Tuesday the 27th finally rolled around and, ironically, the best connection to Marienborn was the international express D444, the same service that Bruno had caught to Cologne three weeks earlier. I picked the train up at Schönefeld, and a few minutes before we reached Magdeburg a transport policeman came through the train, pointedly informing all citizens that the next station was the final stop in the GDR. Not technically correct, but the border station, Marienborn, was scheduled as a boarding-only stop. I didn’t have the right stamps on my paperwork to stay with the train that far so for the final leg of the journey I would have to join the proletariat on the stopping service.
When I alighted at Magdeburg, I saw the transport cop in his dark uniform mentally counting us as we filed past. I made my way down the steps to the passenger tunnel as the tannoy announced the international express was only for passengers with a valid exit visa.
The local train was made up of a loco and three grimy carriages. It took a whole hour to rattle along the mere forty kilometres of track between Magdeburg and Marienborn, wheezing into every village and hamlet on the way, stopping to let babushkas wearing coats that were heavier than themselves dodder off down the platform, most of them carrying full shopping bags and walking sticks.
Marienborn Station’s only concession to Christmas was a raddled spruce in a pot at the end of the platform. Fairy lights had been wound through the branches, but weren’t switched on—Christmas was already over, after all. I walked past the Mitropa station buffet and crossed the tracks by the level crossing on the way to the international platform. Colleagues from the Firm, dressed in border guard uniforms, watched from the end of the international connections platform, while real border guards kept an eye on passengers from an inspection bridge above. A comrade barred my way, standing between a grubby orange railing and a glass kiosk.
“Ausweis and travel documents, please,” he intoned dully, looking over my shoulder to see whether I had come alone.
I introduced myself and fished out my clapperboard, showing him the page that confirmed I was a fully paid up member of the Ministry. The corporal stiffened and saluted, immediately entering the hut and picking up the phone to pass on my request to speak to the head of the Pass and Control Unit.
“You will be taken to the Head of PKE without delay, Comrade Second Lieutenant,” he reported on return.
It was a miserable day, the railings were slick with ice, the stone-grey clouds hung almost as low as the platform canopy and every so often a spit of frozen rain targetted the gap between my collar and neck. I pulled my anorak closer around me and swore at the corporal who’d gone back into his little shelter without inviting me in. Through the window I could see him sitting in the warmth, filling in a grey form at his desk.
An Unteroffizier rescued me from the wind and the sleet, and we marched down the platform until we reached an office tucked away in the far corner.
Behind a desk that was big enough to play ping-pong on, a major was staring at a couple of clipboards, each with a form inside a plastic pocket, numbers filled in with felt-tip marker. He handed the clipboards and a couple of felt-tip markers to the Uffzi, who rapped out a quick Sie gestatten, ich melde mich ab, Genossse Major? and left the room without waiting for permission.
“Two coffees!” the major shouted at the closing door before turning his attention to me. “How can I help you, Comrade Second Lieutenant?” He gestured at the chair on my side of the desk.
I sat down and pulled out my notebook and pen.
“It concerns a passenger who exited the GDR via this border crossing point on the third of December on the D444 express service to Cologne, Comrade Major.”
“The paperwork will have been filed with Magdeburg and Berlin by now.” The officer frowned.
“I’ve seen the paperwork,” I paused for a moment, enjoying his discomfort. “And Berlin has no concerns in regards to your platoon’s efficiency nor the conscientious fulfilment of your socialist duty.”
The major’s shoulders relaxed as his back softened.
“I would like to speak to those members of the Pass and Control Unit who checked the passengers on that train,” I continued.
“You’re familiar with the process? Two teams, each beginning at the end, working through the train until they meet in the middle. Each team is made up of a member of the PKE and a member of the Customs Administration”
I was familiar with the process, but Bruno had been sitting at the centre of the train so either team could have got to him first.
“I’ll need to speak to all PKE personnel who had any contact with passengers on that service, and, if possible, the customs officers, too.”
“You’ll have to speak to Chief GZA about seeing the customs officers. I’ll ask the Duty Officer Border Troops to put you in touch.”
I nodded, my purpose had been to inform the Head of PKE of my intentions, not to ask for advice, but he wasn’t to know that I’d spent years monitoring the smooth running of border crossings into West Berlin.
A stiff silence descended, broken only by the return of the Uffzi with two cups and a jug of coffee.
“Pull the records for the third of December,” the major glanced at me for confirmation that he had the right date. “And send for the personnel that were on the train that day.”
The sergeant nodded and left again, this time without any formality. Wish the CO during my basic military service had been this lenient.
I sipped my coffee—it was good stuff: Seized contraband, murmured the major into his cup while he stared at the wisps of smoke that were escaping from the badly fitted iron stove in the corner. The whole room stank of brown coal, auburn ash hung in the air and settled on the cracked lino.
My observations were interrupted by a knock at the door. The major ignored it, and a couple of minutes later there was another knock, followed by the appearance of the sergeant’s head.
