5th Chapter: The Encounter

Finally, Friday night arrived and Max arrived punctually at midnight at the train station “Hackescher Markt” to await Helena. After 15 minutes of waiting he saw a shadow emerging from the dark night, approaching the station. When the figure crossed the street Max could make out that it was a slender dark-haired woman. She nervously came closer and while she crossed the final meters to Max, Helena’s head was filled with doubts as Max’ appearance didn’t really exude professionalism. She thought that his goofy hat and red socks to the dark suit made him stand out like a clown at a funeral. “Hopefully, he knows what he is doing” she thought before pressing out a timid: “Hello... Herr Max?”

Max, still a bit shell shocked from meeting this beautiful woman in the middle of the night outside of Berlin’s shadiest train station, could only reply “ No, I mean Yes. That’s me, you are Helena, I presume...?”

“Yes”, she whispered, took his arm and led him away quickly through the adjacent streets of the dark city. Our odd couple silently walked for a couple of minutes in what seemed to Max, random selection of streets – a countermeasure against potential followers? Finally, Helena pointed at a small door for a bar at the corner of Landsberger Allee. “Its a very quiet bar, we will be able to talk in there.” He nodded and entered the bar with Helena closely behind him.

4th Chapter: The Night before the encounter

The night was tough on Helena as well. Tomorrow she would put her fate in someone else’s hands. And she swore that whatever the outcome she would accept it. She had spent too many years hoping. And now she was tired. Tired of believing in something that might not exist. Tired of the effort it took to defend her beliefs to her family who had long ago dealt with their grief.

So her last chance was in the hands of Herr Max. Perhaps what she had heard about him was exaggerated as even after all this time she didn’t always understand the humor of Germans. Did they trust him or were they making fun of him by calling him Max the spy?

Fate had brought him to her – but what if the name was given as a joke? What if he wasn’t a spy? Would he laugh and her and tell her to forget about it too– just as her family had?

Well, either way she had decided that this was her last effort...whatever the outcome.

She needed to calm her nerves. “Why is there never anything to drink in this house!” she thought. Ahh...some brandy in the desk drawer. That would do. As she opened the window, the night breeze brought with it the noise of people in the restaurant across the platz. A low hum that mixed with the brandy finally brought her sleep.

3rd Chapter: The Letter

Of course, Max didn’t know of any of Helena’s background. He in fact didn’t know anything about her besides these few lines she sent to him in her letter today. He didn’t know if he should meet her or not. So in good old investigator fashion, he took a closer look at the letter to see if he could glean anything more about the writer. As far as his counter intelligence training from the Shrivenham Academy was telling him, her letter could be a trap by the communists. It wouldn’t have been the first time, he’d fell for such a trap and so Max rather tried to be overly cautious nowadays.

When he took a deeper look at the letter he was intrigued by her print-perfect handwriting, which showed a very educated style. It must have taken her some time to write this letter– from the correct spelling to the spacing of the letters, the centering of the words to her careful punctuation. Max never spent much time in school focusing on these things, making it quite a burden for him – and he therefore assumed that anyone with good grammer must have spent as much time as he would have.

He also noticed that she called him “Herr Max”, a strange combination of using the German equivalent to “Mr” together with his first name Max instead of his last name. A mistake that was so blatant that it must mean something more, he imaged – but what? Also the fact that she used his colloquial name “Max the Spy”, showed a level of familiarity and a bluntness. She indirectly undressed him from his official role as Britain’s trade attaché by naming his real profession. Was that her way of saying, “I don’t play games – so don’t play games with me” ? He must admit to himself that he liked her from the start and decided to meet her at the Berlin train station she specified in her letter. In Max’ mind he was expecting a German educated, British woman that has lived in Berlin for a long time and must have lived through some tough times because of her directness and by choosing Berlin’s dodgiest train station in the middle of the night – a great place to meet strangers in case you had to run away quickly...

Was it mainly curiosity, his professional duty or something else that drew him to this nightly encounter? He couldn’t tell but he was incredibly nervous the night before meeting her and couldn’t sleep at all. Bad preparation for a busy day and night that should follow.

2nd Chapter - Who is Helena?

Helena was very small and the sky was very bright. She could now barely remember the feeling of sun on her face and what it felt like to have no worries. She was twelve and her family was on their annual holiday. This was the last time she could remember seeing her parents relaxed.

