Brandenburg

by Henry Porter

  It was now 5.30 p.m. The longer he stayed in the prison’s vicinity, the more likely he was to attract interest. He turned towards Konrad-Wolf-Strasse. He had gone fifty yards when a Skoda tore across a stretch of old cobblestones towards him. He looked up and instantly saw Kurt in the back seat on his side. A man was holding onto him by the scruff of the neck. Kurt’s gaze skated across Rosenharte without recognition as the car sped towards the main entrance. Rosenharte did not turn but just kept walking towards the barrier that lay a hundred yards up the road.

  36

  Larsen Trap

  Some twelve hours after Rosenharte’s call to Harland in the middle of the night, the Bird materialized at the Ostbahnhof - the main station in East Berlin. Rosenharte had said little on the phone except that the trainee was detained elsewhere and that he would need a replacement in order to load the goods. The pick-up would be made at the station any time after midday.

  When he spotted the British agent striding through the crowds in a long leather jerkin without sleeves, the like of which he was sure had never been seen on German soil, he hastened towards him and greeted him like an old friend. The Bird responded with similarly dramatic signals of affection, but they didn’t speak until they had climbed into the Wartburg.

  ‘Where’s Harland?’ Rosenharte asked in English. ‘I thought he would be coming.’

  ‘He sends his apologies,’ said the Englishman, stroking his nose. ‘But we really can’t have the chief of Berlin Station breaking into prisons at the moment. But if you need a spare pair of hands I’m ready and willing.’

  ‘Can you drive a truck?’

  ‘Of course. Where is it?’

  ‘We have to hijack it first. I know the routes.’

  ‘Jesus, when are you hoping to do this?’

  ‘In the next two hours.’

  ‘Got any kind of weapon?’

  Rosenharte turned round and lifted the back seat to show the guns and boxes of ammunition.

  ‘Right, well that’s something, I suppose.’ The Bird looked to the front and sniffed. ‘What’s the plan after you’ve got her out?’

  ‘Harland gave me these when we were in Dresden.’ He showed him two dark-blue British passports, complete with East German entry visas dated the week before and laminated strips that peeled back so that the picture could be fixed underneath. A note clipped to one had told him to heat the strips briefly in the steam from a kettle. ‘I don’t have a photo of Ulrike, and I need another passport for my friend Kurt Blast. He was the one arrested yesterday.’

  The Englishman’s head whipped round. ‘Will he talk?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m his only chance of rescue.’

  The Bird nodded. ‘But you admit there’s a possibility that they could know your whole plan, such as it is?’

  ‘Yes, but I must try - Kafka won’t last much longer in that place. We all owe her. You too.’

  The Bird considered this. ‘All right, I’m in but it’s against all my better instincts. We’ll leave this car near the prison. At the first sign of trouble we’ll have to ram or shoot our way out.’

  Rosenharte nodded.

  ‘Afterwards we’ll all go our separate ways. This isn’t a flaming package tour, you know. You’ve got your passports. You make your own way out of this apology for a country. Right, I think we’d better get a move on.’

  ‘Don’t you speak any German?’ asked Rosenharte.

  ‘No, I’m like most Englishmen: I can order from a menu and ask for a lavatory quite convincingly, but beyond that I’m rather at sea.’

  He started the car and pulled out into the traffic on Mühlenstrasse. ‘Doesn’t your service require languages?’

  ‘Yes, but they chose to overlook my cloth ear because of my other skills.’

  ‘And those are?’

  ‘Oh, you know - duffing up people, driving cars, releasing the odd hostage, backgammon, explosives, weaponry. The usual things.’

  Rosenharte nodded and offered him a cigarette. ‘Why are you called the Bird?’

  ‘I would have thought you’d got that by now, but maybe even your English doesn’t stretch that far. My name - Avocet - is a type of bird. A wader, I believe, with a long beak for sifting through the mud. That’s me,’ he said, stroking his crooked nose.

  ‘Ah, yes. Your name in German is Säbelschnäbler.’

