by Alex Gerlis
They had reached the end of the path; ahead of them was a small wood. Edgar walked towards it and then turned around, to address the field rather than Winter. ‘Last saw him in Vienna, May 45. And you know what surprises me? Not that he’s still alive – if anyone would survive it would be him. No, what really surprises me is that he took thirty years to get in touch.’
***
Tell him to use a West German identity but NOT a West Berlin one. He’ll understand. He should enter West Germany through the Netherlands. He is advised to stay in West Berlin for a couple of days before he crosses over, to ensure he’s clean, but he’ll know that anyway.
Whatever he does, he must not – I can’t emphasise this strongly enough – use either Checkpoint Charlie or Friedrichstrasse station. Those are where foreigners come through: they have the sharpest border guards. Chausseestrasse and Invalidenstrasse crossings are just for citizens of West Berlin, so avoid them too.
Now, this is important. I think the safest place to get into East Berlin is the border crossing at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse, in the south of the city: Checkpoint Delta. It’s for citizens of the Federal Republic. He’ll come through Kreuzberg, that’s in the American sector. If he doesn’t like the look of it when he gets there – he’ll know what I mean – then he is to wait a day and then try the Bornholmer Strasse crossing in Wedding, in the French Sector.
You’ve got all that? That’s the easy part. This is what he’s to do when he gets into the East…
***
There was no question that Edgar had a certain spring in his step after Winter’s visit. His wife certainly noticed it.
‘And who was the young man you were walking with in the field?’
‘Just some chap out on a walk – said he had a dog just like Harry when he was younger.’
‘Well, he was wearing the wrong kind of shoes for a walk across the fields.’
Edgar said nothing. He should have spotted the shoes. Maybe it would have been better to walk along the lane.
‘And this has nothing to do with you going up to London for the week?’
Edgar explained again, in a manner that made clear this would be the end of it: there was some tedious business the Service needed him to look over, old files, the usual sort of thing. He’d be away for a few days, perhaps a week.
When his wife went out, later that afternoon, Edgar climbed into the loft and opened the small safe hidden under a box of old books in the eaves. Inside were half a dozen passports, each in its own envelope and wrapped in a plastic bag. He had used Karl Albrecht before; it was one of his most reliable identities. He had first used it to get into Germany on a desperate mission in April 1941, and had made a point over the years of keeping it up to date – he had last renewed it in 1970. He had even obtained a personalausweis – an identity card to match the passport. Karl Albrecht was a businessman from Hanover, and this suited Edgar. He had spent a year at university there and was comfortable with the refined Hannoverian accent.
The following day he caught the train to London and, using a British passport in the name of Paul Barker and buying his ticket with cash, took the night ferry from Harwich to Amsterdam. A few hours after it docked, Paul Barker was on the midday train from Amsterdam Central, arriving in Hannover just after four in the afternoon. He took a left luggage locker at the station, where he deposited his British passport and anything else that could identify him as being British. He found a small hotel just off Burgstrasse, checked in as Karl Albrecht, and took a room at the rear of the hotel, overlooking the River Leine.
As anxious as he was to get to Berlin, he knew he mustn’t rush. He needed to spend some time in Hannover, to acclimatise himself to the city in which he was meant to be native. For the next two days he spoke to as many people as possible, ensuring his fluent German had the correct Hannoverian ring to it. He went shopping too, buying clothes, toiletries and even a small suitcase from local shops, and depositing his English clothes in the left luggage locker at the station. He made one other purchase, made almost on the spur of the moment as he walked past a specialist shop, which put the idea in his mind. After that he found a busy bar in Ostadt, where the owner seemed to know everyone.
I’m looking for a lift to West Berlin; my car’s just broken down. Would you know anyone who’s driving there in the next couple of days? I’ll pay for the petrol and a bit extra on top…
The bar owner said to come back the following day and, when Edgar did so, he handed him a slip of paper. ‘Ring Helmut – he drives to West Berlin every few weeks, his mother lives there. If you’re generous with him he’ll drive you there, and back. You can be generous to me too.’
