“C’mon, I didn’t even hear about him until today,” George protested. It was a stupid thing to say.
Brüske, ever the predator, smelled blood. “My country was betrayed from within, by traitors like Brandt.” Brüske was moving closer, and now George was retreating, slowly backing away around the lamp so he could still see Brüske and the gun clearly.
“Why do you think I should know anything about him?” George snapped.
Brüske struck in a flash. Lashing out like a snake, Brüske swung a telescopic cosh out in his left hand and slammed it hard into George’s temple. George collapsed, knocking the lamp over with him.
Before he could collect himself, Brüske’s foot was suddenly pressed against his throat. George lay in a daze, bleeding from his head. The harsh light of the unshaded lamp shone on his face.
Brüske now stood over him, a silhouetted menace that spoke in a frenzied hiss. “Hans Brandt is a traitor and murderer. He helped destroy my country. And he was never brought to justice for his crimes. I want to know where he is…” Brüske cocked the Makarov as he pressed down on George’s neck. “…Or I will kill you.”
2
Hans Brandt looked out the window of the East German guard tower toward the West. On the other side of the Berlin Wall, a group of children were playing soccer at the edge of Tiergarten. Hans watched the children, a sense of wistfulness building inside of him. There was a carefree energy and innocence in their play, and he wished life could be that simple again.
A voice behind him interrupted his thoughts. “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel? Is everything in order?”
Hans responded without turning from the window. “Yes, very good, Comrade Sergeant.”
Hans was an exceptional soldier. He stood six feet tall, lean but powerful, and fit sharply into his gray gabardine officer’s uniform. At the rare age of thirty-two, Hans was a lieutenant colonel in the Border Troop corps of the GDR. His face was youthful, but his eyes hid a deep reservoir of secrets. He had learned the value of observing before speaking, of carefully watching the world around him. Paired with wisdom that exceeded his experience, Hans had made himself a formidable figure among the ranks of the Border Troops. Some observers were comparing his career to Markus Wolf, the head of the East German foreign intelligence agency, who became a general by the time he was thirty-two years old.
Now Hans’ eyes tracked from the children to the hulking gray mass of the Berlin Wall. It was twelve feet of four-inch thick reinforced concrete. On the eastern side, where Hans stood, the Wall was whitewashed—a security precaution making it easier to see anyone attempting to escape. In front of this stretched a fifty meter death strip zone—laced with mines, vehicle obstacles, and a lighted patrol road. Finally, there was a second wall, only eight feet tall but effective enough that it was the closest most GDR citizens ever came to the border. Hans looked out toward the next tower in a line that stretched to the horizon.
“Your procedures are excellent,” Hans said as he checked his watch. He turned to the sergeant and the other guard in the tower. “You’ll excuse me, comrades, but I’m due for a meeting.” The two guards acknowledged with a salute.
Hans quickly descended the ladder and exited the guard tower. He walked toward a gate in the rear wall, thirty feet away. There a soldier unlocked the gate and let Hans through, leaving the unworldly silence of the border zone behind. A black Zil, a Soviet-made town car, was waiting for him on the other side. On its front fenders were two small East German flags. Hans climbed into the backseat. The driver pulled out onto the street and headed north along the border. There was something always eerie about emerging from the border zone, and Hans sat in reverie looking out the window as the car passed the magnificent Brandenburg Gate. Situated in the heart of the city, the 18th century gate once stood as an icon of the city. Now it was isolated behind the Wall, in the middle of the border zone, inaccessible to anyone but the border troops.
The car turned right onto Unter den Linden and headed past the Soviet embassy. Hans rolled down the window and let the air of the city wash over him. The streets of East Berlin reeked of a combination of coal dust and diesel fumes, with a trace of cigarette smoke—but these pungent aromas helped bring him back to the world. He had encountered them when he first arrived in Berlin, and embraced them as part of the liveliness of a metropolis. Hans no longer found city life so invigorating, but the Berliner Luft had a distinctive fragrance that never failed to awaken him to his surroundings.
In minutes, the car reached the Lustgarten. The glimmering facade of the Palace of the Republic was directly in front of them, but the driver turned right again, to the Staatsratsgebäude. This was the State Council building, where the highest ministers of government met. The red and white facade of the building was rather austere in its appointments. Awkwardly placed as the central entrance was a relic from an earlier time: the Eosander portal from the demolished City Palace. Because Communist hero Karl Liebknecht pronounced the founding of a socialist republic from the portal in 1918, this one piece of the Palace was saved from demolition. Ironically, Liebknecht’s proclamation came two hours after the social democrats proclaimed the founding of the Weimar Republic at the Reichstag. Civil war would declare the democratic socialists winners, but the victory was short-lived. The Weimar Republic’s wobbly economic legs eventually caved in under massive inflation. Hitler and the Nazis would rise from the wreckage. The car stopped at the front entrance, and before the engine had even turned off, a military escort opened Hans’ door. Hans climbed out and returned the salute of the other guard who flanked the building’s entrance. Glancing at his watch, Hans hurried inside.
As Hans climbed the grand staircase, he passed a grotesquely pseudo-religious stained-glass window that ran the entire height of the wall. It depicted a disturbing mix of images: while young girls danced barefoot and doves flew peacefully above them, a group of armed guerrillas with red armbands were blowing a black eagle, the federal symbol of West Germany, to bits. The most dogmatic of political statements was inscribed below: “And whether or not we will be alive, when our goal has been reached, our program will survive. It will be the redemption of mankind,” then, hammering in the message with large letters on a red background, “in spite of everything!” In these halls, there could be no mistake―communism required complete devotion.
Hans reached the top of the staircase and came to a large door. He straightened his uniform, then, taking a deep breath, pulled the door open and entered the chamber. It was a large room with a socialist mural on one side. A large U-shaped oaken table, nearly forty feet in length, filled the room. A dull roar came from the thirty or so ministers that sat at the table, making small talk with one another. Most of the senior government leaders were there, including the Minister of Defense and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Only the old man himself, Erich Honecker, the head of state, was absent. Besides the Minister of Defense, Brandt had only met one of these men prior to today: Wolfgang Müller. Müller caught Hans’ eye from across the room and gave a small smile in greeting.
Müller was sixty-five, a senior Politburo member and deputy chairman on the State Council. He had considerable influence and yet was remarkably even-handed. Pragmatic, but also compassionate, Müller had spent most of his professional life in the Party working to improve his country. Müller also sought to find a more moderate way to preserve communism. He was a dedicated socialist, but not of the same breed as hard-liners like Honecker and the head of the Stasi. At heart, Müller was more a moderate socialist than a true communist, but he was far too private to ever reveal such a political identity. Müller liked the new General Secretary of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. He was youthful, energetic, and poised to open a new dialogue on socialism. Perhaps now there would finally be a new direction for the Warsaw Pact, a rejection of the Stalinist policies that kept the East clenched within a tight fist.