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One afternoon almost ten months earlier, Harald Radler sat at his desk and answered the phone; not an unusual occurrence.
The muffled voice on the end of the line had said, “Colonel Radler, you should speak to Karl Huber. He is in the hospice in Pankow. He knows the truth about your son.” The line went dead.
When young Theodor had been run over and killed, he’d been walking home from a friend’s house. He was 11 years of age, an adventurous and independent boy whose escapades with friends often caused his mother to worry for his safety, as did his tendency to stay out too long for her liking. As a result, she’d insisted Harald place reflective strips on his school bag to improve his son’s visibility on the dark Leipzig streets of the winter months. It hadn’t saved him.
The traffic officers of the Verkehrspolizei had dealt with the matter and by the time he and his wife were informed of the incident young Theo was already in the mortuary. It was a harrowing time for them both and neither of them ever recovered from the loss of their beloved son.
Harald had seen the formal report. A number plate had been recovered at the scene and, pretty soon, the Police traced the owner; a history of drinking problems was involved. When they’d gone to his home address, he’d fired at them with a small handgun and, whilst they called for assistance and re-organised, he’d hung himself. The report had gone on to state his car, an old Wartburg, had damage that confirmed his guilt. Harald had accepted the findings; he had no reason not to.
But somebody did have a reason and that reason was lying in the Pankow hospice.
Karl Huber had been a uniformed street officer. He was first on the scene, had found the number plate and passed it on to the traffic police. He’d also recovered a fog light from a Tatra 603 which had become detached when the vehicle struck. Karl Huber knew, from the plate number, an official vehicle had caused the death of the little boy whose face he’d wept over when he couldn’t make him breathe again.
The Verkehrspolizei had taken control so he’d supplied the investigating officers with a brief statement and when told to do so he’d resumed his normal duties. That was the end of it but he never forgot the boy and he saw him in his sleep all too often. A chance remark sometime later had raised the matter again, a colleague commenting on the result in a report of completed investigations. “Karl, isn’t this the accident you went to, the one with the young lad? They got the bastard, remember? Sorry, no, you were on holiday when the shootout happened, I forgot. You probably never knew.”
He read the report, a précis of each completed incident. The Wartburg was mentioned. He knew that was wrong. He’d gone to his superiors, told them what he knew, they told him he was surely mistaken and to forget about it. There were more important things to be concerned about, the racketeering operating out of Plagwitz for instance. He tried to speak to the investigating officers but found they’d been moved on; one to Rostock district and the other to Schwerin, both the other side of the country.
He got a visit from the Stasi investigations branch, in fact, he got several. That’s when his life began to slowly but surely fall apart. Well thought of in his own department, he was suddenly transferred to the district of Suhl, in the south-east, and soon found his personal record had been doctored to show him in a bad light. As a result, he got all the shit, menial jobs and found it difficult to be on friendly terms with colleagues because they ignored him. After the accident, he’d started to drink more often, to cancel the image in his head and help him sleep. As matters got worse, he drank even more. It was like falling down a slide in his socks whilst wearing boxing gloves. He couldn’t get back to where he’d been. Eventually, he lost his job and was lucky to get the next one as a dustbin man. The Stasi officers told him that, with smiles on their faces. They also said if he wanted to keep it he should keep his mouth shut, permanently.
Harald knew all this now. He’d visited Karl Huber as he lay in what was to be his deathbed. He’d made a point of popping in on his way home or even in his lunch hour and it didn’t take long before he had Karl’s confidence and the truth spilled out. He even remembered the registration number. He’d said unless he drank himself to a stupor it was a regular image in his dreams, that and little Theo’s face. He’d tried so hard to not drink so much but in the end, it became his only respite.
Harald had spoken with a trusted contact in the files registry. He and Manfred had met at the chess club several years ago and he’d made some potentially damaging allegations disappear for him. At their next club meeting, the man told him the vehicle number was still in use, issued to an official from the Finance Ministry but he’d only received it late the year before. The previous user had been an under-Minister in the Justice Ministry.
Harald recognised the name, an up and coming party arse-licker expected to ‘go places’ but oddly overlooked for a prestigious position in ’69, the year of Theo’s death. Faint rumours of a mistress and a penchant for scotch whisky had circulated briefly. Sidelined, he died in early ’74.
There was more to come. Manfred had uncovered a Stasi file which revealed details of the man named as the offender in the traffic report. A ‘businessman’ who’d had access to West Berlin before the ‘Anti-Fascist Protective Wall’ went up, he was already of interest well before his suspected involvement in racketeering and his friendship with several dissidents made him an item of particular note. His post mortem report was interesting in that it revealed death had occurred well before the shooting had started.
It would seem that political expediency had sealed the man’s fate.
Radler didn’t need any more. He knew how things worked. The people and the ‘system’ he’d given his life to had lied to him. Covering up an embarrassing situation was far more important to them than just telling him the truth and administering justice.
They had sneered at his and his wife’s pain and mocked their anguish by these actions and they were still unrepentant. He decided to get even the only way he knew. He’d defect and tell their enemies everything and his knowledge was considerable.