Little Grey Mice Page 11

  With his settling-in allowance Reimann opened an account at a branch of the Deutschcbank on Dohmstrasse. On his way to the bank he passed a car showroom on Flodelingsweg, so in the afternoon he returned and bought a two-year-old 190 series Mercedes. It was black, the bodywork showed no signs of rust and there were only 24,000 kilometres on the clock. He arranged insurance to be covered by the Australian magazines.

  And on the appointed day he made contact with Jutta, in a smoked-wood and yellow-tiled inn on the cobbled street connecting the market square with that end of the Münsterplatz where the statue of Beethoven gazed reprovingly down. Reimann arrived early. It was a place of nooks and crannies and coloured-glass partitions between tables. Reimann chose to stand at a decorated pedestal. He ordered a Kölsch, a small beer.

  Jutta entered precisely on time. She was wearing a cotton summer skirt with short-sleeved blouse open at the neck: it stopped far short of being revealing but was still low enough to show an enticing degree of cleavage. He saw several men openly turn to admire her and guessed Jutta would be aware, too: she was always aware of herself. Jutta chose wine. Reimann stayed with the beer he already had.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked, returning from the bar with the drinks.

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

  ‘No trouble in Berlin?’

  She shook her head. ‘The landlord demanded three months’ severance rent. The office made me a presentation, a flower vase.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘That you’d decided on a change and gone to Munich, where you’d got a job with an accountancy firm, and that I was going to join you. I said we’d decided after all against your commuting at weekends.’

  It made their relationship sound as if he were the decisive partner, which he hadn’t ever been. ‘What about possible contact?’

  ‘I said we hadn’t got a permanent apartment yet, and I would write when we were properly settled. They gave me the address of the Munich office: asked me to get in touch and consider working there.’

  ‘Did you discuss this in Moscow?’ It was a testing question.

  Jutta hesitated before saying ‘Of course. It was considered satisfactory: a normal, safe explanation for a family move.’

  Reimann would have expected a more complicated cover story. It was hardly important. The test had been to discover how forthcoming she would be: he believed he had his answer. ‘What about here?’ he asked.

  ‘My apartment is a cardboard rectangle: I can hear the next-door neighbour fart,’ she complained. ‘And I’ve bought a car, an Audi. What’s it like at Rochusplatz?’

  So she knew where his flat was, although he hadn’t been told her intended address. Part of Moscow trying to build up the importance of her intermediary role? Or did they intend manipulating him and Jutta just slightly against each other, to ensure that each worked properly? He said: ‘Old. Big. Not bad really. I’ve bought a second-hand Mercedes.’

  ‘What do you think of Bonn?’

  Now it was Reimann’s turn to hesitate. Smiling, to take any offence from the question, he said: ‘Is this Jutta Höhn asking her husband a casual question over a lunchtime drink? Or is it Jutta Sneider asking her field officer a professional question the answer to which will be relayed elsewhere?’

  Jutta didn’t smile back. ‘It was a casual question over a lunchtime drink,’ she insisted. ‘But I suppose I might be asked how you’re settling in.’ Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact.

  ‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ Reimann was intensely curious how she would reply.

  ‘Not if we don’t let it become so. Which I don’t intend.’ It was the Jutta of Berlin, autocratic and impatient with doubt.

  ‘As long as we both know the pitfalls.’ He didn’t have to defer to her, as he had before from professional necessity and expectation. She wasn’t the leader any more. He decided against openly confronting her. It was a realization she had to reach for herself: far better that way.

  Jutta refused to let it drop. ‘So answer the question! What do you think of Bonn?’

  Guardedly Reimann said: ‘Quite different from what I expected. Very small, compared with Berlin … I haven’t done anything about supposedly working, not yet, so I don’t know how difficult that is going to be. I certainly haven’t had any difficulty orientating myself. I already know where the districts are: how to get to Dransdorf from Hardtberg and back again. And I’ve been across the river, to Beuel and Küdinghoven.’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve been busy.’ There was a mocking, almost critical tone in her voice.

