Brandenburg

by Henry Porter

  ‘Please just answer the questions. Did she leave you immediately?’

  ‘Yes, but I had hopes of renewing the relationship, which is why I was unhappy to be recalled. Now I understand that she had offered to work for you through another channel and that my attempts to get back on good terms with her were pointless.’

  ‘But this great love of yours had disappeared overnight? It evaporated. Is that a fair statement?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Then how do you account for the sentiments that she expressed in her letter to you this summer? They were somewhat passionate, were they not?’

  ‘She told me she had written more than one letter. If I had been able to see the others I might have understood her motives better. But now, having talked to her, I realize that the time we spent together all those years ago meant a lot to her . . . and in retrospect, to me also.’

  ‘How did she know where to contact you? You’re an obscure art historian, not the conductor of a famous orchestra or a film star. How did she know where to write?’

  He coughed. ‘This is difficult.’

  ‘Go on,’ said the voice, patiently encouraging Rosenharte to ensnare himself.

  ‘Five or six years ago I sent her a couple of notes. They were posted abroad by a friend who is now dead. I told her what I was doing and said that I would give her a tour of the collection of old masters in Dresden if she came to the city. It was a light-hearted message, I suppose. To my surprise, she replied by the same means - she got someone to post the letter in the GDR. I don’t know who that was. She told me that she was going to marry and leave Europe, but her tone was affectionate and, well, wistful.’

  ‘You have the letter now?’

  ‘I’ve got it somewhere, I’m sure.’

  ‘Why did you not say you’d been in communication with Annalise Schering before we took you to Trieste?’

  ‘I didn’t want to admit that I had been in touch with a foreign national, which I well appreciate could be interpreted as a crime. The other reason is that I didn’t want to be involved. I thought if you knew that we had corresponded it would encourage you to send me. And I had my doubts - doubts about the project and doubts about my feelings for her. A lot of water had passed under the bridge.’

  There was silence behind the lights. The voice was taking its time. Rosenharte coughed again and wished he could have a cigarette. He peered beyond the glare and made out the shapes of at least four people.

  ‘So you say that Schering was familiar with the techniques of posting a letter in our country so as to avoid the vigilance of the state security?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosenharte, seeing the trap but unable to avoid it.

  ‘Then why did she not arrange for the letters she wrote you this summer to be mailed from within the GDR?’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t say. Perhaps she didn’t have someone she could trust to do it for her.’

  ‘Or perhaps she knew that this correspondence would not escape the notice of Department M, the postal control services. In other words, she knew that her letters from abroad would be opened. She was making the offer to us, not you.’

  ‘That has occurred to me, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that she is trying to deceive you.’

  ‘You have heard the phrase, “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have considered the possibility that the gift she proposes to make the GDR could damage state security.’

  ‘That possibility is implicit,’ said Rosenharte. ‘I myself pointed this out when you first proposed it to me. All along I have said she could be used by the Western intelligence service.’

  ‘So now we must decide on the nature of the person who is making this gift.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose—’

  ‘And we have reached the conclusion that this person is remarkably inconsistent. In some circumstances, she demonstrates prudence and foresight, for instance when she got rid of you in favour of a more reliable means of communicating with us. Indeed, all through the years of dealing with her she showed detachment and good judgement - a model agent. But there’s another Schering, who can also be hot-headed, given to emotional outbursts and to excessive drinking. When she left you in the restaurant in Trieste, that was most unlike the woman we knew.’ The voice stopped. ‘Although it was entirely like the woman that you wrote about in your first reports. It’s almost as if we are dealing with two different people.’

  They were so close. Rosenharte felt his pulse race. He inhaled and put his hands on his knees. ‘But your people saw her in Trieste,’ he said at length. ‘It is the same woman.’

  ‘We know that. But how would you explain the difference in her behaviour?’

  Rosenharte leapt in the only direction he could. ‘Maybe,’ he started thoughtfully, ‘it has something to do with the way we respond to each other. We get under each other’s skin, though we are still attracted to each other.’

  There was a murmur behind the lights. ‘It is odd that she refused to meet any of our people in Trieste - she specified as much in her letter to you - and yet for ten years she worked with us and had no problem meeting different officers from the MfS. Why has she suddenly developed this phobia for the very people that she wishes to help?’

  ‘She did tell me that she had been scared by the lax security in your people at Nato. She didn’t want to expose herself to the same risks, and when Heise approached us in the restaurant she expressed the same fears.’ Again it was the only answer he could give. Rosenharte felt his stomach constrict. Just two sessions and he had been forced into a space where it was impossible to manoeuvre. Then the inevitable question came hurtling from behind the lights.

  ‘Which foreign intelligence agency are you working for, Rosenharte?’

  ‘I am working for no one except the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden.’

  At this, a large man appeared from behind the lights and walked to Rosenharte, took his face roughly in his hands and peered into his eyes. Rosenharte felt his gaze oscillate nervously between the shadows of the man’s eye sockets.

  ‘You are working for the Americans,’ he said. ‘I can see it in your face.’

  ‘Maybe I am,’ Rosenharte said and pulled back, out of the man’s shadow. ‘Maybe I am working for the Americans . . . Or the British or even the West Germans.’

