Stealing the Future

The German Democratic Republic
showing the situation of Westberlin and West Silesia

Berlin
showing Westberlin and
Berlin, Capital of the GDR

Central Berlin

13:07

Sunshine and darkness march across my path, the car diving through bands of light and shade. My eyes are struggling to adjust to the glare flickering through the trees lining the road, but after a few more kilometres of peering through the dusty windscreen I make out a pair of petrol pumps and a prefab hut. The Trabant rumbles across the concrete slabs and the attendant comes out, wiping his hands on his overalls.

“What have you got?” hoping for anything.

“Don’t know what you call it, thicker than what we use for heating, I suppose,” he rubs his face with an oily rag, looking away, up the road, out of the sandy town. “It works, though. I cut it with grain schnapps—you’ll get home.”

I turn away, gesturing with a cigarette by way of an excuse, and wander over to the other side of the road. Lighting up, I watch him lift the bonnet, then fill the tank from a canister, still talking about the fuel. The radio in the car chatters to itself: …
protests continue throughout the Soviet Union after President Gorbachev was impeached yesterday. It’s unclear whether Gorbachev is still under house arrest, but reports indicate that he is negotiating with both the army and the KGB.
I could go back to the car, turn a knob, silence the newsreader. But turning my own thoughts off will be much harder. I’m tired,
dead tired
. Not the best turn of phrase. The image of the body on the rails hangs before me in the blue-grey haze of the cigarette. The head crushed, the feet crushed. Not crushed, no… I need a better description. I tap ash off my cigarette.

Smeared
.

There was nothing left to indicate the shape of the head or feet: bone, flesh, blood and brains smeared along the rails and around the heavy steel wheels. The smell of blood might have been there, merging with sand and hot metal.

Above the torn body a steel lattice work, thirty storeys high, half a kilometre long. So big it had pulled my attention towards it—I hadn’t known where to look: the body, or the mining machine. Rusty girders merged with the dusty air over the exposed coal seam. My mind, silted with sand and blood, refusing to take in the impossibility of what my eyes were seeing. Looking from one to another. Corpse. Machine. Corpse again. Both were just too far from everyday life experience: I had no reference points, no context to help me understand them.

I force my mind back to the present, the practicalities of this case. Breathing in smoke, breathing out questions. Who was the person this body used to be? The local cops were on the case—papers pulled from the victim’s pockets identified him as the politician Hans Maier. Fingerprints should confirm the identity. Maier had made a big thing about his persecution by the secret police, the Stasi, in the ’eighties: there would be files, his prints would be on some record, somewhere.

But why was a politician dead on the tracks? And why had the local West Silesian police called their Saxon colleagues in? Odd, considering the pressure that we were facing from Westgermany over the Silesian question.

Thinking things through, I can feel tension tightening my shoulders and neck. I feel lost. Out of my depth. And above all, bloody scared.

15:24

I was back in Berlin by early afternoon, and went straight to the office in Lichtenberg, parking on a patch of wasteland a couple of streets away.

As I entered the building, I could feel my concentration sharpening, the smells of the staircase—polished lino,
Optal
disinfectant and the warm earthiness of brown coal smoke. Up the stairs, past the discreet sign marked
RS2
, and through the door.

“Hi Bärbel, can you get everyone together—my office?”

The secretary nodded. “Not everyone’s around at the moment, but give me a minute or two.”

Into the toilets, sluicing my face in the rusty water over the cracked sink, then a glance in the mirror. I still looked tired, but at least I was a bit calmer. I’m at home here, I told the stranger in the mirror. He said it right back, so he must have been me.

What I’ve found out, what I fear, perhaps I can pass it on to the rest of the team—let them deal with it. The stranger in the mirror looked furtive, then guilty. That’s not the way we do it any more he seemed to be saying to me. And he was right. Still, once I’d told my colleagues it would become a shared responsibility.

“A problem shared…” I said to the mirror, and headed back to my office.

We usually met here, it was the biggest room on the floor, but it was dark, the net curtains dusty, hiding more of the light than they needed to. Using the moments before my colleagues arrived, I fished out a piece of paper, only written on one side, and a stub of pencil from the chaos that lived on and around my desk. I made some brief notes about what I’d seen.

