Berlin Centre

by Max Hertzberg

  I should treat him better. Not sleeping with his wife would be a good start. Shit, I hadn’t thought of Ilona since I’d left for Bonn, now I felt doubly bad. I should tell Holger about what happened, apologise to him.

  “Holger,” I called to my friend. Perhaps the only friend I had in this life.

  “Yeah?” He was opening the door, just about to go into the warmth.

  “You got another cigarette for me?”

  46

  Building 74

  Conference room

  We got back to work in the conference room, tape player recording everything we said. Holger checked minor points here and there for a while before pretending to ambush me with the news about the thallium—I knew it was coming because of the dramatic wink he gave me. I acted surprised for the benefit of the tape, but not too surprised. After all, I’d been at the place of death, had suspected the use of poison in the first place—how much of a surprise could the lab results be?

  Holger was grinning like a kid, laughing at Kühn or whichever bigwig had decided that the news of the thallium traces might somehow shock me into revealing something I’d unaccountably been keeping back.

  Clumsy, ineffective, but really not a surprise. After all, our whole organisation is built on the premise that everyone is always lying, or at the very least not telling the whole truth.

  It was while Holger was winding me up, hamming a serious face that I realised that by taking the packet of burgers, I’d removed the evidence of poisoning. Even if the West Germans worked out how Bruno had died, they wouldn’t find the source in his flat.

  I didn’t care about the West Germans or their investigation, but what Sanderling had told me the previous day suddenly began to make sense.

  Who would want to eliminate Bruno that way? For the moment, let’s assume it was neither my own department nor Sanderling’s—if ZAIG or HA II had a hand in Bruno’s death, they wouldn’t have sent me all the way to Bonn to confirm he was a stiff. There were more efficient ways to do that.

  Fine, let’s rule out HA II, and rule out ZAIG while we’re at it. Who’s the next suspect on the list? That would be the West German security agencies.

  Bear with me for a moment, let’s run with the idea that the West Germans knew Bruno had defected. They arrest him as soon as he returns home from visiting his relatives in the East. They interrogate him, confirm their suspicions and decide to get rid of the problem.

  Understandably, they didn’t want him dying in police custody—that kind of thing gets talked about in the so-called free press they have over there. So they release him and think up a way of killing him at home. That way they can tell everyone it was natural causes, heart attack would sound about right. An easy cover-up.

  This wasn’t my area of expertise, but if you listen to the rumours that float around Berlin Centre, you’ll know the West Germans prefer to avoid obvious wet jobs.

  For them, the procedure with suspected defectors is simply to bang them up—four to six years seems to be the going rate.

  After they’ve decided the defectors have sat in their cells for long enough, they set up a cosy chat with a tried and trusted go-between, usually the East Berlin lawyer Wolfgang Vogel. A swap is negotiated: Bruno (or whichever defector it may be) is exchanged for one or more of their spies that we’ve been keeping in storage in Cottbus or Bautzen.

  We’re better at catching enemy operatives, we have a stash of them in our prisons, ready to exchange a couple for one of our agents of peace who’ve been careless enough to be caught.

  So there you have it, that’s our complete list of suspects: two Ministry departments and the West Germans.

  Yet none of them quite fit the bill.

  You still with me? Then let’s consider for a moment that a third of our departments might have been involved. And this mysterious department would have been the ones who organised my stay in Saalfeld. Sound remotely plausible? If so, then we have another possible suspect in play.

  Consider also what Sanderling babbled about an HV A operation and bingo: there’s our mysterious third department.

  My thoughts were interrupted when Holger tapped me on the arm. I looked up, he was still pulling faces at me, but this time he wasn’t trying to make me laugh, his brow was furrowed, his eyes wide, I’d been silent for too long, he wanted me to speak.

  “Who did you give the sample to?” he prompted, nodding energetically. “Can you verify the chain of evidence?”

