Stasi 77

by David Young

  The likelihood was that her phone was being tapped by the Stasi now, if it hadn’t been before. But she only wanted to make one phone call, if the person she wanted to call actually possessed a telephone. It wasn’t a given in the Republic.

  She picked up the phone and talked to the Keibelstrasse switchboard operator. She gave the woman on the switchboard the Schneiders’ address in Gardelegen. ‘Can you check for me if they have a private telephone in their apartment?’ Müller had visited, of course, but she couldn’t remember seeing one, though it had been well after midnight. The room had been in semi-darkness. ‘If they have, could you ring them for me and then patch the line through to me on this extension.’

  Müller waited for a few minutes, twiddling her thumbs. She was just about to give up and go home, when the extension rang.

  ‘I’ve got your call on the line now, Comrade Major. Go ahead, caller.’

  ‘Hello?’ said the woman’s voice at the other end. Müller immediately recognised it as that of Lothar Schneider’s widow.

  ‘Frau Schneider. It’s Major Müller from Berlin again. Thanks so much for talking to me last night.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’m not sure there is much else that I can tell you, though.’

  ‘What I’m interested in is some sort of meeting Lothar had with a French businessman. Do you remember him telling you anything about that?’

  ‘He didn’t need to tell me about it. I spoke to the man myself. On the telephone. Like this.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘The first time?’

  ‘The first time? He got in contact on more than one occasion?’ Müller felt a lightness in her chest.

  ‘Yes. The first time was, let’s see . . . it would have been in the spring. April maybe. Hang on. You’re lucky. I always write . . .’ The woman sighed, loud enough for Müller to hear over the crackly line. ‘It’s difficult, you know. Believing he’s actually dead. It just feels like he’s gone away for a few days. I know that’s not the case. Anyway, I always used to write messages for Lothar on the wall diary, in case he was doing night shifts at the power station and our paths didn’t cross for a day or so. Hang on, I’ll go and get it.’

  Müller found herself slightly breathless waiting for the woman. This felt like something significant.

  The woman returned to the line. ‘Here you go. Fifteenth of April. That was the first call.’

  ‘This year?’ April? The timeframe tallied with the killing of Ingo Höfler.

  ‘Yes, earlier this year. And then he got in touch again very recently.’ The woman paused. ‘Here it is. The 22nd of July.’ Mid to late July. Martin Ronnebach.

  Müller tried to breathe evenly and deeply, to keep the excitement from her voice. ‘What was the message each time?’

  ‘Well, that was very odd. It was just this: wants to talk to you – that was Lothar, of course, this was my message to him – about a farming question.’

  ‘A farming question?’

  ‘Yes. I just assumed he had a wrong number and had mixed us up with some other Schneiders or something. But I wrote it down in case it meant anything to Lothar.’

  ‘And you’re sure those were his exact words.’

  ‘Well . . . that might have been my interpretation. Let me think. Oh yes, it was a bit more detailed than that. Something about the best way to store hay in a barn. That was it. A farming question would just have been my shorthand for Lothar.’

  Mention of this ‘barn’ again. Where Lehmann said he and his Hitler Youth colleagues had escorted the ‘march’. What was that all about?

  ‘And did the man leave a name or a telephone number?’

  ‘Yes. Both.’

  Müller felt her hands tremble as she held the receiver. ‘What were they, Frau Schneider?’

  The woman read out a telephone number and a room number – the same phone number for each message, but each time a different room. Müller noted it down. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that was the dialling code for Magdeburg. It must have been the hotel where the businessman was staying.

  ‘And the name?’

  ‘Well, I hope I’ve spelt this correctly. I possibly just spelt it phonetically, but being a teacher I know some French so I think it’s correct. His name was Philippe Verbier.’

  42

  In the space of a ten-minute phone call, Müller had made the first significant breakthrough in the case. A case that had nothing at all to do with the confiscation of private property and its nationalisation by the Republic. That was a smokescreen from the Stasi. Possibly even directly from Jäger, who clearly had a personal involvement, one she was determine to expose. If no one else was prepared to hold him to account, then she would have to.

  She was champing at the bit to get started and phone the hotel in Magdeburg. But she’d already risked one phone call that could easily have been listened in on. She needed to try to find out which hotel it was without ringing. She needed to pay it an unannounced visit.

  She also needed – somehow – to be able to check the records of passenger arrivals at Schönefeld from France and elsewhere in Western Europe, particularly French citizens arriving by train at Friedrichstrasse, and for French-registered cars crossing into the Republic on the relevant dates.

  There was a lot of legwork to be done, and she would be doing it alone. Although she didn’t think Schmidt would betray her again, she wasn’t going to risk it. As for Tilsner, she felt very much that his initial reticence – shock, even – about the various smoke deaths, indicated an involvement that was too close. Maybe the doddery neighbour of the Schneiders who thought she recognised him from the ‘estate’ hadn’t got such bad eyesight after all. Perhaps Tilsner’s connections with the Altmark and Gardelegen itself weren’t just the distant relatives he claimed to have in the area. Perhaps – like Jäger – his involvement was far darker, and went far deeper.

