by Alex Cugia
He grinned and in a complicated dance in the now slightly enlarged space they changed places. It was two thirty in the afternoon and by shortly after six in the evening a panel of brick wall, a metre high by half a metre wide, was exposed.
Bernhard crawled out and handed Kai the hand drill he’d filched unnoticed from his employer’s construction site. Kai took a last long breath of fresh air and crawled down the tunnel.
Working in the now dim light of the lantern torch and exploring the surface of the wall with his fingers Kai found a gap in the mortar between the bricks, held the drill firmly against it with the chest pad, and started turning the handle. After a few attempts when the bit skittered off it made a dent and started digging in solidly. He pushed further, hoping the wall wasn’t too thick, that there was only a single layer of bricks. Suddenly, while still chewing out mortar, the resistance vanished and the drill pushed forward into a void. Kai poked and prodded at the mortar round the hole but couldn’t get the brick to budge. He set about feverishly making another hole in the mortar above the same brick so that he could look through one and flash the light into the space beyond through the other.
His head was thumping with pain and he felt weak and dizzy with the reduction of oxygen, reminding him of his near earlier fainting. He was dripping with sweat and felt as if he was breathing in a furnace. He put the breathing tube to his mouth and sucked hard. He had to get out of there. He drew the smaller torch from his pocket and placed it over the wider opening, then put his eye to the one above. Nothing! There was not even a trace of light. His heart sank as the sweat poured down his face. He tried again, this time moving the torch to the hole where his eye had been. This time he thought he could vaguely see something. As his eyes got accustomed to the dimness, it looked more and more like dark tiles on a wall. He scraped away and widened the hole further. He stared at a patch of slanting black on pale green, unable to make any sense of what he could see, until he suddenly released he was looking at the end of the letter A. That it was in the old script had confused him but yes, there was no doubt − they had made it! As he crawled back, elated, he could hear Bernhard hissing his name, urging him back. They met halfway along the track in the chamber where there was just room to stand.
“There’s something going on out there but I don’t know what it is. The door creaked and the handle turned again so I guess it’s old Schwineschwanzlutscher rooting around again. She’s getting suspicious."
They listened at the door but there was silence. They opened it cautiously but there was nothing and no sign of anyone hanging around.
"I don't like this." Bernhard said. "You should tell Ulrike to get ready and both come back down here. Damn! I forgot my rucksack so I'll need to go back for that. I'll be as quick as I can. See you back here in a few minutes.”
Kai raced up the stairs and burst into the flat. Ulrike was standing by the mirror, admiring her nose from different angles. She glanced at him, startled by the look on his face as he stood recovering his breath.
“Get your things.” he said, panting hard. “Now! We’ve got to leave. Immediately.”
“But ... I thought … Have you broken through?" Her face lit up, then fell. "Or is there something wrong? What’s happened?”
“Don’t worry. We're through. It’s fine, but there’s no time to waste. Please, Ulrike, get your things. Now!”
Kai’s voice had an edge she had never heard before and frightened by his tone she obeyed silently, hurrying into the bedroom to look for the few scattered objects she wanted to take.
Kai kept glancing at his watch. At least he’d bought some time by agreeing to deliver his rent on the Monday evening but there was no knowing how long it would take to break through the last bit to make a hole large enough to get through. Worse, Frau Schwinewitz was clearly suspicious and nosing around the basement corridor. Oh, well, she’d just have to make of it what she would and they’d have to hope she didn’t call the police to break into the room.
There was no real choice. They had to go now. They had to risk it. Actually, he thought, they had to do it, they had to succeed now or it really was the finish of them all.
“By tomorrow I’ll be in West Berlin!” he thought. “Or I’ll be dead and won’t care.”
He traced for a few moments with his fingers the intricate leather patterning of the cowboy boots which had cost him a fortune, stroked and sniffed deeply the supple tan leather, remembering how he’d felt when he’d first worn them only a few months ago and how Ulrike, enchanted by his style, had struck up a conversation with him and they’d got together. He blinked, shook his head and returned to the present, grabbed his Swiss Army knife, a gift from Thomas, and moved on, filling his small rucksack rapidly.
