The Berlin Assignment

by Adrian de Hoog

  Geissler was staring at the consul’s jacket button again. He seemed far away, on a distant continent perhaps. In the half light, slightly stooped, wearing a khaki shirt, the bookseller almost looked like an explorer. Hanbury knew Geissler had longed to be one in his youth. Von Helmholtz told him that. Hanbury once casually mentioned to the Chief of Protocol that he had been in the cellar of Bücher Geissler and was fascinated. Von Helmholtz replied he knew the Geissler family before the war.

  “Not many people find their way to that store,” the Chief of Protocol had added. “Even fewer get to know poor Ludwig. If you are going to visit places like Bücher Geissler, you’ll soon know us better than we know ourselves. And when that happens we’ll be forced to keep you.” The Chief of Protocol had sent the consul a fleeting smile.

  “It was mostly a social call,” Hanbury had said. “I know someone who works there. Herr Geissler then showed me his old books.”

  “I haven’t seen Ludwig for years. I thought the business was wound up.” Von Helmholtz told Hanbury that before the war, because their families had close contact, he had been invited to the great Geissler villa several times. Ludwig was the youngest of three brothers.

  “Were they Nazis?” Hanbury had asked, having seen dusty cabinets in the Bücher Geissler cellar full of Nazi publications.

  “Winfried, the father, was. Of course, in those days many people were. The two older sons were enthusiastic about Germany’s world domination prospects. Both were killed at Stalingrad. But Ludwig didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to sell books either. The black sheep in the family. He wanted to explore. At one of the family parties he took me into a wild part of the garden which he pretended was a jungle.” Von Helmholtz smiled as he recollected the thicket of Forsythia and Lilac bushes. “Ludwig had clipped the shrubs in one spot and created a little clearing. He told me he was going to retrace the journeys of Livingstone and Stanley. He was five or six years older and I was impressed. It started my own interest in geography. Later, when Ludwig was old enough to travel he asked his father for permission, but Winfried would have none of it. He wanted Ludwig to join the army and accused him of lacking patriotism. It was difficult for Ludwig. In the end he had no choice. He was drafted. By then the two older brothers were already dead. Ludwig was assigned to the African Corps. I wondered at the time whether Winfried intervened. Maybe having lost two sons, he wanted to make a gesture to the one he had left – a nod in the direction of Ludwig’s dream. Ludwig came back from Africa with one arm gone. A story made the rounds in Wannsee that Winfried cried, not out of grief that Ludwig was an invalid, but out of joy. He had proof that all three sons achieved military honour.”

  The consul and the Chief of Protocol were on the fringes of a huge reception and were making their way slowly to the exit.

  “Did Winfried have a special link to the Nazis?” Hanbury had asked.

  “Oh, I think so. The tradition of the family had always been to sell enlightened literature, but Winfried turned the store into an outlet for Nazi propaganda. I don’t know what happened to all that material.”

  “It’s in the cellar. I suppose they put all the Nazi stuff there when the war ended. I’ve seen it.”

  “Poor Ludwig. An eccentric child in a Nazi family, denied his African dream, sent there to fight, returns handicapped, has to live off a family business he hated as a child and now owns the literary remnants of the Nazis who destroyed his boyhood aspirations. Enough to turn him into a troubled man.”

  “He seems wretched.”

  “What did you do to get him to take you into the cellar?”

  “Nothing. We talked about his cousin who panned for gold in the Yukon. It excited him.”

  The Chief of Protocol was running out of time. A prime minister’s motorcade was waiting. “Likely you rekindled a dream,” von Helmholtz had said. “You must tell me about the Yukon one day. Most of us dream about such places.”

  And now, in the cellar, Geissler looked as von Helmholtz said he did in the days when he could still hope to become an explorer. The distant, glassy stare seemed focussed on what might have been – a life dedicated to crossing continents. Hanbury waited patiently for the reverie to end. He looked around at the books piled up and under tables in dangerously leaning towers and strewn haphazardly on metal shelves. The cellar was a turbulent sea of books, too wild to cross in places. A hundred years of German literary output. Prominent in one corner were the cases of Nazi publications. Hanbury had noticed them the first time, but Geissler had directed him away.

  “The other details?” Geissler said, suddenly back from an imaginary safari. He jerked his head savagely towards the consul.

