Stealing the Future (21 page)

The Trabant would be cruising around, looking for me, so I thought it might be better to avoid going directly to my flat. I got the bus to Lichtenberg station, before changing on to the underground for one stop, as far as Magdalenenstrasse. I walked into the old Stasi complex and entered the main building. I asked the porter for the GOTTFRIED, TRAKTOR and FELD files, and as he went away I walked into the reading room to wait for him there. After about five minutes he returned.

“I’m sorry, Comrade Captain, the FELD overview has been signed out to the Ministry, and I can’t find any files for TRAKTOR or GOTTFRIED.”

“Are there no library copies in the registry?” I asked, but the porter shook his head.

“If you could tell us which departments and district they were registered in then I could have the F 77 lists checked, but it might take a few weeks.”

“No need.”

I left the Stasi headquarters. FELD’s background files would presumably be the same as the ones I had in my pocket, Chris’s personal copy that had been found during the raid on the
Thaeri
squat. Far more interesting was the fact that the library copies of the GOTTFRIED/TRAKTOR overview files were missing. The library copies of files should never leave the archives—that way they couldn’t be misplaced or lost, and there would always be a copy of a file available. Had they been shredded in the last days of the Stasi, or removed more recently?

Maybe if I looked at the references to GOTTFRIED in my own Stasi files I could work out who it was? Copies of my Stasi files were at home, so that should be my next stop.

15:19

I walked straight back towards my flat, keeping half an eye open for anyone following me. The only vehicles I saw were on the Frankfurter Allee, and there were very few people on the streets. A couple of
babushkas
carrying shopping bags, a few kids on the way home from school, if I was still being followed then they were too good for me to spot.

I was halfway home when I heard the door to a tenement block open just as I went past. I glanced into the hallway, and there stood Laura, ushering me in. A quick look up and down the street: empty. I went in, the heavy door swinging shut behind me.

“Martin, they’re waiting for you—some plainclothes cops came to the office asking for you, they went away and now they’re sitting in a car outside the offices. They said you sexually assaulted a girl. During the raid on the squat,” Laura glared at me, accusing me, waiting for an answer.

“What-” I started, but was cut off by her.

“Well? Did you?”

“Shit! Shit-shit-shit!” I hit the wall with the palm of my hand. Laura took a step back, but her face stayed hard. Things were moving much faster than I’d expected. “Laura—now this is important. When they came to the office, where was everyone, how did they react?”

“Martin, what does that matter? We want you to come to a meeting, tell us what happened. And we want to know the name of the young woman so that we can talk to her too-”

“For fuck’s sake!” I was almost shouting, “this is a fucking set-up! Do you really think I’d assault someone? Do you? Come on, it’s classic Stasi tactics! Did those cops show any ID? Or did you just take their word for it?”

“You know what? I’m not interested in your excuses, come with me and we’ll talk it through—you need to tell us what happened during the raid.”

I could just shove Laura out of the way, keep moving, keep following the lead I’d found. But instead I tried to swallow my anger—I needed my colleagues, and I needed Laura to believe that I hadn’t done anything wrong—it mattered to me what my colleagues thought of me. Another deep breath, pushing down my sense of urgency. I tried to get through to Laura again.

“Look, Laura: Chris—Fremdiswalde—he’s dead. They killed him,” I looked into Laura’s shocked face and pushed on. “And as for that assault story, it’s classic Stasi attrition tactics. Text book. You know how it works! I’m being followed, they’ve been in my flat trying to mess with my head, all those phone calls—and now this. They’re trying to make me doubt my own sanity! They’re turning you against me, isolating me. We’ve seen all of this too many times!” I was getting agitated again, yet another deep breath, trying to calm down. “Those men that came—they’re involved in the Maier case, they’re probably not even cops. What did they look like, remember the old days when they used to follow us? They looked like that didn’t they? They had
that
look, didn’t they? Laura?”

Laura nodded hesitantly, her arms crossed in front of her. She took another step back, and her eyes flicked upwards, away from my face. She wasn’t happy. I’d taken control of the conversation, was putting her under pressure. And she was shocked at the news of Chris’s death.