“Both together or singly, Comrade Major?” he asked.
The major raised an eyebrow in my direction, and I addressed the Uffzi directly. “Bring them both in, Comrade Sergeant.”
The two men filed in and stood at attention in the corner, casting nervous glances at the Uffzi standing beside them.
“May I, Comrade Major?” I asked.
“Go ahead, Comrade Second Lieutenant.”
I scraped my chair around so I could see the three soldiers. I wasn’t sure of the operational protocol of doing interviews in the presence of the commanding officer and his assistant, but since the major had made no signs of leaving, I decided I had no choice but to press on and hope he would restrict himself to drinking his coffee and staring at the stove.
The sergeant had somehow made it across the room without my noticing that he’d moved. He was now standing beside the major, literally distancing himself from the men I was about to interrogate.
The taller one was a simple soldier, still in his teens, barely begun shaving. The other was a corporal, looking older and more experienced than his comrade, but also obviously not a lifer. They were in winter field uniform and had presumably been pulled from one of the sentry posts on and around the station.
“Comrades, were you in service on the D444 express train to Cologne on the third of December this year?”
After a moment’s pause for thought, I got a simultaneous report from both of them: Jawohl, Genosse Unterleutnant.
“Which of you began at the rear of the train?”
The young soldier took a step forward. I showed him a picture of Holger and asked if he recognised him.
“Comrade Second Lieutenant,” he began doubtfully. “It was three weeks ago, but I believe that person was on the train.”
“Tell me.”
“He was in possession of West German papers, but was wearing what I considered to be clothing produced in the GDR. Close inspection of his passport, Ausweis and other pieces of identification turned up no further inconsistencies, so I moved on.”
“Did you report your suspicions, Co
mrade?”
Behind me, I heard the major mumble something, whether to himself or to his assistant, I couldn’t tell. I ignored him, and passed another three photographs to the men in front of me. The two babysitters and Bruno himself.
Neither recognised the two babysitters, but the corporal squinted at the photograph of Bruno for a moment or two.
“Comrade Second Lieutenant,” he began, as hesitant as his colleague had been. I made an impatient gesture with my hand and he gathered his wits. “I can’t be certain, but if this was him … I believe, at the time, I was paying more attention to another passenger in his carriage.”
The corporal was beginning to sweat beneath his fleece Bärenvotze hat. He shoved the photograph at his colleague. “You remember the woman we took off the train?” he asked.
I cleared my throat and the corporal turned back to me, straightening his back even further and blushing as he did so.
“Apologies, Comrade Second Lieutenant. It is possible that the person in the photograph was in the same compartment as a colleague.”
“Colleague?” I asked, my interest sharpening.
“She identified herself as a member of the Ministry for State Security and left the train.”
I turned to the major who was sharing a sideways glance with the assistant.
“You didn’t think to tell me of this, Comrade Major?”
“You didn’t ask, Comrade Second Lieutenant,” he replied, his voice flat with disdain.
23
Berlin Lichtenberg
I didn’t get back to Berlin until after ten that night. The train brought me to Karlshorst and I caught the S-Bahn to Frankfurter Allee, walking from there down the slick streets to Berlin Centre.
Major Kühn was waiting for me in his office. I’d called him from a public payphone in Magdeburg, asking for an urgent meeting, but it was an open line so I couldn’t tell him what I’d just found out.
“Sit down to give your report, Comrade Second Lieutenant,” he said as I came in.
I’d had the whole journey, and several hours waiting for a connection at Brandenburg Main Station to consider how best to make my report. The facts of the situation were clear enough: I’d gone to Marienborn, been told that a female operative had been removed from the same compartment Bruno had been travelling in. The Head of PKE in Marienborn had refused to tell me what had happened to the operative, or let me look at the report.
The incident opened up a completely new aspect to Bruno’s journey, but what bothered me more was that somebody in this building had already known about events at Marienborn that day, they’d read the report and filed it. Had Major Kühn known about this before he sent me to talk to the PKE?
It was hard to read anything into the major’s manner: his eyes were so far beneath his heavy beetle brow that it was impossible to interpret any emotion; his eyebrows were slightly raised, perhaps in mild interest.
So in the absence of any reason not to, I gave him the full story.
By the time I’d finished my short report, Kühn hadn’t rearranged any of his impenetrable features. If I’d been hoping for tell-tale signs, reactions that might have given away what the major knew then I was out of luck. The guileless don’t advance to become a major of the MfS.
“Well, well, Comrade Second Lieutenant, you really have uncovered something.” The major began tapping his fingers on the table, one digit drumming after another in a repetitive, descending scale.
After a minute or two of admiring his own musical talents, Kühn spoke again. “Leave this with me.”
A flick of the chin told me I could go. I stood up, clicked my heels and headed for the door, wondering whether the matter of the unknown female operative had also been dismissed, or whether I could trust the major to find out what had happened to the missing report.
“Progress report from Bonn by Friday, Comrade Second Lieutenant,” the major called as I reached the door.
