Kompromat

Well, on this particular historic occasion, Helga Brun, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, eschewed platitudes entirely. She was not a tall woman, but that morning she stood very tall indeed.

She looked straight out into the body of the chamber, raising her voice, just as she would raise people’s hopes around the world.

‘Today I pledge,’ she proclaimed, ‘that Germany will play its full part in resolving this crisis. The UN refugee agency has said that the number of people driven from their homes by conflict and crisis has topped fifty million for the first time since World War II. Fifty million! That is unbelievable. This is a situation which cannot be allowed to continue. Germany will welcome those refugees with open arms. We will do what common humanity requires us to do. We already have over one million refugees in Germany. I promise that we will do more, much more. We can do it! And I promise we will do whatever we can!’

While the high-ups were being entertained elsewhere, there was a buffet lunch for officials in one of the Bundestag’s dining rooms. Thomas Hartkopf found himself standing next to a tall, suave Russian.

They had met several times over the last few years, for example at G8 summits. Russia had been expelled or ‘disinvited’ from the G8 in 2014, but it still participated in the annual Munich Security Conference.

The two men found a quiet corner where they could talk.

‘Chancellor Brun went out on a limb this morning, didn’t she?’ Yuri Yasonov commented. ‘If this hadn’t been a special occasion, I feel some hard words might have been said by some of the members. They weren’t keen on the chancellor’s open-ended commitment on asylum seekers, were they?’

‘Not at all,’ Hartkopf agreed. ‘I took a look at my boss, Otto Friedrich, the minister of the Interior. He was purple in the face with rage. That pledge on migrants obviously took him by surprise.’

‘Do you think Friedrich will make a move? Will he stand against Brun in the elections?’ Yasonov asked.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Hartkopf replied. ‘He may not go for it now, but I don’t think he’ll wait for ever. And he has that Bavarian power base. That always counts for a lot in German politics.’

‘If Mrs Brun goes, Friedrich is the chancellor’s natural successor, isn’t he?’

‘A strong candidate, at least,’ Hartkopf acknowledged.

They had ordered a selection of pastries to follow the main course. Yasonov passed the plate across. ‘Here’s something which might help Dr Friedrich on his way.’

Hartkopf was careful to palm the flash-drive before helping himself to a thick slice of Black Forest cake.

Later that night, sitting in his study at home, Dr Otto Friedrich examined the dossier in detail. He was staggered. There it all was in black and white. The fact that her name hadn’t shown up in the Stasi files the government acquired after the fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t necessarily mean that Helga Brun wasn’t implicated. It could just mean she was already in a position to suppress the evidence. But the one file she had not been able to suppress was the one Popov had managed to take back to Moscow when the mission of the KGB’s Dresden office was disbanded.

So what had ‘Mina’ done for the Russians?

‘Mein Gott!’ he exclaimed. He had always wondered about the way Helga Brun had come to power, how she had out manoeuvred Hans Bloch, when Bloch was chairman of the CDU. Deed done, Helga Brun herself became party chairman and subsequently chancellor. The whole game plan was laid out in the documents. An extremely rude word escaped his lips almost involuntarily. It was obvious what had happened. Helga Brun may have been following instructions from Moscow for years!

There was one document he still had to study, and this one was Russian. It was labelled ‘Bundestag: Chancellor’s speech’.

‘Good God!’ Dr Friedrich exclaimed again when he opened the file. There it all was in black and white. The full text of the chancellor’s speech which he himself had seen in draft. A diagonal bar across each page said SECRET. How had Popov’s people got hold of that? Only a handful of Cabinet members in Germany had seen it in advance.

He had been furious that morning when the chancellor gave that pledge on the asylum seekers, cursing her for ad-libbing.

‘We can do it! And I promise we will do what we can!’ appeared in bold red type in the document he had up on the screen.

Dr Friedrich picked up the phone. He’d have to report this.

He paused. Who was he going to report it to? To the chancellor? Not likely, given the circumstances. To the minister in charge of security? Well, he was the minister in charge of security. He could hardly report to himself. Who else then?

Another thought occurred to him. People would ask how he came to be in possession of this explosive information. Was he going to admit that a senior Russian official passed a data-stick to his own state secretary concealed in a slice of Black Forest cake?