One never knows when the winds of change may blow. East Berlin awakened from a long restless slumber feeling the first spirit of freedom, and with it came angry voices. Calls for justice pealed from church pulpits and fed the hunger of persecuted citizens to set right four decades of repression. Calls for punishment against the responsible politicians and the system of surveillance that detained citizens without explanation or took them from their homes in the middle of the night were loud and strident. Vengeance and retribution are swift, they said, and it was only justice that required time. They were met with the opposite convictions of the Old Guard speaking on state television, who proclaimed that collective responsibility required people to be tolerant. Berlin, they said, was not the Paris of 1789. Deposed party chairman Honecker was not King Louis XVI. There was no purpose in marching party apparatchiks before an angry mob in Alexanderplatz who would come to watch blood spill when the blade came down.
In the days and weeks that followed the toppling of the Berlin Wall, a fresh spirit of forgiveness triumphed over angry calls for revenge. No good would come from unleashing vengeance of coworker against coworker, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother. Respect was civilization’s remedy against the poison of intolerance.
There was a long period in which there was no word on the fate of Stefan Koehler. He had disappeared into the chaos that ensued following the fall of the Wall, but this time there was no official urgency to find him. The loss of one man was insignificant in the historical moment that was redefining the lives of eight million people. There were sightings of a linen service truck at Stasi Headquarters, but when Petra inquired she was met with indifference. Calls to the morgue provided no information. Stefan had vanished in October, and then reappeared like a man risen from the dead, only to suddenly disappear again in November.
Anne was with Petra in her apartment when a linen service panel truck delivered Stefan’s pine coffin. Two prison guards carried it into the living room. The taller, older man held the coffin’s rear, and a short, stocky assistant carried the front, and asked Petra where she wanted it placed, saying they had orders to deliver his remains. He explained that mortuary workers had walked off the job and no bodies were being accepted. Cemetery workers had also been furloughed. All funerals were delayed. “No one told the dead,” the older man joked.
Petra had gotten short notice. After three weeks of desperate calls and institutional silence, a call had come the day before. He’d been found in his prison cell. He’d taken his own life. Petra demanded to see the body so she could prove her suspicion that he’d been tortured and murdered. The body would provide the incriminating evidence.
Anne was unable to dissuade Petra from clawing open the coffin’s lid. Anger vibrated in Petra’s voice, waving off Anne’s plea. Anger and indignation kept her from reason. There was only incomprehensible disbelief that her husband had been returned to her in a pine coffin delivered to her living room.
The claw end of the hammer pulled the nails, producing a great aching screech of steel being extracted from unyielding wood. The first two nails were the hardest to remove, but then the leverage of the lid helped and suddenly the top was off.
Anne and Petra saw a cardboard box inside, and inside the box, they found a sealed plastic bag with cremains. Next to the box there was a black-and-white photograph of Stefan’s beaten face—eyes closed, face out of shape. The face of a dead man.
Petra looked at it stoically. The living drawn to the dead. She handed it to Anne.
She took a deep gasping breath, struggling to contain her bitter grief. The two women embraced, but neither cried.
Before leaving, the older prison guard handed Petra an envelope. Inside, Petra found an invoice for the cremation. She looked at the sum and thought it a cruel joke. The two women stood over the coffin unable to find words to express their feelings. Each understood that Stefan was young in years, but old in the treasonous acts that led to the forfeit of his life. Petra pulled her son close in an emotional embrace.
Later that week, she and Anne made their way to Hohenschönhausen Prison on the city’s outskirts. Anne angrily confronted the prison warden, who stiffly apologized for the invoice. He said it was a mistake, a mix-up. The state would cover the charges for the natural gas used in the oven.
“And his death?” Petra demanded. They stood opposite the warden in his office. He was a precise, tense, middle-aged man who seemed uncomfortable with his new obligation to tolerate insults and demands.
“Suicide,” he said.
“I want to see his cell.”
“It’s not permitted.”
Petra presented an official document stamped by a new authority that had opened investigations into the deaths of Stasi prisoners. The warden examined the document and handed it back.
“I will have you escorted.”
“He was murdered,” Petra said loudly to Anne. They walked behind a guard down a long lime-green corridor fresh with the astringent smell of cleaning products.
“You could see it in the warden’s face,” Petra said. “His callous look.”
Cell doors along the corridor were wide open and the political prisoners who’d been recent guests were all gone. Cells were quiet and empty. Their echoing footsteps on the concrete floor were the only sounds. Anne glanced in one cell as they passed. The prisoner was gone, but the evidence of torture remained: wall shackles, metal mattress, and the hint of human stench.
“Here,” the guard said. He had stopped at an open door.
Cell number 203. Anne noted the detail, which, like other seemingly innocuous details, stuck in her mind. She would later write the cell number down. It wasn’t significant, but it was where he had died, and she thought it respectful to hold on to something specific. It helped her think of his death as less lonely.
The door was heavy iron with a small opening for food to pass through. There was a small, grated window near the ceiling. Light entered but the window was too high for a prisoner to look out, even if tiptoeing. Vertical iron bars covered the window’s opening.
“He was found hanging with his belt around his neck.” The guard pointed to the iron bars.
Anne tried to imagine Stefan, face beaten, being able to hang himself. She imagined one end of the belt in his hands, the other end wrapped around his neck, as he leaped up. In the moment he was at the apex of his jump, he’d have to knot the belt on the bars. Anne listened to the guard describe how Stefan had been found.
“The miraculous accomplishment of a contortionist.” Petra spat her words at the guard.
Anne saw faint writing bleed through the freshly whitewashed plaster wall. Stefan, or some other prisoner, had written on it. The blue letters bled through but were blurred and indistinct.
“We don’t even know this was his cell,” Petra said when they were leaving. “We don’t know anything. We’ll never know.”
Rudolf Kruger’s disappearance took Winslow and Cooper by surprise, but the magnitude of the unfolding changes made his disappearance a minor incident in the aftermath of the collapse of the GDR. Where once the Stasi had been feared, they were now absent, some living quietly, harboring their resentments, and others denying their past. Sightings of the vanished former head of Stasi counterintelligence were peddled by other former Stasi agents looking for a reward or a favor. Rumors were everywhere. Escaped to Moscow, hiding in a cellar, or living openly but unrecognized. Old stories of Nazis who’d escaped in the final days of the Third Reich were brought up as if, by example, they proved the truth of the rumor that he’d fled to Argentina or made his way to Lisbon, where he had a son.