Brandenburg (33 page)

The light had suddenly faded and as the crowd swelled beneath the tall street lights of the square, Rosenharte reflected that it would be here that the final struggle between the people and Mielke’s forces would take place.

A few minutes later he saw the first spout from a water cannon arc chaotically through the air and then train on the people about seventy yards from where he stood. He went forward and saw about half a dozen dog handlers and a line of police with batons and shields. They moved in a pre-planned manoeuvre: each time one end lagged, the other end waited for it to catch up. In front of them people were being skittled over by the jets from three water cannon. The ones that didn’t get up fast enough were dragged away behind the explosions of spray and beaten and kicked for good measure.

A roar of indignation arose from the crowd, followed by the chant of ‘We’re staying here!’ They surged forward as if bent on battle, but then a second chant arose: ‘No Violence! No Violence.’

Rosenharte swept the scene with his brother’s cinematic vision, panning through the spray of the water cannon to the people clustering under the lights and lingering over frames of individual joy and staunchness. At any other time he’d have been content to stand and watch but he had to find Ulrike.

He jogged over to a row of benches just in front of the university building and mounted one. He watched the police line steadily approach the crowd, then stop. His eye was drawn to two men moving from beneath one of the huge streetlights towards a group of women. In the middle was Ulrike, who was gesticulating enthusiastically. Right up until the moment when one of them snatched a sheaf of leaflets from her hand, and the other took her by the arm, she seemed unaware of their presence. The other women protested and one clung to her for a few seconds, but within a very short time they had dragged her from the group and were hurrying her towards a truck parked in the shadows beside the Opera House. Rosenharte jumped from the bench and walked smartly towards them, not knowing what he intended to do, but taking some heart that neither Biermeier nor Zank was anywhere to be seen. He shouted after them with a booming military command which made them stop and look round.

‘Leave that woman,’ he shouted. ‘Let her go immediately!’

‘Who says so?’ shouted one with lank, black hair.

‘I do!’ Rosenharte was within a few yards of them now. Ulrike showed no sign of recognition.

‘And who are you?’

‘Colonel Zank, Main Department Three. You are aware of my presence in the city?’

Both nodded. They were young toughs who thought they knew it all, but Rosenharte could see that at this moment they were not at all sure of themselves.

‘And have you any idea what I’m doing here?’

They shook their heads.

‘I am acting on the personal orders of the Minister for State Security. So is the major here,’ he said, gesturing to Ulrike.

Ulrike shook herself from their grip. ‘Colonel, I was told that everyone had been briefed. Weren’t the orders passed on?’

‘They were, Major, but evidently not to these louts.’ He looked at them. ‘Your names?’

Neither one said anything.

‘Show me your MfS IDs,’ he bellowed. ‘Now!’

One reached into his back pocket and gave it to him. His name was Pechmann, and he had been in the Stasi for three years. The man with the black hair said his was back at the regional headquarters in another jacket. He smiled sheepishly.

‘What is the first rule you’re taught during training?’ Rosenharte asked. ‘Never be without some means of identifying yourself to a fellow officer. The Main Department of Cadres and Training will need to hear of this lapse.’ He glanced at Ulrike. ‘Major, get back to your work immediately. I will deal with this pair.’ Ulrike moved away, but then returned to snatch the leaflets from the man’s hand, which Rosenharte thought was pressing her luck.

‘Why didn’t the major say who she was?’ asked one plaintively.

‘Operational security,’ said Rosenharte. ‘Look, there’s a lot going on tonight and I’m prepared to accept that the orders and photographs of my officers were not passed on to you. I’m willing to overlook this matter if you don’t screw up again. You saw the women she was with?’

Both nodded.

‘They’re all ours - brought in from Berlin for tonight’s operation.’

They nodded again and shuffled. Rosenharte turned and moved with a deliberate walk back to the edge of the crowd. Just as he reached it he heard one of the Stasi shout after him: the penny had evidently dropped, but it was too late. Ulrike and he melted from sight and made their way back to the dense crowds around the Nikolaikirche.

