by Jack Barsky
Unusual, I thought when the door didn’t open, and after about ten seconds had passed, I called out, “Come on in.”
The door opened slowly to reveal a short, almost diminutive man with short-cropped hair and a peaked nose that made him look like a weasel. His left forearm was in a cast. This was definitely not a student and not one of our teachers.
“Are you Albrecht Dittrich?” he asked before I could open my mouth.
“Yes?” I replied in a questioning tone, as if to say, “And what do you want?”
The man entered the room, pulled out one of the old wooden chairs, and sat down to my right.
“I’m from Carl Zeiss Jena,” he said. “I would like to talk with you about your career. Do you have a few minutes?”
I recognized the name of the large local optical company with an international reputation, but this introduction was odd. Companies did not recruit students, and my visitor had not even mentioned his name.
The word Stasi flashed through my mind. There was no other possible explanation: This man had to be from the Ministry for State Security, the East German secret police.
“Ja, I have a few minutes,” I said slowly, gathering my lab reports in front of me.
He continued the conversation with banal small talk.
“Working hard, I see—even on a Saturday.” He nodded toward the collection of loose-leaf pages I had by now neatly stacked together.
“Sure,” I responded. “Chemistry is a tough subject, especially since we are required to spend twenty hours in the lab every week.”
“So, what are your plans after graduation?”
“Well, get my doctorate and then become a tenured professor. I love Jena and this university.”
He nodded as if encouraging me to continue.
“I think I have a good chance of reaching this goal. I have the best grades in the class, and I was awarded the Karl Marx Scholarship.” I couldn’t resist a bit of bragging.
“Congratulations,” the man said with a hint of a smile. “I was aware of that. In fact, that’s the reason I’m here. We know that you are very special, and you have a great future ahead of you, regardless of where you wind up. And now I have a confession to make: I am not from Carl Zeiss. I actually work for the government.” He leaned forward, as if trying to create a common secret space for the two of us.
Now the cat was out of the bag. Even though I instinctively did not like this man, I decided to play the game by subtly leaning into our private space.
“Oh, how interesting!” I said with excitement in my voice. “What part of the government?” I was still thinking he had to be Stasi.
“We’ll get to that later. Right now I have only one question. Could you imagine working for the government one day?”
I put my left hand on my chin, as if I were thinking it over carefully. After a pregnant pause, I responded, “Yes I could, but not as a chemist.”
He had cast the line, and I had willingly, and knowingly, taken the bait. I was curious where this might lead. Perhaps something unusual and exciting. I was always up for a challenge.
The man was visibly delighted with my answer. He leaned back out of our common space and flashed a warm smile. “That’s all I wanted to find out today. Why don’t we meet again, next Thursday evening at Die Sonne. Do you know that restaurant?”
“Yes, of course. I usually eat there on Sundays. It is rather expensive, but I can afford it once a week. With the cafeteria food here, you’ve got to have at least one decent meal a week.”
With an affirming nod, my visitor rose from the table, shook my hand, and walked out the door. After he was gone, it occurred to me that I still didn’t know his name.
So I now had an appointment with an anonymous stranger, whom I really didn’t like and whose true intentions were still cloaked in mystery. Intriguing. My mind raced with possibilities, and I could no longer concentrate on my lab notes. Where was this all going?
Thursday seemed to drag on forever, and when the clock finally struck five at the end of our lab time, I quickly packed up and set out on foot toward the center of town, where the restaurant Die Sonne was located.
Once inside, I spotted my weekend visitor at the far end of the main dining room. I assumed he had intentionally positioned himself to be out of earshot of neighboring diners, but I was surprised to see another man seated at the table. Not knowing who he might be, I approached the table carefully. My contact rose from his chair and, once again neglecting to introduce himself, stated matter-of-factly, “I would like to introduce Herman. We are working with our Soviet friends.”
No more, no less. So now I would be “working” with the Soviets? With the introduction of a representative from one of the world’s two superpowers, this opportunity became even more intriguing.
Herman, a blond-haired, blue-eyed man of average height in his midthirties, rose from the table and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Albrecht.” I detected only a touch of a Russian accent.
I shook his hand and settled into a chair.
“Take a look at the menu,” my nameless German contact suggested as he pushed the printed menu under my nose.
“I know what to eat here—it is the best dish on the menu.” Then somewhat shyly I added, “It is also the most expensive.”
“Not to worry,” said Mr. Nameless with a touch of grandeur that seemed out of step with his weasel-like face.
“Danke. In that case, I’ll have the rump steak with herb butter and French fries. You ought to try it. It’s really good.”
Meanwhile, Herman had ordered a round of beers for the three of us and we toasted the German-Soviet friendship. Then we got right down to the serious part of the conversation. Herman carried the ball while Mr. Nameless sat back, sipped his beer, and listened.
“We’ve heard a lot of good things about you,” Herman said amiably. “The Karl Marx Scholarship? That tells me you are one of the brightest and most socially active students in the entire country. Perhaps we can work together in the future. How do you like Jena and the university?”
