We crossed the courtyard and, in fading light, went through a low wooden door in the wall of the old Schulzendorfer Brewery. Underfoot the cobbles were loose, and in some places there were large potholes filled with water. The moon rippled in one of them like a lost silver coin. The three Americans did not resist, and to my experienced eyes, they already seemed to have acquired the compliant demeanor of POWs, with bowed heads and heavy, stumbling footsteps. A small tributary stream of the River Spree marked the edge of the narrowing courtyard. At its southern end was a building with broken, dirty windows and tall weeds growing on the roof; painted on the brickwork was a faded advertisement for “Chlorodont Toothpaste.” I’d have needed a whole tube of the stuff to get rid of the nasty taste I had in my mouth. Within the word “Tooth” was a door, which one of the Stasi men opened. We went into a building that smelled of damp and probably something worse. Advancing to one of the filthy windows, the team leader looked carefully out onto a street.

He waited cautiously for almost five minutes and, having checked his watch, produced a flashlight, which he then aimed at the building opposite. Almost immediately, his signal was answered by three short flashes of a small green light and, across the street, a door opened. The three American prisoners were hustled across the street, and it was only when I put my own head out the door that I realized we were on Liesenstrasse and that the building on the opposite side of the street was in the Russian sector.

As the last of the three Americans was pushed across the road in the all-enveloping darkness and on into the building, I saw a portly figure standing in the doorway. He looked up and down the street and then waved to me.

“Come,” he said. “Come quickly.”

It was Erich Mielke.

40

BERLIN, 1954

He was shorter than I remembered, and stockier, too—a powerful man who was square on his feet, with the air of a pugilist. His hair was short and thin, and so was his mouth, which made an attempt at a smile, only it came off as something sardonic, or whatever it is you call it when a man can laugh at things that other people don’t find the least bit amusing.

“Come,” he repeated. “It’s all right. You’re in no danger.”

The voice was deeper and also more gravelly than I remembered. But the accent was much the same as it had always been: an uneducated and truculent Berliner. I didn’t give much for the chance of the three Americans when they were interrogated by this man.