My shoulders sagged as I expelled the air in my lungs. I pulled my tie loose, undid my top button and reached down to open the bottom drawer, all in one practised sweep.
“Fancy a drink?” I asked my visitor.
Lütten didn’t stay long, just a couple of glasses to check there were no hard feelings. Sure, he’d shopped me to the brass, but before that, he’d gone along with my freelance mission.
Even if he hadn’t grassed me up, I would have run out of time anyway. Still, another ten minutes with Merkur would have been nice, I might have been able to narrow down the information he was peddling about the mole in HV A. Maybe he would have finally told me what he knew about Sanderling.
When Lütten left, I set up camp on the floor behind my desk, just a greatcoat over the lino, my bag for a pillow. Until a few months ago, I’d had the soldier’s ability to sleep whenever and wherever needed. Now I’d be glad if I managed a short doze.
My travel alarm-clock went off at four-thirty the next morning—if Major Kühn wanted to catch me out he’d need to get up earlier than that. A catlick wash in the toilets down the corridor and a moment in front of the mirror, pondering my future. I’d been ordered to wait in my office, but I hadn’t eaten since breakfast in the Bad Doberan safe house. I needed food.
The schnapps had taken the edge of my hunger last night, but it wouldn’t be a such a good idea to start drinking again this morning—I needed solids in my belly, if only to dampen the smell of stale alcohol on my breath.
A glance out of the window to check Kühn’s car wasn’t in its parking place, and I left the building, hurrying across to the canteen. I was back at my desk within ten minutes, admiring the tray loaded with boiled egg, sliced bread, margarine and mixed-fruit jam. And the top-prize: two litres of strong coffee in a flask. If being confined to Berlin Centre looked like this, then I had no complaints.
I had more than enough time to think about my situation while I ate breakfast, not that there was much to think about, and not that I hadn’t had enough time to dwell on it already. I’d borrowed time over the weekend, hoping to find out more about my dead colleague, and now I had to wait while the brass calculated the interest. The initial failure to follow orders may have been tolerated if I’d immediately delivered Merkur into custody, but by hanging on to him I’d gone against virtually every standing order pertaining to the detention and interrogation of subjects. Now it was time to face the consequences.
And one of the more minor consequences would inevitably involve Kühn trotting out the old Chekist chestnut about steady hands and cool heads.
51
Berlin Lichtenberg
“Steady hands! Every Chekist needs steady hands—but without a cool head and a firm class standpoint the operative is at the mercy of the hot heart that beats for the class struggle, for the strengthening and the protection of the achievements of Socialism!”
I stood in front of Major Kühn’s desk, back as hard and straight as the bed I’d lain on that night, eyes burning holes in the wallpaper exactly forty-five centimetres above Kühn’s receding hairline. I wasn’t listening to what he was saying, but I wasn’t expected to listen—just to be present and at attention.
He had my written report in front of him—perhaps he’d even read it—but first he wanted to share his concerns.
“This is ZAIG, we’re the ones who ensure the comrades in other departments have unfailingly clean hands. We have a reputation to uphold, far more so than other staff at the Ministry—how can we do that when you’re up north causing this, this …” and here the major struggled to find a word that could contain what I had done. “We now have a political-operational Havarie,” was what he finally came up with. Not a bad attempt: a technical catastrophe.
His clockwork slowly ran down, first there were gaps between the sentences, then between the words. I stood there and didn’t let my eyes move from the chosen spot on the wall, but I had registered the slackening force and rhythm of Kühn’s speech.
When my ears picked up the rasp of rough paper being turned over, I started to pay more attention. I allowed my eyes to dart downwards, far enough to confirm that Kühn was leafing through my report. I’d restructured my reasons for taking Merkur off the train, moving his revelation about the mole forward and remaining silent about the morsels of information about Sanderling with which he’d tempted me.
