Stasi Winter

by David Young

  The man’s frown deepened. He brushed his hand through his thinning strands of greasy black hair. ‘No, no, of course not.’ He stiffly extended his hand for Müller to shake. ‘Comrade Peter Trautmann. I’m the deputy director here. Our director, Monika Richter, is . . . ’ He paused, staring hard at Müller. His dark eyes seemed to regard her with suspicion. Perhaps a new teacher arriving on New Year’s Day by ski was almost too unbelievable for him to swallow. ‘She’s . . . taking the festive period as an extended holiday. As you can imagine, I was unable to get away for the New Year festivities.’

  The man had started walking quickly across the exercise yard, which Müller noticed had been cleared almost completely of snow.

  ‘I will show you to your room.’ He turned and examined the rucksack on Müller’s back, without breaking his stride. ‘Is that your only luggage?’

  ‘For now, yes. The rest will follow by train, when the line’s back up and running.’

  The man nodded, then turned away as though he hadn’t been interested to start with.

  *

  Müller paced her room from door to window – little more than four strides, fewer across. This – presumably – would have been one of the holiday rooms proposed by Hitler for his faithful Nazi workers to reward them for their efforts for his short-lived fascist empire. To Müller, it felt little more than a cell. She looked out of the window across the white-grey of the frozen Ostsee – ice and snow as far as you could see, like an extension of the land. To do so, she had to stand on tiptoe to avoid her eyeline being blocked by the iron bars obstructing the lower portion. To keep out intruders, or imprison those inside? Müller knew the answer.

  After she’d quickly unpacked her few belongings, she tried to retrace her steps along the corridors and down the stairs to the ground floor. At one point, she got lost and passed what appeared to be a dormitory. In a room about twice the size of her own, she saw three, maybe four sets of metal bunk beds, each one three tiers high. Surprisingly, all were occupied by teenage girls, heads down, reading books or magazines. Was this the sort of dormitory Irma Behrendt had been incarcerated in? Yet here the door was open. Perhaps New Year’s Day brought special privileges.

  Once she was on the ground floor, she started to get her bearings from her previous visit four years earlier. She negotiated her way towards Trautmann’s office – or at least the one he was occupying as a result of Richter’s demise – and knocked on the grey metal door.

  ‘Enter!’ he barked. ‘Ah, Comrade Herz,’ he said, rising to his feet and pulling out a chair for her. ‘I trust you are happy with your room. I made sure you were assigned one on the coastal side.’

  Müller gave a cursory nod. ‘Indeed, it has a lovely view.’

  ‘Hmm. I’m aware, of course, the facilities are a little basic, certainly for someone like yourself, fresh from the Hauptstadt. Anyway . . . ’ he said, rubbing his hands together, ‘. . . we’re not here on holiday, are we?’ He fiddled with his spectacles and opened a file on his desk. ‘You come very highly recommended for your knowledge and teaching of Citizens’ Education, and as you can imagine with the kind of children and youths we have in here, re-education in their duties as citizens is central to our aim of reshaping them into valuable members of our socialist Republic. I can’t see from your background that you’ve ever worked in this kind of establishment before, however.’

  ‘No, that’s true.’ Müller furiously tried to remember where her curriculum vitae said she had taught. She’d only had a few minutes to study it before, and during, breakfast.

  ‘Children such as ours often need a firm hand, Frau Herz. Monika Richter was . . . is a staunch believer in that.’

  The way Trautmann corrected the tense of his assertion had Müller wondering how much of his former boss’s fate the man was aware of. Did he know Richter would never be coming back? Was that why he’d been so quick in occupying her director’s office?

  ‘Now the teacher who’ll be showing you around has, shall we say, not fully taken that on board. She’ll be here in a moment. All I would say is, if you find her being too soft with the pupils, please let me know. Give them a couple of centimetres, and well . . . I’m sure you get the picture, Frau Herz.’

  Müller’s eyes were indeed drawn to a picture: the photograph of Erich Honecker, staring at her from above Trautmann’s head. It was almost as though wherever she went in the Republic, the eyes of the chairman of the State Council followed her.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Enter!’ shouted Trautmann, in the same didactic tone he’d used a few moments earlier.

