There was little or no traffic on the square. Almost as bankrupt as the British, the French had little money to spend regenerating German business in the area, let alone for the restoration of a church that had been built in thanksgiving for the delivery of their ancient mortal enemy, Kaiser Wilhelm I, from an attempt made on his life in 1878.
I approached the building on the corner of Schulzendorfer Strasse and glanced down Chaussee Strasse. Here the border crossing point, on Liesen Strasse, was very close and probably just the other side of the brewery wall. I looked at the names on the brass bellpulls and figured that Erich Stahl was close enough to Eric Stellmacher for our clandestine operation now to proceed as planned.
BERLIN, 1954
W
e moved to a small and very crummy safe house on Dreyse Strasse, east of Moabit Hospital, in the British zone, which, Scheuer said, was as close to Stallmacher’s apartment as we dared to get for the moment without tipping our hand to the Russians or, for that matter, the French. The British were told only that we were keeping a suspected black marketeer under surveillance.
The plan was simple: that I, being a Berliner, would contact the owner of the building on Schulzendorfer Strasse and offer to rent one of several empty apartments using my wife’s maiden name. The owner, a retired lawyer from Wilmersdorf, showed me around the apartment—which he’d furnished himself—and it was much better on the inside than it looked from the outside. He explained that the building had been owned and administered by his wife, Martha, until she had been killed by a bomb the previous year while visiting her mother’s grave in Oranienburg.
“They said she never knew a thing,” said Herr Schurz. “A two-hundred-and-fifty-kilogram American aerial bomb had lain there for almost ten years without anyone noticing. A grave digger twenty meters away was digging, and he must have hit the thing with his pickax.”
“That’s too bad,” I said.
“They say Oranienburg is full of unexploded ordnance. The soil is soft there, you see, with a hard layer of gravel underneath. The bombs would penetrate the earth but not the gravel.” He shrugged and then shook his head. “Apparently, there were a lot of targets in Oranienburg.”
I nodded. “The Heinkel factory. And a pharmaceutical plant. Not to mention a suspected atomic bomb research plant.”
“Are you married, Herr Handlöser?”
“No, my wife also is dead. She got pneumonia. But she’d been ill for a while, so it wasn’t as unexpected as what happened to your wife.”
I went to the window and looked down onto the street.
“This is a big apartment for someone living by himself,” said Schurz.
“I’m planning to take in a couple of tenants to help me with the rent,” I said. “If that’s all right with you. Some gentlemen from an American Bible school.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” said Schurz. “That’s what the whole French sector needs now. More Americans. They’re the only ones with any money. Talking of which.”
I counted some banknotes into his eager hand. He gave me a set of keys, and then I returned to the safe house on Dreyse Strasse.
“As far as the landlord is concerned,” I said, “we can move in tomorrow.”
“You said nothing to him about Stahl or Stellmacher,” said Scheuer.
“I did exactly as you told me. I didn’t even ask about the neighbors. So what happens now?”
“We move in and keep the place under close surveillance,” said Scheuer. “Wait for Erich Mielke to visit his dad and then go upstairs to introduce ourselves.”
Frei laughed. “Hello, we’re your new neighbors. Can we interest you in defecting to the West? You and your old man.”
“What happened to the idea of making him into your spy?”
“Not enough leverage. Our political masters want to know what the East German leadership is thinking now, not what they’re thinking in a year’s time. So we grab him and take him back to the States to debrief him.”
“You’re forgetting Mielke’s wife, Gertrud, aren’t you? And doesn’t he have a son now? Frank? He won’t want to leave them, surely.”
“We’re not forgetting them at all,” said Scheuer. “But I rather think that Erich will. From everything we know about him, he’s not the sentimental sort. Besides, he can always apply for them to come to the West as well. And it’s not like there’s a wall that’s stopping them from coming.”
“And if he doesn’t want to defect?”
“Well, then that’s too bad.”
“You’ll kidnap him?”
