Brandenburg

by Henry Porter

  ‘You two had better be off before we’re all in tears,’ said Harland briskly. ‘I want to have a word with Rudi in private, if that’s all right with him.’

  Rosenharte nodded.

  When they were alone, they ordered more brandy and smoked a cigarette each. Harland delved into a plastic bag, withdrew a folder and placed it on the table.

  ‘This is your Stasi file,’ he said quietly. ‘I acquired it this evening from the Russian. I thought I was being given it as a means of checking some information that they’ve supplied to us, but he made it plain that his motive in handing it over was principally his concern and liking for you.’ He pushed the file across the table but left his hand on top of it. ‘Before you read it, I must warn you that there are a number of shocks in here - things that you may not want to know about. Things that will change your life.’

  Rosenharte looked into Harland’s grey eyes and placed a hand on the file.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Harland.

  He nodded. ‘It’s my life and I think perhaps I should know about it before my fiftieth birthday.’

  Harland coughed. ‘That’s what I mean. This file will tell you that you already are fifty, Rudi. Do you understand me?’

  He took the folder and opened it. There were thirty loose leaves held by two metal clips. His eyes skimmed the first page. There could be no mistaking the file’s authenticity. The spacing and indents, the coding, dating and filing information all written at the top right corner of the page were exactly how he had been taught to lay out a report in spy school.

  ‘Naturally, I haven’t read all of it yet,’ said Harland. ‘But I think it’s perhaps best to start at the back. The last sheet will set everything in context.’

  Rosenharte glanced at him then turned to the back.

  It was a letter from the Dresden Bezirksverwaltung für Staatssicherheit - the Stasi headquarters in Dresden - to Normannenstrasse HQ. It was dated May 1953.

  We have made extensive inquiries into the two young men known as Rudolf and Konrad Rosenharte and have found that there are good reasons for taking no further action on the request from the Polish authorities for investigation and repatriation were these inquiries to be fruitful. Even taking into consideration their likely actual age, both young men have attained an exceptionally high academic standard, which is matched by their physical prowess. There is no telling what they may achieve for the state in future years. Since the war they have been brought up in a good socialist home. Their adoptive parents Marie Theresa and Hermann Rosenharte have no history of sympathy with the fascists. They are robust working-class stock, ideologically staunch and active in the Party’s cause. Frau Rosenharte’s residual Catholic belief does not seem to have unduly affected the boys. On the question of their time in the household of the fascist general and his wife - Isobel and Manfred von Huth - we believe it is safe to conclude that there has been no negative influence of any sort in the formation of the personalities of the twins or of their political consciences.

  We recommend a course of action which suggests to the Polish authorities

  • that the two young babies were killed in 1945. Isobel von Huth died in the Dresden bombings and it would be quite reasonable to expect her to have taken the children on the visit to Dresden in February 1945.

  • or that we have been unable to trace the children on the information supplied.

  A note was added in ink that the latter course had been followed. This was initialled FH, but the original memorandum was unsigned.

  Rosenharte turned over the sheet and found a copy of a letter that had been sent at a later date. Clipped to this on the reverse side were two small brown snaps of identical babies dated ‘November 1938’.

  ‘I would say you were about six months by then, wouldn’t you?’ said Harland carefully.

  Rosenharte hardly knew how to react. Then he blurted, ‘I knew it. Both of us felt this from the earliest age. We knew we couldn’t have been born to that woman. And we always thought that Marie Theresa suspected something but had never told us.’

  He took out the picture from his hip pocket and flattened it on the table. ‘This is Isobel von Huth. Ulrike noticed that the photograph was taken in September 1939, when of course she should have been six months pregnant. But she’s not. I thought it must have been a mistake in the dating. The man Grycko - this is what he was going to tell me in Trieste, wasn’t it? He must have been some kind of relation, or closely associated with our family there.’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s plain,’ said Harland. ‘Maybe later you should talk to the Russian. He knows more about this than I do. After all, I’ve only had the file for the last five hours.’

  Rosenharte returned to the papers and began to read the letter that had been sent by a Monsieur Michel Modroux from Red Cross headquarters in Geneva on 3 December 1956 to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

  We again communicate with you on the matter of two twin boys taken from the Kusimiak family home near Bochia, Poland. Ryszard and Konstantyn Kusimiak were kidnapped in November 1939 by German officers working for the Germanization programme, known as Lebensborn. They were the only children of Dr Michal Kusimiak and his wife Urszula, both academics at the university of Krakow. After the execution of their father and the imprisonment of their mother, it has been ascertained that the boys were taken by the Brown Sisters to Lodz concentration camp where they were inspected by Nazi authorities and assessed as racially valuable. Soon afterwards they were moved to a Lebensborn home and given new names. It is likely that these included the first one or two letters of their original first names - that is to say K or KO, R and RI (there being no German name that starts with RY). Documents in the Ministry of Interior in Warsaw suggest that the Kusimiak boys were not, as was usually the case, split up. Instead they were found a home with a senior ranking Nazi, almost certainly a member of Heinrich Himmler’s SS. There is no record of their ultimate destination. It is hoped by the Red Cross, therefore, after several approaches from the Polish government and two formal requests from this organization, that the time and energy will now be found to research this case in the archives that are known to exist in the GDR. Extensive inquiries have been carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany but there is no evidence of the Kusimiak boys living in the West. It is the conclusion of the Polish authorities, as they have already informed you, that they were settled in what is now the GDR and that there is every chance that they survived the war. We would urge you to expedite this matter with all means at your disposal.

