Delaney said: “Great story.”
“Not finished, not finished,” Mueller said. “So, we have this great story, as you put it. It is bad news for the West, very bad news. A file comes to light, certain people become aware in, I think it was 1997—’96 or ’97—that Klaus Heinrich is not who he appeared to be at all. He was someone else. He was a double agent, not a hero to the West, but a double agent. Imagine this, then. The CDU government, Helmut Kohl’s people, are in the shit, there will be an election soon, in 1998, and they do not want such a scandal. So what do they do? They, those very few who know, decide to say nothing at all. The BND people, those few who know, are instructed to say nothing at all. They decide to let our Klaus carry on as before in Bonn, so as not to make them look like the fools they are, in believing that he was always a good Western spy. Kohl’s fools and his BND fools. Let us not even speak about Willy Brandt and the East German mole who climbed right into his own office, the chancellor’s office and made a nest there before they found him way back in 1974. We do not need to even talk about that disaster that made everyone look like fools and brought down Brandt himself. But another such disaster, years later? Stasi wins, makes fools of everyone again? What has been learned since Willy Brandt’s disaster? Nothing. Correct?
“But, maybe, no,” Mueller went on. “Wait. Is there perhaps also another reason they allow Klaus Heinrich to stay on as before, hush hush, no one makes trouble, he is allowed to carry on as before a retired hero of the West. Is this really likely? No, it is not, actually. So why? Because there is something else. They are afraid not only of how much they will all look like fools before the 1998 election, having been duped again by a Stasi man. There is another reason, Mr. Delaney. Can it get worse? Yes, it can. It can get much worse.”
“You’ve captured my attention,” Delaney said.
“Theories?”
“No,” Delaney said. “You go.”
“Here is how it gets worse, Mr. Delaney. Listen to this now. What if, in addition to being a double agent, Klaus Heinrich with the cheap Deutschland tattoo on his arm, had some very, very interesting information he could use against those few people who knew the real story about him? OK, they don’t want to be embarrassed by the first disaster and look like fools who were duped by a double agent for too many years. But what if Heinrich also has some important information he can use even if they decide to tell the story and take the chance and make it public and try to throw him into jail instead of leaving him alone to live quietly in Bonn? What could it be that he knew that was so dangerous they would leave him alone even if they really did not want to leave him alone?”
“No theory,” Delaney said.
“Think,” Mueller said.
“Sorry,” Delaney said.
“You disappoint me, Mr. Delaney. But I will tell you. How does this situation get worse? Well, imagine if Klaus Heinrich, in addition to being a dirty double agent, was also a disgusting homosexual, the kind Madame Chagny hates so much. And imagine something else. Imagine that for some years after he came back to the West, after 1990, he was having a homosexual affair with a very senior official, very senior, someone who if this were to be revealed, would bring even more scandal down on the government and the spy service and everyone he had come into contact with. Imagine the scandal, Mr. Delaney, if the person Klaus Heinrich had taken on as his secret lover had access to very sensitive secret information. Even if there was no more Stasi, this would not be a good thing, you can imagine this, yes? It shows how lax everyone was at the time, to miss this double agent and then to later find he is also, after all of this, he is also having sex with a very senior, important man?” “Amazing,” Delaney said.
“Yes, precisely. And here is the next question. Who do you think this senior, very important man was, who was having sex with this dirty double agent Heinrich with the cheap tattoo?”
Mueller sat back in his wheelchair. There was no more coffee left, no more distraction possible. There was just a little metal table in the southern France morning at which a dying man was telling very secret stories to a gatherer of information.
“You,” Delaney said. “It was you.”
“Congratulations,” Mueller said.
They sat in silence for a while, listening to birdsong and pondering disasters, victims, identities.
Mueller said eventually: “I loved him of course.” He paused.
“You are not one of these men, are you Mr. Delaney, who thinks it is impossible for men to love each other like this? And for big tough police officers to love other men like this? And a senior, important policeman such as myself?” Delaney said: “It happens. I know.” “I was seduced, of course,” Mueller laughed.
“That is always the excuse, yes? But in my case it was true. Klaus seduced me. He sought me out. I was gay, yes, for many years. I was married; surely a senior respected BKA man must have a wife. But this happens, too. I was not chief at the time Klaus and I began our little affair. He had come back to the West, it was 1990, I had not been made chief yet but we met a couple of years later and we began our little affair. Gays sense it easily when they find another man who is still, what do you say in English, there’s a nice expression. In the closet. Our famous spy Klaus Heinrich told me he knew right away that this important BKA man, not yet the chief of BKA, but this senior BKA man, wanted to have sex with other men, sometimes had sex with other men. He was not the first man I had such sex with, of course.”
Delaney said: “But why would you take such a risk? If you were senior enough to even be in the running one day for the top job?”
