Brandenburg (12 page)

Rosenharte raised his head and blinked the sleep from his eyes. His neck hurt dreadfully, but he turned to see Schwarzmeer sitting on a lone chair, dressed in a dapper light-grey suit with matching grey socks.

‘Did they stand over there by the window, looking across the schlosspark to the hills, and raise their glasses to 1945? Or did they gaze into each other’s souls and see that the end was near? It’s interesting to speculate what they were thinking then, no? Did they know it was all over, or did they still believe the Führer?’

‘Why have you brought me here?’ asked Rosenharte.

‘It’s part of the SVP. As you know, we like to do research: prepare ourselves by entering the minds of our subjects, absorb their experiences and learn to predict their reactions.’ Rosenharte recalled that SVP was Stasi shorthand for
Sachverhaltsprüfung
- a check on the facts of the case.

‘This place has nothing to do with my life.’

‘Oh but it does, Herr Doktor. It was also in this room that you last saw your mother. It’s all in your file, even those tiny experiences. Have a look at this.’

Schwarzmeer moved in his direction. With the woman’s help Rosenharte struggled to a sitting position.

‘That is all,’ said Schwarzmeer. ‘He’ll be all right.’ He paused to allow her to go, then placed a clear envelope in Rosenharte’s hand. ‘Take them out.’

Three very small, square photographs slipped into his lap. Each one showed a man in a black uniform sitting on a grand run of steps. Standing uncertainly in front of him were blond twins in the uniform of the Hitler Youth: khaki shirts, lederhosen, white socks, tiny swastika armbands.

‘That’s you and your brother,’ said Schwarzmeer triumphantly. ‘You see, he was already making you part of the Nazi state. Unbelievable that someone would dress a three-year-old in a fascist uniform.’

Rosenharte returned them to the envelope thinking that there were still plenty of young people dressed in uniform in the GDR.

‘These were found when the place was cleared out after the war and they came to us. Imagine the diligence and foresight which preserved these for the future. One of our people knew they would be useful one day.’

Rosenharte sighed. ‘I am glad they’ve made you happy.’

‘Let me tell you who furnished us with the rest of the information about this household.’

‘You don’t need to,’ said Rosenharte.

‘It was Marie Theresa Rosenharte, the woman you called mother. She was the one who brought you here that day - but your real mother was pining for her Manfred and paid little attention to you. Although she had only been in service here for six months, Frau Rosenharte had already formed the opinion that your mother was a cold and ruthless woman, without much feeling for anyone or anything apart from your father and the Nazi party.’

‘All the more reason for me to see them as irrelevant to my life.’ Rosenharte didn’t show he was shocked that they had talked to Marie Theresa. She had been a chatty woman of limitless good nature, who almost certainly thought she was helping her sons in their careers by talking to the Stasi. She would have been as open to them as she would be to her priest. That would have certainly remained her position until Konrad was arrested. After that she had freely likened the Stasi to the Nazis.

Rosenharte had got to his feet and was looking through the broken glass to a line of garden statuary - beasts from classical mythology, most of them now decapitated. The gardens were overgrown and the grass was tall, but the design was still visible from the raised saloon. He looked at the lake, choked with weed around its perimeter, and the bridge. Then he caught site of the grotto, actually just a niche in a high wall that had been fashioned to look like a ruin. He distinctly remembered the word ‘grotto’ from his childhood and the fun of playing at the foot of a fountain, where water trickled from the mouths of fantastic sea creatures over slippery green boulders. The wall had mostly crumbled into the garden and the fountain was gone.

‘So, it begins to return to you,’ said Schwarzmeer. ‘The last summer of the fascists.’

Rosenharte shook his head. ‘I remember nothing of this place.’

‘That’s a shame because it represents your debt to the state, the state that overlooked the monstrous crimes of your family and gave you the advantages of a socialist upbringing, the best education in the world.’

Rosenharte looked at him, unable to express anything but disbelief. ‘You criticize the Nazis. What about Bautzen, where you held and tortured my brother without even telling his family what he had been found guilty of?’

