Baltic Approach

by Max Hertzberg

  She had about seventy metres on me, but I was fresh and didn’t have a heavy bag—I’d already reached the minor road she’d cut across, I’d made the wide pavement on the other side, half of it covered in fresh snow. Deep footsteps showed me the way, but I’d seen where she was heading—she’d disappeared into a shadowed nook in the wall of the flats, some kind of entrance.

  I reached the point just ten or fifteen seconds after her, sliding again on the ice as I tried to take the corner. This time I went down all the way, my shoulder twisting as my hip punched the concrete. I pressed on the ice with my hands, pulling my legs under me and launching myself into the dimly-lit entryway that led from the street into the yard behind the flats. I shoved my way past a mother, her pram hitting the side of the building, and slowed slightly as I left the passageway, finally stopping to scan the yard.

  Five storeys of flats above me on all sides, a free-standing, low building to the left—nursery? day-centre? polyclinic? Bins in drunken rows to the right, behind them a line of cars, all covered with varying amounts of snow. Every twenty metres, entrances with steps up to the doors. Footsteps in the snow everywhere. But no woman in a tan coat and woollen scarf.

  I walked along the row of cars, checking nobody was hiding behind or between them, but other than a child’s football, nothing.

  I’d lost her.

  Still breathing heavily, I went back through the ginnel to the road. Lütten had parked in a no-stopping zone, his door was open and he was standing by the side of the car waiting for me.

  I limped back to the car and my colleague gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder as I went past.

  “Want me to call it in?” he asked. He already had the radio receiver in his hand, the spiral cable stretching through the open door.

  I shook my head and lowered myself into the passenger seat. Lütten climbed in and fired up the engine, easing back into the traffic. Once my breath had slowed enough, I lit a cigarette. We headed deeper into Lichtenhagen, looking for a way back onto the arterial road to Rostock.

  “So who was that?” Lütten asked, shifting down and taking a left.

  “Know an Oberleutnant Mewitz? Might be in your department?”

  Lütten shook his head.

  “What about the county office? Any Mewitz there?” But I didn’t bother to wait for him to shake his head again, I already knew the answer. “The lady I was pursuing, you saw her? Brown scarf, brown coat made in West Germany, name of Weber Anna. An Inoffizielle Mitarbeiterin for a certain First Lieutenant Mewitz of the District Administration. Since you’ve just told me there’s no Mewitz in your unit, I have to ask myself which is more likely: that you’re mistaken, or the lady isn’t who she said she is.”

  “Got one of those for me?” Asked Lütten as he turned left.

  I fed him my cigarette, I hadn’t made much progress on it anyway.

  “It’s not just about the grey haired man we left behind in Bad Doberan is it?” he asked. I decided to ignore his question, but he hadn’t finished. “It’s bigger than just some Westler behaving suspiciously. Want to tell me how this woman fits into the picture?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, wondering what would happen to my lungs if I took another coffin nail.

  42

  Bad Doberan

  Back at the Schillerstrasse villa in Bad Doberan, Lütten’s big goon was sitting on a kitchen chair at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed over his broad chest. When we came in through the connecting door to the garage, he bobbed up, feet together, fingers pressed to the seams of his beige trousers.

  “Na, Prager?” said Lütten, looking around the hallway.

  “No incidents to report, Comrade Second Lieutenant.”

  “Very good, at ease. Bit chilly in here, isn’t it?” He put a hand on the cast iron radiator.

  “Furnace went out an hour ago, thought it better not to leave my post to tend it.”

  Lütten took his goon off to the cellar to get the central heating going again, and I headed upstairs to see how our charge was doing.

  Merkur was still on his bed, overcoat wrapped around him, fleece shapka keeping his head warm.

  “Did you get them?” he asked.

  I gave him a cigarette and parked myself on the windowsill to admire the moonlit view: the old monastery walls, a couple of barns, one with fire-blackened ribs exposed to the snow; beyond that, the thin copper spire of the minster pointing at the moon’s flat face.