As they moved carefully down the stairs Kai’s mind raced, trying to cover all the angles, wondering if he’d overlooked anything important. They were particularly careful approaching the ground floor. He listened and the faint sound of a radio from Frau Schwinewitz’s apartment, the door firmly closed, reassured him. They opened the door carefully then filed softly down the basement stairs without putting the lights on, hearts pounding.
In the darkness they felt their way along the familiar corridor and as Kai turned the key gently in the lock and began to ease the door open the corridor light snapped on, flooding the corners and blinding him for an instant. Frau Schwinewitz stepped out from the side corridor a few metres away, her gun pointing steadily at Kai.
“Well, well. Look what we have here!” she said, a slight tremor in her high pitched voice “Were you planning to go somewhere? I’d been wondering why the basement corridor kept getting dirty even though I cleaned it regularly. So I thought I’d wait for you.” she said, smug at outwitting them. Her voice harshened. “Face the door, both of you.”
Her voice echoed down the empty corridor. Kai turned to face the blank wall and Ulrike moved next to him in front of the door and felt for his hand.
“Now open the door. I want to see what you’ve been up to, before I call the police.” She gestured with the gun to Ulrike.
Ulrike gave the door a light push.
The room was dark but the smell of damp earth reached to where they stood. Frau Schwinewitz squinted, stepping forward, peering into the darkness, sniffing the air, her gun carefully ready.
“Wider. Open it fully. And turn the light on.”
Kai laughed. “Why would we use lights?” he jeered. “Knowing how you creep around, spying on everyone, looking for lights under doors, we’d as well have told you everything.”
“You have a torch, then. Use that.”
“It’s in my rucksack.”
“Get it out. Don’t try anything or I’ll shoot you, then her.”
Kai slowly eased the rucksack off his back to the floor in front of him. Holding Frau Schwinewitz’s gaze he squatted down, eased up the flap, pulled the drawstring and felt around with both hands, digging deep, then pulled the torch out and switched it on with his left hand, his right now hidden in his pocket, his thumbnail easing open the blade of his Swiss Army knife.
“Show me the room. Move it around. I want to see what you’ve been up to.”
Kai lit up the centre of the far wall then moved the beam of light slowly down and to the right. Frau Schwinewitz moved closer. Her gun drooped, now pointing just beyond Ulrike’s feet. She was almost in reach and Kai could hear her breathing quickening as he watched closely out of the corner of his eye. He ran the circle of light closer to the hole, picking out the edge and then flicked it back and up to the ceiling.
“Back! Bring it back down. What was that? Show me that again.”
Kai moved the light slowly down until it shone into the hole in the floor of the room. The soil was piled high beside and around it and the supporting struts stretched faintly into the blackness like an early mine shaft. She moved closer to look. He tensed his foot and sprang awkwardly sideways, striking at Frau Schwinewitz and feeling the blade miss her arm and enter under one of her lower ri
bs as she staggered and fell away from him. The sharp crack of a shot shattered the relative silence in the corridor as the echoes bounced around the hard walls and the bullet passed through the door no more than a centimetre from where Ulrike was standing.
Frau Schwinewitz was lying on the floor, her left hand pressing the bleeding wound in her side the right firmly holding the pistol now pointing again straight at him as he stood by Ulrike.
“You bastard! You bloody, devious, bloody bastard! Escaping’s bad enough. But attempted murder – they’ll never let you out now.”
Hampered by holding the gun trained on Kai she moved to a kneeling position then struggled to her feet and shuffled back a few steps, kicking the Swiss army knife well out of Kai’s reach as she did so.
“You there, bitch, lock the door. Then throw me the keys.”
Ulrike turned and locked the basement door, weighed the keys in her hand and threw them clumsily so that they landed short of Frau Schwinewitz and close to the far wall. Furious, Schwinewitz let off a warning shot which smacked into the wall between them, jolting them back in fright and making Ulrike fear she’d gone too far.
Frau Schwinewitz glared at them, raised her pistol and pointed it direct at Kai’s chest. Ulrike could see the index finger tensing on the trigger and despite herself closed her eyes in terror and waited for the shot and the sound of Kai falling. When she looked up Frau SchwineAuschwitz had edged forward and, supported by the wall, was beginning to crouch and feel for the keys, her gun still trained on Kai’s chest. At the edge of her vision Ulrike glimpsed a slight movement.