  “Er, the sample was in my possession from the time I picked it up in Bruno’s apartment until I gave it to the interrogator in Saalfeld. I would have preferred to keep hold of it until I could return to Berlin Centre, but without refrigeration the sample was rapidly degrading. I therefore requested it be passed onto the Operational Technical Sector.”

  Holger was giving me the thumbs up, he thought my lapse might not sound too bad on the tape.

  “My interrogator informed me that he had passed the sample to a member of his team so it could be brought to the District Administration labs in Gera.”

  Holger gave me another thumbs up and moved on to his next question. He wanted to confirm the name and rank of the beat police officer who had assisted me in Saalfeld, asked me to describe my assailants again, and to explain my reasons for doing them physical damage.

  But only part of my mind was on the interview. Most of what was left of my brain was reassessing the Bruno case, seeing whether and how HV A could be added to the mix.

  “Are you OK?” Holger asked, frowning again. “You need more painkillers?”

  I pulled myself together and concentrated on Holger’s last few questions. With another smile, he clicked the tape recorder off, noted the time in his notes then, on the way to the door:

  “Cigarette?”.

  We stepped outside and Holger shivered. The wind was stronger than before, it stabbed through our padded jackets.

  “Come on,” I said, carefully picking my way down the steps to the jetty at the edge of the canal.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?” Holger asked once he’d caught up with me. He was hunched in his coat, fleece Bärenvotze pulled low over his ears.

  “I spoke to Sanderling yesterday-”

  “Bloody hell, you’re meant to be in isolation—you can’t just go talking to whoever you want! Why do you think they’ve got us out here in the greenery? Why do you think the whole place has been practically emptied?”

  “Just listen. Sanderling told me the HV A mounted an operation against Bruno.”

  “And now Bruno’s dead?” Holger paused, but not for long: “Sanderling’s on the heavy stuff, it’s just random words. She’s talking gibberish.”

  “Maybe. But think about it—it all fits: Bruno’s dead, and someone took me to Saalfeld. They wanted to squeeze me like a lemon—if I hadn’t climbed out the window and called Berlin Centre then I’d still be down there, and they wouldn’t be as nice about debriefing me as you are.”

  Holger didn’t answer. He was fumbling for a cigarette, his cold fingers too clumsy to get it out of the packet. I watched him, but didn’t help. My fingers were staying right where they were, in my nice warm pockets.

  “OK, I’m not agreeing with you,” he said when he finally got hold of a cigarette. “But there’s something you should see. Last night I was bored: all staff have been withdrawn from the main house and you went to bed early so I had nobody to talk to. I went for a bit of a snoop, managed to find the key to the duty office and had a bit of a look around. Come on, I’ll show you what I found.”

  I followed Holger back up the steps to the forestry house. He didn’t bother taking his coat and boots off but headed down the corridor, turning left at the end so we fetched up by the front door. Opposite was a plain internal door, faced in wood effect Sprelacart with a grey, plastic handle.

  Holger let me in, shutting the door behind us.

  “Here,” he said, pulling a folder out of the filing cabinet.

  I opened
up the file and looked at the top sheet, it was a standard registration form for visitors to conspirational flats. The latest entry was for the 29th of December 1983, the leaving date hadn’t been entered yet—that was us. Name of responsible agent was entered as Captain Fritsche, the very same Holger standing in front of me, and the operation was entered as belonging to Holger’s department, HA II.

  “Look at the previous entries,” Holger directed.

  So I did. There were about a dozen operations registered for 1983, more in previous years, and every single one was marked with a registration beginning XV.

  “Department XV?”

  “The local branch of the HV A. And check out the operation at the end of November: that’s when I brought Bruno here for preparation to be sent back to the West. See the file registration number?”

  “Department XV again.”

  “Yep. Which is just another way of saying HV A were running Bruno.”

  “So Sanderling was right? HV A were involved in rubbing Source Bruno out?”

