Brandenburg (20 page)

‘Quite so,’ said Zank.

‘But in the summary of all the reports I’ve received this evening, there is no analysis that underlines this lack of an overall ideology among the demonstrators.’ He banged his desk with a small clenched fist. ‘That is our opportunity, comrades: to drive a wedge between these groups, compel them to tear each other part. Zank, I want your proposals on a strategy.’

‘Certainly. I think it is an exceptional insight of yours.’

Biermeier risked an incredulous glance in Zank’s direction.

‘Have you got anything to add, Colonel Biermeier?’

‘This is not my area, Minister, but I think there’s every reason to believe that the demonstrators have been inspired, and in some cases supported, by capitalist interests in the West.’

‘Exactly,’ said the minister. ‘I want a breakdown of all the different factions: where they get their money from, their links to the West, the names and backgrounds of the hardcore. Colonel Biermeier, give everything you have on this to Zank here. This paper has top priority.’ He looked at a calendar on his desk. ‘Today is Monday 25 September. I want it on my desk by early morning Wednesday. We need to implement these political-operational tasks by next week, when we will show them what we are made of. I want a list of every active dissident in the country, and an analysis of where all these people are coming from.’

‘Of course, Minister,’ said Zank.

‘We have a fight on our hands. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. But that is the struggle of socialism and as good Chekists we will do everything that is necessary to maintain order and security. We must put the whole strength of this service to overcoming the political-moral weakness that threatens our socialist state. We
will
prevail. We
must
prevail, comrades.’ Spittle had burst from his mouth as he spoke, and each emphasis was accompanied by a chopping motion. Rosenharte was transfixed by the energy of the man’s hatred. Could this creature ever have been a babe in arms, a child running through the grass?

They heard a door open softly behind them. ‘Where have you been?’ the minister shouted.

Schwarzmeer greeted him formally but without apology, then moved to the other side of the desk so that he could whisper to the minister. Rosenharte caught the words ‘briefing for the general secretary . . . from hospital’. Zank looked at Rosenharte and silently shook his head to indicate that he should forget what he had just heard. Rosenharte could not forget. He had read nothing in the papers about Erich Honecker being ill. Honecker ill: that was news.

As he watched the two men, he wondered at their relationship. The minister was a vulgarian through and through, a cunning, crude, brutal man who saw no percentage in hiding his nature. Schwarzmeer, on the other hand, possessed a kind of sophistication, or at least the desire to appear other than he was. Yet despite the difference it was clear that they understood each other. As Schwarzmeer finished what he was saying, Mielke looked up into his deputy’s face, nodded vigorously and said ‘good’ several times.

Then he gestured to the conference table behind them, and told them all to sit down. He took the chair at the end, Schwarzmeer sat to his right, Zank to his left. When Rosenharte sat down next to Biermeier to face the windows, he was told to move two places so that the minister could see him. He placed both hands on the table, splayed his fingers on the cool, oak veneer, then brought them together.

Mielke looked at him. ‘So, Dr Rosenharte, we must decide whether we believe you, or whether to throw you in jail with your brother. That is simply the task before us tonight. You have failed our service once. We will not let that happen again.’

Rosenharte knew that he had to take the initiative. ‘Minister, I have said nothing that can be believed or disbelieved. As General Schwarzmeer will tell you, I never wanted anything to do with this operation because I didn’t want to be held responsible for things outside my control.’ He saw a flicker of worry pass through Biermeier’s eyes. ‘But the general has persuaded me that this is my duty and I am therefore happy to serve as a tool, as an implement of your policy. But, Minister, I cannot answer for the truth of what has been passed to us by Annalise Schering. I don’t know whether she is genuine in her desire to help the state, or is working against us.’

‘That’s a clever answer,’ said Mielke. ‘But it’s not a convincing one.’

‘I can’t give any other. I cannot vouch for her motives.’

‘You are to be sent to the West to make contact with her again and receive more material. But before you leave, I want to know more about you.’

‘But I have received no word from her.’

He dismissed this with a wave of the hand. ‘She has made contact, but I suspect you knew that would happen. You probably even knew the date.’