I hesitated in the corridor outside Kühn’s office, wondering whether to go and book a train ticket to Bonn right now. The major wanted a report by Friday, and looking at my watch, I could see it was nearly Wednesday, which didn’t give me much time to get over there and do my initial scouting around.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t make any friends by going to the travel section shortly before midnight—they don’t appreciate interruptions at any time of the day and the night staff are particularly fond of their snoozes. I decided to leave them until morning. You never knew when you’d need the travel section staff on your side.
It had been a long day, most of it spent travelling or waiting for connections at stations, and I was restless with unspent frustration. A bar would have been the obvious choice, but only the seediest and most squalid dive would be open at this time of night, and only then if they recognised your face.
I knew a few places that fulfilled the criteria, but I needed to stretch my legs. And there was a question or two I had for Holger before I went to West Germany.
I didn’t have my MZ motorbike or my Trabant with me at the Centre and the tram didn’t run this late at night, so I started walking northwards, towards Weissensee. There was little traffic on the roads and I heard the Ikarus bus as it drummed up the hill behind me. I was coming up to the crossroads with Lenin Allee, the bus stop on the far side of the intersection—too far to bother making a dash for it—so I watched the bendy bus wheeze past, exhaust condensing on the frigid night air.
I was almost half-way there anyway, so I put my head down and held my hat against the wind while I trudged on.
Ilona took her time answering the door, and when she did, she pulled her dressing gown close around her, hiding the lacy nightdress that peeked through her gaping gown. I began to wonder whether I’d come all this way in the hope that Holger might not be home.
She took one look at me, shook her head and disappeared from sight, leaving the street door ajar. I pushed it further open and followed her up the stairs to their flat. When I got there, Ilona was no longer to be seen. The flat door was pushed to but not shut, so I nudged it open and went into the lit hallway, waiting to see what would happen next.
Holger came out of the bedroom, blinking and running his fingers through his hair.
“Reim?” he croaked.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Work?”
I gave him a nod.
“Official questions?”
An odd thing to ask, I thought as I watched him rub his face. He was looking more awake now, but still not quite with it. He pulled the bedroom door shut behind him, and with a glance at his son’s door, also shut, he ushered me into the kitchen.
“Can it not wait?” he wanted to know.
“Just a couple of questions, five minutes.”
Holger pulled a glass off the shelf and filled it with tap water. He took a sip, watching me over the rim. Then he perched himself on the work surface.
“I’m going to Bonn tomorrow morning and there’s something that has been bothering me—thought you could help. Bruno said the mole was one of the interrogators?”
Holger nodded again, wondering why this was important enough to wake him in the middle of the night.
“Did he say anything else? Any clues about the identity of the mole? Anything you might have thought of since we last spoke?”
Holger shook his head, no hesitation, no need to think. “I told you all this-”
“Yes, but it still doesn’t make much sense to me. Bruno’s work involved tracking Red Army Fraction members, so how would he recognise a mole at the Ministry? Something like this is completely outside his field.”
I poured myself a glass of water but didn’t drink it, just held it while keeping an eye on Holger. He was sleepy and irritated.
“And he told you nothing, no descriptions, no clues? Height, hair colour, fat, thin? Regional accent? Anything? Because right now, I don’t believe in your mole.”
“Accent?” Holger slapped the base of his hand against his fore
head in a parody of remembrance. “Saxon, he said the interrogator was a Saxon.”
“And you only remember this now?”
“Sorry, it slipped my mind. Bruno mentioned it in the middle of talking about his work, it wasn’t until you mentioned accents …”
OK, let’s give Holger the benefit of the doubt, he’s a friend after all. One tiny problem:
“The interrogators, none of them are Saxons. I’ve been told that two are Berliners, the other from somewhere up north. No-one from Saxony, not even a Thuringian among them. You sure you remembered right?”
Holger sipped his water a bit more and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said.
“What exactly did he say?”
“Der Sachse, der ist es.”
That was pretty clear, no room for doubt: the Saxon, it’s him.
24
Marienborn Border Crossing Point (rail)
The next afternoon I was sitting on the international express to Cologne, waiting for the border controls at Marienborn station. I’d picked up my travel documents and train tickets at Berlin Centre and was wearing the West German blue tweed jacket, pink shirt, blue tie and blue poly-mix trousers provided by the department.
This time, because I had an exit visa and was travelling into West Germany, I didn’t have to leave the train at Magdeburg, but remained in my seat, in the same compartment in which Bruno had sat a few weeks before.
From the window, I could see border guards along the tracks and as we pulled into the station, I spotted a sentry post on top of the signal box.
The comrades from my old department—the ones wearing the green Border Troops uniforms so that travellers didn’t realise they were dealing with the Stasi—were on the platform, making sure there were no unauthorised attempts to board the train. A Feldwebel walked past, his eyes scanning the edge of the platform. His dog would be running along the tracks beneath me right now, sniffing for stowaways clinging to axles.
Berlin Centre Page 7
