‘You just made a call and got given money?’
Landau had checked with his bank and received confirmation that a deposit of ten thousand euros had been made to his account. Strangely, it would be a couple of days before he could spend them even though everything was digital these days. But he knew for sure they were en route.
‘I can’t get any more,’ said Hedin, who had seen in Landau’s eyes what he was thinking. ‘So you’ll have to tell me now.’
Manifestly stout, Uwe Landau stubbed out his unfiltered Roth-Händle and lit a new one. He kept coughing, sounding like an old, worn-out lorry engine that wouldn’t start. White stubble covered his soft, flabby cheeks and his white hair was cut into some kind of hedgehog style with all the short strands standing right on end. He was wearing a tracksuit that was the worse for wear with an emblem on the breast where the words ‘FC Carl Zeiss Jena’ were just about legible under a layer of cigarette ash. At his feet there was a blue bag with the word ‘Interflug’ on it.
‘It’s not about the money,’ said Landau. ‘The only reason I’ve agreed to meet you is because my old friend Rabe asked me to.’
‘Everything’s about contacts,’ said Hedin. ‘It was ever thus.’
The choice of meeting place struck a discordant note with Landau’s threadbare appearance. Glücks Café was a modern, trendy little place. It had concrete walls and a large window facing the street opening onto outdoor seating where the duo were sitting. The menu featured ambitious soups, salads and small plates inspired by the Mediterranean, the Middle East and South America. Hedin wondered whether Landau even knew what quinoa was. But she realised it was the location itself that had been the deciding factor.
On the opposite side of the street – the lively Chausseestraße – was the newly-completed, gigantic complex that housed the Bundesnachrichtendienst. The BND had moved from Pullach – probably for practical reasons, but it was also a symbolic break from the old. The facility that had overseen national security since the days of the Third Reich and had been taken over by the Waffen-SS. Now it was as if they were saying: ‘Forget the old, we’re living in a different world these days.’ Or at least that was what they wanted people to believe.
Perhaps the sight of the building meant the former Stasi officer felt at home here. Or he wanted to torment himself by sitting in the shadow of the proud fortress of the victorious. Or perhaps he just wanted to remember a time when he had been respected and feared by all those working inside the security complex. Even if most of the people working there today hadn’t been born when their side had emerged victorious from battle.
Now he got to feel important all over again because what he knew was worth something. These days nearly everything was about right-wing extremism and Islamism. Tedious doctrines, lacking in history. Socialism against capitalism was another matter entirely. The struggle for a just world using all means available. Here, he was on his home ground. Here, he was the indispensable pathfinder. Before the disaster, he’d had a house in Waldsiedlung Wandlitz, with the woods, lake and all the big villas belonging to the Stasi chiefs nearby. The head of state security, Erich Mielke, had lived in villa number 8. Everyone ranked major or higher had access to holiday homes in wonderful rural settings, free weekends at one of the Stasi’s twenty-four spas, not to mention the shops filled with western goods.
Everything had been, well, the best.
Before the Wall fell.
Now he was worth less than the empty bottles that everyone worked so hard to recycle. Who wanted to recycle him? Hedin was the only person who had ever taken an interest in what he had achieved. She seemed almost fixated on the Stasi and its personnel.
‘Messer, Axt, Faust and Lorelei,’ said Landau. ‘Kommando 719. Named after Andreas Baader’s cell number, naturally. Messer and Axt came from the 2 June Movement and RAZ – the revolutionary cells – and Lorelei admired the Red Army Faction. Even though they were so useless that they all went down, the lot of them. And they put a Heckler & Koch in their emblem instead of a Kalashnikov, which was what every liberation movement in the Third World used.’
Landau managed to rattle off a malicious laugh.
‘What do you know about them? What were they like? What were Axt and Faust like?’
‘Faust wasn’t much of an ideologue, if you ask me. More of a fighter who wanted to stir up trouble. He wanted to hurt for the sake of hurting. What they all had in common was a desire to make the West show its true face by provoking the repressive police state. And we were more than happy to assist in that regard.’
‘You trained terrorists in East Germany?’
‘West Germans, Arabs, Africans, Latin Americans. We provided anyone who wanted to cause a revolution with the skills to do so.’
‘And the weapons.’
‘And the cash.’ Landau snorted. ‘And what difference did it make? An atom bomb over Bonn is nothing compared to a dagger in the back.’
‘And you provided them with protection?’
