Stealing the Future (23 page)

“What are we going to do about it? Do we have to act now?” Erika asked.

“I think so, the cops were at the office and Martin’s house, and we were alarmed enough by that to send Laura out to warn him,” Klaus answered.

“Dmitri seems to think that this is the time to act as well,” I added.

“Can we trust him?”

That was the big question. If the report Dmitri gave me was true, then Moscow had been running both the Minister and BAUM, who had been manipulating the West Silesian situation. But if Moscow were capable of doing that, then they were certainly capable of scaring me into acting—a few people watching me, a couple of meetings with a KGB officer who would feed me disinformation. Anything was possible.

“I honestly don’t know,” I concluded. “But it only makes sense if what Dmitri says is true. If he’s not on our side, well, what would the Russians gain? They don’t care about the future of our country, and they’ve got their hands full with the coup attempt in Moscow right now. Add to that the fact that the Minister has definitely been trying to tie me up without ever actually ordering me to back off. It all fits in—we need to somehow get to the bottom of this.” I could see Laura was about to raise an objection, but carried on talking: “If we had more time we could do some more research, go through the Round Table, but I think if we leave it much longer then I’ll be arrested by the police or grabbed by whatever ex-Stasi group is behind this. Either way we’ll be tied up and unable to do anything. I think we need to act now and then go to the Round Table afterwards.”

Erika and Klaus were nodding, Laura was still thinking it through.

“Erika?” I looked at her, waiting for her answer.

“Yes, let’s do it.”

I turned to Klaus, he nodded slowly. That left Laura.

“You really think this is the only way?” she asked eventually.

“Yes. I’m not happy about it either, but what else can we do? You got any ideas?”

Laura shook her head. “OK. Have you got a plan already?”

“I most certainly do,” I tapped the bag with the police uniform in it. “I think you’re going to like this.”

20:02

It turned out that my colleagues didn’t like my plan, but they couldn’t come up with anything better, so they agreed to go along with it. We made our arrangements, then parted. Now I was waiting for Annette on the bridge that ran above the central slaughter yards and the S‑Bahn tracks. It’s a long bridge, more of a tunnel on stilts, full of shadows and darkness. Even during the day not much light makes its way through the dirty, frosted glass; now at night it was clear why my daughter called this the spooky bridge when she was small.

The echoing clang of footsteps told me that someone was coming up the steps from the S‑Bahn station. I was stood further back along the bridge, so I couldn’t see who it was, but it sounded like more than one pair of feet. When the figures arrived at the top I saw Annette, but she’d brought someone with her—my daughter.

“Katrin, what are you doing here?”

“Hi Papa. Your colleague said you needed help, so I thought I’d tag along with Annette.”

“What’s going on, Martin, what’s so important? Katrin said it was really important that I come.”

I was a bit put out by Katrin’s unexpected presence, it had knocked me off balance. Before I could think of anything to say the sound of a further pair of footsteps echoed down the bridge; rapid and purposeful. I turned to look and was startled at how close the two men were. Both wore hats pulled low over their eyes. One had a
Lederol
fake leather jacket on, the other a short trench coat, much like mine. They glared at us as they came closer, there was no doubt that we were their quarry.

“Shit–”

“What is it, Martin?” Annette had picked up on my stress, and she was now looking around too.

As for my daughter, she just looked at me, saying nothing, letting her eyes do the talking: accusatory.

As I looked around for an escape route I heard a train grind into the station below us. Our only choices were down the steps onto the platform, or the other exit, further along the bridge. But there might be men in plastic-leather jackets waiting for us there too. I looked towards the two men bearing down on us, gauging how much time we had, when someone brushed past me, I hadn’t heard anyone come up the steps, but here was the Russian NCO that had driven the jeep the other day.

“Platform’s clear, get on the train!” she hissed as she went past, casually swinging a heavy shopping bag as she went.

I grabbed Katrin and Annette’s hands and pulled them towards the steps down to the platform, the last thing I saw before I went around the corner was the Soviet soldier kick one of the men in the crotch while aiming her bag at the other guy’s face. We could hear the men’s grunts as we ran down the stairs, jumping on the train just as the door buzzer went.

“Martin, what the fuck is going on?” demanded Annette, glaring at me as I slumped down on the floor next to the door.

