Stealing the Future

by Max Hertzberg

  I didn’t really think that the files would contain anything useful, but I wanted to get rid of the policeman, I needed to sit down for a moment, unobserved. And I was curious about Evelyn, why was she on the scene again, and how come she was at the Ministry? I went into the Minister’s office, told the cop there to go and stand in the corridor, then sat down at the desk. What now? No Minister, no evidence; and the Central Round Table about to descend on us, wanting to know what the hell was going on. It couldn’t get much worse. If the Minister had already crossed the border, or come to that, was hiding out somewhere in the Republic then we wouldn’t find him in time, if ever.

  A knock at the door, and the cop came in with the files. I ignored the Minister’s file, and idly thumbed through Evelyn’s: 1988 in-service training in Moscow, then attachment to the Ministry of the Interior. Before that she was an administrative worker at the State Opera. If she was just a cultural administrator, how did she end up getting a prestige posting to Moscow, followed by a position as case handler in a ministry? And if that wasn’t enough, what was she doing serving drinks at a party thrown for the Bonzen all those years ago when I first saw her? And why did she come to my factory a few months later, wanting to see the works’ Party secretary? To me, it sounded like a pretty thin legend. It certainly looked like she wasn’t just some petty IM informant, but was somehow more involved. Reading between the lines it sounded like she’d been put in place in the Opera to spy on Party Bonzen when they attended performances, later on liaising with Party bigwigs in the factories, before being transferred into the Ministry at the same time the task force was formed around OibE GÄRTNER. But this was wasting time. I needed proof, and unless I found it I would be in deep shit. Alternatively, if there were no proof, if I was just plain wrong, well, same result.

  I was mulling over this possibility when there was another knock at the door.

  “Comrade Hauptmann! The Minister has been stopped at the Friedrichstrasse Border Crossing Point. The Minister and a woman, also in the vehicle, have been detained.”

  “Very good, have them brought to me immediately.”

  The Friedrichstrasse border crossing wasn’t very far away, they’d be here in just a few minutes. In the meantime, we had to search the building for anything that might confirm my suspicions, and it made sense to start in this office. Going to the door, I asked the policeman standing outside to fetch Karo and Laura from downstairs. While I was waiting for them, I looked around the office. If I were the Minister, where would I hide potentially incriminating material? I started opening and closing cupboard doors at random, poking through files, just getting more and more frustrated with myself. I was desperately casting around the office when Karo came in.

  “Karo, we need to search the building for any clues about what the Minister was up to. Do you think you could get your crew to go and safeguard the archives? We need all the archive staff out of there, and to make sure that nobody touches anything.”

  “Sure thing, Martin. But what about the computer?”

  I looked around, and, sure enough, in the corner of the room, on its own little table was a big square box, beside that a television sitting on top of a smaller steel box. I pushed the big red button, and a red light came on, with a green light flickering alongside it. The green light went out, but nothing seemed to be happening on the television set. I shrugged and looked at Karo, who laughed at me.

  “Try turning on the monitor, too—the button’s on the left hand side, underneath. But wait a moment, I’ll go and fetch Schimmel.”

  As Karo went out the door, Laura came in. I explained to her what we needed to find, and asked her to organise a quick search of the secretary’s office next door, as well as the secretariat and archive downstairs.

  “Worth a try, since we’re here,” she responded thoughtfully. “But it’s a bit of a long shot.”

  I turned back to the computer, which didn’t seem to be doing much. Just like me.

  Karo came in with another punk, this must be Schimmel. Like all the punks here today he was young, with ragged hair and a ripped leather jacket. He took one look at the computer and gave a shriek.

  “Cool, a P8000 compact! I wonder if it’s the triple processor? Let’s see what operating system they’ve got—aha! Wega.”

  I peered over Schimmel’s shoulder at the screen: “WEGA login:” it said. Schimmel looked at me.

  “What’s your minister’s name?”

  “Benno Hartmann.”

  Schimmel typed in the name Hartmann, then: “What’s his date of birth?”

  I opened up the Minister’s file, and read out his date of birth, Schimmel typed that in too.

  “We’re in! Most people use their date of birth as a password because that’s what the manual says they should do, it’s easy to remember. Ha! Right, what are we after? OK, so let’s have a quick look at what files he has in here,” he typed a few letters and looked at a long list of gobbledygook. “Any of these file-names look interesting?” he asked over his shoulder.

  I peered at the screen, there must be hundreds of files, and with a few strokes of the keys, Schimmel made another screenful appear. He looked at me, and just as Karo had, laughed at my helplessness. A few more quick taps of the keys, and the printer on the floor started screeching, paper turning out of the top. Schimmel reached down, and tore off a couple of sheets from the long roll, handing them over to me.

  “Here, that may be easier to read. Just look through the names there, see if anything sticks out.”

  He was right, it was easier to look at the print-out than the flickering green letters on the screen. I just scanned through, most of the names looked boring: LetterRT or LetterRT2, Rota17 and the like. I was about to give up again when I spotted ProjGart—that could be short for Projekt Garten, and if Garten was the garden, maybe the OibE GÄRTNER was the gardener in charge of this project…

  “That one, let’s look at that.”

