Authors: Paul Dowswell
‘Look, if it was that simple, I would have done it as soon as we arrived. They told me, when I came over, they would track me down if I tried to get away. They have spies all over the country. They have spies in the police and the government.’
‘Do you think it’s true?’ said Gretchen.
‘They even said they would get me if I moved away from Germany. “Read the papers while you’re over there,” they said. “See how many exiles from the East – in London, in New York – meet a sticky end.”’
Frank buried his head in his hands.
‘Look at that huge office they have at Normannenstrasse. You don’t think that’s just for traffic offences and keeping an eye on a few longhairs, do you? And they said if I don’t cooperate they will seize Geli and Alex and take them back. I can’t risk that happening . . .’
Erich Kohl had asked Frank to meet him near his home for a reason. There was a listening post in an attic apartment close to the Ostermanns where he joined another Stasi operative, based permanently in the West. The Ostermanns’ apartment had been easy enough to break into. Bugs had been placed all around the apartment with a radio transmitter to relay any conversation to the listening post. It was technology in its infancy and it only worked in close proximity to the transmitter. What they really needed was something that would work well at longer range. That was exactly the sort of information his Stasi minders hoped Frank Ostermann would supply from Siemens.
Kohl had instructed the operatives who manned the listening post to make sure they always recorded the Ostermanns after his weekly meetings with Frank. If Frank was going to betray them, those were the times when he would most likely talk to his wife or children. A voice-activated reel-to-reel tape recorder had been set up to capture their conversations.
Kohl could not hear much of the conversation that evening, but the distorted music from a blaring radio told him everything he needed to know. Frank had talked.
‘What will you do?’ said the man.
‘I will show them I mean business,’ said Kohl. ‘I shall take the boy.’
As Kohl hurried back to Pankstrasse U-Bahn, Franz Hübner was walking through the same chilly Berlin evening towards his brother-in-law’s residence in Wilmersdorf. Hübner was the man Erich Kohl had seen in the bar. His presence there was not a coincidence. He had been disappointed to notice Kohl get up and leave and was fairly certain he was the reason for his sudden departure. Hübner had supposed that the black patch he wore over his right eye would have afforded some sort of disguise to someone who had not seen him for several years, but evidently he was still entirely recognisable.
Hübner had been following Kohl, on and off, for most of the year. The West German secret service – the BfV – knew all about Frank Ostermann and his placement at Siemens. Now they were just biding their time, waiting to pounce at the most expedient moment.
Hübner had a personal interest in Kohl, or Gunter Schneider as he also knew him. He had been working undercover on the other side four years ago. Kohl had arrested him. The interrogation had been robust. They had let him go soon afterwards in a spy swap at Checkpoint Charlie. Thereafter, Hübner made it his mission in life to bring down the Stasi man who had beaten him so badly he had lost several teeth and the sight in his right eye.
A few weeks after they had released him back to the West, Hübner, recuperating at home, had been reading an illustrated English book about the Gestapo. There was a spread of photographs, mugshots from identification papers captured by the Allies at the end of the war, showing the faces of assorted Gestapo men. One of them, with ‘DECEASED’ stamped over it, looked familiar.
Further research at the archives of the recently established
Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
– Memorial for German Resistance – in Stauffenbergstrasse, confirmed that this was Gunter Schneider. When Hübner found out, he punched the air. But when he talked to his commanding officer, he was completely uninterested. Hübner was sent out of his office with a flea in his ear. He began to wonder if his boss was working for the other side, or whether he was an old Gestapo man himself. He was certainly the right age – what the radical students called ‘the Auschwitz Generation’.
So Hübner bided his time. Over the next couple of years, during the course of his work, he had picked up whatever useful information he could. They had sources in the Stasi’s Normannenstrasse headquarters who provided them with intelligence. Hübner knew, for example, that Kohl’s superior was a Colonel Theissen. He also knew that Theissen had a deep and abiding hatred for the Nazis. As a Communist ‘agitator’, he had survived six years in Dachau concentration camp. Hübner thought anyone who could do that must have iron for blood. He felt some affinity with Theissen and thought it a shame that they were on opposite sides. Hübner’s own father had named him Franz after the uncle he had never known who was executed by the Gestapo for distributing leaflets calling for an end to the war.
Now was the time, judged Hübner, to let the Stasi know who Erich Kohl actually was. If Hübner’s commanding officer was not interested, then he would send the information directly to Colonel Theissen himself. Hübner photocopied the Gestapo mugshot from the book. He typed ‘Erich Kohl is Gunter Schneider’ on a piece of paper, just to make it crystal clear, attached it to the copy of the photo with a paperclip and placed both in an envelope. His brother-in-law was visiting an uncle in East Berlin tomorrow. He would ask him to post it there.
He smiled at the simplicity of his plan. This was far more efficient than arresting Kohl or having him killed. Such an action usually provoked bloody retaliation. Besides, an arrest would just lead to a tit for tat swap somewhere down the line. Let them deal with their own
Schund und Schmutz
. Whatever fate the Stasi would mete out to Erich Kohl would be far more interesting than anything the West German secret service could do to him.
The Ostermanns sat round their dining table and tried to eat. The neighbours had complained about the radio so now they sat there in a strained silence. No one could think of anything to say.
Frank did try to convince his mother that she would be safer if she stayed in West Berlin. He scribbled his thoughts on the notepad. Grandma Ostermann could not be persuaded.
‘What would the Stasi want with me?’ she wrote.
Alex had still not returned by the time she left to catch a tram from Sonnenallee back to Treptower Park. After Gretchen came back from taking her to the U-Bahn station, they had another desperate, whispered conversation, with the radio on more quietly this time.
‘The police, you must go to them, Vati, or the secret service,’ Geli said.
