Berlin Centre

by Max Hertzberg

  I slapped him on the shoulder and told him to cheer up, but he wasn’t having any of it. He left the flat and his half-full cup of coffee, and I sat at the table a while longer.

  He wasn’t wrong about dragging others down with him. I would be avoiding Holger as much as I could.

  5

  Berlin Lichtenberg

  I next saw Holger a couple of days later. It was midday, I was in the canteen, eating Kohlroulade. Or, to put it more accurately, I was scraping congealed sauce off the soapy cabbage when I saw him at the serving counter. I left my half-eaten lunch where it was and took the side door.

  Did I feel guilty about avoiding my friend? No, he’d have done the same. In fact, just a few weeks ago I was the one who had been bad news and Holger had gone to great lengths to avoid being seen in my company. He knew where to find me if he wanted a chat.

  Back behind my empty desk—the Party membership files had all been checked and returned—I couldn’t help but mull over Holger’s predicament. Or rather, Bruno’s.

  Eventually, Holger would be pronounced Persil clean, or maybe he wouldn’t. I had no influence over the process, it was all down to his department.

  But, just for the sake of keeping our brains active, let’s take Source Bruno’s assertion at face value. Let’s assume for the moment that he was right about the mole in Main Department II—that would not only account for Bruno’s arrest in West Germany, it would also explain why they were giving Holger such a hard time now he was home. It would be in the mole’s interest to ensure Bruno was removed from the scene and that Holger would then take the fall for betraying the source.

  Still not convinced? Me neither, which is why I began to list other scenarios.

  Perhaps Bruno had been arrested for something he’d said or done before he came to visit his relatives over here—the timing of his arrest a mere coincidence. I grunted as the C word crossed my mind—it seemed every detective novel ever published and every episode of Polizeiruf 110 on the telly made some comment about never trusting coincidences. But I live in the real world, not between the blue covers of a Krimi published by Delikte Indizien Ermittlungen. And in the real world, coincidences happen.

  I knew nothing about Bruno. I had no way of knowing whether he was involved in criminal activities in the West, or even whether he’d let slip some clue that he was planning to defect. The possibilities were endless.

  Poor Holger, caught up in this mess. I hoped the brass would realise he wasn’t to blame for Bruno’s arrest, and hoping was the best I could do for him.

  And what about Bruno’s mole? As far as I was concerned: case closed.

  My office phone rang for the first time that afternoon. I stared at the receiver as it vibrated its way through each long ding of the bell. Whoever had dialled wasn’t going away.

  “Unterleutnant Reim,” I answered after the fourth ring.

  “Comrade Second Lieutenant, report immediately to Comrade Major Kühn’s office.”

  I was on my feet, standing at attention. It was that kind of voice. But it didn’t wait for any response from me, it had already rung off.

  I straightened the creases on my trousers, ran a rag over my shiny shoes and rolled my shoulders and shot my cuffs until I was satisfied my uniform jacket was sitting correctly. This was it, I was finally going to be given a task.

  Major Kühn had his office on a plush corridor with all the other Bonzen in ZAIG. He was deputy of the second section—control and measurement. In good German that simply means keeping an eye on all the other Ministry employees.

  I marched into the office, clickety-heeled in front of the bulky, balding officer behind the desk. Wider than he was high, heavy brow folded over the same kind of thick-rimmed glasses worn by Comrade General Secretary Honecker.

  Major Kühn, if that’s who it was behind the desk, did what all superior officers like to do when first meeting a subordinate. He ignored me.

  I remained at attention, staring through the inevitable portrait of General Mielke that was interrupting the pattern on the wallpaper. The major himself continued to examine an advert in a Western newspaper, grainy pictures of sausages and cuts of meat with the smudged yellow and red logo of a cheap supermarket in the corner.

  I can’t swear to it—I was too busy being polite and staring at the wall—but I’m pretty certain I could hear him lick his lips.

