Little Grey Mice (56 page)

‘Do I?'

‘You know you do!' How to escape? He had to deflect her, turn aside the tunnelled curiosity.

‘I'm not sure,' Elke persisted. ‘I can't ever lose the impression that there's something I don't understand. That I should know but which I don't, because you won't tell me.'

‘That's four o'clock in the morning talk,' Reimann said. What was the way? Where was the way?

‘You do love me? More than anyone else, don't you?'

Reimann saw the welcoming path opening before him. He came to the couch adjacent to where she was sitting so that he could take the hands she still had tightly clasped about her knees. There
is
no one else,' he insisted, honestly. ‘There's only you. And will only ever be you …' Should he say it? Make the promise. It
would
be the way to deflect her and he had to do that. He went on: ‘I was thinking about us, coming back on the plane today.'

‘What about us?'

‘The decision I promised to make: about the time to get married.'

Elke blinked at him, clearly astonished. ‘You
really
mean that?' She'd been convinced it was a lie, before: just another lie.

‘We talked about it,' he reminded her. ‘I think it's time we properly settled down, don't you?'

‘I suppose … I don't know …'

Reimann was astonished. ‘Don't you want us to be married?'

‘I …' she began, and stopped. Then she said: ‘I suppose that's what I'd hoped, yes. I guess I need time to think.'

Reimann remained surprised. ‘I thought you'd feel differently than this! I thought you'd be excited!'

‘I am … it's just …' Elke humped her shoulders. ‘It
is
four o'clock in the morning!' Would being married make any difference? Or would there still be svelte women in grey Audis and others who sent missing-you cards from Italy? She said: ‘If we got married would you still have to go away so much?'

‘Sometimes,' said Reimann cautiously. ‘I'd try to cut it down as much as possible.' If he insisted upon regularizing the contact meetings with the Russians he
could
reduce the frequency: once a month would be sufficient. And there could be another insistence, that they were held somewhere closer to Bonn to avoid the occasional need for him to remain overnight.

‘There's something …' started Elke and stopped again.

‘What?'

She shook her head. ‘Nothing.' She smiled, fleetingly. ‘When? When can we get married?'

‘Whenever you like! As soon as you like! It's all going to be marvellous!' He could live with the lie: he could live with any lie, so long as it enabled him to be with her.

‘Yes,' said Elke. ‘Marvellous.'

Chapter Forty-Five

It was a grey, overcast day: when he'd boarded the plane it had been raining heavily. Reimann hoped it would have stopped by the time he reached Berlin. It was a long walk into the East, and he couldn't risk a taxi to the safe house. Strictly according to operational instructions he shouldn't have flown direct from Cologne, but he was impatient with circuitous routes after so long. Flying above the clouds it was impossible to look down at the towns and hamlets as he had the previous week, returning from East Berlin. Reimann knew he'd be able to get back that night, hopefully on an early flight. To hand over the confirming film roll would only take minutes, and he'd decided against discussing his marrying Elke. Better to build up a series of untrue difficulties with her to make the idea acceptable.

He'd agree to a church wedding if Elke wanted it. She'd probably have Ida as an attendant. Maybe Doris, as well. What about Ursula? She wasn't capable of acting as a bridesmaid, but there was no reason why the child couldn't be brought out of the home for the occasion. It was something he would have to discuss with Elke. There were, in fact, a lot of things he had to discuss with Elke. He was surprised she wasn't more excited. The last few days it had always been he who'd had to initiate any conversation, and he had been sure she would have talked and planned with Ida the previous weekend. In the event she'd said nothing and asked him not to, either, as they drove to Bad Godesberg.
I don't want to make any announcement until we've fixed a date and made definite arrangements,
she'd said. He could accept – but only just – that she might be cautious after being abandoned once before, but he had hoped she trusted him more than that. What about himself? Should he have trusted her – believed in her – when she'd given him the chance? And it had been a chance, when she'd asked what he was. A pointless recrimination now. If it had been a chance, then he'd missed it. It could come later: a lot could come later. The important thing was to get the marriage settled. Everything else could follow: he'd handle the difficulties as they arose.