  *

  It was still the early afternoon by the time Müller got back to Strausberger Platz, finding a parking space in a nearby side street. She was going to leave ratcheting up the search for Verbier’s comings and goings from the Republic until the next day. For now, she wanted to re-integrate herself into family life.

  When she let herself in through the front door, she was disappointed the apartment was empty. After her night in the car, and her marathon drives around the Republic, she had been looking forward to a long, hot soak in the bath. As she ran the bath, she stripped off her clothes and examined herself in the full-length mirror. The partially-botched – or at least unprofessional – Caesarean scar was slowly fading. It would always be there, but she was getting used to it. It was almost like a trademark, a brand. She smiled to herself. There would be few children in the world, if any, who’d had as exciting a first few hours as Jannika and Johannes, who had been plucked from her womb, spirited away, and chased in desperation by her and her police colleagues. But they’d survived, she’d survived, and she’d got what she’d always wanted – a little family.

  She smoothed her fingers across her face. There was tiredness there, but she’d seen the Stasi captain’s looks of appreciation and the same from the Bulgarian waiter. She lifted the undersides of her breasts, first one, then the other. She would like someone to caress her. She would like to find another man. But it wasn’t the be all and end all. There was still time.

  The steam from the bath had started to cloud up the mirror. She’d run it hot, despite the heat of summer outside the apartment. It was a throwback to her days in Oberhof, when after ski-jump practice as a teenager she loved nothing better than running a bath which was just on the cool side of scalding, then staying in it as long as she could, as her fingers crinkled and the water cooled. She climbed in, and lowered herself into the water.

  So she was off the case and had been thrown off – in effect – three times in a row. But this time, she wasn’t going to let it stop her. She had something on Jäger now. He wouldn’t be the only official in the Republic who at one time had
been in the Hitler Youth. But it was certain that he wouldn’t want it widely known.

  *

  She was almost drifting off in the bath when the sounds of screaming awoke her. She jumped out of the bath with a start, almost sliding and falling on the tiled floor, frightened for an instant. Then she realised it was a young child yelling his head off.

  Johannes.

  Helga and the children were back.

  Then came Helga’s voice. ‘Jannika, put down the telephone, please.’

  Müller came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, to see that her daughter was standing on a chair, pretending to talk into the phone. Her son was still in the pushchair, bawling and arching his back.

  ‘You’re back at last,’ said Helga. ‘I know with the job you can’t always warn me when you’ll be away longer than expected, but we were getting worried.’ Her grandmother pulled her into a hug.

  ‘I’m sorry, Helga. Everything just snowballed. I didn’t have chance to ring.’

  Helga turned to her great-grandson, with her finger against her closed lips. ‘Shush, Johannes! Otherwise Mutti won’t give you a hug.’ Then sotto voce to Müller. ‘He’s been a little menace today.’

  In the mayhem, Jannika had climbed down from the chair and was now trying to pull Müller’s towel down. She succeeded. ‘Mutti! Mutti!’ she cried, shaking her little blonde head in mirth at her mother’s nakedness.

  ‘Ooh, you little rascal,’ said Müller, pretending to chase her daughter round the hall, not bothering to pull the towel back up. Then she lifted Johannes from the buggy, struggling under his weight, and rocked him till he calmed, singing his favourite lullaby.

  ‘Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf

  Der Vater hüt’t die Schaf

  Die Mutter schüttelt’s Bäumelein

  Da fällt herab ein Träumelein

  Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf.’

  By the end of the first verse, Johannes was calmed and instead of crying, was trying to grab his mother’s breast.

  ‘Typical man,’ laughed Helga. ‘Can’t keep his hands off.’

  *

  When they’d eaten, the children themselves had been bathed and Müller had read them a bedtime story, she finally got the chance to talk to Helga.

  ‘So are you still on holiday or not?’ her grandmother asked.

  ‘Officially, yes. Unofficially, no. I’ve got plenty I need to get on with tomorrow. I feel guilty leaving them with you all the time.’

  ‘Nonsense. We have a lot of fun. It’s no trouble. I’ve signed them up for the summer club at Volkspark Friedrichshain for the next couple of weeks, so I’ll get a few hours off to go shopping or whatever. Or if you’re free, we could go shopping together. To the Centrum in Alexanderplatz?’

  ‘Hopefully one day this week. Not tomorrow, though, I’m afraid. There’s something from this last case I need to follow up on.’

  *

  The next day, Müller began her search for records relating to this Philippe Verbier – the French businessman.

  She tried to find Jonas Schmidt, only to be told the forensic scientist was off ill. That explained why he hadn’t returned her call about the history of Gardelegen. Still, she could easily look it up herself in the library when she got the chance. She did ask a favour of another Kriminaltechniker who she knew Schmidt was friendly with. She asked him if he could go through all crime reports for the last six months, checking if any unexpected tyre prints of French cars had been found. She knew from the graveyard girl case that the tyre manufacturers of different countries often used distinctive patterns – and the forensic scientists would keep a pattern book or file.

