Brandenburg

by Henry Porter

  Rosenharte shrugged. ‘Perhaps that’s a good thing. Did you know a woman named Marie Theresa? She worked here during the war. She adopted me and my brother in 1945 and became our legal mother.’

  The man shook his head. ‘I got just two weeks’ home leave during the entire war, and let me tell you I had better things to do than come up here to the house. I saw what went on on the battlefield and I knew that some of the people who were responsible for that carnage were dining in luxury in this very room.’ He looked around them and spat again.

  ‘So you’re the caretaker now?’

  ‘I keep an eye on things for them. I feed the fish in the lake, see that the hunting is right when he comes out here in the winter. I have a couple of lads to help when I need it.’

  ‘Is there anyone here now?’

  ‘No, they won’t be here until November.’

  ‘There are some houses at the other end of the estate. Are they occupied?’

  ‘How do you know about those houses? This place is secret.’

  ‘I was the guest of General Schwarzmeer a month back. We had some business here, but I didn’t realize until the end of my time that we were in Schloss Clausnitz. I wanted to come back and take a look in my own time.’ As he said this he felt in his coat.

  ‘That doesn’t seem very convincing. Are you a friend of his?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t honestly claim to be that,’ said Rosenharte, hoping that he had judged the man right. ‘To be frank, I am no friend of the Stasi. They were responsible for my brother’s death two weeks ago and I cannot forgive them. I’m here to settle some things in my mind.’

  ‘First you say you are the general’s guest, now you say the Stasi killed your brother. To me those two things don’t add up.’

  ‘Both are true.’ Rosenharte moved towards him. ‘Look, we want to stay here a few days. Would that be all right? No one has to know we’re here.’

  The man looked doubtful.

  ‘I can make it worth your while,’ he said, pulling out a hundred dollars.

  ‘I’m not interested in money. I can’t be bought.’ He stamped his stick on the ground and a terrier shot round the corner to do an excited turn in front of Rosenharte and Ulrike.

  ‘He likes you,’ said the man, his tone softening again.

  ‘We probably smell pretty awful,’ said Ulrike, bending down to play with the dog. ‘Both of us could do with a shower.’ She paused and looked up at him with a luminous smile. ‘Can we level with you, Herr . . .’

  ‘Flammensbeck - Joachim Flammensbeck. Go ahead.’

  ‘Herr Flammensbeck, we need to stay here for some time. My friend has just received the terrible news about his brother and he needs peace and quiet. We’ll pay any money you need, or nothing, according to your wishes. We appeal to your good nature to allow us to remain here out of sight for a little while.’

  ‘What’ve you done?’

  ‘Demonstrated for peace, liberty and democracy. That’s all. We were part of that march in Leipzig and things became difficult for us there. We need to lie low for a bit.’

  He looked at Rosenharte. ‘So all that stuff you just told me about being Manfred von Huth’s son was a lie?’

  ‘No, it was the complete and utter truth,’ said Rosenharte. ‘Do you have sympathy for the marchers? You’ve probably heard that they’re demonstrating all over Germany now. Do you think they have a case?’

  Flammensbeck blew out his cheeks and exhaled. He seemed to be weighing something. Eventually he addressed them both. ‘By the spring of 1945 I was in a prisoner of war camp in the east - we didn’t know where. I was lucky to be alive because they shot many of us when we surrendered. Then one day in April it was announced that the Führer had committed suicide. We were stunned, but after a bit we fell to asking each other what it had all been about. So much death and destruction. Millions dead. And each one of us with innocent blood on our hands. What was it all about? No one could say. Then one in our group answered that it was about nothing. There was no point to it, no hidden meaning. Nothing! We’d been had. The German people had been fooled by a lot of gangsters, by men like your father.’ Rosenharte nodded and looked down at the dog. ‘The same question came to me the other day. What is this all about? This socialism? This supposed equality? There’s no equality in the GDR. I see how they live here with their women and their caviar and rare wines. I know what Schwarzmeer uses this place for. The Party bosses come here and they screw like goats and drink themselves into oblivion. So, what’s it all about? I’ll tell you - we’ve been had again. Another gang of criminals has been taking us for a ride.’

