Tunnel 29

by Helena Merriman

  B: No I haven’t heard.

  A: So X told me there was a news report by Associated Press – what can I do to find out more about it?

  B: Call the press office of the Senate. The number is in the telephone directory and then ask for Mr X…

  The Stasi agent sits back. This is big. A tunnel. Around twenty-five East Berliners escaped through it. He must tell his senior officer right away. But by the time he tells him, the secret is out and the Stasi are among the last to know.

  62

  The Pushchair

  SIEGFRIED HEARS ABOUT the escape four days after it happens: on 18 September. Twenty-nine people into West Berlin. He was right inside the escape network, yet he’d failed to stop it.

  There’s no indication in the Stasi files as to what Siegfried feels, no recorded meeting with his handler to discuss it. His only mention around that time is his certificate – his Silver Medal. Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi, signed it himself – on 15 September. As Mielke sat there, uniform on, pen in hand, honouring one of his most productive spies, twenty-nine escapees were celebrating their first day in West Berlin.

  You can sense the Stasi’s disappointment about the operation, their humiliation. In their first report, they note that ‘the flight from the GDR of the twenty-nine through the tunnel supposedly has really taken place’. In a second humiliation, they only hear about the tunnel from an announcement in West Berlin’s Senate. The West Berlin press had been ordered to stay silent about the tunnel until they were sure there’d be no risk to the diggers. It was only on 18 September, four days after the escape, that the press chief in West Berlin’s Senate gave the go-ahead. The story splashed onto the front pages of newspapers in West Berlin, in capitals across Europe, then into America, in the New York Times:

  TWENTY-NINE EAST BERLINERS FLEE THROUGH 400-FOOT TUNNEL

  The journalists are well briefed, the articles include details about the leak, the help of the authorities in West Berlin and the distance: at 120 metres, it’s the longest tunnel dug under the Wall so far.

  Humiliated about the largest single escape since building the Wall, the Stasi scramble to take control of the story. They start with the tunnel. Desperate to find it, they comb the streets near the border. For two days, nothing. Then, at eight in the evening, on 20 September, a VoPo patrolling Schönholzer Strasse notices a tattered pushchair lying in the street. He moves it and discovers what it was concealing: a small passage to a cellar, and there, in all its washed-out muddy glory, is the tunnel.

  Within hours the cellar is crawling with Stasi officers. They measure the tunnel – width, depth – then try to crawl in, but it’s full of water. Undeterred, they dig another tunnel to access it further back, but it collapses. They dig another. It collapses too. They send a guard regiment platoon with six pressure hoses to suck the water out, but they don’t get much. In a final desperate and expensive attempt, they begin backfilling the tunnel with pumped concrete, until they discover that the walls of the tunnel – all the way back to the border – have fallen in.

  Determined to do something, anything, they draw a map of the tunnel route, mostly using guesswork. In a neat hand, a Stasi officer draws a map of the surrounding area along with street names, house numbers, the presumed route; then – with exquisite and unnecessary detail – he adds the details of sheds, silt areas, even cracks on the pavement.

  There are practical reasons for wanting to know all this – the Stasi learn about the expertise of the tunnel diggers, the methods they used – but it’s also the knee-jerk reaction of an organisation that is dedicated to chronicling everything: the emotions of its prison inmates, the lives of its citizens, the facial characteristics of escapees, and now this – the physical detritus of an escape it failed to stop.

  Once they’ve done as much as they can at the tunnel, they turn to the next stage of the investigation. They want to know who they’ve lost, the names of every single person who crawled through the tunnel. Because there is always someone they’ve left behind. Someone to punish.

  63

  The Party

  AT A RESTAURANT in West Berlin, Joachim sits at an oval white-clothed table wearing a suit and tie, chatting conspiratorially to the people around him: tunnellers, refugees and the NBC camera-crew. It looks like a wedding party; the tables are crammed with wine bottles, half-eaten food, and the air hazes with smoke.

