The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  Vuldom looked at her:

  ‘There is a difference, Charlotte. Between looking the other way, and picking up a shovel to build earthworks on the west coast; between taking a job in Germany rather than lose your unemployment benefits, and taking up a rifle to fight for the Nazis. It was their choice. Just as other Danes, among them my father, chose, thank God, to put up a fight, enabling us to make it through by the skin of our teeth. Because in Papa Stalin’s eyes we were all collaborators. German-lovers. The Misty Shores. The model protectorate. They made their choices. Whether to keep their mouths shut. Or collaborate. Or go off to fight on the Eastern Front. Or to make a stand. It was their own, free, personal decision, and there was a price to pay. And no post-modern historian can change that, no matter how much they may revise Danish history.’

  Vuldom’s voice was stern, reprimanding. The other four stared at her in some surprise, each of them absorbing the new little nugget of information about this very private person, Jytte Vuldom: that her father had been a member of the resistance.

  Charlotte Bastrup cleared her throat once and only the slender fingers fiddling with her pen betrayed that she had just been given a small taste of the notorious Vuldom wrath which was liable to come pouring down on anyone who acted unprofessionally, was not serious enough about their work or simply stepped on her toes and said things which went against her ideas of justice and fairness.

  Toftlund came to Charlotte’s aid:

  ‘I think Charlotte, like me, was unaware of what a touchy and controversial issue this is, even today. It can still ruffle the feathers of old front-liners and resistance fighters, their descendants and the historians, who can’t agree on anything. Incidentally, it’s interesting to note that these three researchers knew nothing of Irma’s association with the SS veterans’ movement. Or her father’s story. She has kept that under her hat, even though she is in many ways their mentor. Their guidance counsellor I think they call it down there. In their research project she has steered them in the direction that accords with her view of events.’

  Vuldom lit a cigarette. She was still upset, Toftlund could tell. Angry about something which seemed a small thing to him – unless, that was, it could help to get Irma convicted of the acts of treason which he was positive she had committed.

  ‘Interesting,’ Vuldom said. ‘Our little Irma is a consummate manipulator of others. She has learned from a great teacher, our dear Irma-Edelweiss.’ The sentence was left hanging in the air as if asking to be expanded upon, but no more came. Toftlund was standing out front, when she did not go on he picked up the thread:

  ‘Born, as I say, in 1940. Very attached to her father. Difficult adolescence in Silkeborg, to which they moved after the scandal broke. No one can remember the young man, E–. And the mother’s brain is too far gone. Irma and E– were never married. Not on paper anyway. In 1989 Irma married a fellow lecturer, he died of cancer three years ago. They had no children. She studied literature and history at the University of Copenhagen and went on to win a professorship at the University of Roskilde with a thesis in which she argued that depictions of female characters in classic Danish literature were false, inasmuch as they were based upon the capitalist, male-chauvinist society’s repressive image of women. She chucked, you might say, the whole body of Danish literature written by men on the midden of history.’

  Toftlund sounded as though he was quoting one of the academics he had interviewed, and this did not escape Vuldom’s notice:

  ‘That was some mouthful,’ she said jokingly, as if she knew he was not quite himself today. ‘Something you read?’

  ‘Nope. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. So much for Irma’s public life. But she has also had another life. We have a big, fat file on her. She was extremely politically active. Officially in the women’s movement, but she was also involved with several revolutionary factions operating within and around the far left and the Communist Workers’ Party. She wrote articles about the necessity of violent action. Supported the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Knew people close to the terrorist bankrobbers in the Blekingegade gang. As a very young girl she was a Nazi, but appears to have had no trouble making the shift from there to revolutionary Marxism. From one form of totalitarianism to another. There’s possibly not that much difference between them anyway. One thing they certainly have in common is their hatred of middle-class society. Like Fritz she has kept in touch with her father’s old comrades.’

  ‘War makes for strange bedfellows,’ Vuldom remarked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I think it was Churchill who said that,’ she offered.