  Attached to this was a carbon copy of the reply from the Foreign Ministry, which was dated 8 May 1957 - five months later. It ran:

  At your request, a third investigation was undertaken and we again report that no match was found between the description provided and the records preserved by the government of the GDR for precisely this kind of humane research. As the Red Cross must appreciate more than any other organization, the criminal fascists stole many children in Eastern Europe and when these young persons resisted Nazification they were often liquidated. We regret that we cannot help and must now insist that this matter is closed.

  Rosenharte put down the file. ‘You know what Lebensborn means in English?’

  ‘Spring of life,’ replied Harland.

  ‘They knew the whole time! Those bastards in the Stasi knew the whole time that we had been taken from Poland. And if the Polish were making inquiries, it means that a part of the family survived the war. We have relatives. They denied us contact with our own flesh and blood.’

  ‘Do you think your adoptive mother . . . did Frau Rosenharte know?’

  Rosenharte shook his head. ‘She may have had her suspicions, but she only went to work at Schloss Clausnitz very late in the war so she wouldn’t necessarily have known. She was a good woman and a very good mother. It wasn’t in her nature to deceive.’ He stopped. He was quite simply stunned by the documents. ‘I can’t get over the fact that we weren’t told. They used our Nazi parentage to make us
feel that we each had something to be ashamed of and that we owed the state, when the very opposite was true.’

  ‘They kept you for your talents,’ said Harland, ‘and it explains why you were allowed to join the Stasi in the first place. No one with an SS general as a father would have been allowed to join the HVA. ’

  ‘What else is in here?’

  ‘The documents are divided into two sections. The first are copies of the records of your time as a Stasi officer - reports on your progress, your training at the Main Directorate and your success or otherwise as an illegal abroad. The second section is devoted to your life in Dresden after you were allowed to leave the service. It’s clear they did everything they could to keep tabs on you because of your knowledge of the inner workings of the MfS. There were any number of IMs working on your case: colleagues, friends. It would seem that they turned most of your girlfriends and your ex-wife. Of course the majority is tittle-tattle.’ He stopped and looked across at Rosenharte. ‘But there’s one significant thing that you should know, and this will be a shock to you.’

  ‘What? Tell me now.’

  Harland regarded him steadily but said nothing. Outside, the noise of the crowd rose with each new surge of East Germans coming over; inside the Adler there was a celebration going on like no other. But for Rosenharte the events of the night - indeed of the last two months - had suddenly receded to a great distance. He may have been sitting beneath the Adler’s glass ceiling, in which all the joy of the world was reflected, but he was locked in his private capsule of time and space with the British spy. Before him was a shabby, well-thumbed folder which contained more information about his life than he had ever possessed himself. The Stasi had owned the objective truth of his existence, and of Konrad’s. They had hoarded that truth and used it to mould and manipulate their lives. It occurred to him that reading the file was an act of repossession for both him and Konrad.

  ‘Tell me what I should expect in here.’

  Harland took the file and flipped through the pages, moistening his index finger as he went. Then he turned it round with his finger pressing down on a page. ‘It seems that your brother was recruited as an IM specifically for the purpose of watching you. I’m sorry, Rudi. I didn’t want you to see this.’

  Rosenharte began to read the account of a meeting with Konrad that had taken place in Bautzen. His handler was an officer named Lange, and it seemed they met every six weeks or so at various safe houses in the Dresden area. Rosenharte counted notes on twenty-two secret meetings. He knew that he had to read it all now. There was no possibility of leaving this until later, or skimming it as he would the other material.

  The first pages included observations about Konrad - his diligence, nimbleness of mind and generally helpful demeanour. After his experience in Bautzen, the Stasi had high hopes of making him an important source, not only on his brother. There were members of the intelligentsia that they wished to target; creative types, hostile negative elements, decadent subversives that they wanted to know more about. In order to make certain of Konrad’s cooperation they regularly implied that he could be sent back to prison and they offered medical help and dentistry as incentives, though it seemed these never materialized.

  Konrad had told them about a long walk they had taken together in the hills. Rosenharte remembered the conversation as though it were yesterday because they had come close to falling out about religion and the unworkability of socialism. Konrad was agnostic, Rudi a lazy atheist. Konrad was a convinced socialist; Rudi was a sceptic. The account of the conversation, however, presented an entirely different picture. Konrad had evidently allowed Lange to draw him out on his brother’s inner convictions, and these Konrad had portrayed as a polar opposite of his actual sentiments. Where Rudi had been doubtful about the likely success of a socialist state, he was reported as being cautiously optimistic. When he asserted that he would have nothing to do with the Party, Konrad had surmised that he was lacking in confidence, having failed the state so catastrophically during his foreign service. He pretended not to know about the business in Brussels, but his handler filled in the details and concluded that Rudi Rosenharte was discreet about his time in the Stasi.

