“Only the codeword, I grunted the response and he said ‘goodbye’ and ended the call,” Gunari says.
“We can’t afford to let him believe Schwarzer is...no longer with us,” Janko says, needlessly euphemistically, “They both rang again before you arrived today, and used the correct day’s codeword so at the moment we don’t think our mission has been jeopardised,”
“Ana,” Gunari speaks and looks pained, “It was my fault what happened, my concentration slipped and...and it should never have resulted in that situation,”
I nod and smile at Gunari. I know he will have been dwelling on it since I left and there is nothing to be gained from talking any more about it. Especially with my news.
“I know where we need to go next,” I say, Janko’s eyes sparkle.
I spend the next half hour talking in the kitchen with the two of them about where I had been and what I had heard about Stadtmitte station.
“You mean, there’s an actual laboratory at the station?” Gunari says, his face betraying incredulity.
“Under the station, would be more accurate. But yes, that’s what I heard. There’s only one way to find out properly.” Gunari and Janko share a glance at each other, “I’m ready to end this all,”
Silence descends on the table, the awkwardness that surrounded my return has been replaced by deep thought. I look at the two men on either side of me, one a frighteningly large hulk of a man with a permanent stubble. The other, an elderly, scruffy man with an open, friendly face.
My colleagues? Perhaps.
My friends? Probably.
My family? Most definitely.
“Is this taking us away from our main task, finding Tremmick?” Gunari says, possibly rhetorically as he is looking out of the mucky window.
“If half of what Ana told is correct, surely it is our duty to stop them?” Janko replies. Gunari turns to face him across the table. He looks unconvinced by the proposal.
“I’m not sure it is,” Gunari says. He doesn’t add any more substance to his response.
“Performing experiments on people, this time for money rather than for twisted beliefs. Is this now acceptable?” I say, anger rising in my voice.
“I’m not saying that, Ana,” Gunari says, “I want to know what is happening in there but I wonder if this is our job. If the experiments are illegal it may be better to inform the authorities,”
“You want to call the police?” I shout, I look at Janko in disbelief and he simply shrugs his shoulders, “What do you think Janko?”
“The number one mission is finding Tremmick,” Janko replies, “We know he is in Monaco but we don’t know where. That has to remain our top priority,”
I can’t quite believe these two. After what they have told me about Dieselstrasse, to find out that similar experiments are going on in West Berlin in the nineteen-eighties is astonishing.
“You didn’t see this girl, Birgit,” I say, “She was barely human. Her body was simply wasting away. And at the centre of it all are sick, rich men exploiting the desperate for their own ends. If you won’t go in there, I will,” I make this bold statement without realising what it means in practice but it sounded good.
“The Beckermanns are our last remaining link to Tremmick,” Janko says, “Maybe we should pay them a visit,”
Gunari stands up and circles the table in an exasperating fashion. Finally he stops and sits back down. As I wonder what those laps of the kitchen table achieved he addresses us both:
“We need to know what is going on in there before we decide on the best course of action. If we go in there behaving like we are the stars of an action film anything could go wrong,”
“So what do we do?” I say.
“It’s your time to shine Ana, it’s time you went undercover,”
“Like James Bond?” I say.
“Yes, but try not to get kidnapped by a mad scientist,” Janko says, smiling.
“I’ll call Heiko and find out the exact location of the entrance,”
Wonderland
Monday, 5 May 1986
“Before they built the Wall this was the heart of Berlin for hundreds of years,” Janko tells me, “In the twenties and thirties this was the centre of the world. Cabarets and cafes, dancefloors and theatres, Potsdamer Platz was famous around the globe, the beacon of Weimar Germany.”
“It’s not looking so good now,” I say, casting my eyes across a grey square harshly bisected by a long wall topped with barbed wire. The square is deserted. Virtually no lights are on in any of the buildings on either side of the wire. The setting sun bathes the concrete in a hazy red light, the whole place feels otherworldly, a concrete limbo.
“By the time the Communists erected the wall it was already a sad place, I saw it after the war ended before the wall was constructed. It was a shadow of its former self. It was the convergence of the four sectors so the Americans and the Russians, the French and the British mixed in with the locals. What a shell shocked bunch. What a difference a humiliating defeat in war does for a population.
“I actually was pleased at the time to see so many unhappy Germans, the enablers of the Nazis. Looking back now, I feel guilty about my smugness. It’s not good for the soul, revelling in other people’s misery.”
A young couple, only in their teens, walk by holding hands and sharing a large bottle of beer. They appear to be the only people around here. From the centre of Europe to an abandoned no-man’s-land in five decades.
“It’s a shame, Ana,” Janko says and he looks genuinely sad at this glimpse of Potsdamer Platz, now a faint heartbeat smothered by ideologies, “A real shame. So where is the entrance?”
“Heiko said it is through a door next to the entrance to a big office building, the sign above the office should say ‘Karlsbach’,”
Around the square, spotlights have come on in the burgundy gloom. I spot the office with an unlit sign saying ‘KARLSBACH’. I point to my destination and it takes Janko a while before he sees where I need to go.
