The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  ‘It’ll soon be May, and then it will be summer here. It doesn’t happen gradually the way it does where you come from. From one moment to the next the season changes,’ she said. ‘And with the summer will come peace.’

  ‘That’s what you believe.’

  ‘It’s what I want to believe.’

  Teddy swept out a hand, causing the smoke from his cigarette to describe a narrow greyish-white band in the air, like a miniature version of the exhaust trail from one of NATO’s high-flying fighters.

  ‘Then they can all go home.’

  ‘Yes. And they will. Home to their burned-out houses, their unsown fields, missing papers, devastated country. Home with all their hate. And another fresh problem for you lot.’

  ‘I thought you were on the Serbs’ side.’

  ‘This is my fourth war in ten years, Teddy. I’m not on anyone’s side any more. There’s no one to side with. It’s all over. Everything is in ruins. If I’m on anyone’s side then it’s that of good people everywhere. Those too you find in Serbia. Maybe they will have a chance now.’

  ‘Was that why you got mixed up in that oil deal?’

  ‘The big oil scam,’ she said in English and smiled before switching back to Russian: ‘That was what they called it in the headlines. Was that why? I suppose it was. The old alliances no longer seemed to make sense. No one cared about anything but themselves and their pensions. It started as an extension of my work. Well, we were having to finance ourselves more and more. We weren’t being paid, either. It was too good an opportunity to miss. When you’ve lost out on the ideological front there’s nothing for it but to try to make a winning on the capitalist side. If you want to judge me, go ahead. It’s been years since I could afford to have scruples.’

  ‘Teddy doesn’t judge anyone. Teddy doesn’t throw stones in his own glasshouse.’

  He tried to meet her gaze, but she stared straight ahead:

  ‘What’s your real name?’ he asked.

  She turned to face him, looked him straight in the eye and smiled again. When she smiled she reminded Teddy of Irma. They had the same features and the same sparkling, intelligent green eyes:

  ‘Mira. My name is Mira.’

  ‘And you’re my sister?’

  ‘That part of the story is true enough, Teddy. We have the same father.’

  Teddy sat quietly for a moment. He tossed away his fag-end and promptly lit another smoke before holding out the pack to her, but Mira shook her head.

  Then: ‘How did you find Irma?’ he asked.

  Mira put her arms behind her head and considered the question:

  ‘As a young girl Irma was an all-out revolutionary. She attended a PLO training camp in Lebanon. I spotted her there. According to my own cover story I was a Yugoslavian revolutionary eager to assist our Palestinian comrades in their righteous struggle against Zionism. The kids today would have little clue what I was talking about. I saw her as good raw material, although in some ways she was too radical, too much of a Maoist. But education would fix that.’

  ‘Did you know she was your sister?’

  ‘Not when I first met her in Lebanon. But I soon found out, when we checked her background and Berlin gave me the green light to recruit her. And I asked my father.’

  Teddy straightened up, looking flabbergasted:

  ‘Berlin! What the hell does Berlin have to do with all this!’

  ‘Teddy, my boss throughout all those years was Markus Wolf. I worked for the HVA – East German foreign intelligence – within Stasi. That was why I knew I was in trouble when rumours began to circulate that the Americans had cracked the code which protects us. There are at least three hundred of us. We thought we were safe. We knew that Wolf would never reveal our names.’

  ‘The Devil …’ Teddy breathed.

  ‘Yes, it has all the marks of his work, doesn’t it,’ she commented, still in Russian. Her voice was cool, low and businesslike, but Teddy was in a ferment; he almost stumbled over his words as he said:

  ‘And now you’re worried that just about everybody is after you?’

  She laughed:

  ‘Just about. Serbs, Croats, NATO, the Russians and now the Danes, not to mention a seriously pissed off division of the mafia. I have betrayed everybody and anybody. I am the absolute, and absolutely the last, double or triple agent. Or no, more: I’m the very last specimen of a race of prehistoric creatures which evolved and died out during the century we’re about to leave behind.’