  I watched him type “file: md(0,1600)ProjGart”, then a load of random letters and shapes came up on the screen, and the computer beeped a few times.

  “Fuck!” he groaned. “It’s been hashed somehow… like a code. It hides the contents of that file,” Schimmel tapped away at the keyboard a bit more, then: “OK! I’ve got the programme that does it, but we still need a password. I’ve already tried his birth date, it’s not that. If we can guess the password then we can read the file—easy as that!”

  It didn’t seem that easy to me—what would this password be? It had looked so promising for a moment, but maybe it was a waste of time after all. I slumped back down into the Minister’s chair, putting my feet on his desk.

  A knock at the door, and one of the cops came in, “Herr Hartmann has just arrived, Comrade Captain. Shall I bring him in?”

  I didn’t much like the idea of being confronted with the Minister. Even though he’d just been caught trying to leave the country, his word would still count for a lot more than mine; in his position I’d probably try to bluff it out, order our arrest, something like that.

  But it was time to face him—I’d given up hope of finding any real evidence to back up my suspicions about the Minister.

  “Who was the woman who was detained with the Minister?” I asked the policeman.

  “Fräulein Hagenow, Comrade Captain.”

  There was just time for one last throw of the dice.

  “Schimmel! That password we’re looking for, try: Evelyn!”

  Epilogue

  Friday

  8th October 1993

  Görlitz: Following a week of protests the West Silesian government has lost a vote of no confidence in the Region’s parliament. The vote last night followed the exposure last week of an alleged plot by former Stasi officers to destabilise the GDR. The West Silesian Round Table has invited representatives of the Central Round Table in Berlin to negotiate terms for the full reintegration of the Region into the GDR.

  Moscow: Soviet President Gorbachev continues to consolidate his positi
on after surviving the failed coup attempt last week. Elections for both Soviet Parliaments have been announced, and several ministers in Gorbachev’s government have been replaced. The Soviet Ministry of the Interior has announced an investigation into the role of the KGB during the crisis.

  11:32

  Erika, Klaus, Laura and I were sat in an ante-room in the old Party Central Committee building. We were all nervous, waiting to be called in to the Central Round Table to account for our actions. Dieter had come back from his annual leave, and was sat there with us too—there was no need for him to be there, he hadn’t been involved in the case at all, but he wanted to be with us, and we appreciated that. He wasn’t just a reassuring presence: he had helped us sort through the aftermath too. The work hadn’t stopped last week with the arrest of the Minister and Evelyn—we’d spent a lot of time analysing both the file that Schimmel had decrypted and the KGB file Dmitri had given us. Along with other papers from the Minister’s office we had more than enough information on the Stasi task force. The encrypted file was a running report, written by the Minister for the leader of the task force, GÄRTNER—a comprehensive detailing of all his actions during the West Silesian crisis. It started last year with the Minister encouraging the West Silesian League to campaign for autonomy from Saxony, channelling money from a numbered Swiss bank account into the League’s party coffers. The plan was to destabilise the GDR with the threat of West Silesian secession, making it possible to recentralise power structures, as Dmitri had predicted.

  But once the Westgermans had also started pouring money and technical support into the breakaway Region the threat of secession became an all too real possibility. That would have bankrupted the GDR, leading inevitably to a full takeover by the Westgermans. Maier had spotted an opportunity to feather his own nest, and had become an overenthusiastic supporter of the plans for secession. He had started negotiating a power deal—both for political and electrical power—with the Westgermans, hoping that with their protection he could outwit the task force he had been part of. It couldn’t have been easy for Fremdiswalde to carry out the orders he had been given, to save the plan by silencing his lover. Maybe that’s why he botched it so badly, leaving the body on the tracks rather than disposing of it properly.

  Dmitri’s file provided more general background detail to the beginnings of the operation. As we’d already worked out, the Minister was TRAKTOR. But BAUM wasn’t Evelyn as I’d suspected: it was none other than our secretary Bärbel, who hadn’t been seen since last Friday. Bärbel, always sitting quietly in the corner, making notes about absolutely everything, and never really noticed by any of us.

  Last week I’d assumed the OibE was in position in West Silesia, but the Stasi officer in charge had actually been here at the Ministry all along, keeping tabs on the operation, and on me. Her time in Moscow had been spent preparing her to lead the task force—GÄRTNER was none other than Evelyn.

  We hadn’t yet worked out who ZIEGE and Spaten were—whoever they were, they were still out there, but finding them was a job for the cops, not for us.

  We’d spent a lot of time wrapping up this case, and we’d had lots of discussions about the state of our Republic. We’d had to confront some of the key issues our society faced: the way attitudes in the police force hadn’t changed since the days when they took their orders from the Party, the way Chris could be beaten up and die at the hands of prison warders. His death was more than enough proof for me that there were still connections between the current security apparatus and their ex-colleagues who had been in the Stasi.