‘He was convicted of distributing fascist propaganda that endangered the peace.’

‘And what does that mean? How can making a private film and showing it to a few colleagues endanger the peace? How is that fascist propaganda? And for this, you sent him to a prison used by the Nazis. Whatever you say about the West, they don’t fill old Nazi jails with their own people.’

‘Those observations alone are enough to earn you a sentence in the political section of Bautzen.’

‘No,’ said Rosenharte, louder than he intended. ‘You will not threaten me any longer. I have done nothing but comply with your wishes. I will not be treated like an enemy of the state.’ He paused to collect himself, aware that he was straying over the line of what the Stasi would tolerate. He had to paint himself as a man with an independent mind, with his own views, but one whose basic loyalty could not be doubted. That way they would believe him.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I understand that you have to do your business. But Konrad has had enough. He is a good man and a good socialist. All he has ever been guilty of is bad judgement. Let him go.’

‘That’s not possible.’

Rosenharte waited a few moments then said, ‘I know you are interested in what Annalise has to offer. Otherwise you would not be wasting your time with me. She will only play if I am involved. Her position at Nato is so sensitive that your officers won’t get within a mile of her, and if they do try to contact her, she will simply report the approach. You work with me, or nobody. And if you work with me, you free Konrad.’

Schwarzmeer’s face hardened. ‘That’s not possible. Your brother is suspected of criminal activities.’

‘I don’t believe that. He’s a sick man, incapable of presenting the slightest threat to you. Let him return to his wife and children. Let him find the treatment he needs for his heart and his teeth.’

‘Nothing stopped him when he was free before.’

‘No doctor or dentist would see him.’

‘Well, he must wait his turn like everyone else. No one can receive special treatment.’

‘His teeth became rotten in Bautzen because of the beatings and the diet. When he got out, your people stopped him seeing a dentist. He couldn’t even get an appointment with a veterinary surgeon. Let him go home. He’s suffered enough.’ Rosenharte was aware that a pleading note had entered his voice.

Schwarzmeer moved from the bay window on the east side of the house, the place where his mother had sat so erect and untouchable that last time, and walked to the centre of the room.

‘Who will look after him? His wife is helping with inquiries.’

The drab, brutal efficiency of it appalled him. ‘Okay,’ he said at length, ‘you win. If you return Else and the children to their home and give me an assurance that you will not abuse them any further, I will cooperate. Then we will talk about Konrad.’

‘You do not make deals with us,’ snapped Schwarzmeer. ‘As I have demonstrated by bringing you here to Schloss Clausnitz, your family owes the people of East Germany for their tolerance. The very least you can do in return is to act in the interests of the security of the state.’

‘But I have,’ replied Rosenharte. ‘You promised to release Konrad if I went to Trieste. I did what you wanted. Now . . .’ He stopped to control the sense of helplessness that rose in him. ‘You cannot do this thing without me, and don’t think I haven’t got an idea of what she has to offer. The security of the state is in your hands, not mine.’

‘I warn you, this—’

‘No, I warn
you
, General,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘If you don’t free Else and the children, Annalise will never help you. And before you interrupt me again, there is one other condition of my cooperation. In order to facilitate the next stage of this operation I must be free and allowed to move without surveillance wherever I choose.’ He knew that to be impossible, but he could see that Schwarzmeer was about to concede something. And behind that, Rosenharte reasoned, was the certainty that the first secretary and the head of the Stasi had already been told of what Annalise Schering could bring from Nato. Schwarzmeer had to get it for them.

‘Now,’ he said, moving his aching limbs towards the door. ‘I’d like to be taken back to Dresden. I’ve lost several days already. I have work to do.’

Schwarzmeer blocked his way. ‘Trick me, Rosenharte, and I will see your Nazi brains crushed from your head in a vice.’

Rosenharte smiled at the grotesque image and knew that Schwarzmeer regretted saying something so crude. ‘I just want to live in peace, General, and see my brother restored to health. That’s all I want. And if I can help you in the process, then I will feel I’ve done my duty. May I now return to my home?’

