Little Grey Mice

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘She’s a formidable woman,’ Turev assessed. ‘I was surprised by her complete acceptance of what was involved.’

  ‘I’m not sure she is a formidable woman at all,’ argued Panin. ‘I think there’s a shell, concealing a lot of softness.’

  ‘She ran the cell brilliantly in Berlin.’

  ‘Which makes her a good organizer. What else?’

  Turev used the lighting of another cigarette to cover his difficulty. ‘It’s not unusual, for a raven to be married. Or a swallow.’

  ‘It isn’t just their being married, is it?’ demanded the psychologist, with another infuriating rhetorical question. ‘She’s not just having to accept her husband seducing another woman: at her level of professionalism that probably wouldn’t be a problem. But whether she realizes or not at this moment, she’s also being asked to surrender that professional superiority in their relationship as well, isn’t she?’

  ‘How important is that?’

  Panin pulled down the corners of his mouth, in a doubtful expression. ‘There’s no way I – or anybody else – can assess that, not at this stage. To people such as I believe Jutta to be – people building a shell of apparent superiority around themselves – positions of dominance are very important. They don’t like losing them. Or having them taken away.’

  ‘Are you saying we have a problem, before we begin?’

  ‘I’m saying we have an unknown and unpredictable situation with her.’

  Chapter Nine

  As Ida entered Elke tried to remember the last time her sister had come to the Kaufmannstrasse apartment but couldn’t. Extending the reflection, she realized that Ida wouldn’t have been there that evening had she not invited herself: Elke had expected them to meet during the day in a restaurant, as they normally did. Ida appeared to have the same thoughts about the length of time since her last visit. She looked curiously around the flat, as if it were strange to her.

  ‘I wish I could keep my place as tidy as this,’ she said.

  ‘There’s only me,’ Elke reminded. ‘Me and Poppi.’ She thought Ida looked remarkably chic. The light suit, which she hadn’t seen before, was a mix of browns and oranges and reds, and there was a matching shawl which Ida wore with careless elegance across one shoulder. Elke was not sure she liked the tightness of the jacket, which seemed to pronounce the curve of Ida’s bust. She said: ‘Would you like something?’

  ‘Whisky?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Elke. She never kept alcohol in the flat because she never entertained. She felt awkward, unworldly.

  ‘What is there?’

  ‘Coffee. Tea.’

  Ida made a face. ‘I won’t bother. It wasn’t too much of a rush for you?’ Ida had suggested six o’clock and arrived promptly on time.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Elke. It would have been, if the workload had been anything like it had been for most of the past year. As it was, she’d only got back to the flat fifteen minutes before Ida.

  ‘I’ve got an apology to make,’ said Ida.

  ‘What about?’ As well as the suit jacket being too tight the skirt rode higher than Elke considered it should when her sister sat as she was now, one leg crossed casually over the other. She supposed, from the clothes of some of the younger girls at the Chancellery, that the cut was fashionable.

  ‘That was quite a maudlin little scene at the Reduttchen.’

  ‘You didn’t embarrass me,’ said Elke. What would Ida have said if she’d confessed the feeling had been fear, for herself?

  ‘It still wasn’t particularly edifying.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Horst?’

  ‘As best as anyone can speak to Horst.’ There was the sneer in Ida’s voice again. Elke wished it hadn’t been there.

  ‘What did he say?’

  There was a laugh, still with a sneer. ‘Lots of bullshit at first. No difficulties, everything fine, he could manage the family affairs, rubbish like that. But I’d collected some of the bills that came in our joint names: final demands, too. Then he had to cut the crap.’

  It was as if her sister was intentionally trying to shock her by speaking as crudely as she did. Elke said: ‘It must have been awful.’

  Ida frowned. ‘As a matter of fact I didn’t find it awful at all. I enjoyed it!’

  ‘How could you possibly enjoy it!’

  ‘Being honest,’ explained Ida. ‘For the first time for months … years … he had to be honest. Admit that he wasn’t the big-time executive and that the house was too large and cost too much to run and that he’d lost too much money on the stock market venture.’