  Rosenharte nodded grimly. After forty years it was all so simple, so easily reduced.

  ‘So we can stay here?’ asked Ulrike.

  ‘Yes, but you must hide the car and if they catch you, we’ve never spoken. I have never seen you.’ He put out his hand, palm turned down, and took the money without changing his expression. ‘Do I have your agreement on that?’

  They both nodded.

  ‘Are there guards at the Stasi compound?’ asked Rosenharte.

  ‘An idiot named Dürrlich who thinks he’s my boss. He comes in once a day. But he’s drunk most of the time and when I need him out of the way I give him some of my homemade slivovitz and he stays in bed. He’s away in Berlin filling in as Schwarzmeer’s driver.’

  ‘Some driver,’ said Ulrike, smiling.

  ‘Let’s hope he puts the general into a wall!’ His eyes twinkled and he called the dog to come to him. ‘Move the car and I’ll go and mend the fence you broke last night. If you had looked a little longer you would have found an unlocked gate.’ He left shaking his head.

  Later they made their way across the Clausnitz estate to Schwarzmeer’s hideout in the forest. In all it was about two miles from the house and if Rosenharte hadn’t had some idea of the way they’d never have found the cluster of dachas hidden in the beech trees.

  ‘Why did you want to come here?’ she said as they watched for signs of life at a distance of a hundred yards.

  ‘It’s the one place we can make a phone call without being eavesdropped.’ He was aware of her flinching at the harshness of his tone. A lot had fallen into place overnight, though he hadn’t had time to articulate it to himself other than knowing that she was as much responsible for Konrad’s death as the Stasi. He found that he felt little more than a distant contempt for her.

  There was no problem gaining entry into Schwarzmeer’s house. He used a hoe with a broken handle, which had been left propped against the veranda, to lever the doors apart and burst the lock.

  He went straight to the phone and, remembering the code for that week, dialled Harland. As he spoke he could hear the sounds of an office in the background. A woman was complaining about a broken coffee machine.

  Harland came on the line. ‘Konrad is dead,’ said Rosenharte, barely believing what he was saying. ‘The operation is off.’

  There was a pause. ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘Yes, it happened when I was in Berlin that day. They kept it from me because they wanted me to continue working for them.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m sorry. How did you learn?’

  ‘The Russians told me. They have sources.’

  ‘Please,’ said Harland sharply. ‘Be careful not to use any names or specific details from now on. This call may be intercepted.’

  ‘I’m not using the satellite phone. We were nearly caught yesterday because of it. This phone is safe.’

  ‘Be as vague as you can.’

  ‘You need to tell Else what’s happened,’ said Rosenharte urgently. ‘You have to tell Else and the boys. Do you understand? That’s what you owe me. You must go to them.’

  ‘Of course,’ Harland replied.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy. She’ll go to pieces. She has suffered from depression herself and she’ll find this very hard to bear. Tell her that he died peacefully in his sleep. Try to make it easier for her. And say that I will come as soon as I ca
n.’

  ‘Of course. But you should leave now. There’s no reason for you to stay. Cross the border now and bring your friend. I’ll have someone meet you at the same spot as before.’

  Rosenharte’s eyes had come to rest on the cane chair that Schwarzmeer had occupied while he was questioned by the team from Normannenstrasse. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I am staying here. I am staying here until this thing is over. It’s what Konrad would have wanted.’

  ‘Surely what your brother would have wanted is for you to look after his family in their new home,’ Harland retorted. ‘They need you. You’ve done everything you can there.’

  Rosenharte looked at Ulrike. ‘No, we’re staying here.’ She smiled at him and nodded.

  ‘It’s understandable that you feel as you do. But don’t give them another victory, Rudi. They won with your brother. Don’t let them win with you. Nothing is certain. They’re not beaten yet.’

