This is the twenty-third part of a fiction serial, in 1360 words.

Berlin, 1972.

The new job as Captain was confirmed after less than a month. I took my cue from Graf, and adopted his style. I had more people under surveillance than during his time, and listening to the secret microphones and phone taps was bringing in lots of names that were new to us. Rather than keep rounding everyone up, I advocated the use of informers and infiltrators. Remembering my own experience with Mona, we made good use of attractive women, often using them to have affairs with married officers we suspected of being disloyal. In a few cases, some of our agents even married the suspects, finding that once they were trusted as a wife, the real secrets began to be divulged.

Very soon, we were able to have a good idea just who was involved in any suspicious activity, as well as knowing all their contacts. This led to quite a few shocks. Very senior officers, important local government officials, even senior Party organisers. Some evenings I would sit alone in my office wondering if anyone was actually who we thought they were. There were occasional high-profile defectors too. Sports stars, famous writers or actors, all seemed to be taking any opportunity of travelling abroad to suddenly disappear.

After a high-profile meeting, we changed our policy. Rather than wait for these individuals to appear on western television celebrating supposed escapes, we started to expel them from East Germany. They were labelled undesirables, and it wasn’t unknown for some trumped-up charges to precede their expulsion. For most of them, life in the West was far from what they had expected. The fame or reputation they had enjoyed in their home country rarely followed them into their new life, and some became disillusioned very rapidly.

Some of those expelled were our own agents, who went to the West with a cover story, but were actually going to spy for us voluntarily. This proved very useful, resulting in the downfall of some senior West German politicians, and many other officials being implicated in scandals and disgraced.

Yet even after all those years, and all that work, escapes were still commonplace, and every so often someone would still be killed by the guards as they tried to cross the border. So we tightened the screws more than ever, letting people know just how closely they were monitored. At one meeting, it was proposed to put an informant into every apartment block and shared house, and the cost of paying these people was approved. It wasn’t long before I read the staggering statistic that we had one agent or paid informant for every six people in the republic. We had exceeded the control exerted by the Nazis, and made them look like amateurs.

Naturally, my bosses were very proud of this fact, and news that dissent was on the rise in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary was scoffed at. It was never once imagined that we could have such problems. Despite the popular uprising in Prague in 1968, there was nothing remotely similar here, and life went on much as normal. But unknown to us in our Stasi bubble, the economy of the country was collapsing; crippled by debts, bad management, and lack of exports earning foreign currency. Finance was never on our minds. We did our job, and it cost what it cost. No request for resources was ever denied, and we continued to grow our numbers of double agents and other operatives with never a question asked.

Home life for me had not changed at all. The same apartment, regular visits to Maria, and checking in on Inge when I could. It never even occurred to me that I had no social life to speak of, as work took up too much of my time to worry about that. I was thirty-seven years old, relatively secure in my job, as much as any of us could be, and the war seemed like a memory. I wouldn’t say it out loud, but I was lonely.

I was also feared.

I guessed that my position would come with that, but I wasn’t really ready for the daily implications of it, once I became in charge of the department. I now had a driver, one I had chosen myself, after much investigation. Sergeant Bauer had served in the Army in 1946, and entered the Stasi after five years as a soldier. He was a little older than me, and was married to a woman who worked for the youth programme, the Free German Youth. Their credentials were impeccable, but I never opened up to him.

After all this time, I still trusted nobody except Inge.

It was obvious that he was afraid of me. He rarely spoke unless to reply, and jumped whenever I entered a room. He didn’t speak about his wife, or her job, and never mentioned doing anything outside of work. I was rather torn. Like most people, I wanted to be liked. After all, I had never tortured anyone, had only ever shot anyone in the line of duty, and I didn’t even participate in any of the tougher interrogations that went on. That was covered by another department. In many ways, I couldn’t understand why anyone could be afraid of Manfred, who had once been a schoolboy who looked after his mother and sister.

The other side of me rather relished that fear. It came with the job, and had to be maintained. Weakness was not allowed, and with any show of weakness came suspicion. Once a suspect, however small the suspicion, life could change in a heartbeat. I worked for the Stasi who policed the Stasi. But it was well-known in our circles that there was another department whose job was to police us. And probably yet another that policed them. Our organised paranoia was on an industrial scale, unheard of in the history of mankind.

