Baltic Approach

by Max Hertzberg

  11

  Berlin Lichtenberg

  The next morning I called Captain Dupski.

  “Hier Unterleutnant Reim, I have a written order from Lieutenant Colonel Schur—I’m to begin work on Secondary Operational Procedure Merkur with immediate effect.”

  “I’ll get back to you.” Dupski hung up.

  I smoked a cigarette, blew a speck of lint off my uniform sleeve, straightened the seams of my trousers then stared at the phone. It was another five minutes before it rang.

  “Major Kühn confirms your orders, but adds there’s to be no provoking the local units, particularly around Hotel Neptun. Have a good trip.”

  I caught the mid-morning express to Rostock, keen not to give the brass any time to change their minds. As we beat our way through the frosted forests and along the shores of icy lakes, I congratulated myself on my decision to come by train. The heating in my compartment was on the blink, rasping out only the barest of warmth, but four hours in the Trabant would have been a lot colder and a lot more uncomfortable.

  Gratified by the thought, I pulled my winter coat tighter, adjusted my hat and put my head down.

  I woke as we pulled out of Waren, propped my eyes open long enough to clock the deep snow spilling over roads and onto the frozen lakes and, aiming a hopeful kick at the heating, I pulled my hat over my eyes and settled back for another half-hour.

  We arrived at Rostock main station at just after half past one. Not having phoned ahead for a car, I had to pick my way along ice-shrouded pavements to August-Bebel-Strasse.

  I hadn’t been to Rostock Centre before, but like most other MfS District Administrations, the Rostockers had bagsied themselves one of the best blocks in the city. Four storeys of heavy stone and brickwork, with windows that could outstare any local imprudent enough to glance up as they went past.

  But I wasn’t quite at my destination yet. I didn’t take the steps to the main entrance, I walked past the tall red flags, rattling in sleet driven by a hard Baltic wind, finally taking cover in the pre-fabricated offices beside the main administrative block.

  I showed my clapperboard to the guard just inside the doors and asked for the transport pool. He pointed the way, and I followed my nose until I was back outside, this time in a sheltered courtyard behind the building. A kiosk at the end of a row of garages seemed my best hope, and I rapped on the glass, rousing an Unteroffizier from the depths of an illustrated magazine.

  I slipped my paperwork through the opening in the window and gave him a moment to digest what he was looking at. It took him longer than a moment—they’re pretty slow up here—but when he finally got to the end, he stood up straight, shouted some orders in the direction of the garages and stamped the forms.

  “Kraftwagen für den Genossen Unterleutnant,” he snapped as a mechanic slouched over, kneading a rag that had more oil on it than his fingers.

  The sergeant handed me a carbon copy and stood up straight again, waiting for me to turn my back so he could return to his dirty mag.

  “Anything particular?” asked the mechanic as he led the way to a row of unmarked vehicles.

  I looked over the cars: several Wartburgs of various vintages, a recent red Polo, a Volkswagen Beetle with rusty hubs and a dozen Trabants, both saloons and hatchbacks. Most of the vehicles were under several centimetres of soft snow that was crusted with a layer of hard ice.

  I pointed to a beige Wartburg 353 saloon in the middle of the row and waited while the mechanic went to find the keys. The courtyard may have been sheltered, but the wind still found a way in, and the sleet fell steeply. My shoes and the cuffs of my trousers were soaked, the shoulders of my coat were powdered white. I wanted nothing more than to stamp my feet and clap my hands together—anything to get the circulation going—but behind me, I could feel the eyes of the Uffzi on me, and above and around me, uncounted windows glared down. Right now, as an officer of Berlin Centre, pride was more important than comfort.

  Once the keys arrived, I got into the Wartburg and while the mechanic scraped the windscreen clear. I played with the choke and the pedal until the engine finally agreed to fire. As soon as it settled down to a sweet clatter, I put the heating on full and drove out of the compound, stopping only at the boom to show my clapperboard.