  “A reference was found by the police in a handwritten bibliography when they moved in on a war criminal,” Hanbury said pleasantly, drawing on the script Schwartz had reviewed with him. “A major find. The items – numerous Nazi books and pamphlets – were being photo-reprinted in Taipei, from where they flooded back to neo-Nazi cells in the Americas, Western Europe and more recently Poland, Hungary and Russia. But the book on Nazi rites and decorations – the Orden book – though listed, wasn’t in the Taipei reproductions. Blutkreis – Totenkopf – Ehrenkreuz was the title. Circle of Blood – Death Head – Cross of Honour. The printer was in Nuremberg – Weitling, is that possible? – the publisher was in Munich.”

  “Adolf and Hartwig Weitling. Brothers. Nazi printers. Lehrman in Munich did the publishing.” Geissler turned and hobbled off. He had a painful way of walking, a shifting of weight from side to side, as if one leg was too short and had to be dragged up from behind. After some metres he stopped. “Come,” he ordered the consul, gesturing with his one arm to the far part of the cellar.

  Because he went so awkwardly, Geissler sent several of the leaning towers tumbling. He stopped each time to stack them with his one hand into higher, still more precarious monuments. Hanbury tried to help, but couldn’t get past the bent body. Geissler muttered darkly about disorder. Approaching the far end of the cellar, Geissler became more hectic. A panic seemed to seize him, as if the century’s evil miasma was reaching out.

  “It really is a treasure you have,” Hanbury said soothingly “Better than your cousin’s in the Yukon.”

  Geissler was breathing hard. The struggle was wearing him out. “No,” he said. “No.” His elbow went up high, as a shield, as he stumbled past the Nazi cabinets. A door at the far end opened inwards. The bookseller went through, waving his arm before him like a blind man. He grabbed a string, yanked it, lighting a bulb swinging from the ceiling. The room they entered was once used for storing coal. Wooden shelves, hastily knocked together from planks of different sizes, seemingly rummaged from rubble, lined the sooty walls. On these planks were still more books, two, sometimes three rows deep. Many of them had jackets decorated with swastikas, or eagles, or rifles with bayonets. Some of them sported the SS death head, the Totenkopf. “A bad room. Verbotene Bücher,” said Geissler, with apprehension about all his banned books. His forehead was lined with sweat.

  “I’m causing you a lot of trouble,” Hanbury apologized. “Maybe I can look for the volume. You can go back up. I’ll be very careful.”

  “No,” Geissler resolutely said. “I know where.” In the scarce light, he inspected the titles. He swept a whole row violently onto the floor to get at the second row. A heap of books formed on the floor. The rampage continued. “Lehrman Verlag,” Geissler kept muttering. “Lehrman Verlag. The Orden book.”

  Geissler intensified his destructive search and in the faint light Hanbury perused a few of the volumes. Neuadel aus Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil: The New Elite). Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (The Science of the Race of the German people). Der Führer schützt das Reich (The Führer Protects the Reich). Geburt des Dritten Reiches (The Birth of the Third Reich). Heilige Runenmacht (The Holy Power of the Runes). Wir und die Juden im Lichte der Astrologie (The Jews and Us: What Astrology Tells Us). Luzifers Hofgesindel (Lucifer’s Court Servants). The intellec
tual underpinnings of the Third Reich were accumulating on the floor as if being prepared for the torch. From time to time the consul nudged a book aside with his shoe, or let the volume he was looking at drop, where it disappeared amongst the others.

  Geissler suddenly cried with horror. Das einzige Exemplar! The only copy! He turned wildly towards the consul, shoved the thin volume at him as if he couldn’t handle such corrosive poison and stumbled away bent over like a hunchback. Hanbury watched him scurry off. Before the stairs, with his one arm Geissler sent more towers flying, as if even with only half Samson’s divine strength the whole temple of Godless evil could be sent tumbling.

  The consul methodically picked his way through the mess. The outwardly innocent little volume had disappeared into his suit pocket. Upstairs he wanted to have five more minutes with Geissler to settle him down. He thought of describing the tundra, but the owner of the books had fled.

