Brandenburg

by Henry Porter

Ulrike’s eyes flared. ‘Is that what you thought when you saw one hundred thousand people march for peace in Leipzig? Were they making an exhibition of themselves?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘She felt the women at Greenham Common had found the only sensible answer. I shared her belief utterly. At the time I wasn’t a prisoner of the GDR’s propaganda machine: I read the free press in Europe and I could make up my own mind about such things. It was this issue that forged our friendship. We had our own secret pact.’ The breeze made her hair shimmer. He couldn’t help but be stirred by her beauty and bitterly regretted slapping her.

  ‘What was she telling the East? Why was she so valued?

  ‘Annalise was the truth channel. Everything she told us was true, but at that stage only I had guessed she was being used to tell the Soviet bloc the real intentions of the West.’

  ‘You’re not telling me she just blurted this out to you. There’d be no purpose in telling you a secret that so much of Western diplomatic planning relied on. The risk was far too great.’

  ‘She didn’t. I discovered it for myself.’

  He shook his head. The thing still seemed highly improbable, another tier of lies. ‘She isn’t the sort of person to make mistakes.’

  ‘But she did. At the end of 1980 she gave me an advance copy of Nato’s annual communiqué and I realized that she could not have acquired the sensitive sections about the arms race without official help. I didn’t say anything. Then the following February she went on holiday for ten days in the Caribbean and came back with a glorious suntan. On her wedding finger there was a band of white skin. She had worn an engagement ring during her holiday. I knew then she was hiding another part of her life, because she had never worn a ring on that finger in my presence. I told her I knew and - to cut a long story short - she implored me to allow the truth channel to continue. And why not? It served the interests of peace. That was our shared priority.’

  ‘The Stasi must have suspected something.’

  ‘No, the British and Americans did a good job. Everything she passed to us was good material, so there was no reason to question her motives. They were pleased with what they could pass on to the Soviet Union.’

  ‘And Biermeier? When did he get into the picture?’

  ‘Much later. By ’86 I’d told him everything. At that time I was back in Leipzig and out of the Stasi. The baby - all that had happened by then. Biermeier was working on the Middle East, keeping an eye on the various Arab factions in the GDR and relating it to the information we were receiving from abroad. That’s how he got to hear about Lomieko and Abu Jamal’s plans, though Misha always kept him in the dark.’

  ‘Who did he think was sanctioning this stuff?’

  ‘Schwarzmeer and his predecessor, maybe Erich Mielke too. Biermeier never knew who was running things. That’s why he arranged for me to get the job of looking after Abu Jamal; he had to find out what they were planning on GDR soil. It fitted in well with my other work in youth research and I had clearance, though I was still in disgrace for my immoral behaviour. But Biermeier argued that only a woman of loose morals would be prepared to befriend the Arab and so I got the job.’ She stopped. ‘Look, the only way we could get this information out was through an intermediary like you. We had to improvise as we went along. It wasn’t any great plan to punish you or put your brother in Hohenschönhausen. We both thought that you’d be perfect. The fact that you’d never told them about the death of the first Annalise would mean that you’d have to go along with it.’

  ‘And you call this an improvisation? Look what happened! Konrad lost his life. Else and the boys lost a husband and a father. That’s what your improvisation did. Konrad would be alive today if it hadn’t been for you.’

  ‘I know, I know. I understand how bitter you must feel. A lot of what you say is true.’

  ‘Understanding’s not good enough. That doesn’t help Else or me.’

  She nodded and looked down. He never knew with her: these signals of remorse seemed genuine but how could he believe her? ‘And Biermeier was put in charge of the operation in Trieste because . . .’

  ‘Because he knew her. He could verify that she was the same woman who had been their number one agent in Nato. Remember she had very little contact with the Stasi. She kept her distance and would only see a few handlers: me, Biermeier and a man codenamed François.’

  ‘The gardener at Nato headquarters who was arrested?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Were the British involved?’ he asked. ‘Did they understand any of this?’