  The newspaper rustled and the major spoke for the first time.

  “Comrade Second Lieutenant Heym,” he began, still smacking his lips. I knew better than to correct him. “From your records I see you’re an experienced analyst, so I’m going to try you out in that field. There’s an operational process I want you to look at, see where it went wrong. Who messed up, what lessons are to be learnt. Think you can handle that?”

  I kept my eyes on the wallpaper and my thumbs aligned with my trouser seams. No reply required.

  “Report directly to me. The files are on the table behind you, paper research only at this stage.”

  A rustle of newspaper told me I’d been dismissed. A Jawohl, Genosse Major, more clickety-heels, about turn and with a neat sweep of my arm as I went past, I caught the low stack of files from the table.

  “We need a quick turn-around on this. Interim report by tomorrow afternoon, Comrade Unterleutnant,” the major called after me, meaning I had to about turn and repeat the whole tap of the heels shebang and all that goes with it.

  I managed to get out of the office without doing any more impressions of a typewriter and, returning along the corridor, I relaxed my shoulders and my gait and took a gander at the files I’d been given.

  The top one was a cadre file, the name on the front meant nothing to me. I slid that to one side and looked at the next one down, then the one after: names of personnel I didn’t know, hadn’t met and had never heard of.

  I shoved the files under my arm and carried on towards my office, looking forward to the job ahead of me. Kühn had made clear this was a paper exercise only, but with a bit of luck he might let me interrogate the people whose names were on the covers of these files. I’d tell him it was important to keep my hand in.

  Back at my office, I shut the door, fanned the folders out on the desk and took a closer look.

  None of the names on the first few files rang any bells, couldn’t even tell you what department they belonged to or even whether they were based in Berlin or in the provinces. I shuffled through a few more, all unknown. Until the last but one. Here was a name I recognised.

  Holger Fritsch

  I sat for a while, looking at the writing on the front of the folder. Holger my old pal. Holger, the one who was currently contagious. Holger whose file was on my desk. I pushed it to one side, revealing the cover of the final folder. This wasn’t a cadre file, it was an asset file, and the name on the front came as no surprise.

  There was a stamp showing a date from last week, below that, neatly written in blue ink along a dotted line:

  Source Bruno

  6

  Berlin Lichtenberg

  I pushed all but the last two files aside and stared at the covers. To the left I had Holger, to my right was Bruno.

  I shouldn’t even open these files. I should march straight back to Major Kühn and tell him I couldn’t take the case. Or I could take a quick look first—might find something useful in there for Holger.

  I dithered for a minute, then opened up the file. I didn’t have to tell my superior that I knew Holger—if anyone asked, I’d report the fact that we’d been at the Ministry’s high school in Golm together, tell them we had never even worked in the same building since then. We just knew each other to nod to in the corridor, to share small talk over a coffee in the canteen.

  Hardly knew each other at all. No conflict of interest.

  After leafing through Holger’s file and not seeing anything that seemed relevant to the case, I turned to Source Bruno, real name Arnold Seiffert, date of birth 27th of February 1952.

  It was all there, for each
visit there was the usual collation of data: photostat of his West German identity card, copies of the visa authorisation, the visa itself along with the customs declaration, registration and deregistration forms from the local police station, receipt for compulsory currency exchange. The dates of his last trip matched those Holger had told me.

  So far, so boring.

  A report by the ABV, the local beat officer, was next. Source Bruno’s relatives, who lived in a village a few kilometres from Beeskow, were nondescript. An aunt and an uncle, she was a baker’s assistant, retired, he was a machinist at a collective farm, also retired. Other than membership in the trade union and the Society for German-Soviet Friendship, neither were politically organised. A quiet couple who hadn’t come to the attention of the beat officer.

  There’s nothing like a stack of dry files to make you thirsty. I thought about the bottle in the bottom drawer of the desk, but decided against. I wanted to stay sharp.

