11
BERLIN, JANUARY 2013
The Hotel Adlon’s elegant concierge raised his eyes and gazed in irony at the elderly man struggling to get inside. The doorman, wrapped in a thick coat, his stately uniform underneath, as if he were an admiral in the Imperial Navy, was patiently holding the door, while the old professor—thus he appeared to the concierge observing him—was trying with his one hand to hold on to his hat, so that it wouldn’t blow off in the sharp and icy gusts of wind, and with his other to close his umbrella, which had folded in on itself in the opposite direction, as his body pressed ahead, determined to feel the pleasant warmth that permeated the lobby. And indeed, a huge fireplace was ablaze in one of its corners, and a yellowish light, homely looking, dripped onto the ornate marble floor, from the direction of the bar. The professor finally made it through the doorway, mumbling a word of thanks to the doorman, nodding in the direction of the concierge, and waving his umbrella around as if he were fencing with a ghost, trying with his movements to fold it back to its natural state. His casquette was in his hand now, after almost falling to the floor, and he made his way toward the bar in long and spritely strides, hopping with surprising agility up the two steps, his coat already open and flapping, his gray hair tousled. And there we go, the old man had spotted the man who was waiting there for him, who rose from the plush armchair to greet him. At the same time, he also noticed the young man at the corner of the bar whose muscles seemed to be fighting to get out of his gray suit. The young man went tense upon seeing him and readied to rise from his chair, too, but the man who had already stood and moved toward him with his hand outstretched in greeting signaled to the muscular young man with a glance—it’s okay, it’s him, you can relax.
The two embraced like old friends. “Walter, Walter, it’s good to see you.” “Good to see you, too, Aharon, good to see you too. Thank you for coming on such short notice.” They looked at each other with affection. Walter returned to his leather armchair, Aharon dragged a second leather armchair closer, dropping his umbrella and coat on a third. “A cognac, if you please,” he requested from the waiter who had appeared discreetly at their table. “A glass of hot wine, please,” Walter said, and waited for the waiter to walk away.
“I see you’ve yet to get rid of your bodyguard,” Aharon remarked with a smile. “I, on the other hand,” he added in the same breath, “am no longer considered important enough. As you can see, fame is fleeting. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” he went on, failing as usual to complete the sentence and allowing it instead to fade out.
Aharon Levin and Dr. Walter Vogel—the former head of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, known as the Israeli Mossad, and the former chief of the BND, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service. Vogel had retired a few months earlier and, in keeping with procedure, was still entitled to a security detail, or required one, depending on how you looked at it and who was doing the looking. Vogel had spent his entire professional life in the West German intelligence service, signing up shortly after earning his Ph.D. in law from the University of Goettingen. He had spent his whole career fighting the communist threat. He loathed the KGB, and felt the same loathing for the Stasi, too, which had imposed a reign of terror on the citizens of East Germany, the celebrated German Democratic Republic, whom it was supposed to have protected and whom it was supposed to have served. He reserved respect and admiration, accompanied nevertheless by hatred, only for the Stasi’s foreign espionage division, the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, in which he had seen not only bullying fists, but also artistry, from professional and sensitive hands that knew their craft well.
“Look,” Walter said to Aharon, “I’ll get straight to the point. It sounds like an old-timers’ thing—you and me, and an old priest from Dresden, and an old woman who served in the Stasi and has passed away.”
Aharon remained silent and nodded his head. He was a good listener. A log caught alight in the fireplace, casting a sudden glow over his wrinkle-grooved face. Walter continued:
“I was contacted on the very eve of Christmas by a source I used to handle, an East German priest, who also worked at the time with the Stasi, like everyone almost, because let’s face it, who had a choice back then? He didn’t know if it was important or not, but he wanted to share it with me. Anyway, it’s a secret that got someone killed. He doesn’t know much, and all he does know he heard from a dying and bitter old woman. And like I said, she did in fact die a few days after speaking with him. I’m giving you the gist of what he told me, and believe me, Aharon, I sat with the priest for hours to listen to the story again and again, from every possible angle. The old woman who told him the story was an archivist for the Special Ops Unit of the Stasi’s Main Directorate for Reconnaissance. Listen carefully, Aharon. According to her, the East Germans recruited and operated a high-ranking Israeli asset. They called him Cobra. The KGB was aware of the asset and the Stasi passed on all the intelligence he delivered to them. By the end of the 1980s, Cobra was already a parliamentary aide or perhaps even a ministerial aide, with further advancement apparently to come. The East Germans believed in him. Expected him to go very far. When the ground in East Germany began to shake, the KGB demanded full control over the asset. All the material pertaining to him was handed over to two KGB officers who were sent to collect the dossiers from the Special Ops Archives in Dresden. The archivist, by the name of Marlene, said that she did indeed hand over all the material to them. The order to do so was handed down by the then-director of the foreign espionage division, General Heinrich Krueger, and relayed to her personally by the officer in charge of the operation, who went by the name of Gunther. Gunther dryly told her that the operation was being handed over to their comrades in Moscow, and she said he was left furious and despondent. In any event, Gunther was hit by a truck and killed on the side of a highway north of Berlin less than two months later. The poor driver said he hadn’t even seen him before he was thrown under the wheels of the vehicle. According to Marlene, Gunther was assassinated. Cobra was such a high-value asset that the KGB took action to ensure that no one who knew his real identity was left behind. As I understand things, the Stasi handled Cobra under the guise of being Americans, for reasons I’m not aware of and can only speculate on.
“And as you know,” Walter quietly continued, “Markus Hertz, the serving division chief when Operation Cobra came into being and moved ahead, died a few months after the unification of the two Germanys, while under house arrest imposed by us. He had more than enough crimes for which to pay, but more so than anything he wasn’t a well man, and despite our grave suspicions, we weren’t able to prove that he didn’t die of natural causes.”