Baltic Approach

by Max Hertzberg

  But Merkur knew more about Sanderling’s last operation than I did—he’d given out just enough to tempt me. Don’t think I was too slow to realise I was being played, but I was still trying to work out the West German’s plan, not least because he’d made me part of it.

  Of course, I should step away from him, follow protocol and take him back to Berlin, but then I’d never find out what he knew about Sanderling.

  38

  Bad Doberan

  “My name is Doctor Andreas Portz, I hold the rank of Polizeirat in the Federal Crime Agency.” Polizeirat, equivalent to Major in our organs. Which meant Merkur was fairly senior, perhaps even head of a section in the BKA.

  We were back in his room on the top floor. He was on the bed, leaning against the wall and smoking the last of his West German cigarettes. It was the usual set up—thin single mattress on a divan base, a hard foam wedge instead of a pillow. We’d found fresh bedding in a cupboard and had hung it over the bannisters to air.

  I sat on the deep windowsill, sometimes watching Merkur, sometimes gazing out of the window at the fieldstone wall that surrounded the grounds of the Minster. A light blanket of frost-proven snow lay about and a heavy wind blew more in from the Baltic.

  “I was Arnold Seiffert’s superior officer, but we knew each other socially—Arnold was often at my house, my wife liked to feed him up. She said he needed to find a woman, and if he didn’t then she’d have to start match-making.” He paused, either to reminisce, or to allow me some time to consider the close relationship he’d had with Source Bruno.

  I let him blether on, I was impatient to hear about Sanderling, but I already knew Merkur well enough to realise he wouldn’t be hurried. He had his plan and he’d stick to it. He knew that I’d have to hand him over before too long, and had no doubt factored this into his timetable.

  I was considering lighting another cigarette when I heard the creak of a floorboard. The click of shoes on bare wood came closer.

  Merkur appeared not to have heard, he was giving me some story from the time when Bruno first joined his section and didn’t even pause when the footsteps started up again, softer this time, fading into the background creaks and knocks of the old house—Lütten had returned, he’d listened at the door for a moment but had been sensible enough not to disturb us while the subject was talking.

  While Merkur blethered on, I took out a nail and absently tapped it against the packet. I became aware of how the Western policeman was following the movement of the cigarette. I offered him one.

  Out came the Zippo, and as he lit up, I took the opportunity to speak. I decided it was time to interrupt Merkur’s deliberate rambling, to take control of the interview.

  I wouldn’t achieve that if I stayed with any of the expected topics. The first questions any interrogator could be expected to ask would be why Merkur had come to the GDR, why he wanted to stay—what about his wife, the property he owned over there in the West? And why he kept name-dropping Sanderling? But Merkur would have prepared answers for those topics. I needed to ask something unexpected.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t just take you back to the border and throw you out of the country?”

  He exhaled, half a smile forming. The hand holding his cigarette dropped to his lap and he watched the blue smoke curl up to join the smog collecting beneath the ceiling.

  “You mean other than the fact I’m expected in Berlin?”

  “At my discretion—you only go to Berlin if I like what I hear. Otherwise, back to the border with you. So tell me something useful while you still have the chance.”

  Another draw on his cigarette, wasting more time, watching the rising smoke.

  “OK, I understand. You wish to establish my bona fides? How about this: I’ll give you a network in Rostock to prove my value,” he said eventually, looking out of the window to gauge the remaining daylight. “But you’d better be quick.”

  “Why quick?”

  “If I’m not behind my desk on Wednesday morning, my colleagues will wonder where I am. And when they find out, they’ll start rolling up the network themselves. So, as I said, you’d better be quick.”

  39

  Warnowwerft

  It took quite a while for someone from the works Party Secretary’s office to come and sign us in, and while we waited in the Moskvitch, the works security in their police-like uniforms watched us from their cosy gatehouse.

