Once the Iron Curtain was gone tens of thousands of people from Eastern Europe began filtering into Germany each month to claim asylum. But, in truth, it was the prospect of welfare which drew them, more than political freedom. Spending a few weeks on the run, sleeping a night or two in a forest, crossing a river in a leaky rowboat before arriving in Germany – minor inconveniences on the way to a social stipend ten times the average wage in Romania.
The reaction of Germany’s far right was a brutal whipping-up of fears that the foreigners grabbed jobs, took away good apartments and, worst of all, would eventually dilute German blood. The backlash took the form of Molotov cocktails lobbed into asylum seekers’ shelters. Accompanying all this was an increase in the desecration of Jewish graves and the defilement of monuments that serve as reminders of the Holocaust. Deep inside the German forests, neo-Nazis practised occult rites. Journals around the world ran stories that questioned whether Germany reunified was slipping back into nationalism, political violence, xenophobia and all the other things that had happened in the thirties.
Von Helmholtz, grim-faced, was alone. It was late. An official dinner for the Danish foreign minister had been marred. The man made an off-the-cuff remark in his dinner speech, reminding everyone that Hitler wormed his way into power while the German elite watched from the sidelines. Hitler’s treacherous invasion of Denmark was not forgotten, the minister said. He asked uncomfortable questions about the current situation. Guests shifted in their seats. Later, the Chief of Protocol took the Danish ambassador by the arm, saying the remarks were unhelpful. The ambassador nodded gravely. A digression, he explained. Not part of the prepared text. He would ask Copenhagen for clarification.
The appearance of deterioration – fire-bombings, right-wing thugs assaulting foreigners, a pattern of light sentences for convicted neo-Nazis – had to stop, von Helmholtz decided. He also knew the real right wing danger was subtler. It lay with ordinary people incapable of changing from the old way of being German. A symbol was needed, something effective, to influence German attitudes and turn the tide of world opinion. After dinner, having seen the foreign minister to his hotel, von Helmholtz went to his office to conceive a plan. Towards midnight he dictated a three-page memorandum onto a tape. One page, for the police, outlined the need to get tough; another, to the courts, urged sentences that would deter; the third was for the media. He wanted one hundred thousand demonstrators in Berlin marching for tolerance and against xenophobia.
According to the plan they would converge from East and West on the Lustgarten, which with its military-parade-square emptiness would be ideal. Nothing there for a huge crowd to destroy. The event would be light on speeches, just enough to make the purpose clear, maybe just one – by the German President – and then rock bands to get the crowd to sway and cheer.
The idea took root. Political parties, community groups, clubs, schools, radio stations, multipliers everywhere got into the act. Special fares were offered by the railway; public transport in Berlin would be free. Diplomats were invited too, so that foreigner ministers around the world would get the message. Hanbury received a note from Protocol. Attached was a map showing the VIP area that would be roped-off.
The Sunday began with the city hunkered down in a cold, clinging fog – the type that causes water to drip from trees and attacks the membranes of the nose. The consul faced a choice that morning: stay home and listen to Tchaikovsky, or go out into the graveyard weather to watch Germans declare multicultural love. Some days before, when he had lunched with Gundula in her paper’s club, she became enthusiastic about the rally. Was he going? The consul said he wasn’t sure. She teased his indecision and her laugh echoed (and beckoned) for days. In the end, he decided against Tchaikovsky and for the demo. When he set out, the fog was lifting, but he took no chances, not after the Scheunenviertel. He put on his new jacket, Gore-Tex,wasserdicht.
When the consul emerged from the underground near the Brandenburg Gate onto Unter den Linden he was overwhelmed by a flood of humanity. They made a fluttering sound, like a flock of birds in flight. It was the noise of thousands of soft soles beating the pavement, everyone going in the same direction. Families, old couples, people dressed formally in scarves and hats, and youths in scruffy jeans. All of Berlin, from Kreuzberg to Dahlem and Wedding to Wannsee seemed on the march. These were the masses streaming in from the West. The swell arriving at the Lustgarten from the East – Prenzlauerberg, Marzahn, Pankow – was no different. In his new relaxed, outback-type jacket and faded shoes, Hanbury melded in and became one of them.
Which was how he felt. The feeling had been growing. An oddly different experience from the other assignments – Kuala Lumpur, Caracas, Cairo, the places in the States. Was it Müller, who made the difference? Or von Helmholtz? Or Gundula Jahn? Or even the nearness of Sabine, and now her husband with whom he’d spoken a few times? Maybe it was all of them together.
Müller. Hanbury thought back to their last Tankard session. In between complaints about losing the race, the old man coughed repeatedly. He wasn’t in top form: his glass of Pils scarcely left the table. The beer sitting there, losing its fizz – it bothered Uwe’s son-in-law. He inquired why Herr Müller was resting his elbow. No reply from Müller, not even a scowl. To avoid upsetting him further, Hanbury didn’t mention that Sabine’s husband had called him several times.
Hanbury’s first impression of Schwartz at the stadium was that he resembled a financier more than an academic. He had a formal bearing. And a sneer. But on the phone a few days later, he was friendly, almost familiar. He apologized for being curt when Sabine ran off. He had been taken by surprise, he explained.
“That’s all right.”
“You see, I had difficulty understanding what was happening. Sabine tends to daydream and I thought she might have forgotten to tell me something.”
