Two and a half hours later we were in Frankfurt and heading across the Main into the north of the city. Our destination was an enormous, curving, honey-coloured marble office building with six square wings that lent the place a quasi- military aspect, as if any minute the clerks and secretaries inside might abandon their typewriters and comptometers and man some anti-aircraft guns on the flat roofs. I hadn't ever been there but I recognised it from old newsreels and picture magazines. Completed in 1930, the Poelzig Ensemble or Poelzig Complex had been the largest office building in Europe and the corporate headquarters of the I.G. Farben conglomerate. This former model of German business and modernity had been the centre for Nazi wartime research projects relating to the creation of synthetic oil and rubber, not to mention Zyklon B, the lethal gas used in death camps. It was now the headquarters of the US High Commissioner for Germany (the HICOG) and, it now seemed, the Central Intelligence Agency.
The car passed through a couple of military checkpoints before we parked and entered a temple-like portico. Behind this were some bronze doors and on the other side a capacious hallway with a large American flag, several American soldiers and two curving staircases covered with sheet aluminium. In front of the paternoster elevator I was invited to step aboard and to disembark on the ninth floor. A little nervously – for I had never before ridden one of these intimidating elevators – I complied.
The ninth floor was very different from those below. There were no windows. It was lit from skylights instead of banded glazing, which probably afforded the security-minded inhabitants yet more privacy. The ceiling was also much lower, which made me wonder if one of the qualifications to be an American spy in Europe might be a lack of height.
Certainly the man to whom I was now introduced was not tall, although he was hardly short, either. He wasn't anything you could have described, being unremarkable in almost every way. He was, I suppose, like an American professor, albeit one who spoke fluent German. He wore a blazer, grey flannel trousers, a button-down blue shirt, and some sort of club or academic tie – maroon with little shields. The introduction was not, however, illuminating, in that he appeared to have no name, just a title. He was 'the Chief and that was all I ever knew about him. I did however recognise the two men who were also waiting for me in that windowless meeting- room. Special Agents Scheuer and Frei – were those their real names? I still had no idea – waited until the Chief had acknowledged their presence before nodding at me with silent courtesy.
'Have you been here before?' he asked. 'I mean, when this building was owned by I.G. Farben.'
'No, sir.' I shrugged. 'As a matter of fact, I'm surprised to find it's still here. Apparently undamaged. A building this size, of such importance to the Nazi war effort, I'd always assumed it was bombed to rubble, like almost everything else in this part of Germany.'
'There are two schools of opinion on that, Gunther. Sit down, sit down. One school has it that the US Air Force was forbidden to bomb it because of the building's proximity to the Allied POW camp at Gruneburgpark. The other school would have you believe that Eisenhower had this building marked out as his future European headquarters. Apparently the building reminded him of the Pentagon, in Washington. And I suppose, if I'm honest, it does look a little similar. So maybe that's the real explanation after all.'
I drew a chair out from a long, dark wood table and sat down and waited for the Chief to get to the point of my being there. But it seemed he hadn't yet finished with Eisenhower.
'The president's wife wasn't quite so enamoured of this building, however. She took particular exception to a large bronze female figure – a nude that used to sit on the edge of the reflecting pool. She thought it wasn't suitable for a military installation.' The Chief chuckled. 'Which makes me wonder how many real soldiers she's actually met.' He frowned. 'I'm not sure where that statue went. The Hoechst Building, perhaps? That nude always did look like she needed some medicine, eh Phil?'
'Yes, sir,' said Scheuer.
'You must be tired after your journey, Herr Gunther,' said the Chief. 'So I'll try not to fatigue you any more than I have to. Would you like some coffee, sir?'
'Please.'
Scheuer moved towards a sideboard where coffee things had been neatly assembled on a tray.
The Chief sat down and regarded me with a mixture of curiosity and distrust. If there had been a chessboard on the table between us it might have made things feel a little easier for us both. All the same a game was in progress and we both knew what it was. He waited until Scheuer – Phil – had set a cup of coffee in front of me and then began.
'Zyklon B. I assume you've heard of it.'
I nodded.
