by Alex Cugia
The sudden rush of the table had caught Erwin, knocking him off his chair to the floor. He scrambled up and rushed to pull off Patrick, hooking his elbow round Patrick’s throat and kneeing him in the back. Despite his strength he had no effect, such was the force of Patrick’s rage. Clark Kent had suddenly become his alter ego. Eventually Patrick let go of the table and shook off Erwin casually in turn. He glared at Klaus and shook a finger at him.
“Don’t you dare say I’m a thief ever again. You arsehole. I’ll have you properly next time. You'll find out just what Ossies are capable of.”
“Just stop it. Stop it! Both of you. I didn’t get you here to watch a fight between raging dogs. We’re trying to get a multimillion deal closed, for Christ’s sake. You can kill yourselves afterwards, for all I care, but right now we’ve got some serious stuff to work out. You’re acting like fucking children. Just remember, I control this – pull another stunt like that, either of you, and you’re out of Phoenix for good.”
“That’s not ... ” began Klaus, the rest unsaid as Erwin grabbed him by the shirt at the neck, twisted it tight, dragging Klaus’s face centimetres from his own, and said with quiet menace, “Shut it! I make the decisions. You follow them.”
Erwin sat down, breathing hard and thinking how things risked falling apart without him.
“Patrick, sort the table. Klaus, get us fresh drinks from the bar. The same as before. Now!”
Erwin sat stiffly, glaring at each in turn until everything was arranged to his satisfaction.
“Patrick. You told us about internal difficulties in the Stasi. Is it a formal investigation? Isn’t your contact high enough not to care?”
“He’s one of the higher ranking officers in The Firm and directly in charge of all the regional headquarters and of covert operations. Earlier that would have meant that he could do pretty much what he liked. He and his colleagues just made the law to suit them. But things are different now. There's even talk of prosecuting Mielke. Mielke! Mielke was the Stasi. So he’s got to be more careful and a lot of this is pretty dodgy – utilising the Stasi network for private gain, for instance.”
“So is he afraid of someone below him, or of someone from outside? A judge, maybe, or magistrate? Where's the problem?”
“He didn’t say, but knowing the system I’d doubt that a magistrate would get involved. They’re too busy fixing political trials to be interested in chasing corruption cases. They’ve always been well trained in minding their own business and doing as they were told. Could be someone getting their own back, now things have changed after all this time, of course.”
“Hmmm.” Erwin thought out loud. “I guess there’s no way we can easily check if our Stasi contact is telling the truth or just trying to screw us. Probably a bit of both. The fact remains, he’s asking for a lot more money. Tell him I need to meet him personally, in Berlin. Arrange a meeting for two day’s time. I guess it’s too late now to try to activate the second group, right?”
Patrick shook his head. “There’s no way we could get something set up in such a short time with the SED. And their power and reach is now pretty much non-existent anyway. We’re stuck with the Stasi and the problem is they know it. Too many people are in the loop now. They’d make it their business to destroy us if we cut them out. But they’re armed and they can be ruthless. Anyone exchanging money will think twice about trying any funny games. We can count on that at least.”
“Well, this money will have to come from somewhere. What would a good businessman do in this case?” He waited, a slight smile on his face, but neither Klaus nor Patrick made any comment.
“Well, then, I’ll tell you. A good chief executive would cut his incidental costs.”
The two others looked at him, puzzled. Costs looked as it they had just gone up by three or four million Deutsche Marks, possibly more, and Erwin was talking about cutting them.
“There are three places where we’ll do that.” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “I kept telling you to make sure everything was properly tied up, Patrick, and you should have done this earlier. You haven’t delivered as I wanted and now even if I can salvage something when I meet this guy we’re still going to be out several million from the figure we expected to pay. That’s your responsibility and because you haven’t delivered fully your percentage will go down from 10% to 7%. However, given the state we’re in with the numbers and the new exchange rate that’s still pretty reasonable, probably even a bit more than the 10% at the beginning would have brought.”
