Dark gray clouds hung low and heavy over East Berlin, especially over Stasi Headquarters on Nonnenstrasse. Taking up nearly the entire block, the nerve center for the Deutsche Demokratisch Republik’s Secret State Police never slept. Even now, at just after six a.m., the offices hummed with activity, lights shining out from nearly every window.
On the top floor, at the northeast corner overlooking the twice-life-size statue of Karl Marx, a man stood gazing out of his office window, his expression bemused.
Time had not been kind to Gerhard Müller. His once jet-black hair was now nearly white, the sharp planes of his handsome face had softened and bloated from years of overindulgence of black-market food and drink. But the eyes remained the same: greedy, all-consuming, merciless. They were still the eyes of a predator, a survivor.
And survived he had. As the war neared its end, Müller—now a Gruppenführer—saw the ways the winds were blowing. On the one hand, fleeing to the West would offer salvation of a sort, though he knew he’d spend his life running from both the Jews and those in the Allied governments determined to make the SS pay for its alleged crimes. Unfortunately, he had no funds saved with which to make that flight, and Müller had no intentions of living like a beggar. And despite rumors of an organization forming to help SS members evade justice, he knew this was not an option open to him, for he’d never been popular with those in power.
On the other hand, fleeing to the East seemed just short of suicide. The Russians hated the SS. He knew the part of Germany captured by the Russians would never be given back, and any government set up in their zone of occupation would be as ruthless as the one for which he now worked. And they would need skilled practitioners in forming the new state.
The decision was obvious: he would flee to the Russians. With the armies of the Allies moving ever closer to Berlin, Müller had set about remaking an identity for himself. Identity papers were prepared showing him to be a former member of the Kriminalpolizei who’d been drafted into the army to fight in the east in the last desperate offensive. He then had his blood group tattoo removed from under his left arm—a mark that would positively identify him as a member of the SS—disguising it as an old bullet wound, which was duly noted in his false papers, along with an award of the Black Wound badge.
When the end came in April 1945, the late Gruppenführer Müller donned his ragged Wehrmacht uniform and disappeared into the Eastern Zone of Occupation, spending a few days in hiding.
So, it was Hauptwachtmeister of Police Werner Mueller who “surrendered” to a Russian patrol, and after a few months of interrogation and imprisonment, he was brought before an ad hoc committee comprising a Political Commissar and two high-level Russian officers. Mueller smiled inwardly as the committee pointed out his previous “experience” as a policeman in the Reich, their eyes taking on a greedy gleam.
They then gave him a choice: spend the rest of his life in a gulag, or serve the budding Staatspolizei, an organization that would soon be feared under its diminutive name: Stasi.
For Mueller, it was no choice at all, but he made it look as if the struggle with his conscience was genuine. He asked to have twenty-four hours to think it over, and then after a presumed night of hard contemplation, told the committee that he accepted their offer.
Within weeks he found himself in Moscow undergoing “reeducation” and training not unlike he’d received in the SS. A year later he was back in East Berlin as a Leutnant in Stasi. Now, after nearly forty years of political toadying—something he abhorred—he ran the organization. Men who would bridle with rage if they knew the truth about his Nazi past, now took his orders without question. He was respected.
Feared.
Somehow, it was fitting.
Werner Mueller’s mind came back to the present when his eye caught sight of a lone peddler pushing a cart laden with fruit and day-old baked goods up the street, his back bent with age, his clothes little better than rags. He watched the old man struggle with the weight of his wares and briefly toyed with the idea of ordering him brought before him. He could picture the scene: the old man trembling, his soiled tweed cap twisted in his callused hands, a look of silent pleading on his wizened face. He would approach the man and ask him a single question, the first question he always asked during the course of an interrogation: “Do you love the state?”
Invariably, the subjects reacted in one of three ways. Some would trip over their tongues trying to spit out their love for the DDR and of President Honecker, thinking the more they said, the better off they would be. What they didn’t know is that the more they said, the more the noose tightened around their cowardly necks, because Mueller knew they were lying, as surely as a hound could smell the prey he tracked. These people he would either imprison or shoot, depending on his mood.
The second group, when asked this innocent question, would stare at him open-mouthed, as if the very question itself were some abstraction that could not be apprehended by anyone of less than genius IQ. These he would bore into, knowing, as he did from his years in the SS and Stasi, that these people had something to hide. A little judicious pressure and they spilled their guts, denouncing their grandmothers as traitors. They would later become the perfect informers, eager to prove that they now loved the state in all its proletarian glory.
The third group would sneer at the very idea of loving the state, spitting at the ground in wordless contempt. From these, he would extract the information he needed, then shoot them. These people were the true dangers to the state, possessed of a free and stubborn will.
“And which one would you be, Grandfather?” he said to the old peddler down in the street. The old man could not hear him, of course, continuing on his way with grim determination.
Mueller smiled and turned from the window, returning to his desk and the just delivered copy of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung waiting on his desk. It lay unfolded to the front page, with its large black and white portrait of Friedrich Rainer bordered in black with the dates: 1916-1984. Underneath the picture the small headline read: RAINER FUNERAL SNARLS TRAFFIC.
Mueller stared down at the picture, his expression dour. “So, my old foe, they finally got you.... Verdammt Bolsheviks!”
Grabbing up the paper, he tore it in two, tossing both halves into the metal waste bin at the side of his desk. He sat down and gazed at the latest teletyped reports from the major stations around the world and ignored all but the West Berlin report. It simply said: GREEN.
Mueller reached for his intercom and pressed the button to summon his assistant. A moment later the door opened and a slim young man with washed-out blonde hair and a corpselike complexion walked through carrying a steno pad. Mueller waved away the pad.
“Never mind that, Aldo. Tell me what’s happening.”
“The London office reports that the Atwater situation has proceeded as planned.”
“Sehr gut. Tell Karl he is now assigned to Thorley, and to await further instructions. Is that clear?”
“Ja sicher, Comrade General.”
“Have we heard from Mallory?”
Aldo shook his head. “No, Comrade General. However, we have another South Wessex letter prepared. Shall I send it to England in the pouch?”
“No, destroy it....” Mueller brooded, his eyes staring out at his assistant. A moment later he came to a decision. “Make arrangements for me to travel to the Western Zone, at once. Use the Abelard identity.”
Aldo looked surprised. “How long?”
“Indefinite.”
“The Politburo will ask questions.”
Mueller’s lip curled into a sneer. “Then you shall give them the appropriate answers, or I shall be forced to tell them all about your little boyfriend in Leipzig.”
Aldo paled, his eyes blinking even more rapidly than before. “Comrade General, I—”
“You thought I didn’t know?” he asked with a scolding look. “Shame on you, Aldo, for underestimating me.”
Aldo hung his head, embarrassment coloring his cheeks a bright red.
“Now, now, we must never hang our head, Aldo. You have nothing to fear, unless you cross me. Is that clear?”
Aldo’s head snapped up, his eyes shining with relief and renewed purpose. “Perfectly clear, Comrade General.”
“Good, now get to those arrangements. I will be leaving within the hour.”
“Ja sicher, Comrade General!” he said, snapping a salute.
Mueller returned the salute with a relaxed wave and waited until the young man had left the room. Then he returned to the window and looked eastward, his eyes narrowing with hatred.
“Now, you Slavic bastards will pay...for everything....”