I wasn’t about to let myself get entangled by doing anything that could be construed as weak or ineffective, that was for sure.

Just when I thought things had calmed down into a manageable routine, I was ordered to report to Colonel Nagel’s office.

Although I was now a Captain, and a relatively important figure, Nagel still treated me as if I was Teller’s driver. I would dearly have loved to have got something on him, but he had resisted all my attempts to plant an informer into his social life, and the secret recordings in his office and of telephone conversations had yielded nothing of interest. It seemed the man was whiter than white. He sat with his arms folded, and nodded at a file on his desk.

“Have a look at that, Kraus, and tell me what you have to say about it”.

I flipped open the file, and the colour drained from my face. It contained photos of Inge, with another woman. Nothing explicit, but they were holding hands in the park, then sitting on a bench, with Inge’s head on the older woman’s shoulder. More photos showed her walking into her apartment with the woman, then leaving the next morning together. It could all have been so innocent, if it wasn’t for the look on both their faces. I wasn’t about to let Nagel see I was bothered.

“So my sister has a friend. So what? She’s allowed to have a friend, isn’t she? Nagel grinned, and I knew he had something up his sleeve.

“Her name is Anna Pressler. She is the senior teacher at your sister’s school. Last month, she left her husband and moved into your sister’s apartment. She is forty-four years old, Kraus, and her husband has made a complaint that your sister has seduced his wife into an unnatural relationship. It doesn’t look good”. I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “No doubt she was unhappy with her husband, Colonel. My sister is a kind girl, she probably offered to let her stay while she sorts out her problems”. Nagel bit his lip, and I realised that was all he had. I closed the file.

“Leave it with me, Colonel. I will go and speak to her”.

This is the twenty-second part of a fiction serial, in 1100 words.

Berlin, 1965.

As I approached my thirtieth birthday, I was wondering where the last years had gone. Inge would soon be twenty-six, and was firmly established as a teacher. But she had never had a boyfriend, and when I spoke to her of loneliness and marriage, she told me that she could never trust a man as long as she lived. I felt sad for her, but she assured me that her life was good. I used my position to get her a few luxuries, but she would often refuse them, telling me to pass them on to someone more deserving.

My own love-life was non-existent too. The situation with Mona had made me too wary, too paranoid to embark on a relationship with another woman. I had to sadly reflect that the job I had chosen had made me distrust everyone I met. Other than Inge, I didn’t really have a friend in the world. Of course, I did have access to women, when I wanted or needed that. We had records on every prostitute working in the city, as well as the scores of women who were working for us by informing on their clients.

I found myself a decent widow, Maria. Short of money, she had attempted to work from her apartment, but had been informed on before she had managed to bring home a single client. It was a coincidence that her younger brother happened to be a policeman, so she was referred to our office for questioning.
I was supposed to talk about setting her up as an informer, someone who would chat to her clients, and report back to us if they said anything that could get them arrested.

Although she was considerably older than me, I took to her, and even felt sorry for her. So I made her a good offer. I would set her up in a different flat, pay the bills, and supply her with what she needed to get by. In return, I could go and see her anytime I wanted to, and my job would protect her from any prying neighbours. I expected her to hesitate, maybe ask for time to consider. But she accepted immediately. We couldn’t become a conventional couple of course, but she was happy with my infrequent visits to her, and liked the fact that we often just talked.

But I only ever spoke to her about the past, never about what I did, or what was going on. And I didn’t allow myself to become overly fond of her.

Just in case.

During those years, the new wall had caused a lot of work. It had become condemned internationally of course, and even those who had willingly stayed in the old Russian Sector were not convinced by the official explanation that it was an ‘Anti-Fascist Wall’, to keep our people safe from infiltrators or spies. Many would-be escapees were killed by soldiers or border guards trying to cross over. We had discovered elaborate tunnels that had been constructed to facilitate escapes, and had an increasing number of defectors in our own ranks, as well as from the Army and Police. Graf relished the challenge, seeing each new discovery as an opportunity to round up scores of people, and get more information about their networks.

