Little Grey Mice (47 page)

‘Why so early?'

‘I felt like getting up.'

‘You all right?'

‘You asked me that last night.' Elke regretted the hint of impatience.

‘You were a long time in the bathroom.'

‘I'm fine, really.' Dear God, how much she wished that were true! She shouldn't become irritated with him. He hadn't done anything wrong – nothing they hadn't done knowingly together – and he was only showing he loved her, and she was going to need his support and love a great deal very soon. She was going to need a lot of things.

‘You'd tell me if there were, wouldn't you?' he insisted. Reimann realized he was genuinely concerned
for
Elke, not for any difficulty an illness or indisposition in a manipulated victim might cause him.

‘I'd tell you,' Elke promised, looking into the wardrobe with her back to him, so he could not see her face. There's going to be a lot to tell you, my darling, she thought: I hope it isn't too much.

‘Come back to bed.'

‘I've bathed.'

‘Bath again.'

‘I don't feel like it.'

‘You didn't feel like it last night.'

‘The curse is hanging around.' How fervently she hoped that were true!

‘I'm sorry,' Reimann said, immediately contrite. He realized he hadn't kept the careful note of monthly dates he'd once determined to do. It had scarcely been possible, being called more often than he had expected to East Berlin, in addition to the times he'd felt it necessary to be away from Elke. ‘Can I get you something? Some pills: I've got some that might help.'

‘No. But thank you.' She really was feeling better. She didn't ache any more. Or feel tired, either. She smiled at him as he finally got out of bed. He
did
love her, she knew: truly loved her. She didn't have any reason to fear his reaction. It was pointless to worry: to worry as completely as she was worrying, that is.

The day began working as well as Reimann wanted it to – as most things had worked out on this operation – with the arrival of the morning mail. He recognized the Australian postmark before opening the letter, of course, so he was able to position himself by his desk and prepare the outburst.

‘Shit!' he exploded. ‘The bastards!'

‘What is it!' demanded Elke, alarmed, from across the room.

‘Nothing!' Reimann's voice was loud, the rudeness of a man preoccupied with a private crisis. In feigned anger he threw the letter down, open, on his desk.

‘Is there a problem?'

‘I said it was nothing!' Forceful enough, he thought: no more.

‘I'm sorry.' Elke felt crushed.

‘I didn't mean that:
I'm
sorry,' said Reimann, apologetically. ‘It's … maybe we'll talk about it later. Sorry.' Urgently, clearly wanting to change the subject and the embarrassment, Reimann said: ‘Are you coming tonight?'

‘Yes,' Elke said at once. Unsure how she would physically feel, she said: ‘Maybe we could stay in again: I'll cook.' She hoped cooking food wouldn't disgust her.

‘Whatever you say,' Reimann agreed. He'd always intended that they should remain in the flat again: she had worrying news to learn.

The normal and established routine of the Cabinet Secretariat was still disrupted by the intelligence investigators. There was a mid-morning meeting that Elke attended with Werle at which the senior intelligence officer reported that Gerda Pohl remained adamant during an overnight interview that she could not remember the contents or the amount of the material she had sent to the Soviet embassy. The man dismissed the Russian denial that they had received anything and Werle again talked of a disaster. At the further request of the intelligence officer, who said it was necessary to make the damage assessment as comprehensive as possible, Elke initiated a further search of her reference system for documents handled by Gerda Pohl two years prior to the period already processed by the investigators. That afternoon Werle was summoned, alone, by the Chancellor to give a personal report of what potentially could have been lost. When he returned Werle was more distressed than Elke had known him to be during any previous government emergency.

‘It's impossible to calculate, with any accuracy!' insisted the Cabinet Secretary.

‘Jail, obviously,' said Werle, bitterly.

‘At her age!'

‘Age hasn't got anything to do with it.'

‘What's being done, positively?'

‘There's little that
can
be done. The Chancellor has decided to make a statement this afternoon, rejecting the Soviet denial. He's going to insist that the leakage is of low level. There are going to be a series of individual briefings, to Western ambassadors. And to NATO ambassadors. We're hoping they'll accept the reassurance. The problem is that this isn't our first spy scandal, is it?'

