Baader Meinhof Prologue

Following Baader Meinhof 

‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’  

Revelation 6:8 

‘Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead,  

Benjamin Franklin 

‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on,’  

Samuel Becket 

Prologue:

Beirut 1970

It is the hottest day of the year, Beirut is melting. In a corner of the city, on top of a tall, narrow house in Rue Verdun, a young woman kneels over a low wall and goes about her work preparing a detonator. It’s a long way up. There’s a makeshift wooden stopper in the door, keeping it ajar- something innocuous, something no one would notice. Nobody is there, or anywhere within shouting distance. Everything in this city is tinged with yellow and orange: the fashion, the drinks even the décor.

It’s silent up here, only the birds and clouds for company. Plumes of dust and heat hovering above the buildings, a collection of Beirut’s Ottoman and French mandate architecture. The easel is in the southwest corner- exactly where she left it, the city’s port visible at a stretch over the ledge.

If she makes a great effort, if she controls what she sees and thinks, if she forgets about the detonator she has before her, she can, for the first few moments fool herself into imagining she lives a conventional life: she is not a terrorist, she is not an assassin, the Baader Meinhof group are not her only comrades. By tomorrow afternoon she will be touching down in Berlin airport, the dark reds and deep blues replaced once more by grey and an abundance of never-ending despair. The claustrophobia of Berlin beckoning once more.

It is no secret terrorists regard themselves as martyrs. Baader Meinhof and the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) are no exception. They share a form of violence that is both murderous and suicidal. When Brigitte joined the group she was told by it’s leader Andreas Baader that she ‘should not rule out violence. We have a duty. An certain awareness which may call for violence from the outset.’ He waited for a reaction, but such comments did not bother Brigitte: as the daughter of the ‘Poet of Auschwitz’ her only aim was to maintain her anonymity. Unlike many of the others who joined she did not see the RAF’s mission in a romantic light.

Her incarcerated father, the leading Nazis, General Dirk Schleyer, known now only as ‘The Poet of Auschwitz’, and her pitiful mother, Anke, who’d failed to protect her precious daughter from the evil which surrounded them. Anke could have done so much more, but drunk and on a road to self-destruction she had no time to worry about others. Her reputation was all that concerned her.

‘I used to be proud of my name. He stole my soul, my pride.’ Brigitte was hard pushed not to point out she got off easy in comparison to the rest of the ‘Poet’s’ victims who would have been content to survive with their limbs in tact. Anke went out every night called upon by different suitors dressed up bearing her jewels. Bearing the victims jewels. ‘It’s all we have Brigitte. I would kill myself if we lost it.’ They twinkled gloriously next to the potato soup with her mother wearing the necklaces like a noose beneath every outfit until the day she died.

Stealing cars, robbing banks, there was a purpose to it- to trigger an aggressive responsive from the West German Government. ‘Nazis scum’, men like her father once was. The only question was which prominent Nazis would they kidnap next? Brigitte wants to join the top ranks, wants to be noticed, but on the whole her comments are at best ignored, at worst heralded for their stupidity. Ironically, across the world, preparing to take someone’s life, was the only time she was not a shadow. She would be patient, her time would come.

Brigitte had enjoyed the evenings in Beirut the most, listening to the lurching tide of voices from the street below combined with laughter and billowing cigarette smoke. In Beirut the low wall had become a physical barrier between this world and the next, a protective enclosure.

There was a vague note attached to the bathroom mirror: ‘find your way around. Lie low. We’ll be in touch’. The note was unsigned. The job had been organised by Baader, if things went awry he would protect her- not out of respect you understand, the organisation simply needed the income her assassinations generated. As a result Brigitte was unlikely to be to be abandoned even if Ulrike Meinhof couldn’t stand the sight of her, something she was never shy of hiding.

From the roof Brigitte could see everything, hear everything, but remained touched by nothing. A panorama. She shakes her head wistfully, an unlikely scenario. The random photos delivered with the rising sun are proof that she is being consistently watched- someone out there was prepared to make her job exceedingly difficult. The pictures were signed only ‘A friend of your father. We enjoyed poetry together.’ Someone out there knew her real identity and wasn’t afraid to use it.

At the beginning her life with The Baader Meinhof Gang was, part culpability of her father’s actions combined with an inexplicable search for the truth, a reason to live. How could her father, the so-called ‘Poet of Auschwitz’ have killed so many? How much did her mother Anke know? Brigitte’s life would be different. It would mean something. She would save lives, not take them.

Nothing goes as planned.

