She looked up and down the road. She could go in either direction. She could be away from the building in seconds. Yet it was impossible to know which direction Berlin centre was. There were no signs and no road names. From the morning sun, she calculated the four points of the compass. But what use was it if she had no idea where the centre of the city was?
Then she noticed a tram-line in the distance running in a curved arc across the ground. She thought she could follow the metal tracks and reach the next tram stop. There was be a sign, may be even a map. But then again, it could take too long, or it could be too far, and she risked being picked up by the people she was escaping from.
But if she ran, would they even recognise her? Would they even know she was missing? It may take hours before anyone realised she was gone. It seemed possible she could dash to the end of the street and quickly disappear.
She was taking too long to decide. Uncertainty was not a wise choice. Her mind was made up and she knew she had to trust it. She went to the van and pulled open one of the rear doors. It swung towards her and she climbed inside.
16
Monika crawled down onto her knees and stooped beneath one of the wooden benches where a canvas sheet was half-folded, half-crushed into the corner. She used the sheet to cover herself up as best as she could, feeling its cold grey surface, which was peppered with mould spores, move against her skin. The floor of the van was sprinkled with the spilled sawdust of cigarette tobacco.
Within minutes, she heard the sound of boxes being loaded into the van. She was aware that her feet remained uncovered by the canvas sheet, so she tucked them in as keenly as she could. She resisted looking out from her hiding place, but she could hear the continuing rumble of activity and the gentle rocking of the van as the men climbed in and out. Eventually the loading of boxes seemed to come to an end, and after a few moments of doors banging, the van engine started up. Monika cast her mind back to the delivery drop-off list and worked out how many stops she would have to wait before they arrived at the airport.
After about twenty minutes, the first drop-off point was reached. The van doors opened and for a few moments she could hear the muffled sound of voices and some of the cigarettes boxes being lifted off. The doors closed again and the van resumed its journey. The vehicle swayed and bobbed along. Lying in the pitch black, tucked beneath the sheet, Monika began to remember games she used to play as a child. Or was it the weight of her heart that was prompting these memories? The dancing and the Russian folk songs, the hide-and-seek games to the sound of accordion and fiddle, the giggle of her cousins, aunt and uncles laughing and singing downstairs? She dug her thumbnails into her palms to stop the flood of sensations. It was too distracting. They were making her wobble, these deep-green memories laced with gold. She had to stop them and return to her purpose.
After two more stops, she began to make out the distinct hum of an aeroplane propeller passing overhead. The sound grew louder. She pictured one of the flying machines sweeping down out of the clouds and landing it’s rubbery tyres on the airport runway. To hear the sound was an exhilarating sensation, to feel the liberating promise of the world opening up around her.
It remained now a question of when. The van drove on, turning corners, slowing down and speeding up again. At last, it came to a stop and the rear doors clunked opened.
She allowed herself to peel back the sheet a little so she could see more of what was going on. It was still dark behind the boxes, but if she craned her neck she could make out a triangle of sky between the wall of boxes and the roof of the van. And through this patch of sky, she saw the white wings of an aeroplane coming into land.
This had to be it. This was the moment. They were on the airfield now, or as close to it as she needed to be. She pulled the sheet away and silently slid from beneath the bench.
More of the cigarette boxes were being taken from the van. Only a small stack of boxes stood between her and the outside world. Should she make a dash for it and clamber over the boxes in a frantic rush? Or should she wait and try to leave the van without being heard?
She chose to wait. She crouched on her knees with the grimy sheet still drawn up around her shoulders. The two delivery men were stood along the side of the van; she could hear their voices and the sound of matches being lit for cigarettes. She began to edge around the side of the remaining boxes inside the van, and as quietly as she could, manoeuvred along the bench towards the open door. She could see the full aperture of the opening now, and through it, the horizontal stretch of runway between large swathes of grass. There were three aeroplanes chugging in the far distance.
She reached the door and gently lowered herself down to the ground. The delivery men were still smoking around the other side of the van. She edged her way along the opposite side, constantly checking over her shoulder and then forward again, keeping her body pressed tight close to the metal flank of the van until she was as far removed from the men as possible.
Then suddenly, the face of one of the delivery men appeared from the other direction.
The man was mute for a moment. Shocked, angry. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said in a tone that trailed into bemusement. His face was long and his jaw was misaligned. He was thin, almost to seem malnourished.
Monika didn’t reply. She took hold of the metal rod she’d brought with her and with the short end of the right-angled implement – the end that was flattened to a wedge – trust it directly into the man’s arm. His thick jacket cushioned most of the impact, but there was enough force to penetrate his flesh by a quarter of an inch, causing him to yell out and clutch himself in pain.
Then she ran with all her might into the open space of the airfield. She ran across the grass with the coiled energy of a spring not yet released. She felt a mist of cool rainy air flowing over her cheeks. She ran as fast as she could. A fierce, straight-lined dash, unrelenting, undaunted.
It was only as she felt she’d achieved her escape that she realised one of the delivery men was in pursuit, bearing down on her twice as fast as she could run.
