A Few Words for the Dead

by Guy Adams

  ‘Or have it put to sleep?’

  Spiegel shrugged. ‘I would rather not. I am not a monster, Herr Shining. I am not someone who kills another for the sake of it.’

  ‘But the thing that’s causing us both trouble is.’

  ‘And you can make it stop? Because Gavrill, he talks of you in a most unpatriotic manner. He thinks you are a very special man.’

  ‘If I send him a Christmas card, will it get him shot?’

  ‘I do not think he gets post in his little Moscow basement,’ Spiegel laughed. Then he looked at me seriously. ‘You do not answer me. Can you make it stop?’

  ‘I mean to try.’

  ‘Then tell me where you are going and I will let you do so.’

  ‘Isn’t that traitorous? I had it on good authority you were rather loyal.’

  ‘I am loyal to my people. If I suspected you meant my country harm, you would be in the trunk of the car not the passenger seat. I do not believe you wish harm. At least not today.’ He laughed. ‘Tomorrow is always another day for us, no? But if you can help in this, then today I will ignore you. I will, in fact, pretend you were never in this car. Let tomorrow be another story.’

  I gave him Robie’s address.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  That night was much talked about on both sides of the Wall. Few knew the real cause of the chaos that was to come of course — though Ernst Spiegel may have made some educated guesses — only those who later read my report (and believed it). It was a night referred to in sad, horrified whispers by all of those who saw it. Even when the Wall fell and Berlin made its valiant effort to memorialise the past but move on from it, the story of the crossings survived. It existed not on official accounts but in the horror stories told by those who had been there, the soldiers, the witnesses, the families who lost their loved ones.

  When you visit Berlin now, Checkpoint Charlie exists as a museum, a place to reflect on times that the young are lucky enough to struggle to imagine. People stand next to it and smile into digital cameras. They laugh and smile and wave at the photographer. Look where we are! It’s that place from those old movies! How cool is that? Back then, it was an unremarkable structure that signified so much more. Much like the wall itself, a simple, grey functionalist thing that towered higher in its ideology than it ever could in the flesh. Charlie was not just a set of prefab structures, barriers and signs, it was – like all the crossing points in the city – a focal point of the absurdity that Berlin lived through, a city divided. A city possessed.

  I didn’t see much, I knew only my own small part of it, but I picked up enough of the details from talking to people later.

  The first to run was a young woman. Her name was Heidi Ackermann and people said that, like many others, she must have hankered for what she believed would be a better life in the West. The fact that she was leaving behind her husband and an ailing mother was glossed over. ‘It was the child,’ they said. ‘She was doing it for the child’.

  Certainly she was holding the baby, screaming in her arms, as she jumped over the Wall. Its cries carried even over the sound of her own laughter, the shouts of the guards and the eventual gunfire that cut her down in the snow, mere feet from the other side.

  Then there was Franz Brand, a watchmaker from Pankow. He’d shown no interest in crossing before then, by all accounts having accepted his place in the East. He had focused on the intricate cogs and gears of his craft rather than the metaphorical ones that ground around him. Nonetheless, while Heidi Ackermann was still bleeding into the snow, her baby howling in pain and terror next to her, Herr Brand followed her example, running out into the no man’s land of the death strip. The guards, already on edge thanks to Ms Ackermann, were quicker to respond, Brand didn’t even make it halfway towards the West; a single pistol shot brought him down. According to eyewitnesses, he was giggling at the time.

  There was some discussion about that single shot, Western news agencies debating how that proved the lie with regards the GDR’s claims that, while they had issued orders to border guards encouraging them to use their weapons in the event of an illegal crossing, they had not issued ‘shoot to kill’ orders. If the so-called ‘traitor’ was killed with a single shot, the commentators said, the guard holding the gun was either extraordinarily unlucky or in no uncertain terms as to both his literal and figurative aim. No doubt this commentary was well-meant, yet to me it was another example of people focusing on the detail in order to avoid the atrocity as a whole. Franz Brand was only one of many who was to die – what did the number of shots matter?

  Herbert Feldt came next, pulling his wife behind him. She begged him to stop, yanking him back towards the border but he cuffed her around the head until she was barely conscious as she was dragged through the snow, her feet leaving a deep pair of tracks behind them.

  Then there was Helmut Fuchs, Claudia Gott, Hans Kahler, Werner Jund, Maria Hoefler, Gert and Sofie Hermann… Am I boring you? Do you find this list of names hard to process? I’m sorry but the list goes on. Friedrich Gross, Veronika Forst, Anneke Derrick (she was only twelve years old and was performing a cartwheel through the death strip when she was cut down).

  The guards had lost their minds by then, calling for reinforcements, convinced they were about to be overrun by rebellious citizens. They were panicked. It’s easy to paint them as the villains, isn’t it? To consider them ruthless killers with happy trigger fingers, cutting down men, women and children. But they were blind to rational thought by then; they thought the balloon was going up and their turn would be next. One even fired into the crowd, convinced they were about to charge. Of course they weren’t – everyone was in shock and afraid for their lives. The crossings came from up and down the strip. Some as far as a couple of hundred metres away, some from within the crowd itself.

