“Go! Go! Go!” Stefan shouted at her; she still hadn’t moved from the edge of the tunnel.
“Frau Krauss, there’s no time. You must come now!” The man in the tunnel had heard the gunfire, and his voice was all urgency and panic.
One of the Vopos, still in crouching position, shifted his aim in Elsa’s direction. She spotted the movement, and she realized that she too had suddenly become a target.
“Frau Krauss! Now!”
Without looking, she instinctively backed up a step, and her foot slipped on the lip of the tunnel, twisting her ankle. She heard the crack of the gun as she fell backward into a black hole.
Stefan noticed one of the Vopos shift his aim toward Elsa and saw her tumble backward. Was she hit? Had she been shot because of him? Why did he even follow her today? It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He shot a glance around the side of the angel and saw the shooters using the gravestones as cover. They fired their guns once again. Bullets ricocheted off the wings and the waist of the angel, spraying shattered stone everywhere, and Stefan ducked back behind his guardian.
“Put down your weapon and step out where we can see you! Hands in the air!” came the Vopo’s voice across the cemetery.
Stefan didn’t move. He didn’t have a gun, but it didn’t hurt if they thought he had one.
“You have nowhere to go!”
That wasn’t true. He had an escape route. The tantalizing tunnel opening was only about twenty yards away. He could sprint, he could make it, he could dive into the opening. He could go west with Elsa. But would all four shooters miss him? He had no time to think, no time to plan, and he had to decide—now! Everything hinged on a moment’s choice, like the time when Katarina tried to get him to run through the opening in the barbed wire. He passed up his chance the first time; he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Stefan! Stefan!”
It was Katarina’s voice. Katarina’s voice? Was he going insane?
“Stefan, run!”
In the distance, on the western side of the Wall, he spotted a figure standing up on the roof of a deserted factory building. Was it a woman? Was it Katarina? Was he dreaming?
“Come over!”
The woman used the very words that Katarina had used when she tried to get him to bolt to freedom on that August afternoon. The same words that the West Germans used to get the GDR border guard to toss his cigarette aside and leap over the low-lying barbed wire and flee to the West.
Come over.
Not everything could be planned. Sometimes you just had to fling everything aside, like a spent cigarette, and run.
“Put your hands in the air!” ordered one of the Vopos. “We will not shoot! You will not be harmed!”
Stefan didn’t believe a word they said. Just run. Come over! Come over!
Stefan bolted. He shot out from behind his guardian angel, and the guns went off simultaneously.
28
Berlin
August 2003
“So Stefan followed Elsa to the tunnel in the cemetery?” Kurt said, astonished. “Did he also bring the Vopos to the cemetery?”
“It looks that way,” Annie said.
“But why would he do that if he wanted to escape as well?”
“I don’t think he was planning to escape. But once he saw his chance, he made a run for freedom.”
Kurt and Annie were on their lunch hour, talking and walking through the Tiergarten. They strolled the crisscrossing paths, curving past manicured gardens, statues, and people walking their bikes. The sun was bright and blinding on the white stone pathway.
“Elsa chose escape over Stefan,” Annie said. “It was the second time a girl had done that to him.”
“But it’s understandable. By staying in the East with Stefan, she would have risked further interrogations—and prison. It may sound romantic to stay, but if you knew Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, you’d understand.”
Berlin-Hohenschönhausen: the dreaded Stasi prison. Had Kurt been on the inside of this infamous prison? Had he seen it firsthand as a prisoner? Annie decided it wasn’t possible. He was too young at the time to be incarcerated.
Kurt took her hand as they turned to make their way back toward the Brandenburg Gate, back toward the office. They had been much more open about their affections since the night she came to his apartment for dinner, and they knew that tongues were wagging back at the office. Moving out of the park and onto Unter den Linden, they made weekend plans as they worked their way through the crowd.
“Isn’t that Herr Adler up ahead?” Annie suddenly said, giving Kurt’s hand a squeeze.
It was. Herr Adler was moving in the same direction as they were, so they only saw him from behind. But when he turned to speak to the woman walking beside him, his profile confirmed that it was indeed him. The woman was thin and blonde and a little older than him.
“Who’s the woman?” she asked with a hint of scandal in her tone.
“Now don’t be making any assumptions,” he whispered into her ear.
Herr Adler was married with three children, but Kurt was right: This woman could be one of Herr Adler’s relatives, for all she knew. Annie’s mind had become overly suspicious during the past few months. Working on the files brought it out of her.
“Let’s follow them,” she said on a whim.
Kurt came to a sudden stop. “Follow them? Annie, listen to yourself.”
“What? It’s just . . . I’m not talking about finding out if he’s having an affair or anything. It’s just that something strange is going on in the office. Maybe we’ll learn something.”
“We don’t snoop.” Kurt’s tone was stiff and judgmental.
Annie felt sufficiently rebuked. Embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
He must have felt guilty for his harsh tone because he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “I’m sorry too. But it’s hard to approve of any form of spying.”
