by Ian Slater
The East Berlin parades could be seen by hundreds of West German residents, mainly Turkish Gastarbeiters, or “guest workers,” looking through the holes made by souvenir hunters and down over the remnants of the Wall from apartment balconies in Kreuzberg, the suburb an island of foreigners within the island of West Berlin. It was here Chin now headed within twenty minutes of landing at Tempelhof. The cab driver, like the older Insulaners, “islanders,” of West Berlin, had heard all the noise before, whenever the Communists wanted to whip up an anti-West rally.
Kreuzberg was a suburb which had always been avoided by most West Germans, not because of its proximity to the old Wall but because for most West Germans, Kreuzberg belonged to the Turks who had come in their thousands after the Wall had gone up in ‘61 and who, though they liked deutsch marks, did not like what they saw as West German decadence. The Turks were not so much unfriendly as separate. It suited them and it suited the KCIA, for in the netherworld of the only West German city exempted from the drafts, in order to attract businessmen and young workers, Kreuzberg had also become a haven for dropouts and squatters. It was good cover.
As they entered the outskirts of Kreuzberg, Chin could still hear bands less than a mile away and the tinny sounds of loudspeakers. It seemed as if someone was being denounced and then a band would strike up, but because of a wall of trees, he could not actually see what was going on, and this put him on edge.
When he arrived at the row house, a three-storied “redbrick” ‘ place out of the nineteenth century, he saw that the gardens about it had run wild, unattended for years, many of the cobblestones in the street visible beneath the worn-out scabs of bitumen through which green vegetation was poking. Very un-German this, he knew, but one way that frustrated landlords had of trying to force squatters out. All it did was attract more.
Appearing twisted and bent, the woman walking toward him as he looked through the bubbled glass was an elderly asthmatic, and it took her a long time to answer his knocking. Even before she reached the door, Chin could smell strong, pungent Turkish coffee and sausage. A battered-looking “Golf” van came round the corner, stopped, and unloaded a group of Turks, who were talking and laughing at the day’s end as they dispersed down the street, most of them smoking and taking no notice of him. Several doors opened, children spilling out onto the road, greeting fathers who, putting lunch boxes down on the pavement, lifted their children high, twirling them in the air. They seemed oblivious to the racket from beyond the Wall.
Chin looked up for the late sun to judge how much time they’d have, but it was blocked by me Wall, which in this part of Kreuzberg had not been battered by the souvenir hunters of Gorbachev’s heyday. Then he wondered whether the rapidity of the fading light was due to the fact that the Wall that rose straight up from the small backyard of the house was blocking it or whether someone in Seoul had slipped up in the panic, looking at the wrong month on the calendar and so getting the wrong sunset time. For all his training, this uncertainty panicked him for a moment, but then the door opened at last. As he entered, bowing graciously to the Turkish woman, he saw the other agent emerging from the bathroom, head bowing, apologizing profusely. When the old woman had passed them back into her kitchen, they matched the deutsch mark, though it was hardly necessary, as Chin recognized him as one of the agents whom had worked with years before, when assigned to Bonn. Behind the Wall they could still hear massed bands playing in the distance as they got into a gray BMW.
Six miles south along the line of what used to be the graffiti-scrawled Wall they came to a cream-colored, nondescript apartment building in the suburb of Neukölln, near East Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport. From the black-tarred top of the apartment they would be able to see the airport proper, the two giant Condors, Soviet-made transporters, sitting side by side a hundred feet from each other, not far from the main terminal, their tail planes much higher than Chin remembered from any of the recognition charts he’d had to memorize. The sheer brutishness of their size, their lower half a blue wave pattern, the top a mottled khaki, made them frightening even from a distance. Now more bands could be heard; they were obviously marching south from Alexander Platz, the sound of the bands drowning out the usual putt-putting sound of East German cars, Tribants mostly, which during his earlier posting had always sounded to him like the two-stroke motorbikes mat weaved in and out of the traffic, a law unto themselves. He could smell a mixture of high octane in the late afternoon air as the fumes from planes landing and taking off from Schönefeld washed over into the west on a brisk east wind.