  As the camera pans the room, you see Anita laughing as she picks at her brother Hasso’s beard, you see Piers Anderton draining his tumbler; everyone is locked into conversation – Claus and his wife Inge, Mimmo and Ellen, all of them with sparkling eyes, cigarettes wedged between fingers. The women have bought or borrowed glamorous dresses, they’ve bee-hived their hair, and the men wear dark suits and ties. This time, Peter and Klaus have brought a microphone, and you hear everyone talking and laughing while a jazz-brass band plays in the background. Evi sits in the corner wearing a black dress with white spots and a pearl necklace, her hair up, looking distractingly beautiful.

  But amid the laughter, when you look closer, every now and then you see their faces flicker from joy to something else. There’s sadness: some of the diggers weren’t able to get friends or family out before the tunnel flooded. Claus had even returned to the tunnel with scuba-diving gear, but eventually they’d had to let the tunnel go. There’s anger too, about the NBC film, and there are rumours that some of the diggers have ended up with a lot of money. And there’s fear. Like refugees the world over, having dreamt about West Berlin for so long, they’re experiencing the crash, where the promised land doesn’t match the dream. In East Berlin, though they felt trapped, were terrified of being drafted into the army, there was free healthcare and education, cheap food and rent. They’ve all spent the last few days exploring West Berlin, discovering that food and clothes are expensive, and finding jobs won’t be easy. Apart from the clothes they’re wearing, they have nothing. But tonight, they put all that aside. They drink, dance and laugh about making it into the newspapers.

  At his table, Joachim puts down his drink and looks around the room at everyone, all these people he helped rescue. He’d gone back to the tunnel a few days ago to collect some tools and say goodbye before the water took it. It was a strange feeling. For the past four months, he had spent most of his waking hours there – the digging shifts had shaped his days, the escape the goal to which everything in his life had been directed – and now he was watching the tunnel disintegrate. Crawling down it one last time, past his stove pipes, electric cables, telephone, his eyes had caught on something: a pair of shoes. Tiny, just the size of his hand, they were wet, covered in mud. He’d picked them up, taken them home. Sitting there now, at the party, he remembers those shoes, makes a mental note to find out which child they belong to.

  Towards the end of the night, Peter stands up; everyone wants him to sing a song accompanied by his guitar. With the confidence of someone who’s drunk too much whiskey, he stumbles to the front of the room, grinning. Thanking Mimmo and Gigi for rescuing him and his family, he begins an Italian song, an old Neapolitan ballad, romantic, over-the-top; some of the people in the room recognise it from versions sung by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Pavarotti, and Peter seems to summon them all as he sings, face contorting emotion, eyes beseeching his audience, wallowing in the attention.

  Watching Peter sing, Reuven knows he has it now: his ending. Just one final scene to record: a piece to camera from his correspondent, Piers Anderton. Standing outside the restaurant in a long, beige trench coat, looking into the lens, Piers takes a deep breath and begins. He talks about the Wall, the people who escaped East Berlin over the last year, the people who died trying. He ends with this:

  ‘Twenty-one [men] gave half a year of their lives to dig this tunnel. But there will be other young men. And other tunnels.’

  64

  The Canoe

  TO KNOW ABOUT a planned escape and not to tell the authorities is a crime, punishable with time in prison. So as Evi’s grandfa
ther, Rudolf Sperling, sits in Köpenick police station, he knows that whatever he says during this interrogation will either mean he’s free to go home, or he’ll be arrested. He needs to choose his words carefully.

  Rudolf’s interrogator starts by saying that Evi has committed the crime of Republikflucht – escaping from East Germany. If Rudolf knew about it and didn’t tell anyone, his interrogator says, he could go to prison. If Rudolf lies about anything, he could go to prison. Then the questions begin.

  His interrogator asks Rudolf about Evi’s early life. Rudolf tells him about their family, how he and his wife had looked after Evi since she was six after her mother died. Rudolf tells him how Evi met Peter, how Peter had struggled since the Wall went up – how he’d given him odd-jobs now and then. And he talks about the ‘two Italians’ (Mimmo and Gigi) who occasionally visited.

