Little Grey Mice (31 page)

The Cabinet chamber was dominated by a large and highly polished table, hedged by a continuous line of chairs in matching wood – mahogany, Elke thought, although she wasn't sure – with ornately carved and fashioned backs and arms. In front of each chair was a simple place setting, just a blotter in a red leather holder: to the right of each were two bottles of spa water and two glasses. On such a huge table and for a gathering of this importance the preparation looked inadequate. Werle strode confidently around the table, stopping three positions short of a break in the orderly pattern, where there was a heavier chair of padded leather, a slightly lighter colour red than the fronting blotter holders, which was bigger than the rest on the table. Werle put his briefcase beside his chair and the position papers that Elke had assembled on the table. Immediately behind his seat was an individual table and chair, both larger and more comfortable than Elke's customary place in Werle's office. From her briefing there that morning Elke knew her function was not to take verbatim notes but to create the official records from the transcripts of others: while they waited Werle pointed out the stenographers in their booth at the far end of the room. In addition there was official but not visible recording apparatus: she supposed it was in the same booth.

Apart from the Chancellor, who was to be chairman, the official committee all came into the room together, as if they had gathered elsewhere to make a combined and impressive entry. The bespectacled, nervously thin Finance Minister, Walter Bahr, led the group. It was unfortunate, Elke thought, that the man was directly followed by the Defence Minister. Hans Mosen was a grossly fat Bavarian whose jowls trembled as he walked: close together as they were now the two ministers looked like the two extremes of a diet advertisement. The Foreign Minister, Gottfried Schere, was the third in the group. Behind him came Klaus Mueller, who held the portfolio for Intra-German Relations. Each was accompanied by support staffs, none of whom Elke recognized.

Once through the door the group split, each going to a position around the table with the familarity that Werle had earlier shown, and Elke assumed they were taking up their usual places at a Cabinet session. From each minister came nods and first-name greetings to Werle. Elke had not considered it before, but she wondered at that moment if the Transport Minister would have recognized her from the Maternus had the man been part of the committee. She doubted it, and not because she was someone people never remembered: in the restaurant the man had been besotted by the girl.

Everyone stood when the Chancellor entered. Gustav Rath was a portly, grey-haired man who did everything urgently – when he walked or talked or issued orders or considered decisions – conveying the impression of someone permanently in a hurry and with insufficient time to fulfil all that had to be accomplished. The impression was utterly misleading: Elke was well aware of his reputation as a prevaricator. Rath bustled around the table, nodding to people he passed. He dropped quickly into his padded chair, making lowering gestures with both hands as he did so to bring everyone else down with him.

Rath cleared his throat, gazed conspicuously around the table, and began briskly: ‘Over the past two years we have witnessed a great many historic changes – changes that perhaps many of us at one time could not envisage occurring in our lifetime. This meeting today, the discussions that will emanate from it, is equally of great historical importance. I think it is essential for each of us constantly to keep that in mind.'

The Chancellor spoke quickly but quite coherently, and Elke guessed the man had rehearsed for the benefit of historians: he'd talked mostly with his head turned slightly in the direction of the stenographers who would have been able to hear him quite adequately on the amplified sound system with which the room was equipped.

It
was
historic, Elke reflected, bent over her pad: truly historic, and she was involved in it, at the very heart! She'd been waiting, since the early morning briefing, to experience some sensation, and was surprised – even vaguely disappointed – that she wasn't feeling more. She had an obvious sensation of excitement, although not excessively so. But that was all. It didn't seem enough, just as simple blotters and mineral water on the table at which these momentous discussions were taking place didn't seem enough.

‘… many, many considerations on many levels and in many different directions …' the Chancellor was saying, ponderously.

Elke became sure the man was practically dictating for the history books. Could Rath believe himself the twentieth-century statesman who had unified Germany as Bismarck had brought together the separate German states a century earlier?

