Another Kind of Country (39 page)

Within
minutes it was their turn. IDs were checked, given a perfunctory once-over. You guys wouldn’t be on my team, Dover thought.

The van was waved forward in the night.

Another look at his watch. ‘Almost eight,’ Dover said.

Thursday, 9 November 1989, 8.00 p.m.

East Berlin

Dieter doused the lights, killed
the engine, coasted
the Volvo close to the rear of Block 4. The building was dark, silent.

‘Mainly storage,’ Dieter said. ‘Not even a night watchman.’
Who’d be fool enough to break into the Stasi HQ? Especially when you’re an hour behind schedule, delayed at too many checkpoints across the city
.

A single light showed over the entrance to the rear of Block 5. Dieter turned to Reder, spoke over his shoulder to Rosa.

‘Patrick and I will knock, walk in.’ He didn’t tell them that Kneesestrecker would have his hand out for the balance of his dollars. ‘If we’re not out in twenty minutes, drive off.’ He shushed Rosa’s protests, the general’s shake of his head, with a raised palm. ‘I mean it, if we’re delayed, leave. Patrick and I can find our own way back. Agreed?’

Nobody answered.

‘You must do as Dieter says.’ Miller half believed what he was saying. ‘Promise me, Rosa.’

She nodded, leaned towards him, kissed him quickly.

‘Another thing.’ Dieter was staring straight ahead. ‘It’s quiet here, our Volvo might be left undisturbed for a while, but if you see anybody – any car, whatever – moving towards you, start the engine and move off
slowly
, as though you’re just another car on official business.’ Dieter reached under his seat, straightened with a military peaked cap in his hand. He handed it to Rosa.

‘Put your hair up, Rosa, and sit up here. In the dark you’ll just about get away with it.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’ Miller asked.

‘I’ll pull rank.’ Nobody laughed at General Reder’s words. If it came to it, even a general’s rank wouldn’t pull high enough or hard enough.

‘Time to move,’ Dieter said.

Miller felt Rosa’s lips brush his again, saw her fingers touch Dieter’s face.

‘Come back safe,’ she whispered.

They eased the doors of the car open, the interior remained dark. He’s taken the courtesy light out, Miller thought.

The cold hit them, sandwiched between the Volvo and the dark rear of Block 4. The sky was starless, black as the building.

Rosa got into the driver’s seat and Miller fixed her in his mind, her face pale in the dark interior, the military cap covering the rich hair he loved. In the dark cold he shivered, wondered if he would see her again. He saw her lips mouth the words, ‘
Ich liebe dich
,’ and then he turned away, following Dieter, hugging the shadow of Block 4.

Stasi HQ operated around the clock. After 6 p.m., however, the registry in the basement of Block 5 could be accessed only through the small, rear entrance. It wasn’t a cellar in any complete sense. Four shallow steps led down to the black door; the low-ceilinged basement was about half below and half above street level.

Dieter
and Miller stood on the bottom step. Dieter tapped gently on the door. From within came the sound of footsteps; they knew they were being studied through the brass-ringed eyehole. Inside, a bolt was drawn back, a key turned.

The door opened a fraction. Miller followed Dieter through the narrow opening of light. Behind them the door closed, the bolt slid home. A radio was playing pop.

In front of them a steel-barred gate, to their left an unvarnished door that opened on to a cramped office that held the usual desk, chair, directories on the window sill, phone and crank-up switchboard. A kettle and mugs fought for space on the small government-issue desk.

The office seemed even tinier when Kneesestrecker followed Miller and Dieter inside.

Kneesestrecker looked at Miller, at Dieter.

‘You didn’t say there’d be two of you,’ he said.

‘So? I forgot to tell you.’ Dieter handed the quartermaster two fifty-dollar bills.

‘That’s not what we agreed.’

‘Another hundred when we’re done.’

‘Ten minutes – no more.’

I can smell a woman on you
. Miller noticed the girly magazine on the desk, half covered by a copy of
Neues Deutschland
, the grainy image of naked thighs and breasts entirely appropriate in this cellar of secrets and lies. Cigarettes and garlic and the smell of sex filled the room like obscene incense.

‘We’ll be quick,’ Dieter said.

