Prisoner No. 713

Where is Dr. Walter Linse? Since July 8, West Berliners have never ceased to wonder, and to ask. On that day, on a West Berlin street, Dr. Linse was bludgeoned outside his home, then thrown into a taxi that roared into East Berlin, where he dropped from sight (TIME, July 21). A courageous anti-Communist economist, he is Western Europe's most prominent casualty of the cold war.

U.S. authorities sent protest notes to the Soviets; the Reds disdained to answer. U.S. High Commissioner Walter J. Donnelly appealed directly to his Soviet opposite number, General Vasily Chuikov and Chuikov's reply spoke blandly of "a certain Linse" as though he had never heard the name. Again & again, seven times in all, the U.S. repeated the question: Where is Dr. Linse?

Last week the answer became clear. The Russians, who have a great respect for the forms of diplomacy and a cynical contempt for its use, have imprisoned Linse under another name. This enabled them to say that they did not know--officially--of Linse's whereabouts. U.S. authorities now know Linse's prison name, and in what East Berlin jail he is held. Moreover, the U.S.-sponsored Die Neue Zeitung even published his prison number: 713.

West Berlin's Police Chief Johannes Stumm had set his best men on the case. Last week he reported that four men did the kidnaping, and that they were aided in the planning and execution by 13 other East Germans. All are members of a secret East German ring whose code name is Weinmeister (Winemaster), sponsored, directed and financed by the East German Ministry of State Security. They were paid 500 to 1,000 East marks for each kidnaping and allowed a profitable sideline: the black marketeering of cigarettes, silks and coffee.

Stumm offered 5,000 DM ($1,190) reward for each of the kidnapers. He also announced the arrest of three minor accessories to the crime. One, described as the mistress of a ring member, had been caught just as she was plotting the abduction of another prominent antiCommunist.

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