In the right circumstances anyone had the capability to kill- women, men, even children. After her first kill she knows she should be horrified by what she’s done, by what she helped the terrorists achieve. Instead she feels light headed. She has found her calling. Eradicated the world of one less parasite.

From a distance her stay in Beirut might look glamorous-parties, gin and tonics and gossiping. In reality she was forced to live somewhere she didn’t belong, darting from one place to the next in a kind of blur retrieving information, then passing it on to nameless faces in the night. Assassinations were not easy work and had to be achieved with optimal skill.

To the outside world she is a ghost, a phantom. Many were searching high and low for a man with lethal skills, no doubt strong, a good shot and quick with a knife. Not one had considered ‘the ghost’ might be a woman. In a time where women were discovering their femininity, Brigitte was utterly forgettable in a series of alternate coloured wigs. Her only memorable feature was her troubling intensity the opposite sex found beguiling.

The trick to a successful kill was not to over- think and appear confident: the voice, black off the shoulder dress, the touch of a hand, the flick of her hair. Brigitte was here tonight because this contact had outlived his usefulness. Everybody saw. Everybody knew. He had spoken to one of those nameless faces in Lebanon, who unashamedly reassured him of his safety, but now fears were escalating. What if the contact developed a conscience or went back on his word? Yes, tonight was the perfect opportunity to eradicate the problem.

Meeting him in the hotel bar was straightforward enough. Brigitte sat for twenty minutes repeatedly tapping at her watch, pretending to look frustrated. The role-play at the beginning was always the easy part. She was a slight girl, dressed in clothes she would never consider wearing in everyday life. She wore perfume, bracelets, rings, no earrings. Brigitte had made herself attractive, but not overtly unapproachable. Brigitte gave a louder than necessary audible sigh to catch the stranger’s attention, tonight’s target boldly sidled up to her table. He was a good-looking man of about forty, with freshly pressed white shirt tucked into beige trousers.

‘You look disappointed. Maybe I can buy you a drink?’

‘I don’t know-.’ Brigitte gave a well-rehearsed smile of apologetic self-protection while looking repeatedly round the room.

‘I’m perfectly innocent I can assure you. One drink only.’ A curl of black hair fell in his face as he spoke, he didn’t seem to notice.

Brigitte surveyed her empty glass, ‘well, I suppose one drink won’t hurt. As it happens my friend hasn’t turned up.’ She feigned a little shuffle to avoid apparent personal embarrassment.

‘What’s your name?’ The stranger extended his hand.

She put her finger to her perfectly red lips. ‘No names. Tonight we shall remain anonymous.’

The stranger said nothing. He was at a loss. ‘If that’s what you want.’ Throughout the evening Brigitte laughed in all the right places and agreed to a late night drink in the strangers room once the hotel bar had closed. The Champagne bottle was popped open and Brigitte dropped a dose into both glasses to avoid confusion.

‘A toast to the future’ the stranger said, triumphant. ‘Such a stunning red head. It must be my lucky night.’

‘Lucky indeed.’ There was that feeling again, the knot in her stomach. What could it be? It was hard to tell. He swallowed the drink, choked, and grabbed the table beside him. She watched his face contort. He was trying to say something. Was he begging for help or chastising her?

Brigitte’s voice was calm: her voice soft almost a whisper, ‘Thank you for helping us. Tomorrow wouldn’t be possible without you.’ Brigitte saw the shock in his eyes. ‘Despite my reputation, I get no pleasure from this. No one despises your boss more than I, but be realistic. You’re a traitor.’

She closed her eyes, feeling her heart rate quicken- it was almost over. The stranger’s words, which followed, were unmistakable. ‘I….I…I remember you now. From the camp in Jordan. He was wrong…we knew that…we-’ Brigitte jumped back astonished. He was confessing. They’d known. Night after night they’d heard the screaming and done nothing. Her eyes flashed looking for a comeback, but he had already begun to slip away. Brigitte took his chin in her hand and tilted his face up, he was gone.

‘You got off easy,’ she muttered under her breath. She collected her things and before she left the room she wrote his name in her little black book- indecipherable numbers, which would mean nothing to a passer-by.

It was 2am, time to depart. Brigitte stood at the centre of the carpet and listened behind the door to the restless night sounds of the hotel. A long silence. Satisfied it was safe to leave she travelled down the steps, crossed the lobby and passed the night concierge dozing at his counter, a newspaper splayed before him.

Brigitte walked through the door and kept going. It’s hard to know how far she walked, or for how long, the city is still unknown to her. By sunrise one thing was obvious- this was only the beginning.