Chapter Twelve.
The Trümmerfrauen paused briefly from their labour of clearing the rubble on Behrenstrasse to watch the black Mercedes cruise past. The monotonous clink of masonry hammers tapping away the remaining mortar from intact bricks, thus, making them usable again, faltered as they remembered the similar black Mercedes belonging to the special Gestapo killers... the Alarm Command... that had prowled the streets; or the Razzia cars that had squealed to a halt outside, late at night... or in the early grey dawn. They remembered the clatter of feet on the stairs and the pounding on the doors of the apartments chosen for the Gestapo raids. They remembered the polite young men in long leather coats and with turned-down hat-brims. Now, however; there were no more Gestapo raids or polite young men, and the sinister car was driven by a pretty, young blonde woman.
Behrenstrasse east was still blocked by a fallen building. Charlotte Mckenna turned out onto Wilhelmstrasse to drive up to Unter-den-Linden. As she reached the junction, she noticed that the wrecked Adlon hotel was still functioning... for those who had food coupons. She turned right into Unter den Linden, now shorn of both Linden trees, which Hitler had ordered to be removed; and the twelve-metre-high, white Doric plaster columns topped by German eagle and Swastika symbols that had replaced them. What few trees had remained had long since been chopped down by the Berliners for firewood.
Unter den Linden had always been exuberant, but disharmonious, with its mixture of architectural styles; but that exuberance was now bleakly symmetrical in its gaunt, smoke-blackened ruins. The carriageway had been cleared of rubble and the detritus of shattered vehicles and other assorted war-debris, but the entire length of the once-beautiful boulevard was flanked by desolate, brooding ruins all the way up to the severely-damaged and burnt-out Dom.
In the Thirties, Marlene Dietrich had once sung...
"Solang noch Unter'n Linden
Die alten Bäume blühn,
Kann nichts uns überwinden.
Berlin bleibt doch Berlin!"...
"As long as the old trees bloom on Unter den Linden
Nothing can overcome us.
Berlin is still Berlin!"...
Perhaps, it had been an ominous portent for the future. Unter den Linden was now a two-kilometre-long, tree-less thoroughfare of destruction, lined with the lacerated corpses of Berlin's best neo-classical architecture; where nearly all the public buildings and most of the commercial centres were now heaps of rubble or broken fragments of walls standing stark against the grey sky. Here and there, she could still just make out the faded, ugly chalk outlines of the stark Cyrillic characters spelling out the word: "Atak'ivat"..."searched," (which really meant "looted")... scrawled on the smoke-blackened, shrapnel-scarred stonework.
A colossal seventy-five-million kilogrammes of high explosive had been rained down on the capital of Hitler’s ambition, laying waste more than twenty-five-square-kilometres of central Berlin. It now stood mute testament to disastrous violence and chaos on a truly Wagnerian scale; the "Götterdämmerung" of The Thousand Year Reich. Berlin was a dead, ghostly city of disconnected streets; a landscape of ruins, where the monstrous skeletons of the Third Reich still lurked, roaming in the shadows of the Berliners' memories.
At the eastern end of Unter den Linden, the State Opera, the Crown Prince's Palace; the Neue Wache and the Zeughaus still stood... albeit bearing substantial scars of the fighting. The great dome of the Dom was open to the skies, and the Lustgarten was a bomb-pitted, deserted wasteland. Beyond Museum Island, the Kurfürstenbrücke that crossed the eastern arm of the Spree had been mined and partially demolished by the German defenders during the last days of the war. With the centre arches of the old bridge in a precarious condition, the Russians had reinforced it with steel girders, but it was now only a pedestrian bridge. Charlotte noticed that the Rotes Rathaus tower over on Königstrasse appeared to be relatively undamaged. At least one famous Berlin landmark had survived. Perhaps "Berlin bleibt doch Berlin" still held true.
She was heading for an address on the edge of Scheunenviertel... the infamous Mietskaserne... the rental barracks area of Prenzlauer on the eastern side of Alexanderplatz to meet an unknown contact, who, according to a signal from BOB; was co-ordinating a covert network of agents in the Russian Administrative departments. She felt for the silenced HiStandard pistol concealed in a special compartment under the dash. She could withdraw it in seconds if need be, and it was wise to be prepared. She noted that the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Brücke was also demolished. She now had no choice. There was no sound road bridge across the Spree in this area. She would have to walk the last kilometre, or so, up to Alexanderplatz. She withdrew the pistol from its compartment and concealed it under her coat; parked the Mercedes at the edge of the Spree embankment, and walked across the wooden footbridge.
