Brandenburg

by Henry Porter

  She frowned, then stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. ‘We’re both old enough to know that you want two things - to sleep with me and for me to fall in love with you - the double triumph.’

  He grinned. ‘I mentioned a walk. That was all.’

  She returned his gaze, her eyes shining with defiance. ‘You do understand that it’s not going to be possible?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that. I was—’

  ‘I have watched you in those lectures. You want people to love that elegant intellect of yours, your passion for art, your eloquence, the sense that you’re above it all. You need to seduce people.’

  ‘My lightness of being,’ he said, trying to humour her.

  ‘No, it’s much more dangerous than that.’

  He smiled at her mischievously. ‘So you won’t be the axe to my frozen sea?’

  She shook her head and pointed to a chimney that was leaking a trail of heavy smoke across the city. ‘I’d rather work in that factory over there or in the gravel pits outside the city. I’d rather be detained by the Stasi for a night’s questioning than lose my freedom to you.’

  ‘Don’t be so extreme. More than you can imagine depends on both of us remaining free.’

  She gave him a look of surprise, letting him know that she hadn’t expected his reaction. ‘Don’t worry. Keep your cool and we shall both get through this.’

  ‘I will keep my cool, as you put it, but it’s not just us. My brother and his family are involved. I have a lot to lose.’

  She nodded.

  ‘How will I get in touch with you?’ he asked.

  ‘By the same means as before, but don’t go to the Nikolaikirche. Sign the book at the Thomaskirche, leave any postcard at the cafe, or one wedged between those two pilasters. Then wait outside the Thomaskirche. I will find you.’

  He gave her the address in Dresden, but left out the apartment number. ‘If you want to contact me, send a postcard to Lotha Frankel. Frankel used to live in my apartment. Sign it Ruth if you’re in trouble, Sarah if you need me to come to Leipzig. I will see it without it being delivered to my apartment.’

  ‘I’ll see you then,’ she said, turning away.

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘I will. Now go, before you make yourself conspicuous.’ She set off down the street that would take her to the centre of town. Rosenharte watched her go. About fifty yards down the road she suddenly turned and smiled at him.

  No, he said to himself firmly, he would not be swayed from his task of getting Konrad and Else and the boys out of the country. That was all that mattered.

  11

  Berlin

  He made his way to the station, unable to decide about Kafka. She certainly wasn’t what he’d been expecting, but the more important thing was that her story didn’t hang straight at all. No more than a handful of senior officers would be allowed to know that the GDR sponsored terrorism. It was simply unbelievable that this provincial university worker had acquired such significant knowledge from a friend.

  But what did it matter to him? He’d made contact with Kafka, and she had coughed some very startling information. That was all he needed for the British. When he told them that there would be more information, and that they would have the precise location for Abu Jamal in a couple of weeks’ time, they’d have to start moving on Konrad and Else.

  He crossed Dresdnerstrasse and came to a man standing by a suitcase of trinkets for sale: a watch with Karl Marx on the face, a pair of men’s shoes, a small communion bell, a flag holder and an empty photograph frame. Rosenharte nodded to him, lifted his shoulders and opened his hands, as though to say he was broke too. He moved on towards Karl-Marx-Platz. As he turned to the traffic in order to cross the road he caught sight of a man about fifty yards away who had been looking at him, but who now jerked his interest in the opposite direction. He was a big, rangy fellow in a checked shirt of orange and green and tight stone-washed jeans, all of which rendered him useless as a surveillance officer. This was certainly no Stasi footpad intent on merging into the general drabness of Leipzig. Rosenharte knew it must be the same character who had turned up at the gallery and who had watched him with Ulrike at the cafe. He wondered whether he had followed them to the park, and if so whether he had drawn any conclusions about their visit. Now the man was looking at him directly and seemed to signal that he wanted to talk. Rosenharte was curious, but decided he wanted nothing to do with him and quickened his pace. The man broke into an effortless jog to keep in touch and waved a couple of times. Rosenharte thought he heard him call out. In very little time they reached the square where the Volkspolizei were mustered in their thousands. A good number of Stasi were hanging around in civilian dress, some with side arms in the back of their waistbands, others with radios and cameras. As he walked along the east side of the square towards the station, he heard a voice shout his name.