Some days, I still felt as if I was drowning in paperwork and files.

At work, I spent more and more time with my boss. I had come to really like Graf, and to consider him a friend. He didn’t consciously use his position to intimidate anyone for no reason, and working alongside him made me feel more like a police detective, than a Secret Service Officer. And after all this time, I was also becoming well-known in our circles. Many considered me to be an important figure, an experienced Lieutenant in the company of those who wielded power. I didn’t see that at all. To me, I was just Manfred, a victim of circumstance who had gone along for the ride, with no realistic option to do otherwise.

But I was happy enough to use this new influence in my favour.

One decision I made was to get Inge somewhere better to live. Her tiny studio was depressing, at least to me. I got her name down for a one-bedroom flat only five minutes from where she was living, and she no longer had to share a bathroom. And for Maria I managed to obtain some decent lingerie and nylons, as well as some excellent make-up and hair products. All of this stuff had been confiscated from smugglers who had been arrested, and it was supposed to be destroyed. But I knew where to go, and who to talk to, and I could wander around the storeroom where it was kept, choosing my goods free of charge as if in a department store. Cigarettes, chocolate, wine and liquor, I could just turn up and select anything I wanted, no questions asked.

The one thing I didn’t do was to change my own apartment. I liked how central it was, and that it was in an old building, not one of the fast-appearing high rise blocks. I got to use the car too, if I wanted, but I generally left that at headquarters, and walked home. I would walk in the next morning, and collect it to go and pick up the boss. For me, the walking around gave a connection to the city, and also enabled me to keep an eye on the district. It didn’t hurt that local people knew full well who I was, and where I worked.

Berlin, 1966.

There was to be an important meeting, and Graf asked me to drive him there. “You should come in too, Manfred, listen to what is going on”. As we walked down the stairs, he stopped and rubbed his arm. “I feel sick, Manfred. Too much cognac last night, I suspect”. He started to smile, then suddenly sat down heavily, slipping down four of the stairs on his back. I was shocked. “What’s wrong boss? Shall I get help?” He didn’t respond, and his mouth was opening and closing like a fish taken out of water. I ran down to reception, and told them to call a doctor. By the time I got back, Graf’s face had turned blue, and I knew he was dead.

Two days later, I was told that I was now the Acting Captain, in charge of Graf’s department.

As I walked home, I felt cold.

I was going to have to step up, no mistake.

This is the twenty-first part of a fiction serial, in 1050 words.

Berlin, 1961.

Working for Graf had been a real eye-opener. I learned that more than three million people had already left East Germany, simply by crossing to the Allied Sector, then disappearing into western countries, or applying for official papers to emigrate. Unsurprisingly, that figure included many Stasi officers, eager to get away in case the border was closed for good. There had been lots of gossip about tougher restrictions, and the rumours were spreading like wildfire.

We rounded up their friends and families, and made life difficult for relatives left behind. They were watched, monitored, and their chances of getting better jobs or promotion were non-existent. One thing that did come as a shock was that Graf was remarkably agreeable, even to officers arrested on suspicion of planning to leave the country. My image of beatings and fierce interrogations was not happening at all. My boss was a man who valued information above all things. Any prisoner happy to give such information was treated fairly, though others simply disappeared into prison somewhere.

The new job made me feel as if I was walking on water. Our arrival at a Stasi office was treated like a Papal visit, with even very senior officers deferential to Graf and myself. Nobody wanted to fall foul of Internal Affairs, and they were happy to co-operate with any of Graf’s demands. Operating like a separate force with the organisation, we could more or less do what we wanted. Arrests were frequent, and never challenged. We could request to see any documents or files too, nothing was beyond our remit.

More good news came for me, in the Spring of 1960. I was to be promoted to Lieutenant, not long after my twenty-fifth birthday. Inge was teaching full time in a junior school, and now had her own studio flat in the eastern suburbs. She was still painfully thin, and reclusive socially, but she was as settled as she was going to be. I managed to see her at least once a month, though irregular hours in the new job meant I never knew what my working hours would be.

