Brandenburg (60 page)

He didn’t wait to hear Zank’s retort, but turned and ran to the Wall and, using one foot to power himself upwards, he stretched and found the hands reaching down to grab hold of his arms. There was a moment when it seemed as if he would slip back into the death zone, but two of Benedict’s friends gave him a mighty shove from below and he clambered up and rolled over the edge just as he had done on the sea wall in Trieste all those weeks ago. Then he was on top, dusting himself off and looking down at the sea of happy faces on the other side.

Ulrike’s eyes were filling with tears. ‘Is this true?’ she asked. ‘There’s never been a moment in history like this. Are we dreaming?’

He shook his head very slowly and bent to kiss her.

An hour later they approached Checkpoint Charlie from the western side. The only part of the crossing that remained visible was the little cabin set up in the middle of Friedrichstrasse by the Americans. Across the white line, painted by a young East German officer named Hagen Koch twenty-eight years before, was a vast crowd of young people who had filled all but one of the three lanes leading to the passport and customs control of the GDR. They had swarmed over the first pillboxes in the East and were now standing on or hanging from anything to get a better view of the people coming through from the parallel universe on the other side.

The East Berliners making the trip in the middle of the night were no longer just the pushy, the foolhardy or the young. Entire families were coming over, and they were bringing their babies in pushchairs, their dogs and their elderly relatives. Strangers hugged each other, lovers kissed as they crossed the line and some people simply looked up and cried to the heavens in disbelief, tears of joy welling in their eyes. Few of them took the time to consider the accumulation of accident, daring and political will that had brought the crowds from both sides of the Wall to overrun all seven crossing points by midnight on 9 November. And that, perhaps, made the evening seem all the more miraculous.

Watching these scenes with Kurt and Ulrike, Rosenharte found it very hard to absorb what he was seeing. Shaking his head he followed Kurt and Ulrike into the Cafe Adler. Robert Harland was sitting at the corner table by the window on Zimmerstrasse. Opposite him were the Bird and Jamie Jay. All three wore the standard expressions of the night’s incredulity.

They ordered champagne and brandy chasers on the British government and made toasts to Berlin, freedom and, in the case of the three Germans at the table, to a united Germany. Harland told them the story of Schabowski’s gaffe, and how it had taken the journalists a few minutes to realize what he had said.

‘Was it planned?’ asked Kurt, through Ulrike. ‘Surely, he knew what he was doing - an experienced Party official like that?’

‘Who knows, who knows,’ said Harland, ‘but here we are in a new world. The things that mattered on November the ninth don’t even figure on November tenth.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’re twenty minutes into a new day and a new era. What’s happened tonight is irrevocable. Without the Wall, there’s no East Germany, at least not one that will function as a viable state. The game is up.’

For a further half-hour they sat huddled round the table, but then Ulrike’s cough and Kurt’s obvious discomfort made Harland insist that they go and get the medical attention that had been arranged. He rose to his feet, but not to usher them from Cafe Adler. The Bird and Jamie Jay stood also. ‘I would like to offer you three a toast - to your indomitability, your courage and endurance. What you did is very important and will remain so, even in this new era of ours.’

Rosenharte looked at his two companions. ‘I know I speak for us all when I thank you each for your role in getting us out. Without your help, Mr Avocet, my friends here would still be in Hohenschönhausen. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for this deliverance.’ The Bird’s utterly English features began to redden from the neck up. ‘Before this extraordinary night is over, I want us to toast Ulrike, one of the true founders of the revolution. She is one of those who have made tonight possible.’ He raised his glass to her. The others followed suit.

‘You two had better be off before we’re all in tears,’ said Harland briskly. ‘I want to have a word with Rudi in private, if that’s all right with him.’

Rosenharte nodded.

When they were alone, they ordered more brandy and smoked a cigarette each. Harland delved into a plastic bag, withdrew a folder and placed it on the table.