  As he read on, Rosenharte began to smile. According to a reluctantly disloyal Konrad, he, Rudi, was guilt-ridden, politically naïve, mean with his money, depressed, self-absorbed, selfish, and had difficulty in forming permanent relationships with women, most of which were the opposite of Rosenharte’s actual characteristics. Here and there were grains of truthful observation and reports of incidents that had taken place, but the total picture was false. He let the file slip to the table and summoned the image of Konrad in the late spring of that year sitting in a rickety chair, watching his sons playing in the hay meadow. He remembered his expression as being curiously detached at the time. And when he’d asked if there was something the matter, he had turned to him with the odd look that seemed to suggest Rudi’s trespass. Now he understood: that gentle mind was planning each step of his brother’s protection - a lonely course which required sacrifice and patience and was plotted alongside his own oblique defiance of the state.

  Harland waited for him to speak.

  ‘He used them,’ said Rosenharte. ‘He told them a whole pack of lies about me. He made fools of them and helped protect me.’ He paused. ‘It’s a tragedy that he did not live to see all this tonight. He would have been amazed and a very shrewd interpreter of what has happened.’

  Harland nodded. ‘I know there’s always a diminishing return with the third cognac, but I think you’re going to need it.’

  Rosenharte wondered at the tension around Harland’s eyes. Surely tonight of all nights a British spy could relax. But he seemed on edge and distracted. He asked why.

  ‘Everything’s changed. I may lose the deal I set up with the Russian. Five hours ago it looked pretty sweet, but then this happened and, well, it seems that the Americans are going to step in with their money and gather up everything I was working to get hold of.’

  ‘Does it matter? After all, you achieved the arrest of Abu Jamal. You got Konrad’s family out. And without your strange friend, Cuth Avocet, I would never have managed to release Ulrike and Kurt.’

  Harland pursed his lips. ‘You’re right. But my pride is offended. I wanted to pull it off. Still, when history takes over we all have to stand aside.’

  He signalled for another round. When it came he said: ‘My instructions from London specifically require me not to tell you the thing that I believe you ought to know.’ He stopped, swirled the brandy in front of his nose and glanced out of the window. ‘However, while watching you go through that file and seeing you read about yourself and Konrad, it struck me that tonight I also have a duty to the truth.’ There was another agonized pause during which he took a cigarette from Rosenharte. ‘In our line of work, things necessarily remain hidden. Deception and subterfuge are allowed to stand as the truth; the lie becomes the record, if you like. On this occasion, I don’t want that to happen.’

  Rosenharte shrugged. He was suddenly exhausted. He needed time to himself.

  Then Harland said, ‘Annalise Schering never died. There was no suicide.’

  Rosenharte felt himself stiffen. He slammed down his glass, almost breaking it, and looked away. ‘No! She was dead. I saw her.’

  ‘But you didn’t touch her.’ He paused. ‘You left immediately. We had people in the apartment. The moment you went in there we arranged for the doorbell to go and the phone to ring. You saw our little tableau with Annalise in the ice-cold bath and panicked, just as we hoped you would.’

  ‘Why? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘She wasn’t up to dealing with you. She wasn’t sharp enough and she wanted out. We didn’t know how you’d react. When you didn’t immediately tell your people that she was dead and that you had in effect failed, we knew we could use you. We got the police involved and put a deal to you. Then we made sure they got rid of you by using the second Annalise to feed s
ome bad stuff back to the Stasi about your drinking and your lack of discretion as an agent. I think they did a pretty good job on you. Well, you already know that.’

  Rosenharte was still dumbfounded. ‘But the risk! I might have told the Stasi at any time.’

  ‘There was no risk whatsoever. The only person who was exposed was you. The longer the operation went on, the more important Annalise Schering became to us, the Stasi and of course the Russians. You’ve got to remember it was the only method of telling your side what we actually intended without them putting it through the usual filters of suspicion. Because she was a traitor they trusted her.’

  He opened his hands to invite reaction. Rosenharte shook his head and said nothing.

  ‘You have every right to be angry about this,’ said Harland, pushing the tip of his cigarette around the ashtray. ‘I know how much that little stunt affected your life, but then . . . but then you have to appreciate that to us you were just another communist spy, a Romeo sent to the West to steal our secrets and threaten our security.’ He paused and revolved the watch on his wrist. Rosenharte had never seen him so unsettled. ‘Look on the bright side, Rudi; at least you have no death on your conscience. The real Annalise Schering has grown plump and happy and is living in the English shires with three teenage children.’

  Rosenharte shook his head. He could have sprung his own shock on Harland by telling him how Ulrike and the second Annalise had bonded and worked together in the cause of peace for so long. But that was their secret and it wouldn’t serve any purpose to reveal that a young Stasi translator had seen through MI6’s great subterfuge. He rose from the table and threw back his brandy. ‘That was another time - an age ago.’ He stretched and then stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Right now, Mr Harland, I need some sleep.’