Tunnel 29

by Helena Merriman

  Then they see it: a truck. Mimmo is on board and he’s just about to tell the driver to park and unload the escapees when he sees the men in long coats and hats on the street. ‘Keep going, keep going, don’t stop!’ he shouts and the truck screeches off. Shaking, Mimmo is relieved, but has no way of letting the others know the operation has been infiltrated. And right now, the first escapees, those coming on foot, are arriving.

  They collect on the street, waiting for something, none of them sure what. Some try to hide, one Stasi files notes: ‘it appeared that they were waiting for something specific. One of the wives waited in a bush by the cemetery wall for an extended period of time.’ Eventually, one man approaches a Stasi agent, assuming he must be a volunteer from West Berlin, here to help with the escape. ‘Is the operation still on?’ he asks. ‘Can we get any more people into the lorries?’

  The Stasi agents can’t believe their luck and they bundle the man into a car, where they pump him for information. One of the escape-helpers on the street realises what’s going on; he tries to signal to those arriving that the operation is blown, but it’s too late, and he’s arrested. Soon there’s a steady stream of arrivals – elderly people, couples, some with children in pushchairs – all oblivious to the men in long coats, and by the time they notice that something isn’t right, it’s too late, for the Stasi agents are swooping in, shoving everyone into cars and taking them away until there’s no one left – just a single pushchair lying on the street.

  A few roads away, Evi, Peter and their toddler Annet are racing towards the house. They’re late because Evi was out when the messenger turned up at their house to tell them the escape was on. Evi was collecting a green dress she’d had made specially for this escape, the only item of clothing she would bring with her to West Berlin. When Evi arrived home, Peter was furious: ‘Where have you been? We have to leave right now! The tunnel is ready!’

  Grabbing their ID cards, nappies and money, they’d raced to the station, onto the S-Bahn. Now, as they approach the street, Evi’s stomach churns because, apart from them, there’s no one else there and she can’t understand why it’s so quiet. But they keep going, determined to stick to the plan, for they know the house is just around the next corner, and that’s when they see them – a handful of men skulking on the street, and they turn on their heels, walking away as fast as they can, hoping that no one follows.

  At the same corner, Renate is arriving with two friends – Peter and Britta – and they walk right into a Stasi agent, who stops them. ‘What are you doing here? Papers. Now.’

  Renate’s stomach plunges as she pulls out her papers, and she watches as Peter and Britta hand theirs over too, the Stasi officer making a note of their names and addresses.

  Renate’s mind races; what excuse can she give for them being here? But then Peter starts talking about how it’s his birthday today; how they’ve come to meet his sister who works in a factory nearby so they can celebrate. It’s a good story because when the Stasi officer checks Peter’s papers, he sees that, yes, today is indeed Peter’s birthday: 7 August. He radios his commander, who radios someone else until they reach the factory to check that Peter’s sister really does work there, and when the confirmation comes through, the officer returns their papers. All right then, he says, off you go, and Renate and her friends leave, trying to smile and laugh as though they’re celebrating a special day out, while on the inside, they’re falling apart as they realise the operation is unravelling and there’s nothing they can do.

  At the parking spot in Grünau, the lorry organised by Wolfdieter and Renate has just arrived. People emerge from the bushes where they’d been hiding, waiting for the lorry. One by one they board the truck, giving the codeword to the driver, who pulls out, oblivious to the Stasi truck behind. The Stasi follow them almost all the way to the tunnel, then drives them off the road, arresting everyone.

  At the house on Puderstrasse, another lorry arrives, full of escapees. They get out, straight into the hands of the Stasi. And so the operation falls apart, the Stasi taking away family after family until, eventually, the streets are quiet.

  It’s now 5 p.m. The Stasi agents walk towards the house. They’ve arrested over forty people from East Berlin, but now they want the bigger prize – the people behind the operation, the tunnellers from West Berlin.

