The Berlin Assignment

by Adrian de Hoog

  Hanbury checked each one out. With practice it went faster and Schwartz passed him more cards, so that by the time his Berlin vacation began he was working on more than fifty names. One by one he traced them deep into the files. Some names, after complicated cross-references had been tracked down, pointed to a file location called DDB. Hanbury eventually located a small room in a remote corner of the complex with a card thumb-tacked to the door showing these three letters. The files in DDB were meagre compilations, a few sheets of notations that were very difficult to decipher. The information seemed meaningless to him. But once Hanbury had jotted it down and brought it out, Schwartz was excited. “Fascinating,” he muttered. “Rich material. More research in that area will be essential. See this…” He pointed at a word.

  “Tristan,” said Hanbury.

  “Remember two days ago? Isolde? And the file on Karel Neumann mentioned a Parsival, also with a reference to DDB. We’ll keep looking for references like that. Some kind of group existed with cover names borrowed from Wagner.”

  “A special class of informants?”

  “Possibly. Possibly something else. And there’s another category that’s fascinating. Leopard, Grizzly, Scorpion. Dangerous creatures. Are they connected? And these others – Herald, Incubus, Charlemagne. There must be information on them somewhere. If only we could find a way to match cover names with real ones.”

  “I could try tracing them in reverse. References to cover names always come at the end of searches through the substantive files. Suppose I start with the cover names index tomorrow and see where trails go then?” Schwartz agreed and prepared a fresh pile of cards, this time with cover names in the upper left hand corner.

  Thus began the productive final two days. Thursday morning, promptly at 8:30, in F77 – the index to the cover names – Hanbury searched out Dragon, King of Fear, Black Queen, Cactus, Spear, Minuteman, Saturn, Chairman, Northern Lights, Poison and so on and so forth. The index pointed to many file locations. Not infrequently, there was a link to F47, the Stasi control officer index. Going into F47 through this back door provided still more trails, which took him into parts of the complex he had not visited before.

  The summer weather that evening was at its finest when the professor and the consul met in the Klecksel garden under an enormous oak. As daylight faded, small oil lamps on the tables flickered in the darkness; the tree above was an impenetrable dome. Schwartz picked slowly through the latest cards. Remarkable, he kept muttering. Remarkable. “Last day tomorrow,” he said. “Concentrate on DDB. We’re near a breakthrough.”

  Hanbury spent the final day in the small back room looking for answers to Schwartz’s questions. On Friday night a rich pile of cards, each one covered with precise notations, lay before Schwartz on the Klecksel garden table. The professor was calm, but it was a forced calm. The day’s haul excited him as none before had. “Jawohl,” he said several times. “Yes. Indeed yes. This fits.” A few cards later, he sucked in his breath. “A surprise. Truly a surprise.”

  “After yesterday and today, I’m no longer so sure all this is purely Nazi war criminal material,” Hanbury broke in.

  “What makes you say that?” Schwartz asked carefully. He continued studying the cards. “If not Nazis, then what? What’s your guess?”

  “Most of the information you’re looking at has an F47 connection. At first, I assumed these people were Stasi agents since we knew they were not Stasi targets. But taking the names back to the main index, F16, and from there to F22, they didn’t lead me back to F47 as should have happened had they been agents. Many led to F59 instead. That’s the index on economic operations. So, these people are neither targets, nor agents, nor informants. They’re a different class. These were people who cooperated with the Stasi in other ways. If you take for example the economic sector’s cover names, Panther, Leopard, Stinger and the others, and check them out through F77, the cover name index, the file numbers you get there are different again. It’s not a circle. These cover names take you in all kinds of directions, except most of the time there’s the DDB hint. And when I went after those hints in DDB, as you can see here and here too, you get German names, foreign names and cover names, plus a recurrence of the acronym,BKK. What’s BKK? Financial information is often associated with it, sometimes in DM, often US dollars. So I doubt it has anything to do with the Nazis. BKK seems like a commercial entity, maybe engaged in weapons sales, or something like that.” Hanbury was pointing at words and numbers on the cards. “Furthermore, these others – Joker, King of Fear, Superman – these individuals are not that old, not old enough to have been active Nazis. Interestingly, they travelled to international conferences. These scribbles seem to be shorthand reports on meetings with personae who carried cover names based on ancient philosophers – Democritus, Epicurus, Socrates, Aristotle. What might those meetings have been about? Philosophy? I doubt it. What would the King of Fear have in common with Socrates? Mind-expanding drugs? And this is an interesting grouping too. Shakespeare, Titian, Paganini. People buying or selling art?”