‘Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nidal, Abu Daoud, the Red Army Faction, the PFLP, Black September. We were very international.’
‘And Kommando 719.’
‘I helped to train them myself. Close combat, believe it or not.’
Landau gestured at his own shabby figure, as if to emphasise what poor shape he was in.
‘Lorelei was called Werner and Messer was called Gerlach, so we gather. But which out of the other two was Axt and which was Faust?’
‘Rau was Faust. The devil himself.’
‘And what is he called today? What was his new name?’
‘No idea. We weren’t allowed to know. This was some of the most secret stuff we were involved in. Communist cells in the West taking up arms. Subversive operations. If our enemies had been able to prove that we supported this, then there would have been a war.’
‘But Rau was the driving force, you said?’
‘Definitely. He was the engine of that group. He wanted things to happen, to see blood.’
Landau laughed, which set off yet another earthquake-like coughing fit. This time the attack lasted a little longer and he concluded the outburst by spitting a large quantity of matter into some napkins. Hedin turned her head away.
‘What happened to Faust?’ she said, in an attempt to get back to the subject.
Landau shrugged.
‘Given his fervour, I doubt he gave up. But he may have found new ways to fight on.’
‘You don’t think he just hid under a false name?’
‘Well, you can count on the false name. But he won’t just have hidden. Someone like him would struggle to live a normal life. He’s probably in this world in one way or another. He simply disappeared after the Wall fell. Everyone who could hide did back then.’
Hedin could tell that Landau didn’t count himself as one of this cowardly band. She knew that he had always stood by his work for the East German security services and surveillance state. He had been charged but freed after a trial in which accusations and censure had been cast at him. He argued that his activities had been completely legal in the system that applied in the country at the time – in no way different from what they were engaged in across the street in the present day.
‘But perhaps he was useful to someone else,’ said Landau.
‘Who?’
The former Stasi major shrugged.
‘The Palestinians, the Israelis, the West? Who knows?’
‘Is it possible to find out his new name? The one he got in Sweden?’
Landau shook his head.
‘It’s not documented anywhere. It was only in his handler’s head, and he’s long dead. Just as I will be soon.’
‘Not even in the files they’re putting together using computers now?’
‘Some details were too secret to be recorded – even for the Stasi. The idea with the new identities was that they wouldn’t be traceable. In that regard, comrade Koch did a magnificent job. Only he knew.’
And he tried to exploit it, Hedin thought to herself.
‘What else do you know about Rau?’ she said.
‘He knew Sweden well – he’d visited quite a bit and worked up a network of contacts. I think he had a Swedish mother. So yes, he led operations there. He was good. Merciless.’
‘Would he kill someone threatening to unmask him?’
‘Without even a second’s hesitation,’ said Landau, before adding: ‘And he’d enjoy it.’
Hedin looked up towards the gargantuan building across the street. The world’s biggest intelligence service headquarters. A grey concrete colossus with completely straight lines that looked more like an East German prison than a grand fortress for the defenders of freedom. Was there an agenda in building something so grim? She allowed her gaze to wander across the anonymous façade.
She suddenly had the feeling that someone was looking down at her from one of the windows. She squinted up towards the building, but of course she could see nothing.
In the meantime, Landau’s body shook with a new attack of coughing. He spat into a new wad of napkins, but his coughing continued.
‘I’ve only got three months left,’ he said between coughs and without looking up. ‘I’m going to spend my final days living like a king on that money.’
‘Then you can tell me what the purpose of Kommando 719 was. They were preparing for something specific.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
Landau looked around for more napkins.
‘Yes I do,’ said Hedin. ‘And I’ve paid for it. You wouldn’t have spent so much money on them if they hadn’t had something very special brewing.’
‘Many millions,’ said Landau with a wry smile.
‘Exactly. So tell me.’
A new round of coughing, and Hedin saw him put a hand to his ribs. The powerful convulsions were probably painful. Eventually, Landau looked up at Hedin with bloodshot eyes.
‘If you open that door then there is no going back.’
‘OK.’
Landau took a deep drag from his cigarette.
‘Do you understand what kind of man you’re looking for?’
Hedin didn’t reply.
‘Do you really want to find him?’
‘Yes. Tell me now,’ Hedin said impatiently. ‘What was the purpose of the group?’
The ungainly man looked at her with something verging on sympathy.
‘You don’t want to know,’ he repeated.
‘Yes I do,’ she said again. ‘What have you got to lose? You’ve got three months left to live.’
‘That may be longer than you have.’