Berlin Centre
Reim #3
Max Hertzberg
www.maxhertzberg.co.uk
December 1983
1
Berlin Lichtenberg
My old pal Holger walked into my new office early on a Thursday morning.
“You’ve had a promotion,” I told him after counting the pips on his shoulder.
“Change of scenery, too,” he replied, twisting his head so he could join in with the counting. “Been transferred to Main Department II.”
Small talk exhausted, I told him to shut the door while I got the bottle and glasses out. He was my first visitor at Berlin Centre, and that called for a toast.
“You know that favour you owe me,” he asked once he’d emptied his glass.
I knew I owed him a favour, I just didn’t know which one he was referring to. But he was probably here to let me know, so I topped up his glass and settled back, ready to hear what Holger had to offer.
“Practically the first job across my desk,” he said, sipping his vodka. “I’ve been assigned to look after a walk-in, would you believe?”
“Congratulations,” I replied. I’d never had a Selbstanbieter, a member of a foreign security service walk up to me and offer their services as an informant.
“They sent me to pick him up from Beeskow. Let’s call him Subject Bruno, that’s what his file says, after all. Bruno from Bonn. He’s visiting relatives over here and decides to make himself known to the local county office—they’re all in a swither and phone Berlin. Berlin phones me and tells me to go and get him.”
I took a sip of vodka. What Holger was saying sounded interesting, better than pushing the same piece of paper round my desk all day, which was what I’d been doing ever since I got here.
I topped up our glasses and waited for him to get to the point.
“So I drove out to Beeskow—you know the place?”
I knew it. I’d passed through on the motorcycle once or twice. One of those sandpit towns that lurk in the endless Prussian forests of Brandenburg.
“Picked him up, brought him back,” continued Holger. “On the way, we got chatting, hit it off a bit. He was easy to talk to.”
I could already tell I wasn’t going to like where this was going.
“He’s had a week of the treatment and now they’re going through the transcripts, deciding what to do with him. While that’s happening, he’s to behave himself and sit tight.
“So, yesterday I took him to a Datschek in the woods. Nice joint, they’re keeping him sweet: good food, more than enough beer and a couple of guards to split firewood and feed the stove when he’s feeling cold. I reckon the plan is to make sure he arrives back in Bonn on time so they can play him back to the opposition. Of course, there’s a hair in the soup.” Holger paused to light a cigarette. I let him get on with it, I was enjoying story hour. “There’s always a hair in the soup and this time it’s the source himself. It seems our new friend Bruno from Bonn is getting bored.” Holger paused to take another sip of vodka, watching me over the rim of his glass.
“You want me to feel sorry for him?”
“Wait, listen—this is the best bit: I had to take some paperwork down there this morning, had a bit of a chat with Bruno. He told me he’s frustrated that the one good bit of intelligence he brought with him hasn’t been acted upon.”
“How’s he know what we’re doing with intelligence he provided?” I snorted, this was obvious stuff, even to a walk-in Westler.
“Exactly. Normally he wouldn’t know. Except this time he does because when I picked him up from Berlin, during a nice chat on the way to the Datschek—he told me about a mole in the Firm.”
That made me sit up straight. Moles are bad news for everyone, and speaking personally, the last thing I needed was a deep probe tunnelling through the whole Ministry, I had too much smelly laundry that wasn’t fit for the light of day.
“Wait, it gets even better.” Holger held his glass out for another top-up. “One of the officers who interrogated him—Bruno from Bonn says the interrogator is the mole.”
2
Berlin Lichtenberg
It doesn’t do to wander around Berlin Centre saying stuff like that.
The first thing I did was double check my office door was closed. The next thing I did was pull an army blanket out of the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and put the telephone to bed, tucking it tight in the grey blanket.
“A mole? You sure he wasn’t just trying to cause trouble?” I asked.
“Always a possibility.”
“You passed on the information?”
“Wrote the report, never got round to handing it in—you know what happens to messengers.”
We looked at each other for a while, sipping our vodka. I wasn’t enjoying the conversation and needed Holger out of my office. But he wanted something from me, and he wouldn’t go until he’d asked. I gave him his line: “What do you want?”
“If I hand that report in—it’s about members of my department and I’ve only just arrived. Doesn’t do to make allegations like that, not without collateral.”
“I’m not the one to-” I had my hands up in front of me, shaking my head.
But Holger wasn’t in a listening mood. “Just have a wee poke around, see if there’s anything to it. If it looks like Bruno’s telling the truth then I’ll hand in my report. Start my new posting with a bang—breaking something like this would set me on the right path.”
“It’ll also make you lots of enemies. Particularly if anyone finds out about it before you get that collateral you were just talking about.”
“That’s why I’m asking for help.” Holger’s face was a picture of innocence.
“Listen, pal, I’ve only just got here myself. Haven’t even got my feet under the table yet. What you’re asking … something like this, I’d have to take it to the section chief.”
“Be a good start for you. You run it, I’ll help out any way I can. That way we’ll both get some credit.”
