Puzzle People (9781613280126)

by Peterson, Doug

  “Can I call you tonight?” he asked as she stepped out of the taxi.

  She didn’t answer immediately. Why did she pause? This level of ambivalence wasn’t like her. All at once, her eyes lit up, and she smiled—too broadly, as if she was acting onstage and needed to project to the back row.

  “Oh yes! Call me. Do call me.”

  She leaned in through the window and gave him a kiss—firm and decisive, but artificial. All the while, the taxi driver was craning his neck around, wheezing and watching and waiting for her to step away from his vehicle.

  Finally, she said her farewell and hurried to the cemetery gate, where she turned to wave. He waved back, and the taxi lurched away from the curb. He stared out the back window and noticed that she didn’t budge from in front of the gate. She kept watching the taxi, as if waiting for it to disappear before she made any move into the cemetery.

  That didn’t seem normal.

  Stefan patted the back of the front seat to catch the driver’s attention. “Please make a right here and drop me off a block down.”

  “But you said—”

  “Change of plans. Just around the corner here.”

  With a shrug, the driver made a sharp right turn; he didn’t seem to be capable of anything but sharp turns, and centrifugal force pinned Stefan to the door on his left. One block down, the car swerved to a stop, bumping up and over the curb.

  “This good?”

  “This is good,” Stefan said, jamming a few more coins in the driver’s hands before hopping out of the taxi and rushing to the corner where a phone booth stood.

  West Berlin

  Katarina brought her binoculars into focus and watched Elsa standing at the gate of the cemetery. When she had climbed out of the taxi, she appeared to be talking to someone in the backseat, which was strange. She was supposed to come alone. But she didn’t enter the cemetery until she had made sure the taxi had flown around the corner and out of sight. Smart girl. Katarina tracked her as she entered the gate and was met by Matthias, who led her into the small grove near the entrance. There, Matthias would let her know which gravesite concealed the tunnel and give her the grave pass.

  Seeing Elsa for the first time in person, Katarina was struck by her long blonde hair, and it made her regret ever cutting her own hair. People had always complimented her on her long black hair, although her mother had nothing but criticism whenever she let it go natural and didn’t style it. After one of her mother’s not-so-subtle digs, Katarina had marched out of the house and had her locks chopped down to Audrey Hepburn length.

  Katarina rebuked herself for such petty thoughts. She should be focusing on the mission at hand and nothing more, but she couldn’t keep out her stray insecurities. She couldn’t help but make comparisons between herself and Elsa and wonder if she had any hope with Peter once his fiancée was in the West. If Wolfgang knew what she was thinking about, he would be furious. He would say that this kind of adolescent jealousy was precisely why she should have sat out this particular escape.

  Katarina hated to admit it, but his concerns were valid.

  Focus, focus. She made another scan of the area. No sign of the border guards, who had passed the cemetery five minutes ago and wouldn’t be back anytime soon. Elsa, flowers in hand, wandered out of the grove, a little disoriented until she spotted the tall angel statue—the one holding out the stone feather. She looked right and then left before picking her way across the cemetery, passing a statue of the Virgin Mary. Mary had her right hand extended, her gaze downward, and her left hand pulling back the stone fabric from around her face. Someone had placed a live flower in her extended hand.

  Reaching the correct gravestone, Elsa removed the dead flowers from the gray vase and replaced them with her burst of color. Then she knelt on the ground, which was still moist from the rain a day ago, and waited for something to happen.

  Katarina took another quick scan to make sure the coast was still clear. No sign of life in any direction. She pushed the button on her walkie-talkie. “All clear. Over.”

  Jürgen confirmed the all-clear signal and was probably tugging on the rope at this moment, sending the signal to Alexander, who was crouched deep inside the tunnel just below the grave. Katarina found herself wondering again about the bizarre triangle that had developed among Peter, herself, and Elsa. Once Peter was reunited with his fiancée, would that be the end of whatever she and Peter had together? He had a deep sense of honor, and keeping his word might trump whatever feelings he had for her. Katarina wanted him, but she didn’t know if he would choose her. She didn’t mind taking risks, just not the emotional kind.