“I understand.” With his history in the GDR, she really did understand. “And you’re right. I just thought . . .” Annie’s eyes drifted back to Herr Adler and the woman, who had come to a stop on the sidewalk ahead. Herr Adler opened the door to a restaurant, and the woman glanced around. Maybe it was Annie’s imagination running wild again, but the woman acted like someone who feared they were being followed. The woman looked directly at Annie for a split second, and Annie was tempted to duck behind a pedestrian. But it was an irrational urge; to this woman, she was just another strange face on the street.
“I guess we wouldn’t have been able to tail them very far anyway. They stopped in to eat. I’m sorry,” Annie repeated.
Kurt nodded and led her across the street to the green parkway running down the middle of the wide boulevard. He led her to a bench, and they sat down. Clearly, he had something important to say. Annie felt a little bit that she was being treated like an errant schoolgirl.
“I’d rather we be direct about the problems in the office,” he lectured. “No skulking around.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“I know, but I want to explain my reasons.” He peered into her eyes. “I’m aware that things have been said about me in the office. Rumors.”
She feigned shock. “What kind of rumors?”
He frowned, as if he knew she was faking ignorance. She felt a hot blush creep across her face.
“There’s been too much whispering about me, and I told Herr Adler so—to his face.”
“Do you think Herr Adler is the one spreading the rumors?”
“I don’t know, but he’s in charge of the office. So I met him for coffee and asked him to do something about it. I demanded he take action, actually, and he didn’t like that.”
“Is that why he was so angry at you?”
Annie knew she had stumbled the moment the words were out of her mouth. Kurt stared at her, the words slowly registering.
“How did you know Herr Adler was angry at me?”
She felt her face flush once again, for her
fair Irish skin wasn’t very good at hiding her emotions. She didn’t want to lie. So she tried to deflect his question.
“I just assumed it. Was he angry? What did he say?”
He didn’t answer. He looked her directly in the eyes, and she buckled under his gaze and looked away. “Were you watching us?” he asked.
She massaged the palm of his left hand. She sighed. “Yes, I just happened to be at the Sony Center that day after work, and I saw you there with Herr Adler.”
Just happened to be . . .
Please don’t ask me how I got to the Sony Center. Please.
He did ask.
“Did you follow me there?”
She wouldn’t lie. She couldn’t. So she didn’t answer.
He shook his head and drew his hand away. “You followed me!”
“It was only because of what Frau Holtzmann said.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“So you did know about the rumors.”
Annie wished she could be anywhere else at this very moment. She rubbed her sweaty palms on her pant legs.
“She mentioned something about your past. She said I should be careful.”
“And you believed her?”
“No! I defended you, and she got furious. But she confused me.”
“And you suspected me? Did she tell you I was a Stasi informer?”
Annie looked him in the eyes and slowly nodded.
Kurt let out a wounded groan. “But I was just a child in the GDR.”
“That’s what I told her.”
She didn’t bring up Frau Holtzmann’s theory that Kurt became an informer after he came to West Berlin. She wanted this conversation to end.
“But you still wondered if she might be right?”
“I told you, I didn’t know what to think. She scared me.”
“And then you followed me . . .” He shook his head, while she looked around, worried they were causing a scene.
“I didn’t know what was going on. First, Frau Kortig dies. Then Frau Holtzmann tells me it was murder. Then she throws out rumors about you.”
“So she also thinks I’m a murderer?”
“She never said that.”
A young couple paused just a few feet from them to tighten the strap holding their child in his stroller. Kurt and Annie stopped talking. When the couple had finally moved on, she repeated, “I’m sorry.”
“Good.” He rose to his feet and started walking in the direction of the office.
She followed, but they didn’t say another word. He didn’t even look at her.
29
East Berlin
June 1962
Stefan felt the bullets hit, like small fireballs burning into his side, sending hot shock waves throughout his body cavity. He was swept off his feet, as if his legs had just disappeared beneath him. Time slowed. Flying sideways, he landed against a gravestone, the breath knocked out of him. He felt a strange and frightening tingling in his lower body. He was still conscious, aware that he had been hit, afraid he was dying. He heard voices, the dazed, dreamlike voices of the Vopos moving in his direction, but no more gunshots sounded.
He slumped onto his side and put a hand on his waist, where the tingling heat was most concentrated. When he drew his hand back, it was covered with blood. He rolled onto his stomach and tried to crawl, digging his fingers into the graveyard dirt, trying to pull himself toward the tunnel, which was only about twenty feet away. Then there was a whiteout, as if he was crawling into a blizzard, and his vision was gone, washed pale. He gasped for breath, but shallow breaths were all he could manage. He tried to inhale deeper, but it wasn’t possible; it was like trying to draw air from a deflated balloon. His vision came in and out, and then the whiteness was complete, and he felt as if he had disappeared completely into a blizzard, erased from the face of the earth.
West Berlin
“Stefan!” Katarina didn’t hold back when she saw him swept off his feet by gunfire.
She had seen it all unfold from the rooftop, and she reported it to Jürgen over the walkie-talkie—a gruesome play-by-play.