‘This is your Stasi file,’ he said quietly. ‘I acquired it this evening from the Russian. I thought I was being given it as a means of checking some information that they’ve supplied to us, but he made it plain that his motive in handing it over was principally his concern and liking for you.’ He pushed the file across the table but left his hand on top of it. ‘Before you read it, I must warn you that there are a number of shocks in here - things that you may not want to know about. Things that will change your life.’

Rosenharte looked into Harland’s grey eyes and placed a hand on the file.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Harland.

He nodded. ‘It’s my life and I think perhaps I should know about it before my fiftieth birthday.’

Harland coughed. ‘That’s what I mean. This file will tell you that you already
are
fifty, Rudi. Do you understand me?’

He took the folder and opened it. There were thirty loose leaves held by two metal clips. His eyes skimmed the first page. There could be no mistaking the file’s authenticity. The spacing and indents, the coding, dating and filing information all written at the top right corner of the page were exactly how he had been taught to lay out a report in spy school.

‘Naturally, I haven’t read all of it yet,’ said Harland. ‘But I think it’s perhaps best to start at the back. The last sheet will set everything in context.’

Rosenharte glanced at him then turned to the back.

It was a letter from the Dresden Bezirksverwaltung für Staatssicherheit - the Stasi headquarters in Dresden - to Normannenstrasse HQ. It was dated May 1953.

We have made extensive inquiries into the two young men known as Rudolf and Konrad Rosenharte and have found that there are good reasons for taking no further action on the request from the Polish authorities for investigation and repatriation were these inquiries to be fruitful. Even taking into consideration their likely actual age, both young men have attained an exceptionally high academic standard, which is matched by their physical prowess. There is no telling what they may achieve for the state in future years. Since the war they have been brought up in a good socialist home. Their adoptive parents Marie Theresa and Hermann Rosenharte have no history of sympathy with the fascists. They are robust working-class stock, ideologically staunch and active in the Party’s cause. Frau Rosenharte’s residual Catholic belief does not seem to have unduly affected the boys. On the question of their time in the household of the fascist general and his wife - Isobel and Manfred von Huth - we believe it is safe to conclude that there has been no negative influence of any sort in the formation of the personalities of the twins or of their political consciences.

We recommend a course of action which suggests to the Polish authorities

•
that the two young babies were killed in 1945. Isobel von Huth died in the Dresden bombings and it would be quite reasonable to expect her to have taken the children on the visit to Dresden in February 1945.

•
or that we have been unable to trace the children on the information supplied.

A note was added in ink that the latter course had been followed. This was initialled FH, but the original memorandum was unsigned.

Rosenharte turned over the sheet and found a copy of a letter that had been sent at a later date. Clipped to this on the reverse side were two small brown snaps of identical babies dated ‘November 1938’.

‘I would say you were about six months by then, wouldn’t you?’ said Harland carefully.

Rosenharte hardly knew how to react. Then he blurted, ‘I knew it. Both of us felt this from the earliest age. We knew we couldn’t have been born to that woman. And we always thought that Marie Theresa suspected something but had never told us.’

He took out the picture from his hip pocket and flattened it on the table. ‘This is Isobel von Huth. Ulrike noticed that the photograph was taken in September 1939, when of course she should have been six months pregnant. But she’s not. I thought it must have been a mistake in the dating. The man Grycko - this is what he was going to tell me in Trieste, wasn’t it? He must have been some kind of relation, or closely associated with our family there.’

‘Yes, I think that’s plain,’ said Harland. ‘Maybe later you should talk to the Russian. He knows more about this than I do. After all, I’ve only had the file for the last five hours.’