“That’s not a word we use,” said Scheuer. “The U.S. Constitution permits public policy exceptions to the normal legal process of extradition. But I doubt any of this is going to matter. As soon as he sees the four of us, he’ll know the game is up and that he has no choice in the matter.”
“And when you do take him back? What then?”
Scheuer grinned. “I don’t even want to think about that until we’ve got him, Gunther. Mielke’s the great white whale for the CIA in Germany. We land him, we get enough oil to burn in our lamps to see what we’re doing in this country for years to come. The Stasi might never recover from a blow like this. It could even help us to win the Cold War.”
“Damn right,” said Hamer. “Mielke’s the whole fucking ball game. There’s very little that bastard doesn’t know about communist plans in Germany. Will they invade? Will they keep to their side of the fence? How far are they prepared to go to hold on to the yardage they’ve already won? And just how independent of Moscow is the current East German leadership?”
Frei clapped me on the shoulder amicably. “Gunther, old buddy,” he said. “You help us get this bastard, you’re set for life, do you hear? By the time Ike gets through thanking you, my German friend, you’ll feel more American than we do.”
Hamer frowned. “Don’t you think it’s time Gunther should maybe get some more intel from his lady friend? Does Mielke come on a weekend? Does he come at the beginning or the end of the month? We could be in that apartment for weeks waiting for this kraut to show up.”
But Scheuer was shaking his head. “No, it’s best we leave things as they are. Besides, I think Gunther’s already tested the limit of his friendship with this lady. If he asks her any more questions about Mielke, she’s just liable to start wondering who he’s more interested in. Him or her. And I wouldn’t want her to become jealous. Jealous women do unpredictable things.”
He went to the window of the safe house, drew back a gray-white length of net curtain, and looked out as an ambulance raced up Bendlerstrasse to the hospital, its bell ringing furiously.
“That reminds me,” said Scheuer. He turned to look at Frei. “Did you get hold of that ambulance?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not for us.” Scheuer glanced at me. “It’s for the package.”
“You mean Mielke.”
“That’s right. But from now on we never use that name. Not until he’s on a private wing at the U.S. Army hospital in Lichterfelde.”
“I suppose you’ll give him thiopental, too,” I said.
“Only if we have to.”
“Ain’t like it’s rationed,” said Frei.
Hamer laughed. “Not for us, anyway.”
“By the way,” I said. “Feel free to pay me any day soon.”
“You’ll get your lousy money,” said Hamer.
“I’ve heard that before.” I shot a sarcastic smile Hamer’s way and then looked at Scheuer. “Look, all I am asking is that I see a letter from the kind of Swiss bank that treats you like just another number. And all I want is what’s mine.”
“And where did that come from?” said Hamer.
“None of your goddamn business. But since you ask so politely, Hamer, I won it gambling. In Havana. You can pay me the twenty-five thousand as a bonus if and when you collect the package.”
“Gambling. Yeah, sure.”
“When I was arrested in Cuba, I had a receipt to prove that.”
“So did the SS when they robbed the Jews,” said Hamer.
“If you’re suggesting that’s how I came by my money, you’re wrong. The way you’re wrong about nearly everything, Hamer.”
“You’ll get your money,” said Scheuer. “Don’t worry about it. Everything is in hand.”
I nodded, not because I believed him but because I wanted him to believe that money was what motivated me now, when it wasn’t. Not anymore. I squeezed the black knight in my trouser pocket and determined to imitate its action on the chessboard. To move obliquely one square to the side before jumping two squares forward. In a closed position, what else could I do?
BERLIN, 1954
T
he following afternoon, with our bags and suitcases packed—mine was the smallest—we prepared to leave the pension in Dreyse Strasse and move into the apartment on Schulzendorfer Strasse. None of us were sorry to be out of there. The landlady owned several cats and these were not much inclined to piss out of doors; even with the windows open, the place smelled like an old people’s home. We filled a newish-looking VW transporter van with ourselves and our luggage and our equipment. Scheuer drove, with me sitting in the passenger seat and giving directions, while Hamer and Frei rolled around in the back with the bags, complaining loudly. Following at a distance was the ambulance containing what Scheuer called “security”—CIA muscle with guns and shortwave radios. According to Scheuer’s plan, the ambulance would park a short distance away from Schulzendorfer Strasse, and when the time came, these men were ready to help us grab Erich Mielke.