Three hours later they reached Ulrike’s home with some people she’d met at the demonstration. They were in a triumphant mood and Ulrike - flushed, with eyes burning - insisted on telling the story of her rescue several times. When another man arrived with news of arrests and hospitals overflowing with people who had been beaten by the police, the mood became subdued.

Rosenharte spoke little until the men drifted off in the early hours, leaving him facing Ulrike over some empty beer bottles and a couple of glasses of vermouth.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he said quietly.

She gave him an odd, startled look.

‘After all the warnings you gave me about security,’ he continued, ‘after all the trouble you’ve taken to move yourself into a position where you can safely pass information to the West, you mark yourself out at the church and get yourself arrested. If you’re going to behave like this, what the hell is the problem with me giving your name to the British?’

‘I would have been all right. They let people go after a bit.’

‘But Ulrike! You have a responsibility to keep out of their way. All the risks that you and I have taken over the last few weeks will mean nothing if you end up in Hohenschönhausen. I need you to keep a very low profile until I get Konrad out. That’s the priority. Okay?’

‘You’re cross!’

He shook his head. ‘Look, I understand how important this is to you, but let’s admit that the revolution didn’t come this evening. Nothing happened. Your cause was not advanced in the slightest way. Do you remember the talk you gave me in the park, the one about security? Everything you said then was right. We’re dependent on each other, and for the next few weeks I want you to remember that.’

She got up and paced around the sitting room, lit up with passion. She spun round and placed both hands on the table. He noticed the veins stand out on the back of her hands and the curious consumptive beauty of her face. ‘You saw how many people were out on the streets tonight: twenty or thirty thousand. That’s incredible. Nothing like it has been seen for years in the GDR. You can’t ask me to leave Leipzig now. We won tonight and next week . . .’

‘Next week they will crush you,’ he said, turning from her. ‘They won’t let that happen again, because there is no element of surprise. They know what time your service ends, where people assemble and who the main agitators are. The GDR’s anniversary celebrations are over next week. After that the world’s back will be turned. The only reason you weren’t clubbed down tonight is because Gorbachev is arriving at the end of the week. Next week they won’t be so restrained.’

She smiled at him and tilted her head to one side. ‘You’re really angry, aren’t you?’

‘No, just very disappointed. I can’t believe that you behaved so stupidly. Our lives, my brother’s and his family’s, depend on us keeping our heads over the next few weeks. If it had been Biermeier or Zank, you would be under interrogation by now.’

‘You mentioned them before. Zank is . . .’

‘Counter-intelligence. If Zank and Biermeier are here, we can guarantee they haven’t come just to watch you people say your damned prayers. They’re here for a reason and I think they’re on to us.’

She shook her head. ‘If they had had the slightest suspicion about me I’d have been arrested by now.’

Rosenharte looked at her and opened his hands in a gesture of frustration. ‘I’ll leave early in the morning. I will return once more to Leipzig when I’ll hand over my role to professional agents. Is that clear?’

‘That means you will give my name to them?’

‘Not necessarily. You can meet them without telling them your name.’ He got up. ‘I need some sleep if I’m to catch the early train.’

‘Why take the train when you can use my car?’

‘I may be away for several days.’

‘I don’t use it much. It’s an old Wartburg that belonged to my father. He gave it to me some time before he died. It’s running okay.’

This was a peace offering of sorts and he accepted it gracefully. He would have to be careful not to break any traffic laws and to avoid the routine checks by the police. That was a risk but a car would make life a lot easier over the next few days.

They went to bed after that, bidding each other good night with abrupt formality. He lay awake thinking about Biermeier and Zank, although it was the former’s presence in Leipzig that disturbed him most. Zank might be there on a reasonable pretext - perhaps on a special assignment that followed the meeting in Mielke’s office a week ago - but Biermeier and HVA had no business in the city unless it was directly related to him.