  Merkur was smoking his cigarette with the intensity found only in those who have had to do without for a while. He watched the glowing tip between puffs, reluctant to let it out of his sight for more than a second or two.

  “We confirmed that the people you named actually work at the shipyard,” I told him. “But so far we only have your word for it that they’re working for an imperialist agency.”

  He bowed his head, as if conceding the point and took another toke on the almost spent cigarette. “I’m sorry I couldn’t provide proof—the BND run them, not my outfit. Those are just names that recently crossed my desk, I happened to remember them. I have others—if you’re interested?”

  “You just happened to remember a handful of names?” I eyed him from my place by the window. The bit about the BND, the West German foreign intelligence service, that made sense, but I didn’t like the rest of his explanation—too verbose. Wordy answers often point to guilty consciences. I watched him finish the nail and mash it onto the saucer that served for an ashtray. “No need for more names just yet, there’ll be time for that later.”

  I turned my back on him, looking out into the night again, re-running the conversation. If Merkur only had a non-specific and possibly historical awareness of the network he’d just betrayed, then why would Bonn be so anxious to extricate them the moment he returned late from his holiday?

  Contradictions. All Merkur had offered since the moment I first saw him on that video screen in Berlin were contradictions. He wasn’t who he’d first claimed to be. He didn’t want to be tailed, yet was happy to meet and talk with me. He had information he knew I wanted, but whenever we got close to talking about it, he retreated into diversion and dissimulation.

  The more time I spent with him, the more I felt my nerves stretching. And now my patience was going the same way. When I’d entered the room just a minute or two ago, I’d had a mental list of questions for Merkur, now that list had blurred and unravelled. There was only one thing I could still remember. I turned away from the window and observed Merkur for a moment, noted with gratification how the fingers of his right hand were drumming on his lap—the first sign of nervousness I’d seen in the man.

  “A young lady, late twenties. Blonde, long hair. Fair skin and blue eyes. Above average height, slight build, fine features,” I described Anna Weber, the mysterious maid from the Hotel Neptun, the woman who had got away from me not half an hour since.

  “Sounds like you like her?” It was an oddly flippant remark, particularly coming from Merkur. I ignored it.

  “Recall seeing anyone of her description, perhaps in Warnemünde?”

  “She one of your honey traps?” Merkur’s gaze was loose, but his fingers had stopped their drumming. “Plenty of those in the basement disco at the hotel—what’s it called? Da Drin?”

  Daddeldu, but I didn’t bother telling him.

  “Could you be more precise?” He asked, fingers dancing again. “It could be anyone, the person you describe. Plenty of pretty girls around.”

  I considered giving him Anna’s name, watching for a reaction. Instead, I left the room.

  Downstairs, Lütten was poking around the food cupboard in the hope of finding more appetising ingredients than I had earlier. There was no sign of the big goon.

  “Told Prager to remain available,” he told me. “Good man, but won’t get much further than Feldwebel or Oberfeldwebel. Not too fast on his feet, you see, but reliable.” He closed the cupboard doors and turned to face me. “There really isn’t anything to eat, is t
here?”

  I opened a bottle of beer and sat at the table, facing the open door to the hall so I could keep an eye on the staircase.

  “If you can hold out for an hour or so, I’ll go and find something,” he suggested.

  I nodded agreement, even though Lütten was already pulling on his coat.

  “Wait, I need a favour—can you check for any Westerners with the name Weber Anna? And their current registered whereabouts?” I gave him her description for good measure. “Get someone to phone around the police stations in Rostock and the surrounding counties.”

  Lütten returned within the hour. He hefted a nylon shopping bag onto the table and took out bread, a jar of sauerkraut, potatoes, Leberwurst, a few apples and a pot of mustard. From another bag he pulled three portions of Bockwurst wrapped in newspaper and three bread rolls to go with them.

  “I’ve got someone working on finding your Weber, but it’ll take a while. I’ll phone later to check on progress.”