I’d just finished the short list when Klaus came in, smoking one of his cigars. He said nothing, but went over to the corner, lowering himself on to the most out of the way chair, then putting his feet up on another. Erika followed, grimacing at the pall of smoke already hanging in the air, waving her hands in front of her face, but looking towards me.

“How’s it going? You don’t look so good–”

“I’ll tell you in a moment, let the others get here first.”

“There’s only the three of us here right now: Dieter’s away, and Laura is at the Ministry. But here comes Bärbel.”

The secretary sat down in the corner, a sheet of paper on her knee, pencil poised to take shorthand minutes.

“Klaus? Can you put that cigar out—I can’t think with that stink.”

Klaus shrugged, nipped the cigar and laid it gently in an ashtray. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I didn’t want to wait till tomorrow’s meeting. I want to know what you think of this one. What’s everyone doing at the moment?”

“You’d know if you hadn’t missed our meeting this morning. But I guess this has something to do with it?” Erika, somewhere between disapproving and sympathetic.

“OK, can we get started?”

Erika and Klaus were looking at me now, curious, concerned. Klaus slumped in his chair, Erika sat forward, her hands in her lap, eyes searching my face. I needed to learn to hide my impatience better.

“I’ve been on the road since just after midnight. I’ve been to West Silesia and back,” I said it as if I’d been all the way to Siberia, not West Silesia, just a few hours south of Berlin.

Erika’s eyes widened slightly, her hands moved a fraction on her lap.

“Are we even allowed into West Silesia at the moment?” asked Klaus, studying his fingertips, acting nonchalant. But I could see the tenseness around his mouth.

“Probably not. I got a call from the Ministry of the Interior, so I didn’t ask, just went.

“I don’t know how the Ministry got hold of it, I guess from the Saxon police, trying to pass the buck. It was near Weisswasser. A body: the politician Maier. The big fish in the WSB,” the
Westschlesische Bund
—the West Silesian Union, the party behind the move to split West Silesia from the rest of the GDR, our East German state; wanting to become a Westgerman enclave, like Westberlin, deep in our territory.

“What were the Saxons doing there?” asked Klaus, looking both sceptical and confused at the same time.

“Not sure. I’d like to know that too. I guess the local West Silesian cops just panicked, and called their ex-colleagues. They haven’t got the forensic set up, and all the records are still in Dresden, so they’d need to rely on the Saxons anyway.

“The body was found on the rails that one of those open cast mining machines run along.” I didn’t say it, but the body hadn’t been found until the whole thing had run over him. Dozens of wheels had dragged him along. The head and feet were crushed. “Identity papers were found on the body, and they’re checking his prints to confirm. We should find out more in the morning.”

Klaus looked tense, exhaling audibly. I felt exactly the same way. If the body is Maier’s, then we’d have a problem. The Silesians might accuse the GDR government of doing it, the Westgermans will use that as leverage—and the kind of leverage the Westgermans were after was the kind that would make us give up West Silesia.

“I still don’t get why they’re so interested in West Silesia.” The Westgermans were pumping money and technical support into the Region of West Silesia. They were clearly still annoyed that three years ago we had held a referendum and voted not to be taken over by them. The whole world had expected us to gratefully allow ourselves to be swallowed up, but instead, we decided to remain independent. To remain the German Democratic Republic. To continue the social experiment we’d started the autumn before.

“We may be about to find out what their interest is. The whole thing scares me—the Ministry asked me to go and check it out, which must mean that they suspect foreign interference. And we’d better hope it’s the Westgermans, because it isn’t going to be the Poles, and that just leaves the Russians.”

Erika was picking up on my fear: “Do we even have the experience to deal with this one?” She was watching me, a frown creasing her face. “But there’s something else bothering you too, isn’t there?”

“I don’t know, a gut feeling. But that body. It was awful,” I didn’t continue, but my thoughts ran on.