  47

  Building 74

  Oder-Spree Canal

  “We need to talk to Sanderling,” I told Holger. He didn’t disagree.

  We were back outside. Heavy steel clouds hung low in the sky and the wind tore at every piece of exposed skin it could find. Below us, the canal was almost completely frozen over, even the fairway was covered by a fine skin of ice.

  “Tonight,” replied Holger, stroking his nose. “At midnight, when the fireworks go off, I’ll go and speak to her then.”

  “Fireworks?”

  “You’ve lost track of time—it’s Silvester. Everyone will be out here at midnight, ready to give a warm welcome to 1984.”

  I had lost track of time. New Year’s Eve and here I was in the middle of the forest with my interrogator, a surly doctor in a butcher’s apron, several guards and a cook who’d so far done a good job of staying out of sight. But that was fine, never liked New Year’s anyway.

  “I’ll speak to Sanderling, she knows me,” I argued, but Holger shook his head.

  “Nobody will notice if I disappear for five minutes, but you’re different. Everyone’s keeping an eye on you.”

  He was right, still I would have preferred to talk to Sanderling myself. It’s all about trust. Given a choice, I wouldn’t trust anyone—that’s how I’ve stayed alive all these years.

  But hadn’t Holger shown himself to be trustworthy? Not just once, but time and again?

  Relax, I told myself. Let someone else do the heavy lifting for a change.

  I was resting on my bed, fully dressed with my boots ready by the door, waiting for Holger.

  He knocked on my door at ten to midnight and together we left the building, pulling on our coats at the back door. The staff were already outside, standing at the top of the bank, watching one of the guards set up a battery of fireworks.

  It was an awkward gathering—everyone apart from Holger had spent the last few days avoiding me and now we were supposed to celebrate the new year together. The first sentry I’d met when we arrived was kneeling on the ice-hard ground, pulling the foil from bottles of Rotkäppchen sparkling wine, ready for the corks to be popped come midnight. The corpulent medical doctor was by my side, minus his leather butcher’s apron. He had a Lübzer beer in a gloved hand, and seeing me arrive, reached behind him to take another bottle from a small table set up on the pathway.

  “Doctor’s orders,” he said, handing over the beer. His face was red, perhaps from the wind.

  I took the drink and clicked bottles with him. As I sipped the cold beer, I looked around, noticing Holger was helping himself from the table.

  “Bit of a tradition we have,” the doctor drawled. Seemed alcohol made him collegial. “If we have guests for Silvester, we let off a few fireworks. Give the new year a good start.”

  Holger nudged me and used his nose to point out an Unteroffizier examining his fob watch. “That’s the UvD,” he whispered. The NCO on duty, the one who should be in his cubby hole next to the main door, making sure nobody tried to have a look at the visitors registration forms.

  As I watched, the NCO raised his arm and looked around. “Nearly there, another thirty seconds!” he shouted into the night, and conversation ebbed. The UvD was still looking around, enjoying being the centre of attention. We stood watching him, waiting for the countdown to begin.

  “Ten!” he shouted, as Holger began to drift backwards, out of the knot of Ministry goons and towards the door. “Nine!”

  Several others joined in, we were all watching the UvD. All except Holger who’d now disappeared inside the forestry house. The countdown continued.

  “Four!”

  The sentry looking after the fireworks had a long match, was ready to strike it and set off the first rocket.

  “Three!”

  There was a fizz as the match spurted into brightness. It closed on the fuse just as a deep rumble and clatter of ice lifting and breaking announced the approach of a coal barge, its mast light shining bright between the trees as it came around the curve of the canal.

  “Two!”

  The doctor reached for a bottle of Sekt, undid the wire cage, ready to knock the cork out.

  “One!”

  The NCO’s final shout was lost in the crack of corks, the shriek of a rocket and a long pull on the ship’s horn.

  The sentry was already lighting the next fuse, more rockets were shooting up and a pinwheel at the top of the steps to the jetty started whirring around, flinging sparks of light into the gelid darkness.