  Katarina snapped out of her distraction and hurriedly put the binoculars back to her eyes. Someone was approaching! Another mourner was heading for the wrought-iron gate, a young man from the looks of it. Where did he come from? Katarina knew that if she had been doing her job and not dwelling on Peter and Elsa, she might have spotted the man sooner.

  Her walkie-talkie was back to her mouth in a matter of moments. “Hold off! Another mourner has entered the cemetery. I repeat: Hold off. Over.”

  Too late. The ground had just opened to accept the living.

  “Elsa!”

  Elsa was kneeling at the grave, watching the gravestone open up like a yawning mouth, when she heard the voice. Stefan’s voice. She shot a look over her shoulder. He was standing near the wrought-iron gate, and she couldn’t have been more stunned if she had just seen a ghost stepping out from one of the mausoleums.

  She leaped to her feet and locked eyes with him. She went weak at the knees and nearly buckled.

  “Frau Krauss. Frau Krauss.”

  Elsa heard the man in the tunnel whispering, urging her to enter the darkness, but she couldn’t respond, couldn’t move. She should just ignore Stefan and scramble into the tunnel, but the sight of him gave her pause. She cared for him. Didn’t he deserve a word—some explanation? Then she saw something black in her peripheral vision, something moving with menace. It was a car, a black Wartburg, and it came screeching up to the cemetery gate.

  Vopos piled out before the car had even come to a full stop.

  26

  Berlin

  August 2003

  When Annie arrived at Kurt’s apartment, she couldn’t believe what she found looming in the courtyard: a watchtower, straight out of the Cold War. Seven-story apartment buildings, some of them peach colored, completely encircled the gray squat, concrete watchtower—a remnant of the border system that once included several hundred watchtowers peering into West Berlin.

  “You have a watchtower in your courtyard!”

  Those were the first words that she spoke after Kurt had opened his apartment door. She shoved a container of chocolate ice cream into his hands.

  He smiled. “I didn’t mention it because I wanted to see your expression when you arrived. It’s one of the few watchtowers left standing in Berlin.”

  “And you don’t mind living right next to it?”

  “It’s not like it’s still being used. It’s a landmark.” He pulled out his set of keys and jangled them in the air. “I even have a key because I give tours on weekends. If you’re lucky, you might get a free tour tonight.”

  “But isn’t it . . . isn’t it an ugly reminder?”

  “We need reminders, even ugly ones,” he said. “To be honest, it was one of the selling points for this apartment. You can see it from my bedroom.”

  “But in the courtyard of an apartment complex? Amazing! You mind if I take a look?”

  “Be my guest. I cleaned up.”

  They made a beeline for the bedroom, and she tried to keep her focus on the window and not get too nosy. But she did notice that the Western theme permeated this room. A parched white skull of some sort of desert animal stared at her from the top of his dresser.

  She pushed aside the curtains and looked up at the wraparound windows of the concrete watchtower from Kurt’s second-floor apartment.

  “Pretty short for
a watchtower, isn’t it?” she asked. “I thought they were tall and narrow.”

  “This was a command post. They’re shorter than the other two types of watchtowers.”

  “Creepy . . . but interesting,” she said as they made their way back to the kitchen.

  The spicy smell of India filled the apartment, and Annie watched Kurt stir the curry-ketchup mixture on the stove. Bratwurst swam in another pan, this one filled with boiling water.

  “The secret to currywurst is not too much curry,” said Kurt.

  Annie strained to smile. She was not one for spices, but she didn’t want to spoil Kurt’s enthusiasm; after all, this was the first time she was having dinner at his apartment, and he wanted to cook the Berlin specialty. She thought she had mentioned her aversion to spices, but it must not have registered.