They left Hannover early in the morning in Helmut’s old VW Squareback and it wasn’t until they were on Autobahn 2 that Helmut spoke more than the odd word. ‘I presume you’re looking for an easy journey?’
Edgar nodded.
‘I do this journey all the time. We’ll enter the DDR at the Marienborn crossing. Our timing is good because by the time we get there they’ll be starting to get busy and they like to keep things moving. We’ll be searched of course. You aren’t carrying anything they won’t like, are you?’
Edgar replied that of course he wasn’t.
‘I know many of the East German guards, most of them are Stasi. They know I’m always clean. I leave a few packets of French cigarettes for them in the boot, they like those. If they ask, we’ll just say we’re friends, eh?’
It took them an hour to get through Marienborn, which Helmut said was quite good going. The half a dozen packets of Gitanes in the boot had helped. From Marienborn it was another three hours to Berlin on the autobahn. They were in East Germany but not permitted to stop, as if they were driving through a tunnel. They went past Magdeburg, south of Brandenburg, and bypassed Potsdam before reaching West Berlin in the early afternoon.
‘You’ll want a lift back, I suppose – how long will you need here?’
Edgar asked if three days was alright, and had to slip Helmut some more money to make sure it was. The VW Squareback dropped him outside Kurfürstendamm station and they agreed to meet at the same spot in three days.
Chapter 9
East Berlin
March 1976
Edgar checked in, as Karl Albrecht, at a hotel just off Potsdamer Strasse in West Berlin. He found a telephone box a few blocks away and rang the West Berlin number Winter had given him.
A female voice will answer. She will repeat this number.
You are to ask if Klaus is there.
If she replies to say there is no Klaus, do not attempt to cross over.
Otherwise, she will tell you when Klaus will be there. Most likely she will say ‘tomorrow,’ but be prepared for it to be a day or two later. That’s when you cross.
Viktor, so thorough: quite the best agent he had ever encountered, on any side.
The female voice told him Klaus would be there tomorrow, so he was up first thing the next morning and took a tram to Kreuzberg. All the other passengers appeared to be exhausted Turkish workers. He left the tram on Lindenstrasse and walked for fifteen minutes, though not directly towards the border. When he was certain he hadn’t been followed, he approached the border down Prinzenstrasse. Ahead of him was the vast expanse in front of the Heinrich-Heine-Strasse checkpoint.
Be clear that you’re only there for the day; any longer and you’ll have needed to apply for a visa beforehand.
It took the best part of an hour to get through. The queue inched slowly, then he encountered the first official, and then a second, who took away his passport and brought it back twenty minutes later. Why did he want to visit East Berlin?
I am getting very old now and I rarely leave Hannover. I used to visit Berlin before the war. I am in the West visiting friends and would dearly love to see parts of Mitte again… one last time.
The official looked unimpressed, and told him to wait. The third official was a woman who asked a series of questions and painstakingly wrote down the
answers. Edgar recognised the technique: the same questions, but asked in subtly different ways. An inexperienced person could be caught out. At the end she looked disappointed.
‘You understand this visa is just for today?’ She stamped his passport. Edgar nodded. ‘You can only exit through this crossing. Make sure you’re back here by five at the latest.’
After that there was a thorough search, with particular interest paid to the labels of his clothes. He was glad he had bought new ones in Hannover. And then the currency exchange at an obligatory punitive rate.
He knew that once he was through the checkpoint he’d be followed, so taking a circuitous route or going down too many side streets would only arouse suspicion, as would other standard evasive techniques like doubling back. This was where the item he’d bought in Hannover came into its own. He remembered how, when he used to follow targets, what was most infuriating was when they were too slow. It made it hard to maintain a discreet distance. But a target needed a good excuse to move so slowly. Fortunately the East Germans would have seen that Karl Albrecht was 77. Edgar had avoided shaving that morning, and held himself less upright. As he shuffled along with the aid of the walking stick he’d bought in Hannover, he convincingly looked his age.