“Because there is always an element of risk for gays, Mr. Delaney. In Germany at that time, in certain circles, and before that, and always. For some of us, the risk itself adds to the, what, the pleasure. No, that is not the word. It adds to the whole business, the whole life, the whole disaster of it. It’s part of it, for some of us. The risk. And Klaus pretended that he loved me. I knew at the end that he did not, but he pretended very well for several years. So love is also worth a little risk, would you agree? And sex with a policeman, Mr. Delaney, it is a gay fantasy, yes? Policemen, spies, double agents, fear of discovery, rough trade, a gun and some cigarettes on the table. It is all too, what shall I say, too classic, yes?”
Heinrich, according to Mueller, did not have AIDS and was unlikely even to have been HIV-positive when their paths diverged. But there was very little time for discussion of such things at the end, Mueller said, when their paths began to diverge in 2001. Mueller himself only became aware of his illness after he had left Germany for France.
“We were very careful homosexuals, Klaus and I,” he said. “And in any case, he is now dead. He died before me in any case. AIDS did not get him. It was a tsunami wave. How strange life is.”
Mueller knew every detail of recent German history and could recite it. In 1998, Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats lost power. Gerhard Schroeder’s SPD took over. As always in such changes of government, attitudes change in important agencies, senior personnel change, situations change. As well, Mueller said, the CIA began releasing a series of important Stasi files in 2000, handing them back to Germany after they had been copied, examined, analyzed and otherwise thoroughly poked and prodded. If the CIA had become aware of Heinrich’s true status as a double agent, then it would only be a matter of time before the German side would have to act.
“I don’t know if the information was in the files the CIA started to hand back in 2000 or so,” Mueller said. “The German side knew about Klaus well before that, as I’ve said, but perhaps the truth was also in the files the CIA gave back at that point. That would have changed the scenario, of course. Or maybe it was in the Rosewood file. Everyone was waiting for that file to be released as well. Or maybe people simply decided that they could not hide Heinrich’s identity any longer.”
“So it was the SPD government that eventually fixed it up to look like Heinrich die
d,” Delaney asked.
“No, not exactly. Spy services act, when they need to, independently, of governments. Sometimes governments look the other way, or maybe people with talent from a previous government help make certain things happen, or maybe spy services do what they want despite the government’s knowledge or wishes. In this case, only a very few people knew about Heinrich’s real identity. The ones who stood to lose the most were some of the Kohl people, who had stupidly made such a hero out of him when he came back from East Berlin. But the SPD was in power for three years before 2001. They had access to files, the new ones being revealed and released. They would not have looked good either.”
“So some people just made it look like Heinrich died in a fire and set him up in a new life in Thailand,” Delaney said.
“Yes. It’s not so hard. And then I never saw him again.”
“Why would he go? Why would he not use the blackmail idea he had? Why wouldn’t he just say he would reveal everything about you and him?”
Mueller paused.
“At that point, what would be the use? If they were willing to sacrifice me, and take the consequences, Klaus had no blackmail power left at all. And he would not have wanted to go to jail. Even a man who liked rough trade.”
“And you. What did they say to you?”
“Me, they simply washed their hands of. Again, not so hard for them. Some people came to see me. BND. They had one proposal only. Out, exile—forty years in the police and out. For me it was hard, but not for them. It almost killed me, in fact. It killed my wife. I came here. I met Pierre. Now we have a little life. Not an easy one anymore. But the house is the thing. Not Pierre. Not anymore.”
“And the body in the cabin in Bonn?”
“Who knows? Some poor derelict, possibly. Cadavers are not hard to find. People die without identities all the time, police find bodies all the time. Interpol has hundreds of Black Notices for unidentified bodies around the world on any given day. And of course, they had some sympathetic pathologists in this thing, didn’t they? This Horst Becker, you told me about, for example.” “And you don’t know him?”
“I never met him. I don’t think so,” Mueller said. “But I have met his type, many times. He would be a man willing to do all that was required. Just as he is apparently now doing in Thailand.”
Madame Chagny had quietly left while they had talked like conspirators at the little outdoor table. There was still no sign of Rochemaure—probably a good thing. The telephone had rung inside the house a couple of times as they spoke. Mueller seemed content to let it ring.
“It’s a terrific story,” Delaney said.
“That depends on your point of view,” Mueller said. “But now you have the story.”
“All of it?”
“What else would you need?”
“Who is trying to prevent it from coming out? About Heinrich. Possibly about you and Heinrich. Who attacked my friend Jonah Smith from Scotland Yard? Who is bugging his room in Phuket? Who tried to kill me outside my hotel?”
“Horst Becker. In my view that is obvious.”
“And who else? Why?”
“This story will do no one any good when it comes out, Mr. Delaney. The present government in Germany, the previous CDU government. The spy service. The police, the BKA. No one looks good. There will be an election this year in Germany, almost certainly. No one will look good.”