  My own eyes were drawn to the cable crane that rose higher even than the Herculean shipbuilding halls. A skein of cables hung between two gantries, each pair supporting a trolley and hoist mechanism. The trolleys travelled back and forth along the wires, stopping and letting down or lifting loads. Massive slabs of steel dropped into a half-finished hull, further over, several trolleys working together carried engines the size of buses.

  “Our ladies do a grand job.”

  My eyes returned to earth, focussing on the suit wearing a yellow safety helmet. He gazed upwards, just as I had done, admiring the trolleys spidering between the gantries. Lütten watched us both, his eyes glinting in amusement.

  “Ladies?”

  “Oh yes, that’s our women’s brigade up on the crane. They’ve got the knack. A nudge here, another centimetre or two there. Requires concentration and co-operation that job, proud of our crane drivers, we are.”

  Lütten shrugged, and the suit turned around to face us. I held out my clapperboard long enough for him to work out what he was looking at, short enough to keep him wondering.

  “I see,” he said, waving away one of the works security who was brandishing a pen through the window, his free hand placed on the visitors log. “Let’s go somewhere warmer.”

  We passed through the turnstile gate and towards the administration block directly behind the gatehouse. Once in the building, the suit stamped the snow from his boots and gave himself a shake.

  “Know who you’re here to see?”

  “Cadre department,” Lütten answered brusquely.

  We went up to the second floor and through a secretarial office, the suit pausing to knock softly on the next door.

  “Visitors, Willi,” he called and pushed open the door. He ushered us in and left us to talk to Willi.

  “Comrades,” he said, rising from behind his desk. He had us pegged even before we opened our mouths. “A coffee? The poppy seed cake from the kiosk is good—Elsa, three coffees, and some of that poppy seed.”

  “Thank you comrade, won’t be necessary,” Lütten interrupted, closing the door on the secretary who was already hurrying to the coffee maker.

  “I want to know when the people on this list will next be at work.” I laid a piece of paper Willi’s desk and remained standing, close enough that he had to lean back in his chair if he wanted to see as far as my face.

  Willi adjusted his glasses and ran a finger down the names, then angled his head up to address me. “I’d have to ask Frau Richter.”

  Lütten already had the door open and was ushering the flustered secretary in.

  “Elsa, could you check which shifts these workers are down for?”

  Elsa Richter took the page and read, her face growing paler the further down the list she got. She scurried back into her office and Lütten followed her while I sat myself opposite Willi. Leaning forward, I placed my elbows on his desk, hands clasped between his telephone and a nice collection of rubber stamps.

  “Your name, Comrade?”

  “Noack Wilhelm, Kaderleiter.”

  “Well, Noack Wilhelm, Kaderleiter, tell me: did you recognise any of the names?”

  “No, comrade, no.” Willi shuffled back in his chair, trying to put some distance between us. I decided he looked nervous, but not duplicitous. “Should I have?”

  “Just so we understand each other: other than you and Frau Richter, nobody will ever find out that those names were on any list. Clear?” I waited for him to nod. “Your socialist duty, Comrade, your socialist duty.” Another nod.

  I left Willi at his desk, cl
osing the door on him and joining Lütten and the secretary. She had several shift plans unfolded on her desk, cross-referencing the names on the list with those of the brigades in the shipyard. Lütten stood next to her, jotting down the information in his notebook and interrogating her about the four subjects.

  “Have any of them ever been in trouble? Any accusations or investigations—no matter how small?”

  Elsa denied knowledge of any wrongdoings, insignificant or otherwise.

  “And this one, Frau Drews—know her?” he tapped the name on the list and we both watched as Elsa rubbed the palms of her hands against her thighs, her eyes scooting towards a corner where the top layer of the battered lino had cracked and curled. “So you know Frau Drews?”

  “We chat in the canteen. Sometimes. I don’t see her outside work, we’re not in the same brigade, you see, so it’s only now and again for the midday meal …” The secretary admitted, her tone apologetic. More importantly, her mouth was running away from her, spilling out ever more details of how she didn’t really know Colleague Drews.