I told Scheuer to drive north onto Perleberger Strasse intending to go across the canal on Fennbrücke, but an old building on the corner of Quitzowstrasse had collapsed across the road and we were obliged by the local police and the fire brigade to go south down Heide Strasse.
“We’d better not cross the canal on Invalidenstrasse,” I told Scheuer. “For obvious reasons.”
Invalidenstrasse, on the east side of the canal, was the DDR, and a new-looking transporter filled with Americans—not to mention an ambulance filled with armed men—was certain to attract unwelcome attention from the Grepos.
“Go west on Invalidenstrasse until you’re on old Moabit and then right up Rathenower Strasse. We’ll have to cross the canal on the Föhrer Bridge. If it’s still there. It’s been a while since I was up this way. Every time I come to Berlin, it looks different from the last time I was here.”
Scheuer shouted at the two in the back. “That’s why Gunther has the seat,” he said. “So he can tell us where to go.”
“I know where I’d like to tell him to go,” grumbled Hamer.
Scheuer grinned at me. “He doesn’t like you,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I feel the same way about him.”
On Rathenower we drove past a large, grim, star-shaped building on our left.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Moabit Prison,” I said.
“And the other building?”
He meant the great, semiruined building just north of the prison, a huge fortress of an edifice that ran west along Turm Strasse for almost a hundred meters.
“That?” I smiled. “That is where this whole lousy story began. It’s the Central Criminal Court. Back in May 1931, there were police cars parked the length of the street. And cops everywhere, inside and outside the building. But mostly outside, because that was where most of the Nazi storm troopers were gathered. A couple of thousand of them. Maybe more. And newspapermen crowded around the big doors of the entrance.”
“An important trial was in progress, huh?”
“The Eden Dance Palace trial,” I said. “Actually, it was a routine sort of case. Four Nazis had tried to murder some communists in a dance hall. Back in 1931, that was almost an everyday occurrence. No, it was the witness for the prosecution that made the case so noteworthy and why there were so many cops and Nazis on the scene. The witness was Adolf Hitler, and the prosecution lawyer wanted to show that Hitler was the malign force behind this kind of Nazi-on-communist violence. Hitler was always publicly affirming his commitment to law and order, and the prosecution hoped to expose this for a lie. So Hitler was summoned to testify.”
“You were there?”
“Yes. But I was more interested in the four defendants and what they might have to say about another murder that I was investigating. But I saw him, yes. Who knew it would be the only occasion on which Hitler would have to answer for his crimes before a court of law? He arrived in court wearing a blue suit and for several minutes played the good, law-abiding citizen. But gradually, as the questioning continued, he began to contradict himself and then to lose his temper. The SA, he claimed, was forbidden to commit or to provoke any violence. Many of his answers even provoked laughter in the spectators’ gallery. And finally, after giving evidence for almost four hours, Hitler lost all composure and started to rant at the lawyer questioning him. Who happened to be a Jew.
“Now, under German law, the oath is given after testimony, not before. And when Hitler swore to the truth of his evidence—that he was pursuing legal, democratic methods to gain political power—there were very few who believed him. I know I didn’t. It was plain to anyone who was there that Hitler was absolutely complicit in SA violence, and I suppose you could say that this was the minute when I realized for sure that I could never be a Nazi and follow an obvious liar like Hitler.”
“So what did you mean when you said that this was where the story began?”
“Mielke’s story. Or rather, my Mielke story. If I hadn’t been to the Central Criminal Court that day, I might not have thought it worth going to Tegel Prison a couple of weeks later to question one of the four SA defendants. And if I hadn’t gone to Tegel that day, I might never have seen some SA men piling out of a bar in Charlottenburg and followed them. In which case, I’d never have seen Erich Mielke or saved his life. That’s what I mean.”