“Are you ready?” Janko is giving off the air of a concerned grandparent, “This is very risky,”
“It will be fine Janko,” I say, feeling confident in my undercover skills, “I’ll be out as soon as I can - if I’m not out by morning then I’ll let you two come and find me,”
“We won’t be doing that Ana,” Janko says, he moves his hand to my head and strokes my hair.
“What?” I reply, feeling puzzled.
“You’re on your own in there, we can’t break you out if you find yourself in trouble.”
Now I understand, the mission to kill Tremmick cannot be compromised. I nod my comprehension and my confidence ebbs away slightly.
“Don’t worry Janko, I’m tougher than I look,” I say, attempting to keep it light-hearted. Janko has the look of a man told he is dying. He attempts a smile but his face barely moves. I give him a kiss on the cheek and walk off to the door.
At the door I tap in the code Heiko told me on the phone: 1-9-3-3. The door unlocks and I push it open, strip lighting immediately fills the foyer with dirty yellow light. The lift is on my right as expected and I hit the ‘down’ arrow button. After a few seconds the lift arrives and I am startled when the doors part and a man in a full business suit pops out of the lift.
“Oh hello,” he says, he is younger than I first thought, probably only about twenty years old, “Where might you be going?”
“Good evening. My friend Heiko told me I could come and make some money at the lab for some medical testing,” The man grins at my response. He has an off-putting aroma and he is standing way too close to me.
“You’ve come to the right place, we are always looking for volunteers,”
“Do you work at the laboratory?”
“Not at the lab, I’m a salesman for IMFG so I’m usually travelling around Germany trying to sell our products. I’m about to catch a flight to Munich now,”
“I was in Munich recently, it’s very beautiful,”
; “I don’t like it there, the Bavarians are too stuck up for my liking. I prefer Hamburg, the people there are real,”
“Everyone is real,” I say. I am sure this is the exact conversation I had last night with that silly man Heiko. I am beginning to believe that every young man in West Berlin lacks a good fifty percent of the brain cells required for intelligent reasoning compared to the rest of Europe.
“So how do I find the lab?” I ask. I wish he would stand further back, his breath is a disgusting mixture of stale cigarettes, strong coffee and mints.
“Take the lift all the way down and then follow the corridor. It’s a good fifteen minute walk,”
“Thank you, I best go now,” I say and he leans in even further.
“Maybe I will see you again some day, I always pop in and visit the new starters. You know, see how they are settling in,”
“Settling in?”
“Oh yes, some of the volunteers have been here a while now. They love the money, for many of them they are as addicted to hard cash as they are to vodka,” the smelly man starts laughing and then walks to the door, “I’m off to the airport, I’ll see you soon, beautiful,”
I respond by staring at him with barely concealed loathing. He doesn’t notice, he begins laughing again and exits the room. I enter the lift and press the button stating ‘-1’ and it starts descending. The lift is surprisingly quiet for something in such disrepair.
The doors open on a dark corridor with only occasional dim lights glowing every few metres on the ceiling. The corridor seems to go on forever. I inhale deeply and begin walking along the infinite passage.
The minutes pass with no break in the monotonous corridor, No exit doors or decoration, simply walls, floor and lights. A sense of foreboding rises in me as I realise I have no idea what I will be walking in to.
Ghost in the Machine
Monday, 5 May 1986
I walk for a long time, the squeak of my trainers the only noise in the corridor. It’s impossible to say how long I travel down the corridor but eventually it comes to an end. A simple door on the left hand side with no signage. I turn the handle and walk through the door. A gust of wind temporarily unbalances and unsettles me. I am stood on a filthy underground station platform.
Directly opposite is a fading sign on the wall declaring this is ‘STADTMITTE’. As I look around, I can see the tracks and an abandoned kiosk on the island between the two tracks. The walls are grubby but there is no litter about. Leaning on the kiosk is a security guard who is startled by my presence.
I wave at him and he waves back. I amble towards him and he puts on his most authoritative pose which I find deeply unimpressive and pathetic. He is another kid, barely out of his teens - his security officer uniform is oversized making him look even sillier.
“Excuse me, Miss,” he says in a high-pitched voice, even before he spoke I knew that was how he would sound, “This is a restricted area,”
“I’m not surprised, aren’t we in East Berlin?” I reply and he blushes and panics. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. His boss probably banned him from putting his hands in his pocket so he is caught between dangling them by his sides and gesticulating with only his fingers visible.
“No...no I mean, it’s restricted for...for business reasons,” the boy is talking nonsense but I decide not to torment him any further.
“I’m looking for the IMFG laboratory. Can you tell me where it is?” the guard can barely regain his composure. His fingers barely stick out of his outsized coat arms.
“Yes...yes. I’ll show you, I’m the guard,”
“I guessed that, you’re doing a great job,” I say, deciding I will torment him a little bit more.
The guard opens the kiosk door and points to a staircase going down. I nod and the guard leads the way downstairs.
“Close the door on the way down,” he says as we descend deep into the bowels of Berlin. I hear a train rumbling past nearby and I make a strange yelping sound, the guard chuckles at me and tells me: “That’s the old U2 line, the East Germans run it, this one is the U6 line which no longer runs obviously.”