  “Talk about home, does she? Over dinner in the canteen? Well, does she?”

  “She has a son, there’s no man around, it’s just the two of them … I picked the son up from Kindergarten once when a meeting ran later than expected. Well, I suppose it might have been a few times.”

  Lütten chucked me a look, wanting to know whether to continue the interrogation, but I shook my head. I stayed by the door while Lütten indoctrinated Elsa in the importance of confidentiality. He was less aggressive about it than I would have been, but he had the local accent, she knew he would always be close by. No need to be so antagonistic if the subject knows you could waltz back into their office at any time.

  40

  Warnowwerft

  “What have we got?” I asked once we were back in the car.

  “We’ve got a secretary in the works party organisation—that’s the one our Elsa Richter didn’t want to admit being friendly with. A couple of manual workers and the last name on the list belongs to one of them women crane drivers.” Lütten peered at the floodlit crane through the windscreen, his hand groping for the key to start the engine so we’d have some warmth from the heater.

  “Do you think we’ll have to go up there to get her?” I wiped the condensation from the window and joined my colleague in staring at the nearest crane gantry.

  “Hope not, that thing’s higher than the three tower-blocks in Lütten Klein—and I get nervous just looking at them.”

  I could see a lamplit staircase threading up the central stanchion of the near gantry, leading to a series of cabs suspended more than sixty metres above the slip. Even when they weren’t in use, the heavy cables swung and jerked in the winds that funnelled through the river mouth.

  “May be easier to pick her up at home?” Lütten suggested.

  I nodded while I lit a nail, passing the packet over.

  “Shouldn’t we get this investigation on a proper footing?” asked Lütten once his cigarette was going. “File the operational plan? We could do it up here if you want, through my department.”

  I didn’t answer. Lütten was fishing, trying to find out what was going on and what I might be planning. He wanted to know how much trouble he’d be in if he hung around with me for too long.

  But he had a point: urgency wasn’t a reason not to follow the rules, not when it comes to the Ministry. Merkur had told me that his colleagues in the West wouldn’t act before Wednesday morning at the earliest—that was more than enough time to write a report about what we’d found out.

  And why not do that? Because, best case, it could take several days for the apparatchiks at Berlin Centre to react. By then it would be too late to wrap up the network in the shipyard—assuming there was one and we hadn’t been fed a few random names by Merkur.

  But more likely, once I told Major Kühn what was going on, he’d pass the operation back to Counter-Intelligence and Merkur would be lost to me. Whatever information he had about Sanderling would disappear into the system.

  I was right to sit on this and keep hold of Merkur for the time being. Let Monday morning take care of itself.

  But Lütten was still being over-helpful: “It’s urgent, isn’t it? The lads up here are good, I can have them knocking on doors within the hour, collecting background information from the neighbours—have the officer of the day issue an emergency warrant and we’ll get them picked up on their way home from work.”

  Perhaps Lütten was right. Let Rostock District Administration do all the work and tell Major Kühn that I tried to get hold of him but, lacking the necessary authority to do otherwise, had been obliged to involve the Rostockers.

  If I gave Merkur to the local lads, I could try to persuade Kühn to let me do liaison and co-ordination. That way I’d have eyes on the transcripts, maybe even wangle it so I could sit in on an interrogation.

  Far from ideal, but it could be a way through this mess I’d landed myself in. Providing my superior really was still incommunicado—I’d have to try phoning him again, if only to shore up my alibi.

  “Let’s go,” I said. I’d think on the plan while we drove back to Doberan—perhaps put in another call to Berlin from the county unit there, and if Kühn still hadn’t been unearthed from his weekend then I’d send Lütten off for reinforcements. That would give me at least an hour to chat with Merkur before the party started.