‘It's difficult to get the Secretariat functioning properly,' said Elke.

‘It's difficult to get anything functioning properly.'

Just before she was preparing to leave the Chancellery Ida telephoned, checking on their regular weekly lunch, and Elke used the continuing investigation as an excuse to avoid it. She didn't think she would be able to deflect Ida as successfully as she had deflected Reimann that morning. Ida knew her too well: was too responsive to the almost telepathic sixth sense between them. When the moment came to tell Ida (
if
, she corrected, desperately) there wouldn't be the need to say a lot.

‘It must be hell,' said Ida, with unintentional irony.

‘It is,' agreed Elke, sincerely.

‘The weekend, then? With Otto?'

‘I hope so,' said Elke. She was still reluctant to commit him to anything without his agreeing it first. Particularly now.

Elke was grateful she was experiencing no discomfort – no aching, no sickness, no lassitude – when she reached Rochusplatz that night. She had the urge to fuck – mentally using the word he'd taught her to use and which they did together, always – and was sure they would later. She'd only said her period was hanging around, not that she had it: even that hadn't been a bar, a few times. He still seemed subdued, when he admitted her. They kissed and sat without need to talk and he suggested an aperitif which she refused, not prepared to risk any change in the way she felt.

Reimann regretted the refusal, not having intended to begin the production until several drinks had mellowed her into being as receptive as he'd planned. He said: ‘I want to apologize again for how I was this morning. It was very rude. Unforgivable.'

‘I'd forgotten all about it,' Elke lied. The letter he had so angrily discarded remained lying on his desk in the corner, near the still unfilled bookshelves. It looked strangely upright, held up by the way it had been folded inside its envelope.

If her assurance was true, which he doubted, it wouldn't stay that way much longer. He got up from where they were sitting side by side, picked up the letter and the preceding cable and brought it over to her. ‘Look at that!' he said, exasperation replacing the supposed anger. ‘What in the name of Christ do they expect! Fucking miracles! I work my ass off for them and that's all the thanks I get!'

Elke read the cable first. It said:
Greatly disappointed your continuing inability properly to grasp and refect enormity of situation in which you're placed. Yet again unwilling to use your assessment, which unreflected by any other observer.

The letter was much longer. It began with apparent friendliness, addressing him by his Christian name, but the complaints followed in mounting succession:
Greatly disappointed
was repeated. One phrase talked of
constant embarrassment, compared with our competitors.
He was accused of absence of depth and necessary detail. The concluding paragraph read:
After so much hope and expectation we must reluctantly warn you that unless there is a major and sustained improvement in the next and immediate six months we will have no alternative but to reconsider your appointment as our Bonn-based chief European correspondent.

Elke handed back both to him, her hands shaking. The feeling of sickness was back, although not the same as it had been that morning. She said: ‘I think they're being very unreasonable.'

‘Unreasonable! They're being assholes!'

‘What can you do?'

‘What can I do, more than I am already doing at the moment?'

‘You could resign if they tried to reassign you,' said Elke eagerly, pitifully anxious to help but even more anxious to keep him in Bonn. ‘Try to get a position here with some other organization.'

Reimann nodded, seeming to consider the suggestion. He said: ‘Every worthwhile news outlet has a person here in Bonn, after all that's happened. It's one of the major news capitals in the world, and it will remain so for a long time. So there aren't openings left any more. And Australia would appoint someone to replace me and the word would very quickly get around that they'd dumped me because I wasn't good enough. So even if an opening were to arise, I wouldn't get it. No one wants to employ a political commentator who's been dismissed for not being able to do the job.'

‘So you'd have to leave Bonn?' she asked, with defeated finality.

‘I don't want to: I'd try not to,' said Reimann, hanging out the slender hope for her to grasp.

‘But you might have to, in the end?'

Reimann stirred himself. The effort he had to make for the optimism looked painfully obvious. ‘I've got six months!' he said. ‘In six months there'll be cables and letters telling me I'm the best commentator they've ever known!'

‘What
can
you do better than you're already doing?' insisted Elke, uninfluenced by his supposed assurance.

‘I'll think of something,' he insisted, the struggle for optimism still clear to her.

