Tunnel 29

by Helena Merriman

  TO JOACHIM RUDOLPH, the heart of this book: thank you for spending so many hours sharing your memories with me, in your flat in Berlin, and on the phone during lockdown. You put up with my endless questions in the hope that by telling your story, a new generation would understand the Berlin Wall and its consequences better. Without you, this book would not exist.

  I am enormously grateful to the other diggers, messengers and escapees who spoke to me, and in some cases shared their own Stasi files, with information that has never before been public: Wolfdieter Sternheimer, Renate Sternheimer, Evi Rudolph, Uli Pfeiffer, Wolf Schroedter and Ellen Sesta. And thanks to Dr Burkhart Veigel for your valuable insights.

  To Sabine Schereck, thanks for your expert translation, your eagle-eyed comments on my first draft, and for remaining calm when I first drove on German speed-limitless autobahns. I’m also grateful to my other translators: Ute Krebs, Alexander and Beatrix Mett, and Laura Horsfall.

  In Berlin, thanks to Gudrun Heuts at the Stasi Archives for trawling through reports, interrogations, photos and videos, and to Holger Happel at Berliner Unterwelten for indulging my requests to spend so much time underground, stuffed into the replica of Tunnel 29.

  In the US, thanks to Pamela Hopkins at Tufts University for unearthing revelatory papers relating to Reuven Frank.

  To my agent, Karolina Sutton, thank you for your full-throttled support right from the start, for your incisive feedback on my first chapters, and for the green tea that powered me through at the end. Thanks also to Caitlin Leydon, Joanna Lee and Anna Weguelin at Curtis Brown, and a bucketful of gratitude to the unstoppable Luke Speed for your energetic work on the film and TV side of things.

  At Hodder, huge thanks to Rebecca Folland, Melis Dagoglu, Grace McCrum, Ian Wong, Maria Garbutt-Lucero, and Cameron Myers for your imaginative work in bringing this book into the world, and to my brilliant editor, Rupert Lancaster: thank you for seeing that there was a bigger story to be told and for finding so many ways to improve it. And I’m grateful to Nick Fawcett for his skilful copy-editing.

  At the BBC, special thanks to Mohit Bakaya for commissioning the podcast series and for the creative corridor-chats along the way; and to Richard Knight for your Midas-touch editing. To my BBC buddies at Radio Current Affairs, thank you for the heady conversations in the studios once the faders are down, and for the after-work pub pep-talks. You are the most talented, creative journalists I’ve ever worked with and I’ve learnt so much from you all.

  To my friends: deep love and a million thank-yous for cheering me on while I wrote this and for keeping me afloat during three lockdowns with early morning jogs, moonlit walks and long conversations into the night. You kept me sane and inspired me more than you know.

  To Rosie, Livy and Sas: thank you for your sisterhood and for being there through absolutely everything. And thanks to Seb, Jon, Amit and Trewin for your steadfast support and for firing up family chats. Thanks to my dad, whose insatiable curiosity sparked mine, and to my mum who has the best bedtime-story voice of anyone I know, and who had many helpful comments after reading this.

  To Sukie and John, thank you for your long-standing encouragement and the stomach-expanding surprises that appeared through the letterbox. And to Bea, who was full of helpful advice at just the right time.

  To my podcast listeners: I am hugely grateful for your emails and letters and for telling me you wanted more (I hope you haven’t changed your mind after reading this). And to the schoolchildren who listened to the podcast: thank you for showing me that even nine-year-olds care about walls and refugees and war, and for sending me the Tunnel-29-inspired stories you wrote during lockdown.

  Thank you to my wise seven-year-old Matilda, who adores books as much as her namesake, and who in asking the most simple of questions about this story helped me see things more clearly. And to my imaginative, whirlwind three-year-old, Sam, thank you for showing your enthusiasm by requesting tunnel-related bedtime stories most nights. I hope you enjoy this one when you’re old enough to read it.

  Finally, my most gut-felt thanks to my partner-in-everything: Henry. Writing my first book during three lockdowns with two children mostly off school wasn’t ideal, and I would never have reached the end without you – my soul-mate and master of lockdown-nursery. You were the first to read this and found so many ways to improve it. I love the way you come at things, how you always see what’s right with an idea before spotting what’s wrong with it, and the way you laugh at me. I am unbelievably lucky to have you.

  January 2021

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  Helena Merriman is a broadcast journalist who presented and produced Tunnel 29, BBC Radio 4’s new podcast about a miraculous escape under the Berlin Wall. She is also the co-creator of British Podcast Awardwinning series The Inquiry, and previously worked as a reporter for the BBC in the Middle East. She lives in London, UK.

  PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.

  I.F. STONE, proprietor of I. F. Stone’s Weekly, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published The Trial of Socrates, which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.

  BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of The Washington Post. It was Ben who gave the Post the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.

  ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation’s premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.

  For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors. In 1983, Schnapper was described by The Washington Post as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.

  Peter Osnos, Founder