  Maybe he deserved it. Reimann thought, unoffended and most definitely unimpressed. His response to her question had ended more fulsomely than he’d intended: as he’d reported to her when they worked in Berlin, in fact. Mocking back he said: ‘Is that what you’re going to report?’

  Jutta looked very directly at him with her unusual, glacial eyes. ‘You trying to make some point? If you are, it’s escaping me.’

  ‘No point,’ said Reimann.

  ‘Why this attitude then?’

  Reimann thought he detected an uncertainty in her voice. ‘I don’t think I have any attitude.’

  Jutta regarded him with continued directness, for several moments. ‘This is going to be different from Berlin.’

  Reimann intentionally chose to misunderstand. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Much more important.’

  It was Jutta who backed down. ‘I want another drink.’

  The tavern had still not filled with a lunchtime crowd. When he got back to her Jutta said briskly: ‘Are you properly established?’

  ‘Almost. There are still a few formalities about the accreditation.’

  ‘Can you come back with me?’

  Reimann wanted her to supplicate. ‘Would it be wise? What about neighbours?’

  Jutta beat him and knew it. ‘It’s a very small block. There’s no concierge. The flat opposite mine is occupied by a university lecturer, who lives alone. He leaves around eight every morning and doesn’t get back until eight. He also spends a lot of time away, adjudicating examinations. In the apartment above there is a railway executive. He leaves shortly after seven. His wife is a school-teacher who goes out about half an hour later. There are no children. The apartment below is empty. No one has shown the slightest interest in knowing me and I have made it clear, by avoiding everyone, that I have no desire whatsoever to know them. At this time of the day, anyway, the entire building is completely empty: no one will be aware of your entering. Or leaving, if we time it right. Which we will. Satisfied?’

  Reimann bowed his head in acknowledgement, an exaggerated gesture, and said: ‘I am sorry, Fräulein Sneider! I forgot your expertise.’

  ‘Don’t,’ snapped Jutta. ‘And I’m only Fräulein Sneider to anyone else. To you I’m your wife. And supervisor.’

  Enough, Reimann decided. He wouldn’t argue any more.

  Jutta’s apartment was in the Nord-Stadt district and was as she’d described it. The furnishings were cheap and frail-looking and the view from the lounge window was over a patch of threadbare grass towards the backs of more box-like structures. She’d tried to improve it as much as she could. She’d installed a television and a stereo, although not as large or as extensive as those he had at Rochusplatz, and there was a profusion of flowers in vases – one her farewell gift – in the main room and in the hallway. There was also a fairly extensive collection of books and magazines in a rack that overflowed on to a small side-table. The kitchen was cramped, barely functional. Reimann decided it was fortunate she was precluded from coming to his apartment: the difference in their altered status would have been far too obvious. She would have been annoyed.

  ‘Welcome home!’ she said, twirling with her arms outstretched to emphasize its smallness.

  ‘It is not an order that you should have this apartment,’ said Reimann. ‘Why don’t you find something else?’ He felt enclosed, contained, exactly as he supposed he would feel in a box, parcelled up and wrapped f
or delivery. Delivery to where? ‘This is like living in a railway station, waiting for the train to arrive! You must get something better!’

  ‘It’s anonymous,’ reminded Jutta. ‘It’ll do, for the time being.’

  ‘You won’t be moving tomorrow. Or the day after,’ he warned. ‘We could be here for a long time. And I don’t want you living in a shabby, prefabricated place like this. You’re my wife! Do you think I’m prepared to let you stay here, in this shithole!’

  ‘I’ll make the decision, if I feel one has to be made.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous: inconvenience with no purpose. There must be hundreds of equally anonymous flats, all much better than this.’

  ‘I said I’ll move when I’m ready.’

  She’d bought pork. There was no discussion who would prepare it. Reimann roasted it with green apples, with a sour-sharp apple dressing.

