by Alex Cugia
“So the Party found out too. And they were the ones who were most directly affected, since they would be losing their position and influence.” Thomas said. “Unification was at stake and the SED and the Stasi were the sacrifices to help achieve that and of course they didn’t like it.”
“Yes, killing Herren was a simplistic attempt to halt the negotiations, or at least delay them. Dieter only found out after the assassination that a Major Gudenberg of the twenty-second division had been the one who leaked the information - and he was rapidly promoted to Colonel.”
“They attacked the West Germans because they couldn’t lift their hands against the Soviets.”
“The SED tried to get the Soviet generals to overturn Gorbachev but failed. Then we learned that 50 billion DM will be paid by West Germany to the USSR.” Bettina said. “Officially, it’s for the replacement of the military bases and the repatriation of the Soviet military. Then, there’s the amount to be paid to their allies in Europe.”
“What do you mean?”
“You remember the initial reactions after the fall of the Wall? The French and the British kept insisting that unification was out of the question and that an enlarged Germany would pose a threat to European equilibrium.”
“Yes, I remember. Thatcher had spoken quite clearly against the idea.”
“Then Kohl made his speech on the ten points to unification and things really got going. We heard through our contacts in London that the deal to get agreement was that Germany should pay a larger share of the European Community’s bill for the next ten years.”
Thomas thought back to his first meeting with Dieter and Dieter’s comment then: “Most of real history is never written down.”
It was now early evening and much as Thomas ached to stay with Bettina he knew he had to leave shortly for Tegel airport in order to catch his flight.
He hated the idea of leaving Bettina and was worried about her. He had never seen her so tired and so lost, so disheartened and apparently lacking in spirit, following Dieter’s death. She was almost unrecognisable compared to the carefree and self-confident girl he’d met at the party in the youth centre. But then he too had changed, he knew.
They lay on the bed and he caressed her body which then arched toward him in response. They kissed deeply. “I’ll be back in a couple of days. I’ve brought enough food for three or four. Don’t go out for any reason. They’re out there looking for you. Try to listen to the back tapes and see if there’s anything useful there for us. When I come back, hopefully we’ll get straight out of here with the help of the BND.” He handed her a small sheet of paper. “I’ll be staying in Stephan’s flat in Frankfurtprobably stay with Stephan. This is his number in case of an emergency. Try to memorise it or else conceal it somehow, mixed up with another number you recognise maybe. And this is the BND number here.”
“Don’t go, not yet. I need to feel you next to me.”
Thomas held her tightly and gently kissed her face and neck. He wished for time to stand still so they could make love and forget about everything around them.
“Bettina, I hate to leave you but I really have to go now.”
“Take me with you. Please. I’ll go crazy here on my own.”
“I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
He gave her a last lingering kiss and held her tightly in his arms for several minutes then eased free, kissed her lightly again, and walked to the apartment door without daring to look back. He descended the stairs silently, lost in thought. He had almost reached the ground floor when the small black door on the right opened, the corridor light snapped on and an old lady in black, carrying a stick and walking with a heavy limp, emerged and turned to shut the door carefully. Thomas headed hastily to the front door, glancing in her direction, but before he reached it she turned again, saying nothing but staring at him in a way that made him shiver despite himself as he recognised Frau Schwinewitz. He closed the front door behind him, feeling deeply uneasy, and headed to the Friedrichstrasse crossing.
Chapter 43
Friday January 19, evening, then Saturday January 20 1990
THOMAS had become concerned about catching the last British Airways flight out of Tegel airport to Frankfurt but it had been straightforward enough. The border crossing had been easy. There was huge chaos as hundreds of people kept streaming in from all directions, paying little attention to queues or order but just milling around and pressing forwards. The border officer only had time to look at his face and check that he had a valid document before the surge of people behind Thomas pushed him towards the Western side.
Maybe I should have brought Bettina along as well, he thought, as he found his seat. Dieter’s murderers could still be looking for her in Dresden and might not yet have switched the search to Berlin. In a couple of days’ time everything would become more difficult. But they'd have needed to bring all the tapes and the documents over as well in order to find out what was in them. And anyone moving around with a couple of large suitcases would seem suspicious and likely to be detained and inspected more carefully when leaving.
"She really safer back at the apartment." he decided and then he remembered his last minute glimpse of the sinister figure of Frau Schwinewitz. "She's deteriorated badly since my first visit there." he thought, not unsympathetically, although he shivered. "Maybe that smack on the head and the long coma she was in has permanently damaged her."
He made himself comfortable on the seat. He had hardly slept in the last thirty-six hours, and his head was starting to ache. He closed his eyes for a moment and waited for the plane to take off and level into its flight path.
"I must be careful not to give too much away before I know we've definitely got a deal." he thought, jotting down a few notes on a piece of paper loosened from his pad. "Does Richard Köpp have sufficient authority to agree a deal, I wonder? Probably not. So I need to make sure that I only say enough to reassure him that I'm for real and can provide useful intelligence. Then I can ask for a meeting with his superior or with whoever it is that handles this sort of stuff."
