Midnight Hunter

My throat works, trying to get the words out. Maybe it’s not too late. He wants so badly for me to love him that if I say it now he might believe me. But he’s not a fool. I spoke the truth just now and he heard it loud and clear.

In the hall I drag my coat on, feeling numb. So this is it. Downstairs we get into his car and he’s still not looking at me. He drives us in silence through the empty streets. I don’t know where exactly Hohenschönhausen is except that it’s near Stasi HQ. They don’t keep murderers and thieves there. It’s a special prison just for dissidents and traitors and they’re treated in special, cruel ways. What Reinhardt said before he put the silk stockings on me comes back to me. It’s bleak, Liebling. The lights stay on all night. There is no sky. No wind. No hope.

He slows the

car as it goes over some railway tracks and I want to reach for his gloved hand on the wheel and beg him to pull over. There’s so much anger and confusion in my heart, but I can tell him how he makes me feel. How I admire and fear him at the same time. That I respect his drive, his passion, his cleverness, even if I despise the things that he does. That I want him so much it frightens me. But if I start talking I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop. I’ll confess everything—about Peter, about spying on him, and I’ll end up betraying the only people who can get me away from him. I won’t do that, even to keep myself out of prison. If it’s too late for me I won’t drag everyone else down with me.

Stasi HQ is up ahead but before we reach it we turn left up a side street. My stomach lurches, realizing this is the way to Hohenschönhausen, but a moment later he’s pulling into a parking space in front of a nondescript beige building that doesn’t look anything like a prison. Reinhardt gets out of the car and waits for me to do the same.

There’s a sign in metal lettering by the entrance: ministry for state security. It’s not a prison, but it is a government building.

“Where are we?”

Reinhardt still won’t look at me and his face is set and cold. He unlocks the door to the building and leads me into a vast open space filled with lines of metal shelving, stacked with manila folders and archive boxes. All the shelves are marked with letters and numbers that seem to mean something to him, and he walks smartly along them and then turns down a row.

I follow, and suddenly he stops and reaches for a file. It’s a thick manila folder stuffed with typed reports and photographs, and he searches through them. I look between his face and the documents, trying to discern what is happening. Is this when I discover he’s been onto me all along? Is this my file? Is it Peter’s?

When he holds out a photograph my brain doesn’t know what to make of what I’m looking at. It’s not of me or Peter. It’s of a group of people. A family. I recognize the woman at the center of the glossy black and white photograph.

I glance up at Reinhardt in confusion but he just nods at the picture. “Look at it, Evony. Look at it carefully.”

It’s Frau Schäfer, the neighbor that Reinhardt took away in the night for looking at the Wall and weeping. She’s with a man and two small children on a street, the family she so desperately wanted to join in West Berlin but couldn’t because the GDR wouldn’t let her leave. They’re getting out of a car, a model that I don’t recognize. She’s smiling. The street…

I grab the photo with a cry. That car, that street. The signs above the shops are in German but I don’t know the stores. The family’s clothes are cut in unfamiliar modern styles. Herr Schäfer is carrying a newspaper with a name I don’t know.

“This is West Berlin. When was this taken? How?”

In reply Reinhardt extracts a sheet of typewritten paper from the file and hands it to me. It’s some sort of report written in a dense bureaucratic style. All the names are written in capital letters, though I don’t recognize them and I think they must be codenames. I still don’t understand and I’m growing frustrated. “Just tell me what this means. Frau Schäfer is in West Berlin?”

“Ja, Liebling,” he says softly. “She has been for quite some time now.”

I examine the page again, seeking to confirm what he says. My eyes find the concluding note: “…unknown how LANGE reached the American Sector. GDR operatives in the W. BERLIN refugee camp have been unable to obtain intel about the defection from LANGE herself or those close to her.”

Then after a line break there’s another note. “No further intelligence regarding LANGE’s defection. GDR operatives assigned elsewhere.”

Written across the bottom of the page is OFFICE OF OBSTLT. R. VOLKER, and it’s dated just over a month ago. I stare at the report for a long time. I thought Reinhardt arrested Frau Schäfer the night I first saw him, but it seems she escaped. Maybe he thinks I had something to do with it.

Keeping my voice level, I ask, “Do you know how she reached the West?”

There’s a small smile on his face, the sort he gets when he’s particularly pleased about something. “Oh, Evony. Of course I know how she reached the West. I smuggled her across the border myself.”

I stare at him. He did this? Der Mitternachtsjäger?

As if reading my mind, he says, “It is a very useful nickname the people of East Berlin have given me. Midnight Hunter. I can go any place I want, do anything, meet anyone. Nobody questions me. Nobody stops me. My colleagues see only a zealous Stasi officer and my Oberst thinks I’m an insomniac. The people see someone to fear. Or, usually they do. Some reckless young women stare me down, unafraid.” He puts his forefinger under my chin for a moment and smiles again. “I’m careful not to work to a pattern and I deliver the best results in the Stasi. The cells in Hohenschönhausen are teeming with traitors, thanks to me.”

“But why let Frau Schäfer go? No, not let her go. Help her escape. She wanted to leave. Surely that makes her a traitor too?” I imagined it so vividly—der Mitternachtsjäger coming for her in the night, cruel and implacable, unmoved by her misery and tears as he took her to prison. If he’s not that man, then who is he?

Reinhardt gazes at me a long time. “Everything I’ve told you, Evony. Everything you know about me. Can’t you see why I would do this?”

“No, I can’t. Why do you have a heart for her and not for everyone else in East Berlin?” But he doesn’t reply.

What Ana and Ulrich? Is this some sort of consolation prize, showing me that he has a crumb of mercy in the hopes that I’ll believe he’s more than just a ruthless killer? If what he’s telling me it even true. “That photograph and that report could be fake.”

He takes the report back, slipping it back into the file with the photograph. “I’m not going to demand you believe me. You will have to decide for yourself.”

I’m too tired and overwrought for this. “You hate traitors. You call us rats fleeing for the West.”

“Ja. That’s true.” His voice is heavy with disappointment and he puts the file back on the shelf.