Katrin was looking back at the station, lit up in the dark.

“Nobody followed us down to the platform. Right, Papa, I think you have some explaining to do.”

“In a minute! The next stop is Lenin Allee. If there’s a train on the other side of the platform we’re going to run across and get on that, but we need to check if we’re being followed. Annette, you check to our right, see if anyone else crosses to the other train. Katrin, check behind us, and I’ll look to the left. We need to keep watching until the train pulls out of the station.”

Katrin nodded at Annette, who, after some hesitation nodded too. As we drew into the station I saw with relief that there was indeed a train standing on the other side of the platform. I hauled open the doors before we’d even stopped, jumping down, hearing the others follow me, and the shout of the platform attendant.

“Schönefeld:
zurückbleiben
!”

Katrin jumped into the doorway of the other train, just as the red lights lit up, and the buzzer went. She blocked the doors from sliding shut, allowing us to slip in. We were clear—no one had followed us across the platform.

I led the way to some empty seats, and we sat down, Annette and Katrin sitting opposite me, not saying anything, just staring at me, waiting for an explanation.

“Annette, I need your help. There’s some stuff I’ve got to deal with, and I can’t do it by myself. I need your contacts, I think some of the squatters could help.”

Annette looked suspicious. “What kind of stuff?”

In a low whisper I told her of my suspicions about the Minister, how he was probably connected to the Maier case.

“Are you sure? It sounds a bit far fetched.”

“Did you see those two men on the bridge, if it hadn’t been for…” I realised I didn’t even know the name of Dmitri’s NCO.

“What about them? They were just two dudes on the way to the station–”

“They were Stasi,” I sighed, and leant back.

“Come off it! There hasn’t been any Stasi for at least three years!”

“Annette, Papa’s right. They were Stasi,” confirmed Katrin.

Annette looked from Katrin to me, eyes wide. Astonished, and now, finally, a little afraid.

“You better be worth the trouble,” she said, not quite under her breath.

Annette suggested we head over to the Squatters’ Council—they were meeting that night in Friedrichshain—we’d probably get there in time for the beginning. We got off at Frankfurter Allee then walked to one of the Wessi-squats near by. Annette shouted up to one of the balconies where a couple of punks were hanging out. They chucked a key on a piece of string down to us, and we let ourselves in. The key was hauled back up.

The meeting was in a kitchen on the ground floor, about a dozen young squatters sitting loosely round a table too small for the amount of empty beer bottles and fag butts it was holding. A couple of them looked up as we came in.

“Oh shit! Oh man! Who the fuck are you bringing here this time?” This was directed at Annette, but the question was clearly about me.

“Hey, people,” Annette’s voice and accent had changed, she sounded like a young punk herself now, drawling the words out. “This is Martin, he needs our help. He’s from the
Republikschutz–”

“Fuck off! Bull-pig! Stasi pig!” The young man who’d first spoken was on his feet, shouting, pointing his finger at me, but staring at Annette, his spit flecking the front of her anorak.

“Wait,” Annette tried to get them to listen, “Wait! Martin’s been in the opposition for more than 15 years—he was doing actions when you were all in nappies!”

“Yeah, and he’s become institutionalised! Just look at him!”

“Never trust anyone over the age of thirty!”

“Bulls out!”

Pretty much everyone in the room was shouting at Annette now, but only Katrin was looking at me.

“Papa, let’s go, come on.”

Katrin was pulling me, I grabbed Annette’s hand and we went back out onto the street.

There was silence for a couple of minutes, then Annette took my hand again.

“Sorry. That didn’t go as planned.”

I was shocked. Is that what we’d worked for, what we’d sacrificed so much for, just so that Westerners could come over here, squat our buildings and insult us? Ever since Rudi Dutschke the fucking Wessis had been telling us that we were passive and apolitical, giving us lessons in Marx and Lenin, as if we weren’t getting enough of that every day from the Party! And now they were living here in our Berlin with their patronising fucking arrogance. I didn’t feel like I had any energy to carry on. Let them sort out this mess if they thought themselves so much better than us!

“Martin? I’m sorry,” Annette said again. “I should have thought, the council is meeting in a Wessi-squat tonight.”

“I thought the Squatters’ Council was for all the squats?” asked Katrin.

