Sektion 20

by Paul Dowswell

Alex stumbled downstairs, past the bewildered stares of the other residents. Some of them asked what had happened, but he felt too stunned to reply. Frank had to hold Alex tight as his son was unsteady on his feet.

  They waited in the apartment lobby, oblivious to the comings and goings around them. In a few minutes the ambulance arrived. Medics came and gave Alex a blanket and the two of them sat underneath it in the flashing blue and red lights of the emergency vehicles that now crowded the street.

  Frank had not hugged Alex like that since he was ten or eleven. It seemed simultaneously years ago and only yesterday. They waited in a daze for the medics to stabilise the wounded stranger. Whoever he was, he had saved them from Kohl.

  While they were waiting for the ambulance to leave to take Alex to the nearby hospital, Frank remembered the dossier. He went up to the apartment but it was now full of police and detectives carrying out forensic work, and they wouldn’t let him in. Hübner came out and assured him they already had the dossier wrapped in an evidence bag.

  ‘Once the ambulance has left, then we will have to take you down to the police station. But use the phone here to call home first, if you like. Let your family know what’s happened.’

  Frank made a quick call home. When Gretchen came on the line, the whole room heard her cry out with relief. He wanted to cry too, but he felt embarrassed surrounded by all these police people.

  Hübner came down with him to wait with Alex. When the ambulance men called over for Alex, Hübner put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about your father,’ he said. ‘We know what’s been going on.’

  Gretchen and Geli arrived at the hospital within half an hour of Frank’s call. The doctor told them Alex was in shock and dehydrated, with bruises on his arm and wrists, and abrasions on his mouth. They would keep him in overnight but he was certain he would be fit to be discharged after breakfast the next morning.

  Alex was especially pleased to have his family around him. Both of them stayed with him through the night. He slept fitfully, waking with a start several times, dreaming that he was back in the chair.

  An ambulance took the three of them home the next morning. They immediately switched on the radio to listen to the news. A Red Army Faction terrorist, Ronald Sommer, had been arrested after having been shot by police in Kreuzberg last night. He was still in a critical condition. There was no mention of Kohl or the Ostermanns.

  Hübner came round later that morning and they were all delighted to see Frank amble in after him.

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Frank. ‘They’re not going to hold me.’ He seemed years younger and smiled quite naturally – something none of the family had seen since their arrival in West Berlin.

  Hübner called for their attention. ‘I have a few things to tell you but first we have to search your apartment.’ A small team of technicians arrived. They found five minute listening devices concealed around the apartment, and photographed each in its hiding place before removing it. The Stasi had done an extremely professional job, explained Hübner. It was no wonder the Ostermanns couldn’t find the bugs when they looked for them.

  When the technicians left, Hübner stayed behind. First he asked them not to talk to the newspapers. This was a delicate matter, he said, and they wanted the enemy to know as little as possible about what had happened the night before. He also made it clear that if the story did come out, they would have to prosecute Frank Ostermann for industrial espionage.

  For now, charges against Frank would be dropped. He had given them a thorough account of his actions in West Berlin and had obviously been acting under extreme duress. The fibre optics file had not been lost. The Stasi had not been able to make use of it. No actual harm had been done. His department were currently scrutinising the records of all Siemens employees in the West Berlin office, and interviewing them, to try to ascertain who else was working for the East Germans.

  Siemens were not so forgiving. The BfV had explained that Frank was being blackmailed and that no details of their dossier had actually been taken to the East. But they had insisted on pressing charges, until the BfV had told them it was essential to keep the whole operation secret. It made everyone in the West look bad.

  Kohl had escaped. For now, explained Hübner, the family could stay in their apartment. It might be expedient to move them out of Berlin where the Stasi could not abduct them so easily. But Hübner thought it unlikely this would happen. Through no fault of his own, Frank’s cover had been blown. He had acted as they had instructed. This was an operation that had come to an end. His hunch was that they would leave him and his family alone.