  After a few hours, Rudolf comes to Friday 14 September, the day of the escape. He describes how Evi rushed into his house and left straight away with Peter. He was worried, he says, when Peter didn’t return the next day, so he’d walked to their house, where he saw baby clothes sitting in a bowl of water in the garden. He’d wrung them out to dry and put them on the lawn.

  His interrogator listens. Takes notes. ‘Have you heard from them since then?’

  ‘No,’ Rudolf says, ‘no letter or postcard. I don’t know where they are.’ Then he adds, because it’s the truth: ‘But I assume they went to West Berlin.’

  Rudolf’s interrogation is typed up – dates, names, everything. His interrogator sits back, trying to work out if Evi’s grandfather is telling the truth. Luckily for him, he is. Like most who planned to escape, Evi didn’t tell anyone about her plan, not even her grandparents – her surrogate parents. She’d had to leave without saying goodbye, no idea if they’d ever see each other again. Evi’s grandfather is grateful he didn’t know. It’s much easier to be convincing if you’re not lying.

  At the end of his interrogation, Evi’s grandfather mentions something random, seemingly unrelated to anything. He mentions the canoe he once gave Evi as a present. Maybe it’s only natural, at the moment when he realises he may never see his granddaughter again, to think of it. He knows he has joined the ranks of those in East Berlin who are left behind, those too old, too young or too scared to escape, those who wake up one morning to realise that the people they love have gone and they may never see them again.

  And perhaps it’s these details – the canoe, the clothes in the bowl, the steady voice – whatever it is, Rudolf passes the test. He’s allowed to leave the police station and he returns home to the place where he’d watched Evi grow up, where she’d learnt to read, ride a bike, and where she’d paddled on the water in her canoe. Now, just a memento, the canoe is moored up at the house, never to be used again, soon to be hidden by the long grass.

  65

  The Plane

  REUVEN FRANK WALKS onto the plane. Finally, after two weeks in West Berlin, he’s finished editing the film and he’s flying back to New York. He can’t believe he’s got this far, never thought the escape would work, let alone the documentary, and now he’s shepherding the cut film back home.

  Scared about losing it in the hold, Reuven had put the film-reel – all 12,000 feet of it – in a cabin bag. He pulls it close. A heavy secret. Newspapers all over the world have the story of the twenty-nine escapees, but only a few people know it’s been captured on film. It needs to stay that way until he’s ready to write a press release, spin a narrative. Reuven Frank the storyteller knows how important that is.

  The line into the plane moves and Reuven takes his seat in the first-class cabin. He puts his bag underneath it, hidden from prying eyes. Sitting back, his eyes close just as he feels the gentle pressure of a hand on his shoulder.

  Excuse me sir, a man is saying, we have Willy Brandt on board; could you swap so we can all sit together?

  Of all the things Reuven thought might go wrong between Berlin and New York, this wasn’t one of them. He pauses. He can’t say no to a request from the mayor of West Berlin, so he smiles and walks to a different seat, realising as he sits down that he’s left the film under Willy Brandt’s seat. At any moment, the mayor of West Berlin could look down, find it, and who knows – perhaps even confiscate it. And he doesn’t want to draw attention to the film by going back to retrieve it. In the belly of Reuven Frank, an unease sets in: there’s always something you can’t predict.

  As the plane arcs away from Germany, underneath it, now a tiny speck, is the factory. Though the tunnel has collapsed, the cellar is intact, full of the detritus of the escape: spades, clothes, shovels, picks, trainers, electric cables. The diggers left it all there, knowing that as word spreads about the tunnel, reporters will want to come and see the cellar, take photos at the shrine of this spectacular escape. But there are some things they removed: all traces of NBC. Before Peter and Klaus left for the last time, they’d combed the cellar, picking up anything that could lead to the American TV network, following Reuven Frank’s orders that no one should know.

