Stasi Wolf

by David Young

  ‘Apologies, Comrade Major. It’s taking me a little while to get used to the fact that there are no street names. It’s very different from Berlin.’

  ‘Quite, quite,’ said Malkus, sitting back in the chair and twiddling his thumbs slowly. Then he leant forward and pulled up the cuffs of his long-sleeved white shirt a fraction, leaning his arms on the desk. Müller’s eyes were drawn to the white bust of the sharp-faced head of the Soviet Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky, on the desktop. She knew Stasi members liked to think of themselves as the ‘German Cheka’. Alongside the bust was an open vodka bottle with a half-empty glass next to it. Malkus saw her eyeing it, put the top back on the bottle, and then placed it and the glass in one of his desk drawers.

  He looked up at her with the same thin smile. ‘Now what I wanted to try to agree with you was a framework for this investigation. A framework that suits both the purposes of the People’s Police and the Ministry for State Security. I gather you have experience of working with us. Oberstleutnant Klaus Jäger, wasn’t it, of Department Eight in the Hauptstadt?’

  Müller nodded, warily.

  ‘Klaus and I are good friends. We go back all the way to college. He recommended you for this job. Even though you will face some necessary constraints in the inquiry, heading your own murder squad again is preferable to pen-pushing and interviewing no-good little thugs at Keibelstrasse. I’m sure you’ll agree with that?’

  The knowledge that she’d been chosen by the Stasi, by Jäger in particular, rather than her own People’s Police superiors, was like a blow to the stomach for Müller. For the second time in the space of a few months, it looked like she was going to be dancing to the Stasi’s tune. Instead of voicing her anguish, Müller gave another slight nod.

  ‘So,’ said Malkus, getting a folder from his briefcase and then picking up a ballpoint pen and clicking it. ‘Let me take you through some of the issues we face in this inquiry and our suggestions of how to deal with them.’ He looked up from his papers and stared directly at Müller. She suddenly realised – as the sun hit his face just as it had by the rail line – what it was about his eyes that looked so odd. They weren’t yellowy brown – more a startling, luminescent amber. Müller found them unnerving and had to fight to concentrate on the Stasi officer’s words.

  ‘The main concern,’ he continued, ‘is that we don’t want to cause panic. Of course we need to find the killer, the abductor of the babies. We need to find the missing baby . . .’ He paused to look down at his notes. ‘. . . Maddelena. Those should, of course, be priorities. But the avoidance of panic, the avoidance of Ha-Neu getting a bad name, well, that’s almost more important, I think you’ll agree. So, the main thing I must impress upon you is that there is to be no apartment-by-apartment search.’

  She bristled. ‘But surely –’

  ‘It’s not a matter of negotiation, Oberleutnant. It’s been agreed at the highest level between the Ministry for State Security and the ministry in charge of the police, the Interior Ministry.’

  Müller felt anger course though her body. This wasn’t how she imagined the meeting playing out. Her attempts to raise the important issue of a full search were being stonewalled. She made one last attempt to plead her case. ‘We are very unlikely to be able to find the girl, to find clues about her whereabouts, without conducting a thorough search of each flat, in each block, in each residential area. I still believe that is what we have to do.’

  Malkus started shaking his head even before she’d finished her sentence. ‘You will have to use other methods. I’m sure you’ll think of something. And if the baby was being held somewhere, why would it be in one of the city’s residential apartments? Surely that would be too high a risk for the culprit? Anyway, as I say, this aspect of the investigation is non-negotiable. The second-most important thing is that I expect you to share information with us. When you get a new lead, let us know. If you want to take the investigation in a different direction, talk to us first. That way there will be no misunderstandings.’ Malkus put his pen down and rocked back in his chair, with his arms folded over his stomach. ‘I gather from Klaus that there were one or two such misunderstandings during your investigation earlier this year.’

  Müller said nothing, and just returned the Stasi major’s stare.

  ‘Oh, and one other thing before you go. Klaus sends his regards. He was very sorry you turned down the chance to join him in his new job in the Main Intelligence Directorate. He’s been promoted to a full colonel now, and assigned to a post in Cuba. But perhaps you felt foreign travel’s not really your sort of thing. Not like your ex-husband.’