It wasn't raining in Berlin but the streets were wet. Reimann crossed directly, no longer interested in old landmarks or abandoned divisions. Coming here was a chore now: dull, boring routine. The usual attendant opened the door at Johannisstrasse, but only Turev awaited him in their customary room. It stank, as things usually stank about the man.

‘We're not staying,' announced Turev, urgently. ‘Come!'

‘What? … where?' Reimann was startled by the jarring break with routine.

‘We think this house is compromised. There was no way we could warn you. That's what I'm doing now. Warning you. Come!'

‘But tell me…?'

‘Later. It'll all be explained later.' The fat Russian waddled hurriedly across the room, leading the way out. Reimann followed, picking up the other man's agitation: his body was twitching, and as he was crossing the narrow distance from the house to a waiting car which Reimann hadn't seen when he'd entered, the Russian darted looks from side to side, as if he feared being challenged or arrested. There was a raised partition between the front and rear seats: the driver did not turn. As the doors closed behind them, the vehicle moved off. In the back Reimann said: ‘Where are we going?'

‘One of our own military installations is only a few kilometres out of town. We'll be safe there.' The man filled the car with smoke: the hand holding the cigarette was shaking.

‘Who's identified the house? The Germans or someone else?'

‘Maybe both.'

‘We should have switched sooner,' said Reimann. They appeared to have got away unhindered, so the trembling concern was hardly justified. But then they'd always panicked, he remembered. They'd have to decide a new contact place. Maybe he would suggest Vienna: take over Jutta's venue. Vienna would be far preferable to the drabness of East Berlin.

The Russian didn't respond to the implied criticism, tensed forward on the seat, gazing directly ahead. He remained that way until they approached the army camp: not before the car passed through the guarded entrance did he show any relaxation, and then only to look sideways at Reimann, set-faced. Turev said: ‘I've got you safely back on Russian territory.'

They pulled up in front of a low barrack block. There were uniformed men everywhere, most of them armed. As they got out of the car there was the fluttering noise of a camouflaged helicopter lifting off from a nearby pad, making any conversation impossible. The Russian jerked his hand, gesturing Reimann to follow. The barrack building appeared to be guarded by more armed men.

The room into which Reimann was led was larger than that at Johannisstrasse: a briefing chamber, he guessed. As he entered the balding, bearded man he'd expected to see earlier rose from behind a desk, supporting himself against it with both hands. Reimann's passing awareness was that this man was shaking, too.

‘BASTARD!' Sorokin yelled, purple-faced, a vein pumping in his forehead. He'd needed the release, in his personal terror, but he at once regretted the outburst, wanting to appear controlled.

Reimann was momentarily speechless. ‘What the…?' he groped.

‘Bastard!' repeated Sorokin, but quieter now, threateningly so. ‘But you're going to tell me! You're going to be questioned by experts, and we're going to use every chemical we've got until you tell us.' The biggest political disaster for years, he thought: since the new thinking and the reforms of glasnost and perestroika. With its diplomatic but still unannounced agreement to on-site inspection in Germany, NATO had called Moscow's bluff. So they'd lost the demand for Warsaw inclusion. Had to withdraw the troops as undertaken and surrendered God knows how much conventional armaments. Sorokin knew he'd be stripped of his promotion. They all would. There would be other, worse punishment.

‘Please!' said Reimann. He extended his arms, helplessly. There was an immediate noise behind him, and he turned and saw there were three armed Soviet soldiers inside the room: they'd started forward at his movement. Reimann blinked back to the still standing, puce-faced Sorokin and said: ‘I don't understand … you must tell …'

‘It's not going to work!' sneered Sorokin, mocking now. ‘So who is it? The West Germans? The CIA? The British? Who? Who have you gone over to? Easy to see now why you felt able to object and argue as you did, about every order. Took so long. And why you weren't worried at the West German counter-intelligence investigation. Was that when they got to you? Turned you? But you mistimed everything.. Let it run too long! So now we've got you! And how we've got you!'