  ‘You didn’t leave him with a lot of pride, did you?’ said Elke.

  ‘I don’t give a damn about his pride,’ said Ida, angrily. ‘For years he’s let me go on thinking everything is fine. That he’s just a bit of a bumbler but that nothing could really go badly wrong. Don’t you think that honesty in a marriage is important?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ reminded Elke, quietly. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Believe me, it is!’ the other woman insisted. She appeared quite unaware of the hypocrisy of what she was saying.

  ‘How much?’ Elke demanded, directly.

  ‘Thirty thousand marks,’ Ida replied, just as direct.

  ‘I thought it would be more.’ Elke calculated, relieved, that it would leave her with almost the same amount in her deposit account and in insurance investments.

  ‘That’s all he would admit to, finally,’ qualified Ida. ‘And there’s the outstanding loan the bank refused to increase.’

  ‘How much is that?’

  ‘Fifty thousand.’

  ‘Can he reduce that, without the pressure of the immediate debts?’

  ‘I’ve said I want it done properly: a regular monthly amount taken by bank order. And that I want to go to the bank with him to arrange it. That’s the only way it will work: he couldn’t be trusted to do it himself. At least he’ll have to stop buying that pissy wine.’

  ‘You’re being very hard on him,’ accused Elke, again.

  ‘It’s about time someone was.’

  ‘Will it help, completely to humiliate him?’ Elke was at once astonished at herself. It was the first occasion she had ever come close to openly criticizing her sister. It seemed easy to do so mentally.

  Ida shrugged, carelessly. ‘I’m not interested in his feelings,’ she said. ‘I just want to settle this money thing. I hate it! It frightens me! You don’t know what it’s like, to be frightened like this.’

  I do, thought Elke. I know what it’s like to be frightened of not having money and I know what it’s like to be frightened about a thousand other things, every day of my life. She said: ‘I can let you have all of it: the entire thirty thousand.’

  They were sitting in opposing chairs. Ida leaned forward, feeling out for her hand. Elke anwered the gesture for their fingers to meet, with difficulty because she had Poppi on her lap. Ida said: ‘You’re marvellous. I love you.’

  ‘I hope it helps. That everything can be sorted out.’

  Ida let her fingers drop. ‘I want you to understand we won’t be able to pay you back too quickly. I want to reduce the bank debt.’

  ‘I’m not interested in being paid back,’ said Elke. Wasn’t she? Not quickly, perhaps. But eventually. Money – her savings – was her security, the only positive guarantee of any future.

  ‘We will, I promise,’ said Ida. ‘And the same way. When we’ve got the bank debt down we’ll make another order, so that you’ll be repaid on a regular basis. And I’ll have the bank calculate what interest you will have lost and make that up.’

  ‘Stop it!’ said Elke, in what would have been irritation if the feeling were possible towards her sister. ‘I’m not concerned how or when I’m paid back, or about any interest. What I …’

  Ida waited. ‘What?’ she said, finally.

  ‘Nothing. Just what I said. Nothing else.’

  There was a further silence between them. Elke filled it by carefully
standing up, supporting Poppi to another chair where a blanket was already set out for him to lay upon, and then continuing to the bureau in the corner of the room, for her chequebook. Hunched over the writing desk, Elke said: ‘To whom shall I make it payable?’

  ‘Me!’ said Ida, instantly. ‘It’s going into my personal account so I know what bills have been paid.’

  ‘Does Horst know? About me?’

  ‘Of course! Where could I have come up with thirty thousand Marks?’

  Further humiliation for the man, Elke thought. Despite Ida’s insistence to the contrary, Elke was sure the confrontation must have been awful. She completed the cheque and carried it across the room to her sister. Ida took it, folded it carefully, and put it into her small clutch bag. For the first time Elke became aware the bag was patterned in colours to coordinate with the suit and the shawl.

  Ida looked up from her handbag, wrist before her, and said: ‘Seven o’clock. Still early.’