  Müller sighed. It didn’t surprise her that the Halle branch of the Stasi knew everything about her. But she wasn’t going to give Malkus the satisfaction of knowing that he’d riled her, despite his deliberate attempts to provoke. Müller rearranged her skirt and got to her feet. ‘Will that be all for now, Comrade Major?’

  Malkus waved at her airily from behind his desk. ‘Yes, yes, Karin. I don’t want to detain you. I know you’ve got work to be getting on with. Anything important, let me know. For the day-to-day issues, Hauptmann Janowitz will be keeping in close contact. Be careful to stay the right side of the captain. He’s not always as understanding as I am. You know your way out now, don’t you?’

  She exited the room without saying goodbye. It had all been a show of power, she was aware of that. Nothing had been said by Malkus that couldn’t have been said earlier in the day at the railway embankment. The news that Janowitz would be ‘keeping in close contact’ was in no way reassuring. The opposite, in fact. The man in the Skoda – perhaps even the driver of the red Lada from the night before – had probably been one of Janowitz’s underlings.

  As she made her way down the concrete stairs and back out towards the car park, escorted by the same plain-clothes operative, the sense of foreboding she’d felt for much of the Jugendwerkhof girl case settled over her again. Perhaps dealing with annoying hippies like Lauterberg at Keibelstrasse hadn’t been so bad in comparison after all.

  8

  Müller decided to make a brief detour to her police apartment on the other side of town before returning to the incident room. She felt she needed to freshen up again after the Malkus meeting. Perhaps wearing the new jacket hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Throughout the chat, or lecture, whatever it had been, she’d felt drops of perspiration gathering in her armpits. She glanced up at the rear-view mirror again – so far there was no sign of anyone tailing her. Or if they were, this time it wasn’t in plain sight and designed to unnerve her. So on this journey she felt more in control, more confident, despite the discomfort of her clothing.

  She turned into Wohnkomplex VI, with its idiosyncratic curved wall of apartments, feeling almost a sense of familiarity. To her left, she could see the ring road round the city. Beyond that – she’d been told – lay a park and lake. She made a mental note to visit them in something other than a working capacity, although she would need to make sure Eschler and his team searched them, if they hadn’t already. Her head swivelled from side to side, taking in the surroundings. The curved apartment building seemed to extend for ever: uniform windows, uniform doors and uniform grey. But a clean, new grey: not the dirty grey that she was used to and which dominated in Berlin, the Hauptstadt.

  The block numbers weren’t completely logical and didn’t seem to follow a linear pattern. To get her bearings, she watched out for the sudden jump to block 952, which she knew was followed by her block – 953. She parked the car and made her way to the entrance, chewing over in her head what Malkus had said. It was a warning, much as many of Jäger’s ‘talks’ had been in the previous case. In the entrance, she looked around for the lift to get to the fourth floor and then remembered: there wouldn’t be one. Only blocks over five storeys high had lifts. She wondered how the young mothers she’d seen earlier in the day, pushing their prams by the fountains, coped with their buggies and the stairs. Perhaps that was the price of being ass
igned a brand new flat in such a modern city. The sort of start to family life in the Republic that many could only dream of.

  Müller climbed the stairs and negotiated what seemed like a never-ending corridor. She glanced over her shoulder before using her key to open the front door of the flat assigned to the Kripo team. What am I worrying about? They’ve admitted they’ll be watching me, and it’s not as though I have anything to hide. Inside, she could hear a male voice humming to himself. It didn’t sound like Schmidt, but the timbre was – nonetheless – oddly familiar. As she turned the corner into the kitchen, she came face to face with a curly-haired, wiry young man with spectacles, unpacking tins of food. Simultaneously, both their faces creased into smiles.

  ‘Martin,’ she said, pulling him into a hug. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you.’ It was Vogel, the young Unterleutnant who’d helped her and Tilsner in the Harz mountains earlier in the year, during the case of the Jugendwerkhof teenagers. ‘I didn’t expect you to leave the Harz. I thought you were a country detective through and through.’

