by Jack Barsky
One morning, when I met Boris in his car, he handed me a manila envelope.
“You are going to the West,” he said.
I remained unfazed on the outside, but excitement was coursing through my veins. I was being allowed to go where most East Germans could not. The wall ensured that. The West was a world that was taboo for us—and the explorer in me could not have been more thrilled.
From inside the manila envelope, I slid out an East German passport and thirty Deutschmarks, the equivalent of about $50 today. This was the first time I’d had Western currency in my hands. The colorful pieces of paper were the equivalent of a magic wand; they could buy all kinds of wonderful goods that were otherwise not available to us.
The next day, I entered West Berlin by way of the Friedrichstraße subway station. The crossing was guarded only by Soviet military, making it an ideal spot for the KGB to slip people in and out of West Berlin.
Even though the uniformed guard who studied my passport was from a friendly force, my heart still pounded as I waited. Finally, he handed my documents back to me and waved me through.
As I emerged from the subway, I felt as if I had entered a different world. In the first hour of exploration, I noticed a certain cheerfulness in the way West Berlin presented itself, and it made me realize how poorly maintained the historic buildings were in the eastern part of the city and how drab the multistory East German tenements were. West Berlin’s architecture and streets were clean and modern. Even the people looked nicer, and they were much better dressed. Moreover, the streets were packed with automobiles of every variety, with makes and models I’d never heard of. Much later, when trying to explain the difference between the eastern and the western sides of Berlin, I would say, “The East was a movie shot in black and white. In the West, they had color.”
The purpose of this trip was strictly to get my feet wet. Boris had told me to walk around, visit some stores, smell the air, and get used to the place. It was all innocent enough, but as I walked and observed, my nerves were a jumbled mess. The mere knowledge that I was on a training mission for the KGB made all the difference. My heart skipped a beat every time I noticed a policeman in his inconspicuous light blue uniform. In the East, we could recognize the Polizei from a distance by their bright green uniforms, but not here. Could they sense that I was not one of them? Did it show on my face or in the way I walked? Would they recognize me as an unwelcome intruder and haul me in for interrogation?
My last stop before returning to the East was an outdoor snack stand, where I consumed a delicious bratwurst chased down with an equally delicious glass of beer. Then I walked to the train station, went through the checkpoint, and crossed back into East Berlin. As I came out on the other side of the wall, I had a sense of pride. I’d done it!
Months later, I ran into an old high school classmate who had been recruited by the Stasi to go undercover in West Germany. As we talked, I sensed that he knew I was involved in something—either the Stasi or something else—but he seemed to have that knowledge without our directly talking about it. I told him nothing about my trip to West Berlin, but he told me a story about being let go by the Stasi after falling apart on a practice trip like the one I had taken. There was no direct punishment for him, he said, but he lost his chance to be part of the German secret service and was unable to resume his career in engineering, which he had started before signing up with the Stasi.
My foray into West Berlin had served its purpose. I had proven to myself and to my handlers that I could withstand the psychological pressure of being on the other side.
On my next to last day in East Berlin, Boris told me I would be introduced to a very important KGB official. When he picked me up at the usual meeting spot, we drove to the Soviet military complex in the Karlshorst district.
Boris drove up to a fenced-off complex with a guarded entrance. He parked the car and motioned for me to follow him. As I took in the scenery, a complex of large buildings with weathered gray-green facades, every trace of cheerfulness drained from my demeanor. This was serious.
Once past the guards and inside the main building, we walked along a dark hallway and entered what seemed to be an anteroom to a larger office. Boris and I sat down on a wooden bench and waited in respectful silence. Ten minutes later, an attractive young Russian woman opened the door to the office and waved us in.
“Войдите пожалуйста,” she said. “Please come in.”
I followed Boris inside the spacious office, which had a large dark wooden desk in the center. On the wall were two portraits: Vladimir Lenin and Felix Dzerzhinsky—founder of the Cheka, the early predecessor of the KGB. Dzerzhinsky also had a presence on the desk in the form of a bronze bust.
Behind the desk sat a surprisingly diminutive man in his late fifties. He was dressed in a rumpled suit over a white shirt with an unattractive tie. The little hair he had left was cropped short and combed straight back.
This fellow is a big shot? I thought.
Then he spoke.
“Guten Tag,” he said in a loud, steely voice in highly accented German. Those were apparently the only two words in German that he knew because the remainder of his communication to us was in Russian. But there was no question as to who was in charge here. He waved Boris and me toward two upholstered chairs off to the side.
This little man, in all probability the director of the espionage section of the Soviet contingent in Berlin, started the “interview” with a five-minute lecture on the class struggle and the importance of the KGB in the fight against the enemy of the proletariat. My school-level Russian allowed me to follow at least part of what he said, and I managed to respond with a few befuddled nods. But most of the time I had to rely on Boris to provide the translation.
After some compliments concerning my academic achievements and recognition of the praise I had received from Herman and Boris, he wasted no time in going for the kill.