'Everyone assumes it was developed by I.G. Farben. But they merely marketed the stuff. It was actually developed by another chemical company called Degesch, which came to be controlled by a third chemical company called Degussa. In 1930 Degussa needed to raise some money and so they sold half of their controlling interest in Degesch to their main competitor, I.G. Farben. And, by the way, the stuff, the actual crystals that exterminated insects with the speed of a cyclone, thus the name, well that was made by a fourth company called Dessauer Werke. You with me so far'
'Yes sir. Although I'm beginning to wonder why.'
'Patience, sir. All will be explained. So, Dessauer made the stuff for Degesch who sold the stuff to Degussa who sold the marketing rights to two other chemical companies. I won't even bother telling you their names. It would just confuse you. So, in fact, I.G. Farben held only a twenty per cent share in the gas, with the lion's share owned by another company, the Goldschmidt AG Company of Essen.
'Why am I telling you this? Let me explain. When I moved into this building I felt kind of uncomfortable at the idea that I might be breathing the same kind of office air as the folks who developed that poison gas. So I resolved to find out about it for myself. And I discovered that it really wasn't true that I.G. Farben had had very much to do with that gas. I also discovered that back in 1929, the US Public Health Service were using Zyklon B to disinfect the clothes of Mexican immigrants and the freight trains they were travelling in. At the New Orleans Quarantine Station. Incidentally, the stuff is still being manufactured today, in Czechoslovakia, in the city of Koln. They call it Uragan D2 and they use it to disinfect the trains that German POWs have been travelling on. Back to the Homeland.
'You see, Herr Gunther. I have a passion for information.
Some people call that sort of thing trivia, but I do not. I call that truth. Or knowledge. Or even, when I'm sitting in my office, intelligence. I have an appetite for facts, sir. Facts. Whether it's facts about I.G. Farben, Zyklon B gas, Mickey Messer, or Erich Mielke.'
I sipped my coffee. It was horrible. Like stewed socks. I reached for my cigarettes and remembered that I'd smoked the last of them in the car.
'Give Herr Gunther a cigarette, will you, Phil? That was what you were after, was it not?'
'Yes. Thank you.'
Scheuer lit me with an armour-plated Dunhill and then lit one for himself. I noticed the shields on his bow tie were the same as the ones on the Chiefs and I assumed they shared more than just a service, but a background, too. Ivy League, probably.
'Your letter, Herr Gunther, was fascinating. Especially in the context of what Phil here has told me and what I've read in the file. But it's my job to discover how much of it is fact. Oh, I'm not for a moment suggesting that you're lying to us. But after twenty years, people can easily make mistakes. That's fair, isn't it?'
'Very fair.'
He regarded my un-drunk coffee with vicarious disgust. 'Horrible, isn't it? The coffee. I don't know why we put up with it. Phil, get Herr Gunther something stronger. What are you drinking, sir?'
'A schnapps would be nice,' I said and glanced around as Scheuer fetched a bottle and a small glass from inside the sideboard and placed it on the desk. 'Thank you.'
'Coaster,' snapped the Chief.
Coasters were fetched and placed under the bottle and my glass.
"This table's made of walnut,' said the Chief. 'Walnut marks like a damask napkin. Now then, sir. You have your cigarette. You have your drink. All I need from you are some facts.'
In his fingers he held a sheet of unfolded paper on which I recognised my own handwriting. He placed a pair of half- moon glasses on the end of his snub nose and viewed the letter with a detached curiosity. He barely read the contents before letting the note fall onto the table.
'Naturally, I've read this. Several times. But now that you're here, I'd prefer it if you told me, in person, what you have written to Agents Scheuer and Frei in this letter of yours.'
'So that you can see if I deviate from what I wrote before?'
'We understand each other perfectly.'
'Well, the facts are these,' I said suppressing a smile. 'As a condition of my working with the SDECE-'
The Chief winced. 'Exactly what does that mean, Phil?'
'Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionage,' said Scheuer.
The Chief nodded. 'Go on, Herr Gunther.'
'Well, I agreed to work for them if they permitted me to visit Berlin and an old friend of mine. Perhaps the only friend I have left.'
'She have a name? This friend of yours?'
'Elisabeth,' I said.
'Surname? Address?'
'I don't want her involved in any of this.'
'Meaning you don't want to tell me.'
'That's true.'
'You met her how and when?'
'1931. She was a seamstress. A good one, too. She worked in the same tailor's shop as Erich Mielke's sister, which was also where Mielke's mother, Lydia Mielke, worked until her death in 1911. It was pretty hard for Erich's father bringing up four children on his own. His elder daughter went to work and cooked for the family meals, and because Elisabeth was her friend, sometimes she helped out. There were even times when Elisabeth was like a sister to Erich.'