Klaus had been grinning in triumph during this speech as he watched Patrick’s discomfiture and irritation with the changed percentage. As Erwin turned to him the grin vanished and he looked wary.
“As for you, Klaus, you’ve done a good enough job building up the agents but you haven’t thought things through, have you? You don’t know the difference between turnover and profit. You don't know enough about costs and marginal returns. Sure, there’s now lots of agents and that helps with loans and the amount we can convert but there’s greatly increased costs, proportionately increased as well, in servicing all those out of the way borrowers and that’s going to hit our percentage profits. Wouldn't surprise me if some even came in at a loss. Part of that is this extra millions we’ve heard about. So I’m cutting your percentage as well, knocking the same proportion off. But as I said to Patrick, you’re still going to do pretty well out of it.”
It was Patrick’s turn to smile slightly but each realised they were in a corner, unable to move. There was nothing either could do about it. There was no document setting out the formal division of profits or the percentages each could expect and so they were ultimately in Erwin’s hands. And he’d made it very clear that he’d act fairly but expected a great deal from them.
“That’s 6% so far” added Erwin “and if we’re talking about 20 to 30 million that’s still too little, maybe a million and a bit, approaching two million max.”
He drew out from his briefcase a sheet of paper on which he’d earlier drawn a pyramid to explain to an agent how everything worked. With a deliberate motion Erwin drew a big X over the pyramid. He looked at it for a moment. “Bye, bye, agents’ commissions.” he said. “Bye, bye. That’s an expense just too far.”
Chapter 32
Wednesday January 17 1990, early hours of the morning
IT was well past midnight when the door opened and Bettina crept into the bedroom, her clothes bringing a whiff of cigar smoke from her evening with Roehrberg. Thomas lay stiffly in bed as he had done for an hour or more since he’d given up in despair waiting for Bettina’s return.
He had tried to sleep but his brain churned with thoughts and vivid, painful imaginings of Bettina and Roehrberg together. He’d drifted into a half sleep but then jerked awake as he’d seemed to hear again her laugh through the living room door as he’d moved carefully to escape. Her music had been overlaid with inaudible words in Roehrberg’s deep growl and which ended in a chuckle. Then there had been silence, a silence almost impossible to bear. What were they doing? There was soft music playing but otherwise the silence continued. Why had she not made excuses and left? The voices stopped but there were other sounds which repeated and quickened then died away to more silence. He drifted in and out of consciousness.
Then, as on a screen, he watched stubby fingers caress Bettina’s neck and saw her stretch and arch her neck then nuzzle like a cat, smiling with pleasure. The fingers undid a button and then a second, ran their backs lightly over the smooth, swelling skin now partly exposed and showing white with veins repeating the deep blue of her shirt, then moved lower and although he looked away the screen followed, lurched into his line of vision even with his eyes shut, though now the picture was shifting and fragmenting, now swirling into nothing, now showing disordered fabric, the hem of a dress or the edge of a shirt and always those stubby fingers moving and lightly stroking. Then a knee appeared at the foot of the screen and moved slowly upwards as it bent and rose, widely
separating from its fellow across the whole width and always those stubby fingers, now stroking and caressing with more urgency, a soft moaning returning. He had a flash of pain and with that the screen vanished, leaving him half awake, the taint of cigar smoke in his nostrils and with a feeling of immense sadness.
“Thomas. Are you awake?”
He lay there, still, nursing his feelings, keeping his jealousy and fury warm. After a moment she pulled the curtains a small distance apart and the moonlight streamed in.
Now fully awake he watched as she undressed, her back turned to him, the soft rays highlighting her breasts as she turned and walked to retrieve her nightdress then stretched and raised her arms to slip it on, but shadowing under them and failing to penetrate lower and deeper. The thought that she’d been in Roehrberg’s arms filled him with a turmoil of emotion, of sadness and anger and despair.
