At that moment, George would have rather been in Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, or wherever was conceivably the most dangerous place in the world. It was a truly irrational thought, but he had an overwhelming need to recapture the sense of adventure that had brought him to this career in the first place. Without it, his life had drifted and lost purpose. If I could only have mastered Arabic, he thought, they would have sent me someplace where there’s action.
Sebastian slowed in his own search along the seats as something began to dawn on him.
“None of these numbers match,” George burst out in exasperation.
“Wait… ” Sebastian said. “We’re in the wrong hall. It must be the People’s Chamber!”
The two men exited the Great Hall and headed up one more flight of stairs to the fifth and top floor of the Palace. George was winded from the exertion in his suit, but he hurried along, sensing he was finally nearing the goal of this wasteful mission. They hurried through a corridor and turned right to another set of double doors. This time when the men entered they were not enveloped by darkness. Somewhere above was a skylight that kept the People’s Chamber in a drab and dusty shroud of natural light. George and Sebastian turned off their flashlights as they descended the aisle before them.
From the balcony, they could see the entire breadth of the People’s Chamber. The room was strangely undisturbed: the representatives’ desks, the Politburo seats at the front, and the podium all remained. Even the red-carpeted floor and cushioned seats were still there, albeit dusty from five years of disuse. The Chamber was arguably the best-preserved room in the palace. It was this condition, and the room’s one-time purpose, that left George and Sebastian with a decidedly eerie sensation. For fourteen years, the East German government debated and made policy in this room. Now it stood as the tomb of communism. The people—whom communism ever claimed to represent—had brought its extinction.
George and Sebastian stood transfixed for a moment, then brought their minds back to their task and moved down the aisles. George glanced at the side of the seats along one aisle. To his disappointment, there were no markings at all. He threw his hands up. “None of the rows are marked.”
Sebastian looked over the rows as he thought carefully. Suddenly, he breathed in with excitement. “No, it’s code.” He started to walk down the aisle toward a middle row. “B for balcony… and it’s not thirty-seven, its row three, seat seven.”
Full of a sudden, euphoric burst of adrenaline, George raced down the aisle before Sebastian and began to count seats on the third row. “Four, five, six… seven.” Just as George stopped and knelt in front of the theater seat, he turned back to Sebastian, who was now looking over his shoulder. “How are we sure we counted from the correct side?”
Sebastian shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”
George grasped the seat cushion and hard metal base and started to pull them in opposite directions, but could not get enough leverage to pry the parts loose. Sebastian grabbed one end, and together they tore the seat apart. The ripping of fabric and the sharp metallic clang of the base reverberated through the chamber, breaking the funereal silence.
George examined the seat cushion and saw a slit had been cut in the fabric, right above the hardboard base. Sebastian pulled out a Swiss army knife and carefully widened the slit. George reached his gloved hand into the cushion and pulled out two pieces of paper. They were yellowed with age and each folded twice. He opened the papers and read. Both were in German. The first paper was stamped with an official East German Ministry of State Security seal. This was no surprise to George. The Ministry of State Security—Stasi for short—were the East German secret police, and arguably the most effective spy agency in history. Over forty years, the Stasi helped hard-line communists keep a stranglehold on power by invading the lives and secrets of practically all GDR citizens.
As George read, he became confused. The paper was an arrest warrant, issued October 6, 1985, for a Lieutenant Colonel Hans Brandt. The charges were “High Treason against the Republic.” Two hand-scrawled names at the bottom of the paper looked more like notations than signatures. Typed underneath was the first initial and last name of the Minister of the Stasi, and another, more obscure name, “K. Scharf.” George could not understand how this warrant had come to be hidden here in a seat cushion. But the next paper proved to be the bombshell. This document was dated October 5, 1985. George’s eyes were immediately drawn to the body of the document, which read as military orders:
You are hereby ordered, under the authority of the General Secretary and Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic, to carry out Operation STOSS, the invasion and occupation of West Berlin. The operation will commence on the 7th of October, at 01.30 hours.
George’s jaw dropped. He turned to Sebastian, who had been discreetly reading over his shoulder. This was expressly against the mission protocol, since Sebastian, a mere agency asset, had not been given clearance to know the classified nature of the papers. Yet both men looked at each other in amazement. George exhaled into his mask, fogging its plastic shield. “What is this?”
It was past 10:30 that night when George finally reached home. He had a small house in the leafy suburb of Dahlem. It had long been part of the American Sector after the war, and the American Embassy still stood in a large compound on Clayallee. The houses here had sizable yards with trees and hedges, and this “little America” gave comfort to George and many other foreign service officers who yearned for their home soil from time to time. George had been so tied up with paperwork and other monotonous duties for the rest of the day that he had almost forgotten the strange events of that morning. Now he only wanted to sleep.
George parked his car and entered through the back door of the house as usual, tossing his keys in a dish on the kitchen counter. Then he walked into the living room and clicked on a lamp. That was when he first noticed the man sitting in a chair across from him. The man was thin, about forty, with graying dark hair and icy eyes. The eyes locked on George immediately. They, more than the man’s mere presence, startled George the most.
“Don’t move.” The man spoke English with a German accent.
George now noticed the Makarov in the man’s right hand, comfortably resting on the arm chair, but aimed directly at him. George froze, but he could not help blurting out, “Who are you?”
“My name is Brüske, but that’s not important.”
“What do you want with me?”
Brüske stood slowly, his eyes trained on George. “Who is Hans Brandt?”
George caught himself as he let out a laugh. How could this be happening? Why, after ten years, did he have to find an arrest warrant for this Hans Brandt? Why did it bring this man to him? The Cold War was over. The Wall fell. The West won. It was ancient history, more than five years’ on. How did he run into the one guy who didn’t get that memo?
George watched Brüske and slowly straightened, moving his hand away from the lamp switch. “I don’t know.”
Brüske took a stalking step toward him. “Who is Hans Brandt?” he repeated coldly.
“I don’t know.” George could see he was getting nowhere. Brüske was still advancing, moving in on his prey. “Believe me, you must know more about him than I,” George said. “I’ve never met him.”
“But you know about him.”
Caught, George knew he was in a mess. His laziness had cost him. Now, faced with real danger for the first time since he joined the CIA, he was forgetting all of his training. He was panicking.