Stasi Winter

by David Young

  It was on a direct course to Rostock.

  Slicing through the ice.

  Delivering the criminals back into the hands of the DDR authorities.

  For Müller, for Tilsner below, this was the most dangerous time.

  Suddenly, Dieter realised. ‘That’s the fucking Teepott!’ he shouted. ‘Ublyudok!’ he shouted towards the captain.

  Ublyudok! Bastard! About the only Russian swear word Müller did know. Dieter yanked her towards him, then started backing out of the bridge control room with his gun barrel firmly at her temple. She found herself trembling.

  ‘None of you fuckers move! We’re not going back there, I tell you. No way are we going back there!’

  Müller half expected him to try to take control of the ship, but he seemed to have other ideas.

  He was dragging her, running towards the room where Tilsner was being kept captive by the others. What was he planning to do? Part of her wanted to resist, to refuse to go anywhere, but she’d seen the wildness in his eyes. His gun wasn’t for show. She’d no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

  They got back to the room.

  ‘They’ve tricked us!’ he shouted breathlessly, a panicked look on his face.

  ‘Scheisse!’ responded Joachim. ‘Tricked us how?’

  ‘It’s not fucking Lübeck. It’s bloody Rostock. I can tell by the Teepott at Warnemünde. You can see it from the bridge as clear as daylight. They’re taking us back to the Republic.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Holger. ‘Couldn’t Lübeck have a similar structure?’

  Müller decided to put them out of their misery. ‘I can assure you, we saw the Teepott.’

  ‘Shut up, police pig!’ shouted Dieter, suddenly releasing her from his grip. ‘OK, come on, you three – this way. Help me with this.’ Müller watched him gesture towards one of the boxes they’d brought all the way by sled, and then on to the icebreaker via the helicopter. For some reason, the Soviets had failed to check the boxes’ contents.

  ‘What do we do about them?’ asked Joachim, turning towards Müller and Tilsner.

  With one hand on the box handle, Dieter used the other to raise his pistol to the firing position. ‘They’ve outlived their usefulness.’

  Irma jumped in the way. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid. Look – there’s a key in the door there. We just lock them in.’

  With relief, Müller watched Dieter lower the gun. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  46

  Müller couldn’t help herself. She felt relieved. They might be in a locked room, but that was preferable to being in the full glare of the crew with a gun pointing at her head. And the fact that it was a locked room meant their inquiry – their case – was, in effect, over. If Irma, Dieter and their gang were planning to go back on the ice to try to reach Lübeck, good luck to them. With the snow clouds having cleared, they wouldn’t get there. The police helicopter Müller had seen hovering near the coast would ensure that.

  Tilsner seemed to have other ideas. She wondered what he was doing, given his hands were scrabbling down the back of his trousers. He fished something out and threw it towards her.

  Instinctively, she caught it – then remembered where it had been, and wished she hadn’t. It was one of the spare Makarov magazines he’d taken from the Prora barracks at the start of all this. Clearly any search the Soviets had carried out on her deputy hadn’t included his more intimate orifices. He held the other in his hand, and was in the process of loading it into his empty pistol. She got hers from her jacket pocket and – ignoring for a moment where the magazine had spent the last few hours – proceeded to copy him. She didn’t have time to ask why, if Tilsner had the magazines secreted away this whole time, he hadn’t used them earlier.

  ‘We need to find those fuckers,’ he said.

  ‘OK. But first we have to get out of here. Any ideas? If we were in a movie, we’d shoot off the lock. But as we know from our police training, that rarely works in real life.’

  She watched him kneel down by the door, and peer into the keyhole.

  ‘Aha! Luckily for us, the stupid fuckers have left the key in the lock.’

  He got the butt end of his Makarov, and smashed it against the glass of the door’s window. It bounced off. ‘Scheisse! It must be reinforced.’

  He scanned round the room. In the corner was some sort of metal box, covered in dirty black grease.