  They could go out, Elke thought, with quick enthusiasm. She didn’t know anywhere because she never went out to eat at night, but there had to be a lot of places as close as they were to the centre of the city. She smiled towards her sister, about to propose it, but Ida spoke first.

  ‘My night for favours,’ she announced.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told Horst I was coming here …’ said Ida and stopped.

  Elke said nothing, staring at her sister.

  ‘… for the evening,’ Ida continued.

  Still Elke did not speak: didn’t want to speak because she didn’t want to say the sort of words she’d never said to Ida before.

  ‘He won’t call,’ Ida assured.

  ‘This isn’t fair!’ Elke protested at last. ‘Not fair to me!’

  ‘I told you, he won’t call. You won’t be involved.’

  ‘What if he does?’ demanded Elke. ‘What if …’ she stumbled, seeking a reason. ‘… What if the children became ill?’

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic!’

  ‘I’m not being melodramatic. I’m being practical.’

  ‘I could call you. Keep in touch.’

  ‘How do I explain your not being here, in the first place?’

  ‘I …’ started Ida uncertainly, quickly smiling as the explanation came to her. ‘I went out for a bottle of wine! We were enjoying ourselves and I went out for another bottle of wine!’

  ‘That’s puerile.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  Elke was horrified how careless – how absolutely dismissive – Ida had become about everything and everybody. She said: ‘Not again. This once but not again.’

  ‘I knew you’d do it for me!’ said Ida, rising. ‘I have to hurry!’

  Of course her sister had known she would do it, supposed Elke. Everyone could anticipate what Elke Meyer was going to do and say: dependable, loyal, supportive Elke Meyer. ‘Call!’ she insisted, anxiously.

  ‘Of course,’ assured Ida, at the door.

  Elke remained where she was for a long time after Ida left, until the gathering night put the room into darkness. She rose at last, switched on a light, and reversed and plumped the cushions of the seats upon which she and Ida had sat. She tried her latest Graham Greene acquisition but couldn’t concentrate so she put it aside. She prepared Poppi’s meal. When the phone sounded stridently in the apartment she gave a small cry of apprehension and started at it, not wanting to pick it up. When she eventually did she said, very quietly: ‘Hello?’

  ‘Anything?’

  The relief sighed from Elke at her sister’s voice. ‘No,’ she said tightly. There was no sound of activity from the other end to indicate that Ida and the man were in a restaurant or bar.

  ‘I told you it would be all right,’ said Ida.

  ‘Call again.’

  Ida did, two hours later. There was still no background sound. She said she was on her way back to Bad Godesberg, which was what Horst was to be told if he called. He didn’t.

  ‘It’s wrong, Poppi. It’s very wrong,’ said Elke, as she settled the dog down for the night. Elke knew that she had been wrong too, becoming an accomplice. So why had she? Why hadn’t she grown angry and refused? Elke wished she knew the answer, just as she wished she knew the answer to so many other questions.

  ‘Wrong,’ Elke insisted, to the indifferent dog.

  That night, in her diary, Elke wrote: I. 30,000. She hardly needed a reminder date for the loan, but it was a neat entry for a woman who liked neatness, in everything. She sat looking at it for several moments. Then, quickly, she scrawled Fool and closed the book.

  Once more, because Dzerzhinsky Square is so close to the Kremlin, Cherny went to Sorokin’s KGB office after their conference at the President’s Secretariat. This time Cherny wore his uniform, with all his medals.

  ‘Can you ever see liaison – an association – between NATO and the Warsaw Pact becoming a reality?’ queried the KGB deputy chief.

  ‘Of course not!’ the soldier retorted. ‘Whatever America says the West will cheat, somehow. Or Germany will. History proves it. And the last war cost Russia twenty million lives.’

  ‘Will Germany ever agree to the removal of missiles and troops from its territory?’ Sorokin was picking up another discussion point from the Kremlin meeting.

  ‘It has to, for Russia even to begin to be safe. Our negotiators should have insisted upon that before surrendering our occupying Power status over Berlin.’