There was a tremendous roar from the southeast, and turning, he saw it was the 6:00 p.m. Aeroflot flight from Moscow. Through the smell of the kerosene fumes he could detect a faint but much more pleasant odor of fried liverwurst. Everything was at once so foreign yet so familiar. Here the DMZ had been known as the death strip. The mixture of the familiar and unknown was unsettling in Chin’s tired and nerve-racked condition, the Wall having once created the deadly illusion of safety in the West. But he knew that the Wall had served exactly the same purpose as the DMZ in Korea: locking in the peoples of the Communist blocs, prisoners of the totalitarian state, the same state that was at this very moment ripping his country apart, sweeping down from the North like the barbarians of old had swept against the Great Wall of China.
Then it happened. The other agent had assured him that everyone necessary from the trade legation in Berlin was ready. But now he learned that one of the men, the RSO, or resident station officer, had had to back out at the last moment because he felt someone, either from the West German police or from the Staatssichereitsdienst, the reinvigorated East German state security service that was supposed to have disappeared in the post-Gorbachev euphoria, was watching him.
The agent Chin had made the meet with realized that Chin was not listening to the explanation. Instead, the older man had stopped, hands in his light gray summer raincoat, looking up and down the street. “Those trees,” he said, “I’d forgotten—”
“What?” asked the other agent apprehensively. “Oh, yes, ginkgo trees — the same as home.”
“But they are not indigenous to Germany,” said Chin. “I remember it struck me the first time I was here. In—”
The other agent didn’t care about trees and, as delicately yet persuasively as he could, ushered Chin inside the apartment block. “I don’t know about the trees,” he told Chin. Chin could see he didn’t care, but the older man was smiling. It was an omen. How was it, how could it be, that the same beautifully exquisite fan-shaped leaves, native to his homeland, were here— across the other side of the world in Berlin? Still green and full of light, bravely growing and vibrant in the dying rays of the sun that were now flickering down through leaves intertwined with — or were they being strangled by? — the indestructible barbed wire that was still there. Through the branches of the ginkgo trees, he saw scrawled, “Freiheit!” Freedom. The um and the yang. From the turmoil of opposites would come the eternal calm. Such omens were no accidents, he believed — they only underscored the unity of all and the unhealthy futility of drawing borders through men’s souls. His country was on the edge of the precipice — the time had come for the clash of the opposites. From inevitable turmoil would come the eternal calm. “When do they start to load?” he asked.
“Eight o’clock,” answered the other agent.
Chin glanced at his watch. “Then we have two hours to fill.” The other man said nothing.
The five of them were in a room on the eighth floor, on the eastern side of the apartment. “Huh,” one of the agents grunted. “After Gorbachev they were going to be one big happy family.”
“That was before Suzlov,” said another agent. “Everything changes and everything stays the same.”
One of the three men who were introduced to Chin began brewing coffee, another passing around cigarettes from a gold-plated case. Chin hesitated. He’d tried too many times to give it up.
“American,” said the junior man
, an army captain in mufti.
Chin took one, sat back, and felt himself relax, inhaling the smoke deeply, letting it settle in his lungs before blowing it out in a bluish-gray jet. He felt strangely at peace; everything would now be simply a matter of operational procedure, and the men under his command could tell from his face there was no turning back. Chin told them of the five U.S. and ROK servicemen who had been beheaded at Panmunjom. Seoul HQ, he said, had told him that they had a video of it, not a very good one, taken by one of the last units to get out of the DMZ but that Seoul HQ wouldn’t release it to the media. “Upset the folks at home,” Chin said. “What about the airport security tower?” he asked.
The younger one drew a sketch on the back of a copy of Abendzeitung. “We’ll take them out — or at least keep them occupied,” said the agent.
“Have you got suppressors?” Chin asked. “We don’t want any noise here putting us off.”
