‘From London?’ Fiona’s writing. But could it all be a plant?
‘We are only a bank. Our security precautions are not very elaborate. It was a very interesting and most secret report about proposed Bank of England support for sterling. I recognized what it was only because I was looking for such things.’
‘By tonight, you say?’
‘I know where the report is.’
‘Your wife must understand that she can’t take anything with her except what she can wear and put in her pockets.’
‘We have talked about it many times, Bernd.’
‘No friends or relatives, no small dogs or parrots or albums of family photos.’
‘She understands,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t get easier,’ I said. ‘Don’t frighten her, but make sure your wife understands that she’s risking her life.’
‘She will not be frightened, Bernd.’
‘Very well.’
‘I will see you at nine o’clock, my friend. Can you find the Pioneer House at Wühlheide near Köpenick? It’s a twenty-five-minute ride on the S-Bahn from here. Room G-341. I’ll have the papers.’
‘I’ll find it.’
He stood up and, with both hands on his hips, tilted his head back and sighed like a man awakening from a long sleep. ‘At last the decision is made,’ he said. ‘Can you think what that means to me, Bernd?’
‘I’ll need to phone my wife in London,’ I said. ‘She gets anxious if I don’t keep in contact. Can I direct-dial on a secure phone?’
‘Use this one. I call the West several times every day. Dial nine and then the number,’ he said. ‘There is no monitoring of calls, but it will be logged. Be discreet, Bernd.’
‘We have a prearranged code,’ I explained. ‘Just domestic chat. I’ll mention the handwritten paper. She’ll understand what’s happened.’
24
The Pioneer Park is a lavish example of the priority that East Germany gives to sport and leisure. Two square miles of parkland are landscaped into a complex of sports stadiums, running tracks, football and athletic fields, baths, swimming pools, and even a course for trotting races. I found the main building, and inside its gleaming interior I picked my way past well-equipped gyms and huge indoor pools that came complete with everything from diving instructors to rows of buzzing hair-dryers.
I found G-341 on the third floor and looked through the glass panel before entering. It was a small rehearsal room, beautifully panelled in contrasting wood, and occupied by four elderly men playing Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ quartet. Dr Munte was sitting at a grand piano but he was not playing. His head was cocked and his eyes closed as he listened to the performance. Suddenly he got up and said, ‘No, gentlemen, no. There is no grace there.’ He saw me looking through the door but gave no sign of recognition. ‘Perhaps we’ve had too much Schubert tonight. Let’s see how well you remember the Haydn Seventy-seven C Major.’ He beckoned me into the room and greeted me with a bow and formal handshake while the players sorted out the parts for the quartet.
‘This is only our third attempt,’ he said apologetically. One of the men dropped his music on the floor and had to go on his knees to gather the sheets together again.
‘It’s a difficult work,’ I said.
Munte started them playing, using a delicate movement of both hands; then after watching them with a proprietorial satisfaction, he took me to a room beyond. This second room was larger, its walls lined with neat steel lockers for musical instruments and wooden lockers for clothes.
‘You missed “The Trout”,’ he said. ‘I play the piano part for that.’
‘Did you get the document?’
He bent his head, still listening to the music coming from the next room. ‘The first violin is not up to it any more,’ he admitted sadly. ‘He’s having heat treatment for his finger joints, but I fear it’s not helping him a great deal.’
‘The document,’ I said impatiently. ‘Did you bring it?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
Before he could answer, the door from one of the other adjoining rehearsal rooms swung open. A plump man came in dragging a small child and a cello, one in each hand. ‘Now here’s Dr Munte,’ said the fat man to his son. ‘Ask him how long you need every day.’ He turned to us and said, ‘Getting the little devil to practise would try the patience of a saint. All he thinks about is American jazz. Talk to him, Dr Munte. Tell him he’s got to practise. Tell him he must play real music, German music.’
‘If the interest is lacking, the child will never love music, Herr Sprengler. Perhaps you should let him do what he wants.’
‘Yes, that’s the modern way, isn’t it,’ said the fat man, not bothering to hide his annoyance at Munte’s lack of support. ‘Well, I don’t believe in the modern way. This is not California…’ He looked at my appearance and seemed to guess that I was not an East Berliner. But, having decided that I was not a foreigner, he continued: ‘We are Germans, aren’t we? This is not California – yet. And may the Lord protect us from the sort of things that go on over there in the West. If I say my son is going to practise the cello, he’ll do it. Do you hear that, Lothar? You’ll practise every night for an hour before you go out to play football with your friends.’
‘Yes, Väterchen,’ said the boy with affection. He held his father’s hand tightly until the man unclasped it in order to get keys from his pocket. The boy seemed reassured by his father’s dictum.
The fat man put the cello into a locker and closed the door. Then he locked it with a padlock. ‘You’re not strong enough for football,’ he said loudly as they went out. The little boy grabbed his father’s hand again.
‘We Germans find reassurance in tyranny,’ said Munte sadly. ‘That’s always been our downfall.’
‘The document.’
‘The file containing the document you want is now with the clerk to the head of the bank’s Economics Committee.’