“No problem.”
“We talked about you,” Schwartz continued. “She told me the story and, of course, that’s fine. It happened long ago. Still, she wishes… she would have preferred it if you hadn’t come back. By the way, she doesn’t know I’m calling you.”
Hanbury thought this over. Sabine’s husband talking about his wife brought her strangely near. For a few seconds he relived the intensity of the moment at the stadium.
“No need to talk about all that’s happened,” Schwartz suggested, waving the Savignyplatz period aside like crumbs off a table. “I’m a historian. I try to see the past objectively.” He said he was engaged in a study of diplomacy; he believed he and the consul would have much to talk about. Could they get together?
“No problem.”
They decided when and where and Schwartz hung up. He had been so charming, so easy-going that Hanbury wondered why Müller had such a low opinion of his daughter’s husband.
An hour later, still intrigued by Schwartz’s call, Hanbury left for lunch with Gundula. On the way Sturm talked of bread. He had come around to the view, he informed the back seat, that bread in the East was better than in the West. The consul doubted this, but Sturm was insistent. “Think about it, Herr Konsul. It makes sense. Everything in the West is done by machines to maximize profits. So breakfast rolls come out of the oven full of air. You think you’re getting bread, but mostly you’re buying holes. In the East, the baking is done by hand. The bread has substance.”
“Do they skimp on yeast?” the back seat skeptically replied.
“I don’t think so,” countered the chauffeur. “They just don’t overdo it.” From bread, he moved to Wurst, which Sturm argued was also better in the East. And then to fish, freshly caught in the numerous lakes around Berlin. “Our diet has improved since the Wall came down,” he pointed out. “We’re living off the land again.”
In the entrance hall of the publishing house, waiting for Gundula to come down, Hanbury viewed a display. Copies of original front pages headlining Berlin’s historic moments were on show: the day the Communists began building the Wall; soldiers shooting people racing to get out and leaving them to bleed to death where they dropped; a picture of a border guard chucking his weapon and leaping through a gap in the barbed wire (and making it!); JFK’s visit in ’63; twenty-odd years on, Reagan making a speech before the Brandenburg Gate in ’85, daring Gorbachev to open it; Gorbachev visiting Honecker in ’89 saying History punishes those who act too late. Well, Hanbury thought, history did its job. Two months later the totalitarian regime was gone. Still more pictures showed tearful East Berliners in their Trabis surging through the opened Wall.
Hanbury, absorbed in old news and young history, didn’t notice Gundula coming. “Cowboy!” she said. “Entertaining yourself?” She was dressed in jeans and boots and a sweatshirt with the paper’s logo. She looked different than in the minidress at the Helmholtz dinner, but there was the same bite in her voice.
“Look,” he said. “I’ve discovered an age when Trabis didn’t need pushing.”
Gundula began laughing. “There was no alternative then,” she said. “No cowboys. Cars had to start.”
The newspaper’s club was on an upper floor. In the elevator Hanbury inquired how her car was doing. Gundula said she had taken his advice: Trabi had been serviced. He still made noise, but it was a healthy sound, like the purr of an animal mating. “Seen the latest Trabi bumper sticker?” she asked. Hanbury shook his head. “When God created other cars, he was just practising.” He laughed and was about to quip that Trabis mating Trabis should be a good thing, since the species seemed destined for extinction, but the elevator stopped.
The club was imitation-British: leather sofa ensembles for private conversations; wood-panelled walls covered with prints of pre imperial Berlin; a photo collection of famous international visitors. The building had been constructed next to the Wall as a beacon to press freedom and the club had provided good views of the mined no-man’s-land in the city streets just below. The inevitable effect of this reality on visitors, this direct confrontation with Communism, was a fuller appreciation for the need of policies that matched the other side – tank for tank, missile for missile. The same view now led to a different amazement. Land mines (and thoughts of missiles) had been replaced by a giant aerial web of entrepreneurially minded building cranes.
The paper’s old hands, sipping lunchtime drinks, broke off their gossip when Gundula walked by. She flashed them her smile. They studied her guest. Not someone they knew. Gundula didn’t often bring outsiders to the club. Usually she sat with the pros, the cynics, the instant analysts who entertained her with tales of journalistic prowess during the golden age – when the enemy lurked across the street. She led the consul to a table away from the others. A steward took their orders. When he left Hanbury said, “I’ve been reading your columns.”
“That sounds serious.”
“I enjoy them.”
“If that’s true, they’re a failure,” Gundula said.
“I mean the style. The issues you write about are something else again. I don’t know enough about them.”
“That I accept,” she said.
“I take it people in the East aren’t happy. They see that freedom has a downside.”
“They’ve got no problem with freedom,” Gundula snapped. “That’s what they wanted for forty years. The problem is the West’s dog-eat-dog version. Making the transition takes time. The society is in shock.” She looked out the window.
“Your piece on skinheads in Schwedt was riveting,” he said. “Are they really terrorizing the place? It sounds like Dodge City.”
“You know Schwedt?” a surprised Gundula asked. Hanbury shook his head – what he knew came from her column. “A typical post-socialist town,” she said. “People living mono-cultured lives in repetitious blocks of flats. The jobs are gone. Families are breaking down. The kids see nothing functions, not even the police. So they vandalize and terrorize. They shave their heads. They look for scapegoats. What’s to stop them?”