  “What about linking cover names with real names?” asked Schwartz. “What would you say about that?”

  “There’s nothing direct, but I’m pretty sure Leopard was, or is, someone called Hans-Detlef Weisshagel. They appear in similar contexts several times. He in turn was closely associated with Reusch, who you thought at the start was Reuss. Joker seems almost certainly to have been a certain Burkhard Wegener…”

  “Go on.”

  Hanbury flipped through more cards, linking cover names and their activities with names of persons. Schwartz took all this down. “And this is based on DDB files?” he asked again, to be certain. “It’s all DDB. That’s where real names and cover names become nearly directly linked. Most of the documents have a reference to BKK. What does it mean?”

  “BKK stands for Bereich Kommerzielle Koordinierung,” Schwartz said. “It was a wing of the Stasi that bought and sold goods on world markets, sometimes illicitly.” He said this as if it were widely known. “Fine work, Tony. It goes without saying there’s a good report in this for you and a monograph or two for me. A productive week.” Schwartz rifled through the cards with his thumb.

  Reports! Hanbury thought about slaving over yet another one. It gave him no enthusiasm. His life had been ruled by reports. Admittedly, they had caused a stir. Krauthilda had phoned to say her last act as a Zealot was to let him know a rumour was circulating that the high priest wanted the Berlin reports used as a model. “You should also know,” she had announced, “that Krauthilda is history. Starting Monday I’m first political secretary in Rome. I hope I get on with Italians as well as you do with Germans.”

  And now, under the Klecksel oak, recalling the phone call, Hanbury shook his head. What report with what kind of theme would do justice to the information he had lifted out of that strange DDB room? Who could possibly be interested? In his last report he had explored the skinhead phenomenon. Schwartz had labelled them directionless creatures lacking a spiritual framework, but possessing enormous reservoirs of energy. Would the Stasi’s Scorpions, Stingers, Jokers, Supermen, whoever they were, be treated by Schwartz in a similar way? Misfits with unused potential? Hanbury was curious. “What monographs?” he asked. “What would you write about? What do you think all this information means?”

  The professor studied the consul. “It’s too early to say,” he said. “It’s good to know what’s in the DDB room, but I’ll need outside corroboration to see what it adds up to.”

  “Tell me, this DDB crowd, are they a sociological phenomenon like the skinheads?”

  “I’ll know more in a few weeks,” Schwartz replied evasively. “I doubt direct comparisons can be made. What makes you ask?”

  “The last report we did on the neo-Nazi movement. You suggested the members were in search of spiritual roots. Remember, you said if they were handled properly they could make a contribution. I’m wondering whether the DDB crowd is like that, whether they have that pote
ntial. My impression is they’re more likely to be criminals.”

  “Some of them may be,” the professor said.

  Hanbury laughed. “That would be quite a monograph, sketching out a spiritual rationale for the DDB crowd of criminals. You know, I’ve seen skinheads hanging out around railway stations begging for coins. They’re not great advertising. I personally think it would be a hard row making them productive.” He made more light jokes about the thin parallel between Stasi-linked criminals and neo-Nazi rowdies. “If the former deserve no respect, then why the optimism about the potential of the latter?” he asked.

  “You haven’t seen them in their element,” said Schwartz. He looked at the consul for a long time, seemingly making a decision. “It’s Friday evening,” he taunted. “Are you free? Shall I show you something?”

  Hanbury shrugged. “Why not? I’m on vacation.”

