Little Grey Mice (24 page)

Reimann sat reflectively for several moments. ‘To whom could the frugal, careful Elke Meyer be suddenly paying out thirty thousand Deutschmarks?'

‘Which was about half what she had in her accounts,' said Turev, in further disclosure. ‘And you are right. She
is
frugal and she
is
careful. So it must have been extremely important. Any ideas?'

Reimann shook his head. ‘Not yet. But I'd like to know. That's quite a lot of money by her standards.'

‘By a lot of people's standards,' said Sorokin.

‘It would be good if it provided some point of pressure.'

‘We'll continue to monitor,' Turev undertook.

‘I want a poison,' Reimann announced, almost casually. ‘It won't need to be particularly strong: it's only a minimal body weight.'

‘What for?' demanded Sorokin, bewildered.

‘She's very attached to the dog,' said Reimann. ‘She can't be allowed another attachment, other than me. I am going to kill it.'

‘Nothing!' queried Günther Werle. He was relieved. At the beginning, when he'd first necessarily proposed to the security service what he intended for Elke Meyer, there had been concern at her having had an illegitimate child.

‘Nothing whatsoever to concern us,' confirmed the counterintelligence officer. ‘Or you. We've had the fullest cooperation from the American FBI and from Australian counter-intelligence. Otto Reimann checks out everywhere. He's quite genuine. We even had some of our analysts look at articles he had written. They were pretty dull but politically very sound.'

So he could go ahead, Werle decided. He wondered how Elke would respond. In her usual way, he guessed: calm, unflustered, utterly competent. He wanted very much to make the announcement but there were still the final formalities to be completed. Not much longer, though. His mind lingered upon her involvement with another man. Not really an involvement: certainly not in any way that should concern him. Which in itself was a premature reflection. There was nothing in their relationship which gave him any right to be jealous. Not yet. And in any case, jealousy was an immature emotion, one he was sure he did not possess.

Chapter Seventeen

Despite his dismissing the danger of a security investigation, Reimann remained cautious in returning to Bonn, glad in hindsight that he had taken similar precautions at the outset of the journey. He actually stayed a full day in Frankfurt inquiring among financial institutions about the importance of a stable Deutschmark in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, material he could use in the next article for Australia. Throughout he was nerve-stetched alert for any surveillance and detected none, nor did he relax on his arrival at Cologne that night or during the drive into Bonn. He paid off the taxi two streets before Rochusplatz to approach on foot, but saw nothing to make him fear observation on his apartment. At the press centre the following morning he was greeted quite normally by journalists or officials of whom inquiries might have been made by intelligence officers. He began to feel easier.

After fulfilling his duty attendance at the press headquarters, Reimann went directly to the garage, initially ignoring his own restored vehicle to concentrate upon the Volkswagen. It had been repaired superbly. Reimann handed over the promised bonus and added a personal cheque for fifteen hundred marks to the prepared bank draft to settle in full the original estimate and the excess charges. He had the amount of that provisional estimate receipted to the Australian cover insurance company, with a separate receipt for the additional charges to be attached to his monthly expenses account. He had a second full receipt, which represented Elke's authority to retrieve her car, put into the Volkswagen.

Elke answered the telephone on the second ring, slightly breathless, as if she had hurried to it.

‘The car is ready,' Reimann announced. ‘It's waiting for collection.'
Had
she hurried? he wondered: he hoped so.

‘That's wonderful,' said Elke. It seemed a word she was constantly using in conversations with him. It always appeared appropriate.

‘I inspected it today: they've done a first-class job. You wouldn't know it's been in an accident. I'm sorry it took longer than I promised.' The work had been finished on schedule: the Berlin visit had delayed Reimann from completing the financial formalities.

‘What do I have to do?' asked Elke, predictably.

‘Nothing,' said Reimann, airily. He wished they had been face to face so that he could have gauged her reaction to his clear indifference. But then talking on the telephone instead of personally going to Kaufmannstrasse, which he was sure she had expected, was all part of that dismissal.

‘Nothing!' she echoed.

‘It's
all
fixed,' Reimann repeated. ‘I've left the release forms, all signed, with the car. All you've got to do is pick it up.' She couldn't misunderstand what he was saying now: goodbye, brief acquaintance. Finished.

