CHRISTMAS OF 1972 was the last holiday I would spend with my family. My brother had recently volunteered for the army, and my mother was getting remarried after the holidays, so we decided to meet at her new apartment in the town of Weißwasser to celebrate the holiday and attend the small civil wedding she would have a few days later. My mother and I had kept in touch through letters while I was at the university, but this would be my first visit in some time.

Her apartment was typical for the GDR at that time—a cookie-cutter, four-story walk-up with a kitchen and adjoining living room at one end, a bathroom in the hallway, and two small bedrooms at the other end. The government had built thousands of these units all over the country to deal with a severe housing crisis. For my brother and me, this was not home; we came primarily to be together and to get another taste of our mother’s cooking. On Christmas Day, she served her special brand of seasoned pork chops with potatoes and sauerkraut. I stuffed myself to the gills.

As we were sitting around the table sipping after-dinner drinks, I broke the news.

“Mutti, I’m changing careers.”

She looked at me as if I had slapped her. What was this nonsense from her golden boy, her straight-A student who had won the Karl Marx Scholarship? If there was one thing my mother had known for sure, it was that her elder son would one day be an honored professor at a prestigious university.

“Change careers?”

The question sounded more like a challenge.

“Why would you throw away the great career you have ahead of you?”

“In February I am joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to become a diplomat. Think about it, Mutti. I will move to Berlin, and eventually I will be able to travel to many foreign countries.”

She stared at me, uncomprehending, from across the table. Finally, she blurted out, “Are you a spy?”

Now it was my turn to be stunned, but Hans-Günther came to the rescue without realizing what he was doing.

“Not our Albrecht! He would never do something as sinister as that.”

My mother frowned, then rose to clear a few dishes from the table. I couldn’t tell if she believed me, but that was the end of our discussion about my career, and the subject was never taken up again.

At the end of January, I quit my job at the university and handed my SED Party membership booklet to a representative of the secretariat. I wasn’t certain why it was necessary to turn in the booklet, but it seemed they would keep it on my behalf to be reclaimed when or if I needed it again. As I spoke for a moment with the secretary, he made a knowing comment about unsung heroes. Apparently, it was not the first time this comrade had collected a Party booklet.

The next day, I stashed my belongings in a suitcase and a large briefcase and boarded the train for Berlin. As we made our way toward the capital city, I realized I was on a trip to nowhere, without a return ticket. There would be many more trips like this one, but this train ride was the starting point of a most unusual journey. The destination on the map of my life was clearly marked with a hammer, a sickle, and a big question mark.

On Monday, February 5, 1973, early in the afternoon, I arrived at Berlin Ostbahnof, one of the city’s major train stations. After stashing my bags in a locker, I proceeded to the prearranged meeting place at a Karlshorst intersection, where I would connect with my new handler. The meeting protocol was identical to the one that Boris and I had used for my practice trip three months earlier, and everything proceeded as planned.

At three o’clock sharp, I spotted a stocky middle-aged man wrapped in a thick coat, smoking a cigarette near the side of a building just down the street from where I stood. After the usual exchange of passcodes and a few introductory niceties, we went straight to his car to discuss our next steps.

Unlike Herman, who had become a friend, and Boris, whose demeanor was always kindly, this new fellow, Nikolai—a Ukrainian national with a square face and a thick neck—talked and acted like a tough boss.

“Welcome to Berlin, comrade. I can tell you, your training won’t be easy.” Nikolai shifted in his seat so he could look me in the eye. “Let’s start as close to reality as possible. Imagine you just arrived in a new country and have to find a place to live.”

“Okay . . .”

“That is your first task—find a place to live and call me at this number next Monday at 9:00 a.m.”

I was dumbstruck. After living in dorm rooms with roommates for the past five years, I had been looking forward to settling in to my new accommodations. Surely the almighty KGB would provide their new spy-in-training with a nice place to live. But now Nikolai had just made it clear that I was on my own—and I knew that the housing shortage plaguing the entire country was most severe in Berlin. Communal living was not uncommon, particularly for young people—who often had to stay with their parents while languishing for years on a waiting list before they could find a place of their own.

What have I gotten myself into?

I kept a straight face, but my mind was spinning.

Is this how my great career as an undercover agent begins—looking for a place to live where there is nothing to be had?

