A Darker State

by David Young

  Müller heard a commotion behind her. Then another armed man entered the room, flanked by two cronies.

  Jäger.

  A look of recognition flashed across Gaissler’s face. Then a nervous smile.

  ‘Comrade Oberst—’

  Jäger raised his gun and cut him off. ‘Your work is over, Comrade Gaissler. Drop your gun.’

  ‘But—’

  Müller heard the click of Jäger releasing his safety catch.

  ‘Now.’

  Gaissler began to move his weapon. Müller felt a momentary sense of relief: it looked as though he was about to lay it down.

  But instantly a shot rang out, then another. There was screaming, shouting. Müller – her eyes sweeping to the prone Markus – saw he was splattered in blood. Schmidt rushed forward, cradling his son.

  ‘No! No!’

  Then she realised Markus was still moving. The blood was Gaissler’s, not the boy’s. The endocrinologist lay splayed upon the floor, fatally wounded.

  She glared at Jäger. ‘What have you done?’

  Jäger’s voice was icy. ‘He was about to shoot him, that is what your report will say, Comrade Major. Make sure I get to see it before you submit it.’

  Müller was almost too shocked to move. It was Tilsner who had to order Gaissler’s shaking assistant to free Markus and the other youths.

  Schmidt meanwhile slowly raised Markus to a sitting position, embracing him gently.

  Jäger went over to Tilsner and slapped him on the back.

  ‘Good work, Werner. Excellent,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Comrade Oberst Jäger,’ replied Tilsner.

  Jäger glanced over to Müller.

  ‘And you too, of course, Karin. Well done to both of you. You’ve both done work today to make the Republic proud of you.’

  Müller stared at him hard. How could the man have the gall to make out that the ending of Gaissler’s operation – and the freeing of the surviving youths – was what his Ministry for State Security had wanted all along? She’d seen the look of recognition from Gaissler. Heard him start to reason with the Stasi colonel, until he was silenced in the most brutal way possible. It suited Jäger to have Müller and her team help him close this down now – but she was certain that hadn’t always been the case.

  51

  ‘Has everything been sorted out, Klaus?’

  ‘It has, Comrade Generalmajor.’

  ‘And Jan will not be involved?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’ve made sure of that. Your son will be portrayed as an innocent party.’

  ‘And my name – that will be kept out of things too?’

  The colonel nodded and the Stasi major general offered his subordinate a glass of schnapps.

  ‘So what will we say about what the Bezirk Frankfurt department were doing?’

  ‘We will say that Baum and Diederich acted alone. That they were siphoning off money from the American pharmaceutical company for their own purposes. We will say they were in league with Gaissler, who in turn was keeping money back to rebuild his family’s former property portfolio in Wilhelm-Pieck-Stadt Guben, and that he was killed when he attempted to thwart an armed police operation to free the patients.’

  ‘So Baum, Diederich and Gaissler were all acting like the worst kind of capitalists?’

  ‘Exactly, Comrade Generalmajor.’

  The Stasi major general leant back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head.

  ‘And just to be clear, there is no paper trail? Nothing official that can be laid at our door?’

  ‘Nothing, Comrade Generalmajor.’

  ‘What about that infernal People’s Police major? Can’t we take her down a peg or two? You were saying she’s been over-promoted.’

  ‘Yes,’ the colonel replied. ‘But that’s useful for our purposes.’

  ‘You’re not sweet on her, are you Klaus? She’s an attractive woman – and I hear she may be about to become single again.’ The major general took out a cigar box, selected one for himself, then offered the box to Jäger, who declined the offer, just as he had with the schnapps.

  ‘Nothing like that, Comrade Generalmajor. As you know, I’m married. I have a young family. I wouldn’t take the risk.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry you’re not joining me in a celebratory drink and cigar.’ He put the unlit cigar down and lovingly stroked the white bust of a sharp-faced, bearded man that was prominently placed on his desk.