“Yes, suppressors, of course. Two rifles.” The agent identified the marksman, who inclined his head respectfully. Chin told him to destroy the sketch, then said nothing more. There was a long silence, the evening light growing dimmer.
Chin could sense the question in the air from all four of them but calmly kept smoking, composing himself. The marksman was looking over at the younger agent and the other two with the suitcases. “We were wondering, sir,” began the younger agent tentatively, “should we not do it now?”
Chin looked around at them, taking his time. “Are you afraid? I don’t want people who are afraid.”
“No, no,” hastened the younger agent with forced unconcern. “I merely thought that while there is light—”
“There is no point in half measures, son,” Chin responded. He paused, the end of his cigarette glowing more brightly now. No one put on any of the lights in the apartment. Nearing the end of the cigarette, Chin asked for another one, accepted it graciously, tapping it on the gold case, thinking for a moment about his young colleague who’d been trampled outside the Secret Garden. Chun looked up.
“Are there any other questions?”
There were none.
“Lee,” he signified to the young agent. “You should stay here to stop anyone at the door. Just in case. I will go up with the others.” Chin nodded toward the other three men.
“Sir?” asked Lee. “With great respect, sir, I would wish to be with my colleagues. We have served together in Berlin and-”
Chin shrugged easily. “Very well. I will stay here.” He looked around, seeing it would be no problem to put the sofa across the door. But in truth he expected no one. They had been very careful, they all said, leaving the embassy and all their homes in West Berlin at different times, using different routes. And Chun was now sure no one had followed him from Tempelhof.
When Chin glanced at his watch again, it was 7:30. “Go up in ten minutes,” he said quietly. “Has the roof lock been freed?”
“Yes, sir,” answered one of the men. “Everything has been prepared.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
In the wars of the early and mid twentieth century, the naval yards of Bremerton, west of Seattle, had seen many a ship launched and not return, but it was never something you got used to, most navy wives carrying it about with them until the day their husbands retired. Beth Brentwood, as had her mother-in-law and many navy wives before her, thought about it every night when she put the children to sleep and went to an empty bed. Sometimes she would take one of his shirts to bed with her.
She had prepared herself for the knock on the door, one of the things Ray’s mother had told her she must do as a service wife. It was no good trying not to think about it, Catherine Brentwood had told her — only fools told you not to think about death. We moved toward it since the day we were born. To imagine it, said her mother-in-law, and how it might come to your loved ones, could sometimes help dampen the fear. Once you’d imagined it in all its obscenity, it wouldn’t have such a hold on you. Besides, Beth knew, navy wives were expected to have the right stuff, too. And so, dutifully, Beth had imagined Ray’s death, or at least receiving the news of it. A naval officer, probably another captain, smart dark blue uniform with the pristine white cap and gold braid. A gentle knock on the door. Their eyes would meet and the first thing would be to get four-year-old Johnny, who right now could talk the leg off a chair, away from the door. Jeannie, eight next week, would realize, with her sensitivity, that something dreadful was up, and Beth knew she could appeal to her maternal instincts to look after Johnny while the naval officer, cap off, smiled down at the two children, waiting. Then when the children were out of the room… “Sorry, ma’am, but I have to tell you the USS Blaine—”
But it wasn’t like that at all. Jeannie had been bratty about cleaning up her room. “Daddy wouldn’t make me!”
“Oh yes he would.”
“No he wouldn’t.”
It had quickly degenerated into Jeannie charging, “You don’t love me!” and Beth answering, “Ungrateful brat!” and telling her, “No!” she certainly could not have Melanie home to play after school. Jeannie had obeyed, bringing home not Melanie but Judy, the daughter of one of the Blaine’s petty officers. Beth had had to make a polite but firm stand and tell Judy that she was sorry but that Jeannie hadn’t been behaving and had been told she couldn’t have any friends to play after school.
“That’s okay, Mrs. Brentwood,” Judy answered, bubbling. “ ‘Bye, Jeannie.”