“A mole?” the major asked, his voice sharp with apprehension. “The interdepartmental committee took the decision to close Secondary Operational Procedure Merkur on the grounds that the subject did not meet the degree of reliability and factual accuracy necessary to authorise a continuing investigation. Yet you, without authority, effectively re-opened the operational procedure!”
My field of vision extended far enough to see his hairline lift as he raised his face to look at me. “And a mole? Comrade Second Lieutenant, could you not have found any other reason for disobeying orders?”
Another lift of the head, longer this time, he was staring at me. “At ease, Comrade Reim,” he sighed.
I spread my legs a little and allowed my back to relax, but kept my eyes on the wall. I could understand his wariness—any news of a mole is bad news. Always. Regardless of whether the information is true or not, the hunt for a mole turns whole departments upside down, causing trouble throughout the ministry. Questions would be asked of the interdepartmental committee, the first would be why they had not just once, but twice ordered the removal of Merkur from the territory of the GDR. Kühn had good reason to be sore at me, I was the one who’d dumped this Havarie on his lap.
I got off lightly—a bollocking from the major and suspension from duty while the interdepartmental committee considered whether and how to act on Merkur’s information. In fact, Kühn had been so exercised by the idea of the mole that he hadn’t thought to ask about the maid from the hotel, even though Lütten must have told him how I’d been picked up while observing Anna Weber’s lodgings.
Captain Dupski levered himself off the wall he’d been propping up while I received my lecture, and accompanied me back to my office. He didn’t say anything, not because he wanted to show his disapproval, it was just that he didn’t care any more. He was coming up to retirement and his career was at a dead end. Maybe that’s why I risked a question.
“Were you at the committee meeting when they decided to expel Merkur?”
Dupski didn’t respond. He stood in the doorway while I changed back into civilian clothes. He didn’t watch, as far as I could tell, he was just standing there, bored. Eyes glazed.
I picked up my bag and waited for him to give me space to pass through the door, but he didn’t move. His eyes shifted, focussed on me, then he gave me a nod. Not a ready now? kind of nod, it was an answer to the question I’d asked five minutes earlier, the significance underlined by eye contact that went on longer than comfortable.
“Is that a yes?” I asked. “You were there? Anyone particularly keen on making sure the subject left the country?”
Dupski stepped back from the doorway and we walked out of the building. Halfway across the courtyard, he turned his head and, in a tone of voice usually reserved for commenting on the weather, said: “HV A,” and gave me the same long stare.
So foreign intelligence had been the ones pressing for Merkur to be sent home. Perhaps not that much of a surprise.
We arrived at the Magdalenenstrasse exit, I showed the sentry my clapperboard, then surrendered it to Dupski, giving him a sloppy salute as I did so.
Dupski didn’t frown or smile or return my salute. He turned to trudge back through the snow-pocked courtyards to his warm office.
52
Berlin Friedrichshain
I took the U-Bahn home and went to bed. There would be blank days stretching ahead of me, nothing to do but sit and indulge my preoccupation with Sanderling. Maybe she’d let me sleep, maybe she wouldn’t. If I drank enough, it wouldn’t matter.
Afternoon came and I got out of bed. I took a shower, exe
rcised the stiffness out of my knee and ankle then crossed to the window to admire the monochrome world of Berlin in winter. Steel cloud above, dirty snow and ice below. The car opposite was grey too, but it wasn’t as familiar as the weather.
From this angle I couldn’t see inside, but the driver-side window was cracked open a couple of centimetres. Only one reason to have a window open in winter, and that’s to stop the windscreen fogging up when you’re sitting inside.
I pulled on my clothes and went down to the street. The driver of the grey car saw me coming and looked the other way, perhaps hoping I’d be stupid enough to believe he was waiting for someone.
A rap on the window and he turned to face me. A young operative, bum-fluff on his upper lip, warm woollen cap on his head. Probably his first field experience.
“Comrade, I need to go shopping, give me a lift, won’t you?”