  ‘We’re staying here,’ he said heavily. Ulrike saw he was about to collapse and rushed to catch him. He pushed her away and then rolled into the chair.

  She picked up the receiver, which had fallen to the floor. He heard her say: ‘It’s not possible for your friend to travel. You understand. He’s taken it very badly . . . yes . . . We’ll call again . . . yes . . . goodbye.’

  She put the phone down, crouched in front of him and held his hand.

  ‘Get away from me,’ he mumbled.

  For the next thirteen days Rosenharte moved in his private limbo of guilt and anger, knowing little of what was going on around him. He drank Flammensbeck’s sweet and deadly home brew and once or twice he used a powdered sleeping draught which the old man had acquired from a friend with cancer of the prostate. He roamed Schloss Clausnitz, by turns raving and silent. He was vaguely aware of Ulrike always there a few paces behind him, watching that he did no harm to himself. On the Saturday after they had received news about Konrad, he climbed up on the roof in the light of the full moon of that night and was deliberating whether to throw himself from a gable into the courtyard. Ulrike talked him away from the edge and then knocked him out with a blow to the back of the head with a piece of wood. He woke up God knows when, naked and wet from the flannel bath she’d given him to clean the blood away. He yelled at her and called her a lying bitch then saw the shock and hurt in her face and muttered an apology. She said she understood.

  It was odd how much he heard his brother’s voice during these days and nights. ‘Don’t let them see you cry,’ and, ‘Come along, it isn’t that bad. You have everything to live for.’ The voice was as clear as if Konrad was in the room with him, and he couldn’t help replying. For some reason, the Konrad he saw in his head was not the wreck in Hohenschönhausen, but the boy of thirteen or fourteen, the age when the gifts of mind and body began to reveal themselves. He grasped that he was merely remembering Konnie, yet the stream of images was so delightful and absorbing that he didn’t want to disturb the flow. Between his naps in front of the range, which had been fired up after Flammensbeck knocked a couple of pipes into place in the flue, he sat thinking and remembering, almost living his childhood again.

  Flammensbeck seemed to be there a lot with his dog, which had formed an obsession with Rosenharte and would sit for hours looking at him with its head cocked to one side. His master’s only comment was to refer to die Kriegsneurose - the shellshock he’d seen as a young man - before turning away to talk to Ulrike with a pipe in his hand.

  When they were alone he sat watching Ulrike, searching her face for signs of the personality that he had so badly misjudged. He remembered the fake smiles where only the lower half of her face moved, the steady gaze she produced when lying and the effortless diversions in her conversation. A spy through and through, and yet he could not entirely expel the warmer feelings he had for her, and he recognized that he would not have survived these past weeks without her.

  On 18 October, a Wednesday, they were listening to a radio discussion touched off by a statement published a couple of weeks back in Neues Deutschland by Erich Honecker. A Western station commented that the article was an overture to the people inspired by reformist voices such as Egon Krenz and Gunther Schabowski, a senior figure who’d once edited Neues Deutschland, and suggested that there was some kind of struggle going on in the Central Committee. A few minutes later there was an announcement. Erich Honecker had resigned for reasons of health and had been replaced by Egon Krenz. The man who had organized the building of the Berlin Wall and ruled the GDR for the eighteen years since replacing Walter Ulbricht, was gone.

  The miracle had occurred but it was another five days before he began to feel himself again. Ulrike begged him to accompany her to Leipzig for what promised to be the biggest Monday demonstration, but she had to be content with reports from friends about the 300,000 who had gathered in Karl-Marx-Platz on a warm evening. The following Wednesday she stood in front of him and said: ‘Okay, that’s it. Enough! You need some good country air. We should go to the lake. Really, it’s a wonderful day. Makes you happy to be alive.’

  They left by the French windows and made for the far end of the lake where they came to a jetty hidden in some reeds. He walked to the end and looked across to a couple of coots bobbing like bath toys in the choppy waters on the far side. The air was sharp and invigorating. Ulrike had turned towards the house rising from the swirl of dead grass and brambles. ‘I agree with old Flammensbeck: this place has some kind of magic, despite its history.’