“It is, but the local squatters are getting pissed off with the Wessis, so most of them don’t go to the meetings if they’re being held at a Wessi-squat. The locals say the Wessis are too dogmatic, think only in terms of black and white… But Martin, you know Karo, why don’t we try her?”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea…” I tailed off, remembering the last time I’d seen her, huddled in the corner, shaking, probably traumatised.

The three of us were walking slowly back to the Frankfurter Allee, Katrin quiet, probably as shocked as I was by the Wessi’s vitriol. Annette tried to be encouraging, which grated hard against my feelings of dejection.

“Why not? What’s wrong with Karo?”

“Nothing. At least I hope not… She hasn’t done anything. There was a police raid at her place a few days ago. It was pretty bad, and I was there. With the cops, I mean.”

“God, Martin, you don’t make things easy, do you? Right, where does she live? OK, you hang around somewhere near by, I’ll go and talk to her, see if we can sort this mess out.”

We walked along the Rigaer Strasse, and Katrin and I went into the
Fischladen
bar while Annette went round the corner to the Thaerstrasse squat.

Food was still being served and Katrin brought us two plates, overflowing with steaming goulash. We both picked at the stew, neither of us saying anything. All the plans I’d made, they just weren’t going to work. I somehow had to get hold of Laura, Erika and Klaus and call off tomorrow’s mission. Without more bodies there was no way it could work. But if we didn’t do it tomorrow then we may not get another chance. And then what?

I was deep in my thoughts when Katrin patted my arm. Annette was standing in front of us, her eyes and face were hard. She avoided looking at me, speaking only to Katrin.

“Karo wants to talk to you.”

Katrin got up and the pair of them left the bar, leaving me behind, brooding over my ruined plan.

“I’m sorry about what I said to you, you know, during the raid on Tuesday.”

It was Karo. She was standing in front of my table, looking down at her feet. When she finally looked up I could see a large bruise shading her left eye.

“I think you’re the last person who needs to apologise,” I answered. “I’m the one who should be apologising to you.”

“No, it wasn’t you, brother. It was the bulls. Katrin made me realise—she said you’d never do that, that you’d do whatever you could to stop it. It made me think again, run through what happened. And I guess that’s what you did—try to stop it, I mean.”

Not sure what to say, I looked down at my goulash, cold, practically untouched.

“Annette says there’s something we can do for you.”

“Not for me, for all of us,” I looked up, meeting Karo’s eyes, hope welling up again in my chest. “Fancy another revolution?”

“Hell, yeah! Any day! Do we get to settle up with the bulls?” Karo grinned at me. I was forgiven.

“I think we might find a way. And there’s something else I need too.”

“What?” Karo looked at me, her eyes bright.

“I need a place to crash tonight.”

Moscow:
The Soviet Army has declared support for the President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Broadcasting from Moscow’s television complex Marshal of the Soviet Union Gennady Bereskov announced an operation to round up rogue KGB troops in the capital. President Gorbachev is expected to return to Moscow this morning.

09:47

In 1906 an unemployed cobbler put on a second hand captain’s uniform then commanded some soldiers to follow him. He deployed them in an occupation of Köpenick town hall, arresting the mayor and confiscating 3,577 Marks from the council’s coffers. His plan was very simple: it relied on the blind obedience of the soldiers he’d rounded up on the street—without his uniform he had no authority, and without that authority, he had no chance of getting to the money.

I think I probably felt much the same way as the Captain of Köpenick did when he began rounding up his troops. I was pretty nervous, but a uniform is like a coat of armour—I was shaking inside, even if nobody looking at me would be able to tell. The military cut of the green jacket and trousers, the shiny shoes, the peaked cap, all straightened my spine and lent me an arrogance I would not normally want. I strode confidently down the Mauerstrasse—a Captain of the
Volkspolizei
.

My ragtag troop of punks followed in silence. They’d been busy during the night: I had sworn them in to the service of the Republic, toasting them with beer. Each had a strip of red material tied around their left arm, white letters spelt out
HelferIn des RS—
RS auxiliary. Most of them had flowers, crude representations of peace doves or the national
Swords to Ploughshares
emblem daubed below the letters. Beside me I had Laura, Klaus and Erika, each of us caught up in the drama of the situation.