She was standing up, but she didn’t think the Vopos would dare fire across the border at her. She didn’t care if they did. Stefan had stopped moving. She had watched him crawl a short distance on his belly, pulling himself along. But now he was motionless, and the Vopos pounced on him. One of them felt for his pulse and then dropped his limp hand. Two other Vopos leaped into the tunnel, while the other pair worked at lifting Stefan’s dead weight. She kept her binoculars focused on Stefan, looking for any twitch, any blink, any sign of life. He was ghostly white.
The Vopos managed to hoist him from the ground and prop his body between them. Stefan’s arms dangled as if they were made of rubber. The two policemen strained to get his arms over their shoulders, creating a human crutch, and they trudged forward, hauling him along. Stefan’s feet dragged behind, plowing the soil as they pulled him forward.
Katarina stepped back from the ledge, afraid she was going to faint and tumble over the edge. She sat down on the roof and felt the sobs building inside, choking off her breath. She tossed aside her walkie-talkie and pressed her hands into her eyes. She should not have shouted “Come over.” Stefan should have surrendered. He shouldn’t have made the run. He shouldn’t have listened to her. She was reckless, a fool. A dangerous fool. Why did he listen to her this time when he never did before?
She needed to see Peter. Not bothering to pick up her walkie-talkie, she ran for the door leading from the roof and pounded down the stairs. She was moving so fast, so recklessly, that she thumped down hard on one of the rotted steps, and the wood snapped beneath her shoes and her right leg crashed through. Her pants tore as she retracted her leg from the splintered stair and continued down. She couldn’t keep back the tears this time.
Down four flights, down to the basement, she arrived at a scene of complete chaos. Wolfgang was shouting. Jürgen was shouting. Peter was shouting. They were standing all around the main shaft, the tunnel entrance, yelling at each other and shouting down the hole at the people below. Katarina used the back of her wrist to wipe away any traces of tears. She stayed back, unwilling to walk into the thick of the argument.
She just stood there, staring, until Wolfgang caught a glimpse of her, and he came at her like one of the German shepherds that patrolled the border. He charged at her, pointing a finger and bellowing.
“This is your doing!”
Katarina, stunned, didn’t respond.
“It was your boyfriend, your informer, who brought the Vopos!”
The accusation brought her back to life. She stepped closer to him, put her face within inches of his. “Stefan was just shot down by Vopos! Why would they shoot him if he’s an informer? Have you thought of that, or are you too stupid?”
“Of course they shot him! He was making a run for it! He showed up with the Vopos right behind him, and he decided to escape. That wasn’t part of the plan, so they shot him. I hope they killed him!”
She slapped him across the face. She hit him so hard that her hand stung, and the crack carried across the basement. Eyes turned in their direction.
He stared back at her in shock and put his left hand up to his face. A red spot had already flared up where she had hit him. Then his right hand whipped from his side and caught her across the face. She staggered under the force, and her cheek lit up like fire. He grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her up straight, and shouted obscenities into her face. She struggled to get loose, but his grip was tight; his fingers were pressing into her shoulders, hurting her.
Then Peter was upon them. He grabbed Wolfgang by the shoulders from behind and peeled him off of her, spinning him around in the process, as if he weighed nothing. Peter buried his right fist in Wolfgang’s gut, and Wolfgang buckled, dropping to his knees.
“You touch her again, and I’ll rip your arm off!”
Wolfgang didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was on his knees, still unable to take i
n a breath, let alone speak. A string of spittle extended from his gasping, gaping mouth as he stared down at the dirt floor.
Peter shifted his attention to Katarina. He put a hand on her chin, gently, and turned her face sideways to examine the angry red mark flaring on her left cheek.
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “But thanks.”
He ran the back of his hand across her cheek, barely touching her skin, soothing the sting. Katarina blinked back the tears that came to her eyes after the slap, embarrassed by them. She had learned to hate tears, thanks to her mother, who would regularly fall apart, leaving it to her to pick up the pieces. To hide her eyes, she walked into Peter’s embrace and buried her face in his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, and they stood that way for about ten seconds before someone started shouting at Peter. It was Alexander.
“Peter!”
Alexander’s voice was charged with anger and frustration.
Breaking away, Peter and Katarina looked across the basement toward the tunnel entrance. Three men and one woman stared back at them. The woman was Elsa, and her black mourning dress was torn and covered in mud. Her face was also smeared with earth, and she was shaking. Her body tilted right, like a listing ship, as if she couldn’t put her full weight on her right leg.
Elsa glared at Peter as if he had been the one taking shots at her, not the Vopos. Then she shifted her eyes to Katarina, and Katarina had the distinct impression that she would have liked very much to march across the basement and give her a hard slap on the other side of her face.
30
Berlin
August 2003
Kurt was number 56785. That was how he was identified in his file.
His file. Kurt had seen it once before, but after all that had happened with Annie, he decided to examine it again. It was as if he needed a reminder to convince himself that what had happened to him in the past, what had happened to his parents, really occurred. When he told Annie his secrets, he wanted his memories to be correct. So now he was back in a small white room in Berlin’s Stasi archives, with his life spread out in front of him. It was a sparse room, with the greenery of the four-foot potted plant and the green upholstery of his chair the only color.
Puzzle People (9781613280126) Page 20