I memorized the phone number and got out of the car, joining the stream of pedestrians making their way home from work on the cold streets of Berlin. It was too late to begin my apartment hunt that day, so I retrieved my luggage and rented a hotel room for the night. Tomorrow would be the official start of my new life, and a very unpleasant one at that.

The next day, I began my search by asking myself a question: How does a newcomer go about finding a place to live in a huge city where hundreds of thousands of people are waiting for a place of their own?

The answer was simple: Go door-to-door.

I knew the closer I searched to downtown Berlin, the more impossible the search would be. So I took a commuter train to the town of Erkner, forty-eight kilometers southeast of the city center and the last stop on the line out of Berlin. When I stepped off the train onto the cobblestone-paved platform, the drab terminal was deserted. This was encouraging. The fewer the people, the better the chance of finding a place—or so I hoped.

Exiting the terminal, I made a sharp left turn and walked toward a cluster of detached single-family houses. For the next three hours, I knocked on doors, rang doorbells, and talked with residents. Eventually, my efforts yielded a lead. One homeowner directed me to a small house on a street lined with beautiful birch trees. The street was appropriately named: Unter den Birken (Under the Birch Trees).

The woman who answered the bell appeared sickly, with loose strands of uncombed dirt-blonde hair and a two-tooth gap in her upper front teeth.

“I have a space I can rent out,” she said, “but . . . it is not very comfortable.”

I would soon discover that “not very comfortable” was the understatement of the year.

The woman led me across the yard to a ramshackle outbuilding divided into two rooms—one with a bed and a chair and the other with a coal-burning stove and a sink with running cold water. There was no other furniture. The toilet was an outhouse in the backyard.

So this was it, my very first apartment: a bed, a stove, a chair, and running water. Not exactly what I had dreamed about, but at least I could say I had a roof over my head and a bed to sleep on.

The spartan conditions didn’t bother me. During childhood, I had gotten used to asking for little and getting even less. And sacrifices had to be made for the cause. After all, my ultimate hero, Vladimir Lenin, had suffered through three years in a Siberian prison camp before triumphantly returning to Russia to take the reins of the first Communist state. I could not have known that my KGB bosses were living in luxury while lazily handing out orders to new recruits to find their own housing in a crowded and unfamiliar city.

I moved into my humble abode in Erkner with the kind of faith instilled in me by my parents: Good things will happen if you perform well. So I embraced these new circumstances with youthful optimism. This place was not a home; it was just a place to sleep.

Each morning, I took the train to the city and spent my time at the library or museums, or exploring the various neighborhoods on foot to establish a foundation for future operational exercises. I also joined the basketball team at the College of Economic Studies in Karlshorst, which provided me with some stable social interactions and guaranteed me at least one shower a week. I never told Nikolai anything about my living conditions, and that was instinctively wise. Bosses do not like to hear complaints or problems; they prefer solutions.

For one who was eager to get the ball rolling, my training unfolded at a painfully slow pace. There was never a written or structured plan with timelines, deliverables, and performance criteria. Nikolai gave me an outline of the subjects we would cover, but the implementation seemed to be a week-by-week, ad hoc exercise. The only constant in my training was my weekly time with Nikolai. Every Monday at nine o’clock sharp, I called him from a phone booth near my home, and he told me where and when we would meet. The only permanent feature of our meetings was the reports I had to turn in every month: an activity report and an expense report.

During our second meeting in Nikolai’s car, he handed me my first month’s pay—a stuffed envelope with 800 marks inside. This amounted to a 200-mark pay raise from my net income at the university.

“We pay in advance, and we do not take out taxes,” Nikolai said with the smallest hint of a grin.

At first, our meetings took place in Nikolai’s car, which he parked on Fürstenwalder Damm near the Friedrichshagen train station. He always brought me a stack of West German newspapers and magazines, and I looked forward to reading these interesting publications cover to cover, a true highlight of my otherwise mundane existence.

Our meetings generally lasted only twenty minutes, during which we engaged in small talk before Nikolai gave me my next set of instructions. It took me a couple of decades to realize that there is really no such thing as small talk between a spy and his handler. Nikolai was analyzing every word I said.

I quickly learned not to ask any questions about my training. I simply listened and learned. But it didn’t take long to see that the training was roughly divided into two categories: technical skills, or spycraft; and soft skills, which were about developing me as an individual.