He walked to the end of Heinrich-Heine Strasse, turned left into Neue Annenstrasse, and eventually joined Breite Strasse. Edgar felt immediately as though he had walked not just into a different city in a different country, but also into a different era and a different time of year. The contrast with the West was stark: the small number of cars, the presence of so many people in uniform, the lack of colour and noise in the streets, the apparent absence of advertising, and the profusion of political posters. The pervasive smell of lignite – the cheap brown coal they used in the east – was noticeable, and he began to feel it at the back of his throat. Fairly soon he was away from the looming presence of the wall. It was no more than twelve feet high but it still felt ubiquitous, as if it cast a grey pallor over the city.
He crossed Französische Strasse and in Marx-Engels Platz spent some time slowly moving around the vast square, constantly in the shadow of the vast Palast der Republik. The home of the Volkskammer, the East German parliament, also contained a concert hall and art galleries where Edgar spent half an hour, taking an apparent interest in an exhibition of contemporary Bulgarian art.
Back in the square he sat on a bench and took stock of his situation. The pair who had initially followed him appeared to be down to one: a tall, bored-looking man who constantly wiped his nose with a large handkerchief. He knew if he was patient then sooner or later his tail would be removed altogether.
An hour later, he’d walked down the Unter den Linden towards Pariser Platz. Just before the Brandenburg Gate he turned back and, now sure he was no longer being followed, walked back down the Unter den Linden, turning left into Schadow Strasse.
***
Viktor had embraced him so tightly that Edgar wondered for a few uncomfortable moments whether he had fallen into a trap. It had all gone as per Winter’s instructions: a small ‘x’ had been scratched on the side of the door to the apartment block on Schadow Strasse, the same mark repeated just inside the doorway. In the damp entrance hall, he spotted a copy of the previous days’ Neues Deutschland in the pigeon hole for the flat, and when he climbed to the top floor the final sign all was safe was in place: a black umbrella with a bright brown handle propped up beside the door.
A middle-aged woman let him into the apartment. He had barely stepped into the small lounge before the Russian threw his arms round him.
‘Edgar, Edgar,’ he said as he released the Englishman from his embrace, and held his shoulders in his outstretched hands, admiring Edgar as one would a growing child. ‘So we’ve both lived long enough to reach old age. What were the chances of that when we last met, eh? You have not changed, my friend. It is so good to see you. Come, sit down. Irma, bring us a drink. Edgar I hope you weren’t insulted by my instructions. I knew I could trust you, but being so careful and taking so many precautions – that’s what’s kept me alive!’
Anyone observing the scene would imagine the two were old friends, rather than adversaries going back thirty years. The last time the two had met was in the NKVD headquarters in Vienna, in the May of 1945, shortly after the Red Army had liberated the city. Edgar had entered Vienna clandestinely, to find out what had happened to one of his agents whom he suspected of also working for the Russians. He’d been arrested by the NKVD, and Viktor could have done anything with him. But, to the Englishman’s great surprise, Viktor not only let him go but actually helped him with his mission.
And when Viktor explained why, Edgar understood immediately. One day I may need your assistance Edgar. I may have to contact you indirectly. I would like you to give me your word that if I do, you will do what you can to help me.
Edgar had asked how he would know it was a genuine approach. The Russian spy master had looked around the room and picked up a nearly empty pear-shaped Cognac bottle, a Baron Otard.
Should you ever get a message that a Baron Otard is trying to contact you, you will know it is genuine, that it is me. You understand?
***
The two old spymasters sat opposite each other: the Russian on a shiny settee, the Englishman in an armchair which appeared to be made from a type of plastic. The woman Viktor had addressed as Irma brought in a bottle of brandy on a tray.
‘Three years ago my doctor asked me how much I was drinking,’ said the Russian as he poured two very large measures. ‘I said maybe two bottles of vodka a week and you know what? He told me to stop!’ Viktor paused, long enough to allow Edgar to absorb the sheer injustice of it. ‘Which I did, of course, who disobeys a doctor? But he never said anything about brandy, eh?’
The two men laughed heartily and drank their brandy. It had a rough edge and Edgar was concerned they’d only just started.
‘So, you survived Viktor!’
‘You mean after what my doctor told me?’
‘No…’ Edgar hesitated, looking for the right words. ‘I mean after the war, Stalin, purges… all that kind of thing one heard so much about.’