The issue of Bettina’s brother was particularly tricky, he realised. But most importantly, he needed to avoid being identified and to minimize his own involvement. There was still a remote chance that he could find his file in the East and eliminate all proof of his collaboration. If he confessed his role to the BND agents and they then reached no agreement, he would have condemned himself with his own hands. He needed to be very careful. He dozed off and the biro slipped from his hand.
It was a hard landing. The plane bounced once and Thomas jerked awake from his sleep filled with visions of Dieter’s assassination. Three men had entered through the front door as Thomas stood watching from the garden window. They had started searching the house as Thomas desperately looked for the gun that Dieter had given him. Then Dieter had come in the room, and two of the men immediately drew their guns and shot him. He saw the body falling heavily to the floor, face first. Thomas shouted, and the other man looked over at him, hatred suffusing his face. He tried desperately to escape but as he ran his feet would only move slowly and he felt as if he were wading through treacle. He had his hand on the gate, almost escaping, when he felt a hand grasping his shirt and holding him back. He turned, and over his shoulder saw that it was Bettina, smiling slowly, turning her head and leaning closer, her mouth gaping to bite, traces of blood on her hair and teeth.
He shuddered, shook the image away, passed his hand behind his neck and noticed he'd been sweating profusely. He felt so washed out he was tempted to make straight for Stephan's flat and immediate bed, leaving it till the next day to call Richard to confirm their meeting, then thought of the risks to Bettina back in Berlin and realised that he had no time to waste. Although late, Richard suggested meeting immediately but Thomas, conscious that he had to be at his most alert, refused and they settled for 10.00 the next morning. Within the half hour he'd reached Stephan's flat by taxi, collected the key, strewn his clothes on the floor,
set an alarm clock, stumbled into the large and comfortable double bed, thought again how he would have liked Bettina with him, and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
The alarm dragged him awake, this time from an apparently dreamless sleep. He felt refreshed and capable of beating the BND at whatever game they chose to play with him. He'd still need to be careful and very much always on his guard, he thought, but he felt much more confident and while lying there for a few minutes updated the approach he planned to follow.
He'd travelled light from Berlin and as he and Stephan were roughly the same size, Thomas a little better built, perhaps, and had frequently worn each other's clothes during the many holidays they'd spent together he decided to raid Stephan's wardrobe. He needed to look as impressive as he could for the meeting, he decided, and selected an Armani suit of navy blue lightweight wool the severity offset with thin pin stripes of light grey, which fitted him perfectly. He added a light cream linen shirt, very slightly starched, and a fairly sober silk tie with, nevertheless, a riot of subdued colours seen when looked at more closely. He added casually to his top pocket a matching handkerchief and saw, looking at himself in the mirror, a confident young man, reliable and sober but with clear sparks of intelligence and individuality showing through. He twirled a point of an imaginary moustache, winked at his reflection and left the flat, eager for the meeting.
As he reached the towering building in the city centre which housed the BND headquarters, Thomas could feel his heart beating faster while a prickly edginess made him realise how much of their futures were at stake. He stood on the pavement some metres from the main entrance, breathed deeply and slowly several times, then walked through the sliding glass doors into the main vestibule. It was approaching 10.00am.
"Richard Köpp, please. He's expecting me." The young man at the desk looked through the computer directory, dialled a number and had a brief, discreet conversation. He wrote out a pass, led Thomas across the entrance hall and through a metal detector, then accompanied him into the lift. At the eleventh floor the metal doors opened of themselves and Thomas stepped out into a small reception area walled on all sides with reflecting dark brown glass. On the right an open panel revealed a small meeting room with two men present. Thomas guessed that the younger of these, a tall man of about his own age with dark, slicked-back hair was the man he’d arranged to meet.
“Richard Köpp. How do you do?” the young man said, holding out his hand as he walked over. “I didn’t catch your name when you called ... ”
“Wilhelm Schultz.” Thomas said, holding Richard’s gaze and noting the fleeting smile which acknowledged that it would be useless to insist on Thomas’s disclosing his real name. “How do you do?”
“OK, Wilhelm.” He turned and indicated the other man. “This is Ulrich Bockmann, responsible for the anti-terrorist department here. I thought it would be useful to have someone senior present at the meeting so we can cut right to the chase if necessary.”
Thomas nodded and shook hands with Bockmann. He realised this was primarily a tactic to intimidate him and so better extract information, but in any case Richard was probably too junior to be able to strike a deal without authorisation from someone more senior. Bockmann was shorter than Köpp, about 50 Thomas judged, had neatly groomed short, white hair, and was dressed formally in a dark suit with a deep blue tie. He had very cold grey eyes, a tanned complexion and a muscular face with a particularly bulky neck. “He looks like an old sailor,” Thomas thought “the kind that hunts sharks in the Caribbean.”
Bockmann led Thomas into the small meeting room and Köpp closed the glass door behind him. The room was rectangular with the wall opposite the door almost a complete picture window giving a spectacular view over the Frankfurt’s west end. On the side of the table facing the winter glare from the window there was a single chair and as Bockmann laid a hand on the back to pull it out and invite Thomas to sit Thomas deliberately moved to the head of the table instead, taking a position where he would now be able to watch the expressions of the other two while more easily hiding his own. Köpp glanced at Bockmann but neither man said anything.