  Bjergager gave a little cough. They turned to him in surprise. He generally did not say much during these sessions. He noted everything down and remembered everything, but he was not a hasty man, he preferred not to make any comment until he had had the chance to turn over in his mind the points discussed and the evidence presented.

  ‘Yes, Bjergager?’ Vuldom said.

  Bjergager leaned a little way across the table:

  ‘Churchill did say something to that effect,’ he said in his deep, dry voice. ‘But that was because he was a well-read man. The original quote comes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: ‘Misery makes for strange bedfellows’ or something like that. Churchill just changed the wording slightly – to explain his unholy alliance with Stalin against Hitler.’

  ‘Thanks for the lecture, Bjergager,’ Vuldom said and nodded to Toftlund who took a sip of water and glanced at Charlotte before continuing:

  ‘I think we’ll find the explanation for her treason …’

  ‘Which we cannot prove,’ Vuldom broke in.

  ‘… for her treason in her revolutionary youth. She’s no longer active. But then we haven’t had her under observation for some time. She’s never been convicted of anything.’

  ‘She’s just like all the rest,’ Vuldom said. ‘The Danes never started a revolution. There was no war. Their theories remained just that. Their cold talk of terrorism was never anything but talk. Their apocalyptic visions never amounted to any more than visions. They were lucky that all their revolutionary spoutings didn’t have serious consequences for the liberal society they hated so much.’

  Toftlund did not know what apocalyptic meant, and was actually expecting to be enlightened, but Vuldom simply stubbed out her cigarette and glanced first at him, then at Charlotte Bastrup who was sitting with a pile of reports and her own notebook in front of her. Toftlund felt a shudder run through him, as if someone had opened a window, letting a chill draught into the warm, modern office. Vuldom’s gift for reading both situations and people was legendary, but she wasn’t a fucking mind-reader, surely?

  ‘Does Irma know you’re reading her account?’ was all she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you mean to confront her with it?’

  ‘Yes. There are things there I can use. To which she’ll have to provide answers.’

  ‘How did you hack into it?’

  ‘That was Charlotte.’

  Vuldom glanced inquiringly at Bastrup who raised her head and looked her straight in the eye:

  ‘It’s a standard Word programme. She had devised a code. Most people are pretty unimaginative. I started with her own name, forwards then backwards, then her brothers’ names, her father’s and so on. It turned out to be Teddy spelled backwards. I transferred the document from her computer when she was being interviewed or in the exercise yard.’

  ‘Teddy spelled backwards – not very original,’ Vuldom said.

  ‘People rarely are.’

  ‘There is another possibility, of course. That she wanted us to read it. That she assumed we were smart enough to break her simple code. Have you considered that? Have you considered that our dear Irma might have wanted us to read her little memoir?’

  Toftlund and Bastrup nodded and waited for their boss’s next words:

  ‘So she’s sendng you a message, Toftlund, loud and clear.’ Vuldom picked up the printout of Irma’s
diary and read aloud: ‘“I looked at him. That may have been the moment when my life acquired meaning. At any rate, when he took me in his arms and held me I burst into tears. There in that bare, hushed clearing in the woods I knew that I would never let this man down.”

  Vuldom looked up, put the paper down and repeated:

  ‘“I knew that I would never let this man down.” I’m right, aren’t I. A heavy hint.’

  ‘And a confession,’ Toflund added.

  ‘That too, but not one that would stand up in court. So who’s E–?’

  ‘Our spy. The one passing secrets to the Serbs. Or to the Russians, who pass it on to the Serbs. It may well have been E– who provided the details of the Stealth’s flight path, thus enabling them to hit it. It shouldn’t have been possible to shoot that thing down. It was invisible, for God’s sake. Irma doesn’t have access, but E– does.’