“Last week I was this close to a bunch of skinheads,” the consul said nonchalantly, showing Gundula a narrow gap between his thumb and forefinger. “I went into a pub. There they were.” He chuckled. “I don’t know how I survived.”
“I guess you’re talented.”
“It’s something I learned in Indian Head…I mean, ducking out of beer hall brawls.”
“I can see you doing that,” she said. “I can see you using table legs as camouflage.”
The steward brought the food. Hanbury delved deeper into the problems of East German towns like Schwedt. Gundula, low-key, as in her columns, described the causes of neo-Nazi attitudes. She mentioned the demonstration against hatred towards foreigners. The paper was supporting it. “A hundred thousand people are expected,” she said. “You should go. Diplomats should see it.”
Hanbury said he hadn’t decided yet. “Protocol is making arrangements. Maybe there’ll be a diplomatic bus.”
Gundula looked at him with disbelief. For her, the rally was something that should be felt, something that provided impulse. Dainty diplomatic dances – one hesitant step forward, two firm ones back – were new for her. “Join the marchers,” she urged. “You don’t want to be part of a flock of penguins stepping off a bus. You’d look ridiculous.”
Hanbury hadn’t come to spar with Gundula over diplomatic niceties. He wanted to hear her laugh again, as she had in the middle of the night in front of his house. He wanted to listen to her impertinence. He wanted to see the sarcasm in her eyes that said she didn’t believe a thing he said. Intriguing him most was her Stasi file. As they ate, he waited for an opening to ask about it. But it was Gundula who questioned him, as if she was after material for the next day’s column. She wanted to know all about hooligans in the drinking halls of Indian Head.
“Not really hooligans,” Hanbury said, back-pedalling. “I shouldn’t have labelled them that. Just strong boys. After a dozen beer they like doing some light sparring. It’s best then to keep your head down because they might try an experiment: what breaks faster, their knuckles or your jaw.”
“I see,” Gundula said. “Civilization’s veneer disappears that fast?”
“Sure. But it comes back. When a woman gets hold of them they turn into hard-working farmers and join curling clubs in the winter.”
“And what happened to you? Did you have cracked knuckles or a broken jaw?”
“Neither. I told you. I watched. From underneath the table.”
“And the women there aren’t interested in men that hide?”
“That’s it,” Hanbury said with twisted triumph. “And what about you? The other night you started telling me about your Stasi file.” Gundula shrugged as if there wasn’t much to say. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said conspiratorially. “I’ll lift the curtain on secret prairie drinking rites if you tell me where you come from.”
“But I don’t mind talking about that. I lived near the Baltic. Ever been there?”
“No, but I guess the Stasi were.”
“They were everywhere. They even worried people would swim to freedom across the Baltic Sea. A swim to Sweden – it would only take five days. They were so stupid.”
“How did you end up in Berlin? How did you get to know Gerhard? I have to admit something. At his house…I thought there was something between you two.”
Gundula pealed with laughter. The veteran journalists lunching two tables over stopped spooning their soup. “Thank you for thinking that!” she said. “My turn. I’ll try one on you. Have you slept with Viktoria?”
Hanbury dropped his fork. “What makes you ask that?”
“You looked down into her bust all evening.”
He remembered Viktoria next to him, her skin in touching distance, the thin halter holding up her dress. “I was looking at her shoulder,” Hanbury said meekly.
Another burst of merriment from Gundula. “Wonderful. A cowboy who saves Trabis, has never bruised a fist and admits to a fetish for bare shoulders. Is every cowboy in Indian Head like that?”
Hanbury became still and Gundula realized she might have gone too far. Dropping the irony from her voice, she described how she went from doing nothing special in East Germany’s north to being a widely-read columnist in Berlin. After the Wall was down travel agencies sprung up everywhere. She first worked for one in Schwerin, then in Berlin. One day she read about a competition run by the paper. Participants were required to write a 300-word portrait of a prominent Berlin personality. The best one would make it into print. Gundula decided to enter, but write about whom? She went for the best known man in the city. Von Helmholtz agreed to an interview. The Chief of Protocol, the multi-layered man with a centre somewhere inside all that perfect breeding, opened up to Gundula, his past, the pitfalls of his work, his views on political and social issues. The material was original and Gundula wrote a piece that was both humorous and serious. She caught von Helmholtz’s character perfectly. The chief editor told her it demolished the competition. “They offered me a job doing stories on East Berlin. One day they gave me my own column. Maybe Gerhard is behind it. The editor is one of his protégés. He helps people along, although I don’t know why he’d do that for me.”
I do, Hanbury thought, keeping his insight to himself. Instead he joked, “Maybe von Helmholtz has a fetish too. Maybe he likes journalists with class.”
“I see. Well, I understand your fetish better.”
Dessert came and Hanbury changed the subject. “Can I ask you something. Would you help me find Günther Rauch? You said you know him.”
“I know of him. I’ve never met him. Why don’t you try the phone book?”
“And why do you want to see him?”
“He’s an old acquaintance.” Hanbury described his student visits to East Berlin. “I want to see how he is. I should have tried to contact him after I saw him the last time, but I didn’t. I want to apologize for that. Everybody seems to know him, but nobody knows where to find him. I don’t even know why he’s so well-known.”