Reimann shook his head, punch-drunk. ‘You must tell me …' he tried again, desperately. ‘I can't…?'

Sorokin ignored him, consumed with rage, terrified for himself. The noise of another helicopter seemed to remind him. He nodded through the wired windows and said: ‘That's how you're being taken back to Moscow. You thought you were safe, didn't you? Thought you could go on fooling us! Laughing at us! Not at any risk, coming here today! You're going to know just how much at risk you are! You'll go insane, you know! You're going to have so much pain you're going to lose your mind. In the end you'll beg to be killed. And you will be. I promise you that. But not until you've told me every secret and every trick. Everything that you've done. Bastard!'

‘I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GONE WRONG!' Reimann screamed back at the man.

‘Take him,' Sorokin ordered the waiting guards.

Jutta stared down at the official communication on flimsy paper, but didn't see the words. ‘Dead!' she said, echoing what the prison official had announced, handing it to her in her clerk's office of the Interior Ministry building in central Moscow.

‘That's what it says.' The official's voice was hard, surly.

‘How … it doesn't say …'

‘That's all you're permitted to know. Just that he's dead.' No official document anywhere recorded that Otto Reimann had died in agony, under interrogation, still unable to answer the questions of the frantic Dimitri Sorokin.

‘No!' wailed Jutta. The only hope to which she had clung, all these weeks, was that somehow Otto would find a way to get her reinstated.

‘You have to sign the receipt,' the man insisted.

‘What's going to happen to me?' said Jutta, echoing the plea she'd made to Sorokin.

‘How do I know?' said the surly official.

Chapter Forty-Six

Everyone had been extremely kind: sympathetic. ‘Everyone' didn't seem the right word. It indicated a lot of people and there weren't a lot of people. There never had been, even before Otto. Ida and the family, of course: always Ida. In a bizarre, illogical way Elke felt more embarrassed for Ida than she believed Ida was for her. In those first weeks poor Ida and even poorer Horst had gone through agonies trying to find the right phrase, until she'd become sure herself and told them they didn't have to try any more: that she knew Otto had left her, as Dietlef had left her before. As it always happened. There were still half-begun sentences that trailed away to nothing: blurted mentions of his name, gulped back, as if they were trying to swallow instead of saying it before Ida finally did say it, that she'd always thought there was something odd about him and never really trusted him. Elke was glad she hadn't talked to them about the wedding, as Reimann had urged. Just as she felt sorry for Ida, she felt pity for Horst, for losing his fiction market. And not just for Horst and his self-assurance and the extra money, although the man would never know what sort of escape he'd had. Elke was resigned to not getting the outstanding five thousand marks repaid, as she was resigned to so much else: resigned to everything.

Who else had been kind? Günther Werle, she supposed. Pleased, too, she knew. It had actually been he who raised it –
are you still friendly with the person you met through that accident? –
and within a fortnight started talking about a concert when she'd admitted that she wasn't. Elke supposed she would
go
with him, eventually. Like she might do other things, eventually. Werle wouldn't be able to fuck like Otto, but she'd come to like it so she probably would go to bed with him, if he tried hard enough. There wouldn't ever again be any danger, of course. Although at the moment she was completely celibate Elke was still taking the Pill and intended to go on doing so, although not specifically for sexual protection. Her periods
were
much easier, because of it. Elke reflected, with a cynicism that was practically permanent these days, that her less painful periods remained one of the minuscule benefits of ever having known Otto Reimann. She found it difficult to think of any others.

Elke turned on the windscreen wipers, fearing at first that it might be snow and glad when it wasn't. Not much longer, she estimated: only a week or two before hard winter. With German efficiency the autobahns were cleared very promptly, but Elke always allowed herself extra time to get to Marienfels in the winter. She'd have to remember to check her tyres, for roadworthiness in the snow. No she wouldn't, she corrected herself at once. Otto had had new tyres fitted, after the accident. Had it all happened in such short time, in less than a full year? It seemed difficult to believe.