Stasi 77
Page 25
‘Were those the only names?’ asked Tilsner. His voice was light, gentle. Almost artificially so.
The woman frowned. ‘I think so . . . No! Wait! There was another. He asked if Lothar had ever mentioned anyone who used to be called something or other.’ The woman started rubbing her forehead, as though that would help her remember. ‘It’ll come back to me in a moment. But I thought it was a strange phrase anyway. “Used to be called”, he said, but perhaps – although his German was good – it might simply be that he was translating a French turn of phrase, or something similar.’
Frau Schneider looked up at Müller, as though she’d finished speaking.
‘And the name? You can’t recall it?’
The woman screwed her eyes up. ‘Yes! Sorry. It was Willi. Willi Pfeiffer.’
*
There was little more the woman could tell them, but Müller had felt Tilsner’s discomfort alongside her on the sofa throughout the conversation. He was holding himself terribly still, almost as though he’d been turned to stone. But if he was uncomfortable hearing Frau Schneider’s account, Müller had every intention within the next few moments of ratcheting up his fear even more.
As they exited the Schneiders’ apartment, Tilsner rushed ahead of her, about to descend the stairs.
She drew her Makarov from its holster, and slipped its safety catch. Tilsner heard the echo of the tell-tale click, and turned, a look of disbelief and terror on his face.
‘Don’t attempt to leave, Werner. Otherwise I’ll have to arrest you.’ She beckoned him with the gun. Then pointed to the neighbouring apartment door to the Schneiders’. The one where the old woman lived. The woman who thought she’d recognised him.
‘Stand there,’ she ordered, pointing to the doormat.
As she jabbed the pistol into Tilsner’s back, she rang on the doorbell.
The old woman opened the door, then frowned when she saw who it was.
‘You two again. What do you want this time?’
Müller gave Tilsner another prod with the gun, just to remind him it was there. ‘I brought my deputy back to see you. He suddenly remembered where you and he knew each other from, didn’t you, Hauptmann?’
Tilsner inched forward, hunched over like a naughty schoolboy anticipating his punishment at the headmaster’s study door. ‘Hello, Frau Rost.’ His voice was barely audible. A whisper – from a fifteen-year-old boy trapped in the hell that was 1945.
‘Günther?’ She reached up, pulling his face down towards hers so she could study it more closely. ‘It is! Günther Palitzsch. Wherever did you get to? You never came back to see me.’
Tilsner didn’t answer. He was sobbing uncontrollably in the woman’s embrace.
57
Magdeburg, East Germany
The man noticed the note as soon as he opened his hotel room door. The business card that he’d wedged between the door and door frame had been a crude way of telling if anyone had ignored the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. It fell to the floor as he entered, right next to a folded piece of paper that had been slipped under the door.
He bent down to pick it up, then unfolded it.
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID AT THE BARN.
AND NOW I’M COMING AFTER YOU.
The man smiled wryly to himself as he crunched the piece of paper into a ball and then lobbed it towards the waste-paper bin, with a petanque-style underarm flip of the hand. Years of practice with the empty oyster shells on the Ile de Ré meant the paper ball hit its goal.
There was one person left that he wanted to find. To each of the previous targets, he’d typed exactly the same message he’d just received. In fact, there was a good chance it was one of his own notes that had been saved, and now it had been sent back to him. The paper looked similar.
Now he was the target.
It was ironic, but in some ways he wasn’t surprised. There was only one man who knew enough about what had gone on, but who was now powerful enough to turn the tables on him.
Perhaps everything had been leading up to this point.
The man he wanted to find had now found him.
The others had just been warnings. This was the one he really wanted.
Would he come for him here?
Probably not. Interhotels were notorious as centres of Stasi spying. And if – as the businessman suspected – this particular Stasi senior officer had been pulling strings for his own ends, using the spy ministry’s resources to settle his own personal score, he wouldn’t want to do it somewhere where he could be seen or overheard.
He had no doubt that the woman he’d given the flowers to – the one posing as a prostitute – was one of them. He’d almost been tempted, but since that fateful day in 1945 he’d never strayed, and wasn’t about to now. She had been a beautiful woman – her features reminding him a little of Marie-Ange in her younger days. Of how she looked when he’d finally arrived back, and found that – no – she hadn’t slept with the Boche soldiers. She hadn’t had their babies. She’d been waiting for him. Finally, he’d been able to say those words he’d been dreaming about saying almost every minute, every hour of that nightmare ordeal.
So he’d given the woman the flowers. Not because she reminded him of Marie-Ange. His wife – older now, but still beautiful – was waiting for him back home in Loix. No, he’d given her the flowers because he knew she was one of them.
So that they would have his fingerprints.
So that they would have the proof about him – even if they chose to ignore it. That he sent the notes but wasn’t at the crime scenes.
The likelihood was that the one who was hunting him wouldn’t come to the Interhotel.
But there was one place that was particularly appropriate for this to be settled, once and for all.
The place where it had all happened more than thirty-two years ago.
The place he would never forget.
The killing barn.