“He was briefly famous because of what he did after the regime fell. He organized a group to stop the Stasi destroying their files. For a few weeks he was a hero, then he faded from the scene. I suppose his politics weren’t right.”
“He’ll never have the right politics. Could you locate him? If questions come from me, you know, being a diplomat, people wonder.” Gundula said she’d think about it.
As Hanbury was leaving, at the entrance to the building, her face again took on an impish smile. “So don’t forget the rally. And don’t forget your cowboy boots. Otherwise I might not spot you.”
Fat chance of spotting anybody, the consul now thought. How many hundred thousand were there? He was locked into a human tide slowly moving past the Opera, past the imperial armoury, across the bridge onto the island in the river. Locating Gundula would be impossible, so he decided to aim for the VIP area next to a stage put up at the far end of the Lustgarten. People were coming to a halt, the continuous arrivals on the periphery were causing compression at the centre. Hanbury squeezed through an increasingly denser crowd. At a security cordon he showed identification and slipped into the area reserved for VIPs. Gundula had been right. In their dark coats the motionless, hunched diplomats stood around like penguins in slumber.
One of them woke up. “Canada!” he sang in welcome. He fingered Hanbury’s waterproof jacket. “You dressed for the occasion. Such courage.” Another said, “I considered it. I almost decided to dress casual.” This started an animated discussion on the staggeringly high price of clothing in Berlin, which converted slowly into muted criticism of the distance they were forced to walk in formal attire through the security cordon. A Scandinavian complained police patrols had not been provided to ensure safe passage of official cars through Berlin and a Latin American observed no escorts were available with free umbrellas should it start to rain. The group then compared their getaway plans once Germany’s President had spoken, how best to race back to the sanctuary called Dahlem.
Von Helmholtz appeared. He shook hands, thanking the diplomats for coming. They congratulated him that such a huge crowd had been assembled. “It will send a message to the world,” prophesied the representative of France. Hanbury moved towards von Helmholtz and asked if everything was as expected. “Yesterday’s prediction was three hundred thousand, but the estimate keeps rising. It could be four. But, the police have picked up a rumour. We’re worried about trouble.” Von Helmholtz surveyed the front ranks of the crowd.
Hanbury had never seen four hundred thousand people together in one place. Most remarkable was the stillness, the queer silence. An air of duty had settled over the Lustgarten and its neighbouring boulevards and squares. It seemed almost half a million people in an immense, open-air temple were waiting for a religious act to start. Von Helmholtz excused himself. Shortly after, the stillness was broken by a scattering of applause. Von Helmholtz was now on the stage in the company of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Everyone sensed the aura of noble purpose with which they walked to the front. The Chief of Protocol spoke into the microphone. His voice jumped out of a hundred speakers. The sound echoed lightly off the wall of the Berlin Cathedral and further back, more faintly, off the glass face of the Palast der Republik. He thanked the people for coming, described their common aim and the symbolic nature of their act. Meine Damen und Herren, he announced,der Bundespräsident.
The President spoke without a prepared text. Words from the loudspeakers filled the Lustgarten and reached towards the far corners of Marx Engels Platz. It crossed the river, echoing down Unter den Linden. The people were attentive. In understatement he addressed the past, its horrors, and the fear ordinary people feel when faced with tyranny. Every society has a potential for tyrants, he said. Every society is obligated to find ways to keep them down. He described the power a society acquires when toleration and vigilance are in balance.
Hanbury, looking at von Helmholtz, saw him suddenly stiffen. He made a series of rapid, scarcely noticeable signals. At the same moment there was a rustle in the crowd. Hanbury turned. Objects were flying through the air. One hit him on the shoulder and clung. An egg, wet and sticky, dripped down his jacket. Another, better-aimed egg got the President on the side of the head. Still more landed on the stage with no effect. It was over in seconds. Von Helmholtz stepped to the President to rub the worst away with a wipe or two of a handkerchief. Hanbury perceived vaguely that the rustle in the crowd was now moving to the sidelines. Undercover agents had jumped on a half dozen assailants and were hustling them away. No one had said anything. No shouting. No commotion. In those few seconds the same queer silence reigned. The President and the Chief of Protocol, close to the microphone, were heard whispering, their indistinct exchange sounding like a wind moving through a stand of trees. The President shook his head. He would not back away. Unfazed, he intended to continue. His voice betrayed no change in emotion. Reason and persistence were his weapons for this fight.
Two hundred metres deep in the crowd it would have been difficult to notice something had happened. People saw the Chief of Protocol go towards the President and move away to the side, no more. But TV cameras saw it differently. The image speeding around the world was of a President assailed and of a demonstration that had failed.
When the President finished and a rock band began setting up, the diplomats departed. Several commiserated with Hanbury over his soiled jacket. The Scandinavian made a little joke about bird droppings; the Latin American concluded the mishap proved that people in public life should wear washable garments. Von Helmholtz came along, saw what had occurred and asked Hanbury to walk with him to his office. The official part of the event was over; the rock concert would be routine.
As they walked the Chief of Protocol vented his anger. “They weren’t neo-Nazis,” he said grimly. “Merely anarchists. Ineffective, pathetic creatures who lack purpose. Still, we know what the headlines will say. I’m sorry you were hit.”