  Toftlund paced up and down. Vuldom followed him with her eyes before saying:

  ‘If he has worked with NATO’s armed forces, or the Foreign Department, or within the EU organisation, and if we’re to believe Irma, then he must be nearing retirement age, or already retired. He’s a relic from the cold war. He thought he was safe because Stasi managed to destroy the tape containing the names of its foreign agents. Or most of them, at least. If he himself does not have access then maybe he recruited someone who has. Then suddenly one day there’s a knock at the door and there’s some Russian, say, who knows him by his Stasi cover name and wants to reactivate him. He has to get hold of the flight coordinates of NATO planes over Yugoslavia and Kosovo or else …?’

  Vuldom let the sentence hang.

  Bastrup cleared her throat and said:

  ‘I know the Russians are against the war and are, to some extent, on the Serbs’ side in this matter, but it’s not like them to go so far as to risk compromising their own agents and – more importantly – letting the rest of us know that they actually have a complete list of Stasi’s old network of moles and undercover agents and, hence, a potential bargaining tool and possible blackmail material. Although they could, of course, also find themselves called upon to make such a list public. Is that what you’re saying, boss?’

  Vuldom smiled and nodded, like a teacher receiving an answer from a good student:

  ‘Exactly. So the reward for revealing to the rest of us that they have a copy of the details of Wolf ’s old network would have to be very big. And it was. Access for Russian engineers to America’s top-secret Stealth technology is a reward beyond price. The cold war and all that may be over, but Russia is still keen to possess this technology. And if the Yugoslavian air defence knew the flight coordinates, the odds of them shooting down a Stealth bomber would suddenly be greatly improved, and with them the chances of Russia building its own Stealth aircraft, which they could hawk to the Iranians or the Chinese, or whoever else buys arms from the Russians these days. It would be worth it, even if it meant giving away information or compromising an agent.’

  Toftlund said:

  ‘But who is E–?’

  ‘Yes, who is E–?’ Vuldom repeated. ‘What do the files say? About the liquidations during the war? Have you found anything?’

  Toftlund walked over to Bastrup, who handed him a sheet of paper. He ran a quick eye over it then said:

  ‘The resistance carried out somewhere in the region of four hundred liquidations in ’44 and ’45. After the war, representatives from the resistance movement looked at all the unsolved killings and if there was any mention of an informer liquidation the case was shelved. And since the occupation no one, not the press, nor the historians nor any other researchers have had any inclination to delve into that matter. It’s still very much a taboo subject. No one has tried to find eyewitnesses or surviving relatives. Both those who did the killing and the families who were hit bear the scars to this day. The majority of those who were directly involved are dead. Many of the surviving spouses changed their names, remarried and so on. There are a lot of faded old case files. But they got us nowhere. We can find no trace of any young man fitting Irma’s description of E–. It’s like this blank spot in Danish history. We’ve been able to track down hardly any survivors, in fact. Or locate any relative now occupying a post which offers access to classified information. But E–’s mother could have remarried and taken her secret with her to the grave. That’s what usually happened.’

  Toftlund regarded Vuldom regretfully.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s rephrase the question then: who knows who E– is?’

  ‘Irma does. But she’s not telling. I’m convinced that, while Irma may well be Edelweiss, she is not the actual spy, only the spy’s carrier pigeon. E– has survived this long only because he has had plenty of filters between himself and the recipients of his reports – be it the KGB, or Stasi, or both. Irma was one of these filters. E–’s identity was not even known to the normal spy chiefs within Stasi or, earlier, the KGB. Apart, perhaps, from the director himself. He was a vital asset, and as such was closely protected. He delivered his reports through human carrier pigeons like Irma. But there was more than one Irma in his life.’

  Toftlund glanced at Vuldom, who nodded:

  ‘I’ve reached the same conclusion,’ she said. ‘E– is our man. He thought he was home and dry, but there’s always just one more job. Always one last job when you’ve pledged your soul to the Devil.’

  ‘And the other sister? The secret one?’

  Toftlund was anxious to hear whether, here too, Vuldom had reached the same conclusion as himself. She had:

  ‘I see where you’re going, Per. E–’s real name may have been the currency which Mira Majola or Maria Bujic, or whatever this good sister calls herself, brought to Teddy, thus ensuring that it went into his suitcase. And what she wanted to buy – having burned all her bridges – was, of course, a new name and a new identity in peaceful little Denmark.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Toftlund said.

