village of Rossendorf: he ended up in the hospital for war veterans on Friedrichstrasse. Official hospital records contain fictitious information about the part played by Anwaldt in the campaign against Poland. The pseudo-veteran survived the bombing of Dresden in this same hospital. As of March this year, he is once more at the psychiatric hospital on Marien-Allee. Agent GS-142 did not succeed in establishing the nature of the relationship between Anwaldt and Mock since information offered by hospital staff was of a gossipy and scandal-mongering nature: because of the frequent visits, some claimed that Anwaldt was Mock’s illegitimate son, others that he was his lover.
DRESDEN, MONDAY, JULY 17TH, 1950
MIDNIGHT
Director Bennert walked in absolute silence down by the side staircase used only during apparent evacuations which thankfully had not recently been declared all that frequently. The shaft of torchlight cut through dense darkness. Ever since the city had been bombed, these narrow stairs had filled him with dread. On that memorable thirteenth day of February in 1945, as the noise of the first bomb resounded, Bennert had run down them to the cellar which had been turned into a provisional shelter. He had shouted his daughter’s name, searching for her among the crush on the stairs, but in vain. His cries had been lost in the din of the bomb and the horrific wailing of the sick.
He rejected the painful memories and opened the door leading out to the hospital park. Major Mahmadov was standing in the door. He patted Bennert jovially on the shoulder, passed him by and made his way upstairs. After a while, the sound of his footsteps disappeared. Bennert did not lock the door. He took his time going up. On the half- landing, he peered out of the window. Across the grass, flooded with moonlight, strode briskly an elderly man in uniform. Bennert would remember that walk for the rest of his life. Again he heard the noise of bombs, the wailing of the sick and through this same window saw an elderly man with sparks of fire in his hair and a burned face, carrying his unconscious daughter in his arms.
Nurse Jurgen Kopp sat down at a table with two colleagues, Frank and Vogel, and started to deal cards. Skat was a passion shared by all the lower ranks of the hospital staff. Kopp bid a bottle of wine and turned out a jack of clubs to draw trumps. He did not have time to win a hand, however, before they heard an inhuman cry from across the dark courtyard.
“Who’s that yelling his head off?” wondered Vogel.
“Anwaldt. His light’s just gone on,” Kopp laughed. “Seen another cockroach, I expect.”
Kopp was right in part. It
FIVE MINUTES LATER
Scorpions crawled over army trousers and hands covered in dark, thick hairs. One of the scorpions straightened its abdomen and climbed up to a double chin. It swayed on the half-open lips and stood on the gentle peak of a chubby cheek. Another, exploring an earlobe, strolled through thick, black hair. Yet another slid along the floor as if it wanted to escape from the puddle of blood pouring from Major Mahmadov’s throat.
BERLIN, JULY 19TH, 1950
EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
Anwaldt woke in a dark room. Before his eyes, he saw a ceiling with dancing reflections of water. He got up and, with an unsteady step, approached the window. Below flowed a river. On a barrier sat a couple tenderly embracing. In the distance flashed the lights of a great city. Anwaldt knew this city from somewhere, but his memory refused to obey him. The tranquillizers had reduced the speed of his association to zero. He swept his eyes over the room. The greyness of the floor was cut by a yellow streak of light coming in through the partially open door. Anwaldt pushed the door open wide and entered an almost empty room. Its severe, ascetic decor consisted of a table, two chairs and a plush sofa. On the floor and on the sofa articles of clothing lay strewn. He started to examine them and, after a while, segregated them clearly in his mind, using gender as the decisive criterion. From his analysis, he concluded that the man who had thrown his clothes about should have remained in nothing but one sock and underpants and the woman in stockings. He caught a glimpse of the couple sitting at a table and was pleased with the precision of his analysis. He was not far wrong: the plump blonde was indeed wearing nothing but a pair of stockings and the elderly man with a red, scarred face had on only his underpants. Anwaldt stared at him for a while and cursed his feeble memory yet again. He shifted his eyes to the middle of the table and remembered a frequent motif in Greek literature:
BERLIN, THAT SAME JULY 19TH, 1950
ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING
Anwaldt woke up on the plush sofa. The girl had disappeared, along with her exquisite clothes. By the sofa sat the old man, clumsily holding a cup of steaming broth. Anwaldt leaned over and drank half a cup.
“Could you give me a cigarette, sir?” he asked in a strangely strong, resonant voice.
“Don’t call me ‘sir’, son,” the man extended a silver cigarette case towards Anwaldt. “We’ve been through too much together to play at such formalities.”
Anwaldt collapsed on to the pillow and inhaled deeply. Without looking at Mock, he said quietly:
“Why did you lie to me? You set me on the Baron but that didn’t stop the Yesidi’s revenge in any way! Why did you incite me against my own father?”
“It didn’t hold the Yesidis back, you say. And you’re right. But how was I to know that at the time?” Mock lit up yet another cigarette even though the previous one was still smoking in the ashtray. “Do you remember that muggy July night in Madame le Goef’s brothel? It’s a shame I didn’t stand you up in front of a mirror then. Do you know whom you’d have seen? Oedipus with his eyes gouged out. I didn’t believe you’d escape the Yesidis. There were two ways I could have saved you from them: either give you hope and isolate you — at least for a while — or kill you myself and in this way protect you from the Turkish scorpions. Which would you have preferred? You’re in such a state of mind at the moment that you’ll say: I’d have preferred to die … Am I right?”
Anwaldt closed his eyes and, squeezing them tight, tried to prevent the tears from falling.
“Interesting, my life … One hands me over to an orphanage, the other — to a madhouse. And claims it’s for my own good …”
“Herbert, sooner or later you’d have ended up with the lunatics. That’s what Doctor Bennert said. But to the point … I set you up to kill the Baron so as to isolate you,” Mock lied again. “I didn’t think you’d escape the Yesidis. But I knew that thanks to that you’d be relatively safe. I also knew what to do to make sure you didn’t get a long sentence. I thought: Anwaldt will be protected by the prison walls and I’ll have time to catch Erkin. After all, getting rid of Erkin was your only hope …”
“And what? Did you get rid of him?”
“Yes. Very effectively. He simply disappeared, and his holy dervish continued to believe that he was tracking you down. He believed it until recently when he sent another avenger who is now lying in your room in Bennert’s Dresden clinic. And you’ve won a bit of time again …”
“Very good, Mock. So you’ve protected me for the time being,” Anwaldt raised himself from the sofa and drank the rest of his broth. “But another Yesidi will come … And will get to Forstner or Maass …”
“He won’t get to Forstner. Our dear Max met with a terrible accident in Breslau — he was crushed by a lift …” Mock’s face turned even redder and the furrows paled. “What do you think? I’m protecting you as best I can, and you keep on thinking about the curse. If you don’t want to live, you’ve got a gun, kill yourself. But not here, because you’ll betray an apartment belonging to the Stasi … Why do you think I’m protecting you?”
Anwaldt did not know the answer to that question, while Mock wanted to drown it out by shouting.
“And what happened to you?” Anwaldt had never been afraid of shouting. “How did you get into the Stasi?”
“That institution gladly took on high-ranking officers from the Abwehr, where I had moved at the end of ’34.
