25

The house appeared bent under the overhanging fir boughs. A low, inconspicuous building with a grey façade and a porch that looked home-built. Tall cherry laurel bushes stood along the edges of the property; only the garden gate offered a view inside.

Kaiserley parked his car on the other side of the street.

‘What does the residency office say?’ she asked.

Kaiserley checked his phone. ‘Nothing yet. Our contact there has gone home for the day. But I assume that the name Horst Merzig is real. Just like his career with the Stasi.’

‘You assume.’

Kaiserley sighed. His right hand still lay on the steering wheel and Judith thought how just a little while ago that hand . . . she opened the door and got out. There was no room for feelings in her life. They could dissolve into thin air, just like names and people. And the schizophrenia of the Cold War led one to believe that Merzig, whom they were visiting in his detached house, had also been more than just a pencil pusher.

The damp, heavy smell of rotting greenery greeted them. The suburbs. Compost heaps. Lawns with sprinklers, blossoming flowers, tall trees. The birds twittered, and the sky had that post-sunset green that Judith loved so much. The traffic noise from the nearby B1 motorway was muffled. It sounded like a satiated swarm of bees bringing the day’s harvest back to the hive.

‘No former General Lieutenant of the Main Section II still lives under an alias.’

He stood next to her and cast a quick, examining glance at the surroundings. Small detached houses, built in the sixties and seventies, gaining some patina and slowly erasing the newly built smell of the settlement. Voices and laughter mixed with the fragments of dialogue from the rattling loudspeakers of old tube-type televisions cranked up next to the opened windows. The aroma of bratwurst and charcoal crept into Judith’s nose. Someone had fired up the barbeque.

Had she been here before?

She followed Kaiserley across the street. The garden fence was a piece of GDR blacksmith production, the playful philistine counter to socialist modernism. Blue. Sky blue. She extended her hand to press down the handle, but Kaiserley held her back. The initials ‘H. M.’ were next to the doorbell nameplate. The path to the vestibule was made of exposed aggregate concrete, and under the porch of dirty yellow corrugated fibreboard stood a man. He had the mid-sized, sinewy figure of a garden worker. Slender, almost haggard, with a healthy tan on his finely chiselled face. His eyes, small and shiny as stream pebbles, were almost hidden in a wreath of deeply weathered wrinkles, giving his face an impression of vigilance. Like a bird, was the thought that shot through Judith’s head.

Had she seen him before?

She was afraid. She wanted to turn around and go. But she knew that there was no longer a way back. Kaiserley looked at her. She didn’t know what he was thinking but all of a sudden she was glad that he was there.

In the few seconds she needed to reach the stairs from the garden gate she tried to take in the property again. Rectangular, with the long side to the street, almost hidden, well tended.

‘Watch out!’

She’d almost stumbled. The man came towards her, smoothing, feline, and held out a hand for her. Judith grasped it. It was cool and dry.

‘Ms Kepler?’

He had a voice like reed grass: elegant, almost whispery, but razor-sharp at the edges. Next to the sickle of his mouth his cheeks dug deep, cliff-like valleys into his skull. It was hard to guess his age. Bad late-sixties, good early-eighties.

‘Horst Merzig. I’m very glad to meet you.’ The reeds rubbed together. Dry blades, touched by the wind. ‘And you are . . .?’ He cast a look over her shoulder.

‘Quirin Kaiserley. Publicist.’

Merzig’s thin lips formed a smile. He extended his hand to Kaiserley.

‘I’ve been following your revelations with great interest. Perhaps there will be the opportunity for an . . . annotation or two. From my perspective.’

Judith and Kaiserley followed Merzig into the house. It was set up so that all of his daily needs could be attended to on one floor: kitchen to the left, bathroom to the right, a Spartan bedroom behind, the living room straight ahead. The doors were ajar, as if Merzig wanted to demonstrate that he had nothing to hide.

The living room was simply furnished. A three piece suite of Scandinavian minimalism, book shelves, grandfather clock, and desk. It was dominated by an aquarium that seemed huge for the setting. Its green light cast the windowsills and the green plants in an almost enchanted light. The fish were as large as trout, shimmering and silvery with deep blue patterns. They moved with a majestic elegance.

‘My hobby.’ Merzig hadn’t missed Judith’s gaze. ‘Cockatoo dwarfs. Cichlids. Since I retired. So pretty much exactly since the summer of 1990. Would you like to sit down? You look tired.’

Judith nodded and chose the armchair. Nothing in the world would have made her sit on the couch next to Kaiserley.

‘The last couple of days have been stressful.’

‘I gather.’

Merzig offered Kaiserley a spot next to him on the couch. He pulled a crystal ashtray containing a pipe towards him.

‘I hope you don’t have anything against smoking. I tend to be inconsiderate within my own four walls. I don’t get many visitors.’

He opened a can of tobacco and began to stuff the pipe. Judith didn’t let herself be deceived by his demonstration of composure. Merzig was vigilant. And he was an astute observer.

‘Then I don’t want to keep you for too long,’ she said. ‘Dr Matthes . . .’

She stumbled and cast Kaiserley a quick glance. What did he think about the fact that she was increasingly dependent on old Stasi cadres? His face didn’t reveal anything.

‘. . . mentioned you might be able to tell me about the operation in Sassnitz during the mid-eighties.’

‘Dr Matthes.’ Merzig smiled and patted down the pockets of his washed-out, too large corduroys until he had found a matchbook. ‘How’s he doing?’

‘We’re not that close.’

‘He’s the head of that sanatorium, right? Did you know that used to be an insane asylum? Lots of head cases. Up there, of all places, where the ferries to Sweden were constantly floating by. I would have gone crazy there.’

‘A sanatorium?’ Kaiserley asked.

He sat down, brushing Judith’s knee while doing so. It was like a tiny, electric shock. She shifted in her seat away from him.

‘Is that important?’ she asked. ‘This isn’t about Dr Matthes, but about you. Who or what were you?’

‘I was head of the counterintelligence service.’

‘And signed arrest warrants.’

‘Yes, I did.’

Judith took a sharp breath. ‘Including one for Irene Sonnenberg and her husband?’

‘That’s possible.’

‘And . . . Christina Sonnenberg?’

Something flashed in Merzig’s eyes. Maybe it was just the reflection of the match he was holding to his tobacco.

‘No. Children weren’t arrested.’

‘They were sent to the home,’ Judith said. She hoped Merzig wouldn’t notice how much his calmness upset her. ‘To Gagarin, for example.’

Merzig shook the match until it went out. A cloud of smoke floated through the room. It smelled of wood and earth.

‘A model institution. Truly. In contrast to those youth camps. Their educators were much more committed, as far as I can remember.’

‘I want to know what happened that night. I kept my promise. Now it’s your turn.’

‘Judith Kepler?’ Merzig asked.

Judith nodded.

‘You really want to know how your parents died?’

‘Yes,’ Judith whispered.

She groped for her bag and felt the cold, hard steel.