He was still awake when she came to his bed and stood looking down at him in the dark.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I want to talk.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘You have to have faith in me. It will work.’

‘It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I don’t understand you. Every time I see you, you seem to be a different person. I find you hard to assess.’

‘Is that what you do with your women - assess them?’

‘You’re not one of my women, you’re a source. I’m trying to assess you as that.’

‘You don’t find me attractive?’

‘Of course I do, but in the park it was you who said I was only interested in going to bed with you and making you fall in love with me. As it happens, neither statement was right.’ At that moment this was true. Over the evening he had consciously tried to extinguish his attraction to her.

She mumbled something he didn’t hear. ‘You have to speak up,’ he said.

‘I have more information for you. I forgot to tell you. The Arab will be here for two to three weeks from next Monday. He will stay at the villa and I will see him there. It’s all settled. I heard late this afternoon.’

‘The information came from your collaborator?’

‘From a coded telex to Professor Lomieko.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ She knelt down and cupped his head in her hands. ‘Trust me and this
will
work out.’ She kissed his eyes and his lips then felt his face with her fingertips. ‘It’s going to be all right. Believe me.’ Then she jumped up and slipped away.

Rosenharte shrugged and shook his head in the dark.

A dark Skoda saloon kept pace with him as he flogged the Wartburg southwards to Karl-Marx-Stadt. After a while he responded by abruptly accelerating to 100 km per hour and then slowing right down, just as he’d been taught in the MfS training school. The car read his movements well, keeping in touch with him but never getting close enough for Rosenharte to make out the number plate or see the driver’s face. At length, without warning, he veered off at the turning to Karl-Marx-Stadt and drove into the city, where he went through an elaborate counter-surveillance measure, doubling back on himself, slipping into parking spaces without using his indicator and slamming on the brakes at the last moment. He wished his car were fitted with a device used by the Stasi in West Berlin, which allowed the brake lights to be switched on manually. It was particularly effective at night, and could throw a surveillance vehicle very easily when the target car appeared to slow down at traffic lights, only to speed away.

He toured through the sad, filthy city for about an hour, stopped and scanned the traffic as he ate lunch, drove a short distance, then bought a cup of coffee and filled the petrol tank on the western outskirts before heading out. He wondered if he had been worrying unnecessarily about the Skoda, but nevertheless going along the small country road towards a town called Zschopau, he repeatedly dived into concealed tracks to see whether anyone was making efforts to keep up with him. Twice he took diversions into villages on the way.

By four o’clock he was satisfied that no other vehicle had replaced the car in his mirror, and made directly for the hamlet beyond Marienberg, where Konrad had sought refuge to bring up his family. He reached Steinhübel, a village of a dozen bleak houses, and began the climb through the pine plantations to Holznau. The first house was Frau Haberl’s place on the right, and after passing two smaller houses on the left he let the Wartburg freewheel down a narrow track that glanced off into the pine trees. Within a few seconds he came to a wide, open meadow, which had escaped cultivation during the chaotic management of the district’s farms that followed collectivization in the fifties. It was a beautiful place, in summer full of wild flowers and insects. At the far end behind an apple orchard rose a large brick and timber barn with a sharply pitched black roof. To its southern flank a traditional black and white farm house had been added which Konrad had found for himself and Else after agreeing to pay for new windows and doing the repairs to the roof himself.

As Rosenharte bumped down the track, he caught sight of Florian and Christoph with a football, and then, to his surprise, Idris wading carefully in the uncut hay crop, carrying something in the skirts of his robe. The boys stopped playing and looked anxiously at the unfamiliar mustard-coloured car, until Rosenharte shouted and waved from the wheel.

He pulled up behind the barn so the car would not be visible across the fields from Frau Haberl’s house, and ran round the side to scoop the boys up in his arms. Their squeals of excitement brought Else to the door. Rosenharte saw her expression light up, her hands reach to her mouth, then her shoulders sag. She had thought he was Konrad. He set the boys down, absorbed her bruised, fearful expression and went to take her in his arms.