by David Young
Whether they needed it in this blanket of fog, Müller wasn’t convinced. Nevertheless, she followed his example, crouching behind a huge block of ice which shielded them from the bow of the ship. They turned their heads towards the ice, pulling the hoods of their camouflage jackets in on their faces. The fog itself provided excellent cover. But even if it lifted temporarily, she knew their camouflage suits would blend into the icy whiteness.
‘Here they come,’ said Tilsner, peeking over the top of the ice mound.
Müller couldn’t see anything through the murk. But she could hear the groaning of the cables, and the banging of the lifeboat against the metal sides of the ship, getting closer and closer.
Then, through the curtain of mist, they could see shadowy figures being helped out of the boat, onto the ice. For a few moments, they waited as Dieter and Irma’s gang readied their sled.
Soon the hum of the icebreaker’s engines increased in intensity.
Müller realised with horror the vessel was already moving again – all around her the sound of thunderous cracks, like a thousand bones being broken one by one.
‘Quick!’ Tilsner’s whisper was urgent. He dragged her away from the vessel, and the most perilous part of the ice sheet. Five metres, ten, then he shoved her down in the snow, lying flat alongside her.
Once her heartbeat slowed, Müller risked raising her head. The ghoul-like figures of Irma’s group had moved away in a panic with their sled to reach a safer part of the ice. They seemed to be ready now to start their journey – the journey they hoped and believed would see them free in the West in a matter of hours.
It would be a perilous one – for the fugitives, and for Müller and Tilsner.
One fall through the ice would kill.
One bullet from Dieter’s gun could pierce her heart.
And one false move with the explosives the gang still carried could send them plummeting to their deaths in the icy Baltic.
Was this pursuit of justice really worth it? Wouldn’t it have been better to refuse Jäger’s orders? To have demanded to be airlifted from the icebreaker, resigned her position, be reunited with her family and then slowly – somehow – to have rebuilt her life. And why couldn’t the border troops have done this final job? Why was it being left to two detectives from the Volkspolizei? She knew the answers. If anything went wrong, if this became an international incident, the blame could be directed at two rogue officers following suspects into the BRD’s territorial waters. The Republic could claim it wasn’t an official operation or an official decision.
It was too late to turn back. The icebreaker had gone. And in this foggy weather, there would be no helicopter airlift – not until it cleared, anyway.
They’d solved the crime. Now they had to bring the perpetrators to justice. Müller’s training and pride demanded it. But, if she had any choice in the matter, this would end without bloodshed.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure the choice would be hers to make.
She pulled her Makarov from her shoulder holster. Gestured to Tilsner to do the same.
The hunt was about to begin.
55
I panic as the icebreaker pulls away and the ice beneath us starts to shake and crack.
‘Quick, everyone!’ shouts Dieter. He’s pulling the sled off to the side, helped by Joachim. I try to run after them, but my bad ankle gives way.
‘Hurry up, Irma!’ he shouts, as though yelling at me will somehow make my leg better. He seems more concerned with his precious cargo of explosives and food than he is with me. Holger is more caring. He helps me to my feet and allows me to lean against him as we hobble away to where the ice is safer.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I’ll make sure you’re safe.’
I look down at his giant hands and I know I want them to protect me. To help me. To hold me.
The others have waited for us on a safer piece of the ice, but Dieter hardly spares me a glance. He seems to be staring at his feet. Then I see why.
The ice is melting. A thaw is on its way.
‘There’s no need to panic,’ says Holger, seeing the expressions of horror on Dieter and Joachim’s faces. ‘We just have to pick our way carefully to the shore.’ He seems to be taking over from Dieter, his voice authoritative. ‘And I think it’s too dangerous to keep dragging that heavy sled. We should abandon it. It’s slowing us down, and if we encounter a patch of thinner ice, it might cause it to collapse around us.’
‘No!’ shouts Dieter, that manic look in his eyes.
‘Why not?’ asks Holger. ‘The explosives have served their purpose. We need to abandon it before we get to the BRD coastline anyway, otherwise they’ll be arresting us, never mind the Republic’s Grenztruppen.’
Dieter appears to be about to argue, when suddenly a shout rings out from behind us through the fog.
‘Drop your weapons and hold your hands in the air!’ It’s Major Müller. Scheisse! ‘You’re all under arrest for the murders of Monika Richter and a Soviet seaman. Not to mention the attempted terrorism charges.’
Holger drops his gun. I don’t have one any more. We raise our hands above our heads.
Dieter and Joachim both raise an arm – but it’s their gun hands, holding loaded pistols.
I rush over to Dieter. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’ I try to grapple with his gun arm. He shoves me aside brutally. Then he fires towards the direction of the shout. Joachim copies him, like the faithful lapdog he is. I try to climb on Dieter’s back, but Holger pulls me away.
‘This way!’ he yells, running off and dragging me with him. ‘Get your hands above your head. Leave the idiots to it. We’ve got to save ourselves.’
I turn my head, see the flash from their pistols as Dieter and Joachim fire once more, as though they’re outlaws making their last stand. And I suppose they are.
