FOUR

Werner Müller was born in Heinersdorf in East Berlin. His mother's name was Anna Berndt before she married Albert Prosel - in the course of his work Werner used both surnames. As with most things in his life he created a persona for use in whichever society he found himself during the course of his work: East Berlin Secret Police boundaries went beyond any law enforcement agency operating in the west. One week prior to being permanently dispatched to New York he changed his name to Müller.

Werner came from a modest background. His mother, Anna Berndt, was a pastry cook in her uncle's bakery when she met Albert Prosel. After the daily quota was baked it was Anna's duty to tend the small shop until lunch time. She worked from four in the morning until one in the afternoon. Every day she brought cakes and warm bread home to her mother, whatever she needed. She had two sisters, one of whom also worked in the bakery.

She met Albert in her uncle's shop, he simply strolled in to buy bread one morning and she was smitten.

Their courtship was short and tumultuous as was usual for the time. One perfect summer day six weeks later, in June, they were married. It was 1934. Then, time really did not wait for any man, or woman. Decadent social behaviour from the previous decade had endured in Berlin. Young Germans lived their lives at an exhausting rate, planning not at all for the uncertain future.

Two days after their wedding the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, flew to Munich to play at his favourite lakeside hotel. That night Ernest Rohm, one of Hitler's closest colleagues in his new Nazi Party, was shot dead. As many as a thousand others in Munich and Berlin were also executed in what has since been called the Night of the Long Knives.

Werner was born in Berlin the following spring and raised amid the prevailing chaos that soon spawned global conflict. He was eight when he saw Hitler for the first and only time. On the streets that day were millions of small, red flags with black and white centres featuring the swastika; they were fluttered excitedly by school children along the planned motorcade route. Hitler stood and waved with one hand as the elongated convertible sped through the neighbourhood. In the crowds, hysteria transmitted itself in wave-like swells travelling beside the car. Every neck strained and every face brightened the day the Führer presented himself to Heinersdorf.

The second world war for Werner, the young boy, was a blur. There were ribbons in his memory on which euphoria and fear were etched. There was the ultimate real-life nightmare of invaders taking over his country. This was followed by a succession of hardships and defeats. He was ashamed of his country's defeat, his childhood pride was in tatters and that feeling never left him.

Just after his eighteenth birthday Werner eliminated a rival gang member and got away with it. He didn't kill the boy: he jagged him twice in the ribs with a short screw driver. But the injured boy's parents immediately moved their family away from the neighbourhood. The following month Werner was recruited to the city police force.

From the moment he donned the uniform at the police training academy, Werner knew he had found his niche, although it was not all clear sailing: he still had a highly developed sense of loathing for authority.

Werner discovered the writings of Nietzche in the third year of high school, and in them two concepts he continued to espouse throughout his life. These were Nietzche's idea of the Superman and the 'proper place' for women in society. He enjoyed the idea that men of intelligence and vision should not be bound by the rules that govern others. They should be allowed to rise above the rest, revered and rewarded, even as dictators. And when Werner read Thus Spake Zarathustra his own opinions of women were finally reinforced: in it Nietzche wrote that women were not capable of friendship, they were still cats, or birds, or at best cows. 'Man shall be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior. All else is folly,' he read.

Werner learned that Hitler and his favourite composer, Wagner, based their life's work, as well as their own ethics, on Nietzche's writings. So, that was that - Werner's life had clear direction.

Physically or intellectually, Werner was no superman and when he met Renate she didn't know he thought of her as the equal of a cow, bird or cat. She thought he loved her, he said so often enough through that first summer. They were married four weeks before the approaching Christmas. About twenty friends and relatives attended the wedding; he wore his police uniform; she wore a tight, white gown and a short veil.

Werner was firm. When he had said 'no children' to Renate, he meant it. The morning after she told him she was pregnant, he left her. They had been married for two years. He couldn't ask that she have an abortion, it went against his moral beliefs. That she should raise the child in his absence was her fault, he told her.

He never married again.

Soon he had risen through the ranks of the police force and was considered for promotion to secret duties. He told no one when it happened. Werner Müller simply changed his surname to his mother's maiden name, Berndt, and without remorse, disappeared from the life of his wife, family and friends... forever.

It was in New York that Werner was first approached to get involved in industrial espionage. He was waiting to meet a flight, sitting on a stool at a bar in the airport next to a banker. The man looked like his father, short, overweight, balding and roughly the same age. He was from the south. But his tall, slim wife was only about twenty-five and from her broad accent, definitely a New Yorker. After he had bought Werner a second drink and they had sat talking for half an hour the man just propositioned him right there.

'I think I'm a pretty good judge of character Werner,' Michael Lewis said staring into his face.

'Oh really.'

'Yeah... and I reckon you're not what you seem.'

'What do you mean?'

'You look like a cop to me, or a private detective or undercover airport security officer.

'Do I?'

Werner did not miss a beat, he was hard to fluster.

'Am I right?'

'You're absolutely right.'

Both of them smiled and there was silence.

'Well what is it then?' the banker insisted.

'I can't tell you that.'

'Sure you can, who the hell am I going to tell man?'

Michael leaned forward. 'You can tell me, I'll keep your secret.'

'Well there's not much to keep secret.'

He looked at Werner frowning.

'Okay... I'm a private detective. You know one of those men who peeks in windows photographing husbands who fool around.'

For a moment Werner noticed Michael Lewis went pale but soon recovered and drew back hard on his cigarette.

'You're not checking on me are you Werner?' he asked, spraying scotch and blowing smoke as he coughed and hacked, forcing a fit of belly laughter.

'No... I wouldn't be sitting next to you if I was.'

'I like your style Werner, Europeans take their work more seriously than Americans.'

He looked the German up and down.

'Would you like to work for me, Werner?'

'I don't know... .'

'I mean full-time work... for the bank?'

'I suppose it depends on what I have to do.'

Michael Lewis looked him over again.

'I need someone to check on what my competition is up to, from time to time... and I think you might just be that person. Am I right?'

Werner agreed to think about the Banker's offer. He knew there was more money to be had in this line of work than he was currently able to command. But it wasn't until a few weeks later, when his German colleagues - national operatives - began to mysteriously disappear, that he finally decided to take the job on.

He joined the South Carolina Bank of Commerce and worked there as an undercover man for twelve years. At the same time he remained working for his beloved Germany. While he was with the bank he was single handedly responsible for the bank's stock and property boom: he provided Lewis with illegal insider trading information which made billions of dollars for his employers. When Michael Lewis died, Werner left the bank and joined TransGlobal Mining. He had been headhunted by a specialist personnel company in San Francisco. Finally, he could operate on the surface again. He was getting too old for the stress of undercover work.