The following afternoon, with our bags and suitcases packed—mine was the smallest—we prepared to leave the pension in Dreyse Strasse and move into the apartment on Schulzendorfer Strasse. None of us were sorry to be out of there. The landlady owned several cats and these were not much inclined to piss out of doors; even with the windows open, the place smelled like an old people’s home. We filled a newish-looking VW transporter van with ourselves and our luggage and our equipment. Scheuer drove, with me sitting in the passenger seat and giving directions, while Hamer and Frei rolled around in the back with the bags, complaining loudly. Following at a distance was the ambulance containing what Scheuer called “security”—CIA muscle with guns and shortwave radios. According to Scheuer’s plan, the ambulance would park a short distance away from Schulzendorfer Strasse, and when the time came, these men were ready to help us grab Erich Mielke.

I told Scheuer to drive north onto Perleberger Strasse intending to go across the canal on Fennbrücke, but an old building on the corner of Quitzowstrasse had collapsed across the road and we were obliged by the local police and the fire brigade to go south down Heide Strasse.

“We’d better not cross the canal on Invalidenstrasse,” I told Scheuer. “For obvious reasons.”

Invalidenstrasse, on the east side of the canal, was the DDR, and a new-looking transporter filled with Americans—not to mention an ambulance filled with armed men—was certain to attract unwelcome attention from the Grepos.

“Go west on Invalidenstrasse until you’re on old Moabit and then right up Rathenower Strasse. We’ll have to cross the canal on the Föhrer Bridge. If it’s still there. It’s been a while since I was up this way. Every time I come to Berlin, it looks different from the last time I was here.”

Scheuer shouted at the two in the back. “That’s why Gunther has the seat,” he said. “So he can tell us where to go.”

“I know where I’d like to tell him to go,” grumbled Hamer.

Scheuer grinned at me. “He doesn’t like you,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I feel the same way about him.”

On Rathenower we drove past a large, grim, star-shaped building on our left.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Moabit Prison,” I said.

“And the other building?”

He meant the great, semiruined building just north of the prison, a huge fortress of an edifice that ran west along Turm Strasse for almost a hundred meters.