Red to Black

‘And closer than Turkey there was Liechtenstein, just across our border. Did you know the population of Liechtenstein doubled at the end of the war? Oh yes. It was largely a German and Austrian migration, for anyone from the Nazi regime who possessed the necessary loot and influence.’

For Germans like Dieter, determined to remove the stain of their country’s recent past, the totalitarian mindset of the ex-Nazis, whether across the southern border in Liechtenstein or elsewhere, was closer to that of the East German regime than to the new West Germany. Ideological differences between Communist and ex-Nazi were irrelevant to the trade that could be done between two former hated enemies.

‘Totalitarianism, like money, is not squeamish about whose bed it shares,’ Dieter had said to Finn.

After the British had handed Schmidtke over to the Germans, Dieter had been one of Schmidtke’s interrogators for the next two years, until the investigation into the old Stasi spy was quietly dropped and Schmidtke retired to Tegernsee with a good pension and the protection of his former enemies. Dieter wasn’t happy with the deal and lost his job for being unable to come to terms with it.

A waitress brings menus to the table.

‘I want to go back to the beginning, Dieter,’ Finn says, when they’ve drunk half their beers. ‘I need to see the unbroken line from back then, from 1961, to the present.’

‘What makes you think the line is unbroken?’ Dieter replies.

Finn doesn’t answer.

The soup arrives, another beer is ordered. And then Dieter slowly begins to talk, as if he were having difficulty with the memories. But Finn knows he is like an old actor who’s played a part so many times in the private theatre of his own head that the lines will never leave.

‘When Kommerzielle Koordinierung—KoKo—was set up in East Berlin, just on the other side of the Wall in 1961, their motto was “Necessity has no law”,’ Dieter begins. ‘It was a thieves’ decree. Jewellery, artwork, stamp collections, antiquarian books—anything of value belonging to East German citizens—it was all on KoKo’s menu. But this was state theft and, while some objects of value were simply stolen, in general the state and their Stasi agents applied the classic bureaucratic, totalitarian state methods of theft.

‘To give you an example, Finn, people were told they had to insure their property, such as jewellery, for outrageous sums which they couldn’t afford. When they failed to do so, the property was confiscated. That was one method. The value of a citizen’s private property was hugely inflated by KoKo, in order to inflate the insurance value, simply for the purpose of rendering its owners unable to pay. Sometimes Schmidtke’s men inflated the value by 1,000 per cent. Then, when the owners couldn’t pay, or their persecutors simply tired of this longer bureaucratic route, the agents of KoKo would invoke the so-called Fortune Law that existed in East Germany and that said it was illegal to possess property of such a high value. The state could claim that the private citizen had broken the Fortune Law that regulated the private wealth of citizens.

‘Huge numbers of private homes in East Germany were raided by the Stasi. I have walked with an old man after the Wall came down along the pawn shops and the second-hand shop windows of West Berlin, looking for a smart Swiss wristwatch that was taken from him right at the beginning of this grand theft. He never found it, but others have sometimes found their stolen property since eighty-nine, tucked away in a street market somewhere.

‘The state raked in fifty million Deutschmarks a year from thefts like this and it went on for more than twenty-five years, though with decreasing returns, of course. The East Germans were hard up. There was an embargo in the West on the export of technology. In the East they needed to fund their own technological development.’

‘And their own intelligence operations in the West,’ Finn interrupts.

‘Certainly, their own operations in the West, many of which concerned precisely the theft of technological secrets. And this theft was mainly from us, in West Germany. So, in the beginning, KoKo stole the valuables, sold them to West Germans and then used the money to bribe West Germans in particular for industrial secrets. But they also used Raubgold, this stolen wealth, to corrupt our bankers, politicians, even us in intelligence. A lot of money was available for bribing West Germans.’

‘Schmidtke told us that KoKo used a holding company as cover, to keep up appearances,’ Finn says, remembering. ‘Art and Antiquities GmbH it was called, if I remember rightly. It sounded very sound, very proper. Dealers in London did business with it all the time. The company, one removed from KoKo, enabled buyers to turn a blind eye.’

‘Oh yes,’ Dieter says. ‘The two Germanys proved that crime pays,’ he says. ‘To both sides.’

‘And Schmidtke was the great bureaucrat in charge.’

‘Schmidtke was the head of KoKo, he organised this Raubgold. And, in doing so, he learned many more valuable things. He learned how companies worked offshore, how the lawyers handle that side of things, which lawyers could be tempted on our side, how tax worked and was avoided, how to launder wealth, which banks were open to corruption. We were complicit here in the West, or at least many, many individuals in powerful positions were complicit. And all the time Schmidtke had the Stasi and the KGB to back him up with threats if anyone looked as if they might step out of line on our side. Some were willing, of course, but others were compromised with threats and blackmail. Politicians, bankers and businessmen were sexually compromised in KGB sting operations, for example. And Schmidtke had lawyers in Luxembourg and Liechtenstein and Geneva; he had bankers in all three countries, and he had politicians, too, here in Germany and elsewhere.’

Dieter sips from his glass as the soup bowls are removed and he lights a cigarette.

‘And this network of Schmidtke’s,’ Finn says. ‘You spent two years investigating it.’

‘Just over two years,’ Dieter replies, as if remembering a bad holiday. ‘But it was vast and complex, hidden behind wall after wall of trusts and false company names. Two years was what it took just to peel back the edge of the carpet on Schmidtke’s network in the West. And then? Then my government didn’t like what it saw appearing from under the carpet and covered it up again.’

‘So…’

‘So I was retired, along with some others, after a decent time lapse from the investigations. We were being wound up individually, just as the investigation was being wound up. They didn’t want us around any more, with our knowledge, in the same room as them.’ Dieter sniffs. ‘And they were afraid of our indignation that the file was being closed. I finally left in 1992 and they rolled the carpet safely back over the rotting stench.’

Dieter looks at Finn. The handsome eyes in the lined, outdoor face sharpen.

‘But of course you are not interested in the robbery of German citizens,’ he says.

‘I’m interested in their persecutor who sits in Tegernsee with a government pension,’ Finn says. ‘I’m interested in why the investigation of Schmidtke’s network was wound up, and in the network itself. I’m interested in the unbroken line from those times to these.’

‘I’ve always thought you were honest, Finn.’ Dieter pushes aside a half finished plate of noodles. ‘I’ve met some of the victims and they are, sure, just victims of theft. They haven’t been murdered or put in camps, their relatives weren’t shot going over the Wall. But they lost out too.’

‘You did your job.’

‘And you? Are you doing your job, Finn?’

Finn doesn’t reply.

‘I think not,’ Dieter says. ‘Or you wouldn’t be talking to me, a retired intelligence officer, like this in private.’

They split the bill and walk to a car park across the bare concrete platz outside the restaurant. The wind creeps through the thread of Finn’s coat and into his bones.

‘So you want the unbroken line from the beginning to the present,’ Dieter says, demanding no reply. ‘You believe something remains of Schmidtke’s network. Of course,’ he says, and Finn isn’t sure what Dieter means.

They get into Dieter’s old blue BMW and turn out through the car park’s barrier and head west along the banks of the Saar.

‘Let me show you what I’ve bought with my retirement bonus, Finn. Or is it my hush money?’ Dieter adds. ‘I’m not as comfortable in retirement as Schmidtke, but I like it nevertheless.’

Outside the town, when the decayed remnants of its mining past have disappeared from view and been replaced by the slow grey-green curves of the Moselle River as it meanders through wooded hills, they come to an unmade track that leads down to the river. Dieter drives the BMW carefully over the rough ground and pulls up the