Dieter made hand gestures, instructing his men to spread-out. Less than twenty feet separated us. I must hit them with the van and stop them from shooting my family.
I slammed my foot down on the gas. The van lurched forward, tires squealing. I caught Dieter and the man beside him by surprise. It took only a second or two for the van to cover the space between us. The Stasi schweinehunde (pig-dogs) tried to dive out of my path. Their car blocked their way. The impact of the van drove them back into the side of the sedan, crushing their evilness.
The windshield in front of me displayed smeared blood, body parts and a familiar, but now squashed, face an instant before the glass exploded. That was the last thing I remembered.
During the ambulance ride to the hospital, I regained consciousness and focused on Robert’s face, “Is that bastard dead?”
“Yes, Dieter Holburg and three of his underlings are very dead,” Robert replied.
“Good.” I collapsed back onto the stretcher.
Once at the hospital, the doctors determined I’d suffered a concussion and they decided to keep me overnight for observation. Frederick suffered a broken arm, but my parents and Robbie got off with only bruises and slight contusions.
Chapter 148
Robert
Monday, November 20-Friday, December 1, 1961
A cascade of events happened during our remaining days in Berlin. An intercept at the building revealed that Anna, I and her entire family were on the Stasi extrajudicial “Kill on Sight List.” As a result, Anna’s entire family was immediately granted visas to immigrate to the United States.
Since they had left the East with only the clothes on their backs, most of Wednesday was spent acquiring clothes, suitcases, and even small toys for the children in preparation for their long journey to America.
On Thursday, the Hilton served a delicious Thanksgiving dinner—turkey with all of the trimmings in the large dining room of the Presidential Suite. At the end of the meal, I distributed visas and airline tickets to Anna’s family. “You’ll leave on Saturday and stay at my Hunter Grandparents’ home while you get settled.”
At the funeral service for Kurt Altschuler on Friday, I attempted to give a stirring remembrance speech for a man I’d learned to love like a brother. “Kurt Altschuler was a consummate European gentleman, who adopted America when he could no longer live in Germany. He spent the war years battling the Nazis behind their lines. Then, in 1946, he voluntarily came to Berlin to battle the corrupt communist regime in East Germany. After a fifteen-year struggle, he gave his life in that fight. We all salute him for his valor and courage. May he rest in peace.” The other military men and I saluted as taps played and his coffin was lowered into the earth.
Scott then announced in a subdued tone of voice that, “Mark Powell, Robert Kerr, and I commissioned a headstone for Kurt Altschuler’s grave which will read as follows:
KURT ALTSCHULER
BORN BERLIN, GERMANY: JANUARY 25, 1918
DIED BERLIN, GERMANY: NOVEMBER 19, 1961
HE GAVE HIS LIFE FOR THIS CITY AND
THOSE HE LOVED
FATHER OF GRETCHEN ALTSCHULER
To Be Born Free is an Accident
To Live Free is a Privilege
To Die Free is a Responsibility
On Saturday, a police convoy transported Anna’s family to Tegel Airport for the flight to America. Even though she would be reunited with them in less than a month, the emotional farewell at the gate lasted so long, the airline staff threatened to leave Bernard and Emma behind if they didn’t board the airplane immediately.
For the next month, Anna and I occupied “safe” VIP quarters at Tempelhof AFB. Armed guards escorted us on the few times we left the base.
On Monday, Scott and Mia were married by the same justice of the peace. Anna and I served as their witnesses. It was a lovely ceremony. Mia beamed like any blushing bride, despite being five months pregnant.
In rapid succession, Scott reported that he had married a foreign national from East Berlin, his security clearance was revoked, and he resigned from the Air Force. On December 1, we went to Tegel Airport as all five members of Mia’s family and Scott headed to a large cattle ranch near Fort Worth, Texas.
The CIA acquired a copy of the East Berlin Police forensic report on the ‘Shootout at the Warehouse.’ It indicated that Thomas Lane, Deputy CIA Station Berlin had “died at his own hand.”
The newspaper Newes Deutschland reported his cowardice with great fanfare and indicating that “a number of other American spies and saboteurs were also injured in the gunfight with heroic Secret Police agents. Those Enemies of the State have managed to escape the scene and are now the subject of a massive manhunt.” The three Stasi agents who died that night were never mentioned.
Chapter 149
Saturday, December 2-Monday, December 18, 1961
In early December, Colonel Morgan told me the CIA was urging the Air Force to investigate the circumstances which had led to the death of two of their agents in Berlin. “Your departure from Berlin will be delayed indefinitely while the circumstances of their deaths are investigated. Be prepared to face a General Court Martial. I must inform you that the charges they are contemplating are very serious and could result in an extended prison stay.”
