The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  Toftlund glanced up:

  ‘Wow. I’ve really hooked the big one.’

  ‘There’s worse to come,’ Vuldom said.

  And there was one report which struck Toftlund as being very serious indeed. It told of two Danish officers who had been arrested for spying in Estonia in 1987. It appeared that Edelweiss had been paid a bonus of twenty-five thousand Deutschmarks for supplying the information leading to their arrest. Toftlund remembered the case being in the news. He had still been with the Royal Navy special forces unit at the time, so he had not been privy to any classified information on the affair. The Danish media had made light of the matter, even though the two officers had risked being given the death penalty or, at the very least, lengthy prison sentences. During question time in Parliament the Social Democrats and the left-wing parties had demanded an admission from the government that the two officers were spies in the service of the Danish state. But to admit such a thing would have been sheer madness. These people were operating without diplomatic immunity. Luckily, the liberal foreign minister had kept a cool head, even though the lives of these agents were on the line – a fact which he could not, of course, reveal while they were working to have them released. Eventually money changed hands and the officers were freed: the Soviet Union dealing in hostages like some mafia organisation. Their names were published and photographs of them appeared in the newspapers and on television, the Danish media having acquired them from Estonian TV, which had shown footage of them being interrogated by a military prosecutor. They had escaped having to serve long prison sentences, but their lives were ruined. That wasn’t the media’s worry, though. It was all just a bit of cloak-and-dagger nonsense anyway. Nothing serious.

  It did not seem as if Denmark’s responsibilities as a Baltic member of NATO had ever been taken seriously during the cold war, Toftlund thought to himself. Nor was any recognition given to the fact that – whether through its listening station on the island of Bornholm or its network of agents – Danish Military Intelligence had played a vital role in ascertaining what was going on inside the closed dictatorships. Because at the end of the day any deviation from the normal situation could have spelled the difference between war and peace. Few people had understood that. Denmark had conducted an efficient, professional intelligence-gathering operation within the GDR, Poland and the Baltic countries. Given Denmark’s geographical situation it had seemed only natural that it should have responsibility for these particular countries. NATO had no central espionage organisation. It based its decisions on intelligence received from its various member states. And in this Denmark played a key role.

  Toftlund raised his eyes from the sheet of paper and looked at Vuldom. She returned his gaze without making any comment and he read on. Attached to this document was another, not directly related to Edelweiss. It was a brief memo addressed to the head of Stasi, Erich Mielke, himself. In it his Soviet comrades expressed their gratitude for his brotherly assistance in breaking a counterrevolutionary, imperialist spy ring controlled from Denmark, a country which had acted yet again as an advance post for NATO aggression against the peace-loving socialist nations.

  Toftlund glanced up again as Vuldom said:

  ‘Three death sentences, all pronounced in secret, all carried out. Also in secret. Only two years before the Wall fell. Two life sentences and one of twenty-five years. We managed to get four out before it was too late. Although it doesn’t say so there, not in so many words, it was Edelweiss who supplied the information. At least according to those who survived. There’s little help to be had from the FSB, the successor to the KGB. They haven’t opened their archives.’

  ‘But we’re talking murder here,’ Toftlund said.

  ‘Or accessory to murder, at any rate. And there’s no statute of limitations where murder is concerned.’

  Per Toftlund removed the three photographs of the Pedersen family from the folder again and considered them.

  ‘There’s something here that just doesn’t fit,’ he said.

  ‘I knew it wouldn’t take you long to figure that out.’

  ‘There’s no way that any of these three could have had access to even a fraction of this material. A baker. A couple of academics. They simply can’t have had access.’

  ‘No, but the Rosenholz file makes it quite clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Irma is Edelweiss and Edelweiss is Irma – take your pick.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have had that level of clearance. Nowhere near.’

  ‘No, but there are no two ways about it. We’ve been onto Edelweiss’s little game for a year or so. We’ve received reports, but never a name to go on. We’ve nosed around the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see if we could come up with a profile that fitted. A career path that matched the pattern of the reports. Without success, obviously. These people move around a lot. But Irma is our little flower. It’s as simple as that.’