  A few metres under their feet, Joachim, Hasso and Uli are hacking into the ceiling of the tunnel, pulling out chunks of clay. Finally, the ceiling breaks open and the first thing that hits Joachim is the smell. Coal-dust. Then he feels it. It pours out, onto his head, his shoulders and into his eyes until he’s blind with it. They’ve hacked into the layer of coal-slag insulation under the house and there’s nothing they can do except wait until the coal-dust stops flowing. Face blackened, nostrils clogged, Joachim looks up and sees floorboards: time for the drill. He makes four holes in the shape of a square, then picks up the saw, rasps it through the floorboards above. It’s not easy. The saw keeps snagging on something, a carpet Joachim guesses.

  Then – screaming. A woman’s voice. ‘Get away, get out of here! Get out! Now!’

  They have no idea what’s going on, why she’s screaming, and they’re terrified that someone will hear. Hasso tries to reassures her – ‘Don’t worry, you won’t get in trouble; we’ll give you money if you stop shouting’ – but there’s no reply. Just silence.

  In the tunnel, there’s a sudden burst of static as the walkie-talkie crackles into action, then there are muffled shouts from down the tunnel, though they can’t hear what they’re saying. In the distance, a car horn beeps, long and loud.

  Something is wrong, they know it. Joachim looks at Hasso and Uli. An unspoken message runs between them and Joachim picks up the saw again and pulls and pushes it back and forth along the wood and the carpet, willing it to carve through. As his arm pumps above his head, shaking with the effort, a small voice inside tells him that this is the moment to leave, that there’s still time to crawl back into West Berlin, but then images flash up in his head of families above him, just waiting for the tunnel to be finished. Mothers. Fathers. Children the same age he was when he first escaped, when it all went so horribly wrong. And now all he can think about is getting to them before the Stasi find them. He just needs to work faster.

  Outside the house, Stasi Comrade Teichert and two officers are talking to the owner, a small man called Friedrich Sendler. They tell him to open the gate, they’re here to inspect his house.

  Mr Sendler falters, tries to put them off, but then his front door opens and his wife runs out, the woman who was screaming at the diggers.

  The Stasi agents stop her, ask her what’s going on.

  ‘I feel sick,’ she says, perhaps trying to distract them from entering the house.

  ‘Why?’ they ask. ‘What’s happening inside?’

  She crumples: ‘I was in the living room,’ she says, ‘and I saw holes in the floor.’

  From over the Wall, standing in an abandoned elevated railway switch tower, Piers Anderton and the Dehmel brothers are watching everything. They know that Joachim, Hasso and Uli are still in the tunnel and all they can do is hope that Mr Sendler can hold the Stasi back. Filming everything, they see the Stasi agents talking to the couple and watch, with dread, as they all suddenly rush towards the house.

  Powerless to help, they film the soldiers as they put down their weapons and take off their boots before walking inside the house, the door closing behind them.

  Inside the living room, creeping around silently in their socks, the Stasi agents scan the floor and they see them: four small holes in the centre of the room, each surrounded by a sprinkling of wood chips. Then a noise from under the floorboards: it’s the diggers discussing how they’ll break through. The Stasi comrades tiptoe out of the room. They’ll wait for the diggers to break into the living room and that’s when they’ll take them.

  Underground, Joachim has given up with the saw. It’s not strong enough to slice through the floorboard
s, and he’s desperate to climb up into the living room and start helping people through the tunnel, the people he’s sure are there, waiting for him. Picking up an axe, he starts hacking into the floorboards, the ceiling shaking, everything shaking, the noise so deafening he can feel it in his bones. The whole floor vibrates – whack, whack, whack, whack, whack – until eventually two floorboards crack open and a rush of cold air funnels down into the tunnel.

  Silence.

  Another buzz of the walkie-talkie. More shouts down the tunnel.

  Joachim ignores them; he’s so close, he just needs to keep going, stick to the plan. Rummaging in his bag, he pulls out a mirror, sticking it up into the room like a submarine periscope. He turns it in all directions to see what’s there, hoping to find a sea of faces.

  But there’s nothing.

  From the bag, he pulls out a small pistol. Holding it in one hand, he hoists himself through the hole with the other and clambers to his feet. In front of him, there’s a small sofa, a side-table and a couple of chairs. It’s dark, the only light coming from a window obscured by a net curtain. And right now, he has an urge to see what’s behind it. He takes a step towards the window, the hairs on his skin prickling as he sees a shadow fall across the curtain. He flinches, but keeps going, taking another step, then another, compelled to see what’s there, ignoring the voice in his head that tells him to leave right now and not look back. Hand trembling, he pulls the curtain to one side, his eyes confirming what he already knows.