“So, come with me, we’re going to meet somewhere away from the office, then you can explain it all, and we’ll work out what to do. Together.” She wasn’t really taking in the information I’d given her, she was still trying to steer me back to the accusation of assault.

“Laura, I can’t. They’re on the lookout for me, and they probably followed you here. There’s not much time, wehaven’t got much time. They know I’m on to them, they’ll be cleaning up, covering their traces. I think that’s why they killed Chris. Laura, I need your help: I can’t do this by myself. Tell me, what was everyone doing when those men came to the office?”

Laura bit her lip, thinking, wondering whether to give me the benefit of the doubt. I could see the thoughts as they went through her mind—the serious accusation competing with the picture she had of me, the trust she had in me. I could imagine her thinking about the Stasi, not wanting to admit that there may still be people doing this kind of thing.

“And this, whatever it is you’re doing right now, it’s really urgent?” she asked.

I nodded.

“And when you’ve sorted this out then you’ll answer our questions about the accusation?”

I swallowed the indignation that was welling up—how they could still play us off against one another! I nodded, agreeing to what she wanted.

“I was in the front office doing some photocopying—they talked to me first–”

“So where was Bärbel? Why didn’t they talk to her first?”

“Well, the photocopier is right by the front door, no, that’s it: Bärbel went to the toilet just as they came in.”

“What—did she get up when she saw them coming?”

“Really, Martin! Does it matt–”

“Yes! Come on, tell me!”

Laura hesitated, her eyes closed, concentrating.

“A moment after, yes. The door to the stairwell was open, she must have seen them coming up the stairs.”

“And the others?”

“They came out of their offices just as the cops went. I think they heard our voices, realised something was up.”

“How did they react?”

“Shocked, I think. Well, Erika sat down and Klaus looked grim.”

“And Bärbel, when she came back from the toilet?”

“I didn’t say anything to her, but she must have overheard what I said to the others. She just sat down at her desk and carried on typing.”

I paced up and down the tenement hallway, trying to process the information, fitting it in, slotting it this way and that like a jigsaw piece.

“Laura, get back to the office—have you got your personal Stasi files there? Really it’s mine I need, but they’re at home. So get your–”

“No they’re not—you photocopied them at the office, then left them in the copier. I put them on your desk and watched how over time you piled more and more paperwork on top of them.”

“You are a star! Great—get them for me. Get your own too, ask Erika and Klaus for theirs. Look through for someone called either GOTTFRIED or TRAKTOR. They’re both the same person, and we need to work out who it is. Then meet me on the Grosser Bunkerberg in the Friedrichshain park, at half past six. Bring the other two, but not Bärbel—don’t tell her anything. Make sure to watch out for any tails. And call my daughter—tell her to get in touch with Annette. I need to meet Annette on the spooky bridge at eight. Katrin will know what I mean. But make sure to tell her it’s important—that I need her help.”

She nodded: “And where are you going now?”

“I’m going to the police headquarters,” I told her.

16:30

The police
Präsidium
in Eastberlin is on the Keibelstrasse near Alexanderplatz, and going there was a bit of a gamble. I couldn’t be sure that the men who had come for me weren’t actually cops, but even if they were I suspected they wouldn’t have put out an alert for me just yet. And who would expect me to head straight into the lion’s den? Nevertheless I felt nervous as I crossed the Alexanderplatz after leaving the U-Bahn station. There were always police officers here, hanging around, keeping an eye on the tourists and the punks. They didn’t take any notice of me as I went to the payphone at the edge of the square. It was a Glasnost phone—no booth, just a payphone with a rain hood over it, anybody could overhear my conversation if they wanted to. But that was fine by me—I wasn’t planning on saying anything. I put a couple of 20 Pfennig coins in, watching as two red lights lit up on the payphone, then dialled the number for the KGB headquarters in Karlshorst.

“
Da
,” came the voice at the other end.

I didn’t answer, just kept an eye on my watch. 10 seconds, then hang up. Redial, hang up after 30 seconds. I’d done the same from a payphone near Ostkreuz before I got the S‑Bahn up to Alex. I’d laughed at Dmitri when he told me the procedure, just the other day; but he now knew that I needed to see him urgently. A crash meeting.