  After a silence in which she asked if he was okay, he said, ‘I’m thinking about your history. I am thinking that your story has never stacked up. Too many coincidences. Too many gaps. Too many lies. Why did you choose me, Ulrike? What’s behind it all? Are you still working for them?’

  ‘Rudi,’ she implored. ‘You’re still not yourself. Of course I’m not working for them. You know that.’

  ‘Oh, but I am myself, which is why I’m asking these questions.’ He whipped round and moved the five or six paces to the bottom of the jetty and grabbed her. Then he slapped her, pulling the force of the blow at the last moment. ‘Tell me the truth,’ he said savagely.

  She did not react, but stood with her face turned in the direction of the blow. ‘I never took you for a man who hits women,’ she said eventually.

  ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I need the truth, Ulrike. No more lies. You put Konrad in prison - you and Biermeier.’

  She pulled herself from his grip and looked up at him. Her cheek was red, but there were no tears. ‘Before I tell you everything, I want you to know that I love you more than I have ever loved a living soul. I hope you’ll still feel something because I cannot stop loving you now.’

  ‘All love is conditional. Mine is dependent on the truth.’

  She asked for a cigarette. Then she walked to the end of the jetty and began to speak without looking at him. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. I matriculated top from the language course at Humboldt University and was immediately taken up by the Stasi, just as you were. You see my father was well connected and he wanted this for me because he thought it was the best way I could serve the GDR. After training I was sent to Brussels undercover - false papers, references, everything.’ She glanced at him over her shoulder. ‘That’s when I first set eyes on you. I was just twenty-four years old.’

  ‘You! You in Brussels!’

  ‘Yes, as a translator.’

  ‘Like Annalise Schering!’

  ‘Yes,’ she paused. ‘I knew her.’

  His mouth formed the first syllable of several questions before he managed to say, ‘How did you know her?’

  ‘By that I mean I knew the second Annalise, the one who took the place of the first. I still do, Rudi. I know Jessie. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  He remembered the strange remark Jessie had made in the cafe just before he crossed over to the East with the disks. She seemed to be telling him to pass on her regards to Ulrike. If he hadn’t immediately had to face the Stasi on the other side of the Wall a
nd then fallen ill he would probably have thought more about it.

  ‘I was her contact at Nato. I passed the stuff back to Biermeier, who was the case officer. This was after you’d left, but I do remember seeing you twice.’ She smiled briefly. ‘You were something to see, Rudi - a most beautiful man.’

  Rosenharte brushed this aside. ‘Surely you’re not suggesting that you fixed this whole thing up to get to know me?’

  ‘No, of course not. A lot of it was Biermeier’s idea.’

  ‘Biermeier! You would have needed Jessie’s cooperation. How the hell did he get that?’

  ‘He didn’t need her help. Don’t you see? The letters to you came from British Intelligence, not her.’

  ‘But somewhere along the way she must have been involved.’

  ‘He got word to her.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. She used to be a full-time employee of British Intelligence. You don’t find such people in the London phone book, even after they’ve left.’

  ‘She’s a member of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Stasi keep an eye on such people. In fact, the Stasi had close relations with one or two of the movement’s members in the UK. It proved no problem to discover her address and telephone number, and then it was simply a matter of Biermeier contacting her.’

  ‘But why would she trust an oaf like Biermeier?’

  ‘Because she trusted me. You see, I knew that she wasn’t the real Annalise Schering. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I knew, and I told no one in Brussels and no one on our side. You know why? Because we were both convinced members of the peace movement. That was our first loyalty. Jessie declared her feelings to me. She was worried by the rumours of the deployment of Cruise missiles in Western Europe and when that happened she supported the thousands of women at Greenham Common, the US base in England.’

  ‘The person I met in Trieste and Berlin is not the sort to get involved with a lot of well-meaning women who make an exhibition of themselves.’