‘And this was before the internet became part of all our lives,’ she said. ‘Now Mila Daus collects the data of American citizens with perfect ease.’ She stopped. ‘I know you are an important and busy man, sir, but I want to tell you about the archive. Victims of the Stasi were allowed by the authorities to inspect their own file at the archive in Berlin. I went there and found the details of my life – my boyfriends, my dental appointments, my mother’s illnesses, her love of canaries, references to my college project, my taste for making clothes and the money I made from selling them, the name of our neighbour’s dog, my absolute failure at any sport, my love of Bach – honestly, they knew more about my life than I did, and that was before I was working for the West.’
Reid plainly wondered why he was being told this.
‘When I was in the archive I met a woman who was about ten years older than me. She’s the sort of person you see in a bus line anywhere in Germany, utterly ordinary: a pleasant face yet eyes that betrayed her struggle. She was sitting near the desk I was using and suddenly she began to cry. I went to comfort her and she told me her story. I won’t trouble you with too much detail, but this woman was arrested for making a joke in a store about the Party leader, Erich Honecker. She was put in Hohenschönhausen jail, where she became one of the first subjects of Mila Daus. She was there for two years and was only released when her husband had divorced her and gained custody of her daughter and son. She never saw them again, even after the liberation. And you know why? Mila Daus told her husband that she had betrayed him with another woman and that she’d had many lesbian lovers all through their marriage, which was untrue. She was barred from the weddings of her children, has never met her grandchildren and has led a life of lonely destitution. Until she read her file and saw that Daus had persuaded her neighbours and friends to collaborate in the lie, convincing her husband that she liked women, she never knew the reason. And now he’s dead and the children will still have nothing to do with her.
‘It’s a small story from the Communist era, but it tells you of the kind of pain that is Mila Daus’s life’s work.’ She had held her hands together. Now she leaned forward and touched Reid’s wrist. ‘She murdered the only two men I ever loved. She murdered first the father of my son, then his stepfather, whom he loved very much.’
‘I’m sorry, but this has nothing to do with me.’
‘But it does, Mr Reid. I can see that you are a good man and you’ve had your share of pain and loss. But now you need to help us expose this woman and save your country. You are the only person who can do this.’
‘I’m not in a position to help.’ He had admitted nothing, but Ulrike’s sympathetic appeal had eroded his resistance.
‘But you are in a position to help us, sir,’ said Samson. ‘All we want is for you to bring Mila Daus to the Foreign Relations Committee on Monday afternoon in Room 2172 of the Rayburn Building.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘Because she will hear Denis’s reputation being destroyed,’ said Anastasia. ‘For her, it will be the ultimate victory.’
‘By Warren Speight? You know my feelings about him.’
‘Yes, by Speight and others.’
‘I have absolutely nothing to hide,’ said Reid. But the titan of American business didn’t look convinced of that. If he had nothing to hide, why was he still in the room?
‘When we talked at that fundraiser,’ said Anastasia, ‘I really felt we had a connection. Can I just ask you to do this for Denis and me, after everything that we went through?’
Reid was about to say something, but a knock at the door broke the spell and he began to shuffle forward out of his seat. One of Zillah’s bodyguards came in and bent down to whisper to Anastasia. Samson could hear that Homeland Security agents were in the building. The Agency, routinely used as the presidential enforcers, was demanding entry to the suite that Samson and Anastasia had used under the name of Zillah’s personal assistant. Her people had already got Naji out a half-hour before, and Mr Avocet had left with Mr Harp some time ago.
Anastasia rose to make a final plea, but it was Ulrike who hooked her arm with Reid’s and walked him from the room. They didn’t hear what she said to him, but they saw him with his head bowed and shaking before they were led by two of Zillah’s men to a car waiting in the service road at the back of the hotel.
Zillah was in the front passenger seat on the phone with a laptop on her knees. ‘It’s all kicking off, but it’s only the waterheads at Homeland Security who really don’t have a clue,’ she said. ‘Ask them to beat up protestors and they can just about do that, but anything else and they go to pieces. If it were the Agency, or the Bureau, we’d be in trouble.’ She turned round for the first time. ‘But they’re taking the weekend off. And so are we. You’re going to spend the next thirty-six hours on Ariel II.’
‘That’s your boat?’ asked Samson, the memory of crossing the North Sea in Silent Flight fresher than he’d wish.
‘My new boat! You’ll like her – roomy, very sleek and beautiful to behold under full sail. The love of my life.’
Ariel II was moving sedately across the wind, some distance off shore, where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers meet the Washington Channel. They boarded