Her father, a processed meat baron, brought all his siblings and their families together once a year to what he referred to as the family home. It was a new home he brought in 1937 to bring the large family closer together after the death of his mother. They had started this annual tradition last year after her father won some big contract. That’s the year she’ll always regard at the year that changed everything. She now went to a boarding school instead of being tutored by her aunt.

She loved this new house in the south of the UK. It was close to the port town of Bournemouth and had its own pond on the property. She was so excited that she couldn’t stand still and as a result had been reprimanded by her mother more than once. What her mother didn’t understand was how much she had missed her older brother. Algernon (or Algie as she called him) had been sent to a different school and so she only saw him over the summer and on school holidays. Algae was turning into a young man but somehow leapfrogged the cynical stage her male cousins all seemed to go through. He was always able to make her laugh and to tease her in just the right way to make her feel special and loved.

It was the summer of 1938 and Algae was full of excitement about his idea of what to do after he graduated next spring. At dinner that evening, after everyone was scrubbed and not yet arguing about how there was no hot water left for their baths, Algae told his father while all 17 of the extended family listened to what he decided to do.
“I made a decision and will join the Armed Forces after graduation. Enough with that oppressor down south, its our civil duty to fight against him.”

Their father’s answer surprised them all, as he said the next few words that would change their lives forever. “You can’t join. I have been waiting for the right moment to tell you all, but we are moving. We are expanding our meat processing company and will relocate to Germany. The business there has been exploding and I need you to come with me to run the firm there.”

Today, almost 25 years after this evening, Helena still cannot decide what aspect frightened her more: her fathers' whispered order that destroyed her brother’s dream or the alarm she saw for just a second in her mother’s eyes.

1st Chapter: Spring Time in Berlin

It is early summer 1961. The Berlin Wall is about to be built and the expectancy of the situation seems to centre on the weather. There is promise in the weather. It hasn’t rained for two weeks, the flowers and trees are blossoming and there is a buzz of spring in the air. The signs are clear, it will be a great, hot summer. We keep telling ourselves that. The press keeps reminding us. We share our optimism with the neighbours, but it does little to drown out the depressing situation on both sides of the wall that is growing on a daily basis. In fact it only highlights the gravity of the situation.

Max lives in East Berlin. As a British national his mere presence acts as a soothing balm. If things were that bad, surely he would leave. Or even worse he would suddenly ‘have more friends’. Everyone knew that Max was a spy and though he was the worst spy around, his new acquaintances were always viewed with a kindly suspicion. But Max is still here, wandering around Lichtenberg with an aimlessness that screams – loudly – how time is his enemy.

It’s surprising that Max has nothing to do. He used to work for the British Intelligence Service in the 40s and 50s after he finished the cadet school in Shrivenham. He was a successful and well liked student. Raising just enough hell to be considered outside the establishment by his peers and having just enough success to wear a bragadocious smile.

This may have been the problem. He left a world that adored him to work as trade attaché in the Berlin embassy. Where he far outstayed his welcome and his usefulness. It was the only job he knew and unfortunately bureaucracy wore him like a glove.

Despite this long career, Max is probably the most incompetent spy ever. Even when he was young his operations were clumsy. He could never see the far goal...only the short. And he was known for spilling stories after too many shots of Jaegermeister – a weakness he identifies to himself as his favorite. After 17 years of living in Berlin it was known to basically everyone in the right circles and even to his grocer that Max is a spy.

This was one problem Max couldn’t smile out of, because as eventually this got back to MI6 and they stopped paying him. In March 1960, Max still hadn’t realized this tiny piece of news as he lived off a fairly large inheritance from his grand-auntie Mathilda.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, dutiful Max who is 52 years old now, is walking to the post office next to the Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse where he maintains an anonymous mail box under the name of Heinrich Schimmermann. Unfortunately, this mailbox has been empty for several months. But Max is bound to his routine, as every good spy is, and believes that this is only a sign of his increased importance as undercover agent. He will determinedly lay low for his next big mission.

On the third Tuesday in May, Max finds a handwritten letter in his mailbox that only says: “To Herr Max The Spy: I need your help. Please meet me at midnight on Friday at the trainstation Hackescher Markt. Sincerely, Helena.”

Max The Spy