Almost all the officials were new to their jobs, being former members of the Communist Party and former inmates of concentration camps. The procedure was for each official after hearing my story to pass me on to another official, a little higher up in the hierarchy, to whom I told the same rigmarole again. No one seemed to know quite what to do with a case like mine and I was indeed somewhat of a curiosity, as not many prisoners had then been returned to Germany from Russian camps. Each interview and each request for an interview was accompanied with a suitable douceur in the form of cigarettes.
I was invariably asked about my life as a prisoner of war and I always pitched a good, full-blooded horror story. All the officials were allegedly members of the S.E.D., the Communist-dominated German Unity Party, but the story was always very well received by these outward collaborators with the Russians. I was reminded of the old prewar anti-Nazi joke about a "Berlin steak" which was "brown outside and red inside." The roles were partially reversed. Soviet Berlin was a beautiful uniform red outside. The colour of the steak inside varied, but it was very seldom red all through.
Patience and cigarettes won through in the end and on April 12, 1947, I received my documents and was allocated a room in a flat belonging to Frau Weber, Wisbyer - strasse 41, Pankow. Up to this time I had been living the life of the destitute and homeless Mueller during the day, and at night returned to the sybaritic existence of Major Granatoff. The time had now come to discard Major Hyde and become permanently Herr Jekyll. Before doing so, however, I transferred to my new room all the food I had managed to bring with me from Russia or amass during my stay at Grellenstrasse. I had also been given thirty thousand marks as salary for a year but this was of little use as compared to my stock of food and cigarettes. I was determined before I finally left Russian service to have a short, final fling and had collected this food in order to have a holiday of a month or two.
Before I ceased to be Major Granatoff, part time, a place of conspiracy in Berlin had been arranged by Smirnov. In case the Centre wished to contact me I was to go on the last Sunday in every month to the Prenzlauer station, carrying a leather belt in one hand and my hat in the other. If the Centre wished to contact me someone would come up to me and say, " Wann fahrt der letzte Zug ab?[When does the last train go?]" My reply was: "Seit Morgen urn 22 Uhr[Since tomorrow at 10 p.m.]." If on the other hand I wanted to contact the Centre all I had to do was put a notice on a certain public notice board in Berlin reading: "Suche Kinderfahrrad. A. Kleber Muristrasse 12, Berlin/Gruenau [Wanted, a child's bicycle]," and the next day an agent of the Centre's would come to the place of conspiracy at the Prenzlauer station. He would come straight up and say that he had seen the advertisement, for I would be known to him by sight as a result of my monthly visits. I went to the rendezvous once or twice and succeeded in identifying the Centre's agent but he never contacted me and I never tried to get in touch with him. For all I know he is still faithfully turning up there once a month.
These visits to the place of conspiracy were the last contacts I had with the Centre. I never saw Smirnov after that day in April when I at last got my documentation as Mueller complete. I lived for some time as Mueller in my little room in the Wisbyerstrasse. It was not uncomfortable there as it was on the top floor and comparatively undamaged and unlooted. The Russian soldiers principally confined their looting to the lower floors so the higher one was in any building the better. Life in the curious, twilight world of the defeated capital was not uninteresting but my experiences there have little bearing on this narrative and anyway enough has already been written about Germany in defeat.
The sun was shining on the ruins of Berlin when on August 2, 1947, I left the Russian sector and walked into the British Zone and freedom.
ENVOI
Now that it is all over and I am once again a private citizen in England, it is possible to look back and sum up these ten years of my life. I joined the International Brigade and fought in Spain partly because of a love of adventure and partly because I felt that the cause was right. I worked for the Red Army Intelligence Service from a love of adventure and partly because I was working against Fascism and the enemies of democracy. I left the service of the Russians because I realised that to continue working would be to work against freedom and for dictatorship.
I can look back on these ten years with no regrets. The fight in Spain failed because the enemies of the Republic were too strong and their friends too weak or too unwilling to realise that this was yet another step in the Nazi programme for world domination. The war against Fascism was successful because all the enemies of Fascism combined together in an all-out effort and my efforts with the Soviet spy ring in Switzerland contributed in some degree to the ultimate defeat of the Third Reich. With the war over and Fascism defeated and in ruins, it was obvious to me that a new danger to democracy had taken its place in the shape of Soviet Russia. The danger had been there all along but, with the defeat of Germany and Japan, Soviet Russia remained alone as the greatest threat to the peace of the world. As long as the Western democracies and Russia were fighting a common enemy, so long would Russia co-operate with the democracies and so long was it possible to justify working for Russia against the common enemy. As soon as that frail bond of a common purpose was shattered, then the Russian desire for "security," which bears a startling resemblance to what was called before the war "Nazi aggression," came to the fore and its sequel in eastern Europe is now history. To have continued after the war to act as a spy for Soviet Russia would have been to be a traitor to those principles for which I and many others fought, and many died, in Spain. When I went to Spain and during the war when I saw the magnificent way in which the Russians fought to save their Fatherland, it was possible still to believe in the ideas and ideals of Communism. After a period in Russia, and leisure to think back on the actions of Soviet diplomacy and politics in the past, it might have been possible to remain a theoretical Communist, but I found it quite impossible to believe in Communism as practised in Russia today.
The Nazis have been described, quite rightly so, and equally rightly held up to the execration of the world, as ruthless exponents of "Realpolitik" and "Machtpolitik." Russia has nothing to learn from Nazi Germany in this respect. The tactical methods of the Kremlin change with bewildering frequency and speed, the political sails trimmed to suit the prevailing breeze. The strategic aim remains steadily and unwaveringly the same. That aim has been as clearly described by Stalin as was the aim of National Socialism in Mein Kampf. The Comintern may be officially dead, but the ghost clothes itself, as soon as peace comes, in the flesh of the Cominform. The ultimate aim is still to spread Communism throughout the world. Such a spread, if successful, means in effect the spread of the power and control of Soviet Russia. It is only necessary to pick up a newspaper to see what that means: suppression of freedom of thought and speech; the power of the political police; purges; arrests and oppression. The picture is tragically familiar.