Judgment in Berlin: A Spy Story

by Noel Hynd

  “It’s called ‘Club Weimar,’” she said.

  “Please tell me about it,” the spy asked.

  The club was “underground,” Anna explained further, something she meant metaphorically not physically. Club Weimar was in the dark area, she continued, the vice section way out on the end of the S-Bahn.

  “Do you know where that is?” Anna asked. “The vice section of East Berlin?”

  “I’ve heard of it. Near the extensive black markets and where the farm stands are during the morning and afternoon.”

  “Correct,” she said.

  “Tell me about the club,” he said.

  Anna drew a breath. The club, she explained, sought to evoke the wicked, nasty, debauched Berlin nightlife that had flourished in the 1920s — The Roaring Twenties. Les anneés folles. Die Goldenen Zwanziger – that the Nazis had destroyed. It opened when the last S-Bahn train arrived on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. Customers had to make their way home on their own when the activity ended, which was about one-thirty in the morning. They all had to stagger into work or church at some reasonable time the next day, she suggested through the cloud of tobacco smoke from the Chesterfield. It was suicide for a female to be on the street at that hour so it was best to have a soldier take a female employee home. Or a girl could stay over at the club. There were some private rooms with locks and bunks and blankets on the floor. The girls had their individual ways of thanking their protectors.

  “So Bettina works there?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You can ask her.”

  “And you work there?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t ask what she did, but she told him anyway.

  “I wait tables,” Anna said. “I dance. On stage and on the floor. There are private rooms. Sometimes a man takes me to a private room. Money is money.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Did your sister work there, also? Lena?”

  “Yes. It’s not our choice what we do,” Anna said. “Dangerous sometimes, yes, I know. Lena made bad choices.” Her eyes flicked to the women who were with her. “These are my friends,” the mood of her voice elevating. “Three of the girls are German. One girl is Danish. Heidi, the girl on the far left.” Cochrane’s eyes shot to the females assembled, found a sad-eyed, thin blonde on the far left, and voyaged back to Anna.

  “Heidi is a good woman. Her husband was killed by Gestapo in 1944. Now she has a child from the DP camp at Föhrenwald. We do what we must to survive. Okay?” She spoke in the Low German dialect of the Pomeranian region. Cochrane allowed her to talk.

  “I often do things that are not my choice,” Cochrane said. “You owe me no explanation.”

  “Who is the clientele at the club?” he asked.

  “Diplomats. Government people,” she said. “Soldiers.”

  “German? Russian?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Both. It’s a den of vice for Russians and connected Germans. Important people. Who else has the money, hey?”

  “True,” he said. “Gangsters? Criminals?”

  “They run the place,” she said. “You’ll see. Also, many Germans from the Eastern Zone. People came from the far Eastern Zone on Saturdays. Factory managers, some of them.”

  She snuffed out her cigarette and began to assemble herself, gathering the small purse she carried and the bag of goods he had given her. “Listen,” she said, “You want to see for yourself? You want to talk to Frau Bettina? I can’t stop you.”

  She gave him an address. It sounded like one of those factories that had been stripped and raped by the army, but the walls and interior, some of it, left intact.

  “There’s one big entrance on Blumenstrasse,” Anna said. “There will be some security people inside the door. Big, busy bar, then corridors off to the left and the right as you go past, wide corridors with tables. Buy a drink and go to a table. The corridors overlook a big open space. Music. Dancing. Drinking. It’s where the girls sell themselves.” She paused. “There’s a stage. Some of us perform. Less abuse than on the floor.”

  “I get it,” he said.

  She eased back for a moment, still sitting on the tomb, her bags in her hand. What she further described reminded him of the old speakeasy set-ups in the United States during Prohibition. An eye slit at the door, a couple of dumb musclebound types within.