All the technical skills were taught by highly proficient experts. I always worked one-on-one with my instructors, and Nikolai was the only other person allowed to attend. Because most of the technical specialists spoke neither German nor English, Nikolai often served as our translator. The seemingly vast resources required for my training led me to believe that the number of thoroughly prepared undercover agents had to be rather limited. I couldn’t imagine that there were thousands of us—and possibly not even hundreds—worldwide. Also, I never once met an active colleague—though, of course, such a meeting would have violated the fundamental rules of conspiracy.

The training covered the following subjects:

1. a) Shortwave Radio and Morse Code. The Morse code training was strictly focused on receiving. After I mastered the ten single digits and the alphabet at a slow speed, we concentrated on building up my receiving speed. I eventually topped out at a respectable 100 digits per minute. I was also instructed on the types of commercially available radios and how to use them to receive shortwave transmissions from my handlers in the KGB during my time in the West.
2. b) Cryptography. All transmissions I received via shortwave radio were encrypted, and I was taught to encrypt every specific piece of information (names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.) contained in my secret messages to KGB headquarters. The algorithm they taught me involved a double encryption. First, all letters were translated into digits, which were then randomized by adding or subtracting another set of digits derived by a separate algorithm. The fact that the only KGB document I ever signed with my full real name was a promise never to disclose any information about these algorithms speaks to the value the KGB attached to their code. According to my instructor, the code was unbreakable and good for about two hundred uses.
3. c) Secret Writing. The practice of secret writing, or the use of invisible ink, is as old as the written word. What changed over the years was the technology. The chemicals I used were almost impossible to detect. The process of creating a secret message started with writing a letter to a fictitious friend. This was called the open text. That sheet of paper was then placed on a plate of clean glass, or a mirror, and covered with a sheet of special contact paper and another sheet of regular paper. The secret message was written on the top sheet, using a #2 pencil and a light hand to avoid leaving any visible impressions on the bottom sheet. The letter containing the open text, which now also included the secret message, was sent via regular mail to a foreign address (the addresses I used were in West Berlin, Colombia, and Austria), where a trusted middleman would hand the letter over to a resident KGB agent, who in turn would forward it via diplomatic pouch to headquarters, where the writing would be developed in the lab. The entire process of getting a message to Moscow took two to three weeks.
4. d) Photography. As an avid amateur photographer, I didn’t need to be told how to use a camera or develop black-and-white film. I did, however, receive training in the use of a microscope to create a microdot—a negative no larger than a square millimeter that can easily be hidden under a postage stamp or glued into the inside of an envelope.

A great deal of attention was given to the area of field operations, which included surveillance detection, clandestine meetings, and dead-drop operations.

1. a) Face-to-Face Meetings. These meetings were used to give oral instructions, exchange passports, and hand over money. They were subject to a stringent protocol, including recognition signals and mutually known passcodes. My usual signal was that I would carry a copy of US News & World Report rolled up over a brown briefcase. To indicate danger, I would carry the magazine and the briefcase in separate hands. My meeting partner would always initiate the passcode sequence by saying, “Excuse me, are you looking for Susan Greene?” I would respond, “Yes, you must be David.”
2. b) Dead-Drop Operations. A dead-drop operation is a scheduled, indirect (no face-to-face contact), one-way transfer of material, such as money, a passport, microfilm, or a valuable document. The item to be transferred would be placed in an inconspicuous container, such as an old oil can or a stone made of plaster of Paris, and left in a prearranged drop location (a remote spot with little traffic). The person making the drop would set a signal for the recipient, such as a chalk mark on a utility pole, in a known location that the recipient would be certain to see. Once the pickup had been made, the recipient would set a responding signal for the person who made the drop, indicating the successful completion of the operation.
3. c) Surveillance Detection. Meetings, dead-drop operations, and other operational activities, such as mailing a letter with secret writing, would be preceded by a thorough surveillance-detection procedure. This involved traveling on a two- or three-hour route across the city to determine whether anyone was following. The most effective method of surveillance detection involved a series of small trips via public transportation. If the route was properly selected, it was virtually impossible for even the most sophisticated surveillance team to remain undetected.

Soft subject training involved five elements: ideological foundations, study of West Germany, human contact, learning a language, and cultural enrichment.

To build my understanding of Communist ideology, I was given a three-volume History of the Communist Party and a biography of Lenin to study.

I dissected the West German constitution, read West German publications, and watched their television programs. TV was especially rewarding because not only did it provide entertainment, but it was an activity I might otherwise be punished for, a clear indication of my above-the-law status.

