Jonathan de Shalit: Traitor

On rare occasions, Gunther would show up at the Archives in person, hanging up his heavy coat at the door, a bearish and ungainly figure but exuding strength and inexplicable charm, his blond hair still full but starting to turn silver. And when she saw him, a strange yet delightful sensation that she dared not name—but knew nevertheless could be love—would flutter momentarily through her heart, like an elusive little minnow. A woman’s love for a man, different from the love she felt for all the other boys. They spoke sometimes, she and Gunther, though not much. Mostly he’d ask for files that he needed and she’d retrieve them for him, get him to sign the required papers, and say to him: “Tell me if you need anything else.” But sometimes he’d share a few words about something he was going through, the terrible train ride from Prague, or some inappropriate joke about his mother-in-law (and Marlene would wonder if he even had a mother-in-law at all). Now and then he’d show her a book he was reading, retrieving a crumpled copy from his jacket pocket and saying to her: “Read it, Marlene, read it, if your soul isn’t too delicate for this kind of material,” and he’d smile, wrinkles appearing next to his eyes, his good smell, the smell of a man returning from a long journey, would hit her, and she’d offer a smile in return and feel all flustered.

Later on, during the few years in which she served as head secretary in the bureau, she’d see him a little more often, always bursting in like a whirlwind, awe-inspiring, intimidating the young secretaries, joking back and forth with her flirtatiously, charmingly audacious, always in a hurry to see the division chief, his good friend. And she, who had learned to open her mouth a little—after all, you can’t manage such a bureau without being able to hold your own with important and arrogant individuals—knew how to respond to her Gunther and to give as good as she got, and it was only the truth itself, buried there in her heart, that she couldn’t speak. Marlene knew that the young secretaries gossiped about her behind her back, saying that she was desperately in love with Markus, and that there was a story going around that there was something between them, a long time ago, during the initial years after the war, and that thanks to that fleeting romance from the past, she, an old woman like her, almost sixty, had now landed the position of head secretary. What foolish young girls, she said to herself. Foolish and insubstantial. Yes, she admired Markus a great deal, adored him sometimes, and was willing to serve him loyally with all her heart. But love? Don’t be crazy! What nonsense, nonsense and a waste of time.

Everything happened quickly in early 1984. Markus suddenly lost his charm. He was too independent. The intelligence provided by his agents ruffled the feathers of senior officials once too often. The reports filed by the agents indicated a clear change in the West’s viewpoint vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and its allies. The image of a militarily powerful Warsaw Pact was now being accompanied by more and more talk of the economic frailty of the Soviet Union and its allies, of deterioration and a loss of control, of a fossilized and detached leadership, of centrifugal forces (Marlene remembered the fascinating and frightening term from the reports) that could end up tearing the Eastern bloc to shreds. That was how the West viewed the Soviet Union, and thus, too, the German Democratic Republic, her country. The agents of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance reported everything meticulously and precisely. Marlene remembered deliberating fiercely with herself while filing the reports in perfect order. Could there perhaps be a grain of truth in the things they were reporting? Could they be seeing things that Moscow and Berlin couldn’t see? Or didn’t want to see? In any event, it all turned more and more sour. And Markus managed to get himself into trouble, again, with one of his love affairs, and the rumors reached someone or other among the party leadership, and Markus in early 1984 found himself deposed from his position of significant power and appointed to the post of senior advisor on the Industrial Efficiency Council. Her eyes welled up with tears when she recalled the brief and formal farewell ceremony held in his honor—one of the heroes of the Democratic Republic who had done more for the revolution than all of the dry and stiff nobodies who made up the party leadership. But Marlene didn’t allow herself to think like that, a wrong word after all would slip out eventually, and then she’d also be thrown out of the Special Ops Archives in Dresden, to which she had returned, with all due respect, a few weeks later, after the new division chief had assembled his bureau staff to his liking. Still, she had said to herself, she had more than seven years to go before retirement.

Three years before her retirement, one of Gunther’s operations was handed over to the comrades in the KGB. Gunther stuck it out somehow, following the ousting of his commander and close friend, and continued to handle his agents, professionally and in earnest, albeit with a sullen and grim demeanor. The operation was one of the most classified under Gunther’s control, and she recalled that the seeds had been planted back in the days when she was working in the bureau of the division chief. The agent’s name didn’t appear in the dossier at all and there was only a code name, the nickname they had given him. Marlene couldn’t forget him, particularly in light of what happened later on. They called him Cobra. Gunther was his handler, under the assumed name of Martin for that particular operation. He had explained it to her: “In my dealings with Cobra, I play the part of an American. It’s essential. But I chose a name for myself that’s also a German name. So that if something doesn’t seem right to him all of a sudden, not perfectly American, I’ll have a cover story to offer.” Gunther would often share his little secrets with her. And from time to time, he sought her advice, too, wanted to know what she was thinking. After all, she was just as familiar with the operations as they were, the handlers, and even a little more so sometimes, precisely due to her remoteness from the field. Because, he explained to her, she saw them through the paperwork, via the reports, with a degree of objectivity they lacked.

And then came the day when Gunther turned up at the Archives in the company of two KGB officers. She had never seen KGB officers at her Archives, despite knowing, just like anyone else with eyes in his or her head, that the KGB was involved in one way or another in most of the operations. Evidence of this could also be found in the dossiers on the various operations, which included all the intelligence communications relayed to KGB headquarters in Moscow. But seeing those officers, those foreigners, in her basement? Gunther was stern-faced, there was no smile for her this time, and that spirit of adventure, that sense of faraway places that usually enveloped and accompanied him, was gone. “Comrade Schmidt,” he said to her, “in keeping with orders from the head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, we’re required to hand over Operation Cobra and all the dossiers pertaining to the operation to our comrades in the KGB. Nothing must remain in the Archives, not even a single document related to the operation. From this day forward, the operation is no longer ours, doesn’t concern us, doesn’t interest us. I’ve already forgotten its existence, and I’m relying on you, Marlene”—addressing her by her first name this time—“and it’s an order, to forget entirely about it, is that clear?” Gunther waited, and she nodded, unable to utter a single word. He was so official, stiff and lifeless. From an inside pocket in his coat, he pulled out a printed document bearing the signature of General Heinrich Krueger’s bureau chief. The document was a written version of the instructions Gunther had just given her verbally. And she went, ran almost, to the shelves on which the Cobra dossiers stood, and gathered them up, six thick ones, and carried them to the counter. She laid them down, and one of the two foreign officers opened a large bag, resembling a military duffel bag, and placed the dossiers inside without a word. She remembered wondering at the time if bags like that were fashionable in the Soviet Union, and wondering even more about how such foolish and worthless thoughts could be going through her mind at such a time. After closing the bag, the officer attached it to his person with a steel chain that closed in a handcuff of sorts around his wrist, thanked her in German with a hint of a Russian accent, appeared to her to click his heels, turned, and began walking, with the second officer in his wake. Gunther waited for a moment before leaning toward her and whispering: “You see, my dear, that’s how it ends. Little by little. They’ve lost faith in us.” He rested a large and warm hand on hers for a moment—and left.