“Don’t the East Germans check on this side?” I say and the guard laughs uneasily.
“They don’t check these days, I think the management have an agreement with the Ossis.”
I can imagine what type of arrangement this is, probably involving wheelbarrows of US dollars and eyes that don’t see anything.
The guard walks in first, I follow him in to a bizarrely normal looking reception area. I could be in a high street accountant’s office or industrial park lobby anywhere in Germany. Instead, I am way underground in an entirely different nation to where I entered from. There is another young lad on reception who greets the guard in a jocular manner.
“Hey Fredi, you found yourself a girlfriend at last?” the boy on reception says to the guard. This only inspires more flushed cheeks from the guard.
“What? No, this...lady is looking to volunteer,” the guard, Fredi replies.
“Oh, welcome to the asylum,” the receptionist says, cackling loudly, “Where are you from?”
“I’ve recently moved to West Berlin,” I reply.
“But where are you from? You don’t speak German very well,”
“Why do people keep asking me where I’m from? I’m here to earn money, not tell you my life story. I presume you don’t need to see a passport,”
The receptionist snorts nastily, stands and points to the double doors to the right of the reception desk. I stay standing. What does he want me to do, wander in there by myself? The receptionist stands and pushes his chair back aggressively so it bounces back off the wall behind him. He walks over to the double doors and gestures for me to follow.
“Right, come on. You can have a talk with the doctor and see what tests are available. Maybe they’ll let you take a shower, you smelly bitch,”
I’m taken aback by his words but I bite my tongue. Now is not the time to create a disturbance. His words have actually hurt me, the more so because it is true. I’ve not washed since the morning we left the hotel to visit Schwarzer. We walk through the door and the receptionist gives me an unfriendly but mild shove in the back.
We head along a corridor which has the unmistakable appearance of a rundown hospital. A line of stretchers lie parallel to one wall with bedding at various levels of yellowing. Distantly, I can hear shrieking, the sound’s remoteness cannot disguise the anguish in the voice. I don’t realise but I must have slowed down as I feel another shove in my back. I turn around in silent annoyance at him and the receptionist returns my scowl.
The corridor reaches a T-junction and the receptionist grunts “Right”. I turn right and head down the corridor, on the left are large rectangular windows with lab technicians at work inside. I’m not an expert but I think they are performing scientific experiments as there are microscopes and test tubes visible on the worktops.
On my right there is an open door. Peering in, I can see a skeletal girl lying on a bed with a drip attached. Her face is a grey blank and her vacant eyes are unable to meet mine as I walk past.
The next room on the right also has an open door. Another skinny girl lays on a bed sobbing quietly, I slow down and the receptionist barks “Keep moving, junkie,”. Once more I avoid responding either verbally or in a ‘punchy’ manner.
At the end of the corridor are another set of double doors. I turn to the receptionist once we reach there and he nods blankly and I push the doors open.
We enter a large, dark expanse that resembles a field hospital from one of those Vietnam War movies. The cavernous space is filled with shouts and wails. Makeshift wards filled with dirty beds and torn curtains sadly holding on to flimsy rails. The floors and ceilings are dark which enhances the feeling of filthiness. The only light seems to becoming from spotlights crudely affixed to the walls.
There are probably over twenty beds in this room which is probably the size of a sports hall, although half the beds are
empty and a couple have been turned over. Everyone in the beds looks bony and desperate apart from a couple of grubby, well-fed men with blotchy red faces who are probably alcoholics.
One of them is sat on the edge of the bed nearest to me and he is holding his head in his hands and crying loudly. I start to veer towards him to check if he is alright when I feel a hand firmly grab my neck and guide me towards the central corridor between the lines of beds.
“Do not speak to any of our volunteers, do you understand, you animal?” the receptionist whispers to me, his mouth only centimetres from my right ear.
Most of the people on the beds have the appearance of detainees from a concentration camp. I feel revulsion at how thin some of the people are. And how young too. A few metres away there is a girl who must surely be in her teens who has bruises all over her body and I can see the definition of every bone. Her skin is pulled over her skeleton like a stretched balloon. She is sat up with her legs up by her chin. She looks at me but conveys no emotion, only emptiness.
“What type of testing do you do here?” I ask the receptionist knowing full well he won’t tell me.
“Why do you care? You’ll receive some Marks so you can feed your addiction,”
“These people need to be in hospital,”
“You can forward your comments to the Complaints Department at a later point,” the receptionist says and starts laughing to himself, he finds it so amusing he says it again.
I notice that on three sides of the hall there are smaller rooms but mostly they are unlit and I can’t see what is happening in them. Suddenly a huge cry of pain fills the room. I can’t tell where it came from but the sound is incredible, a scream from the very bottom of the soul.
The volunteers, as we are called, begin making noises of their own. Some are whimpering, a few I hear saying prayers. I check my arms and despite the warmth in this deep cavern I have goosebumps. I want to cry and I realise what I am feeling is terror, the same as everyone in here. Pure terror of what is happening in this hellish facility.
The Wind and the Rain Page 18