As he’d escaped from Roehrberg’s house and pedalled furiously back to the farm he’d felt resentment towards her and an intense jealously of the older man. This had given way to self-pity and despair and at the bottom of the hill he swung round the corner too fast and wide, for a moment dragging himself intentionally into the path of a fast approaching car until the blare of its horn brought him to his senses and he returned to the proper side.
As Bettina slipped into bed he knew that he wanted her with a passion beyond mere animal lust, a feeling that went beyond what he felt when he'd thought of her with Roehrberg, and he realised that he’d fallen in love with her, something he’d not earlier been prepared to admit. It had taken seeing her with another man, a man he both feared and despised, to make the wall he’d built around his heart crumble. But he had to accept he’d lost her, as he had with Olga, and then his despair gave way to anger and he hated her.
“How often has she done this before?” he thought. And then “I suppose that’s just what she does to get information out of people.”
He could feel the warmth of her body next to him, drawing him towards her. He thought back to the different times he’d felt close to her, that first evening when he’d tried to impress at the French restaurant and the night the Wall fell and he stayed in her apartment. There had seemed then to be a growing attachment. He’d felt her close enough to reach her, to develop love between them, but had lacked the courage to try. If he did then that might confirm his worst fears, remove any remaining hope. Maybe his instinct had been correct. It seemed to him now that it was all in his imagination, that she’d been using him, just as she did everyone, playing with his emotions the better to control him. He was her responsibility within the organisation Thomas reminded himself. He had been a fool to think anything true could ever happen between them.
She turned, and was facing him now, her head resting on the pillow. He could feel her breath on his face and the familiar smell of her skin had replaced the cigar smoke of her clothes.
“Are you awake?” she breathed.
He lay for a moment, pretending sleep, but it was too much for him to bear. He opened his eyes and stared at her in the darkness as he might at an unwelcome stranger. He didn’t recognise his own voice when he spoke.
“I’ve not slept. Not properly anyway. Did you enjoy yourself at Roehrberg’s? At Rudolf's. Or is there a pet name you use now?”
She turned and reached for the side light, fumbling for a moment then finding the switch and turning it on. She glanced at him but then looked away almost immediately and lay down, turned away from him and burrowed into the bedclothes. He blinked in the light and sat up a little in the bed, leaning on his elbow towards her. Her voice became increasingly muffled.
“You think I went to bed with him, do you? You think I just went out for a good time, and eine gute Ficke to complete the evening. ... think I’m a whore ... I’m an easy lay ... you bastard ... "
He grabbed her shoulders and wrenched her round to face him.
“If you’ve got something to tell me, say it to my face.”
“He asked me to give him a lift back up the hill from the restaurant and when I was about to drop him at his gate I noticed your bicycle nearby and realised you were probably still inside. That's why I accepted his invitation in, because I thought maybe you could do with not having him prowling around while you escaped. But I don’t have to justify myself!”
She wrenched herself away, turning from him, and they lay in sullen silence for some minutes.
Thomas sighed then stretched out his hand and at his touch on her shoulder she shrugged him off and burrowed deeper away from him. Once more he stretched out, this time cupping his hand on her shoulder, pressing firmly, not forcing her to turn but making it clear what he wanted. Then he removed his hand and lay back and after a moment she turned partly towards him and lay on her back in turn looking at the ceiling, now breathing more calmly. Neither spoke. Shortly afterwards, as she settled, he felt her knuckles brushing his knee in what might have been an accident had it not been for the moment of hesitation in contact. He glanced at her.
“Roehrberg’s study was full of documents packed in cartons." he said. "Remember those things we thought had gone missing from Henkel’s shelves. Looks like they ended up with Roehrberg. I managed to take some pictures and grab a few documents before a couple of men arrived to remove them and I nearly got caught. Roehrberg’s taking them with him, wherever he’s going.”