  “Do siego roku!” shouted a bargee from the bow of the coal boat as it drew alongside our small celebration.

  “Prosit Neujahr!” the doctor returned the greeting in German, before mumbling Fucking Polacks, out of the side of his mouth.

  But I wasn’t listening to the doctor’s curses, nor to the barge crew’s greetings. As the ship surged past, the helmsman still tugging on the siren, sheets of ice were pushed away from the bows and towards the banks of the canal. In the flicker of the fireworks, and the glare of the red navigation light on the side of the wheelhouse, I could see something in the water.

  I scrambled over the bank, out of reach of the sparking pinwheel, slipping downwards until I reached the steps to the jetty. On the slick wooden planks, I knelt down, peering over ice fractured by the passage of boats and healed by freezing temperatures. The barge was past us now, the water slowing and the ice sheet settling back. I turned to grab a boathook and beat the frozen canal.

  The metal end of the hook gouged the surface, splinters skidded away. But the body of Sanderling remained trapped underneath. She peered through the frozen water, her dead eyes looking past me, up at the row of Ministry employees at the top of the bank celebrating the start of 1984.

  48

  Building 74

  Reim’s room

  It didn’t take long for the orders to come through. Only a few minutes into the new year but somehow they managed to get hold of somebody senior enough to make decisions. Made me think old Reim was involved in a serious operation and not just a minor housekeeping job.

  When I discovered Sanderling’s body the goons at the top of the bank moved quickly. I was escorted back to my room and told to wait. Just over five minutes later, Holger was in the doorway, telling me to pack.

  I slipped him the Stefan Heym manuscript, then shoved the few clothes I had into the briefcase. It still smelt of rotting meat, but that didn’t bother me—I had other worries.

  Until this moment, I’d not been too concerned about my own welfare, which may surprise you—after all, those goons in Saalfeld hadn’t done my health much good (my ribs thought of them whenever I bent over or climbed the stairs). But the speed with which the evacuation order had come down the line made me rethink my position. Somebody at Berlin Centre was worried.

  By twenty past midnight, I was back in the beige Skoda, heading for Berlin with Holger in the driving seat. I waited until we were on the motorway before
I asked any questions.

  “Was this eventuality in the operational plan?”

  The motorway was practically empty, and Holger had a heavy foot, regularly exceeding the 100 km/h speed limit. He overtook a Trabi puttering along in the slow lane before answering.

  “How would I know? I’m not on the operations staff, I’m just following orders, like you.”

  “Don’t you want to know what’s happening? Aren’t you interested in who killed Sanderling, or how Berlin managed to react so quickly once her body was found?”

  Holger took his foot off the pedal as we came up behind a Soviet convoy. He pulled into the second lane and began to cautiously overtake the line of Kamaz trucks.

  “When I went to the sick bay, her bed covers were pushed back, you could see where Sanderling had been lying. No sign of a struggle. It looked like she’d just got up and walked out of there.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Sanderling had been drugged to the eyeballs, in no position to resist anyone trying to take her by force or persuasion. If ordered to get up and walk to the canal, she probably would have done her best to comply.

  “What about me? What are your orders?”

  “I’m to take you home and stay with you until told otherwise.”

  House arrest. Not great, but a step in the right direction. Certainly better than being sent to the Ministry’s remand prison in Hohenschönhausen.

  We didn’t speak again until we were near Berlin. Holger came off the motorway and took the F1 arterial road, bringing us into the city from the east, past the winter quarters of the State Circus.

  “My son used to love coming this way, he’d press his face against the window, hoping to see the elephants,” Holger said.

  I didn’t press my face to the glass, but I did spare a glance at the circus. It looked drab. Lamplit concrete yards between industrial buildings where wagons and vehicles had parked up. No big top, no roller coasters or carousels, none of the sparkle of a circus on tour. No elephants either.