‘Ten minutes, no more.’ Kneesestrecker’s belly shook, his open tunic flapped. ‘You’re late, we agreed on seven o’clock.’ Come back another day, he wanted to say, but he was frightened of the monk-like Russian. ‘Please,’ he wheezed, ‘ten minutes, no more.’

‘When
we’re fucking ready.’ Dieter seemed almost waif-like beside the Stasi NCO but Miller watched Kneesestrecker swallow, blink, before the steel in Dieter’s words.

‘And turn that fucking radio down – keep your eyes and ears open.’

Kneesestrecker reached for the small transistor on the desk, lowered the volume. A DJ was spouting his spiel between records. Even here, Miller thought, they listen to West Berlin stations.

They followed Kneesestrecker out of the office, watched him unlock the steel gate that led to the registry. Ahead of them lay the filing stacks: rows of steel shelves crammed with manila folders and foolscap envelopes. Even Dieter paused to gaze in a kind of awe: an assembly of lives, a compendium of a country’s hopes and secrets and betrayals.

‘It takes two archivists,’ Kneesestrecker wheezed with a hint of pride, ‘full-time, to keep the files up to date.’ He pointed to the steel gate at the opposite end of the aisle, at the main entrance. ‘Their office is there, beside reception.’

‘If the filing system is that good,’ Dieter said, ‘we’ll be out of here in a few minutes.’

Kneesestrecker began to swing the gate shut behind Dieter and Miller.

‘Leave it open.’ Dieter’s voice as steely as the gate. ‘You wait inside the office.’

Kneesestrecker shrugged; they watched him shuffle into the small office.

Dieter
turned to Miller. ‘That prick doesn’t have to know which stacks we’re looking in.’

They moved further along the aisle. The music from Kneesestrecker’s transistor radio followed them between the shelves of files. Under the muted strip lights the files looked like rows of cardboard tombstones.

They stood together at the front end of the stacks. The filing system was basic, moving from A on the left to Z on the extreme right.

Dieter pointed, led Miller along the M stack.
Mi
seemed to begin on the top shelf. Dieter hauled a stepladder along the aisle, climbed until he could thumb his way through the ranks of files. Miller worked through the middle and lower shelves.

‘Nothing.’

Miller didn’t question Dieter’s thoroughness. ‘And nothing here,’ he said.

Both were silent.

‘Bloody music,’ Miller said, looking towards Kneesestrecker’s office.

‘Fuck the music,’ Dieter said. ‘We need to find your file.
Think!
’

I think of Rosa and her hair piled up under a peaked cap, sitting in the Volvo beside General Reder—

‘Reder,’ he said. ‘Maybe they’ve put me into a file along with Rosa and the general.’

He ran between the stacks. It almost seemed benign, welcome, to be coupled with Rosa.

Dieter hurried after him, and together their fingers flew through the manila tombstones.

They found the Reder file, a fat folder tied together with a brown lace with steel ends. They flicked through dozens of pages, carbon copies, yellowed pages, flimsies. Even the most cursory of examinations showed that Patrick Miller, sometime UK resident, occasional and reluctant UK/GDR intelligence agent, must be interred elsewhere.

Dieter and
Miller looked at each other in dismay. More than fifteen minutes had passed without profit. The stacks of files presented an unintelligible labyrinth. And Rosa and her father would be sitting in the dark, counting the passing minutes.
And the fucking music went on creaking tinnily from the smelly office
.

Dieter shook his head. ‘I’m an idiot,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Janus,’ Dieter said. ‘And take the Reder file.’

It took them seconds to get to the J aisle, seconds more to locate the file marked ‘Janus’. The first page of the file had a photograph of Miller attached.

‘Wait here,’ Dieter said. He was gone for two, maybe three minutes. When he came back, he had three fresh files in his hand.

‘These are others who also need protecting,’ he said to Miller. ‘Now let’s go.’

They were hurrying towards the exit when they heard the knocking on the door.

Kneesestrecker swore when he heard the knocking.
Why was the fucking Westerner here already?
Why was ‘Wolfgang’
still
here?

Kneesestrecker hauled himself to his feet, puffed his way to the door. Through the peephole he could see the Westerner, black knitted cap pulled down to his thin eyebrows, beside an older fellow in a padded anorak; behind them Kneesestrecker could see a small, dark van.