Our mantra became “contacts, contacts, contacts,” which I heard often during my tenure with the KGB. This was indicative of the high value they placed on human intelligence. I had an ongoing task to meet, get to know, and report on as many new people as possible.

I was told that every KGB operative had to become proficient in a second language. Given the opportunity to choose, I picked English. The KGB paid for private tutors, and I dove into my language studies with the same zeal with which I had studied chemistry at the university.

I happily took advantage of the requirement for cultural enrichment. The KGB wanted their star agents to be broadly educated in order to fit in with the upper strata of any society. I attended the theater, ballet, opera, and museums, and the KGB reimbursed all tickets and entrance fees as part of my expenses.

In particular, I spent a lot of time on Berlin’s Museum Island, home to five world-renowned museums. My favorite was the Pergamon, particularly its collection of classical antiquities, which reminded me how, as a twelve-year-old, I had devoured a German transcription of both The Odyssey and The Iliad.

Occasionally I was given additional tasks, some strictly for practice and others meant to yield real results. Among those were several investigations of individuals with relatives in the West, including a couple who lived in Bernau, some twenty kilometers northeast of Berlin.

In order to accomplish that task, I took up temporary residence in the town, under the guise of a doctoral student of history doing research concerning certain events in Bernau’s past. The full beard I sported in those days made the cover quite believable. I interviewed a number of residents until one of them recommended that I also interview the target couple.

I now had a point of reference, which made my approach very natural and allowed me to strike up a conversation with the couple that turned into a brief friendship, during which I was able to extract the desired information concerning their relatives in the West.

Two other investigations took me into West Berlin, and the successful outcomes gave me confidence that I was not distinguishable as someone from the East. I was also asked to infiltrate the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), an East German political party, by profiling some of their leaders and writing a general report about the party. I gained access to several midlevel functionaries in the NPD by befriending an active member, the curator of the Gerhart Hauptmann Museum, which was located in my new hometown of Erkner. Given that the NPD was closely allied with, and probably even supervised by, the Communist Party, this was very likely a practice task.

During the early months of training, Nikolai acted like a hard boss, someone to be feared rather than liked. The underlying tension in our relationship came to a head in the summer of 1973.

Somehow, my last girlfriend from Jena had gotten ahold of my mailing address. At first, she sent me a very sweet love letter, which she concluded by saying, “And now everything is in your soft, warm hands.”

When I did not respond, she decided to surprise me in person. I could not have been more shocked when I answered a knock at the door of my humble abode and found Gabriele standing there. Though I was rather ashamed of my living quarters, I felt I had no choice but to invite her in. We sat next to each other on the bed, and she initiated the conversation.

“Albrecht, I cannot forget you. I should never have left Jena when I did. You know I never wanted to leave you. I just had to get away from that hateful chemistry lab. Please, let us give it another try—we can make this work.” By now, tears were running down her cheeks.

Despite my laser-like focus on the future, it was hard to watch a beautiful woman cry—and cry over me. But this was an impossible situation. I could not have a girlfriend from the past while I was preparing to leave my entire past behind. Such a relationship would jeopardize everything.

With a coldness that belied my true feelings, I said what had to be said, even though I knew it would hurt her. “Gabriele, I liked you a lot, but I never loved you. There is no foundation for a lasting relationship.”

“But—” she answered meekly, and then her tears began to flow freely as she realized that it really was over.

For the remainder of her visit, I managed to keep the conversation casual, and at the end of the day, I put her on a train back to her hometown of Leipzig.

When I confided to Nikolai what had happened, he straightened up immediately, and his face turned red with anger.

“Well, you can get back together with that girl if you want, but if that’s the case, you may want to consider a career in farming.”

“The relationship is over, completely over,” I said emphatically until finally he seemed to believe me. I had no intention of endangering the path I had chosen, but the message from Nikolai was clear: We own your private life.

Although the matter was never mentioned again, I was certain that in his next report, Nikolai would note that I was honest to the bone and that I had a weakness for the fairer sex. Such a notation may have later played a role in the KGB’s allowing me to get married, possibly to prevent me from falling victim to the wiles of a female counterintelligence agent. As hardened and focused as I would become, there was a chink in my armor—not the temptation of a woman, but the innocence of a child—that one day would lead to my downfall . . . and also to my salvation.