  At one point, one of the border guards even made a run for the West. Lieutenant Heinz Dreher. He acted like he was charging an opposing trench, running towards the crowds building on the Western side, spraying them with bullets from his machine gun. It was the Western border guards that killed him. What choice did they have?

  Are you still trying to find a villain in all of this? Still trying to rationalise the dead? The names on a page, on a tombstone? Of course, there was one, and I was running as fast as I could up the stairs to Robie’s apartment, desperate to stop him.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Robie had been tied to the balcony railing facing the death strip. It was his private box for an evening of cruel theatre, watching each and every one of the innocents forced across the line by the thing that wanted his body. ‘How many?’ it had no doubt asked him. ‘How many before you just say yes?’

  Lucas was a pragmatist. You have to be, in our world. He knew that the deaths would not stop if he gave in, they would just stop for now. He knew that, but still he couldn’t hold out for ever.

  By the time I’d made it up the stairs and through the open door of his apartment, he was begging for it to stop. He would do anything, he told it, just let the killing stop.

  The stairs had exhausted me and I all but fell into the room, Robie framed by the open arcadia door that led out onto the balcony. He was thrashing against the balcony wall and I could see that the rope tying him to the rail had torn his wrists open.

  I had no plan, no idea how I was to stop what was happening. I just knew that I had to be there, to try anything, for Lucas’s sake as well as everything else.

  ‘Do it!’ he screamed. ‘Do it! Just make it stop!’

  He thrashed one more time and then slumped down, his legs giving out beneath him.

  I was too late. Lucas was no more. Now there was only what was wearing his body.

  ‘Is that the little man?’ he said, turning slightly to peer under his new arm, ‘come to prove he’s better than me?’

  ‘To try,’ I admitted.

  ‘What’s your plan?’ he asked.

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘Then maybe you could come over here and cut me lose?�
�� he asked. ‘You’ll find a decent knife in the kitchen.’

  I was on my way back with the knife before I’d even realised what had happened. Hadn’t I always been immune to Lucas’s charm? I was sure that had been the case, and yet now, at the slightest suggestion I had been about to do as I was told. I stopped in the middle of the living room, staring at the dangling body, the knife in my hand.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Cut me free.’

  I took another step forward before managing to stop myself.

  ‘You didn’t think this through, did you?’ I said, fighting hard to focus on the situation, to push away the urge to help him. ‘You’ve taken him over and now you’re trapped.’

  ‘I could just possess you and do it myself.’

  ‘If you could do that, why haven’t you? I think you’re bound to him. Is that how it works? Are you now fixed in one body?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You don’t know, do you? You don’t know how this works any more than I do.’

  ‘Just get over here and cut me loose!’

  This time I actually had the knife pressed against the rope before I regained control. Was Lucas’s power somehow stronger now?

  ‘Do it!’ he shouted.

  I squatted down behind him, holding on to him and thinking of the man he used to be. Then I cut his throat.

  I held him as he choked and swore and bled and thrashed and remembered that first night I’d met him, that brilliant night of laughter that had led to this.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘So you stopped it,’ Ryska asked. ‘You killed it?

  She stared at Shining and noticed he was crying. She didn’t know how to handle that.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wiping at his eyes. ‘I think maybe you were right after all. I did love him rather.’

  ‘You had to do it,’ she said, falling back on clumsy attempts to reassure him over his actions.

  ‘Of course I did,’ he replied. ‘What else could I do? I couldn’t let him go.’

  ‘And it was worth it,’ she said, ‘wasn’t it? You stopped it.’

  Shining rubbed his face, trying to shake off a sadness that had clung to him for thirty years. ‘So you believe me now, then?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t so long ago that you were hinting that everything I said was make-believe. Aren’t you going to try and suggest that it was all just an implausible cover-up? That I’m a traitor who assassinated Lucas Robie? Surely that’s your job.’

  ‘My job was to interview you,’ she said, ‘and draw conclusions from that.’

  ‘And the conclusion you’re supposed to draw is that I’m at best a lunatic, at worst a traitor.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘That’s up to you to decide, isn’t it? I’m tired of trying to preach my corner, to hell with it. People can believe the evidence or not.’ He looked at the camera. If she reviewed the footage, she’d see for herself the truth of what he was telling her, she’d see herself possessed. He thought about mentioning it and then decided he couldn’t be bothered. No more begging for belief. ‘I’m sick of holding everyone’s hand. And as for whether I stopped it, no, I didn’t. I thought I had, for many years I thought I had, but then it reappeared. Brief visits at first, the sort of thing you could write off as paranoia. An overheard phrase, a smile in a crowd. But then, recently… it’s been getting stronger.’

  Ryska didn’t reply and, for a moment, he thought she’d been possessed again, then he realised she just didn’t know what to say. He could hardly blame her.