I walked up the steps and pushed in through the main doors of the Ministry of the Interior. Pulling myself up to my full height, adjusting my voice to fit the uniform, I commanded the porter to call the Central Round Table and the Round Table’s Committee for Internal Affairs, requesting that they convene immediately here at the Ministry. Behind me, the squatters streamed into the building, ignoring the cops standing by the door. I waved an impatient hand at one of the policemen who tried to stem the flow of punks—a curt gesture, slicing the blade of my hand through the air. The guard came to attention, eyes front, ignoring my squad. Before me, the porter, who had been about to question my order, similarly stiffened and picked up the telephone. Karo was standing beside me, and I asked her to stay here with the porter, make sure he didn’t make any other calls.

Turning to the cops, I ordered them to lock the main doors and to accompany me. Erika, Klaus and Laura were still with me, but once the front doors had been locked, they split up, each leading a small crew of punks to seal off the other exits to the building.

I took the two policemen up the stairs to the Minister’s office—we barged in through the door, but the Minister wasn’t at his desk. Out again, this time through the other door to the secretary.

“Where’s the Minister?” I demanded.

The secretary looked up from her typing, nonplussed. “He’s in his office–”

“Call the Central Command of the Border Police—see that he doesn’t cross the border,” I snapped at the policeman by my side, telling the other to guard the office, then headed down to the main hall at the bottom of the stairs.

“The Minister’s done a runner—but we need to check whether he’s still in the building. Can you form a search party?” I asked some of the punks who were still in the porter’s office with Karo, they ran off shouting and sliding over the shiny parquet. I turned to see Laura at my side, looking embarrassed.

“Sorry, Martin, that’s my fault. I went into the office this morning, and when Bärbel asked why nobody was in I just said where we were going, I didn’t think–”

“Someone needs to phone the chair of the Central Round Table, tell her what’s going on, that we need her here, now,” I said, trying to hide my anger, and going back up the stairs to the Minister’s office. I’d just reached the top when the policeman came out of the secretary’s office, saluted and reported.

“Border Police have been informed, Comrade Captain!”

“Thank you, Comrade
Wachtmeister
. Now go to the personnel archives and get whatever files they have on Hagenow, Evelyn and the Minister: Hartmann, Benno.”

I didn’t really think that the files would contain anything useful, but I wanted to get rid of the policeman, I needed to sit down for a moment, unobserved. And I was curious about Evelyn, why was she on the scene again, and how come she was at the Ministry? I went into the Minister’s office, told the cop there to go and stand in the corridor, then sat down at the desk. What now? No Minister, no evidence; and the Central Round Table about to descend on us, wanting to know what the hell was going on. It couldn’t get much worse. If the Minister had already crossed the border, or come to that, was hiding out somewhere in the Republic then we wouldn’t find him in time, if ever.

A knock at the door, and the cop came in with the files. I ignored the Minister’s file, and idly thumbed through Evelyn’s: 1988 in-service training in Moscow, then attachment to the Ministry of the Interior. Before that she was an administrative worker at the State Opera. If she was just a cultural administrator, how did she end up getting a prestige posting to Moscow, followed by a position as case handler in a ministry? And if that wasn’t enough, what was she doing serving drinks at a party thrown for the
Bonzen
all those years ago when I first saw her? And why did she come to my factory a few months later, wanting to see the works’ Party secretary? To me, it sounded like a pretty thin legend. It certainly looked like she wasn’t just some petty IM informant, but was somehow more involved. Reading between the lines it sounded like she’d been put in place in the Opera to spy on Party
Bonzen
when they attended performances, later on liaising with Party bigwigs in the factories, before being transferred into the Ministry at the same time the task force was formed around OibE GÄRTNER. But this was wasting time. I needed proof, and unless I found it I would be in deep shit. Alternatively, if there were no proof, if I was just plain wrong, well, same result.

I was mulling over this possibility when there was another knock at the door.

“Comrade
Hauptmann
! The Minister has been stopped at the Friedrichstrasse Border Crossing Point. The Minister and a woman, also in the vehicle, have been detained.”

“Very good, have them brought to me immediately.”