“No harm done.” Hanbury replied, keeping up with the Chief of Protocol’s fierce pace. “It was the President who got it on the head. Otherwise everything went fine. Everyone was calm. The mood was serene.”
Von Helmholtz slowed. The sun was setting behind them through banks of clouds; one strip was nearly black, another lit up red and beneath it a luminous ribbon of yellow. “We knew something was planned,” he said. “Dozens were intercepted. Seven or eight got through. It shouldn’t have happened. We gambled. We didn’t succeed. I must say, the President took it well. He asked if others were hit. When an opportunity arises I’ll introduce you to him. You’re his only co-victim.”
“Maybe Gundula Jahn will do a column on it,” Hanbury said. She was still in his thoughts. Where had she been at the rally? Had she seen what happened? “Maybe she can recover some ground with a good piece.”
Von Helmholtz doubted it, but the mention of Gundula changed his mood. Some of his tension drained off. He praised her talent as a journalist, but said he worried she was becoming too identified with the problems of the East. “You could help. You should try to interest her in international affairs. She needs to widen her scope before she hits a dead end.”
In the Rote Rathaus courtyard, von Helmholtz commanded a car and driver to take the consul home. Hanbury argued he could find his way, but the Chief of Protocol insisted. “You’re one of us now, Tony,” he murmured, opening the door of a limousine. “You too have been embarrassed by the Fatherland.”
The Monday papers gave the incident in Berlin front page treatment. Randolph McEwen sitting in the breakfast pavilion of a Munich hotel was deciphering the story. The indoor garden with banana plants and palms might be fine in summer, but on this frosty Bavarian morning it was filled with cold convection. On the other hand, the article he was translating – word by word – provided unexpected inner warmth.
Eggs on their faces, he thought. A rally against xenophobia! A batty idea. In the old Berlin, the one administered by the Allies, the right wing would have gotten short shrift: infiltration of the neo-Nazis, hooligans rounded up as they slept, quick judicial arrangements. But now… well…deep down the Hun’s brain was soft. The demonstration proved it.
Delightful though the headlines were, they didn’t alter McEwen’s mood. Guidelines for the transfer of operational control of security and intelligence gathering in the Berlin arena to the Germans were part of the agreement on the withdrawal of foreign troops. In accordance with this unknown blip on Germany’s reunification map, McEwen was in Munich to bare his networks to new German counterparts. Who would have predicted a day would come when he would be forced to swallow a pill this bitter?
Transfer an intelligence-gathering function! An absurd notion. Yet, it was all spelled out in detail in an outrageous, secret annex to the Two Plus Four Agreement which charted the reunification course. Not only that, but the fine print said the handover of Berlin Station operations would be in Munich, in the suburb of Pullach, in Uncle Teut’s own complex. An insult in itself. We won the wars, McEwen kept thinking. I shouldn’t have to go to Uncle Teut.
There was worse. New operations during the changeover period were to be double key. McEwen needed Uncle Teut’s approval for every initiative as his own resources disappeared. Could there be a greater ignominy than a career ending in dependency on the Hun? McEwen’s frustration was so great he felt his spleen was on the verge of rupturing. Berlin was so delightful before Europe changed. Tussling with the Soviets had been amusing. Uncle Sam had been supportive. Double keys with Uncle Sam meant operations moved like lightning. But Uncle Teut was different. Uncle Teut was grave. He was ponderous. He needed time to think things through. He only acted once the highest court in the land granted clearance. By the time an operation began, the Libyans, Iranians, or Iraqis, not to mention the Russian Mafia, had had their day. Half a nuclear arsenal might have been smuggled in and out. Uncle Teut lacked two ingredients for success: flexibility and instinct. His complicated rules rendered a distressing certainty: operations that were permanently jammed.
The egg-splashing yesterday showed the rot. In a sardonic corner of his mind, as he methodically deciphered the front page story, McEwen composed a few remarks he would soon make. Sorry to hear about Berlin, Alex. Frightfully embarrassing. I heard the anarchists had intentions. How did they get through? Dressed as police agents? Nothing wrong with goading Uncle Teut. Uncle Teut wasn’t above delivering insults himself. Why else had an Oxford man been named for this partnership undertaking. Partnership undertaking! That’s what the fine print said.
Alexander Graf Bornhof spoke English with such nearly perfect Oxford diction that whenever McEwen heard the accent he felt robbed blind.
No Hun should be allowed to steal the British soul by speaking like a don.
Graf Bornhof pretended to be friendly; he liked to show himself cooperative; he made out he was self-effacing. The Oxford veneer made him difficult to deal with. But today, at least, McEwen had the unexpected gift of a smelly egg laid in the Hun’s own tidy nest. It mitigated the humiliation – a little.
The humiliation deepened after breakfast. Transportation to Pullach was in a Mercedes 600, V12, bullet-proof, with a communication system and voice scrambler in the trunk. Somewhat more comfortable than McEwen’s own imported compact. A little faster. Slightly better equipped. Real leather seats. And so deeply, deeply silent.
He loves to rub it in, the Hun. We won both World Wars. We won the Cold War. We win all the wars, but it’s the Hun that profits.