‘Why?’ Was the Berlin KGB office already in action?
‘It’s a big file, Bernd. There could be many perfectly ordinary reasons for his taking it away.’
‘Can you get it back from him tomorrow?’
‘The normal way is to ask the records office, and wait while they find out where it is. Eventually such files turn up on the desk.’
‘You’re not suggesting that we wait while the slow wheels of Communist bureaucracy turn for us?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said Munte sharply. He obviously identified himself with the slow wheels of bureaucracy and was offended.
‘Go to wherever it is tomorrow. Remove this damned handwritten document and bring it to me.’
‘How will I explain such an action? The files – even the most ordinary ones – are signed in and out. What would the head of the Economics Committee say if his clerk tells him that I’ve taken the file – or even come into the office to look at it?’
‘For God’s sake,’ I said angrily. I wanted to shout at him, but I kept my voice low. ‘What do you care how extraordinary such actions are? What do you care how suspicious anyone gets? We’re talking about one last thing you do before we get you out of here.’
‘Yes, you’re talking about it,’ he said. ‘But suppose you see this document and decide it’s not something you want. Then you say thank you, and leave me to go back into the office and face the music, while you return to London and tell them I had nothing worthwhile to offer.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But I can’t give you an absolutely firm undertaking to get you out until London agree to my request. I can’t get you out on my own, you know that. I could tell you a pack of lies but I’m telling you the truth.’
‘And how long will that take?’
I shrugged.
‘The slow wheels of Western bureaucracy?’ he asked sarcastically. He was angry. Fear does that to some people, especially to such introspective soberfaced old men as Munte. It was odd to think of him fe
arlessly enduring all the dangers of spying for years and then getting so frightened at the idea of living in the West. I’d seen it in other men: the prospect of facing a highly competitive, noisy, quick-moving, kaleidoscopic society and braving its dangers – sickness, crime, poverty – could be traumatic. He needed reassurance. And if I did not reassure him quickly and properly he might suddenly decide he didn’t want to go to the West after all. Such things had happened before, not once but many times.
‘Preparations must be made,’ I said. ‘You and your wife will not go to a reception centre for refugees. You’ll be VIPs, looked after properly, so that you have no worries. You’ll go to Gatow, the military airport, and fly directly to London on an RAF plane – no customs or immigration nonsense. But for all that you’ll need documentation, and such things take time.’ I said nothing of the dangers of crossing the Wall.
‘I’ll get it tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Will Silas Gaunt be there?’
‘He’ll be there, I’m sure.’
‘We were close friends in the old days. I knew your father too.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Next door there was a pause in the music before the slow movement began.
‘Haydn speaks an everlasting truth,’ he said.
‘You’ll be all right once you’re there,’ I said. ‘You’ll see old friends and there will be a lot to do.’
‘And I will see my son.’
I knew they wouldn’t let Munte go to Brazil so readily. There would be long debriefings, and even after six months or so, when trips abroad are sometimes permitted, they wouldn’t want him to go to Brazil, with its German colony so infiltrated by East German agents. ‘We might be able to get your son to London for you,’ I said.
‘One step at a time,’ he replied. ‘I’m not even in London yet.’
‘You’ll soon be there.’ I said it glibly while wondering which route to take back to the centre of the city.
‘Will I?’ said Munte in a voice that made me give him my whole attention. ‘You’ve told London that I want to get out. And, guessing the real meanings behind the conversation you had with your wife on my phone, they now know about the evidence I’m providing for you to pinpoint the traitor there.’
‘Yes?’ I said doubtfully. From the next room there came the solemn melodies of the quartet, the first violin wringing a plaintive song from under his stiffening fingers.
‘Are you really such a fool? Someone in London is worrying what you will discover here. They will make quite certain that they hear any news you supply to London. They will then take measures to eliminate both of us.’
‘You worry too much,’ I said. ‘There will be no official report of what I told my wife.’
‘I don’t believe you. Someone will have to take responsibility for the task of getting us out.’
‘My immediate superior. He’ll be the only person told. Rest assured that he is not the man we are after.’
‘I’m not going home tonight.’
‘Then where are you going?’
‘We’ve got a Laube. It’s just two tiny rooms and a kitchen but we have electricity, and I won’t lie awake all night worrying about policemen knocking on the door. My wife went out there earlier today. She will have some hot soup waiting.’
‘Where?’
‘At Buchholz, behind the church. It’s a huge spread of allotments. Hundreds of people go out there at the weekend even at this time of year.’
‘Tonight? It’s a long journey to Buchholz. Do you want a ride? I’ve got a car.’
‘You’re very kind. It’s not such an easy journey by bus and the S-Bahn is quite far away from us.’
I realized that Munte had deliberately introduced the topic with the hope of getting a ride there. ‘How soon will you be ready?’
‘I must wait for the end of the Haydn. I must tell my friend that his fingers are getting better. It’s not true of course, but it’s the sort of lie one expects from a good friend.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘And I will not see any of my friends again, will I?’
First I took Munte to his home in Erkner, a village surrounded by lakes and forests on the extreme eastern edge of the city. I waited in the car ten minutes or more. He returned carrying a small case.
