Stealing the Future Read online

  Instead of sitting down I took an empty glass from the table in the corner and wandered off to the toilets to get some water. I didn’t hurry back, but stood in the corridor, enjoying the majesty of the staircase and the light coming in through the windows. Behind me I heard the door to the Minister’s office open. I turned to see him shaking hands with a man carrying a briefcase and wearing a light blue suit, well cut from slightly shiny material. The suit obviously came from the West, and so did the wearer.

  I made no attempt to be discreet, remaining where I stood, watching as the visitor headed off downstairs. He showed a certain confidence, suggesting he was no stranger here.

  “Martin, you’d better come in.” The Minister seemed uneasy as he ushered me into his office.

  “Have you come to see me?” seated behind his large desk the Minister seemed more at home, less confused.

  “I’ve just returned from West Silesia. The night officer sent me down to have a look at Maier’s body, said I should report directly to you on my return.”

  I couldn’t be certain that the Minister already knew about Maier’s death but I reasoned that he’d almost certainly been briefed by now.

  “Mmm… yes, it was you they sent down,” he seemed to be talking more to himself than me.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Do you have a report for me? Perhaps you could just hand it in to the secretary.” He leafed through the pile of papers in front of him, then looked up, slightly irritated that I was still there.

  “I came straight here, I haven’t had time to write a report. I thought you might want to know immediately.”

  “Yes, that’s very kind of you. Well, you’d better let me have it, I suppose, since you’re here now.”

  He hardly seemed excited about what I had to say, just nodded absent mindedly as I told him what I’d seen. I left out my reactions to the size of the mining conveyors and excavators, the helplessness of the broken body. I kept it all businesslike. At the end of the account he nodded once more, and asked me to let him have the written report by the end of the next day.

  “And Martin? No need to worry about this, it’s all in hand. What I mean is, there’s no need to prioritise it over your other work. We can handle the liaison with the Saxon police and the Round Table sub-committee.”

  Without looking at me, the Minister returned to his papers, and I returned the glass to the secretary.

  17:38

  The Minister’s attitude perplexed me—but right now I was feeling drained, and happy not to have to think about Maier. After all, the Minister himself had told me not to worry.

  We went way back, the Minister and I. It’s not like we were close or anything, but still, must be more than ten years. Benno was his name, not that any of us called him that any more. We used to call him Benno or Pastor Hartmann, but nowadays we generally just called him ‘the Minister’. Not sure why that’s the case. He used to be the vicar at one of the churches which gave shelter to opposition groups, a safe place to meet. But he had been more than that—he took part in some of the demonstrations and events that activists organised. Some said he only took part in those actions when he was guaranteed exposure to Western journalists, and that he’d soon disappear once the cops showed up. There were often snide rumours and jokes circulating about him in opposition circles, usually when he was mentioned in one of the Westberlin papers. I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but did notice that when the revolution really got going in November 1989 he very quickly managed to get a place on the Central Round Table that began by advising the government, and soon became a part of the government. Most of us involved in the opposition movements at that time were working flat out, organising demonstrations, creating news sheets and leaflets, helping new people to get involved, showing them how to design and print their leaflets and set up their groups. We didn’t have time to sit down and negotiate with the Communist Party about how to run the state. But a few people—some who had been very involved in protest and resistance over the years, others merely on the fringes—started working with the Party. Most of them now occupied leading positions in what central government was left. A lot of power had been devolved down to the local level, but a few state functions remained stubbornly centralised: foreign affairs, customs and border controls, taxation and policing, in which somehow I had become a small cog.

  It was the end of the working day, the sun was starting to hang low in the sky, just visible over the top of the buildings opposite. I decided to walk down the Mauerstrasse to get to the underground line that would take me up to Prenzlauer Berg. I hadn’t been up there for a while, and I fancied a quick beer in a small bar, something different from the workers’ pubs in my native Lichtenberg.

  As I went down the steps onto the platform, I could feel the warm air being pushed out of the tunnel by an oncoming train, bringing the same smell of hot metal that had been there this morning in the mine pit. I hopped on, finding a seat on the long bench along the side of the carriage, feeling slightly nauseated, lost in my thoughts of that sandy, dusty hell.

  It took a few stops for me to become aware of my surroundings again. Lots of people got on at Alexanderplatz, and I amused myself by playing Spot The Westerner. The number of Western tourists had increased dramatically in the last couple of years, and it looked like I wasn’t the only person heading up to Prenzlauer Berg in search of a cool bar.

  The train laboured up a steep ramp out of the underground and onto an elevated section of track, stopping almost immediately at Dimitroffstrasse station. I got off and walked down the steps to the Schönhauser Allee. I crossed the road, and took a few turns at random, pausing at the neighbourhood Round Table’s noticeboard. They’d provided a short summary of decisions at the top of the board, with references to the relevant parts of the latest minutes posted below. Sometimes it felt like our whole lives were being taken over by meetings, and even if we weren’t at a meeting, the chances were somebody would expect you to know about what had been talked about in it. I liked the way this noticeboard provided a quick overview of the decisions—at the end of a long day at work I didn’t usually have the time or patience to read about the proceedings of every relevant meeting.