The gate to the Pullach complex slid aside. Papers were checked. Für Graf Bornhof, the driver snapped. Warten Sie! Wait, ordered the guard. He telephoned, then returned. In Ordnung. That’s fine. McEwen heard the exchange as a series of short verbal explosions. McEwen knew Pullach by now, but he didn’t like the place. He didn’t like the sound of it. He didn’t like the sound of the orders.
He was escorted to the conference room. As always, fruit juices, soft drinks and a thermos with good coffee were on offer on the table. Christmas was not far off and there was decoration too: holly twigs, red candles and trays of Christmas cookies. Interspersing the colour were small poinsettias alternately red and white. Into this festive atmosphere Graf Bornhof and two subordinates arrived.
“Randolph!” Graf Bornhof exclaimed with delight.
“Terribly pleased to see you, Alexander,” came the flat reply. “Starting the annual celebration, I see. Very pretty.” He nodded to the decorated table.
“I shall pass your compliment to the ladies. They are quite excited at this time of year. And why not? Intelligence work can have a human face. Allow me to introduce my colleagues.” Graf Bornhof presented Herr Seidel and Herr Heine. “Howwayuh,” said Seidel. “Hi,” Heine added. American accents. Uncle Sam trained. Seidel was bald. Even his eyebrows were thinning into nothing. He wore rimless glasses which heightened the effect of the naked head. A Himmler clone, thought McEwen. But Heine was an imitation Ivy Leaguer: well-trimmed hair, a Harris Tweed jacket, and thick-soled brocade shoes.
They settled around the table. “Good to have you here again, Randolph,” Graf Bornhof said. “Trip went well?”
“Got out just in time, I’d say, Alex. It turned jolly nasty yesterday in Berlin. The President pummelled with eggs. What went wrong?”
Graf Bornhof’s smile dried up. “We had an emergency post-mortem last night,” he said. “The enforcers flew in and when we sat down, that was indeed the question. Where was the mistake? Was it the information, the manpower, the control system? Once we pieced things together, we decided the question should be otherwise. What went right? Almost everything went right, Randolph. The event was high risk – there were enough arguments against it – but overall it worked. Four hundred thousand people, orderly and peaceful. About fifty anarchists were intercepted on the way, sifted out from four hundred thousand participants. Seven got through, but they were dragged off the moment they cocked their arms to throw. I believe only one egg landed.” Graf Bornhof relaxed. How close to perfection can one get, his posture asked.
“Excellent work, Alex. Suspected as much. I know from experience how challenging such events can be. The line between what goes right and what goes wrong can be faint, difficult to define. Too bad about that one egg…and on the President too.”
“Indeed,” said Graf Bornhof.
As Graf Bornhof spoke, Seidel, the Himmler clone, had been fingering a stack of newspaper clippings. “Correction,” he drawled in a gutturally modulated southern states’ accent. “See here. A diplo was in the line of fire too.” He pulled out a story with a paragraph circled in red and placed it in front of his boss who pushed it impatiently to the side.
“A diplomatic incident as well? Oh dear, worse than I imagined,” McEwen said.
Graf Bornhof didn’t bite. “Shall we commence?” he said.
The agenda had two items: Phase Three of the handover and, at McEwen’s request, the need for an urgent twenty-four-seven, double-key operation.
No aspect of the partnership undertaking caused McEwen more pain than Phase Three. Phase One catalogued Berlin Station operations. Phase Two passed electronic listening facilities, targeted mostly at Russian military camps around Berlin, plus surveillance responsibilities of German threats in Berlin, over to Uncle Teut. But Phase Three hurt. McEwen was to bare his covert networks and transfer control.
With two half-round slotted keys, McEwen opened a case. He removed a dozen thin files marked Top Secret. He grabbed the top file, his least complicated operation, a pipeline into Berlin’s Lebanese underworld. Three Arab-Israelis with Beirut credentials had infiltrated the Lebanese community. The information haul – details on arms deals, timetables for shipments of chemical weapon ingredients, circumventions of export controls on inertial guidance systems – was significant. The meta-diplomat, master of Berlin Station, described the network, the procedures for information downloading, the intercepts of shipments destined for Libya, Iraq, Iran. When McEwen finished, Graf Bornhof took the file, studied it, asked questions and passed it to his subordinates who also looked it over.
They worked their way meticulously through all the files. Information on the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union had been obtained from a group of social workers looking after refugees. There was a nearly completed organization chart of the Berlin branch of the Russian mafia put together by a diverse group – office cleaners, taxi drivers and some long haired youths running a bogus parcel delivery service. Reports had been assembled on an international armaments dealers’ association that met in a picturesque villa on the Tegeler See, using as cover an annual conference there on improving aid flows to poor countries. McEwen also had a handle on an international biological warfare cartel run from the laboratories of the Free University under the code name Sherry Trifle. And an army of paid informers in the Russian Army in East Germany had been productive over the years, but this group was beginning to disperse. Clerks in three banks in Berlin reported on the laundering of profits from European sales of pirated video and audio tapes from China. The fake patents business, the heroin trade, shady forms of counter-trade, Russian girls sent into prostitution around the world: the files were portraits of the black side of humanity. They symbolized McEwen’s view of the world, and his stand against it.
As Phase Three proceeded and McEwen’s world passed into the responsibility of Uncle Teut, the ticking of a wall clock sounded like a dirge. Regularly a cuckoo defiantly stepped out, but its voice had been suppressed, so there was only the sound of a mechanism whirring. Which was how McEwen felt. He darkly believed that the clock, so sadly emasculated, had been hung there for a purpose.