  ‘Of course not. They didn’t need to know about the collaboration between Annalise and me. It would have served no purpose whatsoever. Anyway, our plan meant that Annalise didn’t have to do anything except what they asked her to do.’

  ‘And who was the person you first used to take your message to British intelligence from Leipzig? Was that Annalise, too?’

  ‘No, a friend of hers called Mary Scott - she’s in CND and a Christian. Biermeier had the material inserted in her luggage before she crossed into West Berlin. It was all very simple.’ She screwed up her face against the light and looked at him. It was an expression he found very endearing, though he held himself back. ‘Rudi, I know there are things that you can’t forgive, but you must believe me when I say that if I’d known what would happen to your family, we would have found another way of getting the information out.’

  They were silent for a few minutes.

  ‘You’re in touch with Biermeier?’ he said, focusing on a grebe that had surfaced near the coots.

  ‘Yes, I’ve spoken to him several times since we’ve been here.’

  ‘He can help me find Zank.’

  ‘Zank’s under investigation,’ she said. ‘Biermeier doesn’t know what happened, but two weeks ago Zank disappeared on sick leave. He has been questioned several times. You don’t have to bother with Zank any more. Zank’s finished.’

  Rosenharte shook his head. Zank wasn’t finished.

  32

  Stasi Storehouse

  That afternoon they dug out the car, which had sunk into a boggy patch near a spring where they’d hidden it, and took the long route around the lake to Schwarzmeer’s compound. They knew Dürrlich was still in Berlin because that morning he had sent word to Flammensbeck telling him to carry out some running repairs to a light and a broken cistern. When he pulled up outside the shelter where he’d been questioned and beaten in the middle of the night, he saw that it had been disguised to look like an aircraft hangar. The half-barrel shape was covered with soil and grassed over. Beech saplings sprouted from the roof.

  ‘The old man said there’s enough stuff in here to equip a small army,’ he said to Ulrike.

  She nodded.

  He placed the crowbar Flammensbeck had given him to the first of two padlocks, jerked upwards and the lock fitting burst from the door. For the caretaker’s sake it needed to look like a break-in.

  Cool air, laden with the smell of oil and earth, rushed towards them. Rosenharte threw a light switch and they both exclaimed at the same moment. When he had been interrogated there with the beam of a single light shining in his face, he’d had little sense of what was in the store, but now they saw a hoard of equipment and luxury goods - bio-hazard suits, hoses, ropes, coils of wire, rubber boots, new tyres were jumbled up with boxes containing tape decks, cameras, video recorders, electric kettles and steam irons. ‘What could the Stasi want with half a dozen steam irons?’ asked Ulrike.

  Rosenharte thought. ‘To stop anyone else having them.’

  Deep in the interior of the shelter was a cage illuminated by a naked bulb, which contained a dozen wine racks, two televisions, several shortwave radio sets and a case of shotguns, hunting rifles and pistols which hung from their trigger guards on hooks.

  Ulrike hunted round for a paint sprayer and the tins of paint Flammensbeck said were there, while Rosenharte approached the cage and rattled its side. ‘It’d be good to drink some
of the bastard’s wine,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a few bottles for this evening.’

  ‘Come on, Rudi, keep your mind on the job. We shouldn’t stay here long.’

  He didn’t pay any attention to this and started attacking the locks on the cage with the crowbar. When he failed to make any impression on them he resorted to a long spiked pole, which he drove with some relish into the hinges. After a few blows they gave way and he went along the wine racks, picking up bottles randomly and examining them against the light. Many of the labels had disintegrated, but he saw enough to understand that this was a very fine collection of wine from before the war. The earliest bottle of Cognac came from 1928 and the Armagnac 1924. He called out to Ulrike: ‘This must all have belonged to my family. There’s no way a Stasi officer, even Schwarzmeer, could lay his hands on this. It would go for tens of thousands of Deutschmarks at auction in the West.’

  ‘You don’t need that,’ Ulrike said despairingly.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said, gathering up several bottles of French wine and some vintage champagne. ‘Besides, it’s rightfully mine.’