Then I hear two more shots – this time from away to the side. I glance round again. Dieter and Joachim are both slumping in slow motion to the floor, like two trees felled by the same axe.
I try to loosen Holger’s grip. ‘We’ve got to go back and help them!’
‘No, Irma,’ he orders. ‘We need to get off the ice. Now.’
I peer into his eyes and look again at his meaty hands. And then I realise. It wasn’t Dieter who saved me, pulling me from the icy water under the remains of the pier in Sellin. A flashback of those hands pulling me out is burned on my brain. It was Holger.
He saved me then.
He wants to save me again – this time from myself.
And I realise I’m going to let him.
56
When the first shots rang out, Müller threw herself to the ice. Tilsner had done the same. That was when she noticed the snow on top was damper than before. Scheisse. It was beginning to melt. She didn’t have time to compute in her head what that meant, except that it was bad news.
She was just about to shout a second warning to Dieter’s gang, when two of them fired again. The bullet thudded into the ice a few metres from them. There would be no second warning now.
She raised her head briefly above the ice block they were sheltering behind, got Dieter’s head in her sights, and squeezed the Makarov’s trigger.
His head was thrown back by the impact, then his body slowly crumpled.
Alongside him, Müller could see his friend collapse almost in a stereo effect. Tilsner must have fired at the same time.
Both were trained police marksmen.
Both had hit their targets.
When she was sure that Dieter and Joachim were lifeless – or at least wouldn’t be firing back any time soon, she crept forwards towards their bodies. When she reached them, she felt their pulses.
Nothing.
She looked up, expecting to see Tilsner alongside her. He wasn’t there. Instead, he was disappearing into the mist. ‘I’ll get the others!’ he shouted over his shoulder.
‘Wait, Werner,’ she ordered. But he was already gone.
She rummaged in her poc
kets for the small camera she carried with her for recording crime scenes. They had completed fifty per cent of Jäger’s required target. Müller hadn’t wanted it to be this way, but Dieter and Joachim had defied her order to give up their weapons and hold up their hands. They had fired at her and Tilsner, twice.
Before she took the photographs she would need as evidence – in case helicopters from the Republic were unable to recover the bodies – she altered the scene slightly. She’d learnt things from Jäger in their last case. Both of the young men’s weapons had dislodged from their hands as they’d fallen.
She put her gloves on, and rearranged the guns back in their hands – how it had been when she and Tilsner fired the fatal shots.
This was a recreation of the truth. Not a perversion of it, as Jäger favoured.
She lifted the camera and clicked the shutter to record the scene.
Whether the Republic would ever publish these photos as a warning to other would-be Republikflüchtlinge, she didn’t know. Perhaps the authorities would show the proof to the young men’s relatives, how they met their deaths as criminals resisting arrest.
Or perhaps everything might get hushed up.
She didn’t care. She needed the evidence to protect her job. Her own family.
Should she try to follow in Tilsner’s direction? Should she try to track the other two down?
Then she looked down at the melting ice beneath her feet.
57
We know we are in a race against time to get off the ice before it transforms into a raging sea. This might have felt like the Arctic – a Soviet nuclear icebreaker named the Arktika had played a central role in our dramatic escape – but this is the Ostsee. Only once in my lifetime has it been frozen like this. I was two or three years old and can barely remember – and as Oma loves to insist, this winter is not – so far – as cold. But now it is returning to its natural state.
Water. Square kilometre after square kilometre of open sea.
And already there is a layer of it on top of the ice, and we are sloshing through slush – hoping to God the ice is still thick enough to hold.
We’re concentrating on going as fast as we can, despite my injured leg. The icebreaker has long gone – the option of giving ourselves up and being saved that way has disappeared. Holger would have more chance of saving himself, of reaching the West, if he abandoned me. I can see in his eyes he’s not going to do that. Because every time he looks at me, every time he looks with concern at my ankle, I see love there.
Perhaps being in extremes sharpens your senses. Even before he’d fired those two shots I’d seen Dieter for what he was. A hothead who cared more about grand gestures of defiance than taking care of me, his girlfriend. With Holger it’s different. We haven’t declared our feelings for each other. To all intents and purposes we are just two acquaintances.
But I know he will not leave me out here.
We will die together, or survive together.
And then we see him, camouflaged like us. Gaining on us.
We know that this is it. That we’ve come so close to reaching freedom, but it will be snatched away.
Holger stops. He’s accepted our fate. He holds me close – hugging me.
‘Leave me,’ I whisper. ‘You could still outrun him. It can’t be many kilometres further.’
He shakes his head and hugs me tighter. ‘I’m not leaving you, Irma.’
Those words, of course, I could have taken at face value. But in that instant, I realise they mean more than that.
He never wants to leave me, and I never want to leave his side.
I want those strong, industrial hands to hold me for the rest of my life – even if that life is short.
The policeman’s shouting at us. He’s too far away. We can’t make out what he’s saying. We put our hands above our heads again, assuming that’s what he wants before he arrests us and takes us back to the Republic. If any of us survive that long.