“So, are you ready to sign up? It is time to make a decision. Are you in or out?” This part of his communication needed no translation; it was accompanied by the universal thumbs-up and thumbs-down gestures.
I was not prepared for this direct frontal assault, and now this imposing little man was staring at me, waiting for an answer.
“I—I really like the idea, but I don’t think I am trained well enough.”
The director let out a hearty laugh that quickly degraded into a lengthy coughing fit. He had probably smoked too many of those poisonous Belomorkanal Papirosi cigarettes, which were the cheapest and most popular Russian cigarettes during the war and for many years thereafter.
Taking a gulp of water from a glass on the desk, he said, “Don’t worry about that. We will give you all the training you will need. For now, we need a decision. True revolutionaries are decisive. You have until tomorrow to let us know.”
With that, he waved dismissively toward the door, indicating that the meeting was over.
I kept silent for most of the car ride to the Hirschgarten rapid transit train station, where Boris dropped me off. I had witnessed my first display of ruthless authority.
Before I left the car, Boris reminded me, “We need your decision by tomorrow. Consider this an ultimatum.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked somewhat innocently. “You’re not giving me any more time to think this through?”
“No. The boss has spoken, and when he speaks we had better listen. We shall meet here tomorrow at three, and I expect a firm answer.”
Usually, the walk from the drop-off point to my temporary residence was a ten-minute jaunt along a winding dirt path through a nearby park. This time, however, I took my time, walking as slowly as possible.
It was a typical fall day in Berlin. The trees had lost all their leaves, and the empty branches stretched toward the overcast sky as if reaching for an answer to the question “What’s next?”
To my overactive imagination, this was an almost surreal scene. I desperately wanted those trees to
be alive, to be someone I could talk to and get advice from. But advice was not forthcoming. I had arrived all alone at this ultimate fork in the road, with no possibility of turning back.
On the one hand, I had been looking forward for years to a career as a college professor, and I had worked hard to achieve my goal. Moreover, I liked teaching. I liked being a somebody and being in the limelight. I liked chemistry, I liked living in Jena, and most of all, I liked being part of my basketball team.
To become an undercover spy, I would have to give all of this up. I would also have to completely disappear, leaving behind family and friends to possibly never see them again.
As I kept walking, a decision began to form in my mind. This opportunity was one of the greatest honors imaginable. There were no human ties strong enough—not even the ties to my beloved game of basketball or my teammates; not to my friend Günter, or even my mother—to counter the lure of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something special and be somebody special.
Kim Philby expressed my innermost thoughts precisely when he was asked why he joined the KGB. He said, “One does not look twice at an offer of enrollment in an elite force.”[2]
The next morning I met Boris for the last time before my departure from Berlin.
“Have you come to a decision?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m committed. Let’s do this.”
CHRISTMAS OF 1972 was the last holiday I would spend with my family. My brother had recently volunteered for the army, and my mother was getting remarried after the holidays, so we decided to meet at her new apartment in the town of Weißwasser to celebrate the holiday and attend the small civil wedding she would have a few days later. My mother and I had kept in touch through letters while I was at the university, but this would be my first visit in some time.
Her apartment was typical for the GDR at that time—a cookie-cutter, four-story walk-up with a kitchen and adjoining living room at one end, a bathroom in the hallway, and two small bedrooms at the other end. The government had built thousands of these units all over the country to deal with a severe housing crisis. For my brother and me, this was not home; we came primarily to be together and to get another taste of our mother’s cooking. On Christmas Day, she served her special brand of seasoned pork chops with potatoes and sauerkraut. I stuffed myself to the gills.
As we were sitting around the table sipping after-dinner drinks, I broke the news.
“Mutti, I’m changing careers.”
She looked at me as if I had slapped her. What was this nonsense from her golden boy, her straight-A student who had won the Karl Marx Scholarship? If there was one thing my mother had known for sure, it was that her elder son would one day be an honored professor at a prestigious university.
“Change careers?”
The question sounded more like a challenge.
“Why would you throw away the great career you have ahead of you?”
“In February I am joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to become a diplomat. Think about it, Mutti. I will move to Berlin, and eventually I will be able to travel to many foreign countries.”
She stared at me, uncomprehending, from across the table. Finally, she blurted out, “Are you a spy?”
Now it was my turn to be stunned, but Hans-Günther came to the rescue without realizing what he was doing.
“Not our Albrecht! He would never do something as sinister as that.”
My mother frowned, then rose to clear a few dishes from the table. I couldn’t tell if she believed me, but that was the end of our discussion about my career, and the subject was never taken up again.
At the end of January, I quit my job at the university and handed my SED Party membership booklet to a representative of the secretariat. I wasn’t certain why it was necessary to turn in the booklet, but it seemed they would keep it on my behalf to be reclaimed when or if I needed it again. As I spoke for a moment with the secretary, he made a knowing comment about unsung heroes. Apparently, it was not the first time this comrade had collected a Party booklet.