As the thought crossed her mind, Rath actually referred to the original creation of the Fatherland. He hurried through the history of the two wars and gave the largely unnecessary reminder that reunification was written into the 1949 Federal Constitution.

Rath paused, looking in the direction of the stenographers' booth. ‘I am proud to have been Chancellor at times like these, to have seen the dream of unification become a postive reality.'

Definitely
reciting for history, decided Elke.

‘But we must not be blinded by euphoria,' continued Rath. ‘Unification is a fact. Monetary union is a fact. But unity – proper cohesion between two countries that had been divided for more than forty years – is
not
. .'

‘I'm glad that point has been made,' said Klaus Mueller, whose ministry had the heaviest responsibility for caring for the thousands from the East who had already moved and settled in West Germany since the removal of the border restrictions. Mueller was a rumpled, carelessly dressed man who had entered politics from a university professorship and was rumoured to be annoyed at not having been appointed to the education ministry.

The Chancellor looked irritably sideways at the interruption, but then smiled and said: ‘Would you like to expand the point?'

Mueller nodded at the offer. ‘The thousands who crossed, in the first months, gave a misleading impression. Like it or not – and I suppose we shouldn't like it, not at all – two Germanys
still
exist: with the majority the ideology is still too deeply entrenched after so long for there to be the assimilation we might have expected.'

‘Surely only a very temporary thing?' suggested the Foreign Minister, an urbane, silver-haired man whose sartorial flamboyance had earned him the nickname of the Clothes Horse from one of the satirical tabloids.'

‘I don't think so,' came in Werle. ‘I think it will be probably ten years before there is anything like the assimilation we once imagined there would be.'

‘What's the answer?' asked Walter Bahr.

‘One of the sociological remits for this committee,' identified Rath. ‘Probably the most important and probably the most difficult.

‘What about things that are more tangible?' demanded Gottfried Schere. ‘I believe unification – even with the difficulties you've suggested – has strengthened us considerably. And we were already the linchpin of NATO and the dominant partner in the Common Market, however much the other member nations like Great Britain and France might have postured.'

‘That might be an opinion we hold privately but I would not like it too openly expressed, outside this room,' warned Rath.

‘There is – and will remain for a long time – a great deal of apprehension and even suspicion about a unified Germany,' supported Werle.

‘And to be honest,' continued the Chancellor, ‘after the two examples of our military expansion within living memory Europe – and America – have good reason to be nervous of a re-united Reich.' He turned to Mosen. ‘What is your contribution here?'

The fat Defence Minister coughed, clearing his throat. ‘I was extremely surprised that the Soviet Union agreed so easily with the other three Allied Powers in Berlin to give up their occupation rights which remained after the Second World War. I expected them to use their international right as they had done for forty years, as a bargaining lever. I think they're frightened of a united Germany being in NATO. And I expect some pressure in the future for a Warsaw Pact linking, although I can't at the moment anticipate it.'

Elke made her notes, her concentration fully upon the discussion. Already, from what she had heard, the difficulties appeared enormous and the assembled ministers were only yet touching the surface.

‘Let's get some statistics into the record here,' demanded Rath.

Mosen was able to respond without any reference to notes or files.' ‘Our own troops strength is just over 997,000. The United States are already reducing their 321,000 commitment. France's strength is almost 585,000. The United Kingdom have 246,000.'

‘What's the comparison with the Warsaw Pact?' the Chancellor demanded.

‘East Germany admits to 450,000,' Mosen continued. ‘But also based there at the moment are 380,000 Soviet personnel. Poland's army totals 660,000. Hungary's strength is 139,000. Czechoslovakia is still being assessed. In each country, Moscow has agreed to their troops being withdrawn, over various periods of time.'

‘Any bargaining manoeuvres?' asked Bahr.

Mosen gave a wobbly shrug. ‘America is withdrawing, as I have said, to create for themselves a lever with Moscow on conventional arms reduction. Britain supports the stance. In my opinion France is ambivalent, although we must never forget their inherent historical fear.'