  Surprisingly she laughed, as if she found the whole situation very funny:

  ‘It’s no wonder that I’ve been thinking a lot about Australia over the past couple of years. I don’t think anyone down there cares – it’s so far away from Europe. But it’s too dangerous for me to go crossing borders at the moment, what with the war …’

  ‘I don’t get it, Mira. How did you wind up in the GDR? And how did Irma wind up there, if she wound up there?’

  ‘It’s very simple, Teddy. The fact is that personal alliances are everything. After the Second World War the Russians, and later Stasi, took over part of Nazi Germany’s Gestapo and SS network. The new enemies were the capitalists and the imperialists. The past ceased to matter so much. If your old enemies now happened to be your new enemy’s enemies then that mattered more than some bygone war. It was the same thing in the West. Several of my father’s old comrades from the Eastern Front served under the sword and shield of the GDR secret services. They knew the trade. In actual fact there was probably little to choose between the two systems. That was how I was contacted, courted and recruited. That was how I learned about Irma, Fritz and you, although Irma was clearly the most likely to be persuaded that socialism also requires discipline. And that such discipline is found not in small, sectarian left-wing parties, but only in the Communist Party, which knows that at the end of the day Lenin’s fatherland must lead the way. I arranged to meet her again at a so-called seminar in Rostock which was attended by a lot of Danes. The rest, as they say, is history.’

  Teddy shook his head helplessly, threw away his cigarette butt, lit up again and this time when he held the pack out to Mira she accepted. Around them the clear sounds of the refugee camp had become no more than a backcloth of voices, shouts, cries, sobs, splashing water and boots squelching through the mud. The sun had come out completely and with the sunlight came new smells, carried across the camp fence by the breeze: the scent of damp grass and what might have been budding flowers, a distinct, indefinable sensation of warmth from the crumbling brick which reminded him of summer, and above the voices of the people Teddy thought he could hear birds singing.

  ‘Why did you come to see me in Bratislava?’

  She puffed placidly on her cigarette. A faraway look had stolen over her face. She must have been remarkably beautiful as a young woman, Teddy thought to himself. Irma looked good, she always had done, but Mira’s Croatian blood had endowed her with a loveliness and a sweetness underneath the tough exterior which Irma lacked.

  She looked at him:

  ‘A fox always has two exits. You were to take something out for me.’

  ‘The codes to bank accounts.’

  ‘Something along those lines, but it was more than that.’

  ‘The suitcase is gone,’ Teddy said, feeling disappointed that it had not been personal.

  ‘I realise that. I also sent them poste restante to myself.’

  ‘But you don’t know whether the money has been touched?’

  ‘No, I’ve no way of knowing.’

  She paused as if not entirely sure whether to tell him, but then she went on:

  ‘I gave you notes and things, hidden within our family history. It’s a very old method. Written in invisible ink underneath the visible words: details of cash transfers made over the years, the names of agents, of people who now think themselves safe, but whom I know to be what one would term traitors. All sorts of information which I thought might come in handy if I had to make a deal.’

  �
��You crossed borders. Why was I suddenly supposed to be given your life insurance policy?’

  ‘That’s a very good name for it, Teddy. An insurance policy. They were after me. A lot of different people, but I wasn’t worried about my former colleagues. I was worried about what you call the mafia.’

  ‘What do you call it?’

  ‘The mafia.’

  They both giggled. Teddy liked that about her. She had the ability to laugh – at herself too.

  ‘I followed you, but I had the feeling that someone was following me. I don’t trust customs officers in this part of the world. They can be bought for a ten-dollar bill, so it occurred to me that it would be better if I could deliver my little hoard of secrets concerning other people and their pasts to a man whom no one has anything on. Namely, you. Had things gone differently I would probably have paid you a visit in Copenhagen. I felt the net closing in on me. I had to get rid of my heaviest piece of baggage.’