  Fair enough, the right people wouldn’t be around on a Saturday evening, everything slows down at weekends. I grunted my thanks as I put one of the sausages on a plate, cut the roll and smeared mustard on the side to take up to Merkur later. I could have invited him down to the kitchen to eat with us, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to him any longer.

  More importantly, I didn’t want Lütten listening to him, either.

  “What about tonight, watching the subject? We could do half and half?” Lütten asked, his eyes on the crate of beer in the corner, wondering whether to take another one.

  “I’ll take the first shift.”

  “Fine. I’ll turn in then, it’s been a long day. See you at 0200 hours.”

  Compared to sentry duty when I was doing national service, standing for hours in sun, rain and snow, this was an easy watch. I had a chair, I was indoors, I could move around as much as I wanted to. Embrace the boredom and don’t fall asleep—that’s all you have to do.

  The house creaked in the wind, and as the furnace died down, the radiators ticked and clattered and the cold crept through the cracked putty of the window frames and under the door to the cellar. Lütten snored, interrupting himself with nonsense words. Perhaps he dreamt in Russian.

  Merkur slept quietly. Too quietly. Once or twice I crept to his door and listened, wondering whether he’d found a way to cut through the bars and escape, but the silence was punctuated every so often by a short snore.

  Nobody with a conscience could sleep that easily.

  43

  Bad Doberan

  I was woken by Lütten knocking on my bedroom door the next morning. After he’d relieved me in the early hours, I had gone to bed but hardly rested, my frustration with Merkur somehow bringing an ever sharper and clearer Sanderling to my dreams.

  “You shout in your sleep,” he told me from the doorway.

  I rubbed my eyes, tried to think of a comeback, but let my head fall back on the pillow. I wasn’t in any state to be witty.

  “Breakfast downstairs, coffee’s on the boil.”

  “Coffee?” I lifted my head again, but Lütten had already gone. I could hear his footsteps on the stairs.

  In the bathroom, I splashed some water around then pulled on my clothes and went to check on Merkur.

  “Morning,” I offered, but Merkur was too busy to answer. He was on the floor, doing press-ups. “Coffee’s on the way.”

  Down in the kitchen, Lütten was playing mother. He had slices of bread piled up on a plate and he’d laid the table for two.

  I stuck a knife in the Leberwurst and scraped it onto a slice of bread, did the same with the mustard and then held a cup out for Lütten to fill.

  He poured the coffee slowly, taking care to ensure most of the grains stayed in the pan. “Subject gets his breakfast first, does he?”

  I couldn’t think of a witty response to that either.

  “Breakfast!” Merkur seemed pleased enough with what I had to offer, even if it didn’t come close to the standard he’d enjoyed at the Hotel Neptun. “Will we have another chat today? Perhaps about Gisela Bauer?”

  I didn’t answer. It seemed I was developing new habits.

  “So what are you going to talk to the subject about today?” asked Lütten, when I arrived back in the kitchen.

  He was still pushing, trying to find out why I was unwilling to give up Merkur. Fair enough, he was helping me, and there was no need for him to do so.

  “When will you hear back about that search for Weber?”

  “I’ll head out and find a call box now.” He washed down the last mouthful of bread with strong, black coffee.

  Lütten left, and I took a notebook and pencil out of my bag and made some notes. I knew what questions I wanted to ask the subject, I just wasn’t sure how best to get the answers I was after.

  Today was Sunday, I’d have to pass Merkur on to HA IX first thing tomorrow morning. So if I didn’t get the information I wanted today, I possibly wouldn’t ever get it. I’d already crossed the line, ach, who am I kidding? I’d crossed several lines, and I’d have to face the consequences. I just hoped whatever Merkur knew about Sanderling and her death would be worth it.

  I finished jotting down my questions and walked around the kitchen, calming my nerves before heading upstairs.

  “Ready to begin?” chirped Merkur as I walked in. He was back in position on his bed, feet on the floor, back straight. I noticed his forefinger, tapping his thigh again. Good, nicotine withdrawal was still doing its work.