Nothing looms so terribly as a stranger chasing after you. She could feel the vibrations in the earth, his heavy boots thumping on the soft green turf. All thoughts of child’s play were gone now. She waited to feel his arm hook around her, to be scooped up, lifted back and returned to her captivity in cruel retribution.
Giving up was not allowed. She thrust herself forward. She would not look behind because to do so would affect her pace by a fraction. And she just needed a fraction. She just needed to cross this stretch of grass and reach the grey-box building – an aeroplane hanger presumably – where she could see a car and several people frozen in the distance – her saviours, whoever they were.
Then suddenly she was running on hard ground and realised she was crossing a runway. An incoming propeller plane gurgled overhead, descending through the wind above her. It swooped in a great arc as the engine noise squeezed and elongated, dropping a pitch as it sped over. She ducked her head instinctively and raced on. Her feet returned to grass again, and as the sound from the aeroplane diminished, she had the sense that she had gained some distance from her pursuer.
There were no vibrations in the ground any longer. She slowed down and turned to look. Her heart was racing and her chest was biting with pain. To her surprise, she saw the man fifty yards behind, bent over with his hands on his knees. He’d given up. Then, at the same moment, she saw up ahead the glistening shape of a car travelling across the turf towards her. As it drew closer, she felt sure she recognised it as the same car she’s travelled in back to Berlin. It pulled up a short distance away and from its rear door a woman stepped out. Monika knew her immediately. That pretty face she instinctively trusted. Hannah Baumer.
She knew then she had been rescued and went towards the car with relief breaking in her chest like a wave cresting. She ran with ease, as if the wind was pushing her, as if the end of her journey lay right ahead, her escape route marked out like the fi
nishing line on a running track.
17
Within moments, she had come inside from the breezy airport air and was sat on the leather seat of the car alongside Hannah Baumer, whose scent of cologne had all the sweet warmth of a family stew.
‘How did you know I was here?’ Monika asked after a few moments, catching her breath. She noticed the car was driving slowly back to the airport terminal.
‘You don’t need to talk,’ the woman said. ‘Just rest for a while. That was very close.’
Monika did as she was told. She’d been awake for several hours now. She had no idea what time it was and she’d not eaten a morsel since the night before. Her throat was suddenly bone-dry. All she could think of was getting back to her family home and sitting around the dining table with her parents, listening to them talk and the sound of food being served. It didn’t matter how she was going to explain herself to them. Whatever lies she’d told to spend the weekend with Arno, they were nothing compared to the ordeal she’d just gone through. They would understand when she explained it all.
‘Where have I been?’ she said, all of a sudden wanting to know answers all the questions that were coming. ‘I don’t understand what happened. I thought I was going home.’
‘I have some explaining to do,’ Baumer said. Her voice sounded apologetic. That’s what Monika would have expected. Something went wrong along the line. The blame lay with the sack-of-potatoes policeman. She expected Baumer to feel contrition. That made complete sense.
‘I’m sorry you had to go through all of that,’ Baumer said, as if she could read Monika’s thoughts.
‘I feel filthy,’ Monika replied. She had some right to complain. Her parents – when they found out – would certainly want to take it further.
She gazed out of the window and gave a little shake of her head. What an ordeal! But it was over now. Her bravery and intelligence had delivered her from her captives. She deserved to be free.
As the car drove through Berlin, she began to imagine how this event might mark the start of a new era for her family. Once the appropriate complaint against the authorities had been made – her father would probably recruit the expertise of his legal friends – then she could foresee the beginnings of their Berlin life coming to an end.
Perhaps it was inevitable. The last few years had been a difficult and mysterious time. It was common knowledge among her community that the Jewish population was despised by some quarters of the wider city. What was mysterious was the question of exactly how it would materialise in her own life. For she didn’t herself feel overtly oppressed by the situation, whatever it was that was emerging. Jew-haters seemed to have other targets in mind other than young women like herself. Or was it simply that she’d grown used to the prejudice and didn’t see it any more? She remembered a bus journey from a few months earlier, when one of the other passengers, who couldn’t have been much older than she was – just a young man travelling to work – began talking about the ‘corruption of German blood.’ He was speaking to his friend sat beside him. The friend argued that Jews made up only one per cent of the population, which meant that the ‘Jewish question’ was not so important as some made it out to be. At this, the first boy replied ‘Yes, but they are prone to dominating our culture. Something about the German race makes us particularly susceptible, perhaps because we are too trusting. We’re not like the Latin races, who defend themselves more vigorously. For Germans, the Jews are a corrupting force precisely because we are innocent. That cannot be tolerated.’
Talk like this made Monika feel as if the easiest thing was to deny who she was. It was an embarrassing and shameful thought, one that her parents would refuse to endorse, but to her, it seemed like the most expedient path, and the one that – more importantly – would keep her own inner-self intact.