  Trained as a sexual expert – practitioner, innovator, experimenter-Reimann had come to need sex, better sex than he’d ever known with Jutta. That night he went just a little further with her than he had in Moscow, using his mouth and urging her to do the same, which she’d always resisted and broke away from quickly. He was sure she had more than one orgasm. She was asleep long before he was.

  His stay at Nord-Stadt developed into a claustrophobic parody of domesticity. Reimann did not leave the apartment at any time when he might have encountered the other occupants of the block, whose every movement – although not actually farting – it was possible to hear through the inadequate walls. Jutta shopped for what they wanted to eat, which he always cooked. He told her what wine to buy: she had already stocked vodka, whisky, schnapps and brandy. They watched boring television. Each, from time to time, attempted the books and the magazines but neither was very interested. They made love only once more during his stay.

  ‘The afternoon is the safest time. Around four o’clock,’ Jutta suggested on the second day.

  ‘OK.’ Reimann was quite ready to leave. Anxious, in fact.

  Jutta indicated the telephone. ‘You’ve memorized the number?’

  ‘Of course I have.’ They’d arranged a code.

  Reimann was relieved to get back to Rochusplatz. The bread was stale, and although not sour the milk was old: he had protectively avoided engaging any trade or delivery men, just as he had avoided engaging a cleaning woman to look after the place, which needed attention. Reimann shopped leisurely for more milk and bread, with time enough before the important task of the day.

  He was in place in the carefully parked Mercedes long before he knew, from the rigidly maintained observation files, he needed to be. Elke Meyer returned from the Chancellery precisely according to schedule and parked her very clean Volkswagen exactly where he expected it to go. She entered the apartment without looking either left or right along the street, hunched slightly forward and walking quite quickly, as if she were late, which Reimann knew she was not. He remained where he was, checking further on the earlier, professional observation. It was extremely accurate. Fifteen minutes after entering the apartment Elke Meyer emerged again, with the dog on its lead, and set off in the direction he knew she would take for her evening’s walk. Poppi looked like one of those irritating, snappy sort of dogs.

  Elke Meyer was taller than he had imagined from the films and the photographs. Slimmer-legged, too. There was a stiffness about the manner in which she held herself: his impression, at first sight, was that she was apprehensive of appearing lacking in something – her stature or her dress, maybe – to anyone she might accidentally encounter. Again she walked without looking left or right, not risking the casual attention of anyone else on the street. Better able to see than when she’d come home, Reimann was aware that she looked down quite a lot, so that she would not meet the eyes of anyone directly ahead, either.

  I’m going to seduce you, Elke Meyer, Reimann thought: I’m going to strip you of clothes and attitudes and morals and inhibitions – strip you of absolutely everything – until I can do whatever I want with you. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it happening.

  *

  Elke supposed Kissel had to express the gratitude it had taken him three weekends to get around to conceding but she wished he wouldn’t: she didn’t want his stumbled thanks or foot-shuffling awkwardness, and still less the painful assurances.

  ‘I’m glad I can help,’ she said hurriedly, trying to cut him off. They were in the front drawing-room at Bad Godesberg again, waiting for Ida to appear from the kitchen. This Saturday Kissel wasn’t serving sour wine as an aperitif and Elke was grateful.

  ‘It’ll only be temporary, you understand,’ said Kissel. ‘It’ll all be repaid very soon: with the proper interest.’

  ‘I’ve talked it all through with Ida,’ she said, unhappy that it sounded as if he had no say in any discussion.

  ‘I’m writing a book,’ the man announced.

  Elke stopped just short of saying she knew that from Ida, too. Instead she said: ‘That’s fantastic’

  ‘It’s going to be a novel,’ he said. ‘A political thriller. I think it’s going to be very successful. That’s why it won’t be long before I can pay you back.’

  Elke felt herself growing hot with discomfort, more anxious than usual for Ida’s arrival. Kissel was looking at her expectantly. Elke said: ‘How much have you written, so far?’