  Wasn’t Bruno subject to restrictions by his employers? Could BKA officials just travel to East Germany whenever they felt like it? Or did they need some kind of permission?

  I wrote the questions in my notebook and returned to reading about Bruno’s relatives—despite having never met them or Bruno, I was beginning to hate them purely on the basis of these tedious reports. In fact, it was all so boringly normal that I felt I must have missed something and went back to the start. It was just as slow and stale on the second reading.

  Bruno’s parents left East Germany in 1950, just over a year before he was born. They passed through Berlin and settled near Osnabrück, in the north-west of West Germany. Both had become civil servants: the father a postman, the mother a schoolteacher. Just like their relatives who stayed over here, there was no record of political activity.

  I leaned back in my chair and stared at the wall opposite, trying to keep my mind away from the schnapps. This was slow, dull work, and it would get worse before it got better—I’d have to see whether Bruno’s relatives had their own files that could shed light on his background, anything that might explain his interest in working for us.

  I put the parents to one side and returned to the background report on Bruno himself. For someone who came to the GDR so regularly, and a BKA officer at that, the report seemed a little slim. It held little information beyond what could be read on his visa application form: date of birth (27.02.1952), marital status (single), dates of entry to GDR (four, at intervals of between two and three years, twice arriving by train, twice by vehicle), occupation (Federal Crime Agency official) and on it went. There was nothing even vaguely useful here.

  I stared at the wallpaper, my eyes tracing the faint green pattern over the buff background, then with a sigh I closed the folder and placed it, along with the other files in the steel cupboard, sealing the doors before leaving my office.

  In the canteen I sipped a weak coffee and nibbled a dry pastry. The place was nearly empty, just me and the serving staff. Clangour and shouts came from the kitchen area as supper was prepared for those officers who were working late.

  Bruno was West German-born, I summarised the day’s reading to myself, still feeling I’d missed something. Regular visits to his mother’s sister and her husband, dating back to when he’d finished his national service.

  His parents, on the other hand, had never returned—not surprising considering they’d left the GDR illegally and would be worried about being arrested if they came back. But what about the aunt and uncle? They were retired, which meant they were free to apply for visas for travel to the West, yet the aunt had never shown any interest in visiting her sister in Osnabrück.

  Correspondence between the two sisters was sparse: Christmas greetings, a letter for birthdays, and not even that every year. But Bruno regularly wrote to his aunt and uncle, sent parcels of coffee, clothes and chocolate. Interesting family dynamics going on there—I wondered why it was that Bruno was showing more interest in maintaining family ties than his mother did.

  Were Bruno’s visits to his aunt and uncle merely cover to enter the GDR?

  7

  Berlin Lichtenberg

  Back from the canteen, I picked up Bruno’s file and flipped past the personal details until I got to the reports of his defection and debriefing.

  I read through the accounts without pause, just to get a feel of it, building a mental picture of what had happened. By the time I finished it was getting dark.

  I leaned back in my chair, eyes smarting, and reached down to get the bottle. I rewarded my efforts with one drink, then switched the light on and began reading again.

  Files are never exactly exciting, but it’s hard not to get frustrated when the juicy bits have been redacted. There was no finesse about it, just a gap in the dates where pages had been removed—everything and anything from the moment Holger picked up Bruno in Beeskow until the morning Bruno left the safe house named Building 74 to catch the train to Cologne. Nine days’ worth of files, covering the interrogation of Bruno and his preparation as an informant and agent of the Ministry.

  I packed the files into the safe and sealed them in, then picked up my coat and bag and left the office.

  A Siberian wind whipped the fine rain and gusted through the courtyards of Berlin Centre, I kept tight hold of my ID card as I showed it to the sentry on the side gate on my way out, worried it would be blown from my grasp.

  On exiting, I tucked the clapperboard away, I hunched my way down Magdalenenstrasse, one hand pressed to my hat, keeping it safe on my head, the other clutching my briefcase.