She had walked perhaps, half a kilometre along Königstrasse and was approaching the Rotes Rathaus, when a dark green, BMW four-door saloon screeched to a halt beside her. Its occupants; two bulls from the newly-formed "People's Police" jumped out and blocked her way. The larger of the two, resplendent in his new green uniform, snapped his fingers.
"Papieren Bitte"... 'Papers, Please'... with an ominous emphasis on the "Please."
She looked at them. She had been warned by "Hermoth" about these people. They were recruited from "proven anti-fascists"... veterans of the labour movement... workers who were known to have supported the Communists; and they regarded most ordinary Berliners as "class enemies."
As she was reaching into her coat to produce one of her identity documents, a Willys jeep with a conspicuous red star painted on its hood cruised past. It made a sudden "U"-turn and pulled up alongside the Police BMW. A tall, youngish officer wearing a high-collar officer's tunic and the broad shoulder boards of a Podpolkovnik... a Lieutenant-Colonel, climbed out and strode towards the two bulls, who, by now, had the pretty blonde girl with her back up against the grimy wall. He snapped out in acceptable German:
"Beachtung! Was ist los?"
Shouldering the two People's Police bulls aside, he stepped up to Charlotte, and turned to the two men.
"Erhalten Sie verloren, Arschlöcher"... "Get lost, Assholes."
He turned back to Charlotte as the two men hurriedly jumped into their car and sped off towards Alexanderplatz.
'Are you all right? Did they harm you?'
Then;
'Don't I know you from somewhere?'
She stared at him. He did look familiar. Then, it came to her. The last time she had looked into that face was in the back kitchen of a ruined villa on Tiergartenstrasse. Then; he had been a Major in a combat group, with a dying girl soldier. What was his name...? Then she remembered... Maksim ... Major Maksim Siegel. She smiled.
'Yes, you do. I tended to your wounded "Nevaéssta"... your squad Sweetheart in that ruined villa on Tiergartenstrasse during the last days of the battle.'
His face lit up.
'Of course! The pretty "Blind Angel." What the hell are you doing wandering around in the Soviet Control Zone on your own? As you can see, it's risky with those creeps prowling around. I don't trust them any further than I could throw them.'
Charlotte's mind was racing coldly. Which of her personas would be the most plausible? Should she be the Red Cross Investigator tracing displaced relatives... or should she use the pass that identified her as Comrade Major Paula Lukanovna; Ministry of State Security Investigator based at the Soviet Central Kommandatura, Luisenstrasse? She decided to go for the big lie, and handed him the Russian pass.
His eyes widened as he read the document. He gazed steadily at her.
'So; you were one of us all the time. That was certainly a good cover. I was sure you were a German nurse.'
He paused.
'NKGB?'
She shook her head.
'No, the other gang.'
He raised his eyebrows. From that, although she hadn't actually spoken the name; the inference was that she had been SMERSH... Smert Shpionam... "Death to Spies"... the counter-intelligence department of the Soviet Army which was now officially discontinued, and merged with GRU. It was probably wise not to delve too deeply. He quickly changed the subject.
'So; why were you walking through these ruins?'
She shrugged.
'I was out on the western borders of the Zone, down by The Brandenburger Tor. I had to leave my transport on Museum Island and use the footbridge to cross the Spree. Now, I need to get to Prenzlauer Berg. Could you give me a lift?
He smiled.
'I can do better than that, Comrade. I'll arrange for another car to be brought for you to use. I'll give you a lift up to Alexanderplatz.'
The Wertheim Department Store immediately in front of the Stadtbahn viaduct carrying the tracks from Alexanderplatz Bahnhof across Königstrasse was a complete ruin; although the viaduct itself was still intact, and the destruction of the other buildings lining the street intensified as they approached Alexanderplatz proper. The Bahnhof itself was scarred and roofless; and the two Behrens-designed eight-storey buildings... Berolinahaus on the left and Alexanderhaus on the right of the entrance to Alexanderplatz still stood; albeit, windowless and battered from the bomb-blasts that had destroyed almost all the other buildings that Charlotte remembered as having been here.