Despite my new rank, I stayed as Graf’s driver. Though he now treated me more as a colleague, than a subordinate. I was happy to stay in my apartment, as I only ever seemed to get back to sleep there. Something else changed though. I started to feel very grown up. I had made career choices that tied me to the administration, and realised there was no going back. That summer, everyone was told to attend an important meeting. Graf had drafted in a lot of help, as we were going to detain a large number of suspect officers, as well as many members of the civilian police too. After the briefing, I was called in for a talk with him.

“I trust you to keep this to yourself, Manfred. The government is about to start construction of a wall, a physical barrier that will divide Berlin. Once it is built, nobody will be allowed to leave the country anymore. It is obviously going to cause a lot of consternation, and we expect hundreds to try to get across before it is finished, if not thousands. No doubt many of those will be Stasi and police, as they will be the first to know. So we are embarking on a series of preventative arrests, the detention of anyone we suspect of planning to leave. We will round them up before construction starts, and they will be one less problem to worry about”.

As we walked to the car, I took in the enormity of what he had just told me. We were building a wall to keep the people in.

I doubted that was going to be very popular. And I was right.

It hadn’t been thought through, that was obvious from the start. Many East Germans had relatives in the western sector, often just a few streets away. Some still worked in the west, and they would no longer be able to go to work. As soon as it became obvious what was happening, scores of people tried to get through before the city was sealed off. That included some police officers, soldiers, and the occasional Stasi operative too. Those caught and brought in for questioning could count on a rather bleak future, that was for sure.

Any thoughts I had that the new wall would make my job easier were soon banished by a noticeable increase in our workload. Once physically trapped inside the old Russian Sector, underground groups formed almost overnight, planning escapes, and organising opposition to the government. Although we were supposed to only be dealing with internal Stasi matters, we were soon roped in to help deal with the sheer volume of increased surveillance, and higher numbers of arrests. Some days, I fell asleep at my desk, and hardly ever seemed to get home. Captain Graf appeared to thrive on the pressure, and I watched him, intent on learning the secrets of how he did his job so well.

When I had worked for Teller, I heard a lot about ‘instinct’, and having a ‘nose for the job’. Graf was the complete opposite. He favoured detail. Meticulous records, thorough investigations, and covering every angle. He was not influenced by gossip, or tale-telling. I wasn’t at all surprised to discover that he had been a police inspector before the war, and had determined to stick to his old methods.

Nonetheless, we lived in what I started to think of as the ‘Stasi Bubble’. Life outside went on for ordinary people, and dramatic world events made the news in western countries. But we never concerned ourselves with the world scene, or wider issues. For us, it was all about keeping it together, and not going backwards. To make that happen, we happily cracked down on any dissent, and freedom of speech was non-existent. That was nothing unusual to me, as I had been born into a country ruled by the Nazis and the Gestapo.
I was brought up in the same repressive atmosphere, and didn’t know any different.

The politics, and even the name of the country had changed.
The uniforms and flags were different too.

But for me, it was all perfectly normal.

This is the twentieth part of a fiction serial, in 1190 words.

Berlin, 1958.

I answered the door with my heart in my mouth, and was relieved to find it was Inge. But the news she brought was far from welcome.

“Manfred, Aunt Greta and Ernst have left. They have gone to the west. I wrote to her recently, and when I got no reply, I telephoned her work. They tell me she has gone to Stuttgart, where Ernst has a new job. Now there is only us, no more family”. She didn’t cry, but was obviously upset. I didn’t know what to say. The day had been bad enough, and now my relative had apparently left for West Germany. I couldn’t imagine how they got permission, but I wasn’t about to go into work and ask any questions.

I calmed my sister down, and later walked her back to her room. I knew full well that my superiors would know all about Greta, and feared it would not go down very well at all.

Sure enough, when I arrived at the translation office the next morning, there was a note on my desk telling me to report to the office of Captain Graf, an officer in Internal Affairs. I walked up the stairs with a sense of dread. Many people summoned to see Graf had never been seen back at work. A heavy-set, cheerful man, his appearance belied his fierce reputation. In an organisation that worked in an atmosphere of suspicion, he was probably the most suspicious of all.

