Free Brandenburg by Henry Porter Page B

hut behind some bushes. After checking their credentials and scanning the faces in the cars, they opened the gates. A long drive led to a clearing in the woods where there were four well-tended, single-storey summerhouses, all with verandas. The model for these was the Russian dacha, though there was a defended, sinister air about them. All the windows and doors were fitted with grilles. Despite the rustic setting, the place had somehow been impregnated with the Stasi’s dismal paranoia.
    He was led to the furthest house and down some steps to a basement, which was so soundly built that it might have served as a bomb shelter. He was shown to a large room with a bed, table, chairs and a glass bowl in which there rested a solitary apple. The light came in through four horizontal windows along the ceiling. ‘You will remain here until they call for you,’ said Biermeier. ‘Everything you need is here and food will be brought to you.’
    ‘I have commitments in Dresden tomorrow,’ Rosenharte said.
    Biermeier regarded him as though he were a child. ‘The only commitments you have are to the state, Herr Doktor.’

    For three days Rosenharte saw no one apart from the men who brought his meals and escorted him for a daily turn in the grounds. When he asked for something to read, he was given two old copies of Neues Deutschland and Wochenpost , and a translation of stories by Jack London. It took all his self-discipline to avoid worrying. He told himself that he was being held while Annalise’s material was assessed and they decided whether to proceed further. But he also understood they would be checking on every detail concerning Annalise’s position at Nato, her life in Canada and her present circumstances in Brussels. He could be expected to know little of this, but they would look for inconsistencies between what they’d discovered and his account. He went over and over everything that Harland and the American had told him, praying at the same time that they had given Annalise’s new life convincing depth. A single error, the slightest hint of incongruity or a sense that Annalise’s existence was just too two-dimensional to be real, and he would be done for.
    The glimpse of life in the West - the first since he’d left Brussels - had sharpened his outrage at the way the Stasi had incarcerated him but also his fear of what they could do with him and Konrad. The brilliance of the Italian day accentuated the German night. He wished Harland and his American friend could have one day of his experience, sweating in a noiseless white cell, schooling himself in answers to an interrogation that he could only hope to predict, knowing that if things went wrong, he would be destroyed. Westerners would never understand the reality of the Stasi’s power and their dogged, almost surreal pursuit of the ordinary man.
    By the morning of the third day - Thursday 14 September he noted - he was ready to start kicking up a fuss in the belief that too much compliance indicated some kind of guilt. When the man brought him breakfast, he demanded to see someone in authority and told him that this was a shameful way to treat a person who was seeking only to serve his country. He returned a couple of hours later, picked up the tray and silently indicated that Rosenharte should follow him.
    It was no more than a hundred yards to the first house, and the moment after Rosenharte reached the top of the steps from the basement and took in the day, he saw a figure on the veranda, lounging in wading boots that had been rolled down to his shins. The face was hidden in shadow, but he knew it belonged to Schwarzmeer.
    ‘How do you like our little retreat, Dr Rosenharte?’ he called out as Rosenharte approached. ‘A lover’s paradise, no? It’s a tragedy that Miss Schering could not be here with you. There are some splendid walks through the forests.’
    He reached the veranda and looked up. ‘Why are you holding me prisoner, General?’
    ‘You