Poor lad didn’t know which way to look or what to say. Didn’t make any difference, because I was already pulling open the passenger door and climbing in.
“Centrum department store at Ostbahnhof,” I told him. I watched his eyes widen as he processed the information, probably remembering the course on tracking, the bit where they told you department stores are the most difficult environment to keep hold of your subject’s tail.
But that wasn’t the reason I wanted to go to the Centrum—I no longer had access to the small but well stocked supermarket at Berlin Centre, and around here the Centrum was my best shot at getting a decent range of goods without having to queue in the cold for a trolley.
But I was kind to the lad. I made no attempt to shake him off in the Centrum. I even gave him my shopping bags to hold as collateral. In fact, with an extra pair of hands and a vehicle, I could pick up a few of crates of beer and a few bottles of Doppelkorn along with the rest of my shopping. I made sure to buy some food as well as cigarettes and alcohol—reports would doubtless be written about this trip, and I wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.
I piled a few kilos of potatoes, a loaf of grey bread, a pack of overpriced coffee, a few shrinkled apples, a triangular carton of milk and a few cans of Eberswalder sausages in the trolley before leading the kid back to the car.
A familiar-looking, dark blue Shiguli with Rostock plates was parked on my street—I spotted it as we turned the corner, but was careful not to look inside as we drove past. The kid parked opposite my flat and helped me schlep my purchases up the stairs before I sent him back to his post in the cold. I didn’t feel like company, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to share my space with a little Pinscher like him.
After putting some potatoes on to boil, I went back to the window and looked down the street to the corner, standing off to one side so the young operative couldn’t see me. The Shiguli was still there, and from this angle I thought I could make out a figure behind the wheel, although it may have been the head-rest.
Stepping further away from the window, I broke a fresh deck of cigarettes and wondered what Lütten wanted. Had he been here on official business, he’d have been knocking on my front door by now. If he was here for his own reasons, he’d have to wait for an opportunity to get into my block unobserved. Either way, it wasn’t my problem.
I went back to the kitchen and checked how the potatoes were doing.
It gets dark early at this time of year, the windows in the flats opposite were already lit up by four o’clock, but I didn’t bother switching my lights on yet. I moved a chair so I had a good view of the street below and drank a beer. Lütten and the kid were within thirty metres of each other, but I was prepared to bet a crate of beer that Lütten was the only one who’d clocked the other.
At exactly 1630 hours, the kid started his car, it snorted blue smoke from the exhaust for a while before he drove off. The only other cars that had arrived and departed since I’d cracked my first beer were neighbours that I either knew personally or at least recognised. The kid hadn’t been relieved—Lütten was the only observer left.
He waited another twenty minutes before pulling out and driving down the street. He went slowly, but not too slowly. I couldn’t see him in the dark interior of his car, but I knew he’d be checking his wing mirrors, looking into each vehicle as he passed, alert for anybody sitting, watching.
The Shiguli turned the corner at the end and disappeared from view. I checked my watch, having another bet with myself—I reckoned it would be five minutes, ten if he couldn’t find a place to park.
It was 1704 before the buzzer went. I pressed the button to let him in and waited by the fish-eye lens in the flat door, only opening up when I saw Lütten was alone.
“Thought you might appreciate one of these,” he said, brandishing a bottle of Neubrandenburger Kümmel. He was beginning to grow on me.
Back in the living room, I drew the curtains before I switched the lights on, then went to find a couple of schnapps glasses and a second beer glass. I poured Lütten his beer, and he measured out the Kümmel.
“Proost,” he toasted me in his Mecklenburg accent.
“Prosit.”
He downed the spirit and started on his beer, all the while swivelling his head to take in what he could of my flat. There wasn’t much to see: telly in one corner, door to the bedroom opposite, couch in between. Tiny kitchen next to the bedroom and a short corridor to the front door, with the bathroom on one side and coat hooks on the other.