“Is that what you want?” Delaney asked. “To make everyone look bad?”
“Some people, yes. Some people deserve to look bad.” “Like who?”
“Well, allow me to pick my number one target. Let’s see. Well, well. The Interior Minister? Yes? The man in charge of the world famous BKA police when I was made to give up my career? He would be at the top of my list. There are others.”
“What do you really want me to do with this information now, Herr Mueller?”
“That is up to you, my friend. You are a journalist. I am a policeman. You know your job. But the information will now get out, I have no doubt about this. And, in my experience, from what you have told me today, it is going to get out no matter what you do anyway. Have no illusions. Things are changing in the situation, Mr. Delaney. Your involvement, and quite possibly other factors, have now set things in motion. There are people already taking risks in Thailand, there are people very interested in what you are doing. Much is at stake. This makes people take risks and make mistakes and then things break open. I saw it many times when I was in the police. Things will break open, whatever you yourself now decide to do. But you can shape this, maybe. We can control this just a little, you and me.”
“What will they do to you, when it comes out?”
“I don’t care. I’m dying already. But do you think they will send someone to Saint Lager Bressac to shoot me? I doubt this very much. And it would be very hard to get a car in my little courtyard here to run me down. What can they do? If I cared.”
Delaney sat in silence. Then he said: “Depending on how I handle things, this story could make waves in the German election.”
“And so?” Mueller said. “Why not? Let us make a big wave. Let us see what happens then. Let us sit back and watch the wave come in. I would love, for example, to watch the Interior Minister drown.”
They heard a car labouring up the steep rutted track toward the house. It was almost noon. They had been talking for more than three hours. They sat looking at each other in silence as a car door slammed outside the wall. Then the carriage gate opened and Rochemaure came into the courtyard. He stood just inside the wall, glaring at them both.
Mueller, despite looking very fatigued from the long morning of talk, took the offensive. In his prime, Delaney thought, he would have been a formidable police officer and boss.
“Pierre, before you take one step further into this place, I warn you not to act like a fool,” he called out. “Of course you are drunk. This is boring to me. So be very, very careful not to act a fool, my Pierre.”
“This bastard is still here?” Rochemaure shouted.
“You have been warned, Pierre,” Mueller said calmly. “There will be none of this.”
Delaney wondered how Mueller intended to make good on his policeman’s warnings, in his present condition and given Rochemaure’s size and demeanour.
“You bastards,” Rochemaure said, swaying very slightly.
“Go in and have a sleep. Do not embarrass me anymore,” Mueller said. “Go. Your drunkenness disgusts me.”
To Delaney’s surprise, Rochemaure stood swaying where he was for a moment, then flung away his cigarette—clearly his nonverbal communication method of choice—and simply stalked on past both of them into the house. The heavy door slammed, and a moment later another door slammed inside.
“I’m sorry,” Mueller said.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Delaney said.
“It is like this now, I’m afraid.”
“It’s no problem. But maybe I should be going.”
“Yes, perhaps. I would say.”
“OK.”
“And your plan now?”
“First, I need to go up to my room and write in my notebook. Before I do anything else. I want to make sure I’m clear on all of this and get some notes together. Then I think I’ll head back up to Lyon and get a plane to Berlin.”
“And then?”
“Then I’m not sure. I need to think. Thailand, probably. I’ll absolutely need to speak to some people there. Then I can decide.”
“As you wish,” Mueller said. “You go to your notes. I will rest. You come to find me before you go.”
“I will.”
For some reason Mueller thought it appropriate to offer Delaney his hand. Delaney took it. The handshake was a pact of some kind. But neither of them, it seemed, was clear on what the pact actually entailed.
“You listen well
,” Mueller said.
“Years of practice,” Delaney said. “It’s what I do.”
Delaney rested too for a while, then sat at the little writing desk near the window of his big old room, doing up his notebook. He stopped often to gaze out at the lovely French scene below—ordered squares of gravel and plants, well-trained vines, an ancient door in an ancient wall. Everything in its place. But there was no such order in his notes or in his thoughts. Not yet.
The house was quiet. Madame Chagny had so far not returned for her afternoon and evening duties. Cicadas hummed in the trees in the late spring heat. They almost masked the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs and down the tiled hallway to his room.
There could be no missing the very loud knocking on his door, however. His visitor didn’t wait for Delaney to open it. There was more knocking, then the door flew open and Rochemaure strode in, still red in the face and still clearly not a happy man.
He was carrying an old long-barrelled revolver. It was blue-black. He waved it with theatrical flourish at Delaney as he came into the room.
“You must leave this house immediately, you bastard, you leave now,” Rochemaure shouted.
Drunk. Angry. Delaney knew it was best in such situations to agree to everything.
The Tsunami File Page 29