  ‘I think Dzerzhinsky would have approved of our operation, don’t you? We’ve proved ourselves to be the German Cheka, even though some of our Soviet colleagues mock us.’

  The colonel smiled.

  ‘Getting back to this People’s Police major,’ the major general continued. ‘This ends her inquiry, yes? She won’t be sniffing round Metzger’s untimely demise?’

  ‘She has no reason to, and no authority to go to the West, so I don’t expect so. They’ll be patting themselves on the back at Keibelstrasse over this thing in Wilhelm-Pieck-Stadt Guben, without really realising what’s gone on in Bonn.’

  ‘And we’re sure about the loyalty of our agent involved in the Metzger incident?’

  ‘Absolutely. He was recruited in . . . shall we say, exceptional circumstances. He was shown the importance of being loyal, and the price of disloyalty.’

  ‘And this policewoman, she doesn’t realise who he is?’

  ‘No. She has no idea. And we’ll make sure we keep it that way.’

  52

  I don’t really understand what’s happening. The drugs they give us make our thoughts cloudy. Trying to find what I want to say isn’t easy; it’s like something is lost inside a huge, luxurious feather duvet, and I’m flailing round to try to find it. But then I can’t remember what I’m looking for, and I realise it doesn’t matter anyway.

  Something has changed. The usual faces have moved away. There are happier faces now, smiling faces.

  And then one of these, a round face, adorned with thick spectacles, like the ones I used to wear before they got me the contact lenses, emerges from the sea of confusion and lunges towards me.

  Then I realise.

  It’s my father.

  He’s happy to see me. I’m pleased he’s happy, but I’m not sure why he’s crying.

  ‘Oh Marki, Marki,’ he slobbers, stroking my face like he used to when I was a little boy. I try to say something, something loving, but my mouth is just opening and closing, my face feels damp, and no sounds are coming out.

  *

  When I stand, and my father lets me lean on him, it feels nice. Warm. Comforting. Like those wet autumn days when you finally get home after school, and Mutti has a steaming mug of cocoa waiting for you. But when I try to move my legs, they wobble and shake like jelly. And then I feel I’m going down. My head hits something. There’s more confusion. It doesn’t matter, I want to tell them. Nothing really matters. And then they’re strapping me onto something. I want to tell them not to, that I don’t want any more of the injections, that I don’t think they’re good for me. But I can’t summon the energy, and instead I let them carry me up the stairs and into the fresh air.

  Outside, there are blue lights flashing. They’re carrying me to a van with a red cross in the window. I try to remember what it is. Then the word comes to me through the fog. It’s an ambulance. An ambulance. I toy with the word in my head, rather proud of myself. It’s a nice word. It has a nice ring to it.

  *

  After a few days at home, my head begins to clear. And that woolly feeling starts to fade. I begin to feel very angry. I’ve been tricked, cheated and abused and yet my mother and father are trying to carry on as though nothing has changed. They want to talk about my future. The agent’s promises of a university place, of adjusted grades, seem to have evaporated.

  Towards the end of the first week, my father’s police boss, Major Müller, comes to see me with her deputy. I don’t particularly want to talk to them, but my father insists.

  We sit
across from each other in the lounge. I tell my mother and father I don’t want them to stay in the room.

  ‘How are you doing, Markus?’ Müller asks, once they’ve left.

  ‘Fine.’ I feel myself flushing, my heart racing.

  ‘Good. We’re glad you’re safe now, and back at home.’

  Yes, I think. But you know all about me now, don’t you? You know about me and poor Georg. You and your Stasi friends will always be watching me.

  Müller explains what was going on in Guben. We were being experimented on to try to ‘cure’ our homosexuality with hormone drugs and implants, backed by some American company. We were human guinea pigs. Just the thought of that utterly disgusts me. When the police raided Gaissler’s headquarters there were around ten of us there. Some had even had their brains operated on. But something went wrong with Dominik Nadel, and then his death was disguised as a sadistic murder, his body weighted down and dumped in a lake near Senftenberg. I never knew him, of course. But he knew Georg. In the same way I knew Georg. Blackmailed to be a ‘Romeo’ just as I was. So I feel a connection; almost like he’s a brother I never got to meet.

