Little Grey Mice (19 page)

The concert visit with Günther Werle continued Elke's chapter of misfortune. Without a car of her own, he had to collect her from Kaufmannstrasse. She'd bought gin and whisky and vodka, as well as red and white wine. In hallway and living-room she displayed daisies and chrysanthemum and gypsophila. Werle arrived with six short-stemmed roses that were lost against the flowers she already had. Poppi pawed irritatingly, until she had to exile the dog into the kitchen. Werle asked for mineral water, which she didn't have: he only sipped half a glass of white wine. She split the cork into the bottle, opening it. The cocktail snacks she had bought specially were soft and stale. Each floundered for conversation not involving the office. Poppi gave him the opportunity to talk about the wolfhounds he kept at home, which surprised Elke because Günther Werle did not look like the sort of man to have wolfhounds. Elke said a review she'd read had described the orchestra they were going to see as magnificent. Werle said he'd read the same review. He asked about the accident and she said there was no progress. He said he was sorry. She refused a pre-recital or interval drink at the Beethovenhalle, because he didn't seem to enjoy drinking. She would have liked to mingle with fashionably dressed concert-goers, pleased that the dark blue silk dress she had worried over fitted perfectly into the surroundings. Both read their programmes avidly.

The recital was magnificent, and Elke became completely absorbed in and by the music, not permitting anything else into her consciousness – not car accidents or her sister's affair or loans she'd made and hadn't wanted to or whether she was comfortable or not to be sharing the evening with a married man who seemed to be having as much difficulty with the situation as she was. There weren't even thoughts of Ursula, who usually occupied a part of Elke's mind at all times.

The restaurant to which he took her afterwards was in a narrow alley in Süd-Stadt. They ate trout with almonds and pork with apples and apricots, and although Elke said she only wanted a glass Werle insisted upon ordering a whole bottle of wine. It was drier than that she'd served at the flat and he drank two glasses. The excellence of the concert provided the initial conversation, and during it Elke decided it was ridiculous, creating an atmosphere of artificiality between them, not to talk about the man's family. Werle was proud of his son's progress at school and his prospects for eventual university entrance. Elke got the impression he was slightly less enthusiastic when she asked about his wife. There was still no definite date for her return from the spa near Munich. Her perpetual ill-health was a great tragedy.

It was past midnight when they got back to Kaufmannstrasse, and Elke was relieved that Werle kept the engine running. They both sat looking directly ahead.

‘Maybe it would be possible for us to attend another recital, some time in the future?' he said.

‘Maybe.' EIke felt there was no other reply.

He helped her from the car and extended his hand, inclining forward in a suggestion of a formal bow when she took it.

‘How was it?' demanded Ida eagerly when she telephoned the following evening.

‘Wonderful,' Elke lied.

When the telephone rang again within the hour, Elke thought it was her sister wanting to talk about something she had forgotten on the first call.

‘This is Otto Reimann,' said the voice. ‘My car was involved in the collision with yours, at the weekend?'

‘Yes,' said Elke. At last!

‘Just thought I'd call to see that everything's going along all right,' said Reimann brightly. ‘The police tell me they haven't caught anyone, though.'

‘The police told me that, too,' said Elke. ‘And everything is
not
going along all right. It's becoming very difficult.' She hadn't intended to be accusing, as if it were his fault.

Just about the right amount of aggrieved indignation, judged Reimann, satisfied. He said: ‘That's terrible! What's the problem?'

‘Apportioning guilt or blame.'

This wasn't to be a protracted discussion, Reimann reflected: there had to be a meeting, the two of them face to face again. Pushing the concern into his voice, he said: ‘Could we meet, perhaps, to talk about it? As I told you at the time, I'd like to be able to sort it out, if I could.'

‘What could you do?' asked Elke, uncertainly.

‘I don't know, not at this moment. Something might occur to me if we had the opportunity to talk it through.'

‘I suppose we could.' Elke was still uncertain.

She had to be hurried, before there were any doubts. ‘At your convenience,' he said, apparently generous.

