“How will she get out?” Scharf asked him for the twentieth time. “How?”
Danforth clenched his teeth. He had to resist, no matter the cost. He knew Hans’ and Anna’s lives depended on his silence. Yet Scharf had lost his patience. He ordered two guards to seize Danforth. Stretching him out on a table, the guards broke his arms with sharp, forceful blows. His left arm had a compound fracture, with bone jutting out of his forearm. Danforth screamed in unbelievable pain.
“Tell me!” Scharf bellowed, not ready to quit. Danforth blew out short, pained breaths, but could not speak. By now, he was in tears.
“Not ready to talk?” Scharf motioned once more to the guards. A further volley of blows reduced Danforth to more pulp than man. His arms were crushed, forever unusable. He knew he stood on the precipice of death, and for the first time, he embraced it as a comfort. His whole life, he had feared this moment, but now, he only wanted one thing—to end the pain. As he looked up at his tormentor, he realized that Scharf knew this, too. Pushing Danforth to the limit, Scharf let Danforth suffer half an hour in agony. It was the longest 30 minutes of Danforth’s life. Then, finally, Danforth whispered what Scharf wanted to know about the dead drop. Scharf probed for as many details as possible, and when finally satisfied, he thanked his captive. Scharf stood and smiled. A guard handed him a pistol, Scharf aimed—and became the merciful executioner.
Brüske immediately went to the dead drop in the People’s Park. Using the details Danforth had given, he located the tin behind the arches of the fairytale fountain. He found the dead drop already loaded with the passports. Carefully, he examined them and recorded each of the passports with a pen-like Minox camera device. Developed by the KGB, it allowed him to roll the camera over the surface of a paper and copy it. Brüske placed the passports back in the dead drop and returned it to its original state, careful to not show any sign it had been disturbed or compromised. Then he took the film for development, while another Stasi agent, Rolf Meinert, took up surveillance on the area. Rolf positioned himself on the roof of a building on Friedenstrasse, just across from the park. Two plainclothes Stasi officers were on the ground—Michael Kassel at the edge of the park, and Tomas Bonhöffer, across from it on Am Friedrichshain street. They expected to wait hours, perhaps days, for the dead drop to be visited.
Meinert and his two officers settled in for a twelve-hour surveillance shift. Brüske would send another team to relieve them at six the next morning. By eleven o’clock, boredom had set in. Meinert had done surveillance work before, but at 29, he was only on his third watch as team leader. Tired of watching through binoculars into the darkness, Meinert soon dozed. At three o’clock, Kassel spotted a man walking along the sidewalk, away from them. The man appeared to have come out of nowhere; he hadn’t passed the team as he headed east along Friedenstrasse.
Kassel immediately radioed Meinert. “Someone’s moving along the sidewalk.” But Meinert did not respond. He now lay asleep, his head slumped against his binoculars.
“Comrade Meinert,” Kassel called into his radio a second time. Receiving no response, Kassel decided to act.
Rushing up to the man, he called out, “State Security!” Calmly, the man turned to face him. “Your identification, please,” Kassel demanded.
The man calmly handed him a Border Troop military ID card.
Caught off guard, Kassel hesitated. “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, what are you doing here at this time of night?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I decided to go for a walk,” the man said.
Kassel looked over the papers, and then again at the man, carefully examining him. It all seemed in order, but he decided to take his time. “You shouldn’t be walking around at this time of night, comrade.”
“Are you saying it’s not safe?”
“No, but it doesn’t look exactly… innocent,” Kassel said.
The man’s tone darkened. “Do you intend to charge me with something, comrade? You should know I report directly to the State Council. If you take me into custody, I’m sure you’ll hear from them. I should be free to clear my head and take a walk when I have insomnia.”
Frightened, Kassel shoved the papers back into Hans’ hands. “My mistake, Comrade Lieutenant Colonel. Have a good evening.”
Kassel turned his attention back to the park. Within moments, Hans reached the next block on Friedenstrasse and turned the corner.
Just before daybreak, Kassel went to check on the dead drop. To his surprise, the tin was empty. Bonhöffer had seen nothing from his position, and neither had Meinert—though the latter man sheepishly hid the fact he had slept for over two hours that night. Altogether, the three men had seen fewer than four people in the hours between eleven and five, none of whom had entered the area of the fairy tale fountain. Their report was just not good enough for Scharf. He flew into a rage when told their quarry had given them the slip. Scharf immediately demoted Meinert and promised to report him to the Minister of State Security, guaranteeing the man’s career was doomed. Scharf saw only one bright note in the fiasco—Brüske had returned with the developed film from the Minox camera.
12
That Friday, Anna made her way to the checkpoint at the Friedrichstrasse train station. As planned, Hans made a visit to observe and detail the security at the station. He stood in a control room that had one wall covered with video monitors. There were a number of border guards and Stasi agents on watch in the room. Most of them sat in front of the monitors, though two supervisors stood back like Hans, taking in the entire view. In one corner Brüske watched the monitors. Hans paid Brüske no notice, having never met him or seen him with Scharf. Each of the monitors showed the processing lines and the booths where the border guards examined the passengers’ passports.
Presently, Anna came into view. Anna took slow, calming breaths and focused herself, determining not to show any signal of deceit. The disguise appeared to be working; not a single guard gave her a lingering or second glance.
Hans watched Anna on the monitor until she was nearly at the guard booth. Then he worked his way through the maze of corridors and back rooms to the customs booths, where he could stand behind the guards and observe. He scanned over the crowd, and while he did not focus on Anna, he did take notice of her. Anna did not look to the left or right, but moved patiently in line, appearing to stare absentmindedly at the people in front of her.
Scharf entered the control room and conferred with Brüske. The past few days had seen a flurry of activity as Scharf and his team of Stasi agents canvassed the checkpoints with copies of Anna’s passports and waited for her to cross over. People’s Police were also given composites of Anna, but Scharf doubted they would be of much use. If they were going to catch her, it would be at the border. There was nothing new for Brüske to report. Scharf went over to the monitors and watched.
In the customs checkpoint, Anna approached the guard booth. She slid her passport under the glass and quietly held her breath as the guard examined it. The guard looked over the passport, first examining the photo and biographical details, and then the stamps. He returned to the photo and looked up at Anna. She resisted the urge to nervously tap her fingers and held her hands together to control herself. After a long moment, the guard reached for his stamper, but hesitated. Hans came up behind the guard and inquired whether there was a problem. Put on the spot, the guard did not know how to answer. The biographical details were similar to those in the copies Scharf had distributed, but they were not exactly the same. He had no idea that the lieutenant colonel standing behind him had carefully altered the passport, finessing the forger’s work to perfection. Stammering, the guard finally shook his head. “No Comrade Lieutenant Colonel.”