5 In a dark suit and vest

I was blinded by the light and could see only that someone was standing in front of me. I shut my eyes tightly, opened them wide, and blinked. Then I recognized him. Ulbrich was standing in front of me.

Karl-Heinz Ulbrich, in a dark suit and vest, a pink shirt and red tie, and silver-rimmed spectacles, over which he looked at me with eyes that were doing their best to seem resolute and menacing. “Herr Self.”

I laughed. I laughed, because the tension of the last minute and from having stood for so long was dissolving. I laughed at Ulbrich’s getup, and at the glare. I laughed at being caught in the broom closet as if I were the lover of the Sorbian bank and Ulbrich her jealous husband.

“Herr Self.” He didn’t sound resolute and menacing. How could I have forgotten what a sensitive little fellow Ulbrich was? I tried to cap off my laughing in such a way that he might interpret it as me laughing with him, not at him. But it was too late, and he looked at me as if I had hurt his feelings again.

“Herr Self, I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you. You have entered these premises illegally.”

I nodded. “Yes, Herr Ulbrich. It’s me. How did you find me?”

“I saw your car parked on a side street. Where else would you be, if not here?”

“Who’d have thought that someone in Cottbus would recognize my car! But perhaps I ought to have figured out that Welker would send you here as his new bank manager.”

“Are you hinting that… are you hinting that I… Herr Self, your insinuation that I might have blackmailed Herr Welker is an outrage! I protest most vigorously! Director Welker saw my merits, something you cannot claim to have done, and was delighted to put them to good use! Mark my words, he was delighted!”

I got out of the closet, my numb legs knocking over detergent bottles, buckets, and mops. Ulbrich looked at me reproachfully. Why was it that with him I always ended up sooner or later having a bad conscience? I wasn’t his father; I could not have let him down as his father. I wasn’t his uncle, cousin, or brother, either.

“I understand,” I said to him. “You are not blackmailing him. He is delighted that you are working for him. I want to go now.”

“You have illegally-”

“You’ve said that already. Welker doesn’t want any fuss in his bank. The police and I would amount to a considerable fuss. I imagine he doesn’t even want to know that I spent a few hours in his bank in the company of brooms and buckets. Forget my illegal entry. Forget it and let me go.”

He shook his head but then turned around and left the kitchen area. I followed him to the side entrance. He unlocked the door and let me out. I looked up and down the street and heard the door shut behind me and the key turn twice.

The side street was empty. I intended to head over to the old market square, but I went the wrong way and came to a wide street I didn’t know. Here, too, there was nobody about. It was a mild evening, perfect for a stroll, for sitting outside, for a chat over wine or beer, for flirting, but the people of Cottbus didn’t seem to be in the mood for any of this. I found a little Turkish restaurant with a table and two chairs out on the sidewalk. I ordered a beer and stuffed vine leaves and sat down.

Across the street two boys were messing around with their motorbikes, making the engines roar from time to time. After a while they sped off, riding around the block once, and then again and again. They finally pulled up across the street, their engines running, again making them roar from time to time, and after a while set off around the block once again. This went on and on. They looked like good kids, and what they were yelling to each other was harmless enough. Still, the roar of their bikes ripped violently through the air, like the sound of a dentist’s drill. Before you feel it in the tooth, you feel it in the brain.

“You’re not from these parts,” the owner of the restaurant said, putting the plate, glass, and bottle down in front of me.

I nodded. “How’s life here?”

“You can hear for yourself. Never a dull moment.”

Before I could ask him any further questions he went inside. There was no knife or fork, so I ate the stuffed vine leaves with my fingers. Then I poured myself a glass.

I didn’t think Ulbrich was blackmailing Welker. It was more likely that after I’d warned Welker he had given Ulbrich a call, invited him over, and then hired him. It wasn’t hard to see that Ulbrich valued a good position far more than anything he might be able to gain through blackmail.

Did Welker not care that a clueless Karl-Heinz Ulbrich was taking over from the very efficient Vera Soboda? Was that what Welker wanted? Did she know too much about what was going on? But how could he know how much she knew? Had the tracking device recorded her escapades in the system? If he knew this and had intentionally replaced her with the clueless Ulbrich so he could continue laundering money, then what did this tell me about Schuler’s death?

6 Dirty work

Vera Soboda had barely greeted me when the doorbell rang.

“You thought you’d scared me off!” Karl-Heinz Ulbrich said to me triumphantly. “You thought that’s why I let you go, right? I just wanted to see who was helping you.” He looked at Vera. “You’ll regret this. If you think that the Sorbian bank will give you your severance pay while you double-cross us, you’ve got another thing coming.”

She glared at him as if she were about to grab him by the neck. If I had thrown myself between them, not much would be left of either him or me. Her eyes pinned on him, she asked me: “Did you find out anything?”

“No. And yet I see why Welker would have replaced you with him. You know what’s going on, he doesn’t. And yet that still doesn’t prove a thing.”

“What is it that I don’t know?” Ulbrich asked.

“Ignorant idiot!” she said, full of disgust. “I’d get off my high horse if I were you! Why do you think Welker made you the new bank manager, when you know as much about banking as I know about ostrich farming? Do you think it’s because you’re able to run the bank? Nonsense! The only reason you’ve been hired is because there’s no way you’ll ever find out that money is being laundered at the bank. Though that isn’t the only reason you were hired: it was also because of the way you handle the employees, and the fact that you wouldn’t shrink back from any sort of nastiness.”

“How dare you! It’s not as if banking is some hocus-pocus. And whatever I need to know, I find out right away. Would I have caught the two of you otherwise? I used to be at the Head Office 18, National Security, where they hired only the best. The best! Money laundering! Don’t make me laugh.”

“You were with the Stasi?” Vera said, looking at him first in astonishment and then as if she hadn’t seen him in a long time and now was recognizing him feature by feature. “Of course. Once in the shit, always in the shit. If no longer for our side, then for the other side. Whoever happens to need you guys and will pay you.”

“Shit? This man entered the bank illegally, and you are making terrible and unsubstantiated allegations. That’s shit! And what do you mean, I’m not working for our side but the other side? How could I work for our side? You’re talking as if I had betrayed our side-I haven’t heard such nonsense in years! Our side no longer exists! The only thing that exists now is the other side!”

He was still trying to present himself in a superior way, but he sounded exhausted and desperate. As if he had believed in East Germany and the Stasi and loved his job and was lost without it. As if he were orphaned.

But Vera Soboda did not let go: in the old days he’d been with the Stasi, and now he was with a shady West German bank, ignorant when it came to banking, nasty to the bank employees, being saddled on her and then replacing her-she was too furious to notice his exhaustion and desperation and to take pity on him. Perhaps that was also too much to ask. “I know our side no longer exists, and I’m not accusing you of betrayal,” she went on, “but what you did in the past was dirty work, and it’s dirty work you’re doing now. You’re already preparing the firings, aren’t you? Everyone knows that. Do you know what they’re calling you at the bank? The angel of death! And don’t get on your high horse just because everyone’s afraid of you. One can also be frightened of a little toad if it’s poisonous and disgusting enough.”