Alexanderplatz was literally unrecognisable even though two years had passed since the city had fallen to the Russians. It was still an outlandish desert of rubble and smoke-blackened walls. A bizarre touch was that the Alexanderhaus still displayed the large, untouched letters spelling out "JONASS & CO" on top of its battered roofline.
The huge Globe that had once adorned the apex of the beautiful old neo-Baroque Herti departmental store frontage still lay where it had fallen onto the oval traffic island in the centre of Alexanderplatz when the bombing had destroyed the right-hand corner and a large section of its frontage stretching along Alexanderstrasse; and had also demolished half of the front of the building.
Alexanderplatz had been partially destroyed by the American air-raids of February 1944; and Siegel remarked that the other extensive damage was caused during the Soviet advance to the city centre from the south east along the Frankfurter Allee, which had been stopped by the defenders at the Alexanderplatz. The street fighting had lasted for more than two days.
The Polizei-Präsidium, the Bahnhof-Alexanderplatz; as well as the surrounding hotels and department stores had been converted into bastions defended by the last of the regular German troops including the crack Grossdeutschland Regiment. This place had seen some of the heaviest fighting, with house-to-house and bloody, hand-to-hand combat, and the few surviving original buildings had been almost completely destroyed. The ruins towered, gaunt, and open to the skies; and yet, even here, in the dusty bones of this devastated landscape, there were Berliners plodding through the huge mounds of rubble that the Trümmerfrauen were clearing under the eyes of their Russian overseers.
The brooding Polizei-Präsidium... the notorious "Graue Elend"... "Grey Misery," as the Berliners called it... across on the corner of Alexanderstrasse and Dirckstrasse was a five-storey, cadaverous, smoke-blackened, and fire-gutted shell, with the bare girder baskets of the domes that had once topped its battered corner towers standing dark, and twisted against the skyline. There were great gaps torn along its soot-grimed, brutal Prussian flanks, and most of the roof had collapsed.
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The first block on Landsbergerstrasse was a flattened wasteland, and across the street, the former Grand Hotel was a bleak, gutted ruin. Further east, the spire of the red-brick Georgenkirch thrust accusingly into the sky. The main body of the church was broken and roofless; but the modernistic six-storey Minolhaus still stood, relatively undamaged a little farther to the north along Königstrasse.
As Siegel steered the jeep around the torn-up, bomb-cratered central traffic island, he asked Charlotte where she wanted to be dropped off. Thinking quickly, she replied,
'If you could drop me at Rosenthaler Platz... that would be fine.'
He glanced at her.
'Up in the Scheunenviertel? What on earth do you want to go there for? It's full of undesirables.'
She glanced at him.
'I am working covertly. I have an informant in the Mietskaserne who feeds me information on Western agents prowling around in our midst.'
He nodded.
'It's a risky game to play, Comrade. The Americans are sending agents into our Control Sector all the time. We've just received a "Zapiska"... a memorandum from the Politburo, of a new one that's recently become operational. This one is code-named "Monokel," and is supposed to be operating out of the Mitte district.'
She nodded, and looked at him innocently.
'Yes. We've heard of this one. We haven't got anything on him as yet, but he'll make a mistake sooner or later, like all the rest. These O.S.S. types are all the same... they've all got the "Al Capone" syndrome. They all like to think they're Gangsters in Chicago.'
There was severe bomb and artillery damage along Münzstrasse and Rosenthaler Strasse as Siegel drove Charlotte north-west from Alexanderplatz. Approaching Rosenthaler Platz, he glanced at her.
'Be careful, Comrade. They're still pulling corpses out from under the rubble to this day. Don't drink any water... anywhere; unless it's been boiled. There have been several outbreaks of Cholera and Typhoid in this quarter from water polluted by putrid corpses. It soaks down to the underground water which, in turn is drawn up by the communal courtyard pumps.'
She looked at the drab buildings.
'Why haven't they started to repair these less-damaged buildings?'
He shrugged.