  ‘Ah. As I thought. I suspected this was the engineers’ room – and this is their toolbox. And—’ he theatrically drew out a huge spanner, then pretended to stagger under its weight ‘—like most things on ships, it’s supersized, with supersize tools. Mind yourself.’ He pivoted the giant metal tool behind his back, and launched it into the glass. With a splintering crash, it gave way. Tilsner knocked out the rest of the glass out to avoid cutting himself, then reached for the key, pulled it out and brought it round to their side of the lock.

  ‘You looked like a professional burglar for a moment there,’ joked Müller.

  ‘That’s nearer the truth than you’ll ever know,’ he replied, as he turned the key, and they were free.

  ‘Up to the bridge!’ shouted Müller. ‘We might be able to see what’s going on and where they’ve got to.’

  *

  When they reached the bridge, Müller realised something had gone horribly wrong. The captain looked ashen-faced, and was barking orders in Russian to the crew, at the same time as trying to deal with angry instructions over the radio.

  Müller knew she would have to test her schoolgirl Russian once more. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asked.

  ‘Those East German criminal yobs have shot one of my men,’ she hurriedly translated for Tilsner.

  ‘Ask him where?’

  She didn’t need to translate, as the captain understood enough German.

  ‘Down on Deck 10.’

  ‘What’s there?’ asked Müller.

  ‘The generators, the turbines . . . ’

  Tilsner had got the gist of the Russian. Turbiny wasn’t so difficult. ‘The shitting reactors. They’re there too, aren’t they?’

  ‘Reactory! Da, da!’

  Müller, in a panic, briefly glanced out of the bridge’s viewing window. They weren’t on their way to Rostock. They’d already arrived. She had a sudden horrible premonition of what Dieter was up to.

  47

  Stasi HQ, Normannenstraße, East Berlin

  1200 hours, 2 January 1979

  ‘Have you heard, Comrade Minister?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard, Jäger. Heads will roll because of this. It looks like they’re trying to take control of the ship’s nuclear reactors. I’ve got to go to an emergency meeting of the State Council any minute now. The Soviets are furious. How did you let this happen, Jäger? How in God’s name did you let this happen? What have they got with them? I know you said they’d stolen guns – that’s self-evident in that they’ve shot dead a Soviet crewman. Anything else? And you’d better be honest with me here, Jäger.’

  ‘I’m afraid there are two boxes’ worth of high explosives missing from the Prora People’s Army arsenal, Comrade Minister.’

  ‘Scheisse! It gets worse, doesn’t it? You incompetent idiot. Why didn’t we know this before? I’ve told the powers that be in the Soviet High Command that all they have with them is semi-automatic weapons and pistols. That’s bad enough. But at least they were confident that wouldn’t be enough to damage the reactors. But two boxes of high explosives? That’s enough to blow the reactors and the whole fucking ship out of the water. It will be an international incident the like of which the Republic has never known. Never mind that Rostock, our most important port and one of our biggest cities, could be contaminated by what – in effect – will be one great massive nuclear dirty bomb.’

  48

  The frozen Ostsee

  2 January 1979

  Müller clattered after Tilsner down the metal stairs, deeper into the bowels of the ship, down and down, missi
ng stairs and crashing against walls in their haste.

  Once they were at Deck 10, she frantically looked for the notices in Russian to show them where the reactor room was. All she could see was a door sealed with a giant wheel lock – as though they were in a submarine, rather than a merchant vessel. But the notice on the door in Russian was the giveaway.

  WARNING! DO NOT ENTER UNLESS WEARING

  PROTECTIVE CLOTHING!

  Tilsner ignored it and began to turn the wheel.

  The door led into a giant chamber, full of hissing steam and the clanking of metal. They crossed the threshold, crouching, guns at the ready, scanning to see if they could get a visual on the construction soldiers. They moved along a metal walkway, with a single guard rail between them and a twenty-metre drop to the bowels of the ship. To their side was a huge metal structure, which Müller could only speculate contained the reactors themselves.

  They scrambled onwards, Müller’s head lighthousing from side to side, trying to see where Irma, Dieter and the others were.