After a two-week emotional roller coaster, while the investigation focused on my role in the incident, I received a person-to-person phone call from Texas. Scott Taylor said, “Robbie, old buddy, I’ve been able to save our collective bacon. They were threatening to call me back to active duty and prosecute you, Mark, the Chief and me for our roles in the deaths of Lane and Altschuler. Vice President Johnson assured my father he has squelched the investigation because of National Security. He has also cleared the way for you to be separated from the service and depart Berlin next week, right on schedule. Call me collect immediately if you aren’t officially informed of this today or tomorrow. Mia and I will join you and Anna in Hawaii right after the first of the year. Good luck, Kemosabe.”
“Thanks, Scott. I’m eternally grateful.”
On December 18th, the Chief, Sergeant Loring, and I walked through the now completed tunnel and Signals Exploitation Center with the officer and NCOs who would take responsibility for maintaining what we had built.
At the end of a party in their recreation room that evening, my crew of hardened veterans and I choked up and even cried as warm handshakes, back slaps and extended hugs were exchanged between our brothers-in-arms from the other services.
General Harrison presided over a parade and awards ceremony in Hanger 1 at Tempelhof the following day. Each man received the two medals Vice President Johnson had promised, the Outstanding Unit Award and Distinguished Service Medal. During the ceremony, I mused over what this small group of dedicated Americans had accomplished in less than a year.
Chapter 150
Wednesday, December 20, 1961
Mark and Mary Powell stood on the tarmac as Anna and I ascended the metal stairs into our Pan American DC-6B. We could have flown a jet out of Tegel, but I decided to leave Berlin the same way I arrived. Much had changed. I had arrived a lonely single man and am now leaving with a lovely wife. The two of us and my relatives will soon gather with her family for a joyous Christmas celebration in California.
Anna took the window seat, and I sat beside her as our aircraft lifted off the runway at Tempelhof Airport. With layovers in London and New York, it’d take us almost twenty-four hours to reach San Francisco.
Because of the direction of the wind, the aircraft took off heading east. Once airborne, it began to slowly ascend and turned to the left to avoid East German-controlled airspace.
“I’m glad we’re going to fly right along the dividing line between East and West Berlin,” Anna observed. “This route will allow me to see familiar sights one last time. I…” She broke off and began to cry.
I put my arm around her and gave her my handkerchief. She dried her eyes and smiled at me, then took my hand
for comfort.
As the aircraft banked, the distinctive roof of the Signals Exploitation Center building, which housed the entrance to the tunnel, came into view. In my mind’s eye, I could see the tunnel as it passed under the River Spree and into the ruined industrial area in the distance.
The aircraft completed its turn to the west to eventually enter one of the air corridors over East Germany. Anna said excitedly, “I can almost see the house I grew up in. It’s just over there in that clump of Linden trees. I’ll probably never see the house my family loved again, but I’m taking all of those happy times and wonderful experiences with me to my new life.”
“And there is Museum Island just ahead.”
In less than a minute, Anna observed, “And there is Unter den Linden. Oh, and there is the Brandenburg Gate, and over there is the burned-out Reichstag Building.”
“You can see that the slab wall they’ve been building in front of the Brandenburg Gate is almost finished,” I said. “And the watchtowers are now almost continuous in this sector. The barriers to freedom are becoming more formidable each day.”
Five minutes later, our aircraft passed over the continuous barren strip of land and the barbed wire fences that separated West Berlin from East Germany.
Anna squeezed my hand tightly and asked, “Will all those people below us ever be free again?!”
“I’m confident that someday Europe will again be free.”
Epilogue
Anna and I took over Grandpa Hunter’s farming operations. I devoted full time to the farms while Anna attended art history classes at the University of California Berkeley. She received her bachelor’s degree in one year and entered their two-stage integrated master’s and doctoral program (MA/PhD) program in the fall of 1963. She became a professor there and was chairman of the Art History Department for years.
Once we returned to the states, Anna began therapy sessions for Gross Stress Reaction, which is now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She has done remarkably well in gaining control of her new life, but still must cope with infrequent, but all too real, flashbacks.
Occasionally, I experience a panic attack. Therapy didn’t help my affliction, so I just learned to live with it. Fortunately, farming is not very stressful.
We’ve raised four children and now have fifteen grandchildren.
Anna’s entire family moved to the states and settled along California State Route 29, which runs from near our farm to San Francisco. We joke that the extended Fischer/Kerr/Smith/Altschuler family are on it so often, we were responsible for it being in a sad state of repair.