Frank was beside himself with anxiety. It didn’t make coming to a logical conclusion any easier. ‘How the hell am I supposed to contact the secret service?’ he hissed.
None of them had the first idea, but they thought if they went to the police they would know.
Frank calmed down and they worked out a plan. When Alex got back, all four of them would go down to the police station on Prinzenallee. Frank would tell them everything and ask for the whole family to be taken into police protection. They would just have to hope the Stasi were bluffing about their spies in government and trust they were dealing with honest people.
Kohl knew he had to get to Alex Ostermann immediately. For all the threats he had made to Frank, having the Ostermann children sent back to East Berlin would take too long to arrange. Mere hours remained to save the situation. It was true that they had spies in the police and the highest level of government. But their coverage was patchy and could not be relied on.
Kohl knew Alex would be home soon so he waited for him at Pankstrasse U-Bahn. Gretchen and Grandma Ostermann walked straight past him as they hurried down to the underground at 9.00 that evening. Kohl wondered whether to seize Gretchen instead. He decided she would be too much trouble.
It was past 10.00 when Alex came up the stairs with his prized Rolling Stones concert tickets – one for him and one for Geli. His friends had both bought four tickets – intending to sell their spare ones for double or more their value. ‘It’s bound to sell out, so let’s make a bit of money out of it!’ said Andreas. Alex couldn’t bring himself to do that. Why deprive someone else further back in the queue of the chance to buy a ticket just so you could make a bit of extra money? It was seedy.
Lost in thought, he didn’t see Kohl until he had grabbed his arm and dragged Alex into one of the shop doorways in the U-Bahn underpass.
‘Alex Ostermann,’ said Kohl, ‘come with me if you want to live.’
Alex flinched as he recognised him. He tried to break away but Kohl had an iron grip. What else could he do? A couple of young men who had followed Alex off the train walked past. Alex cried out for help. They looked alarmed and uncertain.
‘Police,’ said Kohl with brisk confidence. ‘Move along.’
They were easily persuaded. Kohl certainly didn’t look like a mugger.
‘Have you got that?’ said Kohl with venom in his voice. ‘I look like a policeman. You look like trouble.’
As they waited for a southbound train, Alex kept looking up and down the empty platform, hoping someone would arrive who would help him. Maybe Frank would come down with Grandma? Then he’d be all right. Kohl knew exactly what he was doing and whispered, ‘I have an accomplice tailing us. If you run off, he has instructions to kill you. Either him or me can snuff you out in an instant, so do exactly as I tell you.’
Alex didn’t know whether to believe him. Was this man lurking on the concourse above the platforms? He hadn’t noticed anyone else up there. He heard the distant rumble of a train and hoped it would be one coming up from the centre and some of the passengers getting off would be friends from school. His instinct told him that the further he got away from home, the more difficult it would be to escape.
A southbound train burst from the tunnel and Alex felt his hopes drain away. Kohl dragged him into a carriage just as a young man ran down the stairs and boarded the train. Alex wondered if Kohl really did have an accomplice. But there was no eye contact, no recognition, between Kohl and the other man.
Kohl hissed, ‘Keep your mouth shut. No one is going to help you.’
Alex thought he could try to break away when they changed trains, especially after he noticed Kohl’s ‘accomplice’ stayed on the train when they got off at Gesundbrunnen. Kohl realised this too, and held on to his arm particularly tightly as they hurried through the empty white-tiled tunnels.
The only way he was going to get out of this, thought Alex, was by spotting a real policeman and asking him to call Kohl’s bluff. But his luck had deserted him that night.
Their journey came to an end at Görlitzer Bahnhof in Kreuzberg. They walked for ten minutes through dark empty streets until they came to a cheap and anonymous apartment block. Kohl had a sparsely furnished studio room four floors up, in a turn-of-the-century block.
As soon as they got there, Kohl tied Alex to a chair at gunpoint.
‘Keep your trap shut,’ he said. Then he picked up the phone and dialled a number.
‘Hello, Frank,’ he said. ‘Volker here. Alex would like to talk to you.’
Kohl held a knife to Alex’s throat with one hand and the telephone next to his mouth with the other. ‘Just say hello,’ he said calmly.
‘Vati,’ said Alex.
‘Are you all right?’ said Frank
Kohl spoke into the phone. ‘Have you had time to read my letter?’ he said, then he put the phone down.
Alex watched with mounting dread and wondered what on earth was going to happen next. Kohl walked into the kitchenette off the main studio room. Alex heard a drawer opening, then rattling, then tearing noises. Kohl returned with a strip of black insulating tape which he placed roughly over Alex’s mouth. Then he ruffled his hair, like a hearty
Onkel
.
‘You just sit tight and be a good boy,’ he said.
Gretchen and Geli sat in shocked silence. They were all stunned. Eventually Gretchen whispered, ‘Do you think Kohl knew we intended to go to the police?’
‘I don’t know, but something made them take Alex,’ Frank replied.
Geli wrote ‘We have definitely been bugged’ on the kitchen notepad.
They spent the next hour combing the apartment looking for listening devices. Frank found something odd in the telephone but decided not to remove it in case it broke the phone. It could just as easily be a piece of West German technology he did not recognise. They couldn’t find anything else.
Frank could put off opening Kohl’s letter no longer. His hands were shaking so much he had to put it on the table in order to read it. The instructions were blunt.
Memorise then burn. Floor 6. Room 632. Combination 25894927. Fibre optics dossier.
‘What do they mean, “Combination”?’ said Gretchen.
Frank hushed her with a despairing motion and beckoned for them to step outside. They huddled together on the window ledge leading down to the apartment lobby.
‘He’s referring to a safe at Siemens,’ said Frank, trying to pull himself together.