‘Moment, bitte.’

The quartermaster switched off the light outside, heard the muttered ‘Fuck!’ outside as he turned back to the registry.

Dieter and Miller stood beside the steel gate, staring at him.

‘It’s just a couple of fellows to collect files.’

Dieter snorted. ‘Tell them
you’re busy, to come back in five minutes.’

Kneesestrecker spread his pudgy hands, turned back to the door.

‘Come back in five minutes,’ he wheezed.

‘Open the fucking door – now!’

Kneesestrecker faced Dieter and Miller again, spread his hands again:
what can I do?

‘Who is it?’ Miller was whispering. ‘Stasi?’

A shake of the quartermaster’s head, a wobbling of the blancmange gut.

‘Just somebody who wants a file,’ Kneesestrecker said.

Dieter looked at Miller, at Kneesestrecker.

‘A lot of private enterprise in the workers’ democracy,’ Dieter said. He wasn’t smiling. Neither was Miller.

Kneesestrecker was sweating.

‘I told you, open the fucking door now!’ Anger in the words piercing the door.

‘We’ll go into your office.’ Dieter signalled to Miller. ‘Take them, whoever they are, straight through to the registry. While they’re at the stacks, we’ll slip out. Just make sure you leave that door unlocked.’

Kneesestrecker nodded, watched as ‘Wolfgang’ and Miller tiptoed into his office. The office door was left ajar, the radio was turned up louder.
The good life was still safe, more dollars just waiting to drop into his welcoming palm
. Anyway, these fuckers don’t know each other, so what’s the problem?

‘Coming!’ Klaus Kneesestrecker was smiling as he drew the bolt back on the door.
Dollars equals Claudia
. What more could a man desire?

Herbert Dover wasn’t smiling as he pushed open the door.

‘What
the fuck are you playing at? Anybody could’ve seen us out there!’ Dover was uneasy: the black Volvo outside the rear of Block 4 seemed to be empty but why would anybody park there?

Kneesestrecker managed to position himself between Dover and the door to the office.

‘Sorry, sorry!’ He ushered Dover and the anoraked fellow –
doesn’t look German either
– towards the registry. ‘I was getting the gate open for you.’

Kneesestrecker wanted his money but was afraid to ask for it before ‘Wolfgang’ and the other fellow had left.

Dover was hurrying past Kneesestrecker towards the registry stacks when he stopped, his hand raised, his head cocked, listening to Kneesestrecker’s transistor radio.

The DJ had given way to a news reporter.

Time seemed to stand still in the basement of Block 5. Kneesestrecker and Redgrave were looking at each other. In the office Miller and Dieter were listening, holding their breath.

The radio voice changed to Party boss Günter Schabowski’s measured tones, as though reading from a prepared statement:

‘What the fuck?’ Dover was bounding towards the office, towards the radio.

Miller
was staring at the transistor:
the border was open?

Kneesestrecker was wondering if this announcement might interfere with his access to dollars and to Claudia.

Dieter was thinking that you never know.
And why was the office door being shoved open so roughly?

Those seconds of indecision cost him the advantage.

Dover was standing in the doorway, staring at Dieter and Miller. Faster, smoother, the Colt pistol was in his hands.

‘I’ll be damned!’ Elation in Dover’s voice. ‘This is my lucky day!’

The small office was crowded, Dieter and Miller looking across the desk at Dover.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Miller was staring past Dover’s shoulder.

‘I might ask the same of you.’ Redgrave was equally astonished by Miller’s presence.

Dover kept his gaze fixed on Dieter. ‘This your tame Brit in Berlin? The guy who’s giving it to Reder’s daughter?’

‘And you’re the bastard who tried to rape her,’ said Dieter.

‘Shut it.’ Dover didn’t bother to look at Miller: any danger lay with the guy from Moscow. ‘Changes at Checkpoint Charlie or anywhere else won’t make any difference to you, pal.’ He grinned. ‘I told you all those years ago in Chile, you should’ve finished me off when you had the chance.’

‘We can’t just—’

‘We can and we will.’ Dover cut off Redgrave’s objection. ‘But not here. We’ll take them outside the city, someplace quiet.’

‘For God’s sake, Miller is a British subject!’