  I turned away from the noticeboard, not bothering to read the notes there, still wanting a beer. It was a bit too early for the clubs to open, but I should be able to find a drink somewhere not too far away. After a few hundred metres I stopped in front of a tenement block draped in flags and graffiti. Even by the standards of Eastberlin this building was in a bad state. Balconies had fallen off or been untidily removed, and on the pavement lay a pile of bricks and dusty rendering. It looked to be one of the squats that had been opened in abandoned and derelict flats at the start of the revolution. Curious, I went into the entrance, and saw a crowd of punks drinking in the yard. Two of them were setting up a ladder below a broken light, stopping every so often to gulp down a mouthful of beer. When the ladder was in place, one climbed up while the other fed him electric cable. On the other side of the yard I could see the door to the cellars in the side wing. It had BAR crudely painted on it in smeared red paint. A few steps led down into a damp corridor. A bodged rack held leaflets, all jumbled up, and off to the side a door lay across two trestles, with a crate of beer on it. Above the improvised table a slogan was daubed in the same red paint: People who talk about revolution without understanding what is subversive about love, and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth. Quite a mouthful, corpse or no: sounded like the Situationists to me. Something to ponder on while I had a drink. Next to the crate of beer was a jam jar with a slit in the lid. I put a Mark in and took a bottle, looking around for a bottle opener. There was none, but a young woman appeared next to me, her head shaved at the sides, the remaining hair forming a wide mohican, drooping over to the side and painted with washed-out red food colouring. She smiled at me, grabbed the beer out of my hand, and took the top off with her teeth.

  “Nic
e trick.”

  “You gonna get me one then?”

  Another Mark in the jam jar, and the punk took a bottle out of the crate, opening that one too with her teeth, then tapping my beer with her own.

  “Prosit!” She smiled, looking slightly coy under her ragged hair, poor teeth giving her mouth a lopsided look.

  “Prosit!”

  I tipped my bottle, allowing the beer to trickle down my throat, and let out a sigh.

  “Hard day?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. What’s happening here?”

  She mustered me as if she were trying to work out whether I was a cop. I must have passed.

  “We’re holding a talk on energy use in the GDR; you know, the energy crisis, pollution, brown coal. For the demo on Saturday. We’re holding more talks on the theme too, every night next week in different squats and bars.” She was enthusiastic, stumbling over her words, keen to impress me.

  “Demo?”

  The punk moved over to the leaflet rack and pulled out a tatty flier. Badly mimeographed, a line drawing of a power station spewing out clouds of smoke which made up the word DEMO. Underneath that: For a sensible energy policy—in East and West. Alexanderplatz, Saturday 25th September, 14:00. On the back was a mass of text, originally typewritten, but hardly legible after its journey through the smudgy copier. I read it over while I swilled down my beer.

  “Thanks,” I said, screwing the scrap of paper into my pocket.

  “You coming on Saturday then?”

  “You know, I might just be there.”

  Not sure why I said that, maybe it was because of the impression the open cast mine had made on me. Whatever my reasons, it seemed to please the punk. She smiled at me again, and I stuck my hand out.

  “I’m Martin.”

  “Karo,” she said, shaking my hand.

  I’d nearly reached the door when she called out.

  “Hey, Martin!”

  I turned back.

  “Cheers for the beer!”

  I gave her my best smile.

  Day 2

  Thursday

  23rd September 1993

  …at 8 o’clock on Thursday the twenty-third of September, here’s the news on Radio DDR I.

  Moscow: The Second Crisis of the Union in the USSR has deepened after President Gorbachev called elections for both Soviet Parliaments. Delegates of the dissolved Soviet of the Republics have refused to leave the parliament building despite water and electricity supplies being cut off.

  Berlin: The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has formally lodged a complaint with the Westgerman mission in Berlin concerning the delivery of military hardware to the breakaway Region of West Silesia. So far there has been no response from the Westgerman Mission nor from the Inner German Ministry in Bonn. A press conference will be held at the Palace of the Republic later today.

  And now for the water levels and draughts on the inland waterways…

  08:07

  I had just got the coffee ready when the others came into my office for the morning meeting. There were only four of us, plus Bärbel, who sat in the corner without a word, pen in hand. We shook hands with each other as we sat down and I turned the radio off.

  I looked over to Laura. “Did the others fill you in on what happened yesterday?”

  “It sounds quite horrible—are you OK?”

  I smiled, nodding towards the package marked with a police stamp that Erika was holding.

  “Yes, I caught up on some sleep yesterday. But I’m not looking forward to seeing those photos.”

  We passed the pictures round. They were gruesome, but didn’t tell us much. They just showed the body of Hans Maier, head and feet crushed, torso and legs ripped and oil-stained.

  “I asked Dresden to forward Maier’s police and Stasi files,” said Erika. “They arrived with the overnight courier.”