‘Oh,' Elke said. The disappointment was obvious.

‘Is there a problem?' asked Reimann, solicitously.

‘No … I … No problem at all.'

All alone with no one to help any more, thought Reimann: just as I planned this moment to be. He said: ‘I think the garage expect you to collect it tomorrow, if it's convenient. If it's not, you'd better give them a call.'

‘Yes … of course … I'll get it tomorrow.' Elke strained to think what she had to do, how she had to do it. Ask Günther for time off again, she supposed. Make an appointment with the garage, so the car would be immediately ready for collection. But Otto (she was mentally calling him Otto now?) had already said it was ready. No purpose then. She'd call, though. So that it
would
be waiting on the forecourt when she arrived to drive directly back to the Chancellery. Only be away for an hour. Two at the most. Wouldn't it have been wonderful (that word again!) if he'd collected it for her: driven it to Kaufmannstrasse and come up to the apartment to hand over the keys and whatever a release document was? She had another bottle of whisky. Two, actually, just in case. In case of what? Nothing. Not important. Somehow she'd fixed her mind upon his bringing the car back to her, that's all. It would have finished everything off. It would have been so …

‘Well, that's it then!' said Reimann, briskly.

‘Yes.'

‘In future I'll lock my car.'

‘Yes.'

It was working very well, he judged. Prolong her helplessness for a moment. ‘Sorry we met under such upsetting circumstances.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm glad it's finally been resolved.'

‘Yes.'

Elke coughed, because something caught in her throat. She was anxious to sound casual, as he was casual, but couldn't find the words: she rarely could.

It hadn't been necessary to be face to face. Or, he thought, widening the reflection, to be as cautious as he had been to the Russians in East Berlin, about his chances of success. Still wise, though, to have behaved as he had. ‘Goodnight,' he said.

Where were the words? The proper, sensible adult words that should be so easy for her! She said: ‘Thank you, for everything. You've been … you've made it extremely easy for me. I'm grateful. Really I am.' A tongue-tied schoolgirl, Elke thought, bitterly: just like a tongue-tied schoolgirl. Ida wouldn't have been like that: Ida would have been talking easily Joking even, making friends.
Upsetting circumstances but now we've met. Why don't we get together again? All's well that ends better. You call me, I'll call you. Whatever.
Ida was never tongue-tied: never like a schoolgirl. Even if some of the phrases were gauche, too obviously borrowed from some imported, American-originated soap opera. Did she want to copy or borrow from American soap opera? No. Just to be able to find words, to feel comfortable, the way the calm, rarely flustered people in soap operas always appeared, smooth-talking and unharassed and in command of everything, themselves most of all.

‘So goodbye again. Take care.' And Reimann abruptly put the telephone down, not allowing her a farewell reply. Elke Meyer had to be alone now, think alone, grow further uncertain. Marinate was the word that most readily came into Reimann's mind: meat became more tender if it was allowed a period to marinate.

Jutta's response, after the preliminary telephone code, was as prompt as Elke's had been but without the breathlessness. But then she'd had the forewarning to be by the receiver, waiting.

‘I tried telephoning several times,' she accused at once. ‘There was no reply.'

‘I was out.'

‘I called around midnight. And then early: before seven.'

There were a lot of easy explanations for his absence in East Berlin: the most obvious was travelling beyond Bonn ostensibly to research his articles, absolutely to maintain his cover. He'd even gone through the motions, in Frankfurt. Why should he have to bother? It was good not having to explain to anybody but his ultimate Soviet masters. Maybe not even to them. ‘I said I was out.'

‘I see,' said Jutta.

Hard then soft,
remembered Reimann. The exact phrase that one of the more frequent Balashikha instructors had used: the vague-mannered, dyed-haired one who'd invoked the cliche in describing an interrogation technique and who had appeared butter-soft until you'd looked at his eyes and realized they were empty and utterly devoid of any feeling, any pity. Reimann said: ‘Why don't we meet tomorrow?'

‘What's wrong with tonight?'