  Stasi.

  Blood pumping loudly in his ears, he ducks down, mind racing, trying to work out what to do. He saw just one man, a Stasi soldier creeping under the window, but where there’s one, there’ll be more. He reckons he has a few seconds’ head start, just enough time to jump back into the tunnel before they make it into the living room. What he doesn’t know is that the Stasi soldiers aren’t just outside that window, they’re outside the living-room door, Kalashnikovs in their hands, watching him through a crack in the door.

  6.45 p.m.

  At precisely this moment, Wolfdieter is racing back to the border, skin tingling with excitement at the thought of being with Renate tonight, her first night in West Berlin. He’d taken the S-Bahn with Renate a few hours ago, accompanying her for the first part of the journey to the house, then he’d split off, boarding a train to the checkpoint at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse, one of the largest crossing points into West Berlin. He calculates that Renate should have crawled through the tunnel by now; once he’s crossed the border, he’ll take a train to meet her.

  Walking into the checkpoint, a long table in front of him, Wolfdieter sees two men in uniform. They look at him strangely and something in his stomach stirs. It’s as though they’ve been waiting for him. They motion to his pocket. ‘Passport and visa.’

  Wolfdieter gives them his papers.

  They leaf through them and look up at him. ‘Come with us.’

  As Wolfdieter follows, he tries to reassure himself. This kind of thing often happens, jumpy VoPos going overboard with extra checks, but when they put him in a car, his knees start to shake. They don’t tell Wolfdieter where they’re going, but fifteen minutes later he arrives at a building near Alexanderplatz that he knows is the East Berlin police headquarters. Still, he hopes, maybe it’s a misunderstanding; they don’t have anything on me, nothing to tie me to the tunnel.

  Inside the police station, two officers take his belongings – his ID card, watch, money – then give him prison clothes and put him in a cell. Wolfdieter sits there. Taking deep breaths, he calms himself, tries to use this time wisely. Think up a story, think up a story.

  After a while, he’s taken into a room and sat down at a table in front of four policemen. They ask what he’s been doing in East Berlin and Wolfdieter tries out his story. ‘Oh, I’m just a student at the West Berlin Free university and it was my day off today, no lessons! So I thought I’d go to the East and see the city…’ He gabbles on, getting into the groove of his lie.

  The policemen make notes. Ask questions. Send him back to his cell. Wolfdieter sits there again. Someone brings coffee, he drinks it and he dares to hope. Maybe my story has worked, he thinks. Maybe everything is okay. Just stick to the story.

  Back at the house, the Stasi are still watching Joachim through the crack in the door. Hasso and Uli have now climbed up into the room, all of them trying to figure out what to do. The soldiers watch, and they are just about to burst in when they hear one of the diggers say, ‘My pistol isn’t working; pass me the machine-gun.’ They hear the sound of a machine-gun being loaded and the soldiers recoil – they know their old Soviet Kalashnikovs are no match for Western machine-guns. The soldiers assess their next move: if they burst in now, they could be mown down by machine-gun bullets. If they wait for backup, the diggers might get away.

  Inside, Joachim paces the room, not ready to give up. Then the walkie-talkie bursts into life and this time they hear the message clearly: ‘Come back now! It’s over!’

  Through the door, the soldiers have made their decision. They radio for backup – more soldiers and weapons. They don’t want to die over a tunnel.

  Inside the living room, Joachim looks at Hasso and Uli; they know it’s over, and the three of them jump into the hole, crawling frantically through the tunnel with their bags of weapons and tools swinging. Jeans snagging on tree roots, hands spliced open on pieces of rock and grit, they push themselves forwards, dreading the moment they fear will come when the Stasi burst into the room, jump into the tunnel and shoot, so they crawl as fast as they can in the tiny, dark space: crawling, crawling until eventually they see it – a small circle of daylight.

  Minutes later, those extra soldiers arrive. Rushing into the living room, they run towards the hole. They’re too late. But they’re not empty-handed: they’ve got forty-three failed escapees and, best of all, they’ve heard that a messenger from West Berlin is sitting in the police station at Alexanderplatz.