  Müller turned in her chair. As she did, she had to fight to stop the shock registering on her face. She had no doubt the woman standing in the doorway recognised her, despite the passage of those four years. Yet she, too, hid that in her expression.

  ‘You wanted to see me, Herr Trautmann?’

  ‘Yes, Frau Schettler,’ he said, rising to his feet. Müller mirrored his move and stood. ‘This is Frau Herz, the new teacher I was telling you about the other day. She’s here temporarily on attachment from Berlin. Could you perhaps show her round?’

  The detective knew her cover was blown. Schettler was the one person who would recognise her from the 1975 case. Someone who Jäger had insisted was on extended leave and would – therefore – not be in a position to undermine their operation.

  Yet here she was standing in front of Müller, extending her hand, her face masked with a thin smile but otherwise a deadpan expression.

  ‘Welcome, Frau Herz. We may as well be going straight away.’

  Again, the face, the tone of voice betrayed nothing.

  It was only from her hazel eyes that Müller could tell anything.

  She may have been mistaken.

  But what she saw there was a look of pure and abject fear.

  18

  28 December 1978

  We’d arranged to meet this evening in the room at the bottom of the lighthouse again. Dieter had told me to bring a knapsack full of warm clothes and provisions. Normally, that sort of thing would alert the suspicions of the authorities: someone in a coastal area with a rucksack, no matter that they were locals with passes. I can only think there is one reason for the instruction – that tonight is the night. Tonight we steal the boat.

  But I look outside the window of my grandmother’s apartment, above the campsite reception. It won’t be happening. Already snowdrifts are building up against the front door on the ground floor. I won’t be going anywhere – Oma and I will have to sit it out. Surely, Dieter and the others will be doing the same, won’t they? My hand hovers over the telephone. I want to try to ring his base, to warn him. But I know it’s too dangerous. The Stasi watch what I do – they will almost certainly listen to what I say by tapping the telephone line too. And after the warning from Jäger and Steiger at the offices in Bergen, I can’t be too careful.

  ‘What’s wrong, Irma?’ Oma asks. ‘You seem all on edge. It’s nothing to worry about, you know. It was even worse in the winter of 62/63.’

  I try to raise a smile, poised over the phone receiver. Dare I? I know I can’t. ‘I was hoping to go out tonight,’ I say.

  ‘To meet that new boyfriend of yours?’

  I give a little nod.

  ‘I don’t know what was wrong with Laurenz. I liked him. It’s embarrassing now when I bump into his mother at the shops. Still, that’s young love, I suppose.’ She grins a gummy, false-teeth grin at me. Oma can never really be angry with me. She’s already lost her daughter. She doesn’t want to push me away too.

  I give a start as the phone suddenly rings. I’m too frightened to answer it, so I let Oma do it.

  ‘People’s Camping Site Sellin,’ she says in the slightly posh, affected voice she adopts when answering the telephone, as though she runs some sort of high-class hotel in the West. ‘I’ll see if she’s available.’

  She puts her hand over the mouthpiece.
‘It’s that boy of yours. Do you want to talk to him or not?’

  ‘Of course, Oma.’

  She passes me the handset, frowning. I make a face at her. What’s it to her who I talk to on the phone? Why wouldn’t I want to talk to my own boyfriend? But something in her manner makes me more nervous than usual.

  ‘Hi,’ I say to Dieter.

  ‘Change of plan because of the weather.’ His tone is urgent. No time for mutual endearments.

  ‘OK. I thought there would be. I’m pretty much stuck here at the campsite.’

  ‘Can you get out at all? What about to the end of Wilhelm-Pieck-Straße, by the steps to the demolished Seebrücke?’

  I try to think how I’ll be able to fight my way through the drifts. Then I remember the old snowshoes in the storeroom. Oma must have had them since this winter she keeps going on about. The really bad one. In 1962 or 63. I have a vague memory of making an igloo with Mutti, the excitement of crawling inside. But I can’t have been more than about three years old.