  It was Colonel Biermeier, who had burst from the mêlée of police and was pursuing him with four plainclothes Stasi officers. ‘Stop, Rosenharte. Stop now!’

  He turned round.

  ‘Where are you going?’ demanded Biermeier. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I’m late for the train,’ he said.

  ‘The train to Dresden does not leave until five forty-five. You have thirty minutes. Why are you hurrying?’

  Rosenharte looked over Biermeier’s shoulder; the lanky pursuer had vanished. ‘I’m a nervous traveller.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question. Where have you been?’

  ‘For a walk in the park. I needed to calm down after my lecture.’

  ‘Yes, I heard about that. You seem to have offended the locals.’ Biermeier folded his jacket over his arm and wiped his brow. ‘Why did you evade your protective surveillance in Dresden?’

  ‘Protective surveillance! Is that what you call it? I simply left my apartment early this morning. I can’t help it if your men were asleep. That wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘You should have indicated to them that you were leaving.’

  Rosenharte shook his head in disbelief. A young man with a bad case of acne, who had been walking towards the line of police, suddenly produced a white sheet from under his denim jacket and held it between outstretched arms. On it was the slogan Freiheit für die Gefangenen 12/9 - Freedom for the prisoners of 12 September. For several seconds, the youth marched along the line of police in a comic goosestep. No one moved until Biermeier bellowed, ‘Detain that man!’ The sheet was wrenched from his hands and he was hustled into the back of a military vehicle with a canvas top. At this point he turned and pulled down his jeans to show part of the word Freiheit written across his backside.

  Biermeier bellowed, ‘Cover that man, you idiots!’ and then turned to Rosenharte, who did not bother to suppress his amusement.

  ‘Now you’ve found me, can I go back to Dresden?’ he asked.

  Biermeier shook his head. ‘No, you’re going to Berlin.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s enough to know that we have need of you there.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ll take the train; it will be quicker.’

  Forty-five minutes later they were on the Berlin train. Biermeier sat across the aisle from Rosenharte, trying to ignore him.

  ‘You should take some time off, Colonel,’ said Rosenharte good-naturedly. ‘You look stressed. Find yourself a nice young mistress. Have a few drinks. Live a little.’

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  ‘But you make love, don’t you? Or is that forbidden under article one thousand and two of the Ministry’s code?’

  Biermeier did not answer.

  ‘Biermeier - a brewer who doesn’t drink. It’s odd how inappropriate some names are and the journeys they make. Do you know the story of Joachim Neander?’

  ‘No, and nor do I want to.’

  ‘Joachim Neander was a pastor in the seventeenth century who was banned by the church because he refused to celebrate communion.’

  ‘What’s a damned priest to me?
’

  ‘Nothing, I imagine. But the story is interesting. Joachim retired to the country, grew his vegetables, made love to his dear wife and walked in the valley near his house. The people loved him so much that when he died they named the valley after him - Neanderthal. A hundred or so years later some workmen were mining a limestone cave and came across some very strange remains indeed - half human, half ape.’

  ‘The priest?’

  ‘No, the bones turned out to belong to an entirely unknown human species and, naturally, they were given the name Neanderthal. And so Pastor Joachim’s name lives on.’

  ‘Is that what you spend your time learning in your gallery? Useless information that is no good to anybody?’

  ‘All information is useful. Isn’t that what General Schwarzmeer says: everything eventually finds its use?’

  Biermeier examined him for a moment. Rosenharte noticed that the whites of his eyes were tinted yellow.