58
February 1950
Head office for the Protection of the National Economy, East Berlin
‘So Harald and Günther, why do you think I’ve asked you to meet me here?’
Günther Palitzsch was confused. When Harald had contacted him, he hadn’t initially wanted to meet – in fact he didn’t want anything to do with him, or anyone from back then. He just wanted to forget. But try as he might, he couldn’t. Now they were standing in front of someone who was calling himself Hauptmann Winkler, although they knew him by a very different name. He worked for some sort of police service that wasn’t really a police service. It sounded a bit more like an internal spying ministry. The Gestapo revisited.
‘We weren’t sure,’ Harald said. ‘Why did you, Pfei—?’
The man now called Winkler held his hand up. ‘Don’t use that name any more, please. Comrade Hauptmann, or Comrade Winkler will suffice. I asked you here to make you an offer. To help erase something from your past that, otherwise, might hold you back here in the Republic.’
Günther still hadn’t got used to calling this newly formed country by its correct name, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. To him it was still Germany, the same Germany where terrible things had happened in the recent past, only now it was split into two: communist this side, to the East, capitalist on the other, to the West. He couldn’t help thinking it would have been better if the Gardelegen area had fallen on the other side of the border. But perhaps – after all that had gone on – the town and its inhabitants didn’t deserve it.
‘You know that as former members of the Hitler Youth who were involved at Isenschnibbe, you will never be able to progress here. But I can offer you a way forward. You’re both young, good-looking, about to turn twenty. We’re recruiting agents and I know you two are able, and you will be loyal to me, because I will be the one giving you new identities, should you agree to work with us.’
He took some documents from a desk drawer, and handed one set to Harald, and one to Günther himself.
Next in the pile was another ID card, from something called the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. It had the same photo, but this time there was no name. It was anonymous.
‘We will be bound together. We each have our secrets,’ said Winkler. ‘But I will be senior to you, and you will do my bidding. In return, you get a new life here in the Hauptstadt, and a chance to forget, a chance to forge a new career, to be a valuable member of the Republic.’
As the years passed, Günther Palitzsch was never entirely sure why he agreed to the arrangement – especially when he’d seen that Harald’s designation would be ‘Leutnant’, and his would be a mere ‘Unterleutnant’. That was probably the payback for when he’d refused to let the prisoner be killed – for showing that he was willing to disobey orders. But he had said yes. He wanted to be protected from what had gone on in the barn. He knew there were survivors, though only a handful. He’d seen the utter hatred in their eyes when they’d tried to confront the townsfolk who’d been forced by the Americans to go up to the barn and dig up and rebury the dead. How the American soldiers had had to hold them back, to prevent them tearing the townspeople of Gardelegen apart. He knew – one day – one of them would seek their revenge. It was only a matter of time.
His best defence was to accept Winkler’s arrangement. It wouldn’t give him absolute protection. But with a new name, a new job, and a new place to live, he could begin to forget what had happened at that barn on the 13th and 14th of April 1945.
59
August 1977
Gardelegen, East Germany
Müller eventually bundled Tilsner down the stairs and back into the Lada without the need for any more prompting with the Makarov. He couldn’t meet her eyes, let alone speak to her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to meet his. Frau Rost may have thought the sun shone out of the bottom of the boy she once knew as Günther Palitzsch. But the man Müller knew as Werner Tilsner – the man whose bed she’d once shared a couple of times – had revealed himself to her as a liar, a coward, and something much, much worse. A former Nazi. She would never, could never, forgive him.
Forensic scientist Jonas Schmidt came through on the radio as they were heading back to Gardelegen People’s Police offices to catch up with Janson.
‘Hang on a minute, Jonas.’ She covered the radio handset with her hand, and turned to Tilsner. ‘Step outside of the car and go and stand over there where I can see you.’ She pointed to a spot far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to hear her conversation with Schmidt, but near enough that she would have him covered by the Makarov if he did try to escape.
‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked.
‘Not at present. But I can’t trust you any more, if I ever could. Until I know precisely what part you have played in all this, there are things in this investigation that I will be keeping back from you.’
‘It’s not what you think, Karin. I didn’t kill anyone at that barn.’
Still with her hand over the radio handset to prevent Schmidt overhearing, Müller held Tilsner’s gaze till he dropped his eyes, like an animal signalling its subservience. ‘Were you at the barn as a Nazi? Yes, you were. I don’t care how old or young you were. I don’t care what you did or did not directly do. If you were there, if you helped and were complicit in any way, then you are as guilty as any of them. Get out, now.’
She watched until Tilsner was a sufficient distance away from the Lada, and then spoke into the handset.
‘Go ahead, Jonas.’
‘It’s the fingerprints, Comrade Major. I’ve got the results.’
Müller found herself fighting for breath momentarily. This was a critical moment.
‘Go on.’
‘You won’t like it, I’m afraid, Comrade Major. I’ve cross referenced exhaustively against what you gave me on the bouquet wrapper and what was found at the scenes of the various murders. There isn’t a match. Either your suspect was wearing gloves . . . or he’s innocent, and wasn’t there at all.’
