Brandenburg (8 page)

‘Some things do,’ said Rosenharte slowly, conceding to himself the accuracy of the American’s picture. ‘Everyone is in work; they are provided for; they are guaranteed a place to live and their children are well educated - even most Western experts agree on that.’

‘Yes, but what a corrupt version of paternalism that is,’ he said, truly warming to his theme. ‘The Communist Party - the Socialist Unity Party, as you call it - expects a man to stifle all his ambition, all his views and tastes. The Party decides everything for him, from cradle to grave. And if he doesn’t go along with it, he’s put in jail. That’s hardly a healthy society.’

‘You’re right about many things in the GDR,’ said Rosenharte. ‘But you must never underestimate the Stasi. It is a state within a state. And that state has never been healthier. Nothing happens in the GDR without the Stasi knowing about it.’ He paused. ‘Three months ago, my brother’s elder son was interrogated by an officer because of an essay he wrote for his school. The teacher had passed it to them because it contained “unpatriotic and anti-social tendencies”. You know what this essay was about? The migration of birds! A ten-year-old cannot write about a bird flying over our national border without the Stasi seeing it as a threat. I repeat, do not underestimate them. Now, tell me what you want me to do. Where must I go in Leipzig? How do I communicate with you?’

‘Are you a religious man, Dr Rosenharte?’ asked Harland.

‘No.’

‘Well, we need you to be converted to the cause of Christian brotherhood and peace. It is in this context that Annalise has offered to help East Germany. As she explained in the letters she sent you in the summer, she wants to help rectify the technological imbalance between West and East. That much the Stasi know, though of course you don’t because you haven’t seen those letters. It’s the old argument about preserving peace by equalizing military power. You must put some time into thinking about this before you go back. Flesh out a story in your own words.’

Rosenharte made a mental note to do so and realized in the same moment that he would have to hone the old skills of deception and providing impromptu but convincing explanations. ‘I have very little time now. I must give my paper to the conference and make contact with my side before that.’

‘There’ll be time for everything,’ said Harland. ‘First we need to discuss how you’re going to meet Kafka.’

Harland and Griswald said goodbye to Rosenharte at the hotel, having drilled him in the procedures to be followed for contacting the West and for making himself known to Kafka in Leipzig. They waited for an hour before leaving by the service entrance and making their way to the conference centre. After the first lecture started they slipped in and joined Prelli in the projection box at the back of the lecture hall. Prelli pointed out the two Stasi agents that had been hurriedly planted in the audience. Harland watched as Jessie entered and took a seat two rows from the front. Rosenharte turned and nodded discreetly to her, at which a man on the aisle leaned forward and showed interest.

At three, Rosenharte rose and walked to the podium. An effusive Italian academic introduced him as the premier authority on early seventeenth-century drawings in East Germany and added that from the work published in the West - sadly still so limited - it was clear that as a thinker Rosenharte was breaking new ground. His work at the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, said the man, proved that the dialogue between art historians would continue to exist whatever the differences between states. Rosenharte replied with a bow, the lights dimmed and he began speaking without notes and in English.

Harland now saw an entirely different man from the wary individual he had been dealing with. He spoke fluently and addressed his audience with the charm of a politician. Five minutes into the lecture, Rosenharte pressed a button on the slide projector and on the screen there appeared a drawing in rust-coloured chalk of a cripple boy. He stared at it for a moment, then silently ran the pointing stick around the distortion of the boy’s back, hunched shoulders and empty, elfin face.

‘Ten years after this was made by the young Annibale Carracci, some words were written by William Shakespeare: “Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up.”’ He paused. ‘Beautiful words. And a beautiful drawing to describe deformity, wouldn’t you say? But this sketch before you is also revolutionary in its compassion, a work that breaks free of the controlling taste of the patrons of the time. In his own hand the artist has written beside the boy’s head, “
No so se Dio m’aiuta
” - I don’t know if God will help me. And so the artist, like a photo-journalist today, witnesses the injustice of the young boy’s condition, and provides a challenge to God and therefore to the religious authorities. Why? Why are people born like this? Why do men shrink from them and dogs bark at them in the street? These are the questions of a revolutionary conscience and I maintain a socialist conscience. Carracci calls God and the Church to account.’