'They haven't been able to trace the deed-holders. Most of these buildings were Jewish-owned... and we all know what happened to them. Until someone produces the necessary deeds, the occupation authorities have said that these places will remain as they are.'
Rosenthaler Platz was virtually undamaged; just a few buildings showed signs of having been hit by stray incendiary bombs, and - or artillery shells. On the corner of Brunnenstrasse and Elsässer Strasse, the upper floors of the big, five-storey Feder-Haus furniture store were gutted; but otherwise, the remaining buildings had more or less survived unscathed.
Siegel brought the jeep to a halt outside the once-elegant Aschinger restaurant at the corner of Lothringer Strasse and Rosenthaler Strasse on the eastern side of the platz. He leaned across and put his arm on the back of her seat, with a genuinely troubled look on his face.
'Are you sure you want to go into Scheunenviertel alone, Comrade? I can always send a couple of men down to keep an eye on you.'
Charlotte smiled. This was the last thing she wanted him to do.
'Thank you for your concern, Maksim; but I can look out for myself. I am armed, and I'll be careful. I've done this sort of thing a hundred times before, and have never been touched once.'
He nodded.
'Very well; if you're sure. I owe you a great deal for what you did for little Aneska... we were to be married when the fighting was over, and you saved her from any further suffering. For that; I shall be eternally grateful. Now I must bid you farewell. I have to get back to headquarters at Karlshorst. I'll have them leave you a car just inside Linienstrasse, across there. The keys will be tucked between the sun visor and the headlining.'
Charlotte nodded and climbed out of the jeep. Several scruffy-looking customers in Aschinger's watched with dull-eyed belligerence as she bid the Russian officer farewell, but swiftly broke eye contact and returned to their beer and sausage as her cold, blue stare fell upon each of them in turn.
Turning; she crossed Rosenthaler Platz into Linienstrasse. The grimy pavements were very narrow; a clue to the fact that this had always been a poor, working-class area. There was a bombsite a little way down on the left that was now choked with waist-high weeds, where a small group of children played noisily; pausing to stare at the well-dressed woman walking past. Below the level of the street under the shadow of the towering granite cliff which enclosed them were the cellars that contained the small shops that served the area. Most were boarded up... they had been Jewish businesses.
She continued past Joachim Strasse to the next street on the left... Kleine Auguststrasse, a deep cobblestone lane flanked by five-storey tenements. A group of sullen youths loitered on the corners of gloomy alleyways stared at her as she passed. A couple of drab snappers glowered at her from the gloom of a narrow, dead-end close, and then turned away to gossip whilst they waited for customers.
Halfway down the lane, on the left; next to the ruined synagogue, she turned into a small cobbled alleyway that led past piles of mouldy packing crates, dented garbage cans, and wind-blown litter; and entered a world of shadowy, labyrinthine alleyways and towering, soot and coal-dust blackened, five-storey brick tenement slums... the grim, nineteenth-century Mietskasernen... the notorious rental barracks built around a seemingly endless maze of dismal, dank, inner courtyards where the sunshine never managed to penetrate. She passed under the decayed archway into the first hinterhöfe... inner court. The courtyard was narrow and deep; the front walls of the grimy stone chasm inclined slightly inwards, held apart by massive timber beams that spanned the gap, high up against the grey, cloudy rectangle of sky.
At ground level, the sun could never touch the squalid, green algae-soiled cobbles, and the murky pit of the hinterhöfe was shrouded in a deep twilight. There were windows on three sides; many glazed with coarse lavatory window glass... many without any glass at all, and closed up with mildewed cardboard. On the fourth side, an immense, blank, twenty-five metre wall whose plaster surface had blistered and peeled, exposing raw, sooty brickwork was pierced by an archway which led into the next hinterhöfe.
In this enormous human warren of tenements, the air was foetid with the stench of the moist rottenness of the buildings, the choked drains and pungent aromas of greasy cooking; and in the middle of this squalidity stood an old green, cast-iron hand-pump dripping rusty liquid, from which this whole labyrinthine slum obtained its drinking and cooking water.
Her footsteps echoed hollowly on the cobbles, causing shabby curtains to twitch as countless eyes followed her progress through the maze of the dwellings... side-wings, cross buildings; transverse buildings and inner hinterhöfen. She began to long for the openness of the bleak backstreets as she made her way deeper into this cramped stone kennel where almost no provisions had been made for adequate light, ventilation or green space.