*
Müller held her head in her hands. What did this mean? It wasn’t necessarily an indication that Verbier was innocent. As Schmidt himself had pointed out, he could have been wearing gloves – or he could have wiped all his prints. But it meant she didn’t really have the evidence she needed to arrest him.
A sharp tap on the front passenger window pulled her out of her thoughts. It was Tilsner.
She leant across and opened the door. ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay over there?’
Tilsner sighed. ‘Can I get in, Karin? I’ve something to show you.’
She shrugged and beckoned him inside. Following Schmidt’s revelations, she wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed next. For all that he was utterly compromised, Tilsner was still a detective – for the moment, at least. He might have useful information or ideas.
‘I wanted to show you something,’ he said, reaching over to get his jacket from the rear seat. He pulled a piece of folded paper from the inside breast pocket.
As Müller unfolded it and read the contents, she pulled her head back in shock.
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID AT THE BARN.
AND NOW I’M COMING AFTER YOU.
She folded the paper up again, covering the message.
‘When did you receive this?’
‘Just before we were sent down to Karl-Marx-Stadt. Right at the start. That’s why I’ve been so out of sorts.’
Müller gave the message back to him, then stared hard at her deputy again. ‘Out of sorts? You’ve been lying, trying to undermine the investigation, keeping things from me all the way through. That’s not my definition of being out of sorts. You recognised each of the victims, but you said nothing.’
Tilsner held his hands over his ears, and closed his eyes. ‘I was scared, Karin. I am scared. That I will be next. Surely you understand?’
‘No, I don’t understand. Your best defence would have been to help me solve this case. You’d better change your attitude and start doing that from now on, to the extent that I’m prepared to allow you to. But I will never understand, Werner. Never. And once this is over, I will never work with you again.’
*
Rather than meet up with Hauptmann Janson to catch up on his team’s progress with Ernst Lehmann’s friends and relatives as she’d intended, they instead made for Gardelegen town centre and the library. Müller insisted that Tilsner tell her who Ronnebach, Höfler and Unterbrink really were. Instead, he wanted to show her.
First the librarian brought out Gardelegen town’s copies of the interviews carried out by a Captain Wagner of the US Ninth Army’s War Crimes investigation unit, undertaken and transcribed in the days after the massacre.
Tilsner seemed overly keen to show her his own interviews, even though that wasn’t Müller’s principal interest. He traced his finger along the passages where it described his claims of helping the Frenchman, of actually standing in the line of fire to prevent him being shot. Müller started to doubt herself. Perhaps Tilsner wasn’t the monster she thought. If the evidence from Tilsner’s teenage alter ego Günther Palitzsch was to be believed, then Jäger too appeared to have tried to intervene to save Verbier. The villain of the piece was the one called Pfeiffer, at least as far as the involvement of Tilsner’s Hitler Youth unit was concerned – limited though that was in terms of the overall massacre. Perhaps Tilsner had simply been following orders, but was that a sufficient excuse? No, it wasn’t, not for what had happened at the barn. Tilsner had known full well what was going to happen to the prisoners – he’d overheard the one called Thiele, the one who appe
ared to be in charge, talking about it at the party thrown by the lady of the manor. Gerhard Thiele had been the highest-ranking Nazi in Gardelegen – the Kreisleiter or district leader and the man who seemed to have dreamed up this vile plan. Had he been held to account for his crimes? And what about this Frau Bloch von Blochwitz – the one who had offered up the barn as the venue for the mass executions? Whoever were the real architects of the massacre, Günther – or Werner – had known all about it, yet he’d still been part of the escort taking the prisoners to their deaths when they thought they were being freed and handed to the Americans.
‘What about Ronnebach, Höfler and Unterbrink?’ asked Müller.
‘I’m not sure of their names then. Gardelegen’s not a huge town, but it’s big enough. There’s no way I knew everyone who lived here and was involved. And some of them would be from neighbouring villages and so on. But I recognised each one of them.’
‘Where from?’ asked Müller.
‘From the drinks party. And then at the barn itself. Two of them were leaders of some kind, high-ups, issuing orders at the barn. I think one was with the Fallschirmjäger. I think that was the one who was later called Ronnebach. One was with the Volkssturm – that was Höfler. Yes, I remember him. He had a bad limp in his leg. And Unterbrink – I seem to remember he was with the fire service.’
‘But none of them was this Kreisleiter Thiele?’
‘No. I might be able to identify them from some of the photos.’ She watched Tilsner talk to the librarian, then saw her help him with various folders which they brought to the table. Throughout, Müller couldn’t help but think that seconds, minutes and hours were disappearing. Was this the best use of her time? Would she be better off tailing the Frenchman again, watching for his next move? She also knew she needed to phone Helga, to explain that she would be away longer than she thought, and to make sure everything was OK at home. She couldn’t face a repeat of the children being taken into care. She knew they had to be her priority. So she had to make that call now. But if she did, would Tilsner just disappear? He was finally aware that she knew everything about him. Although he seemed to be more cooperative, there was still a desperate, frightened edge to his voice.