  ‘I can try. But how are you getting there? Aren’t all the roads blocked? That’s what we heard on the radio.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. Be there at eight o’clock.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Of course. Should I bring the things?’

  There’s a pause on the line.

  ‘Yes. And a bed sheet. A white bed sheet.’

  ‘A bed sheet? Why?’

  But there’s a continuous tone in my ear. Dieter’s put down the phone.

  *

  Oma hears me scrabbling around in the storeroom, and comes to see what I’m doing.

  ‘Irma, what on earth are you up to?’ She’s holding a flickering candle on a saucer for light, because I’ve got the only torch. The power’s been cut. Probably something to do with the weather. We heard the power lines had been felled by the weight of the snow in Binz – now it looks like it’s our turn.

  ‘I’m trying to find the snowshoes!’ I shout from deep inside the cupboard. ‘I’m sure they’re in here, aren’t they?’

  I hear Oma sigh, and then the sound of a door unlocking. ‘You won’t find them in there!’ she shouts. ‘I got them out earlier and put them in the office – I could see one of us was going to need them.’

  I get up from my crouching position in the store cupboard, where I’d been lifting various bits of junk to try to find them, and close the room’s door. Oma is standing there, with the battered snowshoes in one hand, a stern look on her face.

  ‘Why do you want them? I hope you’re not going to try to go outside tonight. It’s awful out there.’

  ‘I thought you said it wasn’t as bad as 1963?’

  My grandmother’s reply almost sounds like an angry growl. But she knows she won’t be able to dissuade me when my mind’s made up. She knows because she’s the same. Mutti’s the same. That’s what’s always landing her in trouble.

  ‘It’s not. At the moment. But it might soon be, young lady. I hope this isn’t just to see that boyfriend of yours? I thought he was based at the other end of Prora? There’s no way you’ll be able to get there, Irma. You’ll get yourself killed if you try. Believe me.’

  I pull her into a tight hug, feeling then how much weight she’s lost. She’s skin and bones – all the worry over Mutti being in prison, I expect. I hold her by her shoulders, and look into her eyes. Seeing her wisdom, knowing she’s right.

  ‘I’m not going to Prora, silly. Just into town. To Sellin. It’s only a few hundred metres.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a blizzard, Irma. People will die out there, believe me. And I don’t want one of them to be you.’ She gives a slight sob, and I in turn give her another squeeze.

  *

  It’s harder going than I imagined. I have to fight to get the front door open. Finally, I manage to force it open about half a metre. Snow flies in my face from the wind, as the top of the drift falls inwards.

  ‘You cannot be serious, Irma!’ shouts Oma. ‘It’s worse than I thought.’

  I am beginning to have second thoughts. But what if that’s Dieter’s plan? That all the coastal guards will have been diverted to help with the rescue and emergency efforts, delivering food and that sort of thing. Maybe it’s just the time to steal a boat, and perhaps Dieter, Joachim and Holger have decided that Sassnitz harbour is too much in the eye of the authorities. Perhaps Sellin is a better bet.

  These thoughts race through my brain, but in an instant I’m out of the door before Oma can stop me. I try to jam it shut behind me before she can argue further.

  As soon as I let go, I feel the wind trying to blow me off my feet, and the snow is like grit in my eyes. This isn’t fluttery, pretty, snowball snow. The snowflakes are more like shotgun pellets. I don’t think I can go along the coastal path along the cliff edge – I won’t be able to stand up.

  But at least the snowshoes do their job. I’m walking on the drifts mostly, rather than sinking into them. It’s horribly cold, freeze your bones sort of cold, but it’s such an effort to move that it somehow keeps me warm enough. That and Oma’s woollen Strickpulli underneath my anorak, and the shirt and vest under that. I gave in to Oma’s nagging to borrow her long thermal underwear.

  I manage to get as far as the lamppost outside the campsite entrance, cling on and try to get my breath back, each inhale like a knife to the heart, the air is so bitter.