The Friedrichstrasse border crossing wasn’t very far away, they’d be here in just a few minutes. In the meantime, we had to search the building for anything that might confirm my suspicions, and it made sense to start in this office. Going to the door, I asked the policeman standing outside to fetch Karo and Laura from downstairs. While I was waiting for them, I looked around the office. If I were the Minister, where would I hide potentially incriminating material? I started opening and closing cupboard doors at random, poking through files, just getting more and more frustrated with myself. I was desperately casting around the office when Karo came in.

“Karo, we need to search the building for any clues about what the Minister was up to. Do you think you could get your crew to go and safeguard the archives? We need all the archive staff out of there, and to make sure that nobody touches anything.”

“Sure thing, Martin. But what about the computer?”

I looked around, and, sure enough, in the corner of the room, on its own little table was a big square box, beside that a television sitting on top of a smaller steel box. I pushed the big red button, and a red light came on, with a green light flickering alongside it. The green light went out, but nothing seemed to be happening on the television set. I shrugged and looked at Karo, who laughed at me.

“Try turning on the monitor, too—the button’s on the left hand side, underneath. But wait a moment, I’ll go and fetch Schimmel.”

As Karo went out the door, Laura came in. I explained to her what we needed to find, and asked her to organise a quick search of the secretary’s office next door, as well as the secretariat and archive downstairs.

“Worth a try, since we’re here,” she responded thoughtfully. “But it’s a bit of a long shot.”

I turned back to the computer, which didn’t seem to be doing much. Just like me.

Karo came in with another punk, this must be Schimmel. Like all the punks here today he was young, with ragged hair and a ripped leather jacket. He took one look at the computer and gave a shriek.

“Cool, a P8000 compact! I wonder if it’s the triple processor? Let’s see what operating system they’ve got—aha! Wega.”

I peered over Schimmel’s shoulder at the screen: “WEGA login:” it said. Schimmel looked at me.

“What’s your minister’s name?”

“Benno Hartmann.”

Schimmel typed in the name Hartmann, then: “What’s his date of birth?”

I opened up the Minister’s file, and read out his date of birth, Schimmel typed that in too.

“We’re in! Most people use their date of birth as a password because that’s what the manual says they should do, it’s easy to remember. Ha! Right, what are we after? OK, so let’s have a quick look at what files he has in here,” he typed a few letters and looked at a long list of gobbledygook. “Any of these file-names look interesting?” he asked over his shoulder.

I peered at the screen, there must be hundreds of files, and with a few strokes of the keys, Schimmel made another screenful appear. He looked at me, and just as Karo had, laughed at my helplessness. A few more quick taps of the keys, and the printer on the floor started screeching, paper turning out of the top. Schimmel reached down, and tore off a couple of sheets from the long roll, handing them over to me.

“Here, that may be easier to read. Just look through the names there, see if anything sticks out.”

He was right, it was easier to look at the print-out than the flickering green letters on the screen. I just scanned through, most of the names looked boring: LetterRT or LetterRT2, Rota17 and the like. I was about to give up again when I spotted ProjGart—that could be short for
Projekt Garten
, and if Garten was the garden, maybe the OibE GÄRTNER was the gardener in charge of this project…

“That one, let’s look at that.”

I watched him type “file: md(0,1600)ProjGart”, then a load of random letters and shapes came up on the screen, and the computer beeped a few times.

“Fuck!” he groaned. “It’s been hashed somehow… like a code. It hides the contents of that file,” Schimmel tapped away at the keyboard a bit more, then: “OK! I’ve got the programme that does it, but we still need a password. I’ve already tried his birth date, it’s not that. If we can guess the password then we can read the file—easy as that!”

It didn’t seem that easy to me—what would this password be? It had looked so promising for a moment, but maybe it was a waste of time after all. I slumped back down into the Minister’s chair, putting my feet on his desk.

A knock at the door, and one of the cops came in, “Herr Hartmann has just arrived, Comrade Captain. Shall I bring him in?”

I didn’t much like the idea of being confronted with the Minister. Even though he’d just been caught trying to leave the country, his word would still count for a lot more than mine; in his position I’d probably try to bluff it out, order our arrest, something like that.

But it was time to face him—I’d given up hope of finding any real evidence to back up my suspicions about the Minister.

“Who was the woman who was detained with the Minister?” I asked the policeman.

“Fräulein Hagenow, Comrade Captain.”

There was just time for one last throw of the dice.

“Schimmel! That password we’re looking for, try:
Evelyn
!”