Two Brothers

Final Briefing London, 1956

‘YOU WERE RIGHT,’ the man who looked like Peter Lorre said, ‘Silke Stengel née Krause is an officer at the Ministry of State Security. Right at the heart of it, in fact. In Berlin-Lichtenburg on the Ruschestrasse.’

‘Stasi headquarters.’

‘Yes. Stasi headquarters. She has a service record dating back to shortly after the war. You say she used to be a friend?’

‘Yes. A good friend.’

Stone closed his eyes.

Seeing once again the golden freckled shoulders. The thin strip of sunlight from the window moving across them over and over again as the train thundered towards Rotterdam.

Other memories flashed across his mind.

Silke at three or four years old in a flurry of tumbling wooden bricks, sitting first on Paulus’s fort and then on his.

At the Saturday music lessons, singing and banging a tambourine.

Running, jumping. Dancing. Fighting.

Helping carry a body in a rolled-up rug into a lift.

Brown legs pumping at the pedals of her bicycle. Pretty legs, surprisingly pretty.

Lying beside him beneath the stars telling him for the first time about the Rote Hilfe.

Locking horns with Dagmar, the millionaire’s daughter.

‘She always was a Communist,’ Stone said. ‘I suppose she still is.’

‘Well, then,’ Bogart remarked with a gentle smile, ‘here’s your passport, all stamped and ready. Off you go.’