“I absolutely love it here,” I said. “This city feels more like home than any place I’ve ever lived. The people are nice, I have a lot of friends, and I enjoy playing on the local basketball team.”
“What about your career plans?” Herman asked.
I repeated my plan to become a tenured professor, knowing that the Stasi guy had surely relayed my interest in other opportunities.
“Well,” said Herman with a touch of a smile, “perhaps we can offer you something slightly more interesting. Do you like to travel?”
“Certainly. Last summer my friend and I went camping at the Black Sea.”
“Ah, the Black Sea. Beautiful. The Soviet part?”
“No, I was in Bulgaria. Varna.”
“Any interest in seeing other places?”
“I’d love to go to France someday. I want to see the places that Honoré de Balzac wrote about in his famous novels.”
Herman’s smile grew into an agreeable grin. “We should talk about this some more when we meet again.”
I understood that this was the end of our official discussion for the day, and I was too cautious to ask any more questions. We ended the meal with a cup of coffee and some awful Russian cigarettes offered by Herman. We agreed to meet again in a week. Same place, same time.
Even though our discussion had been rather noncommittal, I felt certain this was an attempt to recruit me as a Kundschafter für den Frieden—a “scout for peace,” to use the politically correct East German phrase for spy.
On my walk back to the dorm, my mind raced in overdrive, conjuring all kinds of exciting scenarios. Was it possible I would be able to make a significant contribution toward the triumph of communism throughout the world?
I thought about the larger-than-life aura the Soviets and East Germans had built around historical spy figures. They were an important part of the overall mythology of the struggle against the enemy of the people.
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br /> In history class, we had learned about Die Rote Kapelle (the Red Orchestra), the antifascist group that had operated inside Germany during Hitler’s reign. We were told about Richard Sorge, who had spied for Stalin but was caught and executed by the Japanese during World War II. Through literature I had read, I was acquainted with Rudolf Abel, the Soviet spymaster who was exchanged in 1962 for Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot the Russians had shot down while he was flying a high-altitude mission over Soviet territory. There was also superspy Kim Philby, who made a mockery of MI6, the British counterpart of the CIA, and got away with it.
That very month, the East German political journal Der Horizont had run a feature on the escape by George Blake, another prominent KGB spy, from an English prison.
There were also a number of movies and books that featured undercover heroes. And now, apparently, the door was slightly open for me to join this pantheon of heroes, an opportunity that commanded serious consideration.
The promise of something new and completely unexpected hung in the air as I walked back to my dorm alone.
Herman and I met again the next week at Die Sonne. This time he came alone, and I did not inquire about Mr. Nameless. I liked Herman much better anyway.
After another rump steak and fries, Herman suggested that we get more serious about our future collaboration.
“Listen,” he said. “The things I want to talk with you about cannot be discussed in a restaurant. From now on, we will meet every other week in my car.”
Though I was sorry to have to give up my favorite meal on the KGB’s dime, I was intrigued by the secretive nature of whatever Herman wanted to discuss with me. We decided to meet the following Wednesday at noon, at the corner of Beethovenstraße and Ebertstraße, not far from my dorm in a residential section of town that was unlikely to be frequented by students.
Thus, a week later, I set out for the first clandestine meeting of my life. I made a wide loop around the meeting place, checking frequently to make sure there was nobody in the area who knew me. Though there was absolutely no danger, my heart was beating rapidly as I approached Herman’s brand-new beige Wartburg. As he opened the door, I turned my head one more time to check my surroundings and quickly disappeared into the car.
Herman drove about ten minutes out of town and parked the car on a dirt road in the woods, just off a deserted country road.
“Albrecht, first of all, you must know that everything we will discuss is top secret. Nothing can be shared, not even with your mother or your best friend. This is not just your secret, but a state secret of the Soviet Union, and you must keep it safe.”
“No problem,” I responded eagerly. “I know how to keep a secret.”
“Today we are starting a very long process to possibly prepare you for undercover work in enemy territory.”
Finally, what I had suspected all along was now out in the open. The realization that I was under consideration for a secret mission by the mighty KGB made my chest swell with immense pride.
Herman continued, “We have reason to believe that you are well-suited for such work, but there is much to be done before you or I can make a decision. We need to get to know you, and you need to find out if you can handle this type of demanding assignment. Believe me, the decision will ultimately be yours. An agent who is forced into service will invariably be a bad agent. And one more thing: All agents need a code name.”
“A code name?”
“All agents have a code name, and I have decided to call you ‘Dieter.’”
I thought a moment. “How about something a little more fancy, like Stingray?”
The grin disappeared from Herman’s face. Apparently he did not appreciate my lighthearted approach to this very serious enterprise.
“This is not the movies, Albrecht. This is very real.”
I nodded and said, “Dieter it is then.”
Over the next fifteen years, nine volumes labeled “Dieter” would accumulate in the KGB archives. No doubt the very first pages of those records included a report about this very meeting.
Relieved that a final decision seemed far in the future, I asked, “So how do we start?”