Elke didn't know what to say. ‘I … ah … I'm …'

‘How about tomorrow?' pressed Reimann. ‘We're trying to move things along, after all.'

‘I suppose tomorrow would be all right.'

‘I've only been in Bonn a short while. I don't know a place to suggest.'

Neither did she, Elke realized. ‘I'm not sure,' she said.

‘There's my apartment,' suggested Reimann, deciding he could just take the chance: if she agreed, so much the better.

‘I don't think so,' she refused primly and at once.

‘I could come to you,' he offered.

She desperately wanted to get everything resolved: to get her car back and be finished with all the inconvenience. ‘All right,' she agreed. ‘Eight?' She tried to sound positive, a woman in charge of herself.

‘Eight will be fine,' Reimann accepted, guessing her effort. He had it! Had her! Now it was important to get off the line, not to permit her to retract.

‘Do you imagine you'll be able to think of something?'

‘I'm sure I can.' He smiled down at the replaced telephone. He wouldn't answer it again, not unless Jutta made a coded call, until after he'd been to Kaufmannstrasse. He couldn't risk any change of mind, not now. Elke Meyer couldn't be allowed to escape:
wouldn't
escape. It was going well. So very well.

Nikolai Turev was already considering the private meeting with Reimann, before the first of the panics.

The listening devices were permanently installed in Jutta's flat in Nord-Stadt, embedded undetectably behind plaster in the walls and ceilings – even where the telephone connections were fixed – and all automatically monitored from another Soviet-rented and permanently manned flat across the sparsely grassed rectangle separating the four blocks of the complex.

Every activity was initially recorded, including the minimal love-making. Turev listened to it all, not from any deviant reason but to satisfy himself another way, to ensure no personal problems ever arose between the couple. From the master-tapes he had the KGB Technical Division refine a second recording, removing the sexual interruptions and the extraneous evidence of Jutta in the place by herself: the facile music, the tuneless humming, the television soundtrack, the self-conversation. (
What a mind! How can someone with a philosophy as weak as that be described as an expert! Of course America's colonialist! Always has been. Too much relaxation: that's how the satellites broke away. Weakness.)

To listen to their actual, unwitting, exchanges.

Turev was not overly concerned, not yet. Just alert. Jutta's attitude continued to show resentment. And despite warnings, here in Moscow before he'd been dispatched, Reimann appeared almost to want Jutta openly to acknowledge the secondary, more menial role she now had to fulfil.

Had she already unknowingly revealed her awareness of it, to the inherent jeopardy of the operation? The accounts and reports she had so assuredly presented during their two personal meetings in Vienna since everything had been set into motion were just fractionally at variance with what he heard on the recordings. Those recordings showed she was trying too hard to remain the person in charge, the one who imposed the procedures and conditions.

Reimann had to avoid creating an atmosphere of antagonism.

Turev was trying to decide upon a recall, calculating the wisdom of involving Sorokin in the decision, when the first bombshell exploded, although it came in the muted sound of the telephone.

‘It looks genuine!' insisted Cherny, anxious to believe because what lay before them could confirm a conviction he refused to abandon – that NATO would always remain a militarily aggressive organization. In his excitement the soldier was hunched at Sorokin's shoulder, gazing down at the document lying on the Deputy Chairman's desk, all the usual antipathy forgotten.

‘The Technical Division have analysed the paper,' Sorokin agreed. ‘It's definitely of German manufacture and of the type we know, from originals we managed to get hold of in the past, the Bonn government use. And the postmark was from Bonn.'

At that moment Turev flustered into the deputy's suite, nervous at the summons from the First Chief Directorate headquarters in the Moscow suburb. Ahead of Sorokin, the army chief snatched the papers from the desk, offering them to the fat and breathless man. ‘An official West German report, a discussion document on NATO troop strength!' he declared.

‘What …?' groped Turev.

Sorokin tried to restore his position. ‘They arrived, anonymously, by post at our Austrian embassy yesterday. The top and last pages are missing: they will have been removed to avoid any identification of source.'

‘A trap: disinformation,' Turev assessed at once. ‘Proper intelligence doesn't arrive like this, in the mail!'

