The Old Enemy Henry Porter (best black authors txt) 📖

in an ashtray that rested in a large flower tub by the door. She turned and embraced him and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘How good of you to come, dear Samson. In the few years Bobby knew you, he came to like and admire you. That was rare for him. He would be pleased you’re here.’

She picked up the cigarette and took a last drag before extinguishing it, shaking her head. ‘I gave up for Bobby, though I knew he was smoking when he was out there. But now, well, I think there is no point, so I smoke.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I know you are, Samson. I know.’ She studied him. ‘It’s odd – you’re like him in so many ways.’

They moved inside. She offered him a whisky, which he accepted to keep her company, and they sat down opposite each other on a pair of wicker sofas. ‘I’m glad you came, but you didn’t bring the painting and the sketchbook!’

‘Didn’t want everyone to know where I was going. I’ve just had dinner with the KaPo.’

‘And they want to know everything. They came to see me – Tomas and his boss. I stalled, but, well, I rely on them for my security.’

‘You didn’t tell them about this,’ he said, taking out the Nomenclature of Colours and laying it on the table. ‘Do you know what’s inside?’

‘Bobby never let me look at it and he changed his hiding places. Of course, I guessed it was near his mother’s cookbook because I caught him with the book in his hands two weeks ago. He never showed the slightest interest in cooking. Never! It was there only to remind him of her.’ There was something heroic in her grief. She was still beautifully turned out in her usual colours of grey and beige. Mourning made no difference to the care she had taken over her hair, held in a clip at the back and still quite dark.

‘Does anyone else know? Naji?’

She shook her head. ‘I was against Bobby using Naji. It was too much of a risk after what that boy had been through. But they needed him and he wanted to do it. There was no question of pressure. I would not have allowed that. But, yes, Naji knows everything.’

‘He knows about all the names in this book?’

She nodded and reached into a bowl of sugared almonds. ‘I don’t cook now. There’s no need, so I graze. That is the English expression, isn’t it? I like to graze.’

‘When I was out at the cabin, I saw a young couple there. There were signs they’d stayed the night. I’m certain one of them was Zoe Freemantle, the woman I was paid to protect in London. Did you know they were there? Were they looking for this?’ He tapped the book.

‘Ach! They didn’t tell me they were going.’ She gave him a frustrated look. ‘I’ll tell you about them later. There are things I have to explain to you. It’s complicated.’

It seemed odd but he let it go. ‘They were lucky not to be killed.’

‘I think the gunman was waiting for you. They can’t know about Zoe’s involvement. That was an important part of the whole operation. They never knew about her.’

‘And the young man?’

She clasped her hands. ‘That was my son, Rudi Rosenharte the second.’

Samson’s head spun. He’d met Rudi in Berlin but hadn’t recognised him at the cabin. He sat back. ‘They’re a couple?’

‘Yes, they are.’ She sighed. ‘It’s very, very complicated, but there’s plenty of time for that later.’ She topped up the whisky with water and looked at him, gently nodding, as though encouraging herself. ‘This story begins in 1989, when I was held for a brief time in Hohenschönhausen prison in East Berlin. But do you want to hear this now? Maybe wait until tomorrow.’

He shook his head.

‘I don’t sleep, so it makes no difference to me.’ She stopped. ‘I miss him beside me, you see.’

Samson leaned over and touched her arm. ‘We don’t have to speak about it now. We can sit here and get drunk on Bobby’s whisky.’

‘But you have brought the book and you risked your life to get it! I don’t think we can ignore that. Bobby was killed for it, and Macy told me that they tried to kill you in London, twice. You and your friend were stabbed, and now they want to arrest you.’

‘We’re both okay now,’ he said, opening the book and handing it to her. ‘Who is Mila Daus?’

Ulrike was silent for a few moments as she looked at one of Bobby’s early paintings – a study of grass bent in the wind. She glanced at him. Fury had replaced hurt in her eyes. ‘Mila Daus is the most evil person I have ever met. You read about those female guards in the camps – that is Mila Daus. There is nothing else to be said. She is everything beyond the gates of Hell. I saw her for a few minutes when she prescribed for me a regime to break my spirit. Because I was suspected of spying against the state, I was to be crushed before the trial. That was the word she used to me – crushed. She said she would see me again in six months, when I wouldn’t recognise myself.

‘She was well known among dissidents at the time, although, naturally, no one knew her name. She was quite young then – in her thirties – but she had a reputation among those who were held by the Stasi for unusual cruelty. She came from the Stasi College of Law. Yes, they believed in doing everything legally! Mila Daus rose fast and became a leading expert in Zersetzung, which translates as “decomposition”. They destroyed people’s psychology – what the Party called “hostile and negative aspects of a person’s dispositions and beliefs” – and they did it from the inside of their mind. They gas-lighted them, smashed their dreams and hopes, their faith, their love, their loyalties. The Stasi tunnelled into a person’s