  ‘You’re an arrogant bastard, Rosenharte. So damned sure of yourself on everything, aren’t you? Well, they won’t be hearing from you in Leipzig again. You’ve blown that one.’

  Rosenharte shook his head. ‘Whatever you have heard was taken out of context. The man wanted to be offended; he came for that purpose. Besides, I need to make contacts with the church community there as agreed with our friend in Trieste. So I must return whether they want to hear my lectures or not.’

  They said nothing more for the next hour or so but as night fell and the train dragged itself north to Berlin, then through Alders Hof and Karlshorst - the bleak suburb where the KGB maintained its headquarters - Rosenharte decided to make things plain to Biermeier. He leaned across to him and said, ‘I won’t cooperate until I have a deal.’

  Biermeier shook his head contemptuously. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you won’t say that again. You have no idea how bad they can make your life.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I want one.’

  At the Ostbahnhof they were met by three cars, one of which contained a trim man in his early forties who introduced himself as Colonel Zank from HA II, which Rosenharte recalled was the main department for counter intelligence. Zank took them to the Interhotel where they ate tasteless white fish in an empty dining room. Zank watched them with a bloodless smile. Then Rosenharte began to recognize something of this man’s stillness and reserve and he understood that the shadow that had observed him as he was interviewed by the archivists in the forest hideaway had moved into the world of substance.

  They drove to Karl-Marx-Allee, then headed east to the Lichtenberg district where they turned left on Mollendorf. As Rosenharte knew well, the short and unremarkable Normannenstrasse was the first right. It was nearly fifteen years since he had been there, but apart from the increased number of security cameras and one or two new apartment blocks, no doubt occupied by Stasi families, little had changed. They passed the stadium, the home of the minister’s personal football team, Dynamo, and he recalled a story about the referee who awarded one too many decisions against Erich Mielke’s Stasi team and was threatened with jail. They turned sharp right and reached a barrier. A camera to their right swivelled in their direction. And here he had to clasp his knees to stop his hands shaking. He would get through this for Konnie’s sake. That was his mission - his life’s mission - and if he held on to that thought, he’d handle everything well.

  The guards took their time checking each man’s credentials, then waved the cars through to the main entrance, hidden from the courtyard by a canopy and a screen of ugly concrete lattice work. One or two lights were on in the large courtyard. The car carrying Rosenharte pulled up just beyond the covered area. He got out and looked up at the seven-storey building that contained the minister’s suite of offices. Most of the lights were on.

  The escort peeled off and just one other man, apart from Biermeier and Zank, entered the building with Rosenharte. Zank nodded to the desk on the right and gestured to a paternoster lift, indicating that Biermeier should go first, followed by Rosenharte. They stepped off the moving platforms at the fourth floor and were shown to a characterless antechamber without windows.

  And there they waited.

  Zank went off and came back several times, but said nothing. Biermeier seemed to enter a deep official torpor. The place was slightly overheated and there was a staleness to the air that was so strong that Rosenharte was sure it wouldn’t be shifted if the windows were opened for a month. When eventually Zank returned for the fourth or fifth time and summoned Biermeier and Rosenharte into a dark passage, he noticed the curious odour intensify. It was as if he was moving through a gassy medium of suspicion and terror that had saturated everything in the building. They passed through an office with three secretaries and came to a door, which Zank eased open. On entering, Rosenharte saw a long, panelled room with a conference table on the right and a seating area, consisting of four armchairs upholstered in blue, on the left. At the far end, there was an island of red carpet on the parquet floor. At the centre of this stood two upright chairs, a large desk and a blue armchair.

  From the way Zank and Biermeier were touching their tie knots and smoothing their hair in the corridor, Rosenharte had known they were about to enter Mielke’s presence.

  They came to a halt halfway along the conference table, but it was only after a few seconds that he saw a diminutive figure in uniform standing by the window, holding the net curtains apart - a little old man staring into the night. He threw a testy look in their direction and then returned to whatever was absorbing him outside. They waited. No one spoke. Rosenharte stared at the man who had run the Stasi for thirty years, causing untold misery to untold numbers. The monster was hardly impressive, and for a fleeting and foolhardy moment all Rosenharte could think of was the Wizard of Oz.

