Brandenburg by Henry Porter Page A

they were eager to get their hands on more of Annalise’s material - and he was sure they were - what good did it do? Maybe it had something to do with their twisted obsession with the control and ownership of people. They were giving him a sense of their omniscience, their ability to reach inside someone’s head and destroy whatever they wanted to.
    The leaden deprecation of everything about him and all he held dear was dragged on until evening, when the interview suddenly ended as though the pair were meeting a pre-arranged timetable. They closed their files, got up and walked out, leaving Rosenharte gazing through the grilles of the window. He turned to see if the silent observer was still there, but he had left also, and Rosenharte wondered if this man would be his eventual nemesis, a shadow of a person ready to materialize when his fate was sealed.

6
Night Inquiry
    Five minutes elapsed before two of the resident guards came and led him back to the basement. There was food - bread, sausage-meat, cheese and another solitary apple - waiting for him, together with a packet of Cabinet cigarettes. He ate the apple, deciding to save the rest for later, and settled down to a new batch of old magazines and newspapers.
    He read until ten, without hearing a sound outside or in his own building, then ate and smoked a couple of cigarettes. A little later on he lay down on his bed without undressing.
    As he expected, they came for him again. In the dead of night, two men rushed him, still drowsy, across the damp grass to a low concrete tumulus surrounded by lights. He had the impression of a fortified storehouse; inside there was a lot of equipment - hoses, protective suits, helmets and implements. He was roughly placed on a stool in front of three dazzling lights.
    A voice came from behind them. For some reason, Rosenharte was certain that it belonged to the man who had sat so quietly through the first interrogation in the adjacent room.
    ‘I’m sorry?’ he said.
    ‘You met the woman known as Schering in August 1974,’ said the voice more loudly.
    ‘About then,’ said Rosenharte, straightening his clothes. ‘I had picked her up in a bar. At the time, I was working as a guide in the Musée des Beaux Arts. She came to one of my tours about a week later and things developed from there. You know all this: it was in my reports at the time.’
    ‘And you became lovers. How would you characterize her feelings towards you?’
    ‘I believe that soon afterwards she became very attached to me.’
    ‘She fell in love with you.’
    ‘If you put it that way, yes.’
    ‘When did you discuss working for the GDR?’
    ‘I left it for about four weeks, then introduced the subject one evening.’
    ‘She wasn’t shocked?’
    ‘No, but she said there was very little of interest for us in the Commission. She was hoping to land a job at Nato.’
    ‘This was not mentioned in your reports.’
    ‘I didn’t want to say anything to Colonel Neusel - my controller at the time - until she’d definitely got the job. Besides, she wouldn’t tell me which department she’d applied for.’
    ‘But when she did receive news of the job, she dumped you. Is that what happened?’
    ‘I don’t know. Some time that winter she seemed to lose her enthusiasm for our relationship. She said it had come at the wrong time for her: she wished that we had met five years later. Then she refused to see me. I tried to get in touch but she wouldn’t answer her phone or the messages I left at her apartment.’
    ‘She cut you out of her life?’
    ‘Yes. Look, why are we going over this again?’
    ‘Please just answer the questions. Did she leave you immediately?’
    ‘Yes, but I had hopes of renewing the relationship, which is why I was unhappy to be recalled. Now I understand that she had offered to work for you through another channel and that my attempts to get back on good terms with her were pointless.’
    ‘But this great love of yours had disappeared