Winter Work, page 15
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That I didn’t know. He wants you to call back, no matter how late. Look, Emil, my offer to help was serious. Because…” She faltered, looked down at her feet.
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Just call him. Maybe there’s been a break in the case.”
He smiled at her wording.
“And maybe you’ve watched too many detective films. A break in the case? C’mon, it’s too cold to be standing out here.”
He followed her into the dacha. The TV was on in Bettina’s room, so he peeked through the door to check on her and was alarmed by what he saw. She was asleep, but her skin was even paler than normal, her breathing labored and shallow.
“See?” Karola whispered behind him. “She’s worried, I told you.” Then, as he bent to kiss her, “Don’t! She needs rest.”
He crept back into the living room, then signaled with his hands that he had to use the phone in the kitchen. She nodded and sat on the couch. Emil shut the kitchen door behind him, as much to keep Karola from listening as to keep from waking Bettina. He expected the call to ring through to a duty officer, but Dorn picked up on the first ring.
“It’s Grimm. I’m back, and I heard you’d called.”
“Where have you been?”
“Running errands.”
“I know it’s late, but I have something important to show you. Come to the station.”
“Now? Can you be more specific?”
“Not on the phone. How soon can you be here?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Hurry, then. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Karola followed him back out to the car.
“Is it serious?”
“I won’t know until I see him. Maybe it’s even a ‘break in the case.’ ”
“But you don’t know.”
“No. I don’t know.”
Even in the dark he could see that her eyes were troubled. She again folded her arms.
“I tell you what. Maybe tomorrow, or in the next day or two, I’ll ask Frau Adler if she can go on duty for a while with Bettina. Then maybe we can spend a quiet evening together. At your house, if you’d like.”
“Of course I would. But that’s not my biggest worry. Not after everything that’s happened. I’m shaken up. We both are.”
Sometimes he believed Karola was trying to live her life for Bettina as well. It was as if every experience, mental and physical, was transmitted between them at some level he wasn’t privy to. It was touching, but a little unsettling.
“I understand,” he said. “And I am being careful. Very careful.”
“We hope so. Will you be in Bernau for long?”
“I doubt it, but I’ll call if that changes.”
He climbed into the Wartburg, relieved to be away from them, and guilty for feeling that way, especially after having to tell Karola so many lies. He wasn’t being careful at all, he supposed. Not in the way they’d want, or in the way that his job had once demanded.
Deception had always been a key part of Emil’s work, but he had tried never to carry over those habits to his home life, an occupational hazard that had afflicted many of his colleagues. Some had become so addicted to trickery and false fronts that it guided their every action, even among family and friends. This led to infidelity and shameful secrets, hidden lives in which any sort of behavior became excusable. Lothar, for example, with his carefully planned affair that had then become so reckless, a fall from grace that had made him resentful of Mielke, and perhaps of the entire ministry.
Emil sighed, put the car in reverse, and backed out of the driveway. At least Krauss’s minion was no longer at his post. The Citroën had been gone in the morning, leaving only a pile of cigarette butts to mark its presence.
He set off down the lane. Glancing in the mirror he saw Karola, still with her arms folded as she watched his departure.
For all the unorthodox nature of the triangular arrangement between him, her, and Bettina, Emil seemed to be the only one who was still awkward about it from time to time. He remembered with embarrassment—and some fondness—how the two women had chosen to break the news to him of their plans for their joint future.
They had all been gathered at the dacha at the time, on a beautiful summer evening. Bettina was barely able to speak by then, and, because it had been a warm day, Karola had told him she was going to clip a few flowers from the garden before he drove her back home. She asked him to meet her outside in a few minutes.
Unaware that his life was about to change, Emil had said briskly to Bettina, “I’ll be right back.”
Instead of nodding, she’d smiled and said, “Come here.”
He took her hand. With the strain of the effort showing in her face, Bettina had managed to squeeze back. A smile raised a corner of her mouth, and then tears welled in her eyes, but did not spill.
“What’s wrong, love? Are you in pain?”
Her reply came slowly.
“I am happy. She. Will. Tell you. With. My blessing.”
She had then sunk back in the chair, her face radiating the sort of bliss he hadn’t seen since they were newlyweds dreamily discussing the sort of house they would have once there were a couple of children running around, laughing and playing.
“What do you mean?” He squeezed her hand.
“Just. Listen. To her.”
She released his hand.
He asked Karola about it the moment they were in the Wartburg, but she told him it would have to wait until they got to her house. She invited him inside and poured each of them a drink from a bottle of brandy that her husband had made years before. She told him she’d been saving it for a special occasion.
“And what is the occasion?”
Emil was so overwhelmed by her explanation that he needed a second glass of brandy. He then told Karola he had to talk to Bettina before agreeing to anything.
“Of course,” Karola said. “That is the only proper way.”
She then took his hand, her grip warm and strong and full of passion, which stirred him enough to tell her that he would be happy, if a bit bewildered, to go along with everything as long as Bettina affirmed it.