  Toftlund got up, paced back and forth. Vuldom regarded him. He looked as athletic as ever, with a lurking aggression in his movements, for all that he was over forty now. And yet, there was a greater fullness about him. Not a physical fullness as such, more a softness in his actions and in his manner which had not been there before. Maybe it was marriage that had brought this out in him. Maybe marriage was good for him, although only a few years ago she would have said that was impossible. Toftlund turned round:

  ‘Irma wrote the reports, but …’

  ‘But someone else dictated them to her,’ Vuldom finished. ‘Yes, that must be it.’

  ‘She was guiding the pen and the man or woman. She wasn’t the mole. But she controlled the mole.’

  ‘Why do you say “was”? Why not “is”? Who says the operation terminated with the fall of the Wall? Who says the KGB didn’t take over the reins? And later the FSB, who are every bit as obsessed with NATO as the communists were.’

  Toftlund turned to face her:

  ‘So that’s the job, is it?’ he said. ‘To find Irma’s source.’

  ‘Clever boy. Irma is out of the country at the moment, but we accessed her flight booking. She gets back from Brussels late this afternoon. Arrest her. Then we’ll go to court and request that she be remanded in solitary confinement for four weeks. Under tight security. With what you have in front of you there should be no problem. They’ll probably appeal to the High Court, but I’m sure we’ll be granted our four weeks to begin with.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And Toftlund – find the bastard.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Keep at her. Night and day. Don’t give her a moment’s peace. We want that name.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And preferably soon. Okay? Denmark’s at war. It’ll be no joke if, somewhere within the NATO system, there’s a Danish citizen who cares more about certain foreign powers than their own native land.’

  ‘He’s probably retired by now. Thinks the past is dead and forgotten.’

  ‘The past never dies,’ Vuldom said. ‘Well, welcome aboard. And keep me informed. Regular reports. I’m in on this too.’

  ‘Right,’ Toftlund said, wondering for the first time what Lise was going to say, on suddenly finding that, for the first time since they got married, there was going to be no such thing as regular shifts or regular mealtimes. He dismissed the thought and went off to find his new office. His heart was beating faster and he felt better than he had done in a long time. This feeling he had was not the same as the surge of happiness he felt at those moments when he woke up next to Lise, but a sensation he had also experienced on night manoeuvres: sneaking ashore, setting explosives and slipping back into the dark water without the defending troops or home guard guys ever being aware that he had been there. It was the sense of satisfaction the hunter feels when the chase is on.

  9

  PER TOFTLUND WAS SURPRISED by how much he had actually missed his old job. He threw himself into it with a vigour that made Vuldom pleased and happy with her decision to recall him, only
then realising how he had blocked out the thought of how much it meant to him. Lise, on the other hand, found it hard to conceal her dissatisfaction with his sudden physical and mental absence. From one day to the next he went from being as dependable as a bank clerk with regular working hours to being a spouse whose whereabouts she never knew. She did her best not to let Per see how she felt: she had promised herself years before that she would not be one of those small-minded wives who henpecked their husbands and held them back. In her marriage to Ole, too, she had always insisted that it should be an equal partnership. That it was vital to a relationship for both parties to be free to get the most out of their lives, professionally and personally, as long as they remained true to one another. But in her heart of hearts she had to admit she was not happy that Per’s work now took precedence over her, not least because she also saw how much he loved it. She felt as big as a cow. She missed her own work, even though she had been looking forward to going on maternity leave. And she had suddenly begun to worry that even the baby, when she arrived, would not be able to hold him. The problem was, though, that she could well understand him. And envied him his freedom. As a couple they had found their own rhythm, but this he had suddenly broken, like a melody being rudely cut off right in the middle of a beautiful note. They had created the framework for a life together. They had both been suffering from emotional shell-shock, but they had found one another and together they had built something new. They had managed to make a fresh start. But now that framework had been abruptly and fundamentally altered by him. She could tell that he was really happy. And he was under pressure. That too was clear to see. The case was constantly on his mind, but he was not stressed. He thrived on the pressure and the challenge of it, that she could both see and sense. And her feelings were complicated by the new air of reckless assurance he had about him, in which she recognised the man she had fallen in love with. The man with whom she had cheated on her husband. But it was one thing to have an affair with a man who was different and intriguing, quite another to discover that that self-same unpredictability was not really such a desirable quality in a husband. Was that the way of it?