  ‘It’s at the planning stage,’ he said. ‘Sketching out a framework: making a character list. That’s how a lot of books fail, you know. Insufficient preparation.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Elke. Poor Horst, she thought: poor innocent, day-dreaming, cuckolded Horst.

  Reimann had followed Elke from Bonn that morning but was already driving back, having positively decided how to make his first move.

  Chapter Eleven

  It had been Elke’s suggestion, instantly endorsed by Günther Werle, soon after the collapse of the Honecker regime in East Germany, to divide the official transcripts of Cabinet sessions. Non-classified accounts were distributed for preparation throughout the lower-graded staff, leaving her personally to assemble material which qualified as Secret, to be percolated into the final official records after whatever their designated release period. The days immediately prior to a Cabinet were always the busiest. Leading up to the meeting there was the agenda and the lobbying meetings with individual ministers and their permanent staff, to agree that agenda. Which invariably was not agreed at all, during those initial discussions, despite every indication that it had been. From long experience Elke automatically regarded the initial – and sometimes the second and occasionally, even the third – agenda only as a provisional document. Her sole responsibility after the Cabinet meeting, apart from extremely rare reference decisions to Werle, was to arrange the division of work, which was time-consuming because Cabinet discussions could range from quite mundane, completely non-classified matters, to debates covering the highest security prohibition. Even after the allocation was made there was usually a continuous stream of queries from secretaries who might not, for instance, have a beginning or an end to what they were entrusted to prepare and who occasionally found themselves working in complete bewilderment.

  Gerda Pohl waited patiently, seeking maximum advantage, to protest this system and counter-balance the union-referred accusation of incompetence which had occurred earlier. She attacked through the union official, not directly against Elke, producing broken-up and quite disparate tracts of discussion with the demand to know how she or any other secretary could be expected to prepare material which had no logical continuity.

  The procedure for such disputes was irrevocably established. The union representative’s request for a meeting with Elke had to be channelled through Werle, possibly – and hopefully as far as Gerda was concerned – to get Elke officially reprimanded by her superior.

  Gerda miscalculated by assuming that the system had been devised upon Elke’s authority alone. Not even Elke was aware, until the complaints procedure began, that t
he Cabinet Secretary had from the beginning suggested to the Chancellery security division that the work method be adopted as a protective measure by other ministries. As an attempt to harm Elke, Gerda’s complaint failed absolutely. Elke provided a hesitantly soft-voiced explanation, which was irrefutable either by the union or by Gerda Pohl herself. And as he had done in the previous instance, Werle insisted upon a separate interview with union officials, on this occasion further requiring security officers to take part, in order to recommend and praise Elke’s innovation.

  With her customary aversion to confrontation, once again Elke experienced neither satisfaction nor justification at the victory over the other woman. It upset a pattern, and Elke felt too many had been upset in the recent weeks. The most obvious – the most worrying — was whatever Ida was doing. Since the night of the loan Ida had not involved her or even gossiped about the affair Elke was convinced her sister was now having, but the worry and the awareness remained. During the most recent weekends Ida had been disparaging, practically contemptuous, towards her husband. And the man’s reaction was a further unsettling change. He maintained a pitiful pretence about a book which they knew and he knew would never be written. But his former forced bravura wasn’t there any more: he’d been caught out, shown up in Elke’s and his wife’s eyes as a failure who couldn’t manage his affairs. Now there was a humbleness about him, almost an acceptance that he should be disparaged. Elke was deeply saddened by it.

  And there was the money itself. Elke was reluctant to concede her true feelings – still wouldn’t spell them out, even to herself – but she regretted the loan. It was not that she begrudged the money. It was the feeling of reassurance it represented, sitting comfortingly in the bank. It would be all right if they kept their promise to repay, but Elke couldn’t convince herself entirely that she would get it back. And there was nothing she could do about it, not now.

  Finally, inevitably, there was Ursula. Except that in her case it was seeing the pattern become more and more deeply established that disturbed Elke most of all.