There’d been another fight and Beth had sent Jeannie to her room, after which Jeannie had immediately sent young Johnny on a reconnaissance patrol. “Let Jeannie come out, Mom. Pleeeease.”
“No!” Beth screamed, frightening Johnny.
When the doorbell rang she felt like a quivering mass of guilt, anger, and sheer frustration, and on top of it all the dishwasher that was supposed to have been fixed still didn’t work.
The sight of the woman in navy uniform drained Beth of all color. She forgot to invite her in — heard Jeannie’s “Can I come out now?” and the woman saying something about “normally the Pentagon… but in light of the news reports… as soon as they have further information…” Beth finally rallied enough to ask the woman in, but she said no, asking whether there was anything else she could do.
“Mom, can I come out!” Beth’s hand was on her forehead, trying to sort it all out. She asked the Wave whether Ray’s parents had been notified.
“No, ma’am. Our policy is to first notify…”
“When will you know for sure?”
“Mom, CAN I COME OUT!!”
“Be quiet, Jeannie! Sorry—”
“We should know something more in a few hours, Mrs. Brentwood. I’ll be sure to call you.”
When Beth walked back from the door, Johnny saw something was wrong.
“That lady an officer, Mom?” he asked timidly.
“Yes.” Beth was stirring the fiercely boiling water, macaroni packet unopened.
“She talking ‘bout Daddy?”
“What?” Beth looked down at Johnny. He was holding the macaroni packet. “Can I open it, Mom? I’m strong.”
“Sure,” she said. Johnny’s cherubic face grinned, then turned red as he tried valiantly to puncture the push-open tab. “I help you when Daddy’s away, Mom.”
Beth bent down and hugged him. “Jeannie,” she said, “you can come out now.”
Jeannie came out pouting but not daring a repeat offense so soon.
“Come over here, honey,” said Beth, her voice soft, unhurried. When she pulled Jeannie to her, the three of them clung in an embrace, and it struck her how small a physical space a family actually occupied, a feeling of being infinitessimally small.
* * *
Of the Blaine’s 192-man crew, only 61 were rescued, 11 of these dying within the first two hours of pickup and 14 still in shock with third-degree burns, including Ray Brentwood, whose face was so badly disfigured that the Des Moines’s sick bay petty officer, after giving Brentwood a shot of morphine, had left him till last
, assuming he was a goner, the time better spent on some of the others.
The burn victims, the worst of whom were Brentwood and the lookout who’d been on the port side when the second missile slammed into the port side railing, were ferried to the Salt Lake City. Ray Brentwood’s nose was nothing more than a skewed lump of flesh, a molten pulp now cooled, so that he was forced to breathe through his mouth, creating an alternately groaning and dry whisking sound, which, for all the compassion they had in the sick bay, several of the attendants found difficult to tolerate and so sent someone else to do the awful job of dabbing cool saline solution to wash away the globs of congealed blood from raw flesh that had once been the patient’s face. Brentwood’s eyes, having been partially protected by sunglasses but more effectively by the instinctive closing of the eyelids during the flash of the explosion, seemed not to be affected, but if he survived, this would have to be confirmed by later and more detailed tests once they got to Tokyo.
Now and then he tried to say something, but no one could understand what it was and put the garbled and repulsively snorting sounds down to pain- and narcotic-induced delirium.
* * *
In the Tokyo U.S. Army hospital, beneath the junglelike oppressiveness of an oxygen tent, Brentwood felt a searing burn, so intense he kept blacking out beneath the onslaught of pain, the merest eddy of air tearing across his raw flesh like a white-hot rake. What the voice inside was trying to ask was, what had become of his men and of his ship? But no answers came — only enormous and elusive shadows bending over the tent, the roar of his own breath like that of a doomed animal, the rushing of what he thought was his own blood unbearable but which was in fact his urine, something wrong with the catheter, filling the bed, the warm, acidic solution burning his already burned legs, his sense of smell gone. He was screaming.