  Over lunch Sabine asked, “What happened down there? Herr Geissler came up as if he saw the devil. He ran into his office and slammed the door. Did you find what you were looking for?” Hanbury was evasive. “It was a small book and difficult to locate in the bad light. He seemed tired. Maybe he was annoyed his time was wasted.”

  Sabine didn’t probe. She wanted to know whether he had been to the Brücke Museum in Dahlem. She reminded him they were there once before. Hanbury remembered it. He then casually asked whether she had smashed his stereo back then. Sabine admitted it. How did he know? “I half suspected it,” he said.

  A few days later when Hanbury handed Schwartz the book, the professor had difficulty hiding his excitement. “I can’t tell you what it means for me to have this. It’s an unusual find. I’ll do a paper on it in a bibliographical journal. Of course, I’ll express my thanks to you in a footnote.”

  “No need for that,” said the consul. “It was nothing. Geissler found it, not me.”

  “I know,” replied Schwartz. “But you got him to do it. No one else could have.”

  “It was his cousin in the Yukon. Geissler did it for his cousin, not for me.”

  Schwartz laughed. “The one that searched for gold?” He rubbed the cover of his new book. “This is my gold.”

  The little volume, Hanbury saw, gave Schwartz the same inner pleasure as Geissler showed the first time they went into the cellar to view his treasure. And Stobbe had that air when he showed off the Stasi files. All three of them – the historian, the bookseller, the archivist – in their different ways they were custodians of what once was. The consul believed he was acquiring an understanding of what the professor meant when he referred to the thin book as gold. “I can see why it’s valuable for you.” he said. “Some days ago I was in a historian’s bonanza.” Schwartz stopped playing with the Orden book. “I mean the Stasi files.”

  “Normannenstrasse?” Schwartz asked, his forehead wrinkling into a frown.

  Hanbury told him about the tour he had. “Kurt Stobbe. Know him?”

  “By reputation only. Why did he show you around?”

  “He thinks I could find evidence there on Nazi war criminals who have gone underground in Canada.” Hanbury shrugged. “Anyway, war criminals aren’t my responsibility.”

  The professor studied the consul. “Even if you tried, you likely wouldn’t get far. Not with the Stasi files. We historians run into this when we stand before an archive. A starting point is required. You need a way in.”

  “I didn’t like the place,” Hanbury said. “Geissler thinks there’s evil down there in his cellar, in his books. But those files are worse.”

  Schwartz laughed. “We historians don’t distinguish. If you do want to round up some old Nazis and need a starting point, let me know. I can help. After all, I’m now firmly in your debt.”

  SHERWOOD FOREST

  Randolph McEwen on the train to Munich was using the time to read. His resources had been savaged and Berlin Station had ceased to fly. Even cheap train tickets now provoked stinging questions from sullen clerks in accounting. The wheel of fortune creaked and McEwen was no longer moving upward. A sordid deterioration. Something to keep from Graf Bornhof.

  Life in a slower lane. It took a little getting used to, facing days of tedium. On the other hand, time had opened up for newspapers, time for reading instead of scanning. Which was what the meta-diplomat was doing on the train. A thick stack of clippings on the seat opposite waited for him, like a terrier expecting attention from the master. An abused pocket dictionary, finger-stained and pages rumpled, was going through another workout. A light workout. Because Gundula Jahn’s style was penetrable. McEwen found she didn’t invent words that went on for a full line. Nor did she fashion sentences that continued for a dozen column inches. He didn’t like the normal, local journalistic style. Sometimes you’d have to wade for five minutes through a newspaper sentence, not knowing until the end whether Honecker should or should not be released from jail, if an accused East German border guard had denied or confessed to murder, or whether a stalwart bishop accepted or rejected accusations of having been a Stasi spy. Always the same thing – tortuously intricate considerations poured into each and every sentence before the main thought was completed. As far as McEwen was concerned, it showed a neurotic way of thinking.

  But Gundula Jahn was different. She had a sprightly way of putting things. Compared to the others, reading her was like a levitation, an airy flight over the swamps of German prose. And the views she expressed – through her friend Gregor the mouthpiece – were lucid. McEwen had become a fan of Gundula. He had never met her, but he had begun to like her. Too bad she got herself involved with Friend Tony now that his end was near.