Holger had a point, and I liked the way he said it. He could have got on his high horse, gone on about all he’s done for me over the years, how much I owe him. But he didn’t do that, he just offered me half the glory.
And all the risk.
3
Berlin Lichtenberg
When my last posting ended, I’d decided I was ready for the quiet life. I’d put in for a transfer to Neubrandenburg district headquarters—nothing much happens up there, and there’s nothing to do but watch the trees grow. No borders to the West, so no need to worry about escapees. The district does touch Poland, and to be fair, the way the Poles have been behaving the last few years, that border might become a problem yet.
I packed my bags and sat on them, waiting for my transfer to the empty north, but it never came. Instead, they assigned me to ZAIG, the Ministry’s Central Evaluation and Information Group, based at Berlin Centre in Lichtenberg.
On the first day, they gave me an office, complete with desk, typewriter and telephone, and told me to wait for further orders. Then they forgot all about me.
The first person to come near had been Holger, and he’d left again as soon as he’d told me what he wanted me to do. So I was back to me, myself and I in a poky office, gawping at a telephone wrapped in an army blanket.
I released the phone, folded and stowed the coarse, grey wool, all the while thinking about the time bomb Holger had brought.
If he was right about there being a mole in the Ministry then sooner or later the wolves would be unleashed, and they’d shred every secret from every body they came across, quick or dead. After the last two cases I’d worked, I couldn’t afford that level of scrutiny—I didn’t even know whether I was still in the frame for the death
of my old Boss, Major Fröhlich. Nor did I know whether the disappearance of my wife had gone unremarked, or whether they just hadn’t got round to interrogating me yet.
I was still hoping nobody knew about my involvement in Operation Oskar and the disappearance of Major Blecher—but when it comes to the Firm, there’s no telling. Wily bastards can watch you for years, perfecting their plans. Until they decide the time is right, you’ll be none the wiser.
Perhaps Holger was right. Help him defuse the time bomb and we’d both get gold stars. And gold stars, when attached to shoulder boards, mean more salary and more privileges.
Holger’s story interested me. I hadn’t taken any notes, it was all in my head and I rattled through the little information he’d given me.
What it boiled down to was the word of a walk-in—someone prepared to betray his own country and his own colleagues. A discontented officer of the BKA, the West German Federal Crime Agency, tired of working on the rolling-up of the second generation of the West German terrorist organisation Red Army Fraction. Even if his job involved assessing intelligence on the GDR’s involvement in supporting the RAF, I couldn’t see how he’d get hold of information about a mole in our department.
Source Bruno’s story didn’t ring true. His word wasn’t good enough to justify releasing the wolves on Berlin Centre.
4
Berlin Lichtenberg
It was nearly a week before I next saw Holger. I’d been to his office in the next building along, but the secretary had sent me on my way again. Quoting the paranoid security regulations of the Ministry, she refused to tell me when he might be back. The decrepit aunt wouldn’t even take a message.
So I went back to my own office and continued to wait for someone to notice that I existed.
And my existence was duly noted at the Party branch meeting the next morning when I was taken in hand by the Party deputy-secretary who gave me a pile of membership files to tidy.
Years of training, years of operational experience, and I end up in a tiny office, wondering how Comrade Unteroffizier Rietig’s Party records had ended up in Comrade Gefreiter Reicherl’s file.
I clocked off late that day, same as every other day. When a superior officer comes knocking on my door, holding the files for a challenging and interesting operation, I want to be there, showing a keen face.
Which is why it was after 2000 hours when I left. Ignoring the steps down to the U-Bahn, I turned right and started the walk home. A bit of exercise would do me good after sitting behind the desk, drinking schnapps and smoking all day.
It was winter, in fact it was nearly Christmas—the lights from the shop windows flared festively on the damp pavements—but since the weekend the weather had turned mild. Temperatures were well above freezing, the snow and ice had melted, and puddles lay on the buckled paving stones. I loosened my coat, pulled my thick mittens off and admired how my hands glowed in the damp air.
I went past the bar outside Frankfurter Allee S-Bahn station, it was out of bounds to Ministry personnel, nevertheless the idea of an anonymous beer in a fusty Kneipe appealed. More appealing than sitting at home by myself, watching television.
Despite the lure of the various bars I passed, I made it to the far end of Friedrichshain without being led astray. It seemed simpler to count my miseries in the comfort of my own home.
As I turned the final corner, I could see the streetlamps on my side of the road still hadn’t been repaired, one or two glimmered outside the old-build tenements opposite, but the concrete walkway to my front door was in darkness.
Trusting my winter boots not to soak up the puddles, I stomped through meltwater to my block door and let myself in. I didn’t check to see if there was any post, I didn’t bother to read the new notices from the municipal accommodation administration, just headed straight upstairs to my own flat.
I opened the front door and went in, taking off my coat and boots while doing a mental stocktake of fridge and cupboards. There’d be some of that crispbread I hated, but other than that, who knew? I turned around, deciding I needed to go into the kitchen to see whether I had anything edible, but I only got as far as the living room.