Seidel, eyes full of admiration, was the most vocal of the three. “Hey!” he would say. “This is neat. Real good. Full marks. Congrats.” Graf Bornhof was fascinated too, but more subdued. “Ingenious,” he occasionally allowed. “Clever. Innovative, Randolph. A master’s touch.”
McEwen didn’t need to be told that. Innovation was his hallmark. He’d always been months ahead of global developments: Rhodesia when it became a break-away republic; Uganda at the time of Idi Amin; Jo’burg when apartheid was at its ugliest. He had had a stint in Cairo where he predicted the assassination of Sadat. In New Delhi he knew Indira Gandhi would not live much longer. Some of his networks still functioned, still churned out information, just kept ticking over – as regular as the bloody cuckoo clock. Berlin Station was the culmination. A lifetime of experience had come together. It had a master’s touch. He had predicted three anti-communist revolutions in eastern Europe. But the Wall was a very special chapter. Twelve hours. London knew twelve hours in advance that the Wall would open. Uncle Sam was informed by London thirty minutes later. We knew every peep made in the East German Central Committee. Had for years. And what did Uncle Teut know? Nothing beyond what he watched on television. The Chancellor was out of the country when it happened. He had to hurry back the next day! Resentment welled up in McEwen. Look at them. Three excited children eager for the goodies which Master Randolph was hanging on their Christmas tree.
As Graf Bornhof and his men looked through the files, McEwen thought about the next agenda item. He rehearsed what he had on the consul. The case was not yet well-enough defined, but an instinct told him it was big, a major post-Cold War operation. If handled with discernment, Friend Tony would be his valedictory address. He had worked on the twenty-four-seven proposal for hours. Sipping port, puffing Havanas, he had read through his material, sifted, re-read, thought. His chin had dropped to his chest and he had closed his eyes. Who owned Friend Tony? What was the game? He had contemplated the quarry to try to gain entry to its soul. A patient, cunning man, the consul, a type that’s the most dangerous of all.
The handover, coupled with explanations, questions and further elucidations, neared completion. McEwen indicated casually that a few, rich items were not yet ready for Stage Three. “The diplomatic scene, for one,” he said. “Subversion arriving via the diplomatic bag, that sort of thing. Insight about that channel has consistently been put to good use elsewhere: Mozambique, the Kurds, the Tamils. Next time, Alex? Is that alright? Move along to agenda item two?” McEwen was fiercely calm.
“Of course,” said Graf Bornhof. “A snack, Randolph? Are you familiar with Nürnberger Lebkuchen? A local delicacy. It competes with shortcake I’d say, and Christmas pudding.”
“Better than both, I’m sure,” Randolph McEwen said politely, taking two.
“Agenda item two then,” Graf Bornhof said brightly.
“We have a little problem in Berlin at the moment,” the master of Berlin Station began thoughtfully. “Actually, it could be a big problem if something isn’t done. If things get out of hand you might have to do the clean up, Alex.”
McEwen returned Graf Bornhof’s pleasant gaze. He described the proven value over the years of a reliable source in one of the diplomatic missions, the initial suspicions the consul had triggered, the Spandau mystery, the solitary walks in East Berlin. He laid emphasis on Hanbury’s diffidence, the best ever seen, an extraordinary manipulation of an image. Expertly, always in a low, sometimes mournful voice, eyelids drooping, McEwen wove the facts into a story. A troubled upbringing, a two year gap in the official biography, the evidence in the Stasi archives. “Those files are useful, Alex. I’ve looked at them. They record secret meetings Hanbury had in the late sixties in East Berlin.” McEwen’s voice dropped further still. “At the same time he was arrested at a disturbance instigated by the Red Army Faction in West Berlin, but immediately released. Lack of evidence. Next, he’s home. He joins the Canadian foreign service.” McEwen’s tranquil hands momentarily unclasped with disbelief, as if the lunacy of it was too great to comprehend. He remained lost in dismal thoughts, shaking his head, until Graf Bornhof asked him to continue. With a tremor the master of Berlin Station restarted.
“He throws a blanket over the Berlin period. No one knows about it. He embarks on a dull career. More than twenty years of foreign service humdrum. A feint, Alex. A marvellous example of taking time to acquire perfect cover…” McEwen’s voice trailed off. “I don’t have all the answers, but I know this: he’s been a sleeper all these years and now he’s becoming active. Something big is happening. We must step in. Twenty-four-seven. I don’t see an alternative. We ought to set it up, double quick.” The master stopped; his eyes narrowed to slits.
Graf Bornhof cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “food for thought, if not quite sustenance for action.” “And this guy is Canadian?” said Heine in his Ivy League accent. McEwen nodded wearily. “I’ll be damned.” Heine continued. “Then he’s the one that got it at the rally. Look, he’s the other guy that got an egg.” He pushed the press clipping back under Graf Bornhof’s nose who, with scarcely a glance, shoved it towards McEwen. “Jumpin’ Jesus,” Seidel said. “We’re letting him get that close to the President?” McEwen nodded. He appreciated the alarm. “Let’s not rush,” cautioned Graf Bornhof. He pointed out that twenty-four-seven operations were difficult to set up, and expensive; there were legal implications deriving from the constitution; it had to withstand the scrutiny of the courts. “I know,” the master said wearily. “I know all that.”