But as he takes shape and emerges from the fog, his shouted words take on more clarity.
‘Run, run!’ he’s shouting. He’s overtaking us, not stopping to arrest us. I see that he – like us – has a white bedsheet wrapped around him to blend in with the ice that is fast turning to slush. ‘Run and save yourselves!’ he yells over his shoulder. ‘There’s not much time left!’
Then I have a horrible thought. Where is his partner?
‘What about Major Müller?’ I shout. He doesn’t hear, carries on running. ‘What will happen to her? Surely you have to help her?’ But he’s gone. Either he hasn’t heard, or he doesn’t care. He’s seen his opportunity and – like us – wants to make sure if he gets to dry land, it will be in the West, not the East.
I suddenly realise he’s one of us.
A Republikflüchtling.
An escaper.
And he’s leaving her behind to die.
58
By almost bursting her lungs and running as fast as she could, hoping her pounding legs didn’t break through what remained of the ice, Müller realised she had caught them up.
In the gloom ahead, she could make out three figures. One in the mid-distance, two further on. The single figure must be Tilsner – the others Irma and Holger – and Tilsner seemed to be catching them up. Müller renewed her efforts, trying to run faster even though she was already gasping for breath.
She didn’t want her deputy to have the sole honour of making their arrest.
Then something odd happened, and she couldn’t really believe what she was seeing. The figure she assumed was Tilsner had carried on past the other two – he didn’t appear to be making an arrest. And – like them – it looked like he was covered in a white bed sheet as camouflage.
She saw the shock of red hair peeking from the sheet covering one of the nearer pair. Now she knew. It was Irma.
She raised the gun. Brought the shock of red hair into her sights.
‘Irma Behrendt!’ she cried. ‘Stop there and raise your hands! Otherwise I won’t hesitate to shoot!’
She thought at that point, Tilsner would turn back. Help her make the arrest. Instead, he’d disappeared into the fog in the direction of the BRD’s coastline. What the hell was he up to?
Her focus returned to the girl. Irma had ignored her warning; she’d tucked her hair back under her own bed sheet and she – too – had broken into a run, with – presumably – Holger alongside her.
‘This is your last warning, Irma! Don’t to this to yourself, to your family! Stop or I’ll shoot!’
The girl continued running.
Müller’s finger wrapped more tightly around the freezing cold metal of the trigger.
And began to squeeze.
But a millisecond before she pulled the Makarov’s trigger, the pair stopped, turned round and held their hands above their heads.
Panting, she drew level with them, still aiming the gun at Irma’s body.
‘You’re both under arrest,’ she said. ‘We stay here and we’ll radio for a helicopter to airlift us back to the Republic.’
She could hardly look Irma in the eye. She knew she was destroying the girl’s dreams of a new life – knew she was sending them both back to a jail sentence, or worse. That was if any of them got off the ice.
Then she had a sudden realisation.
She couldn’t radio for a rescue helicopter.
Tilsner had the radio in his rucksack on his back – and he was nowhere to be seen. Holger and Irma wouldn’t be going to jail – and she wouldn’t be getting back to her family in the Hauptstadt. She would never be able to hold or kiss Jannika, Johannes or Helga again. Without a radio, she couldn’t even send them a last goodbye message.
They were going to die out here on the ice.
The layer of water now slopping at her feet told her there was no other possible outcome.
59
When I see the panic in her eyes, I know something has gone badly wrong.
She’s not making any attempt to arrest us.
Instead her shoulders slump; she falls to the ground amongst the slushy surface. What the hell’s wrong with her? ‘Quick,’ I say. ‘Get your radio out. Call for help! We haven’t got much time. I don’t care if you arrest us. We want to live.’
But she’s shaking her head. ‘He’s got the radio.’
Then I realise, she can’t help us. She looks at me with tear-soaked eyes.
‘Run, Irma – run, both of you – save yourselves. You’ve still time.’
I try to grab hold of her, to drag her with us, but Holger pulls me away.
‘We’ve got to save her!’ I shout.
‘I can’t carry both of you,’ he says. ‘She’ll have to make her own decisions.’
Finally, I let him drag me away.
Because I realise Major Karin Müller – who once saved my life by rescuing me in the Harz mountains – doesn’t want to be saved. She is too loyal a servant to the Republic to try and reach dry land by running to the West like us.
Holger is panting, and I’m half-hopping, half-running with him.
Finally, we have almost reached the West. I see the shapes of houses on the shoreline, emerging from the fog.
I take one look back, at the figure sitting on what remains of the ice, her head in her hands.
I cannot understand the choice she has made.
To choose to die, to deny her children a mother, rather than be seen as a traitor to a country that calls itself a Republic, but is in reality little more than a prison of shame.
60
Tilsner was almost bringing his knees up to the horizontal with each stride, frantically trying to reach the shore in time.
This had been planned, of course, ever since they were sent from the Hauptstadt up to the frozen Ostsee coast. He didn’t know whether the opportunity would present itself, but he wanted to be ready if it did. When he was marooned on the ice island all those hours ago, before they were picked up by the Arktika, he’d thought he might get his chance.