  This brought silence to the room. Rosenharte held the man’s eyes. ‘But if I am, I don’t know it. Only you can tell if I am being used.’

  The man let go.

  ‘What makes you think that you’re being used?’

  ‘I have repeatedly said that this could be a trap. It’s for you to decide. I have told you everything I know.’

  The man looked down at him steadily, without giving the slightest hint of his feelings. It occurred to Rosenharte that he was at that moment fighting for his life. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘this isn’t a problem. You know what Annalise gave you before. Judge her on her past performance; judge her on what your people are analysing in Berlin. But don’t judge her on me. That isn’t logical.’

  The voice came from behind the lights again. ‘What do you know about her past work for us?’

  ‘Nothing. But she did tell me to ask you a question.’ He stopped, as though he was making sure he was getting something right. ‘Why no thanks for her news on the Ides of March in 1985?’

  ‘The fifteenth of March?’ asked the voice. ‘What happened on the fifteenth of March?’

  Someone cleared their throat. Schwarzmeer. ‘It refers to the death of Konstantin Chernenko and the succession of General Secretary Gorbachev four days before.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosenharte. ‘On the fifteenth, everything changed in the Geneva arms limitation talks and she told you about it. She gave you the updated briefing documents, the telegrams between Washington and Brussels, and the agenda of a meeting between defence ministers held by the new Secretary General, Lord Carrington. What she couldn’t copy, she memorized. It was her last
job for you. And you never thanked her.’

  ‘There were other things on our minds, I expect,’ said Schwarzmeer.

  ‘Well, she hasn’t forgotten it. That’s why she wants to run this operation on her own terms. She will decide what to give you and when . . .’

  ‘It’s not for you to dictate terms to us,’ said the voice behind the lights.

  ‘I’m not. She is, and whether you choose to believe her is your responsibility, not mine. I have no interest in this matter, other than seeing that you complete your side of the deal.’ He paused. ‘Now you must free Konrad as you promised you would.’

  ‘You have not told us about the arrangements for taking delivery of the material,’ said the voice.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Rosenharte.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I will tell you when you have allowed Konrad to return to his family.’

  The big man’s expression didn’t change as he stepped back and delivered a powerful blow to the side of Rosenharte’s head, sending him sprawling from the stool on to the compacted earth that served as the floor of the bunker. There was a scuffle as another came forward to help beat him. Rosenharte received several kicks to his back and kidneys and a pistol-whipping across the nape of the neck. Even in that moment he understood that each blow confirmed that the Stasi was, in its brutal way, showing interest in the material that Annalise Schering had to offer them.

  He supposed that he had been carried from the shelter unconscious, but that didn’t explain the taste in his mouth, the heaviness in his limbs or the sense that a long time had elapsed. He readied himself for the shock of being in prison, but when he cracked open his eyes he saw that he was wrong. He was in a very light place, which was pleasantly warm; there was a smell of dust in the air. He moved his head and found that he was lying on a bare wooden floor. He shut his eyes against the brightness and became aware of someone beside him urging him to raise his head. This woman kept on saying ‘water’ to him. ‘Drink, Comrade.’

  And he drank, cup after cup, before lying back and allowing his eyes to focus on a plaster ceiling that had holes punched into it so it was possible to see the timber that supported the floor above. He was directly beneath a plaster roundel of a hunting scene - men with muskets and dogs pursuing a stag. It seemed familiar to him but he could not for the life of him think why.

  ‘In this very room.’ It was Schwarzmeer’s voice, low and casual from behind his head. ‘In this very room your father said farewell to your mother for the last time. They drank champagne, brought up from the cellar on 1 January 1945. It was noon on a very, very cold day. The Red Army was a few hundred miles away, but they still thought that the Führer would perform a miracle. Your mother had less than six weeks to live; your father would be dead before spring came. This is where they last saw each other - General Manfred von Huth and his fascist wife, Isobel von Clausnitz. The young men of Germany were being slaughtered on the Eastern front, running backwards, starving, dying in the snow. One last toast to the Third Reich. Here, in this room.’ He spoke as though setting a scene for a drama.

  Rosenharte raised his head and blinked the sleep from his eyes. His neck hurt dreadfully, but he turned to see Schwarzmeer sitting on a lone chair, dressed in a dapper light-grey suit with matching grey socks.

  ‘Did they stand over there by the window, looking across the schlosspark to the hills, and raise their glasses to 1945? Or did they gaze into each other’s souls and see that the end was near? It’s interesting to speculate what they were thinking then, no? Did they know it was all over, or did they still believe the Führer?’

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’ asked Rosenharte.

  ‘It’s part of the SVP. As you know, we like to do research: prepare ourselves by entering the minds of our subjects, absorb their experiences and learn to predict their reactions.’ Rosenharte recalled that SVP was Stasi shorthand for Sachverhaltsprüfung - a check on the facts of the case.

  ‘This place has nothing to do with my life.’

  ‘Oh but it does, Herr Doktor. It was also in this room that you last saw your mother. It’s all in your file, even those tiny experiences. Have a look at this.’