  Kurt’s apartment was small and very old—a one-bedroom with a narrow galley kitchen. Like his bedroom and work office, Kurt didn’t hold back on the Western theme. On the coffee table sat a vase in the shape of a cowboy boot, overflowing with flowers. His clock featured the silhouettes of five cowboys perched on a fence, and the wall above the sofa featured framed posters of John Wayne from True Grit and Clint Eastwood from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Most unique of all was a framed poster showing Gary Cooper from the iconic American Western High Noon. Printed in the background behind Cooper was a blood-red scrawl: “Solidarity,” referring to the famed Polish union that stood up to the communist regime. In the poster, Gary Cooper wore a Solidarity badge and carried a ballot in his right hand. Below him was the following inscription: “High Noon. June 4, 1989.”

  From the kitchen, Kurt noticed her peering at the poster. “You know what June 4 signified, don’t you?”

  “The first free elections in Poland?”

  “That’s right. It was high noon in Poland, and Solidarity overwhelmed the communists. I’m happy you remember because the elections were overshadowed by the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which happened on the very same day, and the Ayatollah Khomeini died the day before.”

  “Quite a week, wasn’t it?”

  “Nineteen eighty-nine was quite a year.”

  Annie moved from the living room to the adjoining dining room and took a seat while Kurt finished up the preparations.

  “No cowboy table settings?” she asked as she surveyed the dining room table. “Not even a Southwestern tablecloth?”

  “That would be overkill.” Kurt slid a steaming plate of currywurst in front of Annie, and the aroma nearly knocked her backward off her chair. She thought he said the secret was not too much curry in the sauce that covered the sliced bratwurst. There was even curry powder sprinkled on top.

  Kurt gave a blessing, during which Annie surreptitiously used her fork to clear the brats of any excess curry powder. When his “Amen” prevented her from any further spice control, her eyes drifted over to one of the few non-Western items on display in the apartment. It was a slice of the Wall, mounted on a stand and roosting on top of a Southwestern-style accent table. The piece of stone was about six inches by six inches, and it carried a splash of blue and yellow—just a dab of the graffiti that had once exploded all across the western side of the Wall.

  “How did you get your piece of the Wall?” she asked.

  His eyes followed her gaze to the chunk of concrete. “Three buddies and I, we were at the Wall when it came down. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. People were renting out hammers and chisels, so we took a whack at it. It was harder than I thought, smashing out a piece.”

  “The first time I saw a piece of the Wall was in Chicago’s CTA station. It was a massive slice with huge lettering, if I remember right.”

  “Those were the big pieces. Individuals like me had to settle for small chunks.” Kurt smiled. “The irony is that this socialist barrier wound up becoming a capitalist’s dream. In the weeks after the Wall came down, people spread pieces out on blankets and sold them on street corners.”

  When dinner was finished, Annie hurried her plate to the kitchen, hoping that Kurt didn’t notice she had scraped her brats of much of the curry powder. After some idle chitchat while clearing away the dishes, they wound up side by side on the couch, directly below John Wayne, who was wearing his True Grit eye patch.

  “Don’t mind him,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the Duke. “With only one good eye, he’s not a very attentive chaperone.”

  “Good, good. I wouldn’t want to get on his wrong side. Mind if I grab a mint?” Annie had noticed the bowl of mints on the coffee table, and after the currywurst, she knew her breath was in dire need of help.

  “I’m sorry, I should have offered.” Kurt picked up the bowl of mints and passed it to her, after he had plucked one out for himself. They had to be thinking the same thing. In this kind of situation, there was only one reason to be freshening breath. This was awkward.

  Annie didn’t want to spoil the mood, but she had vowed that she wouldn’t leave tonight without knowing more about Kurt’s past. Frau Holtzmann’s warning still nagged at her, and she couldn’t move this relationship any farther without answers.

  “Kurt? Tell me if you don’t want to answer this question, but . . .” She tried to gauge his reaction as she spoke; he looked as though he was bracing for bad news. “I’ve always wondered but been afraid to ask: Did you ever reunite with your parents in West Berlin?”

