(2 of 2)
When Glaeske telephoned last week and asked him to come to his apartment that night, Dr. Trushnovich went unquestioningly. There, West German police think, Glaeske had a Communist slugger waiting with a steel whip to cut Trushnovich down.
The Notebook. Next day the German Communist radio blandly announced that Trushnovich, "a leading personality of the fascist White Guard organization, NTS, which works on orders from the American secret service" had come to East Berlin and turned himself over to Communist authorities, bringing with him "documents" proving his espionage activities (NTS said he brought no papers, but unfortunately was carrying a notebook listing names and addresses of NTS contacts).
"A major Communist coup," admitted one Western intelligence operative. Berlin's police chief called it "the most serious kidnaping since the abduction of Dr. Walter Linse," a top official of the anti-Communist Free Jurists (TIME, July 21, 1952). The U.S. commandant in Berlin bluntly charged "clear evidence of complicity" by Soviet officials in this "outrageous abduction," and the British demanded an investigation. But few had any hope of seeing Dr. Trushnovich again, unless and until he appeared in a Communist court, vacant-eyed and slow of speech, in the inexorable pattern the Communists have made cruelly familiar.