  It was ironic to think that the same police force and prison service currently had custody of Benno Hartmann and Evelyn Hagenow. I was glad that it wouldn’t be for us to decide what was to happen to them—that was a problem for the courts. Nevertheless we couldn’t help but think about what kind of punishment they might deserve: prison or exile seemed the most obvious options, but neither seemed particularly palatable. Exile was the way the old regime dealt with those it considered too troublesome; an exclusion from friends, family and familiar landscapes. Prison represented another kind of exile, an exclusion from life without actually having to take that life. A sadistic punishment wrapped up in the language of protecting the population.

  “How are things with Annette?” Erika asked me suddenly.

  I looked over at her. I could have answered. I could have said that I hadn’t seen Annette since that Thursday in the Rigaer Strasse. That I’d spoken to her just once, on the phone, that she’d asked me not to contact her, that she would call me when the time was right. I could tell Erika that Katrin had suggested she talk to Annette on my behalf, but that I’d been too proud to accept the offer. But I didn’t say anything.

  Erika had already gone back to staring at the opposite wall, her legs and arms crossed, one foot tapping nervously, her question idle, empty, already forgotten.

  I thought of Katrin. I’d seen a lot of her this last week. Somehow the events had brought us closer. I think Katrin had been glad to play some small part in what happened, it made her feel that she’d finally contributed in some way, made up for leaving the country in 1989. I think Karo and her friends had a similar sense of pride. They’d celebrated last Friday after the Minister and Evelyn had been arrested. I’d bought them a few crates of beer, and they’d partied far into the next morning, proud to be a part of this great social experiment of ours.

  My thoughts returned to the present, and I restlessly flicked through my copy of the report we had prepared for the Round Table, recommending that all senior ministerial positions should be held by a committee rather than an individual. We argued that ministerial mandates concentrated too much power in too few hands, and were therefore unaccountable and open to abuse. We suggested that a small and accountable team should take responsibility for co-ordinating the work of each ministry. Other chapters of the report observed that there was an acute need to democratise the police force, recommending the presence of civilian observers in any potentially controversial operation, to be decided in each case by a standing sub-committee of the local Round Table. The problems of violence against prisoners was also addressed, and an independent investigation of Chris’s death called for. We’d discussed the need for re-education efforts in the police and prison service, but the very phrase, with its Stalinist shadows, made us hesitate to include it in the report.

  The document had been signed by every single member of the different branches of the Republikschutz and an outline of the suggestions had been published in the newspapers.

  But now we had to personally account for what we’d done. Although the files we’d found at the Minister’s office were more than enough to vindicate our actions, we were unsure how we would be received by the Round Table members—we had seriously exceeded our authority by detaining a democratically elected member of the government.

  The door opened, and the five of us looked up, wondering whether we’d be called in. Instead of an usher, a Russian officer walked in—Dmitri. He smiled broadly, arms outstretched, including us all in his welcome.

  “Comrades,” he cried jovially. “The naughty comrades! What a brilliant plan, an instructive subversion of authority! But, my friends, don’t look so worried, I think all is well!” He considered my anxious face for a moment, “I have given the Central Round Table of the GDR a full report on the activities of GÄRTNER and her team. I explained her links to the KGB faction which attempted to overthrow President Gorbachev last week. I impressed upon them that without your revolutionary vigilance GÄRTNER and her crew would have destabilised the GDR to the extent that Westgermany would have simply taken over policing responsibilities in the interests of keeping order. Now the Westgermans will have to find another excuse to interfere in your country.”

  “But what are you doing here? How did you get to address the Round Table?” I asked.

  “Well, my friend, I thought you could use a little help. After all, you very kindly took the minor problem of the OibE at the
Ministry off my hands—and that meant that I had enough capacity to make my plans against the anti-Gorbachev forces here in Germany. As soon as the coup in Moscow failed I could round them up and make sure they didn’t do any further harm.” Dmitri looked very pleased with himself.

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, there is.” A theatrical pause, then: “You are now looking at the senior liaison officer between the KGB and the government of the GDR. I have requested that you be my contact here in Berlin.” A little bow, “I think, tovarishch, that you and I will be working together again. But right now I think the Round Table is waiting for you,” and with a mock salute, Dmitri marched out of the room.

  Author’s Note

  The Point of Divergence

  Historically minded readers will have noticed the point in time at which the narrative presented in Stealing the Future forks from reality. It is true that on the 4th of November 1989 there was the largest independent demonstration in the history of the GDR, but the For Our Country Statement talked about by Martin and Margrit at the communal lunch on Sunday didn’t actually make an appearance until the 28th of November 1989, when it was almost overshadowed (at least in Western accounts) by Helmut Kohl’s ‘10 Point Plan’ for German re-unification.

  In Stealing the Future, however, both the Statement and the 10 Point Plan are launched on the same day as the mass demonstration.

  This slight change to history resulted, in Martin’s world, in increased awareness of West Germany’s plans for a speedy annexation of the GDR, and in turn, of the issues that are considered in the For Our Country Statement.

  The result: a continued existence for the GDR, and the grand social experiment that forms the backdrop to this book and its sequels.

  More information about the point of divergence and the For Our Country Statement can be found on the author’s website: www.maxhertzberg.co.uk