  An excellent report out of East Berlin from a lingering spectator provided the breakthrough. Plutonium smuggling, clear and simple. The consul’s jig was up. And so, regrettably, was Gundula Jahn’s. And, for good measure, Günther Rauch’s too. The whole nest would soon be cleared away. Graf Bornhof must have the same proof. Why else a summons to Pullach for an urgent off-the-record chat? The graf had been guarded on the phone. As he ought to be, sitting on a mountain of new, explosive information.

  His instincts, McEwen congratulated himself, had once more proved reliable. As predicted, retirement would come after a final, dazzling display of intuition and a deft assembling of known facts. A multi-national ring had crept into the post-Cold War security vacuum and he, Randolph McEwen, had smelled it. Within the year he might expect a presidential citation from Uncle Sam, a medal from Uncle Teut and, who knows, an enamelled maple leaf tie-clip from the Beavers. Could a knighthood then be far behind?

  Immersed in a syrupy glow, Randolph McEwen found the journey pleasant. A good occasion to reread Gundula’s columns. He enjoyed contemplating her character as it jumped off the pages. A piercing writer. Full of subtle mischief and vitriolic wit. The columns, McEwen considered, were a feat. For weeks, every day, Gundula built a story. The Life and Times of Gregor Donner Reich. Gregor was described as having been a slight and wistful man with a precise moustache and thinning hair. Before the Wall came down, for decades, he ran a modest but useful business in a remote corner of East Berlin: a repair shop for all kinds of broken things. In the soothing atmosphere of the shop, no damage was as bad as first appeared. Gregor was dedicated and industrious, unassuming and friendly. An example, Gundula claimed, for the whole Neighbourhood.

  Yet, Gregor Donner Reich was different from his neighbours. Not in any outward way; outwardly he lived like them. What distinguished Gregor was his seeing eye. Not that he wished to be observant – it happened against his will. He couldn’t help it. He was always observing and registering things happening around him.

  Randolph McEwen almost clapped his hands upon deciphering this passage. He identified with Gregor. It could be a burden, he agreed, to have insight into all the sub-surface goings-on.

  Gregor was special in another way as well, because he wrote down what he saw. In fact, Gundula drew on Gregor’s writings in telling his life story. Actually, she
claimed in her column, Gregor had two seeing eyes. The outer eye observed people and events in the Neighbourhood which he described in letters to his mother. He ended all his letters to his mother with an endearment and his initials:Your ever-loving GDR. But Gundula also had access to Gregor’s secret diary in which he chronicled what he saw with a kind of inner eye. The diary had to be kept secret because certain individuals in Gregor’s Neighbourhood – he affectionately called them Bozos – had they learned of it, would have thrown him into jail. Even if he had been suspected of keeping a diary, it would have gone badly for Gregor; in the Neighbourhood inner eyes were verboten. Therefore, Gregor kept the diary hidden in a plastic bag, inside some greasy rags, behind black oil tins, under several bent bicycle wheels, in a far corner of the shop. Gregor wrote in his diary only in the depth of night in his room at the back of the shop with the shutters shut. But the letters to his mother he wrote during the day, in between repair jobs. By the time his mother got them, he knew, half the Bozos in the Neighbourhood had read them first. To her he always wrote nicely about the Neighbourhood. He made it sound like paradise.

  McEwen was entertained by Gregor’s situation. He intuitively understood it. The need to keep a secret fix on things went deep in many people. He had recruited many spectators around the globe in his decades of success. He knew what made them tick.

  Gundula began to describe Gregor’s daily life, quoting frequently from the letters to his mother. Gregor is happy in the letters because by definition the Neighbourhood is that way. Everybody has a job and no one ever loses it. They live in good apartments; the rents are cheap. Crime doesn’t exist. Mothers are satisfied. They have careers. Their infants are looked after cost-free. Children lack behavioural problems. With permanent smiles they join choirs, gymnastic clubs, or symphony orchestras. Quite a few go on to win Olympic gold medals. All is free;everything is provided. Gregor is successful too. He becomes the secretary of the local angling club, a responsible position for which he is rewarded. He and two neighbours are encouraged to apply for – and they receive! – permission for a permanent spot to pitch tents in a communal camp ground beside a big lake not too far from where they live. Gregor writes he feels even closer to his neighbours now because they can plan their vacations together. Their tents are pitched a half-metre apart. They find joy in practising equality and in sharing.