  ‘Scheisse!’ she heard Tilsner curse under his breath.

  Her eyes were drawn to what he’d found.

  The body of a crewman. Was this the man the captain had been talking about, or had Dieter and his gang killed again?

  With every passing minute, the chances of Irma facing the death penalty grew exponentially.

  Then a shot rang out.

  Müller flattened herself to the floor of the gangway. Ahead of her, Tilsner had done the same.

  She looked down in the direction the bullet had been fired from. There they were, some twenty metres below, at the other side of the reactor casing. They were gathered round something with wires leading from it.

  ‘Stay right there and don’t move!’ shouted Dieter. ‘This can all end peacefully – but only if you agree to our demands.’

  ‘We’re not negotiating!’ yelled Tilsner. ‘We don’t negotiate with criminals.’

  Another shot, hitting the steel plate above them, the ringing from the ricochets echoing in Müller’s ears.

  ‘Just be quiet, Werner,’ she hissed. ‘It’s not the time for macho bravado. I’ll do the talking.’ Raising her voice, but keeping her head down, she shouted: ‘We’re listening! What is it you want?’

  ‘We want safe passage. Otherwise we’ll blow everyone – including ourselves – sky high. We’ve nothing to lose.’

  On that last point, Müller knew Dieter was correct. He might have forced the others into this last desperate gamble, but now they’d done it, there really were no alternatives. The Republic, and the Soviets, either gave in to their demands – or they stormed the vessel, at huge risk to the civilian population. The option of persuading them to give themselves up via Irma and Holger had failed. They would know that. The death penalty for all of them was a certainty. By judicial process, or more likely via a carefully aimed Stasi or People’s Army bullet.

  ‘Safe passage where?’ yelled Müller.

  ‘To Lübeck Bay. To the BRD side of the shipping channel in Lübeck Bay. The captain needs to head that way down the Ostsee anyway, and then out to the North Sea via the Kattegatt strait. It’s the best solution for all of us.’

  Müller wasn’t convinced she would be able to persuade the authorities in the Republic to agree to that. She wasn’t even sure who in the Republic she should be trying to persuade. This went higher than Jäger. Higher than Reiniger. Higher, perhaps, even than Honecker and Mielke.

  She had no doubt the request would go all the way up to the Kremlin.

  She had no idea how they would react.

  But she would do all in her power to try to convince them that this way was the only way to avoid bloodshed and potentially devastating nuclear contamination of a city – never mind saving her own and Tilsner’s lives and those of the Russian crew.

  49

  Up on the bridge, the captain seemed somewhat relieved when Müller claimed they had the situation under control, and that the armed terrorists were being pinned down by her own officer. It was a partial lie, of course, but if this was going to end without bloodshed – and them all being blown to smithereens – then she needed him on her side. The worst thing would be if Stasi special agents or People’s Army special forces stormed the vessel.

  Via the ship’s radio, she was patched through to an incident room that had been set up in Rostock. She was unsurprised by the voice at the other end of the line: Jäger.

  ‘This is an utter mess, Karin. Berlin is leaning on me. Moscow is leaning on Berlin. We need a solution.’

  ‘I think I may have one, Comrade Oberst. The terrorists want safe passage to the West.’

  ‘We can never give them that. We do not negotiate with terrorists, counter-revolutionaries, fascists and criminals. This gang ticks many of those boxes.’

  Müller glanced up at the ship’s captain. He raised an eyebrow. He might not know much German, but he could hear from the tone of Jäger’s voice that things weren’t going well.

  ‘I’m not talking about some sort of high-profile spy swap at the Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier or the state border with the BRD, Comrade Oberst. This would simply be a pragmatic solution to meet their demands without bringing embarrassment to the Republic, and avoid a potentially cataclysmic event.’

  ‘Don’t overplay your hand, Comrade Major. We’ve taken scientific advice. There is no way they can set off an uncontrolled nuclear reaction by attempting to blow up a ship’s nuclear reactor with a bit of dynamite. At best they will blow themselves up, at worst there will be some minor radioactive contamination. We’re not talking Hiroshima or Nagasaki here. We’re not talking about starting a Third World War.’