  ‘One of you managed to escape from the Theatre Island bunker,’ she continues. ‘We still don’t know who he was – we think he was Polish or Russian. We’re trying to check through all the records with them.’ The major has this look of motherly concern – as though she cares. But she’s just like them, the agents who got me to spy on poor Georg. She works for the state.

  That was the start of the whole scheme collapsing, she explains. The escaped youth was already drowning in the treacherous waters of the Neisse when they found him. But they shot him – just to make sure. ‘They’? I think. Who’s ‘they’? Why isn’t she saying ‘we’? Because that’s the truth. She’s one of them. She has blood on her hands just like the rest.

  What an awful, rotten country ours has become. Was there ever a dirtier, darker, more disgusting state, ruled by liars and criminals? And tricksters – like my former ‘friend’ Jan, luring people to that club at the behest of the Stasi, and then planting drugs on them. One way or another, I’m going to get out of it. One way or another.

  Not long after they leave, my father says he wants to have ‘a talk’. Even Mutti looks worried about this, and says she’d like to be there too. But Vati says it’s a father and son thing – just between us.

  *

  He drives us to the Weisse See in the Trabi and we sit in the car, looking out over the frozen lake. I remember when we used to come here when I was a little boy, all three of us, when they bought me some skates. Other kids would be skating round with their parents, but mine were never that sporty. They’d just help me put my skates on and then leave me to it. If I got teased by other girls and boys because of my clumsiness, then that was just hard luck. Once, after I’d had a bad fall and cut my face where my glasses severed the skin, I’d refused to go the next week. That was the only time Vati came with me – not actually skating, just holding my hand as he waddled around, trying to keep his balance.

  I hear him sigh now, and focus back on the present.

  ‘It’s a pretty spot, isn’t it? Especially when it’s all frozen over like this,’ he smiles.

  I nod, but don’t smile back.

  ‘Your mother and I are very worried about you, Markus. We know you’ve been through an ordeal, and it will take time to get over it. But we need to have a chat about your future plans. To see if there’s anything we can do to help you.’

  I start humming. I know it infuriates him.

  ‘Don’t do that, Markus. You’re not a ten-year-old boy now, you’re an adult.’

  ‘Why have we come here?’ I ask.

  ‘Because I need to have a serious talk with you.’

  ‘About what?’

  My father swallows. This is difficult for him, I know. But why should I make it easy? The difficulty is caused by his prejudices.

  ‘Your future . . . and your lifestyle choices.’

  I can’t help laughing. I see his face start to redden.

  ‘We will try to support you. I will try to see things from your point of view. But you know that if you continue with your current . . .’ His voice tails off. He still can’t bring himself to mention the unmentionable. ‘All I’m saying is you need to understand the dangers. You know how much prejudice there is against—’

  ‘Against what?’

  I want to provoke him into uttering the word. But he won’t. Behind the thick glasses, tears begin to form in his eyes.

  53

  The atmosphere in the Strausberger Platz flat was one of restrained hatred between Müller and Emil. She still hadn’t confronted him. While the investigation had been under way she had just wanted to concentrate on her work. She realised he didn’t really know what was wrong – for him, it was simply a continuation of their row from the Sunday night.

  Müller had wanted time, too, to decide what she wanted to do. At the back of her mind, a constant refrain: he is the father of your children. He had the right to see them, and they may well in future years come to resent or even hate her if she denied them that right. Each time he’d tried to initiate sex, though, she’d pushed him away. He made her skin crawl. It wasn’t the homosexuality, the bisexuality, or whatever. She had no proof of that, and he would probably deny it, or invent some sort of a story to explain his behaviour.