  ‘It’s coming for me,’ he said, ‘and those around me. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole business is one of its games. How difficult would it be to take over Albert Fisher for a few minutes and set the ball rolling? You’ve heard what it can do. I’ve been tucked away in a box, removed from play, forced to relive the time I first met it. It’s exactly the sort of twisted, stupid, thing it loves to do.’

  She stared at him for a moment and then made her choice. She decided, against all her better judgement, against all her training, to trust August Shining. She decided to believe.

  ‘But how can it be stopped? If killing its host didn’t work then what else is there?’

  ‘Killing its host will work. I have it on excellent authority.’

  ‘Whose authority?’

  He smiled but decided not to explain it was hers, or the entity that had been speaking through her. He was still digesting the details of their last conversation together and didn’t think trying to explain them to Ryska would help.

  ‘The process takes time,’ he said, ‘for the two to become fully bonded. I was too quick. It was only damaged, terribly so, that’s why it took so long to build its strength back up. But next time…’

  ‘Next time? How will you know who it means to possess?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, I thought that was obvious. It’s going to be me.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Albert Fisher was telling a young woman who worked in PR how terribly important he was. He gave no details, naturally, but had become an old hand at communicating in a series of knowing winks and half sentences, giving just enough information to make him sound all the flavours of brilliant. She seemed impressed, but then he’d had so much gin and tonic that his ability to read people — or stand up straight — was not at optimum.

  Paramount was the perfect place to get drunk if you liked pissing away money looking at a good view. Situated at the top of London’s Centre Point, the glass windows offered a panorama of most of the city. Naturally this attracted a certain amount of people who wanted to look at it and imagine owning it all.

  Fisher was not one of those people. What he did like, though, was rubbing shoulders with those he considered less important than himself. Fortunately for him, this was pretty much everyone. He drank alongside businessmen and media figures, all the while basking in the warm glow of superiority and overpriced, imported gin. The overpriced imported gin tasted like normal gin but with just a hint of bank balance. He thought it quite delicious. He had another mouthful of it while watching the distant lights of a jumbo jet pass over the city.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, turning back to the woman who worked in PR, ‘I can’t really talk about it.’

  This wasn’t going to be a problem because she had wandered off. He could see her black hair bobbing away towards the opposite end of the bar.

  ‘Terribly rude,’ said a man next to him, ‘she obviously doesn’t realise how important you are.’

  Fisher turned to look at the man. He was in his early thirties, his suit was shiny and, while his white shirt was buttoned up to the neck, he’d forgotten to put on a tie.

  ‘Do I know you?’ Fisher asked.

  ‘We’ve worked together a fair bit over the last few weeks,’ the man said. ‘Though you weren’t aware of it.’

  ‘How could I possibly be unaware of working with you?’ asked Fisher, concerned that his professionalism was being questioned.

  ‘What?’ the man asked, staring at him in confusion. ‘Sorry, mate, do I know you?’

  But the man who was no longer entirely Albert Fisher didn’t reply. He simply walked away.

  ‘Nutter,’ the man said, forgetting him instantly.

  At the other end of the bar, the woman from PR finally relaxed having managed to extricate herself from Fisher’s conversation.

  ‘You all right?’ asked her friend, smiling in that way a friend does when secretly taking pleasure in someone’s embarrassment.

  ‘I thought I was going to be stuck with him all night. You could have come and rescued me.’

  Her friend shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to cramp your style. Not planning on seeing him later, then?’

  ‘I hope I never see the boring old sod again!’

  She wasn’t to get her wish. She saw Albert Fisher again only a few minutes later. She was, at least, saved his conversation this time. He didn’t say a word as he sailed past her on the other side of the window.

  April had been tempte
d to refuse the food Oman had offered her, the idea of having a Peking duck wrap hand-fed to her by a psycho having almost entirely robbed her of her appetite. But only almost.

  She took the food but struggled with the drink.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ she asked.

  ‘Christmas flavoured cola.’

  ‘Did they not have any water?’

  ‘What’s the point of that? It doesn’t taste of anything.’

  It was like having a child choose the groceries.

  She drank as much as she could stomach and then leaned back in her seat, wondering when the opportunity to break free might arrive.

  They sat like that for three hours. At one point April even fell asleep.

  She woke to feel Oman pulling at the bindings on her wrists. ‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’

  She certainly was, tensed to move the minute she had her opportunity. He extended the blade of a craft knife, slipping it under the plastic of one of the ties.

  ‘Any second now,’ he said, chuckling to himself.

  He cut the tie and handed her the knife. ‘You finish off,’ he said.

  She grabbed it.

  Oman screamed as the woman who was no longer entirely April Shining went to work.

  Toby and Tamar ran through the labyrinthine halls of Gatwick Arrivals. Up stairs, down stairs, along motorised walkways, it sometimes seemed as if the plane had landed them at another airport altogether.

  ‘Try the phone,’ Toby said, weaving between a family grumpily returning from a fortnight in Crete.

  ‘No reception,’ Tamar replied.

  Queueing to get through passport control was torturous, Tamar constantly checking the phone reception. They were, of course, surrounded by signs asking them to keep their phones switched off but, like every other passenger to ever get off a plane, she ignored them.