  ‘So old Teddy was to be your mule. Like a sort of drug courier.’

  She laid a hand on his arm:

  ‘I also wanted to meet my brother. My emotions have been in turmoil for years, after all that has happened. To be perfectly honest I was at my wit’s end. I was terrified, Teddy. You don’t play games with the Russian mafia. It’s active everywhere these days and here in the East or in the Balkans it has a pretty free hand. I was scared, Teddy. I could feel them breathing down my neck and I didn’t dare risk carrying that information across yet another border and having some underpaid customs guy give me funny, knowing looks. I watched you for a while first. Not least to see whether anyone else was watching you. I liked what I saw. Maybe I just had a stupid dream that in the family I might find an anchor to cling to amid all the chaos. That as well as everything else.’

  ‘Sounds awfully sentimental.’

  ‘Well, I could never afford to be sentimental, but perhaps that’s what I dream of when I dream of a normal life.’

  Teddy took her hand:

  ‘Crazy as it may sound, I’m actually happy to have met you.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to say so.’

  ‘No doubting the title of this picture: Teddy Gets All Sloppy in Albania after Reunion with Lost Sister.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘We’ve plenty of time. I’ll explain it to you some day.’

  Teddy let go of her hand and stood up, stretched his back and massaged his aching lumbar region.’

  ‘Does your back hurt?’

  ‘Ah, it’s not too bad.’

  ‘Bend over a little, that’s it, now place your hands on the wall,’ she instructed and he did as she said, stood with his legs slightly apart and his palms pressed against the rough plaster as if he was about to be searched. Her hands felt good as she massaged his back, first through his jacket, then working their way underneath it.

  ‘You’re good at this, Mira,’ he said, then asked: ‘Why didn’t you come to see me again?’

  ‘I had to protect you.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Let’s just call them the bad guys. Some of those whom I double-crossed. I had an old friend in Prague and in Bratislava. He created a smokescreen for me, in honour of a youthful love affair and the other bond between us, but they got to him. I think they were afraid he would tell your Danish policeman too much. They didn’t know the nature of the relationship which Pavel and I had.’

  ‘You’re surrounded by death, Mira.’

  She stopped massaging him for a moment, then resumed her gentle stroking of his spine and the small of his back.

  ‘That’s why I want to get out. It’s over.’

  ‘Is Irma going with you?’

  ‘No, why would she?’

  ‘Because Irma’s a spy. Irma is Edelweiss. I realise that now.’

  ‘Yes and no. Irma was a courier. Edelweiss is more than one person. Edelweiss is the best operation we ever ran. Without Irma there would have been no Edelweiss. Without Edelweiss, no Irma. But Edelweiss is also the biggest Danish operation we ever mounted. Several different controllers, several agents. More in Denmark than anywhere else, and Irma was responsible for coordinating their efforts. It wasn’t hard to infiltrate Denmark. There were so many like Irma there.’

  ‘So who is he? The mystery man? Irma’s secret lover?’

  Mira gave another soft laugh and he felt her gentle hands kneading his back.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he is more than one man. Maybe I know, but don’t want to say if Irma is not prepared to say. And she is not. He is Edelweiss, but he is also a dream. Our sister’s dream of lifelong love, perhaps. Or her dream that it is possible to realise a just society, to create a Utopia. Maybe he’s just an illusion. Take your pick. You’ll have to finish this story yourself, Teddy. Choose your own ending.’

  ‘It’s like Keyser Soze,’ Teddy said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A guy everyone is terrified of. He crops up everywhere, but nobody has ever seen him. He’s a mysterious character in a film called The Usual Suspects.’

  ‘Not one I’ve seen.’

  ‘D’you know what? You will. It’s a great film. You’ll see it at home with Teddy, with wine in your glass and rain on the window. I’ve got it on tape. You’ll love it. It’s a fantastic film.’ He paused, then without altering his tone he said: ‘The police believe you’ve met Irma’s secret friend.’

