The Helsinki Pact (49 page)

Thomas pressed the pause button.
“Damn it, there’s huge gaps. But it must be someone superior to
Dieter, complaining that he’s not been informed. Who else is above
him in the chain of command?”

“I’ve no idea now that we’ve been
moved under the Interior Ministry. Dieter used to be one of seven
heads of department. They all reported to the Director of
Operations, Markonberg. Above him are the Leiter of the whole
Secret Service, Mielke, and the Vice-Leiter, Sponden. I’ve never
met any of them, I’m afraid. But the most likely should be
Markonberg. He’s Dieter’s direct superior.”

Thomas pressed the button again
and the tape continued.

“... about financial services. We
have other priorities. The ... is over. ... an order. I don’t want
to hear another ... Securities.”

Thomas stopped the tape and wound
it back. “Did you hear the last words? It seemed to me like he was
saying Phoenix Securities.” He pressed play again.

“…
an order. I don’t
want to hear another ...eenix Securities.”

“It’s definitely Phoenix he’s
saying.”

Bettina nodded. “He’s being
ordered to halt the mission on Phoenix. That’s why he told us to
come back immediately. Of course, and that's why he mentioned
Henkel! I'd told him of the suicide letter copies we had and I'm
sure he picked up my doubts. That's why he said so firmly it was
clear and straightforward, finished, when it obviously
wasn't.”

Thomas let the tape run
on.

“I believe there may be a case of
fraud on a vast scale. They have built a network all over the
country.” It was Dieter’s voice now, perfectly audible. He was
talking vehemently, but with the respect due to his superior. “The
...”

There was another loud bang as if
the second man had again slammed his fist on to the desk. The voice
continued gaining and losing volume as Dieter's visitor strode
around in his fury, sometimes shouting, sometimes talking quietly
and coldly.

“... has been investigated fully
... Wornletz ... you appointed ... nothing to explain. Do you not
understand? That is an order. You are to take no further action in
this area.”

"Hanno?" Bettina looked at
Thomas. "That means Hanno's in danger too. I need to warn
him."

From the tape there was the sound
of the phone ringing, a pause, a click, and then Dieter’s bored
voice repeating “Hello Hyena. Anything urgent to
report?”

“That’s when you called.” Thomas
pressed the pause button. “No wonder he reacted the way he did. You
couldn’t have chosen a worse moment.” The tape continued, and they
listened, waiting for the phone conversation to end. When it did,
the other voice resumed, perfectly clear as if he was now standing
next to Dieter.

“Thank you, Colonel Dieter. I’m
glad to see you have understood. Don’t let me ever hear about you
taking up this investigation again or you’ll find yourself in
extremely serious trouble.”

The door again slammed. There was
a pause, then…“Yessir, Mr Herr Sponden, sir.” Dieter’s voice said
as if to himself, as the tape ran out.

Chapter 41

Friday January 19
1990, early morning

“SO that's who was trying to stop
the investigation.” They looked at each other, now seriously
concerned that the corruption triggered by imminent unification
reached almost to the top.

He sighed. "Looks like every
single former Stasi high ranker's got his snout in the trough. Who
the hell can we talk to about Phoenix and what we've discovered in
Dresden? Dieter was maybe an exception to this grubbing around for
personal gain and look where that got him. And why was he
interested in Phoenix anyway? Was it just because he didn't like
what he suspected others were getting up to? Maybe. There's got to
be more to this than we know."

“Thomas, Phoenix is the least of
our concerns right now. We're in serious danger and we need to work
out what to do. If people of Sponden's rank are involved and this
is linked to Dresden that's why Dieter was killed. I'm sure of it.
And I'm next in line - you too because even if they didn't know
before what Dieter was up to they sure as hell know now and they'll
be looking for both of us."

“Maybe they killed Dieter because
they discovered he’d evidence of their links with Phoenix. Maybe it
was something else entirely. Maybe the money disappearing in
Dresden and the sale of the mill are nothing to do with Phoenix,
just coincidence. Maybe it's just simple theft and fraud.” He
indicated the small stack of tapes on the table. “We should try to
listen to all these tapes. They may well have clues to ...
”

“Thomas! You have no idea, do
you? Jesus! How can I get it into your fucking thick head that
these people don't play games when they're threatened. You come
poncing around with your liberal Western ideas of what's right and
wrong but you haven't a clue about how ruthless true believers can
be when things don't go their way. These peopleThey're probably
already looking for us, guns ready, and you want to listen to
tapes?”

“It could help us to work out why
Dieter was killed and learn who might be trying to kill us and
why.”

“To do what? There’s no way we
can stop people like Roehrberg or Sponden now that Dieter is gone.
They still control thousands of people inside the country and
outside. Listen! Dieter had integrity. He had intellectual honesty.
And so although he was committed to this country and its ideals,
like me, he also saw how things could get bent, how people could
justify things, how the Stasi grabbed more and more power to
itself."

She look straight at him. "Look
how they justify spying on people in the name of state security.
Look how they get ordinary people to spy and report on others. Look
how they bend the laws to hide what they're doing. All that shit is
just to frighten people about things they don't really understand.
It can seem plausible enough but really only has one aim and that's
to ensure the powerful retain power. They've seen how things are
going now, they intend to benefit and if people get in their way
they'll be eliminated. That includes us."

Thomas had rarely seen Bettina
simultaneously so angry and so despairing. She sat with her face in
her hands and for a minute or two there was silence. She looked up
at Thomas and spoke more quietly.

"We have to get away. We have to
disappear. But even that won’t be easy. Dieter promised to deal
with our files but we don't know what that meant – now that he's
dead they could be going through them right now.”