‘
If
Poland and Hungary adopt their already declared Western-style democracy there's a powerful argument, surely, that the Warsaw Pact no longer exists. And if that no longer exists, what's the point of NATO?' said Schere.

An argument similar to Werle's, Elke realized. Her notes were necessary – and would always be necessary – but she thought she was getting the arguments fairly clear in her mind: there was nothing so far to make her doubt her ability to create the preliminary report.

‘I think we should always bear one anomaly in mind,' warned Werle. ‘Although there is going to be widespread demobilisation, the East German army of 450,000 are being integrated with our forces. Which forms part of the NATO military contingent. And at the same time there are 380,000 Soviet troops in the Eastern half of what is now officially a NATO country.'

‘Moscow have pledged to withdraw,' pointed out Mosen, quickly.

‘Over a four year period, at least,' pointed out Werle.

‘You think they're a protective force?' queried Rath, at once.

‘I think there are some in Moscow who might consider them to be,' suggested Werle.

Never having attended such a meeting before, Elke had no criteria from which to judge but she imagined that Werle's opinion and views were being called upon far more than was normal for such a permanent governemnt official: it was more as if he were a respected member of the government than its servant.

The NATO discussion was taken up, one by one, by every member of the special committee: Elke, adjusted and quite comfortable now to her surroundings, was conscious how often Werle's advice was sought and how much it was deferred to. The Chancellor insisted upon moving the discussion on after almost an hour, guiding the debate back to the Common Market. For some time Walter Bahr, the Finance Minister, dominated the arguments, reminding them of the previous remark about Poland and Hungary looking westward and adding to that reminder the fact that the two countries – coupled with East Germany – constituted an incredible trading outlet. He set out the billions of Deutschmarks Bonn had advanced in export credits and loans rescheduling to Poland even before this opening of the borders, insisting that Warsaw was already leaning favourably towards them.

‘Reunited, Germany constitutes a nation of eighty million people,' said Bahr. ‘In what will then be merely an eastern part of an integrated Germany we have vast and comparably cheap labour resources. In time we can absorb into the Community Poland and Hungary, making the potential even more enormous. And we will dominate it, as we do now! Be the leaders!'

‘All of which will put the fear of hell up every other country in Europe, West or East,' cautioned the Foreign Minister. ‘The inference will be unavoidable: the world the Third Reich failed to dominate by force the Fourth Reich dominates economically.'

‘I think that's an exaggeration,' Bahr protested.

‘I think the sort of economic community you're imagining is an exaggeration,' Schere retorted. ‘I don't believe we should even be thought to be planning like that, not for years! Decades even. If at all.'

‘I agree that sort of conjecture is premature,' said Rath, slightly less dismissive.

Bahr retreated, although not completely. He insisted upon more statistics, detailing the financial aid Bonn was already providing to East Germany and adding to it the extra expense of supporting the influx of refugees who had settled but not yet found work.

Klaus Mueller re-entered the debate here, listing, with its cost, the huge building programme necessary to house the refugees.

‘There's growing resentment from native-born West Germans who see jobs and housing and privileges they consider rightfully theirs going to those from the East who seem to have arrived yesterday,' cautioned the Minister for Intra-German Relations. ‘Already the unions are complaining: some are even talking of a graded system, for jobs going first to West Germans.'

‘And those East Germans who cannot get jobs have distorted our unemployment figures, which were nudging two million before the influx: no one has been able yet to compute what the final figure might be, but I've seen estimates of three million,' warned Bahr, in support. ‘We've already got monetary union. Before that linkage, the original estimate of the cost to West Germany of total reunification was forty billion Deutschmarks a year for five years. I now estimate it will be at least five times that. The cost is becoming dangerously near to getting out of hand. There is already pressure on the Deutschmark, because foreign financiers and analysts are beginning to doubt our ability to afford it.'