

‘It’s true that I couldn’t stop laughing. What she said was so absurd.’

‘It was not absurd!’ Hans fumbled for a cigarette from a packet of f6. Like all bullies, he became nervous when someone stood up to him. ‘She was right,’ he said. ‘No one is out of work in East Germany. Communism has solved the problem of unemployment.’

‘Don’t, please,’ said Rebecca. ‘You’ll make me laugh again, and then I’ll have to be ejected from this building as well.’

‘Sarcasm will do you no good.’

She looked at a framed photograph on the wall showing Hans shaking hands with Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader. Ulbricht had a bald dome, and he cultivated a Van Dyke beard and moustache: the resemblance to Lenin was faintly comic. Rebecca asked ‘What did Ulbricht say to you?’

‘He congratulated me on my promotion to Captain.’

‘Also part of your reward for cruelly misleading your wife. So, tell me, if I’m not unemployed, what am I?’

‘You are under investigation as a social parasite.’

‘That’s outrageous! I have worked continuously since graduating. Eight years without a day of sick leave. I’ve been promoted and given extra responsibilities, including the supervision of new teachers. And then one day I discovered my husband was a Stasi spy, and soon afterwards I was fired. Since then I have been to six job interviews. Each time, the school was desperate for me to start as soon as possible. And yet – for no reason they could give me – each time they wrote afterwards telling me they were not able to offer me the post. Do you know why?’

‘No one wants you.’

‘Everyone wants me. I am a good teacher.’

‘You are ideologically unreliable. You would be a bad influence on impressionable youngsters.’

‘I have a glowing reference from my last employer.’

‘From Bernd Held, you mean. He, too, is under investigation for ideological unreliability.’

Rebecca felt a chill of dread deep in her chest. She tried to keep her face expressionless. How terrible it would be if kind, capable Bernd were to get into trouble on her account. I must warn him, she thought.

She failed to hide her feelings from Hans. ‘That’s rocked you, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘I always had my suspicions about him. You were fond of him.’

‘He wanted to have an affair with me,’ Rebecca said. ‘But I was unwilling to deceive you. Just fancy that.’

‘I would have found you out.’

‘Instead of which, I found you out.’

‘I was doing my duty.’

‘So, you’re making sure I can’t get a job, and accusing me of social parasitism. What do you expect me to do – go West?’

‘Emigration without permission is a crime.’

‘And yet so many people do it! I hear the number has risen to almost a thousand a day. Teachers, doctors, engineers – even police officers. Oh!’ She was struck by an insight. ‘Is that what happened to Sergeant Scholz?’

Hans looked shifty. ‘None of your business.’

‘I can tell by your face. So Scholz went West. Why do all these respectable people turn criminal, do you suppose? Is it because they want to live in a country that has free elections, and so on?’

Hans raised his voice angrily. ‘Free elections gave us Hitler – is that what they want?’

‘Perhaps they don’t like living in a place where the secret police can do anything they like. You can imagine how uneasy that makes people.’

‘Only those who have guilty secrets!’

‘And what’s my secret, Hans? Come on, you must know.’

‘You are a social parasite.’

‘So you prevent my getting a job, then you threaten to jail me for not having a job. I suppose I would be sent to a work camp, would I? Then I would have a job, except that I wouldn’t be paid. I love Communism, it’s so logical! Why are people so desperate to escape from it, I wonder?’

‘Your mother told me many times that she would never emigrate to the West. She would consider it running away.’

Rebecca wondered what he was getting at. ‘So . . . ?’

‘If you commit the crime of illegal emigration, you will never be able to come back.’