The only other awkward moment had come when Karola had asked how the ministry might react if anyone—especially Mielke—ever found out.
“They won’t. I’ll see to it. Although I guess we’ll have to be a little more careful about some of our neighbors up here. Wolf, and Lothar.”
The whole idea of having to keep everything secret from them had irritated him greatly, and Emil had to shove it aside to avoid ruining the mood.
Bettina had been asleep by the time he got back to the dacha, so they had discussed it in the morning, after a night in which Emil had dreamed vividly of an attractive woman whose appearance kept changing, almost from frame to frame, her face never clearly recognizable as either Karola’s or Bettina’s. It was perhaps the only moment in his marriage when he was glad that they didn’t have children, because how could he have possibly explained this complicated arrangement, this triad of mutual need, to a son or daughter? Much less the delicate emotional engineering that had brought it about.
Karola had two grown sons, and she still hadn’t fully explained it to either of them, although one, Stefan, had arrived at her house early one Saturday morning to find Emil and Karola in their bathrobes, sipping coffee at the kitchen table. Stefan wisely never asked for more details, and Karola never offered them.
On that pivotal morning at their dacha, Bettina had asked Emil one final question. “Are. You. All right? With it?”
It had taken every bit of his willpower to look her in the eye when he answered. “Yes. I suppose that I am. But only if you are.”
She offered him a crooked smile, one of the last she would ever manage.
Emil was still haunted by that moment. He had gone over it in his mind again and again, until finally convincing himself there had been a hint of regret in her eyes as she smiled.
He thought of that once more as he turned the Wartburg onto the paved lane leading to Bernau. Then he checked both mirrors. For the moment, at least, he had the road to himself.
21
Lieutenant Dorn glanced out his office window for the third time in less than a minute as he waited for Emil Grimm to arrive. It was late, and most of the building was dark and silent. No sign yet of the yellow Wartburg, a thought that made him wonder, not for the first time, how long before he and his wife could afford a new car. Preferably an Opel or a VW now that choices were unlimited. Certainly something peppier and more dependable than the Trabi they’d bought five years ago after eight months on a waiting list. Goodbye to shabby merchandise, he thought. Farewell to standing in line for bread, meat, and coffee.
All sorts of good changes were coming, Dorn believed. Cops in East Germany had always enjoyed a fairly solid status, but never the sort of authority that got you a better car or bigger apartment. That had been the reserve of party officials and the Stasi.
But the job’s minuses had now turned into pluses, because they meant Dorn hadn’t been irredeemably tainted by the system—in the eyes of the West, anyway. Being only twenty-seven, he also wasn’t old enough to have been fully contaminated by the informant culture of the DDR workplace, one in which supervisors and subordinates alike had been expected to report any questionable political behavior by their peers.
The episode yesterday morning down by the Bauersee had helped clarify for Dorn the liberating possibilities of this new era. He’d been able to evict the powerful Dieter Krauss from a murder scene simply by ordering him gone. It was like magic. Heady stuff.
The previous weekend, Dorn and his wife, Frieda, had taken a leisurely drive through the outer neighborhoods of West Berlin, just to see what their future might look like. Frieda was five months pregnant with their first child, so they were already dreaming big. They bought a map, rolled effortlessly through the checkpoint, and spent a pleasant afternoon motoring by tidy homes and brightly lit shops on tree-lined boulevards. They’d ventured as far as the shoreline of the Wannsee, where they braved the bitter winds of a tourist cruise before warming up with frothy coffee and some perfectly wonderful pastry at a nearby Konditorei.
The only dark cloud—apart from the shocking prices—was the condescending smile of the waitress when Frieda ordered a coffee with cream and sugar by calling it a “Kaffee komplett,” a dead giveaway that they were interlopers from the East, or Ossis. It was a valuable lesson. Wessi culture would have to be learned. It had its own words and customs. The people wore different clothes with a different smell, and their smugness could quickly get under your skin.
But in time, he supposed, those differences would become less evident, especially if he was able to raise his status in the police department. The case of the dead Stasi colonel seemed to offer just such an opportunity, which was why he was working it around the clock.
Unfortunately, the case had also revealed a few pitfalls of this new era. Dorn’s longtime boss, Rainer Bilke, had begun pressuring him not just to solve it, but to make sure its results reflected as poorly as possible on the old regime.
“Don’t let any of those people come out of this clean or vindicated, even the dead one,” Bilke had told him only a few hours earlier. “If we’re to survive, we have to show our independence.”
Speak for yourself, Dorn had wanted to say. Everyone in the station house knew Bilke was obsolete, a once nimble political animal as deeply stained as any Stasi man. He was the one who needed to show his distance, not Dorn.