'Where did they live? Can you remember the address?'
'Stettiner Strasse. A grey tenement building in Gesundbrunnen, in north-west Berlin. Number twenty-five. It was Erich who introduced me to Elisabeth. After I'd saved his neck.'
'Tell me about that.'
I told him.
'And this is when you met Mielke's father.'
'Yes. I went to Mielke's address to try to arrest him and the old man took a swing at me and I had to arrest him. It was Elisabeth who had given me the address and she wasn't very happy that I'd asked her for it. As a result, our relationship hit a rock. And it was very much later on, I suppose it must have been the autumn of 1940, before we became reacquainted; and the following year before we started our relationship again.'
'You never mentioned any of this when you were interrogated at Landsberg,' said the Chief. 'Why not?'
I shrugged. 'It hardly seemed relevant at the time. I almost forgot that Elisabeth even knew Erich. Not least because she'd always kept it a secret from him that we were friends. Erich didn't like cops much, to put it mildly. I started seeing her again in the winter of 1946, when I came back from the Russian POW camp. I lived with Elisabeth for a short while until I managed to find my wife again, in Berlin. But I was always very fond of her and she of me. And recently, when I was in Paris, I got to thinking of her again and wondering if she was okay. I suppose you might say I began to entertain romantic thoughts about her. Like I said, there's no one else in Berlin I know. So I was resolved to look her up as soon as possible and see if she and I couldn't make another go of it.'
'And how did that go?'
'It went well. She's not married. She was involved with some American soldier. More than one I think. Anyway, both men were married and so they went back to their wives in the States, leaving her middle-aged and scared about the future.'
I poured a glass of schnapps and sipped it while the Chief watched me closely, as if weighing my story in each hand, trying to judge how much or how little he believed.
'She was at the same address as she'd been in 1946?'
'Yes.'
'We can always ask the French, you know. Her address.'
'Go ahead.'
'They might reasonably assume that's where you've gone,' he said. 'They might even make life difficult for her. Have you thought of that? We could protect her. The French aren't always as romantic as they're often portrayed.'
'Elisabeth lived through the battle of Berlin,' I said. 'She was raped by the Russians. Besides, she's not the type to give a man an injection of thiopental on the streets of Gottingen, in broad daylight. When Grottsch tells his story I imagine the French will think the Russians pinched me, don't you? After all, that's what you wanted them to think, isn't it? I wouldn't be at all surprised if your men were speaking Russian when they grabbed him. Just for appearance's sake.'
'At least tell me if she lives in the East or the West.'
'In the West. The French gave me a passport in the name of Sebastian Kleber. You'll be able to check me coming through Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt, and into Berlin at the Dreilinden Crossing. But not leaving it to enter East Berlin.'
'All right. Tell me your news about Erich Mielke.'
'My friend Elisabeth said she'd seen Mielke's father, Erich. That he was still alive and in good health. He was in his early seventies, she said. They went for a coffee at the Cafe Kranzler. He said he'd been living in the DDR but that he didn't like it. Missed the football and his old neighbourhood. While Elisabeth was telling me this it was clear she had no idea what Erich junior had been doing. Who and what he was. All she said was that Erich visits his father from time to time and gives him money. And I assumed, given who he was, that this must be in secret.'
'From time to time. How often is that?'
'Regularly. Once a month.'
'Why didn't you say so?'
'I might have done if you'd given me enough time.'
'Did she say where Erich senior had been living? In the DDR?'
'A village called Schonwalde, north-west of Berlin. She said he told her he had a nice enough cottage there but that he was bored in Schonwalde. It's rather a boring place. Of course she knew that Erich senior had been a staunch communist and so she asked him if living in the West meant he had left the Party. And he said that he had come to the conclusion that the communists were every bit as bad as the Nazis.'
'She said he said that?'
'Yes.
'You know we checked and there's no record of an Erich Mielke living in West Berlin.'
'Mielke's father isn't called Mielke. His name is Erich Stallmacher. Mielke was illegitimate. Not that the father's using the name of Stallmacher either.'
'Did she tell you what his name is?'
'No.'
'Give you an address?'
'Stallmacher isn't that stupid.'
'But there is something. Something you'd like to trade.'