Rosenharte returned to the papers and began to read the letter that had been sent by a Monsieur Michel Modroux from Red Cross headquarters in Geneva on 3 December 1956 to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

We again communicate with you on the matter of two twin boys taken from the Kusimiak family home near Bochia, Poland. Ryszard and Konstantyn Kusimiak were kidnapped in November 1939 by German officers working for the Germanization programme, known as Lebensborn. They were the only children of Dr Michal Kusimiak and his wife Urszula, both academics at the university of Krakow. After the execution of their father and the imprisonment of their mother, it has been ascertained that the boys were taken by the Brown Sisters to Lodz concentration camp where they were inspected by Nazi authorities and assessed as racially valuable. Soon afterwards they were moved to a Lebensborn home and given new names. It is likely that these included the first one or two letters of their original first names - that is to say K or KO, R and RI (there being no German name that starts with RY). Documents in the Ministry of Interior in Warsaw suggest that the Kusimiak boys were not, as was usually the case, split up. Instead they were found a home with a senior ranking Nazi, almost certainly a member of Heinrich Himmler’s SS. There is no record of their ultimate destination. It is hoped by the Red Cross, therefore, after several approaches from the Polish government and two formal requests from this organization, that the time and energy will now be found to research this case in the archives that are known to exist in the GDR. Extensive inquiries have been carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany but there is no evidence of the Kusimiak boys living in the West. It is the conclusion of the Polish authorities, as they have already informed you, that they were settled in what is now the GDR and that there is every chance that they survived the war. We would urge you to expedite this matter with all means at your disposal.

Attached to this was a carbon copy of the reply from the Foreign Ministry, which was dated 8 May 1957 - five months later. It ran:

At your request, a third investigation was undertaken and we again report that no match was found between the description provided and the records preserved by the government of the GDR for precisely this kind of humane research. As the Red Cross must appreciate more than any other organization, the criminal fascists stole many children in Eastern Europe and when these young persons resisted Nazification they were often liquidated. We regret that we cannot help and must now insist that this matter is closed.

Rosenharte put down the file. ‘You know what Lebensborn means in English?’

‘Spring of life,’ replied Harland.

‘They knew the whole time! Those bastards in the Stasi knew the whole time that we had been taken from Poland. And if the Polish were making inquiries, it means that a part of the family survived the war. We have relatives. They denied us contact with our own flesh and blood.’

‘Do you think your adoptive mother . . . did Frau Rosenharte know?’

Rosenharte shook his head. ‘She may have had her suspicions, but she only went to work at Schloss Clausnitz very late in the war so she wouldn’t necessarily have known. She was a good woman and a very good mother. It wasn’t in her nature to deceive.’ He stopped. He was quite simply stunned by the documents. ‘I can’t get over the fact that we weren’t told. They used our Nazi parentage to make us feel that we each had something to be ashamed of and that we owed the state, when the very opposite was true.’

‘They kept you for your talents,’ said Harland, ‘and it explains why you were allowed to join the Stasi in the first place. No one with an SS general as a father would have been allowed to join the HVA. ’

‘What else is in here?’

‘The documents are divided into two sections. The first are copies of the records of your time as a Stasi officer - reports on your progress, your training at the Main Directorate and your success or otherwise as an illegal abroad. The second section is devoted to your life in Dresden after you were allowed to leave the service. It’s clear they did everything they could to keep tabs on you because of your knowledge of the inner workings of the MfS. There were any number of IMs working on your case: colleagues, friends. It would seem that they turned most of your girlfriends and your ex-wife. Of course the majority is tittle-tattle.’ He stopped and looked across at Rosenharte. ‘But there’s one significant thing that you should know, and this will be a shock to you.’

‘What? Tell me now.’

Harland regarded him steadily but said nothing. Outside, the noise of the crowd rose with each new surge of East Germans coming over; inside the Adler there was a celebration going on like no other. But for Rosenharte the events of the night - indeed of the last two months - had suddenly receded to a great distance. He may have been sitting beneath the Adler’s glass ceiling, in which all the joy of the world was reflected, but he was locked in his private capsule of time and space with the British spy. Before him was a shabby, well-thumbed folder which contained more information about his life than he had ever possessed himself. The Stasi had owned the objective truth of his existence, and of Konrad’s. They had hoarded that truth and used it to mould and manipulate their lives. It occurred to him that reading the file was an act of repossession for both him and Konrad.