  Over at the windowsill, I lit a cigarette I didn’t need, pretending not to notice the subject’s eyes follow the blue smoke as it swirled gently upwards.

  “Tell me about yourself, Herr Doktor Portz.”

  Merkur pulled his eyes away from my cigarette and bent his fingers into a fist to stop them fidgeting. He took a deep breath. “Do we assume I’ll soon be handed over to the professionals?”

  I didn’t react.

  “We could just cut to what we both want from this—what do you say to that? You want to find out more about Gisela Bauer, who you call Sanderling. I don’t know why you’re interested in her, I don’t need to know—but I’ll tell you what I have. And I’ll tell you why I came over here. The deal is, you have to promise to do your best to make sure I get what I want. How does that sound?”

  “Depends on what exactly you want.”

  “It’s simple: make sure I don’t get sent back to the West. I want to stay here, I’m prepared to work. I’m prepared to talk to your counter intelligence and foreign intelligence. It’ll be full disclosure on operations and operational procedures, but I won’t name any names. I don’t want anyone to suffer because of my decisions.”

  “Sounds reasonable.” It didn’t sound reasonable, it wouldn’t be as easy as that when it came to the proper interrogations, but why tell him something he already knew?

  “I want a decent life here. No prison, no house arrest. Just an ordinary life. I’d like to bring my wife over, we get to have a normal life. Is that a deal?”

  Once again, he was trying to take control of the interrogation before I’d even started, but I didn’t mind. Promise him whatever he wanted, find out what he knew about Sanderling. Depending on how quickly he was prepared to talk, I could take him back to Berlin and hand him over that same evening.

  But his proposal also bothered me—it was too simple. After all the deception of the last eleven days, it sounded too easy.

  “OK, let’s say I’m interested. But why me? What makes you think I can give you what you want?”

  “You’re from Berlin, you’re not one of these local fish-heads. You’re carved from different wood than that fellow you’ve got downstairs. You also know about me, more than you’re letting on—how else did you know to ask about this Sanderling?”

  I turned to look out of the window, just in case my face betrayed any reaction. Hadn’t Merkur been the first to mention Sanderling? When was it? On the train to Herrnburg a couple of days earlier? Or had he
already mentioned it on the frozen coastline at Heiligendamm?

  My cigarette had burnt down to the cardboard filter, so I stubbed it out on the windowsill and left it there, already reaching into my pocket for the next one. Outside, children were playing in the snow—snowballs, snowmen, snow-angels. Adults walked around the monastery grounds, admiring the brickwork or giving praise to god—whatever it is that normal people do on a Sunday.

  “So is it a deal?” Merkur asked again.

  I turned back to him. Cigarette packet in hand, I crossed the room. He took a nail and I lit him up with a match. It was as good as a handshake.

  44

  Bad Doberan

  “Arnold Seiffert and I, we had it all worked out. We spent months putting together material we thought would be useful to the German Democratic Republic. But then you lot sent him back—that’s where it all went wrong. Arnold was arrested. They couldn’t prove anything, though, we were too clever for that—he’d registered his intent to visit his aunt and uncle over here and I’d signed it off and passed the paperwork to the relevant departments. Everything was above board, no rules broken, so in the end they had to release him.

  “But they kept him under house arrest while they sniffed around a bit more, looking for anything to back up their theories. Because I signed off on those visits, suspicion also fell on me. For all I know, my superior was a suspect too—he hadn’t objected to Seiffert’s trip either. But sooner or later they’ll find out about me and Arnold, about our plans to come over and bring the material with us. So now I’m here to ask for help.”

  I’d taken it slow, feeding in the odd question or prompt to keep him talking. But now it was time to steer the conversation to what I was interested in. IX would get the rest out of him in good time. “Was that when you became aware of Sanderling?”

  “No.” He shook his head. Then, contradicting himself: “Yes. Arnold told me she’d made contact.”