'Yes. Stallmacher told Elisabeth the name of a restaurant where he regularly likes to go for lunch on Saturdays.'
'And your idea is? What exactly?'
'This is your area of expertise, not mine, Chief. I was never much of an intelligence officer. I didn't have the kind of dirty mind to be really effective in your world. I was a better detective, I think. Better at uncovering a mess than creating one.'
'I see you have a low opinion of intelligence.'
'Just the people who work in it.'
'Us included.'
'You especially.'
'You prefer the French?'
'There's something honest about their hypocrisy and selfregard.'
'As a former Berlin detective what would you propose?'
'Follow Erich Stallmacher from his favourite restaurant to his apartment. And lay a trap for Erich Mielke there.'
'Risky.'
'Sure,' I said. 'But now that you've pulled me you're going to do it all the same. You have to, now that you've partly undermined all that black propaganda I'd been giving to the French about Mielke being your agent; and before that, an agent of the Nazis. Without the cherry on the cake – me identifying de Boudel for them – maybe they won't find all those lies I told about Erich so persuasive any more.'
'It's true that we would like to get our hands on Mielke. With his father in our back pocket we could even perhaps turn him into the spy you told the French he was. Of course, then we'd have to blacken your name to the French. To make sure they formed the correct impression about Mielke again. That he was and always had been a perfect communist bastard.'
'You see, I knew you'd think of some way around these problems.'
'And you. What will you want to help?'
I frowned. 'I can show you where the restaurant is. Maybe even get you a table.'
'We shall want more help than that. After all, you've met Erich Stallmacher. He took a swing at you. You arrested him. You must have got a good look at him that day. No, Herr Gunther, we shall want more than your help in obtaining a table at this man Stallmacher's favourite watering hole. We shall want you to identify him.'
I smiled wearily.
'Something funny about that?'
'You're not the first intelligence chief to have asked me to do this. Heydrich had the same idea.'
'I've often wondered about Heydrich,' said the Chief. 'They said he was the cleverest Nazi of the bunch. You agree with that?'
'It's true he had an instinctive understanding of power, which made him a very effective Nazi. You like facts, sir? Then here's a fact about Reinhardt Heydrich you might appreciate. His father, Bruno, was a music teacher and before that a composer of sorts. Ten years before his son was born, Bruno Heydrich wrote an opera entitled Reinhardt's Crime. Oh yes, and here's another fact. Heydrich was murdered on Himmler's order.'
'You don't say.'
'I was the investigating detective.'
'Interesting.'
'More interesting to me right now is the money that was taken from me when I was arrested in Cuba. And the boat that was impounded. That's part of the price for my help. Actually it was the price of the deal we had in Landsberg in return for me bullshitting the French, so you're only agreeing to what your people have already agreed. I want the boat sold and all of the money paid into a Swiss bank account, as we agreed. I also want an American passport. And, for delivering Erich Mielke, the sum of twenty-five thousand US dollars.'
"That's a lot.'
'Given that I'm about to deliver the deputy head of the East German State Security apparatus, I'd say it was cheap at twice the price.'
'Philip?'
'Yes, sir?'
'A price worth paying, would you say?'
'For Mielke? Yes, sir, I would. I've always thought that, since the beginning of this whole intelligence effort.'
'Because you know I shall want you to play the ringmaster at Herr Gunther's show, don't you?'
'No, sir.'
'Then I guess you know it now, eh Philip?'
Scheuer looked uncomfortable at being put on the spot like this. 'Yes, sir.'
'You too, Jim.'
Frei raised his eyebrows at that but nodded all the same.
I poured myself another glass of schnapps.
'Why not?' said the Chief. 'I think we could all use a drink. Don't you agree, Phil?'
'Yes, sir. I think we could.'
'But not schnapps, eh? Forgive me, Herr Gunther. There's a lot about your country I admire. But we're not very keen on schnapps at the CIA.'
'I imagine it's rather hard to spike a glass this small.'
'Don't you believe it.' The Chief smiled. 'Hmm. Yes, that's quite a sense of humour you have there, for a German.'
Philip Scheuer produced a bottle of bourbon and three glasses.
'Sure you won't try any of this, Herr Gunther?' said the Chief. 'To toast your deal with Ike.' 'Why not?' I said.
'Good man. We'll make an American of you yet, sir.' But that was exactly what I was worried about.