  ‘Never had much time for birds myself - except driven grouse, of course. And the odd woodcock.’

  They parked about a mile from the prison in Friedrichsfelde and, after ripping one of Rosenharte’s shirts into several lengths of cloth, they shared the four guns between them. They took the U-bahn four stops to Mollendorf and walked the rest of the way to Hohenschönhausen. The Bird was evidently unaffected by his proximity to the heart of darkness, yet for all his extraordinarily vivid Englishness, he did somehow manage to blend into his surroundings more than Rosenharte would ever have imagined. He walked with a stoop, didn’t look anyone in the eye and contrived with a rather depressed demeanour to appear much older than a man in his late thirties.

  They reached the spot that Rosenharte had chosen, a narrow right-angle bend, where the trucks slowed to a walking pace. It wasn’t overlooked by any of the houses in the area. The only problem was that it was just three hundred yards from Konrad-Wolf-Strasse and, therefore, many hundreds of Stasi officers.

  ‘We’ve got no option,’ the Bird murmured with his hand in front of his mouth. ‘How many Stasi do we expect on board?’

  ‘Two, maybe three if they’ve got a guard in the back.’

  He explained his plan and they split up to wait at different positions around the right-angle bend. Rosenharte took up a position beside a wooden fence and watched the gradual incline that the truck would climb before reaching the bend. The area seemed to be almost uninhabited and not for the first time in these last few weeks Rosenharte had the sense of expiration around him. The traffic on the arterial roads seemed muted, the factory chimneys in the south dribbled smoke into the sickly air and, as the night rushed from the east, the houses and apartments began to leak feeble lights into the dreary evening of the exhausted, hunched city. Rosenharte did his best to think of other things, but as the hands of his watch moved past five o’clock - the hour when the forged release documentation came into effect - his stomach knotted with anxiety.

  Near seven the Englishman appeared from nowhere, offered him some whisky from a hip flask and asked whether he thought there would be any more trucks passing that night. The Bird snorted a laugh. ‘We don’t want to hold up some bloody bread van in the dark, do we now?’

  Rosenharte replied that they had nothing to lose by waiting and the Bird again melted into the darkness on the other side of the street.

  It was just past nine when the lights swung into the road from Frankfurter Allee and the truck began to grind up the gentle slope.

  Rosenharte threw away his cigarette and called out to the Bird. The vehicle was almost upon them when he saw him lope at great speed from the shadows and jump up to the driver’s door at the point where the truck was moving at its slowest. Rosenharte drew his gun and ran to the passenger side, reached up and wrenched it open to find no one there. All he saw was the astonished face of the driver as the Bird hauled him out on the other side. The truck was still moving. Rosenharte dived for the gearstick, but the driver’s foot had left the accelerator and the vehicle juddered forward with a series of complaints from the engine and then stalled. He scrambled through the cab, turning off the lights on the way. ‘Where’re the keys for the back?’ he demanded. The driver’s head turned towards him. ‘Tell us and we won’t kill you.’

  ‘There’s no one in the back!’ he protested.

  ‘Then why are you going to the prison?’

  ‘To leave the vehicle there for tomorrow morning. They need it first thing. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Why?’

  He looked down at the barrel pressed into his chest. ‘I don’t know! I’m just a driver. I don
’t know anything.’

  ‘Where’re the keys to the back?’

  The man pointed to a hook above the driver’s door. Rosenharte reached up and then got out of the cab. They frog-marched him round to the right side of the truck, unlocked the door and placed him in one of the open cells. The Bird gagged him with one of the strips of cloth, turned him and tied his hands behind his back, running the cloth through the bar on the side of the cubicle.

  ‘Now you listen to me,’ said Rosenharte. ‘Any sound out of you and you’ll die. Keep quiet for the next two hours and you’ll remain unharmed. Is that understood?’

  The man nodded and they slammed the door on him.

  ‘I’ll drive into the prison,’ Rosenharte said. ‘I know the way and I may need to speak to the guards. Then you drive us out. Is that okay with you?’