  Erich Kohl returned to Normannenstrasse to file his report. He wondered, a little queasily, how far he would be held responsible for the failure of this operation. He noted in his account how he had been able to get Frank Ostermann to steal the Siemens dossier and how everything had gone to plan until the intervention of the mysterious gunman. West Berlin radio news indicated the man was Ronald Sommer, a Red Army Faction terrorist. He was known to the International Sektion at Normannenstrasse.

  Theissen called him into his office that morning for a thorough debriefing. ‘Our Red Army Faction contacts tell us Sommer was acting alone,’ he told Kohl. ‘His girlfriend had been killed in a shoot-out with the police just before the February arrests. Sommer still believed it was you who had betrayed them.’

  Kohl cursed. ‘I knew I had hit him because he stopped chasing me. I should have gone back to finish him off.’

  ‘He may not live.’

  Theissen was being unusually cold with him, Kohl noticed. He suspected this would mean an end to his West German operations. It was a shame. He would miss what the West had to offer.

  As Kohl opened the door to leave, Theissen spoke softly but clearly and gave a little wave. ‘Sieg Heil, Herr Schneider.’

  Kohl’s blood froze in his veins.

  Chapter 36

  The last thing Erich Kohl saw as he was frogmarched from his office was the smirk on his secretary’s face. He had been several days now without a visitor to his basement cell and had nothing to do but sit in these sparse white walls and contemplate his fate. Would they despatch him with a single shot to the back of the neck – a blinding flash of agony and then eternal darkness. Or would they use the guillotine? He’d heard your head lived on for a few seconds, maybe even a minute after it had been cut off. He wondered how much it would hurt, falling from the lunette into the tin bucket.

  Theissen had often mentioned the fate of Oleg Penkovsky – the Soviet Colonel caught spying for the West. His KGB colleagues had told Theissen he had been fed into a basement furnace, feet first. What a fine example to the rest of them, Theissen would chuckle, then remark that he hated traitors almost as much as he hated Nazis. Maybe Theissen had something equally imaginative lined up for him?

  Ilse Grau arrived at Comrade Minister Erich Mielke’s open door on the top floor of Building Number 1 with his breakfast. She was relieved to hear no answer when she knocked. She peeked round the door. His chair was empty. Sometimes the Comrade Minister would be absent for ten or fifteen minutes at that time of the morning. As instructed she proceeded to place his eggs, bread and coffee on the side of his desk. She also cast a quick eye on the documents that lay before her. One particularly caught her eye concerning Unterleutnant Erich Kohl – not least because Mielke had scrawled LIQUIDATE boldly at the bottom. She had no time to read more, but she knew Kohl. He was one of the more unpleasant customers at the canteen. She also knew a man in Blaschkoallee who paid her generously for any information she had gleaned from her day to day work at Normannenstrasse.

  Alex had found Hübner’s reassurances compelling, so he was acutely disappointed that Frank and Gretchen decided it would be safer for them all to leave Berlin and go to West Germany. Alex and Geli both argued forcefully that they should stay. ‘We’re settled here, we like it. And you like your job, Mutti,’ said Geli.

  ‘And it’s Christmas,’ said Alex. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to s
pend Christmas here, without another upheaval. All those strangers in a new town to get to know.’

  Frank was especially surprised that they were so keen to stay. ‘Alex, you’ve been kidnapped. They said they could have you back in the East in an hour. Doesn’t that worry you?’

  Alex shrugged. ‘Hübner’s right. They’re done with us. I want to stay here.’

  But Frank and Gretchen were determined to go.

  A few days before they intended to leave, Franz Hübner paid them another visit. Alex was slightly irritated to see him as he was glued to the television watching the Apollo 17 moon landing and the American astronauts’ excursions on their extraordinary Lunar Rover. Alex liked the fact that one of the crew, Harrison Schmitt, had a German name.

  But Hübner had some good news. He told them the BfV understood that Kohl had been taken off Western Operations. He was hazy about what had happened to him, but he let the Ostermanns know that he certainly wouldn’t be bothering them again. Besides, with Frank’s cover blown, any further harassment would be purely vindictive. He was sure the Stasi had more important priorities for their agents in the West. It was enough to persuade Frank and Gretchen to stay.