‘Family photos, old letters and my father’s medals,’ he explained apologetically. ‘I suddenly realized that I will never return here.’
‘Don’t take too much with you,’ I cautioned.
‘I’ll throw most of it away,’ he promised. ‘I should have done that years ago but I never seemed to have enough time.’
I drove north from Erkner on the autobahn with which Fritz Todt – Hitler’s chief engineer – had ringed Berlin. The road was in poor condition and more than once the traffic was diverted to singlelane working. Near the Blumberg exit we were waved down by an army motorcyclist, and military policemen signalled frantically with their special flashlight-batons and ran about shouting in the imperious way that all military policemen learn at training school. Civilian traffic was halted while a Russian Army convoy passed us. It took ten minutes for the heavy trucks – some carrying tanks and others with missiles – to pick their way around the broken sections of roadway. It was during this delay that Munte told me a joke. He not only told me a joke, he told me it was a joke before he started it.
‘There is a joke that East Berliners have about these neglected autobahns,’ he said. ‘People say why can’t those verdammten Nazis come back and keep their Autobahnen in good order.’
‘It’s a good joke,’ I said.
We waited a long time while the Russian trucks splashed through the rain puddles and thumped their suspensions on the potholes. Munte watched them with unseeing eyes. ‘I was driving along here during the Berlin fighting,’ he said suddenly. ‘It was towards the end of April 1945. The reports said that tanks of the 1st White Russian Front were moving into the northwest part of Charlottenburg and had halted at Bismarckstrasse. And there were unconfirmed reports of Red Army infantry in Moabit. In the car with me I had my younger brother and two of his schoolfriends. We were trying to get to my parents’ home near Wannsee before the Russians got that far south. What an idiot I must have been! We didn’t know the Russians coming from the southwest had already got to Wannsee. They were past Grunewald and fighting in the streets of Friednau by that time.’
He was silent until I finally said, ‘Did you get there?’
‘I was on this same road, this same piece of autobahn. Stopped, just as we’re stopped, but by some motorized SS unit. They drained every last drop of gas from my car and pushed it off the road. They were doing that with every car and truck that came along here. I even saw them commandeer two Luftwaffe fuel tankers at gunpoint.’
‘You walked home?’
‘When the SS men got us out of my car, they looked at our papers. I had my Reichsbank pass and they accepted that without comment. But the three children were ordered to join an assorted collection of soldiers who were being pressed into battle. I objected but they shut me up by threatening to send me into the fighting too.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I never saw any of those boys again.’
‘It’s nearly forty years ago,’ I reminded him. ‘You’re not still blaming yourself?’
‘I should have stayed with him. He was only fifteen years old.’
‘You did what you thought was right,’ I said.
‘I did what I was told,’ said Munte. ‘I did it because I was frightened. I’ve never admitted that to anyone else, but I will tell you truthfully I was frightened.’
The Russian convoy passed and our lane of cars started moving again. Munte sat back in his seat with his head resting against the window. He did not speak again for the rest of the journey, except to warn me when we were getting near to the autobahn interchange for Pankow.
It was late when we reached Buchholz, a village that has become a suburb. The tramlines end in front of the church in a street that is wide enough to be a village square. It was dark and the only light came from a Weinstube wh
ere a waiter was sweeping the floor of an empty bar.
Munte told me to turn off at the church. We bumped along a narrow country lane alongside a cemetery. It was dark, but by the headlights’ beams I could see that there were trees and bushes on each side of a track that was only just wider than the car. Marking these plots of cultivated land were elaborate little wrought-iron gates, neatly painted fences and trimmed hedges displaying an individuality of taste that bordered on caricature.
Against a horizon faintly pink with the advertising lights of the Western Sector of the city I could make out the squat shapes of the houses and hutments on each patch of ground. Lovingly fashioned by dedicated owners, this was the only sort of private house ownership permitted in the Democratic Republic. And selling such improved property provided a rare opportunity for officially tolerated capitalism.
Munte held out his hand to show me where to stop. I welcomed the careful directions he gave me how to get out of this maze of narrow tracks, for there was not space enough to turn the car or even to avoid another on the same path.
I said, ‘Your material is kept quite separate from everything else, Dr Munte. Even if there is a traitor in London, you needn’t fear that you’ll be betrayed.’ The old man got out of the car with a stiff-limbed difficulty that he’d not shown before. It was almost as if he’d aged during the short car journey.
He bent down to look at me. I leaned over the front passenger seat and wound the window down so that I could hear him. ‘You have no need to be so devious, Bernd,’ he said. ‘I intend to go to my office in the morning. I will get the document for you. I am not afraid.’
I said nothing. I noticed that he was wringing his hands again, the way he had in his office earlier that day.
‘I never go that way,’ he added as if he owed me an explanation. ‘No matter how much longer it takes me or where I want to get to, I never go that way. Until tonight, I haven’t been back to that section of autobahn since it happened.’
‘I’m sorry if it upset you, Dr Munte.’
‘I should have done it years ago,’ he said. ‘At last I’ve got rid of those terrible old nightmares.’