  Holding on to the lamppost works. But there aren’t any more lamps on this bit of the coast path. I look around in a panic, gripping fiercely on to the torch. I can’t keep it on all the time – the battery won’t last. Just short bursts to try to memorise the terrain. I realise the only way I’m going to be able to do this is by going from object to object and clinging on, like a drunken passenger on the deck of a boat in rough seas. All I can think of is to use the pine trees. The woods give some shelter from the snow and the wind, and – moving from tree to tree – I begin to make some slow, staggering progress.

  *

  There’s an eerie blackness at the end of Wilhelm-Pieck-Straße. I cling on to the telescope at the top of the steps down to the ruined Seebrücke with one arm, and with the other use my teeth to pull my sleeve so I can see my watch. The luminescent dial tells me it’s already ten past eight. I’d underestimated how long it would take me to get here. I’ve no idea how Dieter was planning to come – how the hell would he get here from Prora? – but even if he made it, I’m so late he’s probably given up and gone again.

  Then suddenly I hear someone going ‘Psst!’

  There’s a figure hiding at the edge of the veranda of the nearest building. He comes out for an instant so I can recognise him, then beckons me with an urgent wave. I look around to make sure no one is watching, then make my way across the snow into the shadows.

  ‘Ha!’ He kisses me full on the lips – his skin still warm, as though he’s just come out into the cold. ‘Snowshoes. Great idea. We should have thought of that.’ I see Joachim and Holger are skulking behind him. Joachim has a sour look on what bit of his face I can see that isn’t covered by the hood of his white camouflage suit. He’s never forgiven Dieter for involving me in their plans – he doesn’t trust me. He’s got good reason not to, of course, but neither he nor the other two know that. All three are wearing the same white winter army suits.

  ‘We were sent here to clear snow in Sellin,’ says Dieter. ‘But no one’s keeping a proper lookout in this weather. We managed to slip away. Did you bring the bed sheet?’

  I nod, pointing to my backpack. ‘Are we doing it tonight?’ I ask.

  ‘Maybe,’ says Dieter, mysteriously. ‘Not the boat, though. Come on.’ He beckons me again. The other two have slipped into the shadows. Dieter pulls me along by the hand. I realise we’re going to the shoreline – not down the steps to the pier, but trying to follow a path through the snow-covered undergrowth. In summer, this would be sandy but relatively easy to climb down. Now, it’s a nightmare. In the end, the other three give up trying
to stay on their feet, and start sliding down on their bums, using the bushes as handholds so they don’t skid out of control. It’s even slower going than my tree-to-tree trek from the campsite, but eventually we make it to sea level.

  I realise we’re heading under what remains of the Seebrücke, out along the snow- and ice-covered beach. In this light, or rather dark, it’s hard to see where the beach ends, and the frozen sea begins. Despite the snow and heavy cloud cover, the lamp-light from the pier illuminates the iced-up sea. And that is all that is visible, I suddenly realise.

  Ice, ice as far as the eye can see.

  Dieter pulls me close and hisses in my ear. ‘Get the sheet out and wrap it over your head.’

  I don’t understand why, but then I look at Joachim and Holger further ahead, and how their camouflage suits blend in with the dark whiteness of the ice, the dim lighting above giving it all a twilight, evil feel.

  And then I realise at last what the sheet is for.

  It’s my camouflage suit.

  It’s my escape ticket.

  We’re going.

  Now.

  Across the ice. To Sweden. To Denmark.

  It doesn’t matter where.

  Anywhere but here.

  And anywhere with Dieter.

  19

  Sassnitz harbour, Rügen, East Germany

  New Year’s Day 1979

  Tilsner found it hard to believe they were doing this on a day which should be a public holiday. But it was happening nonetheless. He hunched his shoulders, trying to get the army greatcoat they’d provided him with to cover more of his body as the wind sliced in from Siberia across hundreds of kilometres of frozen sea. The problem of Markus Schmidt had been temporarily solved by getting the People’s Police to arrest him on a trumped-up charge. He’d be kept in a cell until this had all blown over – then Tilsner had assured Schmidt his son would be freed without a stain on his record. It was a hollow assurance – but the important thing was he was kept out of the way.