  Vogel pulled back from the embrace, his expression grim. ‘It wasn’t the same, Comrade Oberleutnant. Not without –’

  The young officer stopped himself before uttering Hauptmann Baumann’s name. But Müller could see from his eyes, from the look on his face, what he was thinking about: those last few moments of his People’s Police captain’s life, deep underground in a mine by the state border, fatally wounded by a gun fired by someone who ought to have been on his side.

  Vogel breathed in deeply, and shrugged. ‘Anyway, I needed a new challenge. I’d suggested a transfer to Berlin, named you as someone I might like to work for, Comrade Oberleutnant.’

  ‘Karin. You must call me Karin, Martin. We know each other well enough by now.’

  Vogel grinned. ‘Anyway, I didn’t get exactly what I wanted. The bright lights of Halle-Neustadt rather than the bright lights of the Hauptstadt. But I am very pleased to be working with you again, Karin. I gather, though, it may be another difficult case.’

  Müller nodded, and started preparing the coffee maker. ‘Let’s have a coffee first, then I’ll fill you in on what we know so far. It is somewhat sensitive, as with the previous case.’

  Vogel pulled back one of the kitchen chairs and sat at the table. ‘So I’d heard. I gather the Ministry for State Security is heavily involved again.’

  Reaching up to one of the eye-level cupboards to retrieve two coffee mugs, Müller looked quizzically at the young officer who was now her new deputy on the case. ‘Who told you that?’ she asked.

  ‘I had a phone call. In the Harz. After I’d agreed to come. A Stasi Hauptmann – Janowitz? I think that was his name?’

  Müller rolled her eyes and nodded slowly. ‘Yes. He’s the liaison officer. Him and his boss, Major Malkus.’ So the Stasi had been interfering not just with the investigation, but with her actual team – even before she’d linked up with her new deputy. She hadn’t warmed to Malkus, but it sounded as though this Janowitz needed watching equally carefully – if not more so. ‘I was hauled in by Malkus an hour or so ago,’ she continued. ‘I get the impression we’ll be seeing rather a lot of them. Our room for manoeuvre in the investigation might be more limited than we’d like.’ She put two heaped teaspoonfuls of coffee into the machine, added the water, and then switched it on. ‘I’ll go through things in a moment. Are you hungry after your journey? I bought a cake yesterday.’

  ‘That sounds lovely, Oberleutnant.’

  ‘Karin, Martin – please! We’re going to be living, as well as working, together until we crack this case. So we can dispense with the formalities, unless we’re with other officers.’

  ‘Apologies, Karin. Anyway, yes please to the cake.’

  Müller opened the fridge door, but couldn’t see the cake. ‘That’s odd. I’m sure it was here yesterday evening.’ Then she moved the margarine and milk out of the way and saw the empty plate, with just a few crumbs left. ‘Ah, apologies, Martin. Someone seems to have got there first. You’ll meet our forensic officer, Jonas Schmidt, later. He’s a good officer, and a lovely man. But he does have a rather large appetite.’

  Vogel smiled. ‘A cup of coffee will be just fine, Karin.’

  *

  Müller had needed the break at the apartment after the face-to-face meeting with Malkus. Now – with a new deputy at last in the shape of Vogel – she felt refreshed. The two officers made their way in the Wartburg back to the police incident room in the centre of Ha-Neu. For the time being, at least until they had the results of the next day’s autopsy, Müller was content to continue with the series of searches mapped out by the Vopo officers. Once she was back in the incident room, Eschler and Fernbach pointed on the office map to the next tunnel they planned to search – along the central heating duct from the Salzmann family’s apartment block.

  *

  The route took the group of police officers over the majestically curved pedestrian bridge across the Magistrale: the main twin-carriageway road through Halle-Neustadt. The only road in the whole town which actually had a name.

  The Salzmanns’ apartment was about halfway up one of the tallest buildings, towering fourteen storeys high. With its bright bands of yellow render under each row of windows, it looked to Müller like a giant horizontally striped bath towel. Müller, Vogel and Schmidt kept up a rapid pace behind the handful of uniformed officers, but around them new mothers with prams ambled along, proudly stopping to chat with friends about the latest addition to their model socialist families, paying little heed to the group of policemen. The Salzmanns would have expected to be amongst them, with a double buggy carrying twins. Now their best hope would be that Müller and her team could find Maddelena before it was too late.