  Alex went to bed that evening feeling pleased. He did not want another upheaval in his life. But he found himself awake again in the early hours, thinking about Sophie Kirsch, and how she had betrayed him. Of course Frank had told him all about the Stasi and Kohl and the Siemens job. But Alex couldn’t figure out why the Stasi would deliberately set them up to escape and then put their lives in danger with a shoot-out at the border. As his father said, Normannenstrasse was a vast place. Maybe one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing. Sophie could have tipped off one department, who arranged the ambush, without the other lot – the ones Frank was working with – knowing about it. He’d give anything to know what had really happened.

  In the dead of night, when the traffic was quiet, he could still hear the guard dogs howling by the Wall. One day, he promised himself, he would move away from this scar on the landscape. The future had no boundaries.

  Chapter 37

  May 1973

  Sophie Kirsch found the wide avenues by Treptower Park quite disconcerting. The occasional car that sped past startled her in a way it never used to. She supposed that feeling uncomfortable in the great outdoors was an inevitable consequence of ten months’ confinement in the Youth Detention Wing at Hohenschönhausen. It was a warm spring day but she would not dream of going out without a hat. It would take several months for her prison haircut to grow out.

  They did not usually shave the heads of the girls – that was too reminiscent of photographs in their history textbooks of prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps. But there had been a particularly tenacious outbreak of lice in the prison and drastic measures were called for. Actually, lice had been the least of Sophie’s problems. The frequent isolation had been the worst part of her incarceration. Sophie had tried to keep sane by attempting to remember poems and stories. After days alone, broken only by the arrival of meals pushed through her cell door, she discovered she was able to recall whole pieces of music in great detail. It was almost like listening to them. She missed her cello and she missed her grandma’s contraband records. But most of all she missed Alex Ostermann and the thought of what had happened to him was a daily torment.

  The Stasi had come for her three days after Alex had told her he was going. All the gawpers in her apartment block had twitched their net curtains as she was taken away, and her parents had gone white with shame.

  The knock at the door had come just as Sophie was scanning through the local paper. She read, with mounting alarm, that the Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier had been breached and two human traffickers, Albert Metzger and Heinz Amsel, had been shot dead. She was sure Alex and his family would have been caught up in all that. Had they been killed? Were they in prison? How would she ever find out? She remembered too clearly how Holger Vogel’s family had been treated when he went missing.

  ‘Why have you not reported the intentions of the border violator Alex Ostermann?’ asked her interrogators as soon as she arrived in police custody. Hadn’t it been made transparently clear to her that the only reason she had remained at liberty following the incident at the House of Ministries was so she could provide intelligence on negative-decadents at Treptower Polytechnic School. Sophie stuck to her story. She had no idea Alex Ostermann was going. She wanted to ask what had happened to him, but she was fearful of betraying herself with a slip of the tongue. Besides, whatever they told her would not be true.

  In the weeks since her initial arrest at the House of Ministries, Sophie had been making an effort to please them. But she had been careful to say nothing that would make Alex’s life more difficult. She told them his trip to Hohenschönhausen had shaken him badly and provoked a dramatic reappraisal of his life. In his conversations with her, she imparted, he showed every indication of wanting to reform and become a useful member of the Republik. To keep them happy, she occasionally fed them titbits about Anton, and his disrespect for the Socialist Unity Party and the teachers at school. She hated herself for doing it, but told herself what she told them was harmless enough. She didn’t know Anton was of no interest to the Stasi. He worked for them too.

  Sophie spent her time in Hohenschönhausen wondering how she was going to make contact with Alex when she got out. If he was still alive. Maybe they’d all been murdered and the newspaper was keeping quiet about that? After a few months, another thought occurred to her. Alex had confided in her just before they went. It was too unlikely, surely, that the incident with Albert Metzger and Heinz Amsel would not have been connected with the Ostermanns. How did the Stasi know they were going? Would Alex think it was her who had betrayed them?

  Posting a letter was out of the question. Even if she knew where to send it, she was sure the Stasi would read it before the end of the day. Then she remembered Grandma Ostermann. She had gone to see her once with him. If she could remember where she lived, perhaps Sophie could persuade her to take a message out for her.