‘There have been walk-ins in the past,' Sorokin reminded them. ‘This would qualify for the description. But I agree: it's unthinkable that we could act in any way upon it.'

‘If Reimann could confirm the authenticity, it would be a different matter.'

‘I want more than authenticity,' Turev rapped. ‘It's not uncommon for a Western intelligence service to leak a genuine document as a lure.'

‘For what purpose?' demanded the soldier.

‘The obvious one. To test our reaction: see how we jump. As well as authenticity, I'd want positively to know the source.'

‘While I don't think we should overreact, we can't possibly dismiss it, either,' said Sorokin, trying for the middle path.

‘I want Reimann activated at once.' Cherny was insistent.

Sorokin regarded the soldier sourly before looking inquiringly at Turev. The other Russian said: ‘There's a meeting scheduled with Jutta first. The system established to bypass her to Reimann will take longer.'

‘Restrict it to Reimann,' ordered Sorokin. ‘I don't want him thinking there's a separate operation: that's he's being excluded from something. But keep it away from the woman: she needn't know.'

‘You should have devised a quicker method of contact,' Cherny complained.

Sorokin didn't like the soldier's constant impatience.

Chapter Fourteen

Reimann was late, by a carefully calculated thirty-five minutes. He stood in the concealing shadows of Kaufmannstrasse, hopefully watching Elke's lighted window, intent for any curtain flicker or better still the outright look into the street to tell him he had tilted her equilibrium by not arriving at their agreed time. He saw nothing but still hoped she had been unbalanced. If he was completely to succeed – as there could be no doubt that he would – the exhaustively trained Reimann considered it important always to nudge Elke from the centre of every comforting pathway she tried to find. So even minimal lateness would upset her.

Reimann carried nothing with him – not flowers or chocolates-when he finally entered the apartment house, because the gesture would have been wrong. This was not a social visit. It was the arrival of someone trying to help after an unfortunate encounter: as much as anything, a business meeting. The trivial although meaningful love gifts – meaningful to her – could come later.

Elke opened the door to admit him as if she were unsure who it would be: the yapping Poppi was scratching and pawing at some other door closed against it. He decided the dog was going to be a constant irritation: he didn't like dogs of any sort, not at the best of times and certainly not this one.

‘You found it, then?' she said, inviting the apology.

‘Easily,' said Reimann, not offering one.

The interior of the apartment was everything he had expected from the information he had about the woman: only surgical gowns would have been necessary for it to be used as a sterilized operating theatre. She had still to be jostled off centre, for a while. ‘I'm not intruding? Your husband won't mind my being here?'

‘There isn't a husband,' said Elke, softly. More strongly she went on: ‘And in the circumstances it's hardly an intrusion, is it? I want to get things settled if I can.'

Reimann nodded. She'd avoided looking at him in admitting to being unmarried. ‘Of course,' he said. He looked around the flat, seeming to study it. ‘Nice,' he said. ‘Very nice.'

Elke gestured him towards a seat, vaguely aware of a masculine cologne. She said: ‘I was lucky to get it, on a long lease. Did you find it a problem?' It was so easy to make comparisons with the long-ago Dietlef Becker.

‘An apartment?' queried Reimann. Before she had time to confirm her question he said: ‘I guess I was lucky, too. An old place, on Rochusplatz. The pipes make a noise. But it suits me.'

‘Bonn's not easy sometimes.' It was not the most riveting of social conversation but she felt easy with it. So did he, she noticed. He lounged, rather than sat, appearing quite relaxed. It was, she realized upon reflection, the chair Günther Werle had occupied, perched on the edge as if ready to spring up at any moment.

‘Lucky,' repeated Reimann. He guessed she'd changed, for his visit. The skirt was uncreased from any daytime wear and the shirt was crisp, the pressed finish obvious. And she
did
have big tits. The blonde hair was carefully brushed in place, benefiting from the care of a good hairdresser. A little different shade of make-up might have helped, but not appreciably. With detached objectivity Reimann concluded that literally upon face value this appeared a much better assignment than it might have been.