Thomas had forgotten about the
files. Even if Dieter had managed to hide them somewhere in his
office where the murderers wouldn’t find them, it was likely that
the files would shortly fall into the hands of BND agents. Either
way he was doomed. He had no idea about what they contained but the
documents he had signed, and which would certainly be there, were
sufficient proof that he had been a Stasi agent.

“Where would Dieter keep
them?”

“They could be anywhere. He said
on a couple of occasions that he would keep them with him at all
times. So they were probably in his house when he got killed. Maybe
he secured them well, maybe he didn't.”

Thomas thought to himself for a
moment. He could see only one opportunity. If he couldn’t find his
file and destroy it then he needed to prove that he’d been trying
to collaborate with the West German services. If the BND found his
files and pulled him in then even the tapes wouldn't be much
use.

“Is there anyone within the
organisation that you can absolutely trust to help us?”

Bettina sat silently for a long
moment, biting her closed fist. Then she shook her head.

“I’ve always worked for Dieter,
and mostly on my own. I’ve never been involved with the political
aspect of things. I met a lot of colleagues but most of them I know
only superficially."

She coloured, looked away from
Thomas, theen added.

"There's Hanno, of course.
Remember, you met him briefly that day in Dieter's office. He's OK
but he's still junior, although he was always pretty ambitious. And
from what the tape said he's at risk too as he seems to have been
asked to make some report about what we were investigating. I
really don’t know anyone strong enough to go against Sponden or
Roehrberg, like Dieter could have done. Dieter was very different
from the others. He did whatever he felt was right, regardless of
the consequences. That’s why he never made it to the top, despite
his intelligence and capability. He wasn’t controllable and he
wasn't really interested in money or power or prestige for its own
sake.”

"OK, so we need to vanish. But
how do we do that? Trying to hide from the Stasi, ex-Stasi I guess
though it doesn't really matter, is going to be pretty much
impossible wherever we go in Europe if the likes of Roehrberg or
Sponden really want to find us. And we can't hide forever,
particularly as we need to find out more. Trouble is finding out
more, getting the proofs we need to nail them and free ourselves,
makes us even more dangerous to them short term."Despite the formal
disbanding of the Stasi framework there was enough residue and
enough contacts and loyalties among the former agents for it to
remain a powerful force

Thomas took a deep breath. He
knew what had to be done but he also knew there would be fierce
resistance from Bettina and he wanted to explain and justify his
plan to minimise that. Though as with all unwelcome news, he
thought, maybe the best thing was to come straight out with it.
Pull the plaster straight off in a swift jerk.

“The Firm is finished. What's
more it looks as if it was responsible for killing the one person
there you valued most. I know your loyalty to it and particularly
to your country. But the Firm's become your enemy, our enemy, and
if there's a link with Phoenix or with the kind of financial scam
we saw with the mill then it’s your country’s enemy as well. We’re
not strong enough to stop it or halt people like Roehrberg or
Sponden on our own so we’ve got to get somebody as strong as them,
even stronger, to help us.”

They looked warily at each other.
Thomas could see that Bettina was already ahead of him. He took
another deep breath and rushed on.

“We need outside help to find and
prosecute Dieter’s murderers. We need help against Roehrberg and
his comrades and we urgently need protection. We need to contact
the BND. We need to tell them everything we know. With unification
they’ll control everything ... ”

He reeled back as Bettina slapped
him hard across the cheek. He felt her fists striking wildly at his
chest, his shoulders, his arms and his head in a flurry he could do
nothing to control. He’d expected a strong reaction but this was
something else entirely, its violence well beyond anything he’d
anticipated. Suddenly, the onslaught stopped and Bettina threw her
arms round him, sobbing bitterly into his chest as he held
her.

“You can do what you like,
Thomas, but don’t ask me to betray my country. To me the BND is no
different from the CIA or MI5, worse even, the number one enemy of
my country for as long as I can remember.”

“If it comes to unification it
will be because the majority of your fellow citizens just as much
as mine want it. It’ll no longer be us and them, the DDR against
the West, Stasi against the BND. We’ll be the same country, one
nation.”

He stroked her hair gently,
talking softly and trying to calm her.

“No, we won’t be. West Germany is
one nation. The DDR will be a colony, an appendix, a poor relation,
nothing more.” She gulped convulsively.

It was as if he were hearing
Dieter himself as he looked out of his office on the last occasion
they’d met, his thoughts clearly having influenced Bettina greatly.
Thomas decided to approach the matter from a different angle. The
information he knew personally was too limited to be of much
interest to the West German services, the tapes perhaps excepted,
and he desperately needed Bettina’s cooperation and support. In any
case, there was no way Thomas could craft a credible story without
mentioning her or Dieter, and they both needed to flee Berlin to
have a chance of surviving.

“Bettina, do you want Dieter’s
killers caught and prosecuted? Or would you be happy to see them
escape, go unpunished for what they did?” he asked. “This is what
it boils down to.”

Bettina remained silent, trying
to think of something to say, some other way out of her nightmare.
Thomas could see the tension in her features, the conflicting
thoughts flitting over her face, her desperate efforts to avoid
accepting the inevitable. She was like a caged lioness, pacing up
and down the room, torn between remaining faithful to her
principles and her will to survive. Finally her gaze sank and
Thomas knew she was about to give in.

“Do as you wish.” she said, in a
whisper. “Now I must sleep.” She lay down on the bed which served
also as sofa in the room, turned to the wall, curled up tightly and
drew the covers over her head. He watched as they jerked and shook
and then settled as her breathing grew calmer.

It was now approaching five in
the morning and still dark outside. He was tired too but reluctant
to lose connection with the events just past, to draw a line under
Dieter's death and their flight. He put a fresh tape in the
machine. “I’ll keep on listening while I work in case anything is
going on in Dieter’s office. Then we can listen to the earlier
tapes at night when nothing should be happening there.”