  The dog-handling team was already in place in the lobby – sent on ahead in vehicles to avoid too obvious a posse marching through the town centre, the dogs already familiarised with Maddelena’s scent from her hospital bedding. Müller felt happier having another familiar face in Vogel alongside her. As they descended the stairs of the apartment building, down to the basement, she felt a strong sense of déjà vu from the Harz mountains – going after Vogel down the mineshaft.

  The wiry-haired young Unterleutnant had obviously guessed what she was thinking. ‘It feels strange to be going back underground, Comrade Oberleutnant.’ Müller could see the moisture shining in his earnest, youthful eyes – another reminder of the traumatic death of Hauptmann Baumann.

  As Eschler opened a thick steel door, the two dog handlers had to fight to keep their animals from pulling them on ahead. A fug of damp heat wafted over them. With the already scorching temperature above ground, Müller hadn’t expected the giant central heating system to be operating. But clearly there was residual heat trapped in the massive tubes that carried hot air to each residential complex.

  ‘I still don’t understand why we’re not doing a house-to-house search first, Oberleutnant,’ whispered Vogel, as their torch beams danced along the damp walls of the tunnel, following the dog handlers and uniformed officers. ‘Wouldn’t that make more sense?’

  ‘I don’t disagree, Martin,’ Müller replied under her breath. ‘But it’s out of my hands. This evening we need to brainstorm the case – try to think of a way forward. The trouble is, in a sense it’s two cases: an abduction and a murder.’

  ‘Unless . . .’

  Müller stopped for a moment and eyeballed her junior officer. ‘Let’s try to stay positive.’ Then she set off again, increasing her pace to catch up with Eschler, Fernbach and the others, their silhouettes shuffling along in the torchlight. ‘We’ve got to assume that Maddelena is still alive. That’s why we have to act quickly,’ continued Müller, as Vogel strode alongside her. ‘The first few hours are the most important. They’ve already gone. So we have to try to make a breakthrough in these early days, before any trail goes cold.’

  ‘Which is why we should be doing a house-to-house search,’ insisted Vogel. ‘Instead we seem to
be aimlessly walking kilometre after kilometre of tunnels under the new town.’

  Müller said nothing, although inside her head she was in complete agreement with her new deputy. It just reminded her of the frustrating way Malkus had cut her off when she’d tried to argue the point.

  The sudden agitated barking of one of the dogs indicated they both might be wrong. Eschler, Fernbach and the other uniformed officers trained their torches on what the dog had found. It was howling now, ears pricked, straining at its leash as its handler kept it back from the object on a ledge at the tunnel’s side.

  Müller drew closer, then stopped as the shock hit. It couldn’t be, could it? But there, under the Vopos’ torch beams, in the first tunnel search Müller had been involved in, was a body. A tiny, naked body, splayed out on its back, its lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling.

  9

  Christmas Eve, 1965

  Chemical Workers’ City, Halle-West

  Oh what a year it’s been! It must be my happiest year ever. First there was the news in the autumn that Hansi had succeeded in getting us one of the brand new flats in the new chemical workers’ city. I’m sure it helped that I was expecting, and we managed to move in before the big day.

  Now we’re about to celebrate our first Christmas as a little family. I still need to take it easy, of course, but I can do little bits of cooking, setting out the decorations, that sort of thing.

  The flat is looking really lovely. We put up the tree and decorated it early. Hansi put the angel at the top. Although he said we couldn’t really call it an angel anymore; apparently it’s better to say it’s a Jahresendflügelfigur – an end of the year winged figurine. He’s out at the Kaufhalle at the moment, buying the Vienna sausages. We’ll have those later with the potato salad I’ve already made when we settle down to listen to the radio. There’s a play on tonight – a traditional story that Hansi likes, called Auguste, the Christmas Goose. I’m quite looking forward to it, although I would perhaps prefer to watch the television. We’re lucky to have one. Not many families do, you know, but Hansi’s quite important, so we got put on a priority list.