  Müller gave a heavy sigh. She saw the captain look up to the heavens. He, at least, seemed to be on her side. He probably wanted every East German in sight off his ship. ‘With respect, Comrade Oberst, you’re not here at the sharp end. They’ve already killed one crew member. They’re desperate. Whatever advice the scientists have given you, do you want the ship blown up just to prove a point?’

  She could imagine the fury on Jäger’s face. She didn’t care. Müller knew she had to win this argument. She had to persuade him – but that would only be the start of the battle of wills. He would have to persuade his paymasters in Berlin – as far up as Mielke and his ilk.

  ‘What exactly are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m suggesting we humour them, to some extent. Meet their demands, to some extent.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The Arktika’s scheduled voyage takes it through the Ostsee towards the North Sea anyway. When we get near Lübeck Bay, we allow them out onto the ice. Whatever happens after that, doesn’t really matter. That’s the end of your major incident.’

  ‘Berlin and Moscow will never accept letting them go without paying the price for attempted terrorism and murder. Two murders now, let me remind you. Frau Richter and this Soviet crewman.’

  ‘Well, at least let me allow the captain to leave Rostock. Once we’re underway again, I’ll be able to convince them that we’re meeting their demands.’

  ‘It’ll mean sending what is – in effect – a floating nuclear bomb up the Baltic towards the BRD and Denmark.’

  ‘I thought you’d been advised there was no way this could result in a full-blown nuclear explosion, whatever happened? Anyway, Comrade Oberst, if they do their worst – surely it’s better it happens in the middle of the Ostsee than in the middle of Rostock.’

  ‘Very well, Karin. I will make that case to Berlin. I doubt they will agree . . . but, who knows? You realise you and Tilsner will have to stay on the vessel and see this through to its conclusion, don’t you?’

  Müller thought again of her little family back in Berlin. Nevertheless, she knew what Jäger said was correct. She and Tilsner had to stay and see things out.

  ‘Of course I do, Comrade Oberst. I take my duties in trying to ensure this situation has a peaceful outcome with the utmost seriousness.’

  ‘I
t can’t just be peaceful, Karin. It has to be lawful, too. That means the killers must face justice one way or another. I need to be completely clear on that point.’

  50

  As soon as Dieter – his wild eyes madder than ever – ushers us down into the depths of the ship with the explosives, I know this isn’t going to turn out well.

  ‘This is madness!’ I scream at him.

  ‘Shut up, Irma!’ He waves his gun at me, and I’ve no doubt that if I defy him he won’t hesitate to use it. ‘I’ve told you, you’re either with us or against us. Which is it to be?’ I know then, seeing the viciousness of his reaction, that there is no future for us. The dreams, the hopes of a new life in the West already soured before we’ve even got there. Although the way it is going, I don’t believe we’ll ever get there.

  ‘Don’t bully her,’ says Holger.

  ‘Dieter’s right!’ yells Joachim. ‘I said we should have never brought a girl along. She’s been a liability from the start.’

  Dieter stands at the top of the stairwell – sharing the weight of the explosives box with Joachim. ‘Look,’ he says to me more calmly. ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper, but we are in a desperate situation. I don’t want a death sentence conferred on me by one of the Republic’s show trials. I’m sure you don’t either. You and Holger stay here if you want. Give yourselves up if you want. But mark my words, that will be the end result. If you come with me, follow my advice, you’ll still have a chance of fulfilling your dream and getting to the West.’

  I lower my head and give a slight nod. He’s right of course. Everything’s gone too far now.

  *

  It’s when we get into the reactor room that things go wrong.

  We ignore the warning about protective clothing, even though all of us can understand it. We have done Russian at school. But there’s a crewman on guard at the entrance. You’d have thought they’d have armed guards, but he isn’t armed. He can see we are, but he still tries to stop us.