  ‘So if we’re to get any further with Irma, then we’ll have to establish a link between them. Not in the past, but in the present. Between all three of them, if possible.’

  ‘And how are we to do that?’

  Charlotte looked up, a smile on her sensual red lips as she held aloft a sheet of paper. Laughter lines appeared at the corners of her eyes, so fine as to be almost invisible, and Toftlund had a most unprofessional urge to kiss the smooth bare nape of her neck below her cropped hair.

  ‘I think I may have managed it last night,’ Charlotte Bastrup said with a self-confidence which Toftlund found both attractive and annoying, reminding him as it did of the invulnerability he too had felt at that age, before life became so bloody complicated.

  22

  TOFTLUND AND BASTRUP drove down towards the Storebælt Bridge. It was still the same day, but the springlike weather of the morning had been seen off by grey clouds which had just sent a shower of sleet sweeping across the motorway. The road glistened dull-grey and made the tyres hum faintly; then suddenly they were running over dry tarmac again. Toftlund was in the driver’s seat with Charlotte sitting, legs crossed, next to him. They were listening to Radio 2, its smooth stream of hit tunes running in one ear and out the other, unbroken by the incessant chatter that pervaded Danmarks Radio’s programmes. Toftlund was acutely aware of Charlotte’s scent and if he glanced sideways and down he could see her slim thigh and rounded knee showing below the hem of her skirt. He could not help thinking he should really have been the one to arrive at the deduction which Charlotte had made. By reasoning. By deduction. By inference. The holy trinity of every investigation. But his experiences in Prague had hit him harder than he cared to admit. It was like being a bodyguard again. Which he wasn’t. So why these shadows of doubt in his mind? Maybe he should talk to Lise. Try to explain how he felt. But that just wasn’t in his nature. He was not like Irma, who could write about the most intimate details of her life. He did not understand the current penchant for putting oneself on display, for baring one’s soul i
n public. He just did not get it: how could television make people say and do the things they did? Exposing the most private sides of themselves. And why this great need to talk about oneself and one’s feelings? Lise too believed that you could get to the root of any problem by discussing it. Even Vuldom had deemed it only natural, although she herself would never have done it. ‘It’s a form of self-therapy which works for a lot of people,’ she had said. ‘It’s no crime to be unhappy, to have suffered. It’s a far greater crime not to face the fact that one is merely human.’ He had not been altogether sure what she meant. As far as he was concerned, opening up was a sign of weakness. His personal problems and inner doubts were nobody else’s concern. You had to fight these things on your own. There – now his mind was wandering again. Running off at a tangent, where it had no business going. In an effort to thrust aside what he could not bear to think about he forced himself to concentrate on and consider the discovery which Charlotte had made and presented. It was actually very simple, but then breakthroughs often were – if, that is, this was a breakthrough. Or at the very least a piece of evidence with which he could confront Irma and thereafter persuade the prosecutor to submit in court.

  Charlotte Bastrup had made yet another study of the extensive surveillance material they had procured. This included Irma’s bank statements and records of phone calls made and faxes sent from her work, from her home phone and her mobile. This last was especially important. Not only could they check whom she had called and at which numbers, they could also pinpoint the physical location of a recipient phone to within a radius of a few metres. Bastrup had obtained the last piece of the puzzle through the unofficial channels commonly referred to in the media as ‘Echelon’. Major intelligence gathering stations in the UK and other parts of Europe as well as Greenland and the US traced, intercepted and recorded the mass of electronic traffic travelling along the wireless motorways of cyberspace, via the Internet and email. Rows of dry numbers, lined up like soldiers on parade, traced the electronic life of a modern-day individual – here disclosed, laid out, courtesy of the huge hearkening ears and all-seeing eyes which dog a person’s every step along the global highway.