‘How will she contact you?’

‘I don’t know. But I know that she’s already made arrangements. She will contact me near the end of the month.’

Schwarzmeer said nothing, but stepped out of the way. Rosenharte walked to the open French windows where he knew there was a flight of stone steps that splayed into the garden. There were three men waiting for him at the bottom.

‘We will be in touch,’ said Schwarzmeer.

All Rosenharte heard was the birdsong coming from the great deserted garden that had been his childhood playground.

He was returned to Dresden in an unmarked delivery van late that Friday. Over the weekend he bought some food, slept a great deal and made one visit to a bar nearby, but had no contact with anyone he knew. Then, as the working week began, he set about making an unvarying routine for himself. Whereas before he’d taken any number of routes into the centre of the city, stopping off at different places for coffee on the way, he now stuck to the same road, arriving at precisely 8.50 a.m. each day in the Zwinger, the huge baroque palace that housed among other things the Gemäldegalerie’s collection of Old Masters. He ate his lunch on the same bench, looking across to the restored Semper Opera House, and then returned to his apartment near the Technical University at about 8.30 p.m., after a drink or two in the same bar.

His purpose was to lull the Stasi surveillance teams as well as to get an idea of their strength. Very soon, he became used to the men and women around him touching their noses, changing folded newspapers from one hand to the other, sweeping off dark glasses and flourishing handkerchiefs. He saw two different men with what looked like the same metal camera case on consecutive mornings. This he knew contained a change of clothing - probably a hard hat, glasses, wig and false moustache, and boots with thick rubber soles to alter the individual’s height. He was aware of the watchers following him on both sides of the street, one almost parallel to him, another about thirty yards behind and a third about the same distance ahead of him. He understood how they changed positions and were replaced by other individuals in an endlessly adapting choreography. He noted the fixed observation posts on the way to work - the men loitering on street corners reading magazines, or looking at bus timetables. And he saw how the watchers slowed or changed direction when he unexpectedly stopped off to buy a packet of cigarettes; how the white or dark green Lada trailing him in the traffic would drift to the kerb.

Had they forgotten that he’d received precisely the same training as they? Surely his file mentioned he’d taken surveillance and counter-surveillance courses, studied the use of dead letter drops, target pattern analysis, surveillance detection points and the use of disguise both to outwit surveillance and enhance it. They must know that their secret craft was also his: a bit rusty, maybe, but getting better by the day.

At spy school he had not particularly excelled at the basics of his new trade, but this hadn’t been a deterrent to his eventual deployment abroad - the reason he’d agreed to join the Stasi in the first place. Misgivings about his height - he was several inches over the norm for a spy - his political dedication and what was termed his moral fibre were overcome by his skill at languages and his powers of reasoning. In truth, it hadn’t been difficult to shine in a class of dullards and thugs and he’d sailed through the selection board for the HVA.

Rosenharte had much time to think and to see his city anew. The life he led in Dresden now seemed utterly cheerless and he felt ashamed at the threadbare world around him. With irritation he noticed the broken stones on a footpath that ran along his street. They’d been that way as long as he could remember, like the missing tiles from the roof of his building and the street light that had been knocked over by a truck a year or two before and was left at an angle of forty-five degrees. It was surely not beyond the city authorities to tidy up the place, yet even with the GDR’s fortieth anniversary celebrations a few weeks away it hadn’t occurred to them to try to live up to the slogans that proclaimed on every public building the wonders of living in a socialist state.

There was almost a purpose to the drabness, he felt, as though it had been decided in principle that any improvements, any relief from the joylessness, would concede too much to the bourgeois values of the West. Compared to the carefree population of Trieste, his fellow citizens appeared scratchy, rude and disengaged from life. They were simply existing. After nine in the evening the streets were empty, the people too bored, broke or tired from work and the business of finding the essentials of life to do anything other than slump in front of the TV and watch life in the parallel universe of West Germany. What a very strange opiate that was for the popular masses of a communist state approaching its glorious anniversary!