  3 a.m.

  In his brightly lit cell, Wolfdieter has no idea of the time. He guesses it’s the middle of the night, that midpoint between dusk and dawn when time seems to stretch out. Then footsteps, a key in a lock, and the cell-door swings open and a guard appears, marches Wolfdieter back to the room with the policemen.

  Wolfdieter sits there, eyelids drooping, craving sleep, when a tall man with grey hair walks in, towering over Wolfdieter as he opens his mouth and screams: ‘You are a liar! Tell the truth!’

  But it’s not what this man says that scares Wolfdieter. It’s his clothes. He’s not in uniform. And that means one thing: Stasi. He throws Wolfdieter out of the room, tells him to face the wall.

  As Wolfdieter stands there, eyes fixed on the beige wallpaper in front of him, the air filled with the smell of stale coffee and sweat, finally, he accepts his fate. They have him. But out of the depths of a despair that is beginning to swamp him, Wolfdieter pulls a thread of light: at least everyone escaped through the tunnel before they caught him, at least his Renate is safe.

  Then, from behind, he hears footsteps. They are light, a woman’s he guesses. Risking a glance, his stomach lurches as he sees her: Britta, Renate’s best friend; they were meant to escape through the tunnel together. Turning back to the wall, his body floods with panic, his mind racing with images of Renate – Renate caught in the tunnel, Renate arrested at home, Renate in a prison cell, Renate shot trying to run away – and he thinks back to the gamble they’d made, this decision to escape, to risk everything so they could be together, and now it’s clear: they gambled everything and they lost.

  44

  Hohenschönhausen

  WOLFDIETER SITS IN the van, handcuffed, no idea where he’s going. Sitting in the darkness, no windows, he listens to the thrum of the engine as the van skulks through the streets, hour after hour, lulling him in and out of sleep. For the first hour or so the van had stopped and started constantly, the sea-sick rhythm of city driving. He’d heard trams, people talking. Then the van picked up speed,
driving for long stretches, and he knew he must be a long way from Berlin. From the outside, the van looked ordinary: just an old white fruit-and-vegetable truck. The Stasi had bought hundreds and butchered their insides, creating five separate cells in each. Wolfdieter’s cell is so small he sits with his knees crunched against the wall.

  Ferrying prisoners around in these vans was all part of the secrecy of Hohenschönhausen Prison, a prison whose very existence was denied. When you go there now, the first thing you notice is that it’s a long way from the centre of Berlin and it’s hard to find. Right out in the far east of the city, it’s nestled in a warren of side streets. The Stasi didn’t want people knowing it existed: when you look at maps from the time, there’s just a big black smudge where the prison was. There were rumours about the so-called ‘forbidden area’, but no one could get close: surrounding it were checkpoints manned by armed guards and tall steel barriers blocking the view.

  The history of Hohenschönhausen Prison is the story of post-war Berlin writ small: once a Jewish-owned industrial area, it was taken over by the Nazis, who filled it with businesses and a small prison-camp. During the war it was damaged by bombs; then, when Russian soldiers turned up in 1945, they shot the factory owners, shipped the equipment back to Moscow and turned the complex into the headquarters of the Russian secret police in Berlin, filling it with tens of thousands of ex-Nazis and anyone critical of the Soviets.

  Prisoners called the prison the ‘U-Boat’ – the submarine – and once inside, you can see why. You can still walk through the tiny underground cells, cold and windowless, filled with the fusty smell of damp. Prisoners were stuffed in there, ten to a cell, taking turns to sleep on a thin wooden plank. They lived off cabbage soup, and to relieve themselves there was a bucket in the corner, no soap or running water. At the end of the corridor, you come to the cells where prisoners were tortured. In one, prisoners stood in a room of icy water up to their neck; another was lined with spikes, a medieval-looking yoke at the centre; then, at the end of a corridor, there’s a sound-proof padded cell where prisoners lost their minds. After confessing, prisoners were marched up to the railway station behind the prison and shipped off to Moscow or Siberia, where many were executed. Then there were those who died in prison from cold or disease, their bodies chucked into bomb craters nearby.