Nonetheless, it probably wasn’t a good idea to be seen cooperating with a Stasi holdover like Emil Grimm, so Dorn’s plan was to whisk the man upstairs to the privacy of the evidence room before any colleagues spotted them. Fortunately, nearly everyone had gone home. But a small night staff was still on duty, so he kept looking out the window. And on his fourth glance, there it was—the ungainly Wartburg, passing beneath a streetlight, the same color as a blob of mustard spilled from a wurst. It eased to a stop in a shadow in front of the building. Then the door opened and a dark figure emerged.
Dorn rushed out the door of his office and headed for the elevator.
22
Emil generally enjoyed his little side trips into Bernau, even though its charming town center had been defaced by government housing planners back in the ’70s, when they’d replaced many of its old timbered-beam buildings with drab low-rise Plattenbau apartments. But many older buildings had survived, and so had the moated stone wall that had surrounded the town since medieval times. Plus, Emil had a weakness for the Bratkartoffeln platter served by a local café—perfectly browned potatoes topped by a pair of shimmering fried eggs.
The police station, however, was an ugly modern aberration banished to the periphery beyond the wall, a giant translucent egg crate, three stories high. Presumably the architect included lots of windows to show the openness of the resident authority, but the occupants tended to ruin the effect by shutting their blinds. At this hour, only a few lights were on. Dorn was waiting in the lobby, which Emil took as a sign of eagerness until Dorn rushed them toward a back stairwell, which made him realize the lieutenant was simply embarrassed. Emil had become a pariah.
Dorn began asking questions as they climbed the stairs.
“What can you tell me about Lothar Fischer’s vegetable garden?”
“His garden? What do you mean? Why do you ask?”
Dorn stopped on the landing between floors and turned to face him.
“You said it was the last place you saw him alive, two or three days ago. Was he digging when you saw him?”
“This time of year? There would be nothing for him to dig, unless he forgot about his potatoes.”
“I’m thinking of something more like the size of a watermelon, or bigger. You’re saying you didn’t notice any holes of that size?”
“As I told you. I thought maybe he’d been putting away some tools.”
“Yes, so you said.”
Dorn narrowed his eyes before continuing up the stairs. Emil’s lie about last seeing Lothar in his garden had been a throwaway remark, but he had realized even then that he should have mentioned a different location. Fortunately, Dorn had no further questions on the matter.
They went straight to a locked, windowless room on the third floor, where Dorn switched on a flickering pair of fluorescent tubes and quickly shut the door behind them. Spread out on a long table was Lothar Fischer’s waxed cotton overcoat. There were dried bloodstains on the right shoulder.
“First off, thank you for your phone message from yesterday. But how did you know to check the lining of the coat?”
So they must have found something. Emil didn’t know whether to be worried or excited.
“Krauss gave me the idea. It was the last thing he asked his men to check before you showed up, and they never got the chance.”
“So do you think Krauss might have known, then?”
“Known what?”
“Here. I’ll show you.”
Dorn smiled and with a flourish flicked back the right side of the coat to reveal a long, surgical incision in the lining. He reached inside to pull out a clear plastic bag the size of a sandwich, which he handed to Emil.
“Take a look.”
Inside were three dark strips of film. Each was about half an inch wide and a few inches long. Emil was reluctant to touch anything.
“Go ahead, everything’s been checked for prints. I’d like for you to examine them. Use this.”
He opened a drawer beneath the table and handed Emil a large magnifying glass. Emil put the strips on the table and stooped for a closer look.
“It’s microfilm.”
“Yes. Sixteen millimeters. Each piece has probably been clipped from a reel. But what do you make of the images?”
Emil looked again.
“Not much to see, is there? ‘Reel 1,’ it says on this one. ‘Reel 76’ on the second one. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re the first and last frames from a set, maybe. And that third one has a lot of writing on it, although even with the magnifying glass it’s not easy to read.”
“But do you see those initials and numbers, in the upper right corner of the first one?”
Emil had seen them, all right, but had hoped to avoid discussing them. He went through the motions of taking another look.
“Gobbledygook. As you said, it’s a bunch of letters and numbers.”
“That’s the best you can do? Read them aloud.”
Emil obliged him, proceeding letter by letter, mark by mark, number by number. “MfS-F16,F22,SB-14/09/82.”
“The M-F-S notation, that’s pretty obvious.”
“Well, yes. The Ministry for Security. Hardly surprising, since that was Lothar’s employer. And the last numbers are almost certainly the date the microfilm was made, on the fourteenth of September, 1982.”
“The rest?”
Emil shrugged.
“But most likely it’s from Stasi archives, yes?”
“That would be the logical assumption. Find someone from Department Twelve and you might be able to decipher the rest.”
“Department Twelve?”
“Records and archives.”
“Do you know anyone who could help?”
“Offhand? No. Those are among the few people still allowed into the building, but…”
“What?”
“Most of those materials have either been destroyed or handed over to that new task force for Sub-Department 7, which is handling their final disposition.”
“Sub-Department 7?”
“Of Department Twelve. The task force is run by a fellow named Plotz.”