  The destination, Hanbury learned, was Potsdam. In Schwartz’s car he asked what was there. “I’m doing something I normally wouldn’t,” Schwartz replied, refusing to say more. The route took them through Wannsee. The sinking sun had set the sailboats out on the water ablaze and in the light the lake’s surface was a sheet of platinum. Crossing the Glienicker Bridge into Potsdam, the professor joked about the brisk East-West trade in spies once staged there. “Of course, only the important ones came through here,” he added. “The small fry were swapped on the S-bahn.” On the Potsdam side the road was rough and Schwartz reduced speed. The houses were monstrously run down. Always into a different world, wherever, whenever a crossing into the East is made. The Russians, he remarked, reduced Potsdam to crumbling outer shells. The professor knew his way here. At Cecilienhof he turned right, to the river, and then left on a track that took them into a forest. The sun’s final rays of the day came in below the crowns of trees. Schwartz said he loved this sylvan way –Ich liebe diesen Holzweg – adding that it provided a sense of nearness to the stirring Germanic feat 2000 years ago of vanquishing the Roman legions in forest warfare and driving them back to the other side of the Rhine. The path continued over little rises and around massive trees. Here and there the wood thickened into a tangle of luxuriant creeping green, then opened into stands of beeches, or groves of massive oaks with gnarled boughs reaching out. “It seems untouched for centuries,” said Hanbury, inspired by the peace and the smell of rich, dark humus. He was ever more intrigued about their final destination. “A place to feel religion,” Schwartz confirmed.

  They came to a clearing. On one side ran a stockade and behind it stood a fading sandstone building, the remains of an old Waldschloss, an aristocrat’s forest hideaway. The stone was discoloured with lichen and decorative elements were breaking off. Vines crept up the sides and pushed through the roof. Nature doing its reclaiming. But the stockade was recent, and newer still were black pig heads stuck on pointed poles next to the entrance. Eyes had been gouged out; flies clustered in the cavities. “How welcoming,” said Hanbury. He viewed the pig heads with suspicion.

  “It’s not the Potsdam Rotary Club,” Schwartz sneered. “Weiter gehen?” Continue?

  “We’ve come this far.” Occasionally Gundula would dare him with the same words –Weiter gehen? – just before entering another of her East Berlin dives. We’ve come this far, he always said. But here he was less nonchalant. Schwartz didn’t have Gundula’s light-hearted, peppy way.

  Inside the stockade patches of earth were scarred where fires had burned. Schwartz went to a side door and tapped out a complicated pattern. A small shutter slid aside, then the door opened. “Ein Gast,” Schwartz said quietly. He led his guest into a narrow passage to the main hall of the house. An oak staircase was in near collapse. In the muted light Hanbury saw rough planks had been hammered over missing steps. Schwartz followed his gaze. “The Russians,” he said. “They used it last.”

  Thick candles marked a passage down another hallway. A pounding noise grew louder as they went. When Schwartz opened a heavy door the sound instantly converted into wild, driving music which seemed to jump at them. Hanbury stood still, thinking maybe it was better to turn back now, but Schwartz motioned and he followed, down narrow stone steps to a cellar. The music was an assault on more than the ears. It created a black, disorienting pressure. Pushing forward, Hanbury had trouble with his breathing. Finally the professor parted a curtain and preceded him into a cavern where more candles flickered. The consul recoiled. This time the assault was on his eyes. On low stools, around slices of tree trunks serving as tables, swaying to the driving beat, sat a pack of drinking, smoking warriors. Most heads were shaven, others had tails growing out the back. Army fatigues, chains draped over bare chests, swastikas tattooed on upper arms, army belts with bayonets in sheaths, jackboots laced up to the knees. Was this the corked-up creativity which Schwartz declared was being wasted?

  One glance was enough. Hanbury wanted out. He had a sickening sensation that if he went one step further, this sullen pack would rip him apart. But Schwartz continued in, raising a palm in greeting to a nearby table, giving a finger salute to others. Hanbury followed against his will, as if caught in a slipstream. At a vacant chunk of tree they sank down on stools. The professor pointed two fingers at a figure draped with cartridge belts who snapped an index finger back and soon brought them each a beer.

  The loudspeakers fell silent; the grotto calmed. In a corner a video began playing on a large screen. Nazis marching at the Nuremberg rallies; tanks rolling; dictators making rousing speeches; footage of crosses burning in the presence of the Ku-Klux-Klan. Random fascist images. There was little talk. The warriors smoked and drank and watched the video. Hanbury saw one with an Iroquois swath of hair growing from his forehead, over his scalp and down his neck, who operated a Polaroid. He was in demand, the pictures coming out setting off little eddies of manly giggling. “Well?” the professor challenged. “Do they look like beggars?” Hanbury shrugged. “Good local colour,” he said non-committally, masking a deep foreboding. He noticed Schwartz was different here. The academic arrogance was gone. A severity, a deadly lack of humour had replaced it. “I understand what you meant about the pent-up energy. It’s powerful,” Hanbury added, wanting to be conciliatory. “I thought you would,” said Schwartz with cold triumph. He looked in the direction of the video which showed brownshirts smashing Jewish windows.