  He leaned away and looked down at his hands. “My father, yes. But my mother passed away before they could get out of the GDR. She died in prison, and I never saw her again.”

  She reached out and touched his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  He took a breath and paused before continuing. “I reunited with my father in 1982. It was very emotional.”

  “So you reunited before the Wall came down? Then how did he come to the West?” She felt guilty asking these questions, but she had to do it. She needed to know.

  He rubbed his fingers together. “For money. The East sold him to the West.”

  She kept her hand on his as he explained that the GDR, strapped for money, would sometimes sell its political prisoners and other troublemakers to the West. His words came out slowly, and his voice cracked with emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” Annie repeated. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Kurt interlaced his fingers with hers. “No, no, you need to know. And I need to talk. Sometime . . . sometime I’ll tell you the complete story. But not tonight.”

  “I understand.” She leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek. She wasn’t planning such a move, but he looked so forlorn. She rested her head on his shoulder, and they were quiet for a spell.

  “Do you believe in absolute forgiveness?” he asked, leaning his head against hers.

  “What other kind is there? If it’s not absolute, is it really forgiveness?”

  “True.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder: What had Kurt done to stir up talk of forgiveness?

  “Intellectually, I can recognize forgiveness,” he said. “But I don’t often feel as if it’s cost me anything.”

  Whom was he seeking forgiveness from? God? Or his parents who didn’t make it out of East Germany when he did?

  “I don’t believe in cheap grace,” he added.

  Annie pulled away abruptly and looked at him. “Cheap grace? You’ve been reading Bonhoeffer?”

  “Rereading him, actually. Have you read any?”

  “Some. But I can’t recall most of it.”

  “Bonhoeffer said cheap grace is forgiveness without repentance and communion without confession.”

  Confession. Did Kurt have something to confess?

  Annie waited, letting the silence expand, hoping he might say something more specific about what he had done for which he needed grace. Frau Holtzmann’s suspicions haunted their every interaction.

  “Cheap grace is grace without the cross,” he pointed out.

  “But it doesn’t mean you have to nail yourself to a cross.”

  Annie
felt that they kept dancing around the central issue—what he had done.

  “But it should cost me something. I need to pay.”

  “Pay for what?” There. She had asked it.

  But Kurt didn’t answer. He looked down into his lap and ran a finger across the palm of his left hand. And when he raised his head again, she noticed that a couple of tears had escaped. She leaned up and kissed the tears, tasting salt.

  Then she kissed him again, this time on the lips. It was the first time on the lips. The zone had been breached.

  27

  East Berlin

  June 1962

  Four Vopos, all of them armed, swarmed through the cemetery gate with demon speed. But still, Elsa didn’t budge. She stared at Stefan, transfixed.

  “Elsa!” Stefan shouted across the cemetery. He kept firing looks at the Vopos who were rushing in his direction.

  “Hurry! There’s a tunnel!” Elsa finally broke her rock-solid pose, motioning for Stefan to run.

  “Frau Krauss . . . Frau Krauss . . . please . . . now.”

  There was panic in the voice of the poor soul in the grave. His life was on the line as well, although he probably didn’t know the full extent of the danger. He couldn’t see the Vopos from down below.

  Suddenly, Stefan took off in a full sprint toward Elsa, down a wide pathway that ran between two hedges. Small black gravestones stood at attention all along the path. Elsa watched in horror as the four Vopos knelt down and raised their guns into firing position. They tracked the running man, leading him as he flashed across the cemetery. Stefan threw a sidelong glance at the guns, and then he ducked behind one of the stone angels just as the guns went off. Bullets spattered against the angel, hitting it like hail and chipping stone.

  Stefan was unscathed. But he was pinned behind the angel, which faced toward the Vopos with extended arms, as if imploring them to set aside their weapons.

  Elsa shook uncontrollably, and she heard herself screaming, primal and unbridled. It didn’t even sound like her own voice. “Stefan!”