  And now, here she was, three days out of prison, trying to remember which side street of Treptower Park would take her to Alex’s grandma’s apartment. The corner of Klingerstrasse looked familiar so she walked down it to Leiblstrasse, and there it was. The dingy white block with the balconies. His grandma, she remembered, lived just above the main entrance. It seemed half a lifetime away, when they had last been there.

  Sophie walked up the red lino staircase and, heart in mouth, knocked twice on the door. She heard shuffling and a bolt being drawn back. The door opened a crack.

  ‘Ja?’ came an impatient voice she recognised at once. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Frau Ostermann, it’s me, Sophie. Alex’s friend. Can I talk to you?’

  ‘Go away,’ she said and closed the door. Frank and Gretchen had told her they thought she might have betrayed them.

  Sophie leaned towards the door and begged. ‘Please. I promise I will only keep you a moment.’

  Grandma Ostermann relented. The door opened again.

  ‘Can I come in?’ asked Sophie.

  They stood in the hall. The apartment was fusty and needed a good dusting. ‘Are you managing OK without Frank and Gretchen?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Grandma impatiently.

  ‘I want to know what happened to Alex and his family?’ Sophie blurted out.

  Grandma Ostermann was instantly wary. ‘I know you are not to be trusted.’

  Sophie’s face lit up. They were alive; they must be. There was obviously no bad news. And ‘I don’t know’ would have meant she had not heard and there had been no contact. She must have been able to talk to them. Otherwise why would she say that?

  Sophie took her hand. She could barely contain her glee. Tears were brimming in her eyes. She was grinning madly. ‘Grandma Ostermann, I will ask you no more questions!’ She pulled a plain white envelope from her pocket. She was so frightened
of the Stasi finding out what she intended to do she had not addressed it. ‘Can I leave a letter here for you to take to Alex?’

  Grandma Ostermann was confused. She looked at the joy and relief in Sophie’s face and her hostility melted a little. She liked to think she was a fine judge of human behaviour and unless Sophie Kirsch was a world-class actor, she seemed genuinely elated that Alex was still alive.

  But she still wasn’t certain. ‘They think you betrayed them, you know,’ she said.

  Sophie nodded. Her elation began to fade. ‘I feared as much but all I can do is swear to you I didn’t. I don’t know what I can do to make you, or them, believe me. But can I ask you . . .’

  Grandma Ostermann put a hand firmly on hers. ‘No more questions.’ She shook her head. ‘Why have you not come to see me before?’ she asked.

  Sophie pulled her hat from her head, revealing her prison haircut. ‘I’ve just come out of Hohenschönhausen.’

  Grandma Ostermann nodded, and squeezed Sophie’s hand. ‘Here is what we will do,’ she whispered. ‘Leave your message in my letter box in the hall. I may or may not pick it up.’ She winked as she spoke. ‘Now off you go.’

  Sophie almost skipped down the street back to her parents’ apartment where she had arranged to collect some clothes. She had not felt this happy since the night Alex had walked her home from Greifswalder Strasse. She hoped her letter would reach him. It was simple enough. She told Alex she thought of him often. She had just spent ten months in Hohenschönhausen but she was all right. Auntie Rosemarie had taken her in as her parents had disowned her. She did not want Alex to think she had betrayed him and maybe, one day, they would see each other again. But even if the letter never did reach him, Grandma Ostermann had accepted it. That could only mean one thing. They had got away.

  Three weeks later, Alex Ostermann returned home after midnight on the evening he finally got to see Led Zeppelin at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin. They played ‘Black Dog’ three numbers in and Alex thought he had died and gone to heaven. He sat down at the kitchen table to drink a small glass of milk, his ears still ringing from the volume of the concert, and took his beige concert ticket from his shirt pocket. It was tattered and damp with sweat, but Alex wanted to put it somewhere where he would never ever lose it. Among the usual domestic clutter on the table, his eyes alighted on a plain white envelope. His mother had written on it in pencil: Alex – Grandma brought this for you.