The Company of Strangers

  ‘The Snow Leopard also said that this would be his last job for some time. That his position was changing in line with some unspecified political shift here in the DDR. He said he would be going back into cover.’

  Yakubovsky walked her to the door.

  ‘This place where we met,’ she said. ‘It was massive. Hundreds and hundreds of rooms, on four floors, building after building.’

  ‘Yes. The Mietskasernen were built as accommodation for working men and their families in the time of Frederick the Great. They’re no better than slums.’

  ‘If the Snow Leopard had any chance to run I doubt you’d find him in that place, even with a whole battalion of men. There must be lots of ways in and out. There’s probably access to the sewers. It’s his place of choice.’

  ‘What is your point?’

  ‘Mr Gromov, back in London, told me that the only Snow Leopard he ever saw was back in 1929 in the Sayan Mountains. He shot it and his wife wears the pelt as a jacket. I think we should be applying the same ruthlessness to this Snow Leopard.’

  ‘We will have KGB marksmen at hand.’

  ‘I’ve told you that he is very cautious. He’s a professional, a nervous professional. To cover a building like that you would need ten or fifteen marksmen. They would create a presence which the Snow Leopard would pick up. It’s possible, too, that he will give me very little notice. How are you going to position your men in an unknown building in, say, half an hour? No, General, no marksmen. There is only one way to be certain of catching this Snow Leopard. The person closest to him will have to shoot him. It’s not something I want to do, or ever thought I would have to do, but I think it’s the only way. I want you to supply me with a gun.’

  Yakubovsky, the soldier now, looked into her to see if she had the mettle for this. He went back to his desk and took out a handgun from the top drawer. He checked that it was fully loaded, showed her how to operate it. He asked her if she’d ever fired a gun before.

  ‘I was given small arms training during the war, General. Mr Gromov must have told you that I haven’t always been a mathematician.’

  She was taken back down to the car, her legs were weak, her stomach sick, the alcohol and coffee toxic in her blood. On the trip back to Invalidenstrasse she sat in the middle of the back seat, supporting herself with her hands on either side, exhausted by the performance.

  The Snow Leopard stood over his sleeping wife at the end of the bed. She was lying on her back, her mouth slightly open, the air rushing in and out with her every breath. He tried to think of any memorable sexual moment they’d had together. He couldn’t. A colleague had told him once that he’d known when he and his wife had conceived their first child. It had been special in some way. There’d been some extra surge that night. Schneider had been sceptical, had tried not to allow his imagination to tangle with the biology. Both his own conceptions had passed without any noticeable change in the electric current. And yet all he had to do was think of that room in Estrela, that bed, the sofa, the thick lash of her black hair, her brown coin-sized nipples, and he’d feel the blood uncoiling him. Yes, that had been memorable and they’d conceived too, although he still hadn’t had any sense of that. Such is the persuasive power of self, he thought. We’ll believe anything we want to.

  He got into bed next to Elena. It was like an act of infidelity. He turned his back on her. She rolled and her hand rested on the fan of muscle below his shoulder and he found himself thinking of the job he had to do later that week, driving the two dissidents across the Gleinicke Bridge, and he thought about keeping on driving, and driving, and driving.

  Chapter 38

  18th January 1971, East Berlin.

  Schneider arrived in the office early. He hadn’t wanted to be around family that morning. He put a call through to an old friend in HVA Dept X and asked him where Rieff had gone to after he’d left Disinformation and Active Measures. He told him that he’d done three years on National Security running the Wall and the Curtain under the direct orders of Secretary Erich Honecker.

  He went through his in-tray until he came to the report he’d been looking for. Her face looked up at him. A bad photograph but it still quickened his blood. He leafed through the surveillance report. Everything normal. They’d even lied about her taxi ride from Ernst Thälmann Park back to the hotel, saying she’d gone back directly.