  He placed the drink in the car, returned to the gun case and smashed the glass, selecting a SIG-Sauer pistol and a box of two dozen 9 mm shells. He put these in his pockets and returned to her.

  ‘You don’t need a gun,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll tell you when I want advice at every turn.’

  She looked as if he had slapped her again. ‘Really, you don’t have to be so unpleasant. Look, Rudi, we don’t have to be lovers but can’t we be friends?’

  ‘Friends! Men and women are never friends. They want too much from each other to be friends. They fall in love or they make alliances, but they’re never friends.’

  ‘That’s simply not true. I have male friends.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I’ve had countless relationships with women that didn’t end in bed and they never lasted because basically women are as interested in sex and finding a mate as men are supposed to be.’

  Her arms fell down to hit the tops of her thighs in a gesture of irritation. ‘No wonder you didn’t stay married long,’ she said and picked up the spray gun.

  ‘Ah well, there you have the advantage over me; I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading your Stasi file.’

  He could see that that had hurt her but she said nothing and turned to finish the job of painting the car. He unscrewed the number plates and replaced them with a pair from a pile just inside the door. They worked in silence for about half an hour before removing the masking tape and scraping at the missprays. Eventually they stood back and looked at the matt black Wartburg.

  ‘You can be a real bastard when you want,’ she said without looking at him.

  ‘Maybe it’s the Nazi in me.’

  She shook her head, dropped the spray gun and walked into the woods. He didn’t see her for several hours.

  That evening after Flammensbeck left she pulled a chair in front of Rosenharte. He was mildly drunk and the fury had left him.

  She held out her hands to touch his. ‘I need to go back to Leipzig,’ she said, ‘back to my old life.’

  ‘You’ll be arrested.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, Rudi. I won’t be. Things have changed; Biermeier told me Zank’s under investigation himself. Since Zank was found in the villa he hasn’t been seen in Normannenstrasse. By some miracle all this seems to have reflected badly on Zank.’

  ‘But there is still a risk.’

  Slowly she shook her head. ‘That stuff you said about relationships when we were painting the car makes me, well, doubt who you are. You made yourself out to be a misogynist.’

  ‘Perhaps I am. Perhaps it’s because I have been disappointed.’

  ‘Or perhaps you were disappointing,’ she said quickly. ‘Perhaps you didn’t give enough and expected too much. Have you thought of that, Rudi?’

  ‘I was thinking about the deception I’ve encountered recently. There was a woman I knew in Dresden. We had an affair, and after it was over she ended up informing on me. She used the friendship to gain leverage with the Stasi.’

  ‘That was the Stasi’s fault, not hers. We all make compromises in this shitty system. Look at me and the Arab! These things have to be done to survive.’

  ‘And what you did to me, the way you lied to me about your involvement . . . I mean how can I trust you after that?’

  ‘You don’t have to trust me. You can go your own way, although I hope you don’t. I think we had something that . . . it could last. And . . .’ She stopped and looked up at him. ‘And, well, I feel I must say this, Rudi. You need to become a whole person without your brother. I know you worshipped him and plainly he was a remarkable human being but you make him out to be a saint and that can’t be true. He had faults too. You know that. Tell me what his faults were, Rudi.’

  Rosenharte didn’t like being pressed on this but the wine - he had never tasted the like - and the look of candid appeal in her eyes had mellowed him. He put the glass down and shifted in his chair to look at a distant corner of the room. ‘Well, he could sometimes be rather strait-laced, a bit of a pedant. He always knew he was right. But that was because he was right most of the time.’

  ‘Not the most humble person, then.’

  ‘Oh, he could show humility in the face of great art or intellectual achievement but he could also be very dismissive and he had a bad temper.’ He shook his head and smiled. ‘It was terrible. I saw him lose it just three or four times but it was unforgettable.’

  ‘And you don’t lose yours?’

  He shook his head. ‘I lose control - as you’ve seen - but I don’t have a temper. I always wondered where it came from.’