Rosenharte shook his head. ‘No, Minister. I knew nothing.’

‘My view, Rosenharte, is that you’re a gifted wastrel. I find no evidence of your commitment to the state in your files. You are a man who has allowed his weaknesses for alcohol, smoking and women to rule his life. You once had a chance to serve us and you screwed up on the job. As I understand it Schering herself suggested you be replaced.’

‘I try my—’

‘You have never shown a willingness to sacrifice your pleasure or convenience to the interests of those around you. You are the son of a SS general who has inherited a degenerate and selfish character. Isn’t that true? You failed the service because of this congenital weakness.’

Rosenharte said nothing.

Zank moved, but did not take his eyes from Mielke. ‘The minister is concerned by something which we in Main Department Two have brought to his attention,’ he said. ‘The first is the man who died in Trieste. He was a Pole named Grycko. We believe that he was working for Western intelligence and was about to make contact with you.’

Rosenharte let his hands move for the first time since they had sat down. He knew the Stasi hadn’t got the first idea who Grycko was, or what he wanted. ‘I can honestly say that I have no knowledge of this man. He said nothing that meant anything to me before he died. I had never seen him before in my life. The whole thing was a mystery to me.’

‘We believe he may have passed something to you,’ said Zank.

Rosenharte shook his head solemnly. ‘Colonel, you only have to ask yourself, what could he possibly want to pass to me? As someone said, I am an obscure art historian. What would be the purpose in contacting me? I have nothing. I know that; you know that. It doesn’t matter if you disapprove of the way I’ve led my life - believe me, I have my own regrets. And, well, it doesn’t even matter whether you trust me, because neither my character nor my actions are at issue here. It’s whether you believe that what you’re getting from Annalise Schering is true. That’s all that matters to you. Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t trust something that comes to you so easily. But that’s just my suspicious nature.’

To his surprise, the minister nodded. ‘We’ll go ahead with the plan tomorrow. See to it that I’m kept informed throughout.’ He shifted with a little wiggle in his chair. ‘If you’re playing a game with us, Rosenharte, you will pay for it with your life. Understand that.’

The room seemed to have got darker, the atmosphere closer. It occurred to Rosenharte that the smell, which seemed not to affect the others at all, came from a gradual seepage of the little man’s essence - a pungent concentrate of evil.

The others began to move, but Rosenharte remained seated, looking ahead of him at the curtains. Now. He had to say it now.

‘You want something?’ said the minister.

‘You expect me to retrieve more material from the woman. Is that right?’

‘Naturally,’ said Schwarzmeer brusquely. ‘You heard what the minister said.’

‘If you want me to go to the West, I have conditions.’ He turned his head to face the terrifying old man squarely. ‘I want Else and the two boys returned to their home immediately. And I want to see my brother.’

The minister looked at him as though he was mad. Then he waved his hand again and got up. ‘You deal with it, Schwarzmeer. This is an operational detail.’ With this, he moved from the conference table and walked to a door in the corner of the room and disappeared.

They took Rosenharte to another, less well-furnished room in the labyrinth of Normannenstrasse where they had to open windows because of the heat from the radiators.

The three officers sat opposite him with Schwarzmeer in the middle.

Rosenharte wasn’t going to wait for them to speak. ‘If you want this material, you must release Konrad and undertake to allow him to regain his health in peace. That is what I want in return.’

Schwarzmeer’s face resembled a clay mask in the half-light of the room. The bags under his eyes seemed to have filled. ‘You do not come here and make deals, Rosenharte.’

‘Well, that’s what I am doing. In Trieste I was authorized by Annalise to use her as a bargaining position. I told her that my brother was in your prison. I told her the state he was in when he came out last time.’

‘We can make you do what we want,’ said Schwarzmeer. ‘You
will
go and you
will
return with the intelligence. And that is all there is to it.’

‘No,’ said Rosenharte quietly. ‘I am prepared to suffer anything. Unless I have what I want, I will not go. And if I don’t go, you won’t have what you want. She will not help you without me.’