  “German Communist security police at the door,” Anna said. “Big, young, and stupid. Sometimes guns. They carry truncheons. Don’t make trouble, look like you’ve been there before and have money to spend. The door will open to the bar,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “The bar is not busy by Western standards,” Anna continued. “You don’t want to stand out. It’s just one big room, the residue of a bombed-out factory from an airstrike. Russians put it together. They trade black market liquor at night and have a stable of girls working in a nearby ‘hotel.’ The Veronika Dankeschöns make the money, gangsters take three-quarters of it, and the club provides the entertainment and the place to meet.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Cochrane watched the two German state workers and the policeman disappear down the same footpath that Cochrane had used to access the grave site.

  “You can watch the show from the bar,” Anna said. “The bar overlooks the floor. There’s a show. Sometimes. Naked women. You can watch the show if they have one. Like the other men,” she tacked on. She shifted gears and Cochrane had the sense that she was almost talked out. “The woman you are looking for,” Anna said, “she goes by the name of Ilse Groening. She sits at her own table up to the right, reading books and overlooking everything: the girls, the money, side doors, the soldiers.”

  “Why does Frau Schneidhuber have such power?”

  “She worked in clubs in the 1920s in Weimar. Always talked of what a fine time she had. That sound like the same woman?”

  “Yes, it does,” Cochrane answered. “Very much so! I remember her telling me about them. But I’m missing a link. Explain to me how you know her.”

  “From the mortuary, you know. I worked there, too. Only job you can get when you first arrive. Handling the dead bodies. Sewing up flesh wounds. Embalming. We met there. The Russian wanted to employ someone who knew how the clubs worked. Balance sheets. Ledgers. How much alcohol? How much cocaine? How many girls? When Ilse left the medical clinic, she gave me the tip, hey? Come with her. Come work for the Russian, maybe have some fun, maybe marry a diplomat and get the hell out of Germany. My sister and me, we both left. That’s when we first saw the Russian.”

  Then, failing to completely understand, “What Russian?” he asked.

  Anna looked at him as if he were crazy. Then, suddenly very angry, “You’ll see,” she said. “There’s only one big Russian. Lena’s dead because of him. I’m going to kill him.”

  With that, the ten minutes were up and so were an extra five.

  Chapter 49

  Berlin – July 1948

  Cochrane stayed seated on the tombstone to watch Anna leave. The young German women, and the sad-eyed Dane, dispersed together in an eastward direction, protectively ringing Anna as they walked away. The two city functionaries plus the policeman were long gone down the footpath. The gravediggers were still at work, busy with shovels now, grunting and growling at each other, filling the vacant gaping hole above the coffin of the murdered Lena Schroeder.

  Finding himself suddenly alone, Cochrane took stock. He felt he had taken a solid step forward but would only know for sure once he visited the club. He stood and retraced his path across the footpath, past the reeking, backed-up sewer pipe, and toward the gate on Gudrunstraße through which he had arrived.

  He passed through the bent iron gate, and turned to his left, attempting to navigate his way back to Tempelhof. He slammed to a halt after two steps. There before him were the two functionaries and the policeman. They stopped talking the instant they saw him. They glared and stared. The policeman’s hand settled firmly
on his pistol. The three East Germans formed a reception committee that Cochrane could have done without.

  Cochrane’s mood and the world, which up until then was showing signs of settling into an acceptable pace, went into free fall. Seeing the three of them block his path, Cochrane froze and stood rock still. Their six unfriendly brown eyes were focused on him like three terriers, sensing battle, and ready to brawl. They did everything to indicate impending belligerence except paw the ground.

  Cochrane calculated quickly.

  If they were going to stop him, he wasn’t going to avoid it. There were other pedestrians in the area and presumably more police. There wasn’t an escape. Running or panicking would be foolish. He needed a great idea on the spur of the moment.

  Move. Do something! You can’t just stand here grinning and gawking! he thought to himself.

  Desperate for a productive move, he reached into the air and grabbed what appeared to be a good idea as it floated past.