“Well, that's good." she said flatly. "That could tie him in to Henkel’s death.”
He looked at her, wondering why she wasn't giving him more credit for what he'd achieved.
“Yes, but there’s more. The two men were talking about stuff as they worked, this and that, not a lot that meant much to me. But they mentioned someone getting just what he deserved, and they were pleased about that. They also mentioned Dieter, with hostility, and it sounded as if someone had been killed or maybe was to be killed. Do you think Dieter ... ?”
Bettina stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then turned to Thomas.
“It’s not Dieter. It was Herren. He was on his way to a meeting, perhaps with Kohl although I don't know, and his car was ambushed, blown up. Roehrberg had just learned of it and told me tonight. He was killed instantly and that there wasn't much left of the car.”
“Herren? Herren assassinated?!” Thomas’s mind flew back to the interrogation at the Stasi HQ in Berlin after his visit to Frankfurt. It made more sense now and he realised how they'd used him and how the information he'd given had led to this. His heart started to race and he could hardly breathe. He stared at Bettina, enraged that it apparently meant little to her.
“Jesus, Bettina. You’re a real cunt." He was shouting now, not knowing what he was doing, heedless that it was the middle of the night. He found himself grabbing handfuls of her hair, pulling her down and towards him, shaking her like a terrier with a rat. "You don't give a shit! You and Dieter don’t give a shit about what happens to other people. Just so long as you get the information you want. That's all that matters. I told you what I'd learned. And you killed Herren because of that. I killed Herren! How can you just lie there? It's got everything to do with you. You’re in this as well.”
Sweat rushed down Thomas’s face and he felt chilled then hit by a violent convulsion in his stomach, acid filling his throat and spilling into his mouth. He threw her back, tumbled from the bed and rushed to the bathroom, kneeling by the lavatory pan to retch, the porcelain cold on his face. Returning, his fury had changed to a cold anger at Bettina.
“You and Dieter killed Herren. And I killed himguided you! And now Stephan could be at risk of his life. All because of what you made me do.”
“Thomas, I understand your feelings but that's not ... ”
“Don’t patronise me. You don’t understand the tiniest bit of my feelings here. You just play with my feelings to control me. At one point I thought I could trust you but I know now what a goddamn fool I’ve been.”
“It was nothing to do with Dieter. Nothing to do with us. Nothing to do with the information you
gave us. Marcus Wolf and Mielke had already learned about Herren. And it was the Red Army Fraktion, the Baader-Meinhof gang as people call them, who did it. Nothing to do with us. Believe me. Nothing to do with the Firm. Herren was hit by a West German terrorist group just as they’ve hit other capitalists in the past and will again.”
The noise of Thomas’s open hand slapping Bettina’s cheek startled them both. She fell back on the pillow, her cheek violently reddening as tears ran down her face. Thomas raised his hand again and then slowly dropped it, overcome with remorse, with a deep weariness and shame but lost as to what to do next. His anger ebbed but making any gesture of apology or reconciliation was beyond him. He turned away, buried his his face in the pillow, his hands clasped on his head, his knees on his chest and his body tightly curled.
As he sobbed desperately he became aware that Bettina had moved close to him, spooned round his back, and was gently stroking the nape of his neck, her other arm lying over his waist and pressing on his knee. He pushed her violently away and then later, as she persisted half turned towards her, straightening his legs, his head pressed to her chest and lay there, his despair and anger draining away.
After some considerable time, each of them drifting in and out of sleep, he settled further on her and feeling a nipple through the thin cotton of her nightdress caught it with his lips and brushed it with his tongue, playing as it stiffened to his touch and as she settled closer round him he felt the touch of bone and hair on his hip. When he nipped her breast lightly with his teeth she yelped and pushed him away and as they smiled at each other settled down more closely, Bettina on her back, Thomas further turned towards her with his upper arm now resting on her belly, the back of his fingers lightly brushing her inner thigh.