The next day, I stashed my belongings in a suitcase and a large briefcase and boarded the train for Berlin. As we made our way toward the capital city, I realized I was on a trip to nowhere, without a return ticket. There would be many more trips like this one, but this train ride was the starting point of a most unusual journey. The destination on the map of my life was clearly marked with a hammer, a sickle, and a big question mark.
On Monday, February 5, 1973, early in the afternoon, I arrived at Berlin Ostbahnof, one of the city’s major train stations. After stashing my bags in a locker, I proceeded to the prearranged meeting place at a Karlshorst intersection, where I would connect with my new handler. The meeting protocol was identical to the one that Boris and I had used for my practice trip three months earlier, and everything proceeded as planned.
At three o’clock sharp, I spotted a stocky middle-aged man wrapped in a thick coat, smoking a cigarette near the side of a building just down the street from where I stood. After the usual exchange of passcodes and a few introductory niceties, we went straight to his car to discuss our next steps.
Unlike Herman, who had become a friend, and Boris, whose demeanor was always kindly, this new fellow, Nikolai—a Ukrainian national with a square face and a thick neck—talked and acted like a tough boss.
“Welcome to Berlin, comrade. I can tell you, your training won’t be easy.” Nikolai shifted in his seat so he could look me in the eye. “Let’s start as close to reality as possible. Imagine you just arrived in a new country and have to find a place to live.”
“Okay . . .”
“That is your first task—find a place to live and call me at this number next Monday at 9:00 a.m.”
I was dumbstruck. After living in dorm rooms with roommates for the past five years, I had been looking forward to settling in to my new accommodations. Surely the almighty KGB would provide their new spy-in-training with a nice place to live. But now Nikolai had just made it clear that I was on my own—and I knew that the housing shortage plaguing the entire country was most severe in Berlin. Communal living was not uncommon, particularly for young people—who often had to stay with their parents while languishing for years on a waiting list before they could find a place of their own.
What have I gotten myself into?
I kept a straight face, but my mind was spinning.
Is this how my great career as an undercover agent begins—looking for a place to live where there is nothing to be had?
I memorized the phone number and got out of the car, joining the stream of pedestrians making their way home from work on the cold streets of Berlin. It was too late to begin my apartment hunt that day, so I retrieved my luggage and rented a hotel room for the night. Tomorrow would be the official start of my new life, and a very unpleasant one at that.
The next day, I began my search by asking myself a question: How does a newcomer go about finding a place to live in a huge city where hundreds of thousands of people are waiting for a place of their own?
The answer was simple: Go door-to-door.
I knew the closer I searched to downtown Berlin, the more impossible the search would be. So I took a commuter train to the town of Erkner, forty-eight kilometers southeast of the city center and the last stop on the line out of Berlin. When I stepped off the train onto the cobblestone-paved platform, the drab terminal was deserted. This was encouraging. The fewer the people, the better the chance of finding a place—or so I hoped.
Exiting the terminal, I made a sharp left turn and walked toward a cluster of detached single-family houses. For the next three hours, I knocked on doors, rang doorbells, and talked with residents. Eventually, my efforts yielded a lead. One homeowner directed me to a small house on a street lined with beautiful birch trees. The street was appropriately named: Unter den Birken (Under the Birch Trees).
The woman who answered the bell appeared sickly, with loose strands of uncombed dirt-blonde hair and a two-t
ooth gap in her upper front teeth.
“I have a space I can rent out,” she said, “but . . . it is not very comfortable.”
I would soon discover that “not very comfortable” was the understatement of the year.
The woman led me across the yard to a ramshackle outbuilding divided into two rooms—one with a bed and a chair and the other with a coal-burning stove and a sink with running cold water. There was no other furniture. The toilet was an outhouse in the backyard.
So this was it, my very first apartment: a bed, a stove, a chair, and running water. Not exactly what I had dreamed about, but at least I could say I had a roof over my head and a bed to sleep on.
The spartan conditions didn’t bother me. During childhood, I had gotten used to asking for little and getting even less. And sacrifices had to be made for the cause. After all, my ultimate hero, Vladimir Lenin, had suffered through three years in a Siberian prison camp before triumphantly returning to Russia to take the reins of the first Communist state. I could not have known that my KGB bosses were living in luxury while lazily handing out orders to new recruits to find their own housing in a crowded and unfamiliar city.
I moved into my humble abode in Erkner with the kind of faith instilled in me by my parents: Good things will happen if you perform well. So I embraced these new circumstances with youthful optimism. This place was not a home; it was just a place to sleep.
Each morning, I took the train to the city and spent my time at the library or museums, or exploring the various neighborhoods on foot to establish a foundation for future operational exercises. I also joined the basketball team at the College of Economic Studies in Karlshorst, which provided me with some stable social interactions and guaranteed me at least one shower a week. I never told Nikolai anything about my living conditions, and that was instinctively wise. Bosses do not like to hear complaints or problems; they prefer solutions.