‘I have things to do.' He didn't: he wanted an evening alone at Rochusplatz, to think and to review things.
One misplaced brick in a foundation can reduce a skyscraper to dust:
another dictum, on the importance of every detail, from a lecturer he could not recall as vividly as the fey man.

Jutta didn't offer any argument. ‘What time will you be here tomorrow then?' Her voice was dull.

Reimann did not want to spend every moment of his time with Jutta mentally assessing every word before he uttered it in front of the microphones he was convinced existed in the Nord-Stadt apartment. There was no reason why Jutta should be constantly exposed, either. He said: ‘Why don't we get out for the day? It's nearly summer, after all!' The telephone would be tapped, of course. So what? Why shouldn't the two of them spend a day out together?

‘Where?' There was a lift to her voice.

Reimann hadn't decided. ‘The river!' he said, on impulse. ‘Why don't we take a Rhine cruise? There's an embarkation point just south of the Kennedy Bridge.'

‘I know it,' said Jutta, more eager still. ‘What time?'

‘Early,' Reimann insisted: there was as much danger going every day to the press building as there was not going at all. ‘Let's take whatever ferry is leaving around ten thirty?'

‘I'll be waiting,' promised Jutta. Which she was, by the ticket kiosk. She wore light jeans and a striped cotton shirt, with a sweater bundled over one arm. Reimann thought she was the sort of woman able to look good – beautiful even – in either formal or casual clothes. She hurried forward when she saw him and he reached out invitingly, happy to see her. They kissed and he said: ‘Today and tomorrow and the day after! How's that?'

‘Good.' Her attitude was light and frothy, for which he was glad: he didn't want the introverted seriousness Jutta had shown since they'd left Moscow. Nor, either, the demanding demeanour that had been so common earlier, in West Berlin.

There was an explanatory map in a kiosk display case. Jutta studied it for several moments and then, without looking at him, said: ‘How about Linz?'

‘Linz is fine.' Reimann bought the tickets and cupped Jutta's arm to lead her to the jetty. It was going to be hot later, but at this moment, still comparatively early, it was merely pleasantly warm. Out on the river the incredibly long container barges ploughed nose-down in either direction, like cubed alligators made from children's building blocks. Beside him Jutta covered with hers the hand he had against her arm. It was not a particularly attentive action, more something she did automatically, the unthinking movement of the person who had known the other for a long time. A married couple's: I-know-you're-there-and-I-know-you're-mine. Reimann smiled down at her, wishing there were more such gestures, truly attentive or not.

Was she withholding or manipulating things from Moscow to maintain the tiny imagined supremacy that was so important to her? It didn't matter, with the dual system of control that had been devised now: he wished so much that it hadn't always been so important for her to dominate, in everything.

The ferry was a fast-moving hydrofoil, which meant they were entirely enclosed on rows of seats close together, making it impossible to talk of anything they did not wish to be overheard by other passengers. So without discussing it they decided not to talk at all. They sat arm in arm, her hand still covering his, staring out at the landmarks as they sped up beneath a hovering rainbow of coloured spray. They encountered a lot of cubed alligators and some others hump-backed with what looked like coal. With an irony Reimann was not to know for some time, he pointed out the Drachenfels Castle towering over Königswinter, with its wine slopes in between.

At Linz, still arm in arm, they used the pedestrian underpass to negotiate the shore road into the old town, entering through the medieval gate. As they began climbing the cobbled hill, Jutta said: ‘There's no reason why we can't have days like this all the time, is there? Even when you're with her, I mean?'

So Jutta had accepted that he was going to succeed in seducing Elke Meyer. ‘None at all. She'll be working during the day. I won't be with her every night, either.'

Both spoke quite dispassionately, as if Elke Meyer were a thing, an object, not a person.

‘I'd like that.' Jutta halted, so he had to stop too, and looked directly up at him. ‘I'm bored,' she announced. ‘In Berlin there was something to do, every day: we really
worked,
quite properly, at the agency. Here there's nothing for me to do, except go to Vienna once a fortnight. The rest of the time all I do is read books I don't enjoy, watch bloody awful television, bloody awful films, drive around the countryside or wander around Bonn. You know how long it takes, to walk completely around Bonn? Two hours! I timed it!'