Over the next forty minutes he developed the theme of artistic conscience. When he reached the end he opened his hands to the audience. ‘No,’ he said. ‘God does not help this man. But we must. That was Carracci’s message.’ With a tip of the head he thanked them for their attention.

The hall burst into spontaneous applause.

‘It’s the same lecture he gave in Leipzig. It’s why he was chosen by Kafka.’

‘He was chosen by Kafka!’ said Griswald.

Harland nodded. ‘And now I understand why.’

Griswald, no slouch when it came to reading the subtext, puckered his brow. ‘What are you talking about, Harland? What haven’t you told me?’

‘Just that. Rosenharte gave that lecture in the early summer in Leipzig. It seems that Kafka - whoever that is - liked the look of him. You see the lecture can be read two ways. If you are an unimaginative commie it appears to comply to the usual Marxist theories about the suppression of the masses and the rise of capitalism et cetera, et cetera. It can also be seen as an argument against persecution by the state and the stifling of free expression.’ ‘A bird who can sing several tunes at once,’ said Griswald. ‘Hey, look, Jessie’s on the move.’

She had left her chair and was on the edge of a group of admiring academics gathered round Rosenharte, waving her arms comically over the heads of the others. Rosenharte got up to greet her. They kissed and she gave him a light congratulatory hug. Then she broke free and tapped her wristwatch to say that she had to leave. As she went she blew him a kiss. Harland spotted the small padded envelope that she had slipped into his hand.

‘The ball’s in play and our man’s on his way,’ said Harland, noting the two Stasi agents hurrying down the central aisle to be near Rosenharte.

‘So there goes our agent. Sent before his time, scarce half made up,’ said Griswald.

The lights of fireflies were pulsing on the fringes of the airfield near Ljubljana, Slovenia when the Stasi convoy pulled up beside an old Antonov 26 which stood with its props gently revolving in the warm night air. Rosenharte watched them fleetingly before the party clambered up a retractable stairway and dispersed through the aircraft. It smelled of fuel and tired upholstery.

Biermeier appeared in the cockpit door looking self-satisfied, walked up the aisle nodding to his men and sat down heavily next to Rosenharte.

‘Which airport are we flying into?’ asked Rosenharte.

‘It’s enough for you to know that you’re returning to your homeland,’ he replied.

‘I hope there’s something to drink. Anything will do - a beer or some water.’

Biermeier gave him a long-suffering look and barked the order to one of the Stasi officers who had accompanied them from Trieste, then turned to Rosenharte. ‘So, you got the first delivery from your friend. That is good. But what interests me is the dead man. Who was he?’

‘I told Heise. I don’t know - some drunk who had a heart attack.’

Biermeier nodded and frowned at the same time. Rosenharte examined his profile with interest. His runaway chin and sloping forehead meant that his face ran to a bulbous point at his nose. He had several moles on his neck, which evidently presented problems when he was shaving, and a little red rash had appeared at the top of his cheeks. He was unprepossessing and oafish, yet he was far from stupid. He gave the impression of a man with a large character who’d consciously forced his personality into the Stasi norms of merciless reliability.

‘We’ll have to look into it further. You must understand that this seems very suspicious. We know he was following you in Trieste.’

Rosenharte shrugged. ‘Look, I don’t know who the hell he was. I didn’t want to go to Trieste in the first place. Schwarzmeer forced me. Frankly, I don’t want anything to do with this business.’

‘You have no choice. Now tell me what was in that package she gave you.’

‘I have no idea. You have the package.’

‘But she must have told you what was in it. She must have made a hint or two.’

Rosenharte recoiled from his garlic breath. ‘I know nothing except that it concerns Nato defence programs. Why don’t you open it for yourself?’