  “Comrades!” he explained, giving them a wide smile, and lifting his hands wide in a gesture of friendship. “All hail the great and powerful Stalin!”

  The invocation of Stalin kept them momentarily quiet. He approached them with a friendly smile, the last thing they would expect, or so he hoped.

  “Comrades, comrades!” he said.

  He gave them a courteous tip of the hat. He segued immediately into a soliloquy of what a sad day it was but what a gracious public service they had performed to usher the unfortunate girl into the ground.

  They stared at him without speaking. The cop blinked. Cochrane knew he had wrested the momentum of the meeting from them. “I’m grateful to you for your time today,” Cochrane continued. They reacted as if he were the first person who had even been polite to them.

  He continued with high praise in formal German, reached carefully into his jacket pocket, and brought out half a pack of cigarettes. He shook it. By the grace of fate, three smokes popped up. Three anxious hands reached toward him.

  He took one cigarette himself to be part of the gang and struck a match. They were impressed with how deft he was. He moved the match around as they formed a circle with him, extending the flame to all involved. Four lights on a single match. One didn’t see such dexterity that often. Cochrane lit his smoke last.

  The smokes broke an icy spell on a sunny afternoon. Then Cochrane turned the warmth of his charm upon them. He asked the officiator about the ceremony. Lying through his teeth, he said he had known the deceased casually and had been fond of her. But there had been no relationship. He knew she had had an accident, as he put it, and happened across the burial notice in the good socialist newspaper. So he had come by to pay his respects.

  He was selling his story ably and they seemed to be buying it. He joshed a little with the policeman, remarking how difficult a law enforcer’s job was. “Been all over the world,” he said. “Never seen a policeman with an easy job in my life.”

  His eyes bore in on the policeman. He noted the man’s rank of Polizeimeister, a lowly constable on flatfoot duty. “You are in the department headed by Colonel Markgraf, I assume,” Cochrane said.

  “Correct,” the patrolman said.

  “I will put in a good word for you,” Cochrane said pleasantly. “I will tell him when I see him socially that you were here, doing your duty, and performing honorably on behalf of the workers of Berlin. What is your name?”

  The man hesitated.

  “Speak up, young man.”

  “Deiter Hoffman, mein Herr.”

  “Excellent, Comrade Hoffman! I will put in the good word.”

  By now the three men were back on their heels but were picking up on his non-native German. He knew the inevitable question was lurking. He was prepared for it. The registrar, the man carrying the black books, threw it at him.

  “What nationality are you, mein Herr?” the registrar asked.

  “American,” Cochrane said without hesitation. “If I may reach into my pocket to show you?” he asked.

  The cop, with his hand still positioned on his weapon, nodded. Gingerly, Cochrane reached into his jacket. With two fingers and a flat hand, he withdrew his fraudulent passport. He made a show of opening it, showing his picture, but then stashed it quickly.

  “American, yes, I am,” Cochrane said. “But I am from New York City. A fellow voyager in the cause of worldwide revolution and socialism,” he said.

  “Why are you in Berlin?” the registrar asked.

  “I’m an American Communist,” Cochrane said with a ton of indignation, selling them another whopper. “I am proud to say I have been hired by the new regime at the new university, the one formerly known as Humboldt. I will be giving lectures on racial oppression and the exploitation of the poor in the United States.”

  They remained quiet.

  “I am heading a department,” Cochrane continued, building on this lie. “I assume you are all Communist party members,” Cochrane said.

  They were quick to assure him that they were. He had the impression that even if these three were former Nazis they wouldn’t admit it.

  His explanation shut them down and pulled a rug out from under them at the same time. An invocation of Humboldt was a grandstand play and made no mistake in its implications.