But now, after this ordeal, it would surely mean the end of their time in Berlin. They had relatives in other countries: her mother had siblings in Sweden and a cousin in Belgium. Her father’s brother was planning to move to America. She could imagine foreign towns being mentioned, places she’d never heard of. ‘It’s clear that we are not welcome in our own country anymore,’ she could hear her father saying at the dinner table. ‘Just look what happened to Monika. Taken by the Nazis! Do you think it was coincidence how they treated her? Left to waste away in some safe-house that was nothing but a den for – who knows what?’
These conversations were going to come. It was inevitable. If there was one thing her parents liked to do, it was to rake over everything again and again and again.
She felt exhausted by the thought. For now, sat inside the motor car with Hannah Baumer beside her, it was enough to enjoy the sense of relief. The car travelled through the city suburbs, trundling over tram tracks and pausing at road junctions. She felt the pleasure of the silence, the simplicity of feeling safe.
After half-an-hour, the car took a turning down a side street, and then another turning into a residential avenue. It slowed down to a stop and the engine shut off. Monika could hear another vehicle closing in behind them. She turned on the back seat and looked out through the rear window. To her horror, she saw the cigarette delivery van drawing up behind them. She looked out of the window and saw the same building she had escaped from only two hours before. She turned and looked at the woman beside her.
Baumer said nothing, only gave an expressionless smile.
‘I don’t understand,’ Monika said.
‘We’ll have to watch you more closely from now on,’ Baumer replied.
‘Who are you?’ Monika said desperately. ‘Whose side are you on?’
‘I’m on my own side,’ Baumer said bluntly, as she pulled out a compact mirror from her purse and checked herself over.
Now, the two delivery drivers came to the car door, opened it, and urged Monika out onto the street. One of the men was still clutching his arm from the injury she’d given him. Baumer told them not to hurt her. They took her into the building and pulled her up the staircase that she recognised all too well. She was too frightened to resist. This time they put her into a smaller, darker room, and when the door was shut, she could hear a metal bar being placed across the front of it. She was back where she started. She had achieved nothing. It was hell.
18
The window in her new room was so murky with dust and coal-soot that at first it was hard to know if it was day or night. A single electric light-bulb hung from the ceiling with no shade around it. She had nothing to read and no paper to write on. There was just a narrow bed, that was all. She had never felt so alone in all her life.
She had been moved to a different part of the warehouse building. Every so often, voices came and went outside the door, new voices, new business at hand, brief echoes of something important being said.
A day passed. Then a second. Possibly a third. Frau Lange no longer visited. Her meals were brought by a boyish-looking soldier who was almost certainly younger and more naive than she was. Most of the time he wore a cowed expression, as if he expected to be startled at any moment and was constantly waiting for it to come. But he was courteous and patient. He always knocked and never knocked more than once, never hurried Monika to come to the door, just waited outside with her tray of food.
Monika felt grateful for the soldier’s his civility. He wouldn’t tell her his name nor anything else about him. His face was unblemished like a newborn baby. He was perfectly polite, if acutely obedient to whatever orders he’d had handed down to him. Monika thought it was like meeting a ghost.
Yet she waited for these rare moments of contact. The new room they’d put her in was so improbably sparse and unpleasant it seemed to deny her even the possibility of thinking. She realised she needed objects around her, just to allow the thread of a thought to begin. In these circumstances, she found it hard to even to form a memory, let alone a plan of what she might do next. At least the young soldier gave her some relief from this absorption into nothingness.
Each day he
came, breakfast, lunch and dinner, bringing her badly cooked meals that were usually cold by the time she ate them. She tried to make conversation with him, but the boy was far too dutiful to break out of his muteness.
It was hard to say what was happening to her. Her mind refused to offer any answers. The only thing she could dwell on was whether she was one step closer to her reckoning or if, with every hour, she had just enjoyed another reprieve. Was it over or was it still to come, her fate, whatever it was supposed to be?
She found the weight of the uncertainty to be far heavier at night. When the electric light was switched off and her door locked with the metal bar, the room grew so cold and distant it was like being in a prison cell. The electric bulb was switched off at around ten o’clock, at which the four walls of the room closed in around. It wasn’t even black but a swarming, impenetrable ink of darkest blue. She couldn’t see her hand, even when she held it in front of her face.
Sleeping in these conditions was impossible. Most of all, she feared someone entering the darkness. It took an age for the morning to come; when at last the dawn light began to show at the clogged-up window, she always questioned it. It was only when she could hear the rattle and footsteps of morning routines that she allowed herself to feel relief that another night was over. It was like a coming up for air after being submerged underwater.
Sometimes she could remember what it was like to be free. These were the only thoughts that came with any clarity. She remembered the feeling of warm sunlight on her face. And she remembered the holidays with her parents, hiking along mountain valleys and finding shade beneath a row of oak trees, leaning over a map alongside her father, wondering where their freedom would take them next. Were these memories or dreams? Did she summon them or were they summoning her? It didn’t really matter.
Vanished in Berlin: Kidnap suspense mystery set in 1930s Berlin (Berlin Tales Book 2) Page 9