  They thought they’d taken everything, but sitting in the corner of the cellar, as Reuven’s plane wheels over the Atlantic is a small cardboard box. Inside, a reel of film.

  66

  The Second Party

  JOACHIM’S EYES FLIT round the room. Another party, but this one feels different. Unhinged. Earlier, Hasso had thrown a glass against the wall – part celebration, part release. They’re all still feeling it, the after-effects of taking a risk that could have lost them everything.

  A few days ago, Evi had sat at the kitchen table in the flat she was renting with her husband, Peter, and started screaming, then found she couldn’t stop. She’d clung to the table, scared that if she didn’t hold tightly enough she might jump through the window. Memories scrolled through her mind: crawling through the tunnel, her toddler Annet in the arms of a digger behind Evi, terrified that the Stasi might catch them and take Annet, and she might never see her again. Though it didn’t happen, something had taken Evi’s mind back there, to that memory. Perhaps only now, in the safety of West Berlin, could she express the most animalistic terror she’d ever felt, in a scream that came from the bottom of her belly and threatened to never end.

  But tonight, Evi is composed, alcohol bubbling through her as she sits at a table in a short black dress. They’re all high on whiskey and wine and the dancing has begun. Looking round the room, she sees Joachim, his eyes resting on her.

  Evi blushes. She’s intrigued by Joachim, the man who dug the tunnel but had no one to rescue. The man who carried out the most dangerous parts of the operation – going outside to check the apartment number, unlocking the apartment door again and again. She can’t understand how anyone can be that brave when for as long as she can remember, she’s been afraid. A memory flashes up: Evi aged six in a chicken coop with her mother, hiding from Russian soldiers in those horrific final days of the war. Her mother had died from TB a few months later, leaving Evi to figure out so many things on her own. There is something in Joachim – in his courage, his steadiness – that she admires, that she wants.

  Joachim stands up, finds himself walking towards Evi, doesn’t know what he’ll say when he gets there, but the words spill out of his mouth. ‘Do you want to dance?’

  Evi laughs and they move to the centre of the room, Joachim wondering why on earth he asked her to dance when he’s always hated dancing, never got the hang of it. The music is sexy, a rhythm that speaks to the hips, and he starts swaying, relaxing into the sixties twist that everyone is dancing. Evi shakes her head, laughing. ‘I can’t do it,’ she says.

  Joachim looks back at her. Holds her gaze. ‘I’ll teach you.’

  As they move to the same rhythm, everyone around them fades into the background until suddenly, behind Evi, Joachim sees movement – a flash of someone walking fast, and he realises it’s Peter, her husband. He’s leaving, and Evi sees it too and runs and follows, leaving Joachim, alone, in the middle of the room.
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  67

  The Press Conference

  REUVEN FRANK LOOKS at the sea of cameras and journalists in front of him. Over a hundred people in the room, all looking at him, expecting answers. It was never meant to come out like this.

  A few days ago, some journalists had gone to the cellar in West Berlin to take photos. Looking around, one had seen the cardboard box of film, ‘DuPont’ written on the outside. They all knew NBC was the only network to use that brand of film. ‘NBC was here!’ he’d shouted. Time magazine broke the story, revealing in an article called ‘Tunnels Inc.’ that NBC had funded the tunnel in return for film rights. After that, things had gone crazy.

  CBS (who were fuming that they’d dropped their tunnel story and NBC hadn’t) wrote to the State Department, complaining that in ditching their own film when NBC had carried on, they’d been left in the cold. The State Department had cabled the American Embassy in West Berlin, asking whether they’d given NBC their approval. No, they replied, they hadn’t.

  For a few days, NBC kept quiet, hoped the story would go away. But as the storm grew, they knew they had to get out in front and they organised a press conference for Thursday 11 October 1962, which is why Reuven Frank and Piers Anderton were now sitting on stage at NBC headquarters in New York.

  Looking at the journalists, Reuven Frank thinks carefully about his answers. They’ve scheduled the film for 31 October, just three weeks away. If he messes up now, they’ll cancel it.