  41

  Rostock Lichtenhagen

  “Maybe you don’t want to hear this,” said Lütten as he started the Moskvitch and steered us onto the dual carriageway back to Rostock. “But I’ve been there—you’re in the middle of a job and before you know it, the parameters have changed. If you do it by the book, try to change the operational plan, then the brass want to stick their oar in. It slows everything down …”

  Lichtenhagen loomed out of the darkness ahead, the lit windows in the high concrete flats multiplied as we drove towards them.

  “I get it, I really do. It’s late on Saturday—what are the chances you’re going to be able to reach the very person you need to sign off on changes to the operational plan? That’s why I’m offering my lads. The chief is good, I know exactly where to get hold of him this weekend, and he understands operational necessity, he’s happy to bend a few rules if he thinks it’ll get a result.”

  We’d reached the centre of the new town now, barely a decade old and the concrete already stained and matte in the orange sodium lights. Glazed tiles set into parts of the facades glinted, but the fitful glimmer of reflected light just made the whole place appear even more dingy.

  The traffic signals up ahead changed to allow passengers from the S-Bahn station to cross the busy road, and we slid to an untidy halt at the front of the centre lane, our headlights illuminating the pedestrians that were walking out in front of the cars. The usual babushkas returning from a Saturday out in Rostock, some kids wheeling bikes and a young woman. Everyone had their heads down, hurrying to get out of the flinty wind that swept down the wide road. Lütten was still blethering on about operational certainties, revolutionary diligence and the necessity of flexibility when realising operational goals. Possibly he meant well, was intent on providing support for a fellow Chekist, but he could equally have been out to advance his own career over the corpse of mine.

  It was stuffy in the car, the smoke from our cigarettes still hung around, barely shifted by the singed air gusting from the heater. I wound down my window, turning my head to breathe in the cold air that seeped in.

  Most of the pedestrians had reached the other side, the kids huddled together on the corner, chatting before they went their separate ways. Only a babushka was still steadily making for the safety of the pavement. Lütten had his eye on the lights, hand already on the gear stick, impatient to get going.

  The young woman who had passed in front of us was quite a way along already, crossing the side road in front of a quad of flats. I watched her progress with idle interest—she had a s
hopping bag which looked heavy, but was nevertheless going at quite a clip. Something about the colour of her coat reminded me of … what? Tan coat, mustard and chocolate check scarf over her head.

  “Turn right! Now! Rightrightright!” I shouted.

  Lütten was already putting the car into gear as the lights turned. He twisted the wheel, then braked almost to a halt as the car in the right-hand lane refused to give way.

  “Down there!”

  Lütten eased up on the clutch and the Moskvitch jerked over the painted line into the lane to our right, forcing the other car to a stop.

  “Down there, other side of the road!”

  Once we were on the intersection, Lütten put his foot down, hard. The engine, still in first gear, howled as we slanted across to the wrong side of the road, Lütten tweaking the headlights at oncoming vehicles as they slalomed past. The woman in the scarf and tan coat heard the honking and the shouts, she turned slightly, clocked the Moskvitch heading straight towards her and broke into a sprint, cutting the corner of a car park and ignoring an oncoming rubbish truck as she ran across a minor road.

  “Down there, that road by the car park!” I shouted, but Lütten had already caught on, was still accelerating down the wrong side of the road, the heel of his hand pressed on the horn.

  A Barkas swerved to avoid us, the Trabant immediately behind didn’t notice our approach in time, and as the driver began to react, Lütten swung the steering wheel to the left. A jolt, the tyres groaning as hubcaps ground against the curb. Lütten hit the brakes and the Trabant scraped past, leaving behind a wing mirror caught in my open window. As soon as the other car had cleared my door, I pushed it open and ran around the front of the Moskvitch, but my foot slid out in the icy gutter, my shin hitting the same curbstone that had already damaged our car. I jumped up and carried on after the woman, ignoring the pain morsing up and down my leg.