  No. The problem, Müller told herself, was the lying. When claiming he had important meetings at the hospital, Emil had instead been travelling miles each Sunday evening to a club near the Polish border. You had to have a pretty strong reason to bother to do that. Whether it was to meet his Stasi agent friends, or to fuck youths, she had no idea. But it was clear – however you looked at it – that it was a betrayal.

  Before she confronted him, she decided to approach Helga.

  ‘Is there any way, if I paid, you could go to the cinema tonight, Helga? Or out for a meal, something like that? I need to have a serious talk with Emil.’

  Her grandmother nodded. ‘Of course, dear. But there’s no need for you to pay. I’ve plenty of money of my own. I’m living here rent free, remember?’

  Müller smiled. ‘You more than pay your way by helping with the childcare, so I insist. I just need an hour or so to talk to Emil. And it might get a bit . . . fractious, shall we say. So I think it’s better if you aren’t here.’

  ‘What about the twins? If you’re worried about my being here, isn’t it going to be a problem for them?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Müller. ‘I’ll wait till they’re fast asleep. They’re little terrors, but at least they’re both good sleepers.’

  Helga held her arms around Müller, and patted her back. ‘I can tell things have been bad between you two. Do you want to tell me about it, or would you rather I kept my nose out of it?’

  Müller took a step back but held her grandmother’s hands in hers. ‘To be honest, I don’t want to advertise what’s been going on, and I don’t want you to hate him. He’s still Jannika and Johannes’s father, and always will be. So it’s a delicate situation.’

  ‘Another woman?’

  ‘Something like that, but as I said, I don’t want to go into the details. What I will say, though, is that Emil is going to be moving out, at the very least for a trial period, but I expect – to be honest – that it will be for good. He still has his flat in the hospital. He’ll just have to move back in there.’

  *

  Emil was late back from work, if that was indeed where he’d been. Müller had no idea any more. At least it meant she, the twins and Helga had eaten. She’d already put the twins down and they were sleeping soundly, and Helga had set off for her night out.

  There was no point delaying things further. As soon as Emil was through the door, before he’d even taken his coat off, Müller asked him to sit at the dining table.

  He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘I’m tired, Karin. And I thought you weren’t sp
eaking to me.’

  ‘Just sit down,’ she ordered. Her tone brooked no argument.

  He sat in his coat, his briefcase on the table.

  She cleared her throat. ‘I want you to move out. Immediately. This evening.’

  ‘What? I know we haven’t been getting on but—’

  ‘This is my apartment, Emil. Not yours. I’m not negotiating. I’m telling you to leave. You won’t be homeless. You still have the hospital flat, though goodness knows what you use that for.’

  ‘Sorry? What are you trying to say? And what about the twins?’

  ‘I’m saying that our relationship is over. You’ll—’

  ‘Over?’

  ‘That’s right. We’re not compatible. You’ve been keeping secrets from me. I can’t have that. You’ll still have access to the twins, but it will be controlled access for the time being.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ll be able to see them, here, and I will go out. You won’t be able to take them with you anywhere.’

  ‘Well, that’s ridiculous. I don’t know what’s brought all this on, but I’m certainly not going to agr—’

  ‘You will agree to it. You’ll sign all the necessary papers.’ She sat down, and sighed, then, looking up, held his gaze. ‘You see, Emil, it’s not just that you’ve been lying to me. It’s not just that you have been keeping secrets – pretty fundamental secrets – from me. It’s that I know what those secrets are. And I have the evidence.’ To an extent, this was a bluff. Yes, Tilsner had taken photos of those coming in and out of the club, but Müller had looked at them – there was nothing particularly incriminating in the ones of Emil, other than him going into the club with a younger man. It proved nothing. Tilsner hadn’t managed to get any shots of Emil actually in a clinch with one of the youths. But Emil didn’t know that.

  His head slumped on his shoulders and he held his face in his hands. Eventually he raised his eye level to hers.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I’m a detective, Emil. Finding out is what I do.’