That place, barren, empty. Just dust and industrial equipment. Part of the moon, an immense rocket launcher collapsing across a sandy pit, ten kilometres long. Underneath all of that huge machinery, underneath the rusty steel and the wheels, a dead man: broken, fragile, pitiful. Maybe I was just tired, but it really got to me.

“You’re right, it could have waited till tomorrow morning,” I tailed off, feeling pathetic.

“No,” Klaus sat up. “You’re right to tell us about it. This could be a big one. Or just a coincidence. Why don’t you tell us how far you’ve got, then get back home and catch up on some sleep?”

“Not much to tell, I have some film of the crime scene.” I took the small camera out of my pocket, and tossed it on top of the mess on my desk. “He was probably killed elsewhere and the body laid out on the tracks.” Other than that, just questions: why Maier? Why now? Why were the Saxon cops there? “The senior officer present,
Unterleutnant der Volkspolizei
Schadowski made it all sound reasonable. First of all he didn’t want to talk to me, but when I showed him my RS pass he was all ‘Herr Comrade
Oberleutnant
’. I guess these silly titles they gave us can be useful.” The other two grinned, glad of a chance to break the tension: even in these times of change official pieces of paper and officer status bought influence.

“There’s so many more questions, but I can’t work it all out. Too tired. Sorry, it’s not much to show for a day’s trip.”

“That’s fine, thanks Martin. If you want you can go home now. I’ll take the film up to the police technical support offices for a quick turn-around. Klaus and I will have a think about what else we need to work out. Let’s look at the photos and sort everything else out at the meeting tomorrow.”

I looked at the other two, wishing I could follow their suggestion. I didn’t feel up to these all night missions any more, they belonged to another time, a younger time. Perhaps a more idealistic time.

“No, I’ve been asked to report directly to the Minister. I should have gone straight there, but I wanted to talk to you first.”

I got up and went to the door. Bärbel had already left the room, I could see her through the doorway, sitting at her desk. She’d put her notes in front of her and was reaching for the phone. Before I could leave, Klaus had stopped me.

“Before you go, one last question: who sent you down there?”

“You mean at the Ministry? It was the night duty officer.”

Klaus nodded, his eyes unfocussed, far away, deep in thought. Erika and I watched him for a moment before I turned again and left.

16:31

I left the Trabant where it was and walked down to the station to get the S‑Bahn train. I’d had enough of being cooped up in the small car. I also enjoyed getting the S‑Bahn: once you got close to the centre of town the train went along a viaduct, giving a chance to look down on Berlin from on high, peer through first floor windows as you trundled past. My favourite bit was going between the museums—classical buildings between Marx-Engels-Platz and Friedrichstrasse, the pockmarked rendering of the Bode Museum contrasted well with the glimpses of the exhibits that could be seen beyond the windows.

Once past the museum I got up and waited by the doors until we entered the station. Pulling on the handle, I heaved the heavy sliding door open and stepped off the still moving train. Down onto the platform, a slight skip to keep my balance. Moving with the crowd out into the open, I followed the street then crossed Unter den Linden. The Soviet Embassy stood huge before me, red flags hanging limply in the still air. Down the side of the Aeroflot offices, and round the back to where the Mauerstrasse started. The first building on the left was also imposing, but in a more antique style than the monumental Soviet mission behind me. From either side of the door a trio of flags hung: red and black flags flanking the new GDR flag, a black, red and gold German tricolour sporting the
Swords to Ploughshares
emblem of the opposition. All over the country variations of this flag were to be seen: the round crest often replaced by something else: black stars, red stars, sometimes even a black A in a circle, or a hole where the old communist hammer and compass had simply been cut out.

Next to the main door somebody had chalked on the wall.
Where there is authority there is no freedom
, I smiled, nodding at the sentiment, and went in. Showing my pass to the policeman standing guard on the door I went straight up the wide staircase to the first floor. The smells were the same as in my offices in Lichtenberg—
Sigella
,
Optal
and brown coal—but the lino here wasn’t worn into brown patches, and the stairs and banisters were polished stone. I told the secretary that I was here to see the Minister about the body in West Silesia, and without looking up from her typewriter she gestured at the row of chairs against the wall.