“Nice gaff. You here by yourself?” he asked.
I drank my beer and waited for him to tell me why he’d come. It took a while, but he got there in the end:
“Your friend, the tall blonde girl? I’ve been talking to her.”
“You found Anna Weber?”
“She found me—was waiting outside my lodgings.”
“She followed us from Rostock?”
“That’s the least scary explanation I can think of.”
I took a sip of beer. Anna Weber, following us all the way from Rostock, and somehow keeping track of Lütten—not bad going for a hotel chambermaid.
“You reported the contact?”
“Wanted to know what you thought about it first—she gave me a message to pass on.” Lütten poured himself more beer. “She said the old man is back in town. He wants to meet you tomorrow midday.”
53
Berlin Friedrichshain
Whoever was handling Anna Weber was security aware, I’ll give them that much. My first rendez-vous was just before midday at a telephone box on Helsingforser Platz, and you’ll get no bee stamps from teacher for guessing what would happen next.
I was in the yellow booth, my elbow draped along the top of the payphone in such a way that I could discreetly keep the cradle depressed while talking into the receiver. I probably needn’t have bothered, just moving my mouth like a goldfish would have been enough—there was no way the queue outside the phone booth could hear my pointless ramblings over the grumbling traffic on Warschauer Strasse.
Through the window, I watched steam rise from the cooling tower of the power plant just up the road. It hung for moments at a time before being snatched by the wind and merged into the general smog and low clouds. But still the telephone didn’t ring.
Lütten had helped me slip my guard dog. It hadn’t been hard, Berlin Centre had sent the lad to freeze his brasses off outside my house more as a message to me than in any real attempt to clip my wings. So when the Rostocker sidled through a neighbouring block of flats and into the common drying green, he’d had no problems reaching the back door unobserved. I’d left him with a few bottles of beer and the television, and he’d promised to tweak the net curtains every so often so the kid in the company car wouldn’t start worrying.
A woman with a tight perm escaping from her hat rapped on the glass with a coin, mouthing impolite encouragement. I turned my back on her and checked my watch: already two minutes beyond contact time. If the phone didn’t ring within another minute, I’d have to resort to the fall-back location.
The second-hand on my wat
ch ticked down to 6 and started its climb back up the other side. The phone rang.
I waited for three rings, aware of the disquiet spreading through the queue behind me, then lifted the receiver. I waited for the message.
“Oberschöneweide,” said a woman’s voice. Young, with an accent from the Baltic coast—perhaps Anna Weber? “Phone box opposite TRO. Thirty minutes.”
She cut the call and, ignoring the restless line of residents who were demonstratively stamping their feet and burying heads and hands in collars and sleeves, I left the phone box and jogged towards the S-Bahn station as fast as the icy conditions allowed. Half an hour to get to the transformer factory in Oberschöneweide was tight timing, and deliberately so. I understood the reasoning: keep me running so I couldn’t make contact with anyone on the way. It reduced the chances of a line trace being set up on the phone box. But the short timescale wasn’t without risks—any delays on my journey and I’d miss the next phone call and we’d have to start this game all over again.
Darting between the traffic on Warschauer Strasse, causing a W50 lorry and trailer combo to brake sharply, I reached the far side of the road, skidding, sliding, ignoring my stiff knee and running towards the station. No time to buy a ticket, I pounded down the steps, feet crunching over grit and splashing through puddles of meltwater, I jumped the last few steps onto the platform and dived towards the train standing there. I had to push back against the door as it began to slide shut, the bell ringing shrilly and the angry tannoy yelling—Zurückbleiben!
The train shuddered into motion, and I found a seat. I had ten minutes or so until we reached Schöneweide. Enough time to catch my breath, give my knee an encouraging rub and worry about ticket inspectors.
I pulled the doors open as soon as the train eased into Schöneweide station. Before we’d even gasped to a halt, I had one foot ready to put down on the platform.
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