All the émigrés became American citizens. They have prospered, purchasing their own homes and assured that their children received university educations.
The Berlin Wall eventually fell, and Germany was reunited. Scott, Mia, Anna and I have remained close and are going to make our fourth trip to Berlin soon. Tempelhof Airport has been turned into a memorial to the airlift and a recreation park. The many American bases and facilities we knew so well, including the Clay Compound, are now abandoned—uninhabited reminders of that bygone era.
In the mid-1960s, the apartments on Berneurstrasse were torn down and replaced with a section of the Berlin Wall. Recently, an area along that wall has been turned into a memorial for those who died and suffered as a result of the Berlin Wall and communist oppression. One of the few remaining parts of that graffiti-decorated Berlin Wall has been preserved there. This is always the first stop on our tour of Berlin.
Authors Postscript
By 1960, when our story begins, most of the ninety-six mile-long barrier that separated West Berlin from East Germany was a chain link or barbed-wire fence. The part of the Wall that was concrete slabs or blocks was less than ten miles long. Even in 1989 when “The Wall Fell,” the wall part of this barrier was only forty-three miles long.
An estimated 560,000 people left East Germany over the 28 years between 1961 and 1989. Over sixty percent were elderly individuals who were allowed to go to West Germany primarily so the East German government could stop paying them their old-age pensions. Over 120,000 escaped while visiting another country; most of those defectors were athletes, government officials, artists and business people who saw their opportunity to escape and took it. Another five percent were ransomed by the West German government. How much more corrupt could a country be than to sell its own citizens for cash!
What of the rest? The over 30,000 people who managed to escape over the barrier that separated West Berlin and West Germany from the East? Each of them had a harrowing story to tell. Over two-thirds of those escapes occurred between 1961 through 1970. By the 1980s, only one percent of the people leaving East Germany escaped over the now virtually impenetrable walls and fences that surrounded Berlin and the entire Western border.
By one estimate, every day from August 12, 1961 until November 9, 1989, seven people were Captured Trying to Escape East Germany. Those over 75,000 people spent an estimated average of five years in Stasi prisons. Many were convicted of espionage and summarily executed. An estimated 810 freedom seekers were murdered at the walls and fences surrounding East Germany and East Berlin during those bleak 28 years.
Acknowledgments
When people found out that I was writing a novel about the early 1960’s and the Berlin crisis, everyone said, “This era and topic have not been covered in modern fiction.” So, I worked hard for over two years to get this book ready for publication. I hope you enjoyed it.
They say “write what you know.” So, I did. I lived in Germany in the 1960s and was a US Air Force Signals Intelligence Officer. We monitored communist countries communication 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I made the decision to issue reports which ultimately got President Lyndon Johnson out of bed at least five times.
During my training as a signals intelligence officer, we learned about Project Gold/Stopwatch. Even though this was almost eight years after the fact, this project was still classified Top Secret codeword.
I owe a debt to a great number of people. An early draft of this novel was completed in late 2016. Marni Freedman, a writing coach read it and for the next nine months made valuable suggestions on how to improve the story. During this time, the novel evolved into the romantic thriller you’ve read.
My mentor and primary critic was Karen Black. She is a published author, who believed that I had a “good read,” and patiently helped me through the many versions of this novel
Members of the Scribblers, a North San Diego writers group, heard me read numerous excerpts from the book and provided valuable feedback. Terry Badger, leader of the Scribblers, and also a published author, served as a late Beta and proofreader.
Early Beta Readers who made significant contributions to this novel are my ever-patient bridge partners, Diana Glimm and Sue Compton.
Other Beta Readers include my sister-in-law Katy Phillips, my wife Margaret Liles, Ingrid Hoffmeister, Sarah Vosburgh, Jean Jantz, Nick Durutta, Augie Houser, Dale Barden, and Raymond Curtiss. All of their comments helped me improve the story in a myriad of ways.
Laura Taylor line edited the entire manuscript. It reads much better and is substantially shorter due to her efforts. My son, David Liles performed a final edit and made many valuable suggestions for changes, additions, and deletions. Proof readers of the final manuscript included: My niece Ann Phillips, my nephew Mathew Phillips, Kathy Allman, and Zan Rose. Victor Pitcock, a fellow cold war and signals intelligence warrior read an early draft and recently proofread the ebook version of this novel.
Finally, I must thank, the publishers at Acorn—Holly Kammier and Jessica Therrien—for agreeing to publish this book. They have patiently taken me through the myriad steps required to get a book published. I hope their faith in me and my book are rewarded.
m.Net
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