Viktor shrugged. ‘And so did you, Edgar.’
‘Survival was possibly more of an achievement in your case, am I right?’
Viktor shrugged again. ‘You became a politician I hear?’
Edgar nodded. ‘I stayed in the Service for a while, but it wasn’t the same. I had an opportunity to go into politics and I was a Member of Parliament until 1970. I decided to retire then, I was seventy. But I have remained involved with the Service over the years, helping out with the odd case, reviewing files and notes, people coming to see me about agents I ran – that kind of thing. You never really retire from our world, do you?’
The Russian said nothing as he carefully studied the glass of brandy he was holding. He took a tin of small cigars from a jacket pocket, extracted two, gave one to Edgar, and lit them both. ‘My doctor told me to stop smoking too. I decided he meant cigarettes, not cigars!’ He paused.
‘In our service very few people retire, as such, apart from a small number who became too old or too ill. The remainder either stay on for ever, like me, or they are sent away.’ There was another pause. Viktor pointed his lit cigar towards Edgar. ‘They spend what is left of their lives – which is usually not very much – in some miserable camp somewhere in the east.
‘When the war ended I was forty-five years old. I had been an agent for the Soviet Union since I was twenty, would you believe. Since the age of thirty-two I’d been operating clandestinely in Europe: I did that for thirteen years. Along the way I was married, divorced and had a child, who I’ve not seen for forty years. That I survived for so long away from the Soviet Union was remarkable. You know a bit of what I was up to Edgar; you have to admit I was good…’
‘You were extraordinary Viktor. Our hardest opponent…’ Both men fell silent, reflecting on the past: on the regrets, nostalgia and memories tha
t came with looking back on one’s younger days. Edgar found it hard to overstate his admiration for Viktor. The Russian was such a large and distinctive character, yet he’d been able to move silently and safely around Nazi-occupied Europe. He disappeared when he needed to and when he re-emerged he effortlessly took on the role of a native of whichever country he was in. He had been a brave spy, and a dangerous opponent.
‘They didn’t trust me, the idiots who’d stayed in Moscow throughout the war or fled as soon as they heard the German artillery in ’41. I was recalled to Moscow in May 1945 – not too long after we met in Vienna. When I arrived I discovered that my boss, Ilia Brodsky, had been executed. Brodsky was a brilliant spymaster, but Comrade Stalin never much liked his Jews.’
There was a pause as the Russian undid his shoelaces. ‘Brodsky was very good at his job and the last thing Stalin needed once the war was over was a good intelligence chief. I thought I was also done for, I can tell you. I had been in the west for so long that they were convinced I had developed bourgeois tendencies. But at first that didn’t seem to matter, because there was a big operation on – some crazy plan of Stalin’s to invade France and Italy once the war was over. Because of my experience in France and my contacts there, I worked on that for a few weeks – and even went to France – but that’s another story. After a couple of months this operation was suddenly dropped, and I really thought by then my luck had run out. But two things counted in my favour… Edgar, you must have more brandy, what’s the matter with you? It’s Bulgarian.’
The Englishman covered the top of his glass with his hand as the Russian attempted to fill it.
‘Don’t tell me, you have one of these doctors too? The two things in my favour were my record – as you say I was very good: I had run agents throughout Europe and the intelligence I sent back was first class. I had been loyal and brave and they knew that. But those idiots in Moscow could never be accused of sentimentality – my record did not count for much, and Brodsky’s record hadn’t helped him. No, what really saved me was my experience of Nazi-occupied Europe, Germany in particular, and my fluency in German. By the end of the war I not only spoke it like a native but I understood every nuance of the language. There was an old professor at Sciences Po in Paris, I ran him as an agent in the ’30s, who told me something I have never forgotten: it is far easier to speak another language than to understand it. What he meant was to understand it like a native, pick up on the little inflections or tics that show you whether someone is telling the truth, or lying. By 1945 I could do that in German. Now then Edgar, I have a question for you. How many German prisoners of war do you think the Soviet Union held in 1945?’ The Russian leaned back in his seat, folding his large arms across his chest, a gesture that said, ‘go on, guess…’