Heine, taking a cue from his boss, became skeptical. “Let’s falsify for a second,” he said. Falsification, the art of accomplished second-guessing, was an analytical tool he acquired at Harvard. “Flip it around. Put an opposite interpretation on the facts. The facts are good, very good. No quarrel there. Just falsify them. Interpret them a hundred and eighty degrees different. What’s left? What’s the haul then? What’s the minimalist, not maximalist, view.”
“Quite a considerable bit, I’d say,” McEwen said icily.
“Let’s have it, Randolph,” declared Graf Bornhof.
McEwen methodically opened a folder and removed a ribbon-wrapped sheaf. “We were able to keep an eye on him for a few days. We assembled a few shreds of information – that’s all – shreds – not a full picture, not yet a vast panorama. Not long after he arrives in Berlin, he drops his guard. He tells a member of his office staff he plans to move about incognito. Why incognito, we ask. Another time he lets the word reconnaissance slip. Then he worries someone is monitoring his mail. We follow him. He heads for East Berlin,twice changing trains en route. He goes to Alexanderplatz in strikingly awful weather. He pretends he’s a tourist. There’s a downpour, but he persists. He sits down on a bench, the same one where twenty-five years earlier he met up with a member of East Germany’s left wing. Do you know how far left the East German left was, Alex? It was so far left even Marx would have seemed far right. He sits in the rain and waits. For whom? I’ll tell you. We know from the Stasi files he was waiting to take up contact with Günther Rauch. Do you know who Günther Rauch is, Alex?”
Graf Bornhof, half skeptical, half intrigued, shook his head.
“Günther Rauch is an extremist committed to unending revolution. When a revolution has been completed, people like him switch sides, so they can start a new revolution. They revolt against the revolters. Permanent revolution. As in Mao, Alex. I was in Peking. I saw the Cultural Revolution. Not pretty. Yesterday anarchists threw eggs at the President. Tomorrow Günther Rauch may chuck a bomb.” The master paused.
“Why that conclusion?” Heine asked.
“His background,” McEwen argued. “He was an arch-dissenter in the GDR. Committed to its overthrow. When it fell he led a collection of vigilantes to the Stasi complex and drove them out like Christ flailing the moneylenders from the temple. Did he consolidate then what he gained? Did he fall in love with democracy? Did he take a seat in Parliament like the other dissenters? No! He switched to the side that used to jail him! Günther Rauch, Alex, is back to agitating for a proletarian revolution.”
All three men looked at McEwen. “I’m told, he’s bitter,” mused McEwen. “Lifelong revolutionaries who are bitter do strange things.” He became confiding. “At a minimum he might be giving orders to knock off presidents of banks. At a maximum, who knows? Hijacking nuclear bombs? And now his old friend with diplomatic immunity has returned. Diplomatic immunity, Alex, can be handy if you plan to deal in dangerous materials.”
“It still doesn’t add up to much if you change the perspective,” Heine objected once more.
“And I haven’t bloody finished,” McEwen said testily. “Here’s a list of people the consul is cultivating. A distillation of a distillation of who’s who in Berlin. Why is he spending time with all the VIPs?”
“Oh shit. All diplomats do that,” snapped Heine.
“Possibly, in ideal circumstances. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred a diplomat wouldn’t stand a chance cracking into society at this level. Somebody is catapulting him along. Question one – who? Question two – why? Think of the consequences of so much influence in high places.”
Graf Bornhof was shaking his head. “Randolph. Randolph.”
“I still haven’t bloody finished,” McEwen said, eyes blazing. “A couple of days ago he contacted a female journalist. Not any journalist, but the one stirring up trouble in the East with her weepy columns on new social evils.”
“Her name?” asked Heine.
“Gundula Jahn. Heard of her?”
Graf Bornhof again shook his head. “We’re only now gearing up in the East.”
“A file on her is being assembled as we speak. It comes as no surprise that the Stasi had plenty on her too.”
“The Stasi had plenty on everyone, including themselves,” said Graf Bornhof.
“I doubt…” said McEwen menacingly, “…I doubt I could keep my diplomatic spectators together if this piece of work is not performed. I fear things would fall apart. You would have to start from scratch when you take over in Berlin.” In the ensuing silence, McEwen began collecting his papers.
The Mercedes was taking McEwen away from Pullach. Senior executive class to the airport courtesy of Graf Bornhof, a cheap tourist seat from there to Berlin. The master had enjoyed the final scene. Seidel with his drawl regrouped the quickest, arguing the loss of a window on the diplomatic scene could be significant. He became impatient with Heine’s ongoing second guessing. But Graf Bornhof was conciliatory.
“It would be expensive for us, Randolph,” he said at last.
“Don’t use Mercedes 600s then. Cut costs.”
“We might find a way to do it for six weeks.”
“Two months.”
“It will take a month to set it up. We need authorizations.”
“Get them in two weeks.”
“Impossible. We have never obtained an approval in less than four.”
“I get mine in twelve hours.”
“You don’t have a constitution.”
Saying goodbye, Graf Bornhof had pressed a box of Christmas cookies into McEwen’s palm and closed the Mercedes door. The Pullach gate slid open. The car surged noiselessly ahead.