  At 9.00 a.m. he put a call through to Yakubovsky, who growled, but agreed to a corridor meeting outside HVA Dept XX. Schneider prepared himself for the meeting by running up the stairs so that he would arrive out of breath, panicked. He overdid it. Yakubovsky took one look at him from the end of the corridor and nearly bolted back into his office. Schneider calmed, drew alongside.

  ‘I told you I couldn’t help you,’ said the Russian, annoyed.

  ‘It’s Rieff.’

  ‘I also told you that Rieff was not our friend. It is up to you to deal with him in your own way.’

  ‘But he’s like a wild dog after me. He knows everything about Stiller, what he was doing in the West…he’s even mentioned your name.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I denied your involvement,’ said Schneider. ‘But that’s not the problem. If it was just that sort of thing I could handle it…we could come to an arrangement. But this is not enough for him. He wants my blood. He’s accused me of being a double agent called the Snow Leopard. I’ve been through all the files at the AGA and I can’t find any reference to a Snow Leopard. You have to help me on this. Corruption is one thing. Prison, or maybe a labour camp…But treason…treason’s the guillotine.’

  Yakubovsky stopped at the first mention of the Snow Leopard and let his eyebrows give Schneider their full attention.

  ‘What did Rieff say about the Snow Leopard?’

  ‘He’s furious with the KGB, too.’

  ‘But what did he say, Major?’

  ‘He says the KGB never share their information. They conduct their operations without…’

  ‘Major Schneider,’ said Yakubovsky, gripping his shoulder, ‘just tell me what Rieff said about the Snow Leopard.’

  ‘He said…he asked me about the Snow Leopard and, when I said I’d never heard of him, he replied that he didn’t think I would have, because…and these were his words: “I think you are the Snow Leopard.’”

  ‘Calm down, Major,’ said Yakubovsky. ‘You have nothing to be afraid of. You are not the Snow Leopard. The Snow Leopard is a KGB operation which will culminate in the next twenty-four hours. You are not to speak to anyone about this and especially not to Rieff. Afterwards, I will personally speak to Rieff.’

  They parted, the Russian hitting him on the shoulder with his padded palm. Schneider went straight down to the toilets on the AGA floor, leaned his hot face against the cool cubicle wall and lit a cigarette, which did not calm him down.

  Back in his office he put a call through to one of his patrol cars and ordered them to bring in a British national called Andrea Aspinall, a visiting maths postgraduate staying at the Hotel Neuwa and attending lectures with Günther Spiegel at Humboldt University. At lunchtime he was informed that the woman had been picked up and was waiting in Interrogation Room 4.

  He shook himself down and felt for the passport and money in his pocket. He checked there was a full tape running for Interrogation Room 4 and went in. Andrea was sitting with her back to him, smoking.

  ‘I am Major Schneider,’ he said. ‘Have you been offered coffee?’

  ‘No,’ she said, annoyed.

  ‘I’m sorry. This isn’t supposed to be anything threatening. It’s just a routine matter, you understand. Our enemies have forced us to erect this anti-fascist protection barrier…’

  ‘Is that what you call the Wall?’

  ‘That’s what it is, Miss Aspinall.’

  ‘My God…when they sent your brain away, Major Schneider, it came back whiter than white.’

  ‘I can, if I wish…if you want to be rude to me, make this go very badly for you.??
?

  Silence.

  ‘Sorry…you were saying…I think you were about to give me a lecture on enemies of state.’

  ‘Yes…we have built this wall to protect our citizens, but our enemies continue to make frequent attempts to penetrate it. They send people to spy on us. People such as visiting mathematics postgraduates from Cambridge. It is my job at the Arbeitsgruppe Ausländer to weed out the false and leave the true. I have two conflicting reports here, which is why I’ve had to bring you here for questioning.’

  ‘I’m not in East Berlin for very long, Major. This interruption cuts into my very short stay. I would be grateful if you could move it along.’

  ‘Of course. You arrived yesterday, took lunch in your hotel, the Neuwa, went to see Dr Spiegel, had a coffee in the canteen, attended a lecture, went back to your hotel and then went out to dinner with Dr Spiegel in his apartment in Ernst Thälmann Park.’