  Her next visit was to the switchboard room. She asked one of the telephonists she knew in passing whether they had any reverse directories for Magdeburg to see if they could match the number Frau Schneider had given her to a particular hotel. Failing that, could they check the obvious ones where western businessmen might stay, to see if they could find a match?

  Müller’s next task would be more difficult without alerting the Stasi: trawling through the passenger records of trains, aircraft, or cars. She had to decide which mode of transport to check first. What made her mind up was the fact that she and Tilsner had been to the vehicle checkpoints between West and East Berlin before, during the case of the reform school teens. It was more than two years ago, but there was an outside chance that some of the same faces would be there. Many worked for the Stasi, despite their border guard army uniforms. But that was true for the airports and railway stations too. Of course, Verbier might not have crossed into the Republic via the capital. If he’d been involved in the Leinefelde murder, then the border checkpoint at Düderstadt/Worbis would make more sense.

  She was shooting in the dark. There was very little chance of her uncovering anything – particularly without sharing the workload with Tilsner. And she didn’t trust him enough at the moment to share anything with him.

  But she had to try.

  43

  13 April 1945

  Gardelegen, Nazi Germany

  Only a few minutes after the barn doors are closed behind us, I realise Marcellin was right, and I was wrong. Two German soldiers enter and start setting fire to the straw in the barn in several places.

  Hope turns to terror in an instant.

  Suddenly, I feel strong again. We rush round with our blankets, and manage to put out most of the flames. Marcellin is coughing alongside me, slumped to the floor. We try to push the straw to the middle of the barn, in case those same two soldiers return. I start telling myself that perhaps it was some sort of cruel, drunken dare, the last act of bravado by a defeated army.

  But then they’re back.

  This time they don’t just have matches, they have signal flares, which are fired at the straw.

  Again, we frantically try to smother the flames. We’ve just about managed it, when the doors open again. This time grenades explode, and there is the sound of machine pistols and the cries of prisoners in their death throes.

  Somehow I find Marcellin as the smoke begins to take hold. I cover my mouth with my partly burnt blanket and drag him, half-stumbling, towards one of the walls, pressing ourselves against it to try to gain some protection against the bullets.

  This is a massacre, I realise. A cold-blooded massacre.

  Through the smoke, on the opposite side of the building I see a group of some fifty or so Russian prisoners barge through the wooden doors. Hope surges as they force them open and flee into the open air.

  There’s a chance of escape.

  Then – in the fading light – we see their silhouettes mown down by machine pistol fire and rifle shots.

  By now the fire is completely out of control. The inside of the barn fills with choking smoke. There are cries of panic everywhere. Marcellin is shaking in the chaos. I try to protect him – try to cling on.

  I start singing ‘La Marseillaise’ – trying to get Marcellin to join in. Trying to die with dignity. Human torches run around to try to extinguish the flames they’re engulfed in, until they drop down dead.

  In the mêlée, in the choking smoke, I lose my grip on Marcellin.

  My brother.

  I do not want to lose another.

  I try to fight my way back to him, but the crush is too much, as body after body falls on me. I feel the air being squeezed from my lungs like a pair of bellows, and the fire rages around us. I try to wriggle free from under the mass of bodies, but I cannot.

  Those flickering images I saw of my life at Estedt are back.

  The laughing faces of Grégoire and Marcellin when we were younger.

  The games of oyster petanque. Running my fingers through Marie-Ange’s flaxen hair – the same colour as the straw we first saw piled up in this barn.

  The sweet, sweet smell of my mother’s marsh mutton – the memory so real I can almost actually smell it.

  As I start to drift out of consciousness, I have one last – horrible – conscious thought.

&nb
sp; I can smell it. It’s not my imagination playing tricks.

  The smell isn’t of marsh mutton.

  It isn’t ovine meat at all.

  It’s the smell of roasting human flesh.

  44

  August 1977

  Grenzübergang Bornholmerstrasse, East Berlin

  Müller parked the Lada as near to the crossing point as she dared, without attracting attention. Then she approached. She’d chosen to wear her summer uniform with her major’s insignia, even though she was on holiday and a detective who normally wore plain clothes. She wanted to try to make an impression on the person she was hoping to see. It might prevent her being arrested by the Stasi.

  Perhaps she was being unrealistic. Around two and a half years had passed. The fellow major she was hoping to meet had probably moved on, or perhaps wouldn’t even remember her.

  Müller scanned the border guards in the checkpoint. The officer she was looking for was stocky, had messy dyed and permed blonde hair. But – like Müller – she was a woman in a mostly man’s world. She needed a modicum of female solidarity. And then she saw her, sitting at a desk going through some paperwork.

  One of the other guards tried to stop her getting through, but Müller flashed her ID card. ‘I’m here to see the Comrade Major,’ she said, brushing past him.

  ‘You mean the Comrade Oberstleutnant,’ the officer whispered to her, grinning. ‘I warn you. She’s recently been promoted, and likes everyone to know.’

  At that moment, the lieutenant colonel looked up from her papers, and frowned. ‘I remember you from somewhere.’