  This wasn’t a night for walking home, perhaps it wasn’t a night for going home at all—instead of diving down the steps into the warmth of the U-Bahn station, I struggled along Frankfurter Allee as far as the tram stop. The wind hissed past me down the boulevard, pushing me along, old newspapers and leaves overtook me.

  I caught the number three tram, and sat at the back, all the better to observe boarding passengers. It was an old habit, but tonight I had a minor justification for taking care. I wanted to ask Holger a few questions, and it was probably best if no-one saw me do it.

  The tram rocked along Ho-Chi-Minh-Strasse, buffeted by the storm as it gusted through the wide junctions, and I had to hold tight as I made my way to the doors to get off at the Dynamo Sportforum. I stopped a schoolkid who was hauling a handcart full of soggy newspapers into the rain.

  “I’ll give you fifty Pfennigs to take a message.”

  The kid stood bandy-legged on the slick pavement, keeping tight hold of his little wagon. He looked me up and down and thought about the offer.

  “I’m on my way to the recycling shop.” He thought about it a bit more. “And there’s a bad weather surcharge today,” he had to shout over the traffic and the whistling trees.

  “Fifty Pfennigs from me now and another fifty from the comrade I’m sending you to see. Deal?”

  I gave the brat Holger’s address and told him to pass on the message that a comrade wanted to see him at the tram stop.

  “A comrade wants to see you?” asked the boy. “Is that all?”

  While I was waiting for Holger to turn up, I stood in a phone box. I was out of the wind in there, it was dry, and I could keep an eye on my surroundings through the glass. Mouthing random phrases into a dead receiver, I watched the queue of cars shuffle towards the petrol station next door.

  Holger had the nous not to join me in the telephone box, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his raincoat and joined the queue at the tram stop, his gaze set on the road.

  As the tram rumbled up, Holger shifted slightly, glancing at me from the corner of his eye. I nodded, hung up and left the phone box, sprinting towards the tram as Holger boarded.

  I sprang up the steps as the bell rang to warn of the closing doors and sank into a seat a few rows in front of Holger. Neither of us acknowledged each other, we just sat there, buried in the collars of our coats while the tram ground through the tight streets of Weissensee.

  I got off thre
e stops later, aware that Holger had followed me. From the vague reflections in the darkened shop windows we passed, I could see that it was just the two of us on the side road. I turned a corner and waited for Holger to catch up.

  “Reim,” he said as he shook my hand. “Shit weather.”

  The weather wasn’t so bad up here, the streets were narrower so the wind didn’t have much chance to pick up so much momentum. But it was still raining. More than enough reason to visit the pub on the next corner.

  Low-wattage bulbs did their best to cast their thin light on the dark surfaces of solid-wood tables that had survived the war. The bar was varnished to a shade of brown that was almost black and the beer was thin and warm. The landlord looked like he was as old as the tables, the backs of his hands were covered in age-spots that were the same colour as his bar.

  I signalled for another two beers as we sat down near the back, as far as possible from the bar and its only patron, a veteran wearing a worker’s denim jacket, a flannel check shirt and braces.

  “They’ve asked me to go over Bruno files,” I told Holger as I lit two cigarettes and gave him one.

  The top-ups were already on their way, the old man’s hands shaking as he placed the glasses on the table, spilling beer as he did so.

  “Did you tell them you know me?” Holger asked once the old man had shuffled back to his perch behind the bar.

  “Curiosity’s a dangerous thing,” I replied. “Thought I’d save them from that particular sin. They want me to work out who they can blame for what happened in Bonn.”

  My friend’s shoulders slumped when he heard that. He must have known it would be this way, had probably drafted his self-criticism speech, ready for when they asked him to fall on his sword.

  “That’s the bad news,” I said after I’d had some beer. “The good news is that there’s nothing in the files to suggest any of it was your fault.”