At last, she found the place she was looking for... the fourth "Hinterhaus"… the part of the tenement complex accessible only through the furthest hinterhöfe. Here, she had to go up to the third floor of the left-hand "Seitenflügel,"… the jutting wing of the building. Up there, in the third room on the left-hand side of the long corridor, she was to meet the one they called "Die Pilgerin"… "The Pilgrim."
Feeling for the butt of the HiStandard silenced pistol under her coat, Charlotte turned the knob of the paint-peeling outer door of the sordid tenement dwelling. The door was so heavy that she had to push it open with both hands. As she stepped into the gloomy stone corridor that it shielded; the door swung closed behind her with a hollow, resonant thud. A dark stairway led up into the building's tomblike interior. The creaking staircase was very narrow. She carefully made her way up, counting the long, low, dingy landings until she reached the third floor. Drawing the silenced pistol, she knocked at the third door on the left-hand side of the drab, and dreary corridor.
From within, there was a shuffle of footsteps, a clink of keys, and the door opened a little way, on a solid security chain. An unseen man's muffled voice asked,
'Yes? What do you want?'
Holding the silenced pistol towards the grimy ceiling, she replied,
'I saw your card advertising the sale of the gramophone recording of Götterdämmerung performed by the Bayreuth Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Elmendorff. Is it still available?'
The man's voice replied,
'No, I'm afraid it's sold. I do still have Lohengrin performed by the Berlin State Opera Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Robert Heger, if you're interested.'
The security chain rattled, and the door opened to the sight of a middle-aged man pointing a silenced Tokarev automatic at her. He saw her weapon, grinned, and lowered the pistol. Stepping back, he motioned her to enter. Closing the door behind her and re-fastening the chain; he turned to her.
'I am "The Pilgrim"... and you are "Monokel." I am so very pleased to meet you.
The room was small, and sparsely furnished. The window was obscured by a thick, reasonably clean, net curtain. The walls were solid... as were the ceiling and floor. It would be difficult for anyone to conceal any listening devices; there were no pictures on the walls, and only a single light fitting and flex in the ceiling. It was a classically typical "Safe House."
The Pilgrim invited her to sit. She chose a comfortable armchair with a field of view that covered both doors to the room and the window. He smiled wryly.
'There's no need to be on your guard, Monokel; you're as safe here as anywhere in Berlin. These old tenements used to be almost entirely Jewish-occupied. They're honeycombed with secret entrances and exits, cunning hiding places, and false walls. They were all altered in the summer of '41, when the first deportations began, and many of the Jews hid in these places for months from the Gestapo round-up squads. The dwellings of those who were discovered and sent east on the transports were never taken over by Aryans... good Aryans didn't live in slums.'
Chewing on the stem of his ancient Meerschaum pipe, he continued:
'There was never any real danger of the carpet bombing of Scheunenviertel. It had been identified as a residential quarter, and the nearest strategic target was the AEG Fabriken works on the west side of Brunnenstrasse almost two kilometres further to the north. The Humboldthain Flak tower was immediately to the north of the AEG works, and it was probably the threat of its guns that had saved Scheunenviertel from the attentions of the Allied bombers. The daylight raids by the Yanks kept well away, over towards Alex, but the English managed to destroy about half of the works in one of their night raids. Other than that; the Russians came in through Friedrichshain, and only a few stray shells fell on this area. That's why most of it is still intact.'
He grinned again, and laid his Tokarev on the table.
'Anyway, that's enough of the history lesson. Would you care for a coffee or a glass of tea? It's Yank PX stuff; not that crappy ersatz rubbish... then, we'll get down to business.'
He returned with the coffee; set the cups on the table and walked to the shelf on the far wall of the room. He switched on the old bakelite Volksempfänger radio receiver. Spinning the tuning dial to the AFN Berlin network, he turned up the volume. The elegant swing music of Glenn Miller's Orchestra playing "Elmer's Tune" filled the room. He returned to his chair and gave a thin, wry smile.