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘I’d like to be able to say I find your surveillance comforting, Major, but I don’t.’

  ‘This is where we have the conflict. My report says you took a taxi back to the Neuwa Hotel.’

  ‘Which I did.’

  ‘The taxi picked you up at 21.55.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘The Neuwa Hotel reception reported that you came in at 23.10. That’s an hour and a quarter to go from Ernst Thälmann Park to Invalidenstrasse, which would leave approximately one hour unaccounted for.’

  Silence. Over a minute of it.

  ‘I can’t believe this country.’

  ‘Believe it?’

  ‘Is that all you do all day…watch each other? Wait for each other to fall over so that you can report it? Ask the taxi driver. He took me on a tour of East Berlin. The Volkspark Friedrichshain, the statue of Lenin, the Volksbühne theatre, the…the famous water tower where the Nazis murdered communists back in the thirties. It was all very instructive and time-consuming.’

  ‘That still doesn’t account for the hour, Miss Aspinall.’

  ‘You said there was a conflict, Major. When did the surveillance people say I got back to the hotel?’

  ‘At 22.15.’

  ‘So who do you believe?’

  ‘On this occasion the Hotel Neuwa reception,’ said Schneider. ‘And you’re not going back to the university until that discrepancy’s been explained to my satisfaction.’

  ‘Before I left England they told me that the Stasi was no different to the Gestapo and, you know what…they were wrong. You’re worse.’

  ‘I have all day, Miss Aspinall. The rest of the week. A month. We are blessed with time on this side of the Curtain.’

  They sat in silence for ten minutes, smiling, looking at each other.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said.

  Schneider stood and walked around the room. He came back to her, brought his face down to her level and put the passport and money into her open handbag.

  ‘Just tell me what happened in that hour, and as long as you weren’t spying or taking photographs of sensitive buildings, making contact with people without authorization…then you can go back to your hotel. If you don’t, I will have you taken down to a holding cell and…’

  ‘I want to speak to General Oleg Yakubovsky,’ she said, severe now.

  Silence while Schneider blinked that information into his brain. Andrea slowly turned her head towards him. Their faces were only inches apart, their lips.

  ‘Did you hear me, Major?’

  ‘I did, yes,’ he said. ‘I’m just wondering why…I mean, how you know General Yakubovsky.’

  ‘I am operating under his authority…and that of Mr Gromov in London.’

  Schneider stood, went back to his seat, his heart hammering away, even though he knew what was coming.

  ‘What is this operation?’

  ‘It is called Operation Snow Leopard and that is all I am saying, until General Yakubovsky is informed.’

  Schneider stood, kicking his chair back as he did so. He offered his hand.

  ‘Please accept my apologies,’ he said. ‘We were not informed of your presence here. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you unduly.’

  ‘You have, Major,’ she said. ‘And I’m wondering why you don’t call General Yakubovsky.’

  ‘It’s not necessary, Miss Aspinall. And…I would be very grateful if you could possibly not mention this to the general should you speak to him.’

  She stood, picked up her handbag, refused his offered hand.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Would you allow me to drive you back to the university or your hotel?’

  ‘You’re quite pathetic, Major, aren’t you?’ she said, and they left the room.

  Schneider called up a car and, while they were waiting, retrieved the tape of the conversation. He drove her back to the university and returned to his office. He called General Rieff. The general was out and not due back until four o’clock.

  General Rieff’s secretary kept him waiting with his tape and file for thirty minutes before she put the call through. Rieff added on another fifteen minutes before asking him to be sent in. Schneider laid Andrea’s file on the desk and asked permission to play the tape. He spooled it up and sat back to watch while General Rieff alternately rapped and slapped the arm of his chair, listening to the tape, half bored by what appeared to be the usual grind, until he heard her mention General Yakubovsky. Then he was still and listened intently through to the end.

  ‘Why didn’t you call General Yakubovsky?’