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said the Bird enthusiastically. ‘Let’s go and get your friends.’

  The truck was cumbersome and slow, and only as he neared the prison gates did Rosenharte understand that he had to pump the brakes to make them respond. The gate inched back and he let the truck shoot forward into the garage space, but managed to stop before hitting the second door that led into the compound.

  A man came down a short flight of metal steps. ‘Hey, what’s going on? We’re not expecting any more deliveries.’

  ‘This isn’t a delivery,’ said Rosenharte. ‘This is a collection.’ He waved the papers at him. The Bird got out and nodded to him.

  ‘You’d better come to the office. We don’t know about any collection.’

  ‘This is a special collection. Anyway, weren’t you expecting a truck to be left here for morning? There’s another on the way.’

  ‘Identity card,’ said the guard, putting out his hand and turning to take the steps. He glanced at it and handed it back before opening the door. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? We have to sort this out now.’

  Rosenharte looked nonplussed. ‘Yes, we’re in a hurry too. We’re four hours late. The prisoner was meant to be at Karlshorst at five.’ He followed him into an office where there was a table, a bank of four black and white TV monitors, which showed murky impressions of the perimeter wall, two telephones and a single desk light. On the wall was a notice board and a complicated three-tiered diagram of cells and interrogation rooms but - naturally - no names of prisoners were attached to the numbered cells. The records and cell number of each inmate would be kept in the main administration block at the centre of the compound.

  The man ran his finger down a list then looked at the forged papers. ‘I have no record of this.’

  ‘You mean to say that the prisoner isn’t ready for immediate transport? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Of course not; she’s not on the list.’ He opened the palm of his left hand displaying a line of warts.

  ‘This is bad,’ said Rosenharte testily. ‘Very bad. Have her brought down here immediately.’

  The man’s hand went to the telephone. The Bird darted a warning look to Rosenharte, but it was too late; the man had begun speaking. He listened for a second or two and put the phone down. ‘She’s still in interrogation. That means you’ll have to wait.’

  Rosenharte leaned forward confidentially. ‘Colonel Zank is being as diligent as ever, eh? You’d better take us to the interrogation room. This is a matter of national security.’ He drew the man aside. ‘My companion is from the KGB. He is their chief interrogator and he has come to take delivery of the prisoner. Let’s not waste any more time.’

  The man nodded, picked up the phone again and barked an order. Very shortly a younger man appeared in an ill-fitting dark suit. ‘Take these men to the interrogation wing. Forty-two A.’

  He beckoned them down a flight of five steps and out into the U-shaped courtyard formed by the interrogation cell blocks. They walked diagonally across the yard to a door on the eastern wing. The buildings that had seemed so expressive of the police state’s dull efficiency when he saw Konrad that last time, appeared brooding, much larger and more sinister at night. Behind the net curtains in one or two windows lights burned bright, indicating that no effort was being spared to break the few souls still being questioned at that hour. The Bird gave him an encouraging nod behind the man’s back as he worked at the door lock. They entered and looked up a stairwell that was barred all the way up to the top floor to prevent prisoners jumping to their deaths. They climbed to the second floor and turned left, were taken through an iron gate and walked past twenty or so identical doorways. Lights on above some indicated the room was occupied, but apart from the squelch of the guard’s rubber soles on the patterned lino there was no sound in the airless gloom of the passage. The guard stopped and looked up at the number, then pulled a heavy, padded door open to reveal a second door. He knocked. ‘Do not interrupt us!’ came a muffled command from within.

  The Bird drew a gun and put it to the prison guard’s head.

  Rosenharte leaned forward and whispered, ‘Open the door or he will shoot you now.’

  The man put a key in the lock, turned it and pushed against the door with his body. A pneumatic sigh came from the hinge. The Bird flung the man into the room and stepped inside, moving the gun between the three interrogators. ‘Move and I’ll fucking kill the lot of you.’ It was said in the unrepentant tones of the English upper class.