His secretary showed me in, and he indicated that I should sit opposite him as he continued to read through some papers in a file. Slapping it down with a loud crack he spoke in a friendly tone, his voice unnecessarily loud. “What are we to do with you, Sergeant? It seems you have been in some bad company. Captain Teller has fled to Austria, and I suspect he may have been working for the Americans all this time. Now your aunt and her husband have decided to live in the West. Your sister couldn’t manage to stay on the gymnastics team, and your former girlfriend and her husband vanished last night, location unknown. Do you have anything to tell me, Kraus?”

My mind was working overtime. So Mona had been working for Teller, keeping an eye on me. Or had she? Maybe she was working on surveillance of Teller, and he had arranged for her mysterious disappearance to cover his escape? In such a short time, my world had turned upside-down, and I had no idea what was going on. Mainly, I felt foolish, for not being aware of anything.
Graf tapped his fingers on the desk, and I quickly answered. “I only found out about my aunt and her husband last night, Captain. As for Captain Teller, I had no idea that he was anything other than the officer in charge of my arrest team. When I got home last night, my girlfriend had left, but I presumed she was visiting her cousin in Freiberg”.

I hadn’t even convinced myself, so though it unlikely that Graf would believe a word of it.

But to my relief, it seemed that he had. “I’m sorry to say that your aunt and her man are no loss to this country, Kraus. We are better off without the likes of them. And don’t be worrying too much about not knowing about Teller.
To be honest, he surprised us all. But I would be interested to know why your girlfriend disappeared. Did you know she was married? You must have suspected she was a Stasi officer, surely?” I wanted to act as surprised and outraged as I could, without overdoing it. But I went for a sad realisation instead.

“A Stasi officer, Captain? Mona? Of course I had no idea, I met her in the bar where she worked as a waitress. And as for her being married, I would never have lived with her had I known that”.

Because he was so affable, I was wary of being lured in to saying something I would regret. So I left it at that.

Graf threw me completely, by changing the subject. “You got sent to a new job, I understand. What do you think of working in document translation? Be truthful now”. I shrugged, and decided to be honest. “Well, it’s rather dull, Captain, but I suppose it has to be done, and I am able to translate from English quite well”. He leaned back in his chair, and lit a cigarette.

“Don’t look so worried, young man. If I suspected you were involved in anything, you would be in a cell, not sitting in my office. I count myself a good judge of people, and I judge that you were just used by others without your knowledge. My belief is that your ‘Mona’ has gone to wherever Teller has, and they were in it together all along. Can you believe he has left his poor wife behind to face interrogation? Not to mention his teenage son at university.
He was arrested in Leipzig, and will be brought here for questioning”.

Thinking it best to say nothing, that was precisely what I did.

In a very short time, everything I knew had changed. Teller was probably a spy, my Aunt had left the country, and I had no idea whether Mona had been spying on me, or on Captain Teller. I had fallen from grace, in every way possible. The bright future I had imagined had vanished as quickly as morning mist burned off by the sun.

Halfway through his cigarette, Graf leaned across the desk. “So, now you are supposedly guilty by association, and likely to spend your career pushing paper around on the lower floors. Well, I don’t think that’s right, and I am sure it is not what you want. How would you like to come and work for me instead? You wouldn’t credit how many Stasi officers are bad apples, and as for the paid informers, most are the scum of the Earth. You could help me to root out those who are supposed to be rooting out others, and not doing that. What do you say?”

What was I going to say? “No” was hardly an option.

“Thank you very much, Captain Graf, I would be very happy to accept”. He seemed inordinately pleased. “Good, very good. You will be my driver. Forget the translation office, and take the rest of the day off”. He slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Take this to the motor transport office, and they will give you the keys to a car. Pick me up at seven tomorrow at the address written there”.

As I was walking to arrange the car, I had a worrying sense of deja-vu.
But at least I wasn’t in a cell.

I had just joined the ranks of the most unpopular people in East Germany. It had been bad enough being just Stasi, but now I was one of the most hated and feared, the Stasi who policed the Stasi.

For some reason, it was strangely comforting.