  He came back from his morning run quite literally on his toes, glowing with energy, bouncing lightly and sexily on the balls of his feet, boxer-fashion; then he would breeze whistling out of the door, leaving her with hair uncombed, her hand in the small of her back and her stomach swelling out in front of her like a shapeless balloon that seemed to fill the whole kitchen. With a figure like this why bother even trying to smarten oneself up. The worst of it was that he did not talk to her about his work. It was just like it had been before they were married, when everything had been so hush-hush: all that un-Danish secrecy and confidentiality. Although she had actually grown pretty tired of his interminable complaints about his work with Customs and Immigration – the same stories again and again – she found herself missing them within only a few days of Per’s caterpillar-like metamorphosis from a dull hubby on shifts to one of Vuldom’s lads. And from Vuldom in the director’s office to the newest office boy they all loved their stupid secret game, in which they hunted the ghosts of the past and the spies of the present.

  She had a bit of a sniffle after Per left. She did not want him knowing how she felt. She had a cup of tea, read the papers, envying her colleagues their articles, and felt the baby kicking. That made her feel better. Pull yourself together, Lise! You’re about to become a mother! You have to make this work! She got on with her nest-building: sorting out clothes, cleaning, going through the freshly-washed, sweet-smelling baby clothes from relatives and girlfriends, arranging them in neat piles, contemplating the crib, neatly ranged alongside their bed. They would make a lovely family. And she loved him so much. He was good for her and good to her. But it was no wonder that she burst into tears when he called later in the morning and announced, without any further explanation, that he was at the airport, on his way to Warsaw and possibly a couple of other cities. He would probably only be gone a day or two so she wasn’t to worry. It was not so much that he had to go that upset her. But the fact that he simply up and went. That he took his passport with him to work as a matter of course, knowing there was always a chance he might have to go abroad. That he had not deemed it necessary to at least discuss this with her. She felt cross and resentful. What the hell did he have to go to Central Europe for? Had he no thought for her at all?

  On the SAS flight to Warsaw Toftlund mulled over the case. So far they had got what they wanted. They had arrested Irma at Kastrup Airport, had their request for four weeks in solitary granted by the Municipal Court and this order confirmed by the High Court. They had obtained additional search and surveillance warrants and had in their possession the material from the old Stasi records with which they had confronted the accused – although she had of course denied everything. The name Edelweiss meant nothing to her. She had never spied for anyone. This whole thing was utterly absurd. Who the hell cared, now, almost ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, what someone might have said or done in the seventies – or the eighties, for that matter? It might be of interest to historians, but not to the police, surely? Had they really nothing better to do with their time than to hunt the ghosts of the past? To go delving into a cold war that came to an end long ago. Good God. Capitalism really had triumphed. She denied all knowledge of any espionage case in the Baltic region. She knew nothing except what she had read in the newspapers. Irma’s lawyer was of the same mind. As far as he was concerned, they did not have a leg to stand on. The judge had, however, sided with the prosecution, while also making it quite clear that they would have to come up with some more concrete proof if they wanted to hold her for longer.