  Humboldt, which dated from the early 1800s, had been a target of the Nazis over the years of the Reich and the World War. It had been the scene of a massive book burning in 1933. From Humboldt’s main library, twenty thousand books by opponents of the regime and “other degenerates” were taken to be burned on the Opernplatz in a demonstration protected by the SA, the Sturm Sturmabteilung. That glorious day in Brownshirt history also included a speech by Joseph Goebbels, who had been last seen on a hangman’s scaffold in Nuremberg in 1946.

  Humboldt had survived the World War, the bombing, and the Soviet occupation. It reopened in 1946 as the University of Berlin, but immediately faced repression from the Soviet Military Administration. Liberal and social democratic students were persecuted. Almost immediately, the Soviet occupiers suppressed academic freedom at the university, requiring lectures to be submitted for approval by Socialist Unity Party officials, and piped Soviet propaganda into the cafeteria. Vehement demonstrations followed from the students and faculty. NKVD police in plain clothes with no identification arrested scores of students in response in March 1947. The students were hauled before kangaroo tribunals, a Stalinist art form.

  The Soviet Military Tribunal in Berlin-Lichtenberg ruled in private and within a matter of hours. The verdict: students and their professors had participated in “an anti-socialist resistance movement at the University of Berlin as well as espionage and sedition against the revolution of the workers.” The court sentenced them to twenty-five years of forced labor.

  Between the end of the war and 1948, two dozen other students and professors were arrested or abducted by the Soviet Army, NKDV agents, or representatives of Markgraf’s glorious new East German police force — big, thick, low-browed men with massive arms, necks and shoulders, some in uniform, others in boxy, gray civilian suits. They all wore a permanent sneer and had a cloud of malice hanging above them.

  Some of those arrested were gone for weeks and returned to Berlin acting as if they had taken some strange medicine that had wrecked their brains or bodies or both.

  Rumors, never spoken by Berliners in more than whispers, had it that the noisier troublemakers had been bound, gagged, dragged onto small unmarked Soviet airplanes, and transported to the Mother Russia. There they were officially silenced, executed Russian style: two bullets to the back of the neck. Their families dared not ask. All hail the glorious revolution of the workers. Compared with all this, what happened to Jan Masaryk – the Czech leader who went out a third-floor window in his pajamas a few months earlier in March of 1948 — seemed warm and friendly.

  The Soviet administrators targeted many young men and women active in the liberal or social democratic resistance against the Soviet-imposed Communist "dic
tatorship.” The German Communist Party rubberstamped the selection. The Communists had viewed the Social Democrats as their primary enemies since the time of the Weimar Republic. To have been hired as a lecturer at the new University of Berlin suggested that the man in front of them had some rapport, official or otherwise, with the current administration of the city.

  Cochrane couldn’t prove it, but he felt he had sold the cover story. None of the three men confronting him were stepping forward to be the dope who challenged the wrong visiting Marxist. Keep it going, Cochrane told himself. He turned toward the registrar. “What is this book you carry?” Cochrane asked. “This black book you have in your hands?”

  “Official records.”

  “Such as a burial, I assume,” Cochrane said. “I saw you bear witness and enter a name and date, presumably for accuracy.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Are the official records available to the people?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Are they then the people’s records?”

  “Yes, that is true.”

  “I need to witness the quality of your work.”

  Cochrane snatched the volume away from the stunned functionary. He opened to the first inside page and spotted a name and office address. “Fritz Hunsicker. That’s you?”

  Ja.

  “The address is in Lichtenberg in Ost Berlin. That’s where your office is?”

  Ja.

  The American riffled through it, flipping pages. The volume also contained recent births and marriages. Cochrane found the entry for the funeral he had just witnessed. The name checked, but then again, Cochrane had provided it and paid for the service. He clapped the book shut and handed it back. “Where are books like this kept?” Cochrane asked. “Your office?”

  Ja. In das Rathaus, Hunsicker said. “City Hall.”

  “Which one?”

  “The central one for the Eastern Zone of Berlin,” the one in Lichtenberg on Kohlerstrasse. That is the address you see there.”