  Then he remembered Konrad.

  Zank spoke. ‘This is Rosenharte, Minister.’

  ‘I know it’s Rosenharte. What do you take me for?’ He moved away from the window and went behind his desk with short, quick steps, his arms held slightly in front of him. He shuffled some papers together and looked up at them. ‘Do you expect me to shout? Come over here.’

  They moved forward into a pool of light at the edge of the carpet where the minister surveyed them disagreeably.

  ‘Where’s Schwarzmeer? He was told to be here.’

  ‘I believe he is on his way,’ said Zank diplomatically.

  ‘That’s not good enough. I don’t have time for delays.’

  Rosenharte took in the man in detail: the snaggled front teeth in his lower jaw, a permanently down-turned mouth, pointed, protruding ears, bristling grey hair and eyes that seethed with offence and hatred. Every kind of medal ribbon was stitched to the breast of his summer uniform, which was tailored from a vulgar, shiny material, and various decorations had been plastered to its front, almost randomly, like labels on a parcel. Rosenharte assumed he had been attending a formal function, although there was no sense that he had been mellowed by drink or good conversation. It was well known, even when Rosenharte briefly served the MfS, that he neither smoked nor drank, and that his conversation did not extend beyond the affairs of state, sport and hunting.

  Rosenharte was an inch or two taller than Biermeier and Zank and this worried him because the minister was under five foot five. He sank a little into himself and looked ahead, the precise opposite of the minister’s habitual struggle against the stoop of old age. No one said anything. On the desk was a death mask of Lenin in a Perspex case, to the right a shredder, an ordinary black telephone and a switchboard with a white handset that connected the minister with other members of the Politburo. Immediately behind the desk were two panelled doors, which Rosenharte assumed hid a safe because the doors stopped four inches from the floor.

  The minister looked up. ‘In Leipzig, what are they doing, Biermeier?’

  ‘Everything appears to be under control, Minister. It looks like they have put the lid on these demonstrations for good. But we must remain vigilant, of course.�
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  Mielke shook his head and shot him a derisive look.

  ‘They are traitors. They should be locked up. Shot, if necessary. It’s the only language these people understand. There were five thousand of them on the streets tonight in Leipzig. They bring disgrace to the GDR and undermine the efforts of all loyal socialists. What do you say about these people, Rosenharte? Are they your people? Are you a member of the hostile forces ranged against the socialist state?’

  ‘No, Minister.’

  ‘But it’s people like you, isn’t it? People who don’t know what hard work is. People who want to read books all day while the state provides for them.’

  He was picking a fight. Rosenharte wasn’t going to rise to the bait. ‘I think the important thing to realize, Minister, is that the demonstrators are not from one group. There are a number of minority interests that have coalesced to cause this trouble.’

  ‘How do you know so much about it?’

  Biermeier fidgeted beside him, as though he was going to have to answer for what Rosenharte was saying.

  ‘I don’t know much. I simply observe that there is very little homogeneity among the demonstrators. They all seem to want different things.’

  The little goblin clapped his hands. ‘Exactly right. There, you see! I have to go to an outsider to tell me these things. Every type of anti-social element is using this excuse to cause trouble on the fortieth anniversary of the GDR, knowing that the world’s attention will be focused on us. They’re nothing but opportunists and they should be shot like vermin.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Zank.

  ‘But in the summary of all the reports I’ve received this evening, there is no analysis that underlines this lack of an overall ideology among the demonstrators.’ He banged his desk with a small clenched fist. ‘That is our opportunity, comrades: to drive a wedge between these groups, compel them to tear each other part. Zank, I want your proposals on a strategy.’

  ‘Certainly. I think it is an exceptional insight of yours.’