“We’ll talk about that next time we meet. In our business it is important to be thorough and deliberate. You will know what you need to know when you need to know it.”
After concluding the official part of our meeting, we spent another half hour engaged in small talk before Herman started the car and drove back to the city. Along the way, we passed a few grazing cows and a potato field before reaching the road leading into town, which was lined with attractive single-family homes.
One day, I said to myself, I will live in one of these homes.
Thus began my unofficial relationship with Herman and the KGB. For many months, these meetings were a mere diversion and had little effect on my studies at the university. For the most part, life went on as usual—with one exception. Every Monday morning at 8:30, I called Herman and he told me whether, when, and where we would meet. At first, we just met in his car, but after three months, he moved the meetings to a safe house—an apartment occupied by a single, middle-aged woman, a Party member, who served us cookies and tea before leaving the place at our disposal for the next two hours.
Herman always brought some West German magazines, notably Der Stern and Der Spiegel, which I thumbed through while we were together. This was my first taste of being above the law because West German publications were not allowed in the GDR and if discovered would result in an investigation by the Stasi.
With time, Herman gave me small intelligence-related tasks, mostly for practice, but occasionally with some significance. To assess my observational skills, he asked me to write reports about the political situation at the university and to submit profiles on a number of fellow students with whom I had regular contact. He also introduced me to the basics of the spy trade, such as secrecy protocols, field operations, and clandestine investigative techniques.
After about three months of somewhat informal conversations and some high-level theory, Herman gave me my first real task.
“We are interested in a certain individual who lives in West Germany,” he said. “He has relatives in Jena. I want you to make contact with those relatives and find out as much as you can about the West German target.”
I was a bit confused. “How do I do this without those folks getting suspicious?”
“You are smart enough to figure this out—think about it for a moment.”
I spent a few minutes analyzing the situation and then said, “I guess I’ll have to come up with a cover story to make contact and then move the conversation subtly in the direction of the target.”
“Excellent,” Herman said. “That’s how it’s done. The subject should never have the slightest idea what you’re really after. Go to it—I am expecting a written report the next time we meet.”
This type of task made me very nervous and uncomfortable. First of all, I had to lie, which did not yet come easily to me. Second, I had to make contact with strangers, another difficult task. So I practiced extensively in a remote section of a nearby park by talking out loud.
Once I was ready, I walked to the address, took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a middle-aged woman dressed in clothes appropriate for household chores. I launched into a friendly opening.
“Good afternoon, I am Volker, and I am studying sociology at the university. My professor assigned a paper on family relationships, so I am conducting a survey to collect data. Would you be so kind as to spend a few minutes and answer some simple questions? The survey will be anonymous; there will be no names in my notes.”
“No problem, young man. Come on in. I am Frau Reimann—so what is this survey about?”
I opened a notebook and read to her a number of innocent questions about family relationships. I pretended to write down the answers. Gradually, I managed to zero in on the target of our investigation.
“So your neph
ew, Klaus, who lives in Hamburg—does he ever come to visit?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact he’ll be with us this Christmas.”
At that point, I thought I had enough to satisfy Herman. If there was more to be done about this target, my colleagues in the KGB or I would have to make contact with Klaus himself when he came to Jena for a visit.
I used this technique of clandestine investigation several times during my training, but never in the United States.
BY 1971, I WAS READY FOR AN ADVENTURE. I’d been in Jena for nearly four years and had dedicated myself to my studies, basketball, the Party, and assignments from Herman. Günter was also game for something new, so we planned a summer hitchhiking trip to Bulgaria—some 1,900 kilometers in all.
When I informed Herman of the plan, he supported it and asked that I take notes on the journey. As summer approached, I bought some hiking shoes and borrowed a pair of Levi’s from a friend. Günter and I procured a couple of large backpacks and attached our sleeping bags to the outside. We didn’t know it yet, but we would learn to appreciate those sleeping bags on the nights we spent outdoors—wherever our last ride for the day dropped us off. With a stack of maps to plan an approximate route, we hiked to the outskirts of town and stuck out our thumbs.
And thus began “Günter and Albrecht’s Excellent Adventure.”
The trip gave us a view of what life in the southern part of the Eastern Bloc was like. Czechoslovakia and Hungary were quite civilized, with a standard of living comparable to what we were accustomed to in East Germany, but Romania and Bulgaria were a different matter.
In Prague, I had my first real Coca-Cola—delicious!—and I was able to buy my first pack of American cigarettes, a pack of Kents. In Budapest, we entered the lobby of the Hilton and got our first taste of an American-owned hotel. When Günter returned from a trip to the bathroom, he exclaimed, “Those toilets start flushing as soon as you open the door!”
Once we reached Romania and traveled on into Bulgaria, we found that both countries were very rural. Many of the buildings looked as if they were a hundred years old. The people, too, seemed as if they were from another century, dressed in mostly dark, well-worn clothing and wearing shoes that even my fashion agnostic mother would have rejected. In the summer heat, almost all the young children were walking around half naked and barefoot.