  Her hands stopped moving. He straightened up and turned to face her smile and her cool eyes.

  ‘Is that what they’re saying?’

  ‘They say they can as good as prove it.’

  ‘And perhaps they’re right.’

  ‘Why perhaps, Mira?’

  She smiled at him again in a way which made him think how lovely she was and what a pity they had not met before. He felt instinctively attracted to her. It was hard to regard her as a half-sister when she was so new to him and so much of a woman.

  ‘Oh, to hell with it,’ she said. ‘I met him once. Just before I met you. I met him in Denmark along with Irma. She insisted.’

  ‘One last piece of business?’

  ‘No, Teddy. E– has cancer. I don’t think he has that long to go. Irma wanted the two people who have meant the most to her to meet before it was too late. We complied with her wishes, each for our own reasons.’

  ‘That was both sentimental and dangerous.’

  Unexpectedly she took his hand and held it:

  ‘Teddy, Irma started out as business, but later we became sisters. Very dear sisters. It’s many years since we’ve had any professional dealings with one another, but we exchanged letters, met a couple of times a year in Zurich. It’s such a wonderfully anonymous, neutral place. We went walking in the mountains, talked, dreamed, told each other the things sisters tell one another. Irma knows nothing of my links with the underworld. When the Wall collapsed there was no longer anyone to spy for, but that didn’t mean that we stopped caring about one another, you know. Quite the opposite.’

  ‘It all sounds so bloody complicated. I don’t understand a blind thing.’

  ‘No, and you don’t really need to either, Teddy.’

  ‘You make it sound so complex and yet so awfully banal. Like some pop song: I love you and I forgive you and I’ll miss you and all that jazz.’

  She laughed out loud:

  ‘Well, maybe that’s how it is. Love is banal, brother mine. Which is why it’s also so grand and unpredictable.’

  Still holding her hand he eased himself down onto his stool and drew her down beside him.

  ‘Did you see who E– is?’

  ‘I know what he looks like.’

  ‘I’m sure the Danes would like to hear more about that.’

  ‘Forget it. It won’t get you anywhere.’

  ‘I’m not so sure the Danes will forget about it.’

  ‘Ah, the Danes,’ she sighed. ‘They’re a little naive. Up in arms one minute, mild as milk the next. All the Danes really want is to have a nice, comfortable
life free from too much trouble or conflict. As a nation you’re adept at weaving your way through a dangerous world. The Danes would prefer to get off as lightly as possible. That’s how it was when our father was a soldier and that’s how it is today. No one in Denmark really wants anyone digging up recent history. There was no revolution. No violent action. All those young men and women became worthy pillars of society. That’s very Danish. They really didn’t mean anything by it. Or at least that’s what they say today. So why don’t we all just move on.’

  ‘Edelweiss is in the files.’

  She laughed again. He liked to hear her laugh and it occurred to him that if she found it so easy to laugh in her current situation then she must be great fun to be with under normal circumstances. Neither Irma nor Fritz had that gift. They both had about as much humour as a doorpost. It would be just like the thing for him finally to meet a relative with a sense of humour only for her to emigrate to Australia or somewhere in Asia, maybe, far from Europe. Well, at any rate, it was good to hear her laugh, feel the warmth of her wrinkled, blue-veined hands in his, hear the mirth in her voice and see it reflected in her eyes, those eyes which he suddenly remembered having likened to a glacial mountain tarn that evening when she visited him in Bratislava.

  ‘Oh, the files! Teddy, you’re a historian. You have to believe in the truth of the files. Otherwise what would you have to research? But what will you find in the files of the secret services except the conceited hopes of vain individuals, their attempts to make themselves seem important, their longing to be loved and taken seriously. Intelligence reports consist of ninety per cent bullshit or glaringly obvious facts, ten per cent lies, five per cent truth and possibly the occasional little secret.’

  ‘That’s more than a hundred per cent.’