‘That’s good Albert, that’s well done…‘ Praise always went a long way, Fleming reckoned, with a dogged foot soldier of the Service. And a joke was useful.’… My advice, Albert, after what you’ve had to sit through, take a cold shower…’
He had written the note on his pad. There were three cassettes on offer. The sale price of the cassettes was, the calculation given him by Perkins, sterling pounds 10,460. He wrote now the names of those who would be needed to authorize a payment of that size, and the names of those who would wish to consider the potentials of the direction in which the matter now ran. And he wrote the name of Dieter Krause and his pen scratched three lines under the name.
Oh, and, Albert, shouldn’t have forgotten them. What news of our intrepid pair… I see. Yes, I have that… A pastor and a schoolteacher, from Rerik – you don’t have the connection?… I see. .. Well, we have to hope for them, don’t we, that they stay sensible, yes?… Forgive me, Albert, but I need to push on if I’m to get the authorization. It’s about the time that people go home… I’ll call you in the morning.’
It was so peaceful on the river below, and so quiet behind the double glazing around him in his room. He found it difficult, in the peace and the quiet, to imagine, in distant Germany, a small car impacting against the radiator of a heavy goods lorry and a man spiralling down to his death from a great height… It was a question of policy. Policy ruled, policy did not permit imagination.
‘Violet, a moment, please…’
He called through the door. She had her coat on, a scarf round her head, and carried her collapsed umbrella and a shopping bag. He didn’t have to apologize. It was not necessary to apologize for destroying Violet’s carefully constructed timetable. It was general talk that she lived alone, had no life outside the Service. He knew the way to soften her.
‘Albert’s done well… I need a meeting in an hour. I’ll want the assistant deputy director, someone from Resources, Russia Desk should come and American Desk, and someone to take a note… would you emphasize priority, it doesn’t wait till the morning… Albert’s done very well.’
She turned away. Already she was awkwardly shrugging out of her coat, then loosening her scarf. They’d have made a good item, the dogged Albert Perkins and the ever dependable Violet. They’d probably have found a little space in the building to bunk up so they’d never have had to leave Vauxhall Bridge Cross, two devoted servants of the Service, perpetually on call for times of priority.
‘Oh, and please… Dig me what we’ve stored on Dieter Krause, former MfS, Rostock, so I can have a fast hack at the guts of the brute’s life.
KRAUSE, Dieter Friedrich.
Born: 11.9.1952, at Hessenburg (n.e. of Rostock). Father was horticultural worker, amputee from Normandy 1944. One sister, Petra, born 1954. Mother was horticultural produce packer. Unremarkable childhood. Joined FDJ in 1966.
It was not the influence of his father. His father, without a right leg, was a survivor. His father came through the Nazi childhood, the wound, the arrival of the Red Army, the coming of the Communist regime. His father, the survivor, was bray, believed in obedience and correctness towards power. The influence on the child, Dieter, came from the man he called his uncle. The uncle, too, was a survivor and spoke with the guttural accent of an ethnic German from northern Yugoslavia, and had been three years in Tito’s post war prison camps. The uncle taught the child, Dieter, aged twelve, the twin arts of survival and advancement as he had learned them in the prison camp near to Novi Sad. He had also taught young Dieter to understand the mind and character of the Slav Russian without which the distant friendship could not have been bred. He informed, after his first FDJ summer camp, on the other children, on the brigade leader, on what the other children said about their parents. He was given coarse chocolate, and made a unit leader. He had a handler, he was noticed, he tasted power.. And he had learned to fear the loss of power…
Volunteer to Border Guard, 1970. Volunteer for additional six months service. Doctorate of Law, University of Potsdam (MfS sponsorship). Joined MfS, 1976, Normannen Strasse HQ, Berlin. KGB fast track promotion course, Moscow, 1979. Bonn, (importexport cover) 1980. Posted to Rostock, 1981, rank Unterlea tnant. Married Eva (nee Schultz), FDGB organizer at Neptun shipyard, Rostock, 1981.
On the horticultural farm, a friend of his sister, the daughter of workers in the tomato houses, was Annelore. He had promised, dishevelled, wet, naked, that he would love Annelore all of his life. When he had gone to join the Border Guard, Annelore had come with him on the bus to Rostock, and walked with him onto the platform of the Hauptbalrnhof, and waved to him until the train had curved away on the tracks. Sex in the seed store with Annelore when he had returned on leave from the Magdeburg sector. Sex in his mother’s bed, through long afternoons, with Annelore when he had come back for the vacations from the university at Potsdam. There were many girls he could have fucked, sucked, stroked, in Potsdam and when he was posted to Normannen Strasse, but he had stayed faithful to his Annelore. And he had come back to Rostock, and they were to be married. It had been a summer’s evening when he was ordered to the office in August-Bebel Strasse of the major who headed the internal security Abteilung. Annelore was not suitable. Annelore’s cousin was associated with an environmental action group. Annelore, if he wished for a career in the MfS, should be dismissed from his life… He had written to her that evening, four lines… He had been introduced the next month to a quite pretty FDGB organizer. He had chased the power, clung to it. He would not lose the power.
Promoted to Oberstleutnant 1984, transfer to CounterEspionage. 1986, authorization for ‘friendship’ with Major Pyotr Rykov, Wustrow Base, w. of Rostock. Promoted to Hauptman 1987. Following incursion of UK agent, Hans Becker, to Wustrow Base (run, non-authorized, by I Corps, west Berlin) shot agent dead after capture – 21.11.1988.
There had been sufficient light for him to see the way that the back of the boy’s head, against the dirt and the grass of the square, had exploded. Before they had dragged the boy away, they had all knelt on the ground and picked in the earth for the tissue of the boy’s brain and for the fragments of skull bone. Earth was kicked over the blood… He had had the pain in his groin, and he had not felt bad then at shooting the boy or dropping the body into the night sea… He had felt the pain, the next day, when he had been called to the office of the minister, Mielke. Made to wait in the outer corridor, eyed with contempt by officers who used the corridor and the secretaries at their typewriters in the outer office. Marched into the inner office, as if he were a prisoner. Standing, the ache still in his groin, blurting answers to the questions of the old man. Then the monologue of abuse from Mielke. Through the cigarette smoke, he was an incompetent cunt. He had shivered as the smoke had played at his nose, trembled, because he had thought he had lost his power…
Believed to have sanitized personal MfS file, and Becker file, Dec. 1989. Unemployed. 1992, worked in Rostock bank (four months), dismissed. Unemployed. 1995, hardware salesman (on commission). 1996, offered himself to BfV, Cologne.
He had sat for two hours in the public hallway of the BfV complex. He had himself typed the letter he had handed in at the desk, and with the letter had been the torn out photograph from the newspaper. He had sat there for two hours, a man forgotten, without status. A secretary, a plump and grey haired woman so similar to the one he had slept with in Bonn so many years before, had come to the public hallway and given him a security pass and escorted him to the elevator. The faces had been suspicious and sober. He had talked of his friendship with Pyotr Rykov as the spools of a tape recorder turned. He had given the name of a secretary in the Foreign Ministry, and many years before the woman had played her fingers in the hair of his chest and whispered love. They had changed the tape three times… A week later he had been called back to Cologne, escorted with deference to the room of a senior official. There had been sandwiches of Scotch smoked salmon and white wine from the Rhine. He had been welcomed, his power had returned. He remembered the sick feeling of relief as he had driven back again to Rostock. On the autobahn he had made the pledge to himself, over and over, repeated and repeated, that he would never, a second time, lose the power…