  I didn’t bother with a courtesy call to the Rostock brass, they’d find out soon enough that I was in town.

  12

  Rostock

  As soon as I was out of sight of the District Administration, I pulled over at the side of the road and rooted around in my bag for the map of Rostock.

  I opened it up and spread it out on the passenger seat to check my route. Easy enough: stay with the tram tracks for a bit then follow the other cars.

  Traffic was light, and despite the ice-slick roads, I was on the four lane arterial to Warnemünde within ten minutes, the shiny new housing blocks of Evershagen, Lütten Klein and Lichtenhagen on the left, the bridge crane of the old harbour and the tensile cable crane of the Warnow Shipyard on the right.

  The road narrowed at the edge of Warnemünde, and I parked the car there, leaving my bag but taking the map, and picked my way through back streets until I was on the sea front.

  I wanted to get a feel for the place. On paper, Warnemünde didn’t look particularly large, but what the map didn’t tell me was just how many tourists there were, even in the middle of winter.

  I wedged myself against a lamp post and looked out to sea. The rail-ferry was coming in from Denmark, churning the brash ice at the mouth of the terminal. Beyond the wide beach, the Baltic was frozen solid for a hundred metres or more, the grey water beyond hacked at the outer edges of the ice, trying to chisel chunks off, but only succeeding in freezing itself and adding to the mass. Isolated wedges of ice, taller than me, lay aground on the beach, blue in the pallid winter light.

  But more than the ice and the sea, it was the wind that got my attention. It slashed at the flags along the Promenade, whipped heavy sleet into my face and continuously grabbed at my hat and the edges of my coat, trying to find a way through to bare flesh. I twisted out of the weather, watching as the ferry turned, the frothing props agitating the sea ice even further.

  At the terminal, just visible over metal fences and high, concrete slab walls, a diesel shunter tethered to two lonely carriages sat and steamed, waiting for the boat to dock. I thought I could hear guard dogs barking, but perhaps it was just the scraping of wind over ice.

  I wasn’t achieving anything out here in the weather, I needed to make plans, and I couldn’t do that with the wind whistling through my ears. So I leaned into the storm again and staggered across the prom to the Teepott. A ridiculous building that looked like something a child had knocked up one slow summer’s afternoon: giant mussel shells resting on an oversized sandcastle. But, true to its name, it was warm inside, and it served tea.

  The window seats were all taken, even though their only view was of condensation running down the glass, so I sat at an empty table near the middle. Once my order had been taken, I pulled out my notebook and pen.

  I’d spent the last few days manoeuvring, trying to make sure I would be sent up here to Warnemünde. Now I was here, I had no clue how best to find out whether Merkur was a serious proposition, or had just been flirting with us.

  I’d have liked a small team for this—a couple of men watching the subject in the hotel, another brace on foot hanging around the entrance, and several more in cars parked in the vicinity. But this wasn’t Berlin—this was the Hotel Neptun we were talking about. There were so many operatives in that place, it was a wonder they had enough room for the guests.

  But none of those goons were at my disposal. Far from being able to use the assembled forces to keep an eye on Merkur, I’d have to do my best to stay out of their way. None of them were from my department—none of them were even from Berlin Centre. They were all from the District Administration or the county offices, and if they smelt a Prussian in their midst … let’s just say they woul
dn’t be falling over themselves to help him out.

  The tea arrived—I’d ordered tea rather than coffee or beer so I could see for myself how the cultured citizens in this Republic live—and I took a careful sip. I wasn’t convinced, but they say black tea is good for the brain. Whatever the truth of that claim, by the time I’d finished my glass, the page in front of me was still empty.

  I lit a cigarette.

  It boiled down to a straight choice: I could spend my days watching the front door of the hotel, waiting for Merkur to go for a stroll along the front, or I could get in there and see what the natives had to say about him.

  Berlin wouldn’t be pleased when they heard about it, but they weren’t here. By the time my report landed in front of Major Kühn, he might have forgotten the very clear orders he’d given regarding the Neptun.