  ‘Which of you was born first?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. We don’t have that sort of detail about our birth. But we both agreed that Konrad must have been. He used to be slightly taller, too.’ He picked up his glass again. ‘You should have some of this and stop trying to analyse me. It’s Château Margaux 1928.’

  She nodded appreciatively, then fixed him with a look of appraisal. ‘You see we all have faults and secrets and shoddy episodes in our lives. Me? It’s not the spying and the deceit that I regret but the loss of my baby.’

  ‘You had an abortion?’

  ‘As good as. I was ill. I didn’t look after myself and I kept on working in a temporary post I’d got myself. I had been told by the doctor that I needed to take things easy because there were complications. Then I had a miscarriage. At the time I thought it was a good thing and didn’t regret my behaviour, but I do now - bitterly.’ She looked at him intently for a few seconds. ‘You see, now that he’s gone, you have to become a complete person so you can stand on your own. You’re clever and funny and kind, but you have to go on without comparing yourself to your brother.’ She paused again. ‘And by the way, you should stop thinking about yourself. Call his wife, comfort her and her sons instead of wallowing in your own grief. Do it now.’

  ‘Enough of the lecture. I’ll do it tomorrow.’

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Because it’s late and I need to think what to say: to offer her some hope.’

  ‘Hope? There’s no hope. Just say that you’re going to be there with her. Forget this obsession with Zank. Men like Zank aren’t worth your time. Zank means nothing.’

  He leaned forward to touch her face, but she avoided his hand. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry about what happened out at the lake,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I can’t stand not knowing where I am with you. You’ve deceived me so much. You’ve lied and lied and lied.’

  ‘No, I dissembled. It was necessary by our lights and of course we had no idea that Konrad would die in prison. How could we?’

  ‘I accept that and I want to apologize.’

  ‘Okay, but forget Zank.’

  ‘I can’t. Konrad died primarily because of him. Zank must pay for that.’

  ‘You’re going to try to shoot him with that gun? You’re not the t
ype. You’re an intellectual, an aesthete: you know that killing him will only harm you. And what would Konrad think? He would say you’re behaving like a child. Imagine his disdain if you shot Zank. He’d say you’ve lost your mind.’

  ‘Maybe I have.’

  ‘No, Rudi, you’re just very, very sad. And that won’t be cured by killing Zank.’

  He shook his head, got up and made for another open bottle - a Cos d’Estournel from 1934. Having rinsed his glass he poured a fraction, held it to the candle and marvelled at the amber glow at the edge before giving some to Ulrike. They sat in silence drinking and listening to the pine kindling wood snap in the fire. Eventually he set down his glass and leaned forward to peer under her brow. Her eyes avoided his but he took her chin and turned her face to him. Then he kissed her rather tentatively, just grazing her unmoistened lips with his. Her face was almost totally in shadow but he could see the whites of her eyes and the deliberation that was going on in them. She pulled away to read his intent, and after a few seconds seemed to settle something and offered her cheek. He brushed his lips across the patch of down in front of her ear and she murmured her pleasure. Again she looked into his eyes. ‘You know, the thing with the gun is very childish.’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s enough from you,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I need to take something from Schwarzmeer.’

  ‘You already have - the wine.’

  ‘No, that’s my inheritance. The gun is Schwarzmeer’s.’

  She shook her head but smiled and began to kiss him with increasing urgency. He stood and she started to fumble at his trousers but he picked her up and carried her to the bed they’d surrounded with old boards and doors to defend them against the vicious draughts that whistled round the building. He let her down on the odd assortment of sheets and sleeping bags. Her eyes no longer searched his for reassurance, but held them with pure animal need. He undressed her slowly, removing bits of his own clothes too, and turned her on to her stomach to run his hands over her back. She clawed the bedding and her body arched as he began to kiss the backs of her thighs and buttocks, his lips moving inch by inch to her centre. When she could stand it no longer she turned on her side and held his face to her and began to move rhythmically over his lips until she came with a shudder. He entered her and they lay almost motionless, watching the pleasure in each other’s eyes. Then he shifted on top of her and she came for the second time, holding on to his head until finally she pulled his face into the fine brush of her electrified hair.