No problems getting into the police headquarters, show my pass at the gatehouse, cross the yard and into the equipment house. Down the steps to the basement and show my requisition papers to the cop in charge of handing out uniforms.

“Just the extra pips?” he asked, stamping the paperwork.

“The whole lot.”

He looked at me again: “Haven’t you already been issued with a uniform?”

“Plain clothes. But now I need a service uniform too—so far I’ve only had dress.”

He shrugged and turned to the shelves, “What size?” he called over his shoulder.

Twenty minutes later I had what I needed and I was out of there. He’d even given me a woven nylon bag to put it in, printed with a brown paisley pattern. I reached into the bag and checked the shoulder boards—they had the usual green piping of the
Volkspolizei
rather than the Bordeaux red of the RS. I grinned and checked the left sleeve of the jacket I’d been given—it had the
Volkspolizei
shield sewn on it.

“Very sloppy” I murmured.

If that cop had been paying attention he would have given me the red RS shoulder boards and removed the police shield from the jacket, but he hadn’t checked my paperwork properly—just assumed I was a cop too. That was fine, it suited me and my plans perfectly. For my purposes it would be much better to be seen as a cop than a member of the RS.

17:17

I got off the tram at the planetarium on the Prenzlauer Allee. I’d made sure to look around as I got on the tram, watching who else was getting on, then checking for the same faces when I got off. All clear, didn’t look like I was being followed. I walked over to the planetarium entrance and spent a few minutes admiring the notice board, then bent down to tie my shoelace. Plenty of people were walking up and down the Prenzlauer Allee, but I was the only person standing still. Walking around the building with a stick of chalk hidden in my hand I discreetly made a mark on the corner, just a short horizontal line at hand height. I carried on through the park, parallel to the railway tracks, heading towards the Thälmann memorial.

Between the planetarium and the memorial there’s a narrow bit, the path edged in by buildings, and at just that point it curves round to the right. I stood close to the bushes just after the bend—it was a good place to spot a tail, from here I couldn’t see the planetarium, which meant that anybody who was following me wouldn’t see me waiting until they reached the bend. The problem was that this simple trick wouldn’t work if I was being boxed: if I had a tail in front and to the sides of me as well as behind then they could simply pick me up again when I exited the park. After a few minutes of waiting I was satisfied that there was nobody behind me, and I left another chalk mark on the corner of the swimming baths.

Crossing through the shrubs I came up behind the huge Thälmann memorial, a bronze sculpture of Ernst Thälmann, the German Communists’ hero, fist raised in front of a red flag carved out of stone, flowing in the wind, and the whole lot set on a red granite plinth. It was large enough to hide a squad of cops behind, but there was nobody there. I walked around the whole monument, pretending to admire the stonework, but really looking over the Greifswalder Strasse to see if anyone was coming into the park. All clear, mark on the corner of the plinth, and off again.

A couple of turns around the small pond in the park, then Dmitri was standing there, in civilian clothes.

“Martin, how long do you have? Everything OK?”

“Things have started happening—I need some more information.”

“Ah! So, Martin, you have decided to trust me?”

“Perhaps. But it doesn’t look like I have many choices. Listen, Dmitri, last time we met you mentioned the Stasi task force, and you said you’d look to see if there were any links with Maier. Have you had a chance to do that? And were they, or even the KGB involved in the death of Maier?”

“Martin, Martin,” Dmitri shook his head, almost sadly. “An Englishman once said to me: It’s not the questions that are dangerous, it’s the answers—think twice before you ask anything, he said. And I think that was good advice. These OibE operatives are not amateurs, and nor are the KGB. No, it was someone else who killed the Maier politician. But, here, I have something for you.”

From under his coat he pulled out a file, buff coloured, with a red diagonal stripe, some Cyrillic letters and numbers on the front. I opened it, flicked through the papers. It was all in Russian.

“What does it say?”

“I don’t have time now, but it’s an internal KGB report on the task force that Maier was part of. Shall we just say someone from the KGB team sent by Moscow was persuaded to hand it over? Maier was being run by an OibE—I don’t know whether from here in Berlin or from Moscow, but the OibE is called GÄRTNER, he is leading the group. There is also a list of agents he or she has been running. I believe one of them panicked and killed Maier, then moved the body to the coal mine.”