  It was a hell of a job, despite the fact that Vuldom had allocated him more people. They had started digging back into Irma’s life, dissecting it. They threw themselves into that task which is the key to all detective work: finding the connection, linking apparently random elements together to form a solid case with which to present the accused. As in any investigation they also needed a bit of luck. But without a painstaking scrutiny of the available material they would not recognise a stroke of luck when they saw it

  Once the plane was in the air and the seatbelts sign had been switched off Toftlund removed a small tape recorder from his bag. He put on the headphones. The seat next to his was empty. There were only a handful of passengers in business class, while tourist class seemed pretty busy, full of OAPs taking a little city break and a high-school class on a study trip. But NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia had led a lot of people to steer clear of the alliance’s newest members – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland – for fear that the Serbs would carry the war into the enemy’s camp.

  Toftlund pressed Play and once again heard Teddy Pedersen’s voice. It sounded loud and clear over the faint hiss one always gets on a wire-tap. He had a nice voice – deep, mellow and not a little arrogant, even if he did sound a bit het up:

  ‘In hell’s name, Irma. It’s me, Teddy, again. Where the fuck are you? Listen to your messages, for God’s sake. I’ve got lumbago, and I need to talk to you. I just got back from Bratislava and I heard the damnedest story about Dad while I was there. This woman shows up at my door in the middle of the night claiming to be my half-sister. Do you know anything about this? Irma, old girl, do you know anything about Dad being an SS soldier in Croatia and on the Eastern Front? She had pictures and papers which seemed to support her story. And she was following me, sis. In Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava. She said her name was Maria Bujic. For the sake of your non-Slavophile ear that’s spelled B-u-j-i-c. Weird, eh? And those pictures and papers? And then my bloody suitcase got lost. What sort of skeletons has our harmonious little family got tucked away in the closet? Sister, dear! Call your baby brother, or send him an email, for Christ’s sake. Fritz is just being his simple baker self, he’s clammed up completely. So call me, dammit!’

  Vuldom’s feeling had been that this was a tenuous lead, probably no mor
e than a coincidence, but Per believed that every lead should be followed up, and that there might be some connection here. That the murder in Budapest might not be a coincidence, but part of a pattern. On what, Vuldom had asked tartly, did he base this theory? She had hooted with laughter when he pointed to his gut and said: ‘This!’ Some of the research work was easy enough. And the young woman DI who had been assigned to him had proved to be an efficient investigator.

  One part of the story, at least, checked out. Irma’s daddy was listed in the Bovrup Files, on which the names of members of the Danish Nazi party were registered. That he had enlisted in the Danish Legion in 1941 and fought on the Eastern Front at Lake Ilmen, where he was wounded, though not seriously. That he had served in Yugoslavia with the Nordland Division she had also had verified by a surviving SS man who remembered Irma’s father. That he had been sent with the Nordland Division to Narva in Estonia and taken part in the great retreat to Berlin. In March 1945 he appeared to have deserted. At any rate he had shown up in Denmark in October 1945. By then the worst thirst for revenge had been quenched. He got two years, but was released after four months. His name was removed from the national register in ’52 and in ’54 he was declared dead, although no death certificate was ever issued. The court upheld his wife’s contention that he had in all probability died in Hamburg – the body had never been identified, but from the papers found on the deceased it seemed likely that it was him. She was free to marry again. And this she had done. End of story, if that woman had not turned up out of the blue in a hotel room in Bratislava. If a man had not been murdered. Possibly by mistake? It was a lead he felt was worth pursuing. To see where it led. Such things were easier now that former enemies were allies. Sex, an approximate age, a name and computers started buzzing in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland and, yes, even in little Slovakia. This last-named might not be a member of NATO, but like an eager suitor who will do anything to win his beloved’s favour, Slovakia would do anything to help a NATO country. His gut instinct had proved to be correct. The name Maria Bujic popped up on one computer. Warsaw had her in their system. Bujic was only one of a number of pseudonyms adopted by this Yugoslavian citizen. The most interesting thing was that the Polish security service also had a record of her having entered the country in 1995 on a Swedish passport under the Scandinavian sounding name of Katrine Ulfborg. Who was this woman? His opposite number in Warsaw would not say over the phone, but would be happy to speak to him face to face in Warsaw. Toftlund promptly booked a ticket.