  Schwarzmeer moved in his direction. With the woman’s help Rosenharte struggled to a sitting position.

  ‘That is all,’ said Schwarzmeer. ‘He’ll be all right.’ He paused to allow her to go, then placed a clear envelope in Rosenharte’s hand. ‘Take them out.’

  Three very small, square photographs slipped into his lap. Each one showed a man in a black uniform sitting on a grand run of steps. Standing uncertainly in front of him were blond twins in the uniform of the Hitler Youth: khaki shirts, lederhosen, white socks, tiny swastika armbands.

  ‘That’s you and your brother,’ said Schwarzmeer triumphantly. ‘You see, he was already making you part of the Nazi state. Unbelievable that someone would dress a three-year-old in a fascist uniform.’

  Rosenharte returned them to the envelope thinking that there were still plenty of young people dressed in uniform in the GDR.

  ‘These were found when the place was cleared out after the war and they came to us. Imagine the diligence and foresight which preserved these for the future. One of our people knew they would be useful one day.’

  Rosenharte sighed. ‘I am glad they’ve made you happy.’

  ‘Let me tell you who furnished us with the rest of the information about this household.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ said Rosenharte.

  ‘It was Marie Theresa Rosenharte, the woman you called mother. She was the one who brought you here that day - but your real mother was pining for her Manfred and paid little attention to you. Although she had only been in service here for six months, Frau Rosenharte had already formed the opinion that your mother was a cold and ruthless woman, without much feeling for anyone or anything apart from your father and the Nazi party.’

  ‘All the more reason for me to see them as irrelevant to my life.’ Rosenharte didn’t show he was shocked that they had talked to Marie Theresa. She had been a chatty woman of limitless good nature, who almost certainly thought she was helping her sons in their careers by talking to the Stasi. She would have been as open to them as she would be to her priest. That would have certainly remained her position until Konrad was arrested. After that she had freely likened the Stasi to the Nazis.

  Rosenharte had got to his feet and was looking through the broken glass to a line of garden statuary - beasts from classical mythology, most of them now decapitated. The gardens were overgrown and the grass was tall, but the design was still visible from the raised saloon. He looked at the lake, choked with weed around its perimeter, and the bridge. Then he caught site of the grotto, actually just a niche in a high wall that had been fashioned to look like a ruin. He distinctly remembered the word ‘grotto’ from his childhood and the fun of playing at the foot of a fountain, where water trickled from the mouths of fantastic sea creatures over slippery green boulders. The wall had mostly crumbled into the garden and the fountain was gone.

  ‘So, it begins to return to you,’ said Schwarzmeer. ‘The last summer of the fascists.’

  Rosenharte shook his head. ‘I remember nothing of this place.’

  ‘That’s a shame because it represents your debt to the state, the state that overlooked the monstrous crimes of your family and gave you the advantages of a socialist upbringing, the best education in the world.’

  Rosenharte looked at him, unable to express anything but disbelief. ‘You criticize the Nazis. What about Bautzen, where you held and tortured my brother without even telling his family what he had been found guilty of?’

  ‘He was convicted of distributing fascist propaganda that endangered the peace.’

  ‘And what does that mean? How can making a private film and showing it to a few colleagues endanger the peace? How is that fascist propaganda? And for this, you sent him to a prison used by the Nazis. Whatever you say about the West, they don’t fill old Nazi jail
s with their own people.’

  ‘Those observations alone are enough to earn you a sentence in the political section of Bautzen.’

  ‘No,’ said Rosenharte, louder than he intended. ‘You will not threaten me any longer. I have done nothing but comply with your wishes. I will not be treated like an enemy of the state.’ He paused to collect himself, aware that he was straying over the line of what the Stasi would tolerate. He had to paint himself as a man with an independent mind, with his own views, but one whose basic loyalty could not be doubted. That way they would believe him.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I understand that you have to do your business. But Konrad has had enough. He is a good man and a good socialist. All he has ever been guilty of is bad judgement. Let him go.’

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  Rosenharte waited a few moments then said, ‘I know you are interested in what Annalise has to offer. Otherwise you would not be wasting your time with me. She will only play if I am involved. Her position at Nato is so sensitive that your officers won’t get within a mile of her, and if they do try to contact her, she will simply report the approach. You work with me, or nobody. And if you work with me, you free Konrad.’

  Schwarzmeer’s face hardened. ‘That’s not possible. Your brother is suspected of criminal activities.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. He’s a sick man, incapable of presenting the slightest threat to you. Let him return to his wife and children. Let him find the treatment he needs for his heart and his teeth.’

  ‘Nothing stopped him when he was free before.’

  ‘No doctor or dentist would see him.’

  ‘Well, he must wait his turn like everyone else. No one can receive special treatment.’

  ‘His teeth became rotten in Bautzen because of the beatings and the diet. When he got out, your people stopped him seeing a dentist. He couldn’t even get an appointment with a veterinary surgeon. Let him go home. He’s suffered enough.’ Rosenharte was aware that a pleading note had entered his voice.

  Schwarzmeer moved from the bay window on the east side of the house, the place where his mother had sat so erect and untouchable that last time, and walked to the centre of the room.