  ‘I’d already spoken to him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d asked him to help me. I told him that you’d accused me of being the Snow Leopard. I was desperate for him to intercede on my behalf. All he did was ask me how you knew about the Snow Leopard. And, of course, I didn’t know. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and told me not to worry, that I wasn’t the Snow Leopard, that the Snow Leopard was a KGB operation which would be concluded within the next twenty-four hours. He told me not to speak to anyone, and especially not to you.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘I’ve checked on Miss Aspinall and she’s flying back to London tomorrow at 11.00 a.m.,’ said Schneider. ‘I also personally drove her back to the university in order to ingratiate myself, so that she would not report the incident to General Yakubovsky. She has agreed that it would be between us.’

  ‘The Snow Leopard is not a KGB operation,’ said Rieff. ‘It is the codename of a double agent and we have as much right to him as the KGB. More right to him, because he is here, now, in this building giving away the names of our agents in the West, helping defectors…’

  ‘I’ll tap her phone and maintain surveillance on the Hotel Neuwa.’

  ‘You and only you, Major, will listen to the phone tap, and all surveillance will report back to you if she moves. Nobody else in this building is to know about it,’ he said, picking up the file. ‘Is this hers? Have you done a background check on her?’

  ‘I have, sir. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. She has spent the last two years doing pure maths research in Cambridge and before that she was a maths postgraduate at Lisbon University. I also checked on Mr Gromov, who she mentions on the tape. He has diplomatic status in the Soviet embassy in London, but he also holds the rank of colonel in the KGB.’

  At 7.30 p.m. Andrea got back to the Hotel Neuwa from Humboldt University. She sat on the bed with her head in her hands and looked at the telephone. Her gums itched and she had a fit of gaping yawns. She picked up the phone and dialled Yakubovsky’s number.

  ‘The Snow Leopard’s made contact again,’ she said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A note was given to me in the university canteen.’

  ‘Has he asked for a meeting?’

  ‘Of course, he has to, he needs my help.’

  ‘Where is the meeting?’

  ‘You remember what I said to you…I don’t want anybody there. We have to think of him as the kind of animal that he is.’
r />   ‘Of course, but I will have to make my report.’

  ‘The meeting will be above the arch on the third floor of the dreiterhof in the Mietskasern at number 11 Knaackestrasse in Prenzlauer Berg, at 22.00.’

  At 7.38 p.m. Schneider relayed the phone tap to General Rieff.

  ‘What do you think this means?’ asked the general. ‘When she says, “I don’t want anybody there.”’

  ‘My understanding of that, sir, is that she is going to deal with the Snow Leopard herself.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I will not permit this to happen. The Snow Leopard must be interrogated. We have to find out the extent to which he has compromised our agents and who he is planning to help defect. If she kills him we will lose all this valuable information. We will lose the opportunity to become the Snow Leopard ourselves…the possibilities for disinformation are enormous. I will not allow it.’

  ‘Do you know this place where she’s going to meet him?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘So you know why she’s proposing to deal with the Snow Leopard herself?’ said Schneider. ‘It’s the only way she can be certain.’

  ‘You will leave me now and I shall think about this and decide on a course of action.’

  ‘To control one of those Mietskasernen I would suggest you need a hundred men, and if you turn up with a hundred men I am sure you will not see the Snow Leopard.’

  ‘Thank you for your advice, Major…you have been indispensable.’

  ‘May I add one other thing, General Rieff? That if you interfere I would suggest that it could lead to a lot of bad feeling between ourselves and the KGB.’

  ‘Herr Major?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I shit on the KGB.’

  At 9.00 p.m. Andrea checked the gun. It was still fully loaded, as it had been the last fifty times she’d looked at it. She left the hotel and walked straight into a waiting taxi and asked him to go to the Jewish cemetery near Kollwitzplatz. She stood in a dark corner and watched. Nobody was following. Yakubovsky appeared to have kept his word and Schneider had made sure that nobody was tailing her from the hotel. She went back up Husemannstrasse, turned left into Sredzkistrasse.