“Verdammt nochmal,” I swore under my breath.
Holger was sitting in my favourite armchair, holding a bottle of my beer and looking serious.
“This is not funny,” I told him.
“We need to talk.”
I swiped my hand through the air, brushing him off, and headed to the fridge for a beer.
“What’s wrong with looking me up at work?” I asked once I’d got settled on the sofa.
“I’ve been away.”
“I had noticed.” It wasn’t just his absence from the Centre that I’d noted, it was the Lufthansa bag at his feet, and the creased Western suit he was wearing.
But I left the conversation where it had run aground. Sipped my beer and waited for Holger to tell me why he’d broken into my flat. Whatever his reasons, they would have to be good—over the last few months, too many people had seen my front door as an open invitation, and the heavy traffic was giving me dyspepsia.
Holger finished his beer and got up to fetch a new one. “Need another?” he asked as he went past.
“Kind of you to offer.”
“No problem, it’s your beer anyway.” Holger didn’t recognise sarcasm.
He opened a couple of bottles and handed me one on his way back to my armchair.
“I needed that.” He opened his mouth wide for a burp, then polished his gob with the back of his hand. “You’re probably wondering why I was waiting for you?”
“You were waiting for me? I assumed you’d just run out of beer.”
“I’ve been to Bonn.”
“Not good for your health this time of year—heard it’s a little damp.”
“Reim—shut up and let me get a word in edgeways. I was babysitting Bruno, making sure he got home OK. Usual drill: house him, bed him in, confirm channels of communication-”
“Was?” He might have told me to shut up but I’m not a secret policeman for nothing, I’d picked up on the way he’d emphasised the past tense.
“Bruno was arrested on Saturday. They were waiting for him at his flat in Meckenheim, grabbed him as soon as he got home.”
“So, they found out he’d had a chat with us. Stands to reason,” I ventured. “Look on the bright side, at least you got away.”
But Holger was shaking his head. “No. Everything was going exactly to plan: he took the train he was booked on, arrived home the right day, the right time. Everything as expected, there was no reason for any suspicions.”
“You say this happened on Saturday? Where have you been since?”
“Dortmund. Never thought I’d end up in a safe house in Dortmund, but that’s where they put me. Two days of debriefing, they let me come back this afternoon.” Holger took a pull of his beer, then another. “I came straight here, but they’ll have more questions for me at the Centre tomorrow.”
I gave my friend a closer look, noting the dark bags under his eyes, the heavy eyelids. The hand holding the bottle was trembling.
I made a trip to the kitchen and came back with a couple of glasses and a bottle of Doppelkorn. Holger downed his in one go, so I filled him up again.
“OK, Holger, let’s hear it from the top, nice and slow—we’ve got the whole evening ahead of us.”
Holger took it from the top. From when he collected Source Bruno from the county administration in Beeskow, to the moment he watched Bruno being bundled into the back of a black Mercedes in a small West German town on the outskirts of Bonn.
All the usual counter-surveillance measures had been put in place while Bruno was still on the territory of the GDR. As soon as he’d made contact with the local operative in Beeskow, he’d been mothered—even if there had been a Western minder out there trying to keep tabs on Bruno, the chances of the defector being spotted while talking to us were as close to zero as the Firm could manage. And in this Re
public, that was damn close.
No, the West Germans must have had another reason to nick the source.
Listening to my friend talk, it was clear he thought he knew the answer to the riddle.
“You know how it is, the most likely scenario is the one that’s probably true,” he told me. “Time and again we see it. Why go hunting for far-out explanations? We’re not a regiment of Miss Marples; we deal in facts, not fiction. And the most obvious explanation in this case-”
“Don’t say it!” I leant forward, elbows on my knees, looking into Holger’s eyes. But there was no stopping him.
“That mole Bruno talked about. It was the mole that told the West Germans about Bruno’s defection.”
I couldn’t disagree with Holger, in our game we concentrate on the most likely explanations first. But he and I differed in our opinions on what the most likely reason for Source Bruno’s arrest might be. Right now, I wasn’t prepared to commit to any theory, not until I’d found out a bit more.
I didn’t think I’d get much sense out of Holger tonight and tried to send him home. Trouble was, he refused to leave.
“What about your family?” I coaxed.
“They don’t know I’m back yet,” he replied, burying his head in his hands.
It wasn’t just that he was tired from the nursemaid operation and the subsequent debriefing, he was in a funk. He’d already been vigorously debriefed and was expecting more of the treatment when he reported for duty in the morning. He’d failed in a simple babysitting mission and he knew the Centre would be looking to spread the blame on his bread.
I took the bed and gave Holger the sofa. I’m not heartless, he got a blanket too. And I even doled out a few sleeping pills of my wife’s that were cluttering up the bathroom cabinet.
In the morning I woke up in as good a mood as can be expected in mid-December, but Holger looked no better for his few hours on the couch.
“We can go to work separately, I don’t want to drag you down with me …” he mumbled around the edge of his coffee.
Berlin Centre Page 1