  Hanbury wanted to remark he didn’t need to stay longer, but the skinhead operating the Polaroid came over. Without warning the flash went. Schwartz was instantly annoyed. “Franz! Nein. Das will ich nicht.” I don’t want that. “It’s a Polaroid, Herr Professor,” the skinhead smiled. “If you don’t like the picture, throw it away.” Franz lifted the photo off the back. Before their eyes, it formed. The consul looked lost; the professor stared out of the picture with hatred. The back of a warrior at the next table, naked from the waist up, was on the picture’s edge and hieroglyphic markings on the wall behind seemed to spring out of their heads. “It’s yours,” Franz said to Schwartz, “or yours,” to the guest. He continued to the next table. “I don’t like my picture being taken,” Schwartz muttered.

  Hanbury studied the photo, then turned around to look at the markings on the wall. “What’s that?”

  “Symbols of an ancient Aryan cosmogony,” Schwartz said, taking the photo from Hanbury and putting it in his pocket. “They depict fire, air, earth and water.” He pointed at several specific symbols. Hanbury asked about the others. Schwartz explained that a symbol with three curved hooks joined at the centre portrayed the swirling fire whisk from which the universe was born. Inverted triangles and anti-clockwise markings including the swastika – he called them triskelions – symbolized stages in cosmic evolution. Such portrayals, he said, had developed over time into the Maltese cross, which in turn was the basis for the iron cross with its Prussian importance. “I did research into ancient Nordic runes years ago,” continued Schwartz. “I explained the meanings to these boys. They wanted to believe in them. One might say, they felt it pointed them towards a divin
ity that was uniquely theirs. The book you got from Geissler improved my understanding. It revealed pictograms I hadn’t seen before. It had quite an impact here, as if their version of the Dead Sea scrolls had been found. Well, now they have the full spiritual vocabulary of the ancients. So they painted the signs on the wall. This space is their temple.”

  Hanbury was incredulous. And what are you doing here? he almost cried. Where do you fit in all of this? But the video was over and the music restarted. Schwartz’s spiritual horde began their motionless contemplation once more. As the pain of the eardrum-cracking beat became unbearable, he shouted into Schwartz’s ear that he wished to go. The professor nodded. It was too loud for him too. In the upstairs hallway Schwartz took the photo from his pocket, stuck it in a candle and held the burning picture by a corner until it was gone. “Visits here do not take place,” he said. “We did not come. Agreed?” The cold severity was gone. The customary arrogance was back. “Sure,” Hanbury replied meekly. Schwartz broke into grin. “It would take too long to explain to Sabine.”

  Reappearing in the easy evening air was like awakening from a disturbing dream. Hanbury now asked his question. “How did you get involved with them?”

  “Research,” Schwartz answered smugly. “A historian needs to understand the present to interpret the past as much as he studies the past to shed light on the present.”

  “And you were comfortable there?” Hanbury probed. “I wasn’t. I admit it. That was a brutal video.”

  “There are no restrictions, no taboos in my work. That video tells us about power and how it is manipulated. The Nazis had good insight into power, but they set themselves poor objectives. Imagine what could have been achieved with better goals.”

  Hanbury thought about this. He might have asked more questions. Why furnish neo-Nazis with the spiritual vocabulary of ancient Aryans? Or, was there a link between this and the information he had dug out of the Stasi archives? But Hanbury didn’t ask his questions. He didn’t want to know the answers. Visits here do not take place. He agreed with that. As Schwartz’s car rolled and pitched out of the forest, he tried to purge his mind of what he’d seen. He wanted to get back to the beginning, to the time before he and Schwartz began collaborating. He wanted to get back to simplicity and innocence, to his sanctuary in Dahlem, where Gundula sat next to him at the piano and afterwards they went onto the terrace to drink champagne, looking at the treetops silhouetted against the stars, until a nudge from her said it was time to go inside, and holding hands to ascend the stairs.