  “Have you had a chance to look through them yet?”

  “Not really, just a quick look—but it was enough. See for yourselves.”

  She put another package on the table, an A4 envelope, and pulled out a few pieces of paper.

  “These are the photostats of the files the police have managed to pull so far.” Erika looked at the top piece of paper, which had a letterhead reading LdVP Sachsen. “We’ve got copies of his F 16, F 22, a Disciplinary File and his I 210—his written declaration of commitment. That’s all they could come up with at short notice—they said they’d carry on looking.”

  I sifted through the pieces of paper. Apart from the declaration, none of them actually had any markings on them to indicate which was which. I glanced through the handwritten declaration, the usual pompous phrasing: On the basis of my Marxist-Leninist convictions, I, Johannes Friedrich Maier swear to collaborate with the Ministry for State Security in order to secure and strengthen the GDR…

  “Of course, we should look in the central archive in the Ruschestrasse, but for the time being, this is what we have: the F 16 file has the person’s real name. The reference number is in the top right hand corner,” continued Laura.

  I looked at the file. Johannes Friedrich Maier, along with various addresses where he was registered during the last twenty years. The reference number began with a Roman numeral.

  “What department was HA XVIII?”

  “That was the department monitoring heavy industry,” said Laura. “It makes sense—Maier always claimed to be a victim of Stasi tactics, but at the time he was a big fish in the BMK Kohle und Energie—the combine that did all the building work at power stations. He was in the main offices in Hoyerswerda for several years.”

  The next filecard didn’t mention Maier by name—it just had his reference number stamped in the corner. His codename: MILCHMÄDCHEN, date of birth, first contact in 1964 by HA I/12. The most interesting entry on this card was the field marked “IM-Category/Offence”. The entry was simply “IM”—Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter, informal collaborator. This, along with the written declaration told us that he’d worked as an informant to the Stasi, and it looked like he’d been recruited in 1964.

  “What was Maier doing in 1964?” I wondered aloud.

  “Looks like he was doing his National Service in the army,” answered Laura. “I put together a summary of his activities yesterday.”

  “You lot have been busy!”

  A grunt from the other side of the table was Klaus’s first contribution of the morning. I looked up.

  “Yeah, these two got excited about doing something interesting for a change,” he gestured towards Erika and Laura.

  “Well, it’s good to get a head start, you never know what we’ll be saddled with next,” slightly defensive, from Erika.

  I could understand her irritation—Klaus rarely said very much, so when he did, it felt like he was making an important announcement. Light hearted criticism from him could sometimes feel like a serious accusation.

  Klaus fell back into silence, and Erika and Laura busied themselves with flicking through the papers.

  The final photostat must be the Disciplinary File. It had Maier’s details, including his full name rather than his code-name. The file was dated summer 1988, and scanning through the text I could see that Maier had been reprimanded for having an unsuitable relationship with another asset, and had been told to end the affair. There was no further information than that.

  “I’ve never seen one of these before—why has Maier got one?” I asked.

  “It’s interesting, I thought they were only used for Stasi full timers, not for informants. But Maier was just an IM, not a paid officer—looks a bit strange. If we had the VSH card then we could double check, but they didn’t send it. Maybe it got lost.” The answer came from Laura, who had become something of a Stasi files expert.

  “None of this seems to help though, does it? Half the files are missing, and the ones we do have don’t really tell us anything.” Klaus was studying the cobwebs up in the corners of the room near the ceiling, probably in an attempt to avoid Erika’s indignant gl
are.

  “I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway. The Minister asked me to write up a report on my trip to Silesia and to leave it at that,” I looked around at the others, all staring at me.

  “What, he told you to drop it?” asked Laura.

  “Yeah, I’m not to worry about it.”

  “Hang on, wait a moment,” Klaus suddenly leaned forward, like he had a point to make. “Did he actually tell you to stop working the Maier case?”

  “Nooo… not in so many words. But he definitely meant it.”

  “So, what did he say?”

  “That I shouldn’t worry about it, erm… and not to prioritise the report, despite the fact that he wants it by the end of today.”

  “OK,” Klaus looked around at us jubilantly. “So, we can carry on working on it. After all he didn’t tell Martin to drop it–”

  Erika looked troubled, holding up her hand, palm outwards, as if to stop the flow of the conversation.

  “But it’s clear that he meant we should leave it. Presumably he’s got someone else working on it? We shouldn’t just go against him like that. And anyway, what’s the point?”

  Klaus shrugged, sitting back in his chair again and crossing his legs. We all sat looking at each other, slurping coffee from our mugs. All except Bärbel who was still making notes in shorthand.

  “Now that I think about it…” I started, wondering whether I was saying the right thing. “He seemed sort of, shifty. Like he was unhappy that I was involved, and couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

  “Doesn’t have to mean anything. Probably just a bit stressed or busy. I think it’s safe to assume that the case is being dealt with, no doubt by another department. Klaus—do you really think we should carry on looking into Maier’s death?” Laura asked in a matter of fact way.