Both agreed they weren't hungry. Elke made omelettes which they scarcely ate. Reimann opened wine but they each took only one glass.

Normally he left the bedroom light on, because they both liked to see. That night he turned it off the moment they got into bed. In the darkness he gave an uncomfortable laugh and said: ‘The situation is reversed.'

‘Reversed?'

‘Tonight it's me who doesn't feel like it. I'm sorry … it's just …'

‘I understand … I don't want to either … I told you this morning,' said Elke, glad of her earlier excuse. She didn't want to any more, either. I can't lose him now, she thought: now, more than ever, I can't lose him.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Elke believed herself to be so close to him now that her initial disappointment at Reimann's apology for having to be away from Bonn for the second successive weekend went beyond being automatic to be almost instinctive. She didn't show it, of course, insisting that she understood the effort he had to put into work, particularly after the cable and the letter he had shown her

Her disappointment did not last long. She actually became glad they were going to be apart, temporarily relieving her of the strain of trying to explain away the depression she couldn't conceal. Elke clung to her original excuse and came close to collapse when he said it was a long time coming. She almost broke down again when, with the compassion to which she'd become accustomed and which was one of the many reasons why she loved him so much, Reimann later suggested she consult a gynaecologist if she was going to suffer this degree of discomfort every month. Elke said she was thinking about doing so.

The Gerda Pohl affair continued to dominate Güther Werle's attention, so much so that he did not notice any change in Elke, which was a further relief. And a scheduled meeting of the special committee was postponed for the Cabinet to discuss the espionage débâcle, so she was spared the extra burden that inevitably imposed. She nevertheless tried to escape into as much activity as possible. She immersed herself in clearing up the backlog of normal work delayed by the counterintelligence inquiries and presence, continuing to prepare Werle's daily itinerary but reducing it to the absolute minimum to enable the man to concentrate on the Pohl affair. And with her increased security clearance Elke was able to take over and handle a proportion of the day-to-day business with which Werle would normally have dealt.

None of it succeeded in blotting out the one spectre crowding her mind.

On the Friday she told Ida by telephone that they would not be accepting the weekend luncheon invitation, not positively lying but allowing the inference of doing something else with Reimann, even surer now than she had been in avoiding the midweek encounter that she could not have sustained several hours with her sister without a blurted, tearful confession.

‘Definitely next Saturday!' Ida insisted. ‘Horst has got some new story ideas he wants to discuss with Otto. And we haven't talked for ages.'

So far the Australian payments had enabled them to repay Elke twenty thousand Deutschmarks against the original loan. ‘If we possibly can,' Elke agreed. She didn't want to contemplate what there could be to talk about by the following weekend.

‘Everything still OK between you two?'

‘Fine,' said Elke. I'm soon going to find out, she thought.

‘I've got something to tell you,' said Ida, circumspectly. ‘About a friend.'

Elke tried to sound interested, which she normally would have been, but it was hard for her. She guessed there were other people in the house at Bad Godesberg whom Ida did not want to overhear. Safe at her end Elke said: ‘About Kurt?'

‘Yes.'

‘You've finished it?' demanded Elke, hopefully.

‘Wait until we meet,' Ida refused.

The awareness that for the first time in her life she didn't
want
to meet Ida, not yet, not now, burst in upon Elke as she replaced the receiver. She became physically hot, without bothering to seek out which of all the jumbled-up emotions brought that particular feeling. Her mind, every interrupted reflection,
was
jumbled, and from the mêlée came a phrase, and not just the words but the tone of voice in which they'd been spoken to her.
Stop feeling so sorry for yourself… so full of self-pity.
It was Ida's recollected voice, although Elke wasn't sure if the words were precisely accurate: wasn't sure of the actual occasion or reason, except that she believed the accusation had been comparatively recent. Not important, not when or how. But the warning was important. That
was
what was happening: she was letting herself be sucked down yet again into a swamp of sorrowful self-pity. She'd stopped letting that happen, months ago: and it had to remain stopped, never permitted back. OK, the mental highs and lows of the past days (what highs?) had been understandable, permissible, but she had to accept that the days were just that, past. Now she had to consider the future. Make plans. Make a list, even. Numbered, maybe: first priority, second priority, third priority and so on.