  13

  Warnemünde

  From the door of the Teepott, I could see the Hotel Neptun further along the prom—it was hard to miss, the tallest building around, with letters a storey high shouting its name from the rooftop.

  I edged back into the café to check my map again—my first destination was the Kurhaus, and according to the map it was just this side of the hotel, not five hundred metres away. But those five hundred metres were exposed to heavy sleet slanting in from the sea.

  The Kurhaus, an Art Deco building with a wide flight of steps directly opposite the Neptun, was supposedly the cultural centre of the town—the place old ladies go on summer afternoons to hear the local brass band play.

  I ran up the steps and pushed through the doors and into the wide entrance hall. A grey door on my left was marked Administration—sounded right to me, so after I’d taken my dripping coat off, I gave it a knock.

  A key scratched in the lock, and the door opened a few centimetres. I stood close in, body screening my opened clapperboard from any casual passersby.

  A man with grey skin that sagged beneath his glasses and an unkempt moustache below his nose was peering through the crack between door and jamb. He clocked my ID and grunted, but before letting me in, his eyes swivelled over my shoulder to check I was alone.

  The room wasn’t large, the only light came from dull sunlight that had struggled through brisk clouds and net curtains. A couple of desks and chairs were in front of me. To my left, beneath the windows, a second operative sat on a platform, peering through binoculars mounted on a fixed tripod. A range of cameras fitted with various lenses were permanently mounted in a row along the windows.

  The first operative was still standing in my way, preventing further ingress. He wanted to know who he was dealing with, but wasn’t sure how polite to play it—the page of the MfS clapperboard that you flash around shows only photograph and signature of the bearer, along with information about location of your posting and a series of stamps to prove everything is up to date. They didn’t know what rank I held, nor which department I represented.

  I decided to put them out of their misery: “Unterleutnant Reim, from Berlin Centre. I want to take a look out of your windows.”

  Far from relaxing, the operative began to chew his moustache. He looked to his colleague who was now observing us from the platform—unannounced visits from Berlin were never good news, and these two didn’t know what to expect.

  “Relax,” I told them. “I’m interested in a subject booked into the Neptun.”

  And the two of them did relax, they told me their names and ranks, I forgot the names immediately, but they were both NCOs, so nothing for me to worry about. Sure, they’d remember my name, and they’d report it back to District Administration, but that was fine—at some point Berlin would get around to informing the locals of my visit anyway.

  I took the steps to the platform and picked up a pair of binoculars from the shelf. There was no need for them—less than a hundred metres away, a uniformed doorman greeted guests while a car hop found a spot for the Audis and BMWs in the car park in front of the Hotel.

  I watched as a Mercedes R 107 pulled up at the red carpet. The doorman hastened to open the door for a woman in a fur coat and sunglasses while a bellhop opened the boot and took out a set of fawn suitcases.

  The driver, wearing a camel-hair coat and pressed trousers, walked to the back of his car to supervise the handling of the luggage. He held on to his hat to keep it firm against the wind that came in hard under the canopy, and with the other hand he took out some money. A green banknote, could have been twenty of our Marks, more likely to be five Westmarks—cheaper for the Westerner, more valuable to the Easterner. The bellhop pocketed the note with an unctuous nod.

  Only when the couple had gone into the hotel and the car was parked did I turn back to the colleagues in the room. They were both still gawking at me, waiting for what? Blessings from the capital?

  “Do all the guests come this way?” I asked the man next to me. His hair was a little long for the Firm, half-way to his collar, and like his comrade, he had poor skin and an untidy moustache.

  “Pedestrians come up from the Prom and use this entrance,” said Long Hair, in a wide, slow Mecklenburg accent. “Entrance to disco and bowling alley round the back, but that’s in the evening,” he added. Long pauses seemed to be part of the speech pattern round here.