‘She must have told you more.’

‘Is this an official debrief, or should I wait until I see General Schwarzmeer?’

‘This is my operation - I have security clearance.’

‘As I understand it, this operation concerns the gravest issues of national security. Open the package but don’t compromise me. I’ve done my job.’ He turned away and looked out on the flashing light at the end of the wing. Eventually Biermeier gave up on him and moved to be with the other members of his team. An unexplained delay kept them there for an hour before the engines started up and the plane rumbled down the tarmac, causing the fittings of the interior to squeak and the lockers to crash open. Once they were airborne, Rosenharte moved to the port side of the cabin to look out over the Alps with a certain boyish glee, as they took a course that skirted Austria and flew north-east towards Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The landscape was pretty well illuminated by the half moon and he could just make out the ridges along the tops of the mountains. He thought of walking the valleys below with his brother, a thing they had promised they would do once Konnie’s health improved. He always insisted it was simply a matter of time but two years had passed without him being able to raise the energy. He needed treatment in the West and that was what Rosenharte was going to get for him.

After two hours, with first light beginning to show in the east, the plane circled three times then landed on a runway at a military base somewhere in the south of the GDR. They taxied past the humps of fortified aircraft hangars where men in overalls could be seen moving about beneath naked lights.

Two Ladas and a military truck awaited them, but only Biermeier and three officers got off the plane with Rosenharte. Then the Antonov, emitting a good deal of black exhaust from its starboard engine, turned and prepared to take off again, he assumed for Berlin-Schönefeld, where Annalise’s material would be examined.

Now back on German soil, the Stasi had become a degree more officious and, as they walked to the cars, the largest of the men took hold of his upper arm. Rosenharte shook himself free and spun round. ‘Understand this: I am not your prisoner!’ Biermeier nodded to the man, who dropped back a couple of paces, but Rosenharte knew that this didn’t bode well. In their eyes he was more suspect than helper.

He had to reverse that.

They set off through what he knew must be a restricted zone. On several occasions the empty road swung by large compounds of apartment blocks and stores that had been flung down in the great beech forests to accommodate the Russian military, massive buildings quite out of character with their surroundings. About forty-five minutes on, as the road began to climb, they reached a gateway and two men appeared from a hut behind some bushes. After checking their credentials and scanning the faces in the cars, they opened the gates. A long drive led to a clearing in the woods where there were four well-tended, single-storey summerhouses, all with verandas. The model for these was the Russian dacha, though there was a defended, sinister air about them. All the windows and doors were fitted with grilles. Despite the rustic setting, the place had somehow been impregnated with the Stasi’s dismal paranoia.

He was led to the furthest house and down some steps to a basement, which was so soundly built that it might have served as a bomb shelter. He was shown to a large room with a bed, table, chairs and a glass bowl in which there rested a solitary apple. The light came in through four horizontal windows along the ceiling. ‘You will remain here until they call for you,’ said Biermeier. ‘Everything you need is here and food will be brought to you.’

‘I have commitments in Dresden tomorrow,’ Rosenharte said.

Biermeier regarded him as though he were a child. ‘The only commitments you have are to the state, Herr Doktor.’

For three days Rosenharte saw no one apart from the men who brought his meals and escorted him for a daily turn in the grounds. When he asked for something to read, he was given two old copies of
Neues Deutschland
and
Wochenpost
, and a translation of stories by Jack London. It took all his self-discipline to avoid worrying. He told himself that he was being held while Annalise’s material was assessed and they decided whether to proceed further. But he also understood they would be checking on every detail concerning Annalise’s position at Nato, her life in Canada and her present circumstances in Brussels. He could be expected to know little of this, but they would look for inconsistencies between what they’d discovered and his account. He went over and over everything that Harland and the American had told him, praying at the same time that they had given Annalise’s new life convincing depth. A single error, the slightest hint of incongruity or a sense that Annalise’s existence was just too two-dimensional to be real, and he would be done for.