“Given everything that happened afterward,” said Hamer, “we’d all have been a lot better off if you’d just let him get killed.”
“But that would mean I’d never have had the pleasure of your acquaintance, Agent Hamer,” I said.
“Less of the ‘Agent,’ Gunther,” said Scheuer. “From now on, we’re all of us just gentlemen, okay?”
“Does that include Herr Hamer?”
“Keep riding me, Gunther, you arrogant German bastard,” said Hamer, “and see where it gets you. I almost hope Erich Mielke doesn’t come. Just to bring you down a size or two. Not to mention the pleasure of seeing you come up short on twenty-five thousand bucks.”
“He’ll come,” I said.
“How do you really know that?” said Hamer.
“Because he loves his father, of course. I wouldn’t expect you to understand something like that, Hamer. You’d have to know who your father is to love him.”
“Hamer,” said Scheuer. “I’m ordering you not to answer that. And Gunther? That’s enough.” He pointed at the road ahead. “Where now?”
“Left on Quitzowstrasse, and then right onto Putlitzstrasse.”
We drove west with the Ringbahn on our right, keeping pace with the little red and yellow train that clattered toward Putlitzstrasse Station, moving along the green verge and overgrown track like two snooker balls. The redbrick station with its tall arched window and tower was more medieval abbey than rail terminus.
Dusk was fast approaching, and under the weak, greenish gaze of the praying mantis streetlamps of the Föhrer Brücke, we drove into Wedding. With its textile works, breweries, and massive electronics factories, Wedding had been the industrial heart of Berlin and a communist stronghold. Back in 1930, forty-three percent of Wedding voters, many of them soon to be made unemployed by the Great Depression, had voted for the KPD. Once it had been one of the most overcrowded bezirks in Berlin; now, with long winter nights fast approaching and no sign of the economic revival that had come to the American sector, Wedding looked almost deserted, as if all had been taken away to the ships of the conquerors. In truth, Berlin had always gone to bed early, especially in winter, but never in the late afternoon.
Scheuer hammered the steering wheel with excitement as he turned us onto Trift Strasse. “I can’t believe we’re really gonna get this guy,” he said. “We’re gonna get Mielke.”
“Fuck, yeah,” said Frei, and whooped loudly.
The three of them sounded like a basketball team trying to rouse themselves for an important game.
“If only you knew, Gunther,” said Scheuer, “what this guy is capable of. He likes to torture people himself. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“Les Bauer,” continued Scheuer. “A party member since 1932, he was arrested in 1950 and Mielke beat him like a dog. The Russians sentenced Bauer to death, and the only reason he’s still alive is because Stalin is dead. And Kurt Muller, head of the KPD in Lower Saxony. The Stasi lured him to East Berlin for a party meeting and then accused him of being a Trotskyite. Mielke tortured him, too. Poor Muller has spent the last four years in solitary confinement in the Stasi’s own prison at Halle. The Red Ox, they call it. And you don’t want to know what Mielke’s done to the CIA agents they’ve caught. Mielke’s a real Gestapo type. They say he has a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky in his office. You know—the first Bolshevik secret police chief? Believe me, this guy Mielke makes your friend Heydrich look like an amateur. If we get Mielke, we can cripple the whole Stasi.”
I’d heard it—or something like it—before and I hardly cared. This was their war, not mine. Probably the Stasi thought the CIA “fascists” were just as bad.
As we neared the end of Trift Strasse, I told Scheuer to turn right onto Müller Strasse.
“That’s Wedding Platz just ahead,” I said.
Approaching the apartment building on the corner of Schulzendorfer Strasse, Hamer, kneeling behind us, said, “What a dump. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to swap a cottage in Schönwalde to live here.”
Scheuer, who had been to the apartment himself, said, “Really, it’s not so bad inside.”
“Well, I don’t get it.”