  I turned to the window again, angling my head low to see the full height of the building opposite. Fifteen floors for accommodation, plus a few storeys at the bottom for entertainment, dining, shopping and administration. Each room had a balcony, tinted windows angled to catch a view of the sea. Large suites at the top for special guests. I’d never been here before, but I’d spent a lot of time in Main Department VI, which kept an eye on tourists, among other things. I’d heard the stories about the Hotel Neptun: everyone from Fidel Castro to several West German Chancellors—Willi Brandt and Helmut Schmidt among them—had stayed here. It was that kind of place.

  I wanted to get inside, have a look around. See where Merkur was staying. But this was a sensitive place—it was obvious why I’d been told to tread carefully: Neptun was a favourite destination of Westerners and a major source of hard-currency, and that was before you considered the columns of workers from our Republic who enjoyed their annual holidays at the hotel, courtesy of the trade unions. Nowhere else in the Republic did East and West mingle so readily, not even in Berlin.

  That’s why the Hotel Neptun had more informants and operatives fizzing around than the May Day parade on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin. With that many colleagues on the scene, it wasn’t going to be easy to avoid tap-dancing on a few toes.

  14

  Warnemünde

  It was warm and dry in the observation room at the Kurhaus, so I decided to stay with the comrades, keeping half an eye on the window in case Merkur decided to turn up early.

  I knew he’d be travelling by train, and I’d checked the timetable: the daily Cologne to Rostock express stopped at Osnabrück, where Merkur lived, and that seemed the most likely service for him to take—the other connections required several changes, which lengthened the journey considerably. From Rostock main station, a taxi or the S-Bahn would bring him to Warnemünde, where I’d be waiting.

  But waiting makes for hungry work. It was a long time since I’d had breakfast, and a civilised cuppa in an architecturally over-reached tea-room hadn’t helped to fill the hole in my belly.

  “What do the comrades eat when they’re on observation duty?” I asked the room at large.

  The colleagues shared a look, then the eyes of Glasses-moustache flicked towards a briefcase lined up against the wall next to the door.

  “Just outside the back-entrance, there’s a Kaufhalle-” began the other one.

  “But surely assiduous comrades don’t abandon their posts?” I tut-tutted, watching as the one with long hair glanced towards a leather satchel, neatly positioned next to the briefcase.

  I climbed down from the platform and stood by the bags. “Do you mind?”

  They didn’t mind. They couldn’t see an officer starve, could
they? So I helped myself. An apple and a piece of sausage from a battered aluminium lunch box, and a piece of bread and butter from a bright plastic box.

  “Thanks comrades,” I said between mouthfuls, but they didn’t seem to appreciate my attempt at being polite.

  It was completely dark by the time Merkur arrived. Buoys and ships winked out at sea, but the Hotel Neptun was lit up like the Palace of the Republic. Even the doorman stood under a bright light in front of the car park.

  A blue Volga taxi pulled up, and the staff hurried out to extract the visitor. Merkur was bustled inside before the wind could sweep the old man away.

  I angled my watch towards the window, trying to catch enough reflected light to read the time. While I did that, I checked whether either of the colleagues had noticed my interest in the new guest at the hotel.

  Glasses-moustache was dozing in a chair, a greasy patch on the wall showing this wasn’t the first time he’d rested his head there. Number two was checking his cameras. He’d taken a couple of snapshots of Merkur as he’d exited the taxi, just as he’d done for all the arriving Westerners.

  Still staring at the watch face, I considered how long I should stay. Another half-hour would be enough, no need to let this pair know which particular hotel guest I was interested in.

  I left the Kurhaus by the delivery entrance, skidding along the concrete service road until I reached the small supermarket on a parallel street, where I merged with shoppers cradling their purchases as they picked their way through damp snow-drifts.

  As I came out of the side-street, the wind caught me, and I had to twist away in order to keep my balance. The sleet had eased into wet snow, dampening the exposed side of my face. I bent into the wind, one hand on my hat, the other across my chest, holding my coat tight against the gusts off the sea.

  Turning the corner and needing to find my balance again, I shunted myself along the front until I was in front of the Hotel Neptun, then let the wind push me up the path leading to the main door.