Albert Perkins ducked his head, the motion of respect. He could have done without the lecture, but listening to it was his route towards the facility he required for the next day.
‘The failure to prosecute the Stasi left the organization intact and emboldened, my dinner guest told me. He listed for me the prosecutions that could, should, have been brought. The theft of twenty-six billion DMs that should have gone to the treasury of a united Germany, four hundred cases of murder, torture and kidnapping, the destruction of the personality of many thousands of innocents. But that is the cold world of statistics. It was a good meal, we had the opportunity to eat well. But one story he told so disgusted me that the meal was an irrelevance. My guest investigated the death of a young man in the Stasi prison at Jena. He killed himself after the interrogation during which they played him a tape of the screams of a young woman and told him the screams, under torture, were those of his nine-months- pregnant girl-friend. There have been no prosecutions of the Stasi officers responsible for driving that young man to the despair of suicide.’
A deep frown of concern cut Albert Perkins’s forehead.
‘They are intact, Doktor Perkins. They have a network, an organization, to which we give the name of Seilschalften. They are the source of organized crime in the old East. They have links with criminals in Russia. They are behind the illicit movement of arms, the narcotics trade, the theft of cars, they are expert in the recycling of fraudulently obtained monies. Through inaction, when the chance was there, Doktor Perkins, we have made a monster. I offer you co-operation.’
Albert Perkins reached across the table and, with warmth, shook the hand of the police chief.
‘If the politicians can determine who is to be prosecuted, and who is not, then they have destroyed a cornerstone of democracy. You say, Doktor Perkins, that tomorrow is the critical day in this matter. I wish to help. I wish to do something in the name of that officer who was my guest at dinner in Berlin. Tomorrow you are welcome to sit with us.’
Albert Perkins went on his way, out into the night.
‘I think it is necessary that you lose him, for a month, for two months. I think he is damaged.’
The three video-cassettes, copies from the originals, had been couriered from the Lubyanka to the minister. He had watched the first fifteen minutes of the first cassette, then turned away, his face a lined, wearied portrait of pain. The General of military intelligence, GRU, his friend, had switched off the video player.
The General said, ‘He climbed too fast. He is a shooting star, brilliant in the night sky but burning out fast as it falls. He takes to bed with him the wife of a Stasi officer. That Stasi officer is now a prize exhibit of the Germans and talks to whoever will listen of his knowledge of Pyotr Rykov. Did the German share his wife with Pyotr Rykov? Was there compliance? If there was compliance where does it end? Or does it continue? Is he still linked with the German who calls him his closest friend? You would trust Rykov with your life, and I believe I would, but the cassettes ask questions that we cannot answer. If you protect him you make yourself vulnerable. He has damaged himself but he should not be permitted to damage you. You should lose him. If there is nothing else to compromise him, in a month or two months, you might call him back, with discretion. You should not seek to help him, if there is anything else. For now, you must distance yourself from him. It must not be you who is vulnerable.’
They cruised on the wide street.
Olive Harris was tolerably rested. She had read the local file and thought it inadequate. She had eaten, alone, in the staff canteen, apart from the security men and the night-duty secretaries and the communications team who worked late. The food had been indifferent.
They passed the surveillance car. She was pleased to see it in place. The city, until the moment she saw the car, had seemed disappointing. It was without threat, until she saw the car with the misted windows and the fumes spilling grey-white into the night air and the glow of the cigarettes. She had thrived on that feeling of threat and danger, half a career ago, when she had been here before and run agents and sidled to the dead letter boxes and played games with the tails. In London, she missed, more than anything else, that feeling. In London, in her small personal office, on the train and the bus that took her to and from work, she made a fantasy each day of threat and danger, as if to fill a void. They were ahead of the surveillance car and he murmured the number of the floor on which the target lived. Theie were three windows. Two were darkened; in the third a dull light speared the gap in the curtains. It was a shabby little block of apartments, which told her something of the target man. He was pulling away, one run down the street only. It was all in her mind, the street door, the width of the pavement, where they would stop in the morning and the position of the surveillance car. She eased back in her seat.
‘May I, Mrs Harris, ask a question of you?’
‘You can try.’
He stared straight ahead, eyes on the road, and his voice was clipped. ‘I’m just wondering what Rykov has done to us that he deserves our targeting him? That’s my question.’
‘For God’s sake, have you a problem?’
His voice was quiet and without emotion, and she thought he had stored the question through the day. ‘It’s pretty straightforward. What has Rykov done to deserve the action we are taking against him?’
‘Where are you starting from?’
‘Starting from? I’ve never met Rykov. I’ve only watched him from a distance and evaluated him. I listen to what people say about him. Actually, Mrs Harris, I’ve not heard a bad word said of him. He’s a patriot. He’s a man who cares about his country. You saw that grubby little apartment block – that’s not the home of a man on the make. With his position, his connections, he could live in style, snout in the trough, hand in the till, running rackets. What’s evil in this country is the degree of corruption and criminality. He’s not corrupt, he’s not criminal. That’s where I’m starting from. Why are we mounting a hostile operation against Pyotr Rykov?’
She said, tried to cut him down, ‘Been here a long time, haven’t you, David? Started to get to you? Going native, are you?’
He said, without anger, ‘I quite understand, Mrs Harris, if you are not willing to answer my question. I think he’s a good man. I think he’s a brave man. Of course, Mrs Harris, you have no obligation whatsoever to answer my question. I think also he was doomed before you came here. I think what he has fought against here would have beaten him anyway within a few months. He’d know that. Without you, in a few months or a couple of years at maximum, beaten, he’d have been pushed aside, shoved off to some mission in Ulan Bator or some crap job in Transbaikal, put out to grass. But that’s not your game, Mrs Harris. Your game is the immediate destruction of a fine man. You won’t mind me saying it, Mrs Harris, but I find your game distasteful and immoral. Well, here we are. I’ll see you in the morning.’