Red to Black by Alex Dryden Page B

the room–Putin’s Ears, as Finn refers to the microphones later. But while Finn, it seems to me, wants my masters to hear what he is saying, he nevertheless and unnecessarily looks straight at me as if to convey a deeper meaning that cannot be known by anyone outside the room. I know he’s conveying a message to me beyond his words, but that the message in some way includes his words too.
    In retrospect, I now realise that it was an appeal, an appeal to me to understand his real motives, the unexpressed, the unsaid.
    ‘KoKo became one of the biggest illegal arms sales operations in the world,’ he continues. ‘At its height it was selling shipments of weapons all over Africa, the Middle East, South America, China, rebel groups in the Far East…Schmidtke even sold a cargo of small arms out of Rostock to the Americans for their covert war in Nicaragua. Good, solid Soviet-made weapons and East German optics could soon be bought throughout the world. And Schmidtkefunnelled the profits down his secret financial pipeline into Switzerland. Two banks in Geneva friendly to Schmidtke and the KGB washed the money and a friendly bank in an obscure Swiss canton invested this laundered money into all kinds of business ventures.’
    Finn smiles at a memory. ‘I remember once when I was on a skiing holiday I was sitting on a ski-lift in a canton in Switzerland. I suddenly realised that this ski-lift was, in fact, a KGB investment,’ he says. ‘The technology was Swiss,’ he adds, as if concerned that we might be worrying about his physical safety.
    But then he’s serious again.
    ‘So. When we arrested Schmidtke in Berlin in eighty-nine, several billions of dollars had been laundered by KoKo and invested in all kinds of ways. When we brought him in, Schmidtke was returning from Geneva having deposited over a billion dollars. We were a few hours too late to stop him divesting himself of the cash and bonds. We knew the money was held in an escrow account belonging to one of Schmidtke’s Western agents, a Belgian arms dealer living in Switzerland. We wanted him too, but missed him that time and every time since then.’
    ‘What does this have to do with Putin?’ Nana asks. ‘Our new President, God bless us.’
    ‘Putin was one of Schmidtke’s colleagues. He also worked for Schmidtke’s KGB controllers in the eighties,’ Finn says. ‘That’s the connection. Back in the days when he was based in East Germany, Putin and Schmidtke met regularly.’
    ‘And Schmidtke was clearing out the accounts before German re-unification,’ I say, ‘which is why he was depositing these billions in Switzerland.’
    ‘Yes. There were a lot of traces to be covered in a very short time,’ Finn replies. ‘Everything happened so quickly after the Wall came down. It wasn’t just Schmidtke and the Stasi and their KGB allies who had a clearout. Every KGB general and some regular army generals in East Germany were stripping the place. Huge Russianair transporters were flying out cargoes of Mercedes stolen in the West and bound for Moscow. The rapaciousness was unbelievable. Do you know that when Mercedes opened a dealership in Moscow at the beginning of the nineties, they couldn’t sell any cars, there were so many already there? Instead, they opened a service centre; they made good money, thanks to Russian driving.’
    ‘And Schmidtke?’ Nana says.
    ‘We questioned him for a few weeks in London. We knew he knew everything, all the skeletons, right up to the very top of the political leadership in Bonn. But the West Germans naturally wanted him, too, and they had a greater claim. We let them have him. Perhaps that was a mistake,’ Finn adds.
    ‘Why?’ I ask.
    ‘Why was it a mistake? They questioned him for two years. At the end they found he still knew more about them than they knew about him. He held all the secrets. Their secrets, secrets they didn’t even know about their own political leaders. Don’t forget, for nearly thirty