  Rosenharte looked down. Ulrike was crouching, bare feet on the floor, torso wobbling, grimacing like a child trying to hold a pose, her face streaked with tears that shone in the single desk light trained on her. She did not look up when they came in and clearly had not absorbed their arrival. He rushed to her and lifted her in his arms. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘We’ve come to take you away from here. It’s okay - I’m here, my love.’ She looked at him with the same incomprehension as Konrad had - that same disbelief that Hohenschönhausen would suffer any intrusion or trespass from the reasonable, humane world outside. There were bruises round her eyes and her neck was ringed with a chain of love bites - strangle marks.

  The Bird glanced round. ‘Here, give her one of these.’ He passed a blister pack to Rosenharte. ‘It’s a painkiller and light opiate. There’s some water over by that fucker with the red tie. And then give her one of these. It will keep her awake.’

  Ulrike took the pills, gulped at the glass and put it down. She stood kneading the blood into one foot by rubbing it with the other, shaking the numbness from her hands. Rosenharte quickly took in the standard hell of a Hohenschönhausen interrogation room. There was a T-shaped desk, partly in pale-blue formica, three chairs, a low stool for the prisoner, a safe, a console for the recording equipment and phones, and a desk light designed around an upright bracket that allowed shade to be swivelled to the horizontal, as it was now. In the lino, curtains and wallpaper, the Stasi had striven for a bureaucratic norm. ‘What shall we do with these fucking bully boys?’ asked the Bird. He turned to them. ‘Treating a woman like that! You’re a bloody disgrace, d’yer hear? A bloody disgrace.’ He jabbed the gun at each of them in turn.

  Rosenharte left her side and went over to the lead interrogator at the head of the table, pulled his head back by his hair and put the gun to his ear. ‘You people killed my brother. I told Zank I’d hold you responsible; now I’m here to keep that promise.’ There was no question in his mind that he was going to kill this man. He must pay for allowing Konrad to die and burning his body like a piece of trash.

  Ulrike said, ‘Don’t, Rudi. This isn’t you! Konrad wouldn’t want this.’ She put her hand to her forehead and waited a few seconds. She looked dreadfully pale. ‘He’s not worth the trouble it will cause your conscience.’

  He looked down at the man’s moist, puffy skin. The other interrogators and the guard who had brought them had imperceptibly moved away, believing that he was about to pull the trigger. Instead he raised the gun and let it come down very hard just above the man’s ear. He fell forward with blood seeping from a deep, curved gash, still conscious.

  ‘Where’s Kurt?’ R
osenharte demanded.

  ‘They’ve got Kurt?’ said Ulrike, her voice rising.

  ‘They picked him up yesterday on the street outside. He was in on this with me. Where is he, you bastard? And where’s Biermeier?’

  ‘Biermeier’s dead,’ she said. ‘They killed him - shot him last week. Zank showed me his body.’

  Rosenharte turned to the man he had hit. ‘Is that what you did with Konrad - put a bullet into the back of his head? Is that what you did, you filthy piece of scum?’ But by now he was watching himself at a distance, perhaps with Konrad’s eyes. He knew Ulrike was right: this wasn’t him. He leaned forward with the fingers of one hand splayed on the table. ‘Where’s Kurt?’ he said to the back of the man’s head. ‘Is he in the U-boats? Is that where Zank put him?’ He glanced up and caught the expression on the face of the guard, which told him he’d guessed right. He leaned forward to the senior interrogator. ‘Then you’d better come with us and let him out.’

  Rosenharte felt in his pocket and handed Ulrike the other gun. ‘You may have to use this; it could be our only way out of here. Okay?’ She stuffed it into her pocket and hobbled to the door, where her shoes were. She leaned on Rosenharte while putting them on.

  The Bird took the keys from the guard then began to rip the wires from the base of the console. With one hand he hauled the chief interrogator towards the door and, having deposited him in Rosenharte’s charge in the passage, tucked the gun into his waistband and went back inside. Holding a hand over his nose and mouth, he sprayed the room with an aerosol canister. Rosenharte saw the three remaining men slump to the desk and floor before both doors were shut and locked.