'I'm certain that this place is free of eavesdropping devices, but you can never be absolutely sure. The Russians are deviously cunning bastards, so it's better to be safe than sorry.'
His expression became serious.
'Before I brief you as the new resident agent control officer; I'd better give you a little of my background.'
Charlotte put down her cup, and stopped him.
'I don't want to know anything more than you are The Pilgrim. What I don't know, I can't tell... if I'm caught.'
He shook his head and re-lit his Meerschaum pipe.
'You need to have complete trust in me if you are going to succeed in this game. Before the war I was a Schupo out of the Alexanderplatz Polizei-Präsidium patrolling the old Alex slums. Later, I joined the vice-squad Razzia detachment working the Scheunenviertel Quarter. That's how I became completely familiar with the tenement layouts... from chasing the pimps, snappers, and petty-criminals through the tangle of passages, alleyways, and bolt-holes that litter these old Jewish tenements.
I reached retirement age before the Nazis politicised the Police force, and then became a sniffer... a private investigator. When the war ended, the Russians banned all private detective and information agencies in their zone, so I offered my services to the Allies and ended up in this game. I kept in touch with a few of my trusted ex-police colleagues who didn't want to go back into the police. The force was full of the Russians' own people in the top police jobs.'
He paused to sip his coffee. Charlotte studied him. Yes, she could easily picture him as a stolid Schupo, dutifully patrolling his rounds. He was in his mid-fifties; broad-shouldered and barrel-chested. His iron-grey hair was thinning at the temples, and his steel-blue eyes were alert and worldly-wise. He continued, having taken a long puff at his pipe.
'I gathered a core of the honest ex-Alex bulls, who set up their own networks of agents, contacts, and couriers. The Russians tried to break the organisation by targeted kidnaps and luring agents into their sector to arrest them. They turned some of these and sent them back to work against us, but we managed to dispose of those. There were others who joined just to grind their own personal axes, but they were dealt with as well. Now; we can place an agent into almost any place of interest to us in the Russian zone in a very short space of time. We have resident informants, sleepers, and agents-in-place all over the Russian Control Zone.'
He re-lit his pipe, tamped down the tobacco with his thumb, and continued with his briefing.
'That is the basic structure of what we do, and what you will control. The network has been allocated a specific cryptonym... "Siebenschläfer"... "Dormouse." I will send you detailed information on locations of dead drops to you by courier. This courier's identification code will be two knocks... a count of ten, and three knocks in quick succession. Your answer is "What is it?" and the reply is "Grandmother has died." The courier will then slip an envelope under the door. The contents will be coded in G5, One-time-pad.'
He gave an almost sheepish grin.
'All very cloak and dagger, but it works. Now; let's get you out of here. We'll take the scenic route... just in case you were being watched when you came in.'
He led her out through a concealed door in the tiny kitchen, into a dim maze of stairways and passages that led down to a rubbish-strewn, overgrown hinterhöfe between towering blank walls. She followed him through a series of winding alleyways to an old paint-flaking door at the base of yet one more cliff-like wall.
Stepping inside, she found herself in one of the basement shops. The light was poor. The front windows were boarded-up. The Pilgrim moved carefully towards the front of the deserted shop and cautiously opened the door. A loose stone caught under the door and screeched as he pulled it open on squeaking hinges that showered rust down as the pins grated in their sockets. He looked out warily and beckoned to Charlotte. Three steps led up to street level. The street was deserted... but which one was it? The tortuous route had completely disorientated her. He smiled.
'This is Joachim Strasse. Linienstrasse is just up there. Goodbye!'
He closed the door with another screech as she turned and walked up to the main thoroughfare.
A grey BMW four-door saloon was parked at the kerb, twenty metres up towards Rosenthaler Platz. As she approached it, she noticed that it carried a red pennant attached to the driver's side front fender. There was also a paper sticker inscribed with Cyrillic text attached to the windscreen. Nonchalantly she tried the driver's door handle. It opened. Slipping into the driving seat, she felt above the sun visor. Her fingertips touched a key. She removed it from its hiding place and slipped it into the ignition lock. Turning the ignition on; she pressed the starter button. The six-cylinder engine fired almost immediately. Releasing the handbrake and engaging first gear, she pulled away from the kerb and accelerated away up towards Rosenthaler Platz.