Schwarzmeer looked at Zank.

‘These difficulties you face now with demonstrations,’ Rosenharte continued, ‘are nothing compared to the perils represented by the technical advances in the West. You will crush the people on the street eventually, but then you still have the problem of the West’s technical superiority. They progress by leaps and bounds every month. I have an idea what Annalise’s material means to you, because she told me how important it was.’ He paused. ‘Besides, what’s the point of keeping Konrad and Else in jail? They’re harmless people. Konrad is a shadow of himself; Else is a simple, loving mother.’ He stopped for a beat or two. ‘This is about humanity; and it’s about showing good faith to a woman in the West who appears to be risking everything in the cause of technological parity.’

‘So what exactly do you want?’ asked Zank.

‘Before I leave, I want half an hour with Konrad in private. I will tell him that he is to be released, because that’s what you are going to do. When I’m in West Berlin, I’ll make a call to the neighbour of my brother at six in the evening - Else does not have a phone. I will bring the material back with me only if she answers and tells me that she and the two boys are home.’

Schwarzmeer moved to protest.

Rosenharte put up a hand. ‘Then I shall request a second collection from Annalise in two weeks,’ he continued. ‘By that time, Konrad must be with Else and receiving medical and dental care. During the period before and after my second visit to the West, my brother’s family will be left in peace, unmolested by surveillance or any form of harassment. They are to be treated with respect.’

Schwarzmeer glanced at Zank again. This interested Rosenharte because Schwarzmeer was the ranking officer and the HVA carried far more prestige than Main Department II in the ministry. Maybe Zank was more than he said. Maybe Zank was running things.

‘And if there are problems with the material,’ said Schwarzmeer, ‘then we revert to the status quo as of tonight.’

‘There won’t be.’ It had been almost as though someone else was speaking for the last twenty minutes. But now he heard his voice falter and he coughed to cover it. Zank’s anaemic features twitched with understanding.

Nothing more was said. Rosenharte was taken to another part of the building and placed in a holding cell, which was little more than the end of a passage fitted with bars. A crude iron bed was swung to the horizontal position by a lever outside the cell. All except one light was switched off. A man coughed down the corridor. He sat down on the bed and, to the embarrassment of his rational self, prayed to Ulrike’s God.

Harland poured a second sachet of sugar into his coffee and looked round at the surge of passengers filling the departure lounge bar at Tempelhof airport. It was the third trip he’d made that day from the SIS offices at the Olympic stadium to Tempelhof. This time he met Alan Griswald in the bar.

‘What time’s her flight?’ asked Griswald, looking down with admiration at his new mobile phone.

‘There’s a half-hour delay. She should land in twenty minutes - if she’s on it.’

‘How’s she doing?’ asked Griswald. He began to buff the display of the phone with his sleeve.

‘Well, I think. London’s impressed. The worry now is how long her story will last under Schwarzmeer’s scrutiny. They’re being very thorough indeed.’ Griswald gazed at the arrivals board as Harland told him how the Stasi’s inquiry had taken them to western Canada - Vancouver and Sylvan Lake, a town south of Edmonton, Alberta - where Annalise was supposed to have lived with her husband Raymond Knox before their divorce. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service were being more than helpful, shoring up parts of the hastily assembled background that looked likely to collapse, and improvising a set of deeds to a property north of Sylvan Lake, bank accounts, life insurance policies and share deals in her married name of Knox.

The Canadian end of the story appeared to be holding up for the moment, but in Brussels the Stasi’s operation to track and watch Nato’s new employee was so extensive that SIS had to call on help from the CIA and from the French, West German and Belgian intelligence services. Outside the Nato building, Harland’s worry was that the East Germans would short-circuit the process by kidnapping Jessie for interrogation behind the Iron Curtain. SIS had to ensure that this didn’t happen, but at the same time make certain their protection was discreet as hell. Inside Nato there was every possibility that East German agents, who had been planted by the Stasi, or turned while working there, would unearth discrepancies that gave the game away. Again, records were adjusted and people who had known Annalise Schering in her previous role at Nato were squared.