  ‘I wish to hell we were in a stronger position.’

  ‘The army have wished that for over a year,’ Cherny growled.

  Chapter Ten

  Reimann was disappointed with Bonn. He’d always believed capital cities should look like the most important place in a country: overwhelm ordinary people on the streets or on the pavements because they were ordinary people and such people had to be overwhelmed into believing that the other sort – the special people – who occupied the monuments of power were bigger and better and more able than they were, properly equipped and qualified to rule. But there weren’t any enormous, intimidating structures in Bonn: even Berlin, razed in 1945, still possessed more imposing buildings than existed here, although they were not all utilized for government purposes.

  It shouldn’t have happened – or been allowed to continue – whatever the immediate post-war history. Which Reimann knew well enough, even before the Balashikha lecturers. He knew – although he cynically did not fully accept – that the first post-war Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, had chosen his birthplace as the government centre for the divided, Western-orientated country believing that the location would only be temporary and that Berlin would be fully restored, after reunification. For years ‘temporary’ was the recognized and accepted qualification, preceding every official reference to Bonn as the West German capital. To Reimann Bonn appeared nothing more than a village inhabited by passing strangers who might any day move on, leaving it to go back to sleep like Rip Van Winkle among its small streets and stunted dwellings. He actually discerned a rural, yokel somnolence about the place: people moved slowly and reacted slowly and spoke slowly. It was little wonder West Germany demanded reunification so fervently after the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the impervious borders between the two countries. Reimann guessed the politicians here would be as anxious as hell to get back to a proper, imposing city. It was certainly not a place where he personally wanted to live or even stay too long. He hoped it didn’t become necessary to do so.

  He arrived believing there was a great deal of preparation to occupy him before he would have to consider Elke Meyer, but establishing himself was not as difficult as he expected. In advance of his coming his intelligence-controlled media outlets in Australia had written to advise the necessary ministries and departments of his appointment as their Bonn correspondent, so he was expected when he presented himself at the press centre off Adenauerallee with his supporting letters of accreditation.

  Reimann was content enough with the Soviet-selected apartment on Rochusplatz
. He’d feared a modern, box-within-a-box building. Instead it was most of the ground floor of a converted, late nineteenth century house. Its age dictated high ceilings and expansive windows and the furniture matched. There were heavy velvet drapes and big, larger-sized cupboards and wardrobes. The claw-footed dining table and chairs were mahogany and heavy, the chairs difficult to shift, and the supposed easy chairs were over-stuffed and not particularly easy to sit in. Although it lacked the outright luxury, the size of the rooms and their furniture, together with the suggestion of ornateness, reminded Reimann of Neglinnaya and he wondered if it had other less immediately obvious fixtures, like those the Moscow apartment had possessed. In fact there were no eavesdropping devices, in case of discovery by West German counter-intelligence if any romance with Elke Meyer should lead to a security check.

  The plumbing was ancient, the tiling was white and heavily fissured with cracks, and all the taps were very large, so the unconscious tendency was to use two hands. The bath stood, like a beached boat, in the middle of the bathroom. The toilet seat was mahogany, like the furniture outside. When the water flowed, the pipes creaked and whined, playing their own surrealistic melody. Because of the approaching summer the central heating, provided by gargantuan radiators, was switched off, but Reimann guessed it would have a tune to perform in the winter. His only additions to the apartment were a microwave and electrical fitments – coffee grinder, coffee maker, toaster and food mixer – in a kitchen already fitted with a refrigerator and deep freeze. In the living-room he installed a television, a video and a hi-fi set and attached a facsimile machine, befitting his supposed role as a journalist, to the telephone. Faithfully following the last-day Moscow instructions he bought an expensive Nikon camera and a set of proxile copying lenses, which he stored in the top left-hand drawer of the desk, hoping he would have an early use for them. On the same day as he signed the lease, paid a deposit and agreed an inventory deduction at the end of his tenancy, Reimann notified the telephone, gas, electricity and rating authorities that he was now responsible for all charges incurred upon the property.