I shrugged. “That’s because you’re not a Berliner, Hamer. Erich Mielke’s father has lived in and around this area all his life. It’s in the bone. Like the allegiance to a tribe or a gang. For an old Berlin communist like Stellmacher, this is the center of German communism. Not police headquarters in East Berlin. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he has some old friends who live in these very streets. That’s a big thing for Berliners. Community. I don’t expect you get that much where you come from. You have to trust your neighbors in order to be neighborly.”
Scheuer stopped the van and turned in his seat. A few meters away, the ambulance containing our security came to a halt.
“All right, listen up,” said Scheuer. “This is a stakeout. And we could be here for a while until Erich junior shows up. No one mentions the Company. Once again, there’s to be no Company names and no Company language. And nobody uses profanity. From now on, we’re members of an American Bible school. And the first thing we take out of this van is a box of Bibles. Okay. Let’s go and get this bastard.”
But as we entered the building and trooped up the stone stairs, I almost hoped that Erich Mielke wouldn’t come at all and that everything might stay the same as before. My heart was beating loudly now. Was it just the effort of climbing two flights of stairs with a box of Bibles in my arms, or something else? In my imagination I already saw the scene that lay ahead of us and felt a twinge of regret. I told myself that if only I’d remained in Cuba I would never have landed in the hands of the CIA and all of this might have been avoided. That even now I might have been reading a book in my apartment on Malecón, or enjoying the pleasures that were to be had in Omara’s body at the Casa Marina. Was Mr. Greene still there, juggling breasts? Sometimes we just don’t know when we’re well off. And for the first time in a long time I wondered about poor Melba Marrero, the little
chica
rebel who’d shot the sailor on my boat. Was she in an American prison? For her sake, I hoped so. Or was she back in Havana and at the mercy of the corrupt local police, as she had feared? In which case, she might very likely be dead.
What was I doing here?
“Why did you have to suggest Bibles?” Hamer grunted loudly as he put the box he’d been carrying down on the landing outside the first-floor apartment’s door. He looked at the door with obvious displeasure. “You sure about this place, Gunther? I’ve seen better-looking slums than this place.”
“Actually,” I said, “there’s a very nice view of the gasworks from the sitting room window.”
But in my imagination I saw only the CIA surrounding Mielke as he arrived to visit his father, and I heard only their snarling pleasure as they bundled him into the apartment, snapped some handcuffs on his wrists, hauled a canvas bag over his head, and tripped him onto the floor. Maybe they would kick and abuse him the same way I had been kicked and abused until something in me had broken, the way they had wanted it broken. And I realized that I had at last become the thing that I abhorred, that I had crossed an invisible line of decency and honor, that I was about to become the fascist I’d always detested.
“Stop complaining,” said Scheuer, glancing anxiously up the stairs at the landing above, where he believed Erich Stellmacher’s apartment was located.
I found the set of keys given to me by the landlord and slid one into the strong Dom lock. The key turned and I pushed at the heavy gray door. A strong smell of floor polish greeted our nostrils as we entered our apartment. I waited in the largish hallway until the last of the Amis was inside and then closed the door. Then I locked it, carefully.
W
hat the fuck?” Agent Hamer’s voice contained a tremor.
Agent Scheuer turned back to the locked door and was felled by a blow from a Makarova pistol to the back of the head.
Agent Frei was already in handcuffs. His face was pale and worried-looking.
There were six of them waiting for us in the apartment. They wore cheap gray suits and dark shirts and ties. All of them were armed with pistols—Soviet automatics with cheap plastic handles, but no less deadly for that. Their faces were impassive, as if they, too, were made of cheap Russian plastic, manufactured in quantity by some factory stolen from Germany and then reassembled on an eastern shore of the Volga. Just as cold as that river were their gray-blue eyes, and for a moment I saw myself in them: policemen doing their duty, taking no pleasure in these arrests but handling them quickly and with the efficiency of well-trained professionals.
The three Americans might have said something, but their mouths were already stuffed with cloth and taped tight so that I only had their watery eyes to reproach me, although these were no less bitter for that.