Bockmann’s voice was dark and deep and he spoke slowly. “So, Mr Schlitz, how long is it that ... ”
“Schultz.” Thomas said. “My name is Schultz.”
“I’m so sorry! I must have misheard you. It’s such a common name, of course. How long is it that you’ve been in the service? I mean the Stasi. You look so very young.”
Thomas glanced at Köpp and saw that he was looking firmly towards Bockmann. It was clear that the older man was in charge and that Köpp had no intention of interrupting.
“Wait a minute.” Thomas said. “This is not an interrogation. I came here of my own accord to discuss ... ”
“We know why you came, Mr Schultz. You’re not the first Stasi agent to knock on our door, and you certainly won’t be the last. In fact, there’s so many of you I think we should set up a special division. We could call it the Rapture Division, something commemorating the end of your world.” He stared at Thomas and smiled thinly. “Realise that you’re in a buyer’s market, not a seller’s. You really have very little to offer. We already know most of what you have to say and as for the rest, well, we’ll find that out on our own in a couple of months.” He took a few strands of tobacco from a leather pouch, put them in his mouth and chewed, staring reflectively at Thomas.
“Definitely an old shark hunter!” Thomas thought. He waited for the man to say more but the silence, and the steady chewing, continued. Finally Bockmann spat the tobacco into a small ashtray without taking his eyes off Thomas, leant back and vaguely waved his hand in a gesture which seemed to suggest that it was Thomas’s turn to speak, that he, Bockmann, was waiting and that Thomas had better not waste their time.
“Then I guess it was a waste of time coming over.” Thomas said as he got up from his chair. “I’d thought stuff like, oh, the real story of why Herren was assassinated the other day and who actually did it might have interested you but I guess if you know all that stuff already ... Thanks for the coffee anyway.” He gestured to the Thermos flasks and the three clean cups at the end of the table and made to leave.
He reached the glass door, pulling at it and finding it locked, before Bockmann spoke. “Not so quick, Mr Schulz. I’ll decide whether what you have to say is worth listening to.”
Thomas turned slowly and they looked at each other for a couple of seconds without speaking, Bockmann smiling in the way Thomas imagined a cat smiles with pleasure at a mouse about to be played with and duly eaten. “I’ve got him!” he thought, and walked back to his chair and sat down. He had to control the conversation, he realised, and to do that he had to attack from the start.
“Let’s lay our cards on the table, shall we?” Thomas said matter-of-factly. “I’m here on behalf of an agent who’s been in the service for nine years and was privy to high-level detail. We can provide privileged information about a lot of events - terrorist attacks in West Germany, Herren’s assassination as I mentioned, criminal behaviour on the part of senior Stasi officers, and a great deal more. We have hard evidence which will allow you to nail many of the people responsible, including for other stuff you don’t even know about yet.” He looked around the table to see the effect his words had produced. Each man was listening attentively.
Bockmann grunted. "Go on."
“You’ll find this is all valuable stuff, not even suspected in the Weast in some cases. We have three requirements in return: one, the agent needs a new identity and a suitable new job; two, the file of an informer who was coerced through blackmail into helping the Stasi needs to be cleared; and thirdly, an unjust prison sentence passed on a relative of the agent needs to be reviewed and quashed or, at least, reduced considerably to time already served.”
“What is your role in all this, Mr Schultz? An innocent bystander, perhaps – or something more? Why would you be negotiating on this other person’s behalf?” Bockmann’s voice rose
and he slapped the table in front of him fiercely and suddenly. “You talk about putting your cards on the table but I don’t see any real cards there, merely hints about what they might be. You must think we’re gullible fools, eager to buy anything trivial! We'll decide what the information is worth and therefore what we’ll pay for it. And as far as this prison sentence is concerned, we have no power to ... ”
“It’s a package deal. Everything All or nothing. This person was given fifteen years for killing an attacker in a fight in a bar. Here in West Germany he would likely not have been convicted or at most would have got maybe five to seven years for inadvertent manslaughter. It was a miscarriage ... ”
“What would you know about the West German legal system?” Bockmann interrupted. Then he looked at Thomas and smiled slightly. “Ah, but going by your accent I’d say you’re from somewhere close to here, close to Frankfurt. Well, this makes matters possibly more interesting ... Go on.”
“I, this informer was blackmailed, as I said. If he hadn’t cooperated he would have been jailed for an indeterminate period. He really had no choice but what he then did do was spy on the Stasi in turn. He accumulated information he knew would be of value to the West and he did this to prove what side he really was on. That, added to what the agent knows through day to day activity, is material you will certainly be interested in.”
“What do you mean, ‘spy on the Stasi’?” Bockmann asked. The deep voice was languid but the doubt and the amusement were clear. He glanced at his watch in a staged gesture of impatience.
“He bugged Colonel Dieter’s private office in the Stasi operational building. He placed a microphone in a hidden corner of Dieter’s desk and captured the conversations wirelessly in a nearby location.”