Just as Frau Schwinewitz’s hand grasped the bunch Bernhard jumped on her from behind, bouncing her head from the wall on to the concrete floor with a sharp crack echoing her involuntary shot a microsecond earlier, the bullet tugging at Kai’s jacket but leaving him unharmed. She lay motionless on the floor, a trickle of blood now staining the concrete. After a few moments when it was clear that she was no danger to them Bernhard stepped forward, pocketed the gun and the keys, felt her wrist and lifted her head from the floor.
“She’s alive but the skull seems cracked. And there’s a narrow cut, but deep. I guess she fell hard on a key or something.”
“We can’t just leave her to die here.” Ulrike was almost in tears.
“Tough shit!” said Kai. “We’ve got to get out straight away. If anyone's heard the shots the police will be here any moment.”
“We’re four or five metres underground” said Bernhard “and these walls are really solid. You said she was the only person living on the ground floor. No one will have heard anything.”
“But we just can’t leave her here. If she dies that’s murder! They’ll know what’s happened. It’s murder! The GDR will ask for us back and the West won’t just ignore that, not for murder." Ulrike was becoming hysterical, tears streaming down her face, and Kai put his arms round her and stroked her hair. "I hated her but I didn’t want to kill her. Damn! Damn! Damn! We’ve got to take her to hospital.”
“No, Ulrike” he said. “We can’t. They’ll want to know what happened, probably get the police in to question us, maybe even hold us until she wakes up and can give her version. We can’t do that. We don’t have the time." He held her tightly for a moment then looked at her at forearm's length. "We don’t have a choice. It’s her or us. All we can do is maybe drag her to the stairs and leave her there. Someone will find her. We've got to go.”
Chapter 11
Sunday September 17 1989
“DO you have an alarm clock?” Bernhard asked suddenly, staring at the inert figure lying on the cellar floor.
“What the fuck has that got to do with anything?” Kai shouted. “Let’s get out of here and stop pissing around.”
Bernhard ignored him. Ulrike pulled out a small, old clock from her rucksack.
“We’ll carry her to her apartment and make it seem that she fell and cracked her head there. It’s just gone nine now. We’ll leave the door ajar and set the alarm for ten. Someone should hear that, find the door open and rush her to hospital. Kai, scatter some dirt on the blood on the floor and move it around. We don’t want anyone getting curious about things if they come down here.”
They carried Frau Schwinewitz up the stairs, Ulrike pressing a cloth to the head wound to minimise the blood flow and scuffing with her shoe at odd drops which escaped. As they neared the hallway Ulrike listened at the street door then crossed quickly to the apartment, opening the door with keys taken from Frau Schwinewitz’s pocket and urging them over quickly. Despite Frau Schwinewitz's slight frame the inert body was heavy and Bernhard and Kai were bathed in sweat as they laid her down, arranging her in mimicry of her earlier fall, placing her bloodied keys by her head wound, rucking up the thin carpet and positioning it so that it looked as if her outstretched right foot had caught it and brought her down.
“Where’s the carpet fitter when you need him?” remarked Kai and the three burst into stifled giggles, clutching each other for a moment in relief, while Ulrike cautiously slid open the door and left it ajar.
The alarm clock, fully wound and set for 10pm, sat on the small table. No one was around and they darted back across the hall. Moments later they were again in the basement room.
Kai crawled to the end of the tunnel and started attacking the wall with all his strength, hammering in a stone chisel and sometimes trying to fracture bricks where there were apparent faults. He was sweating profusely but fear gave him impetus and new strength. The muscles of his arms ached but he pushed himself past the pain. The mortar was old but still hard and often difficult to break. Occasionally it crumbled and he was able to push chunks out and into the void beyond and on those occasions his hopes and his mood lurched in response. By now he’d removed a section of six bricks and he could see clearly into the tunnel. The sight of the pale green tiles lit up by the torch beam delighted him and spurred him on. There was a cool and welcoming draught coming from the hole, refreshing him.
It was now approaching nine thirty and as the hole was enlarged it began to get easier. He’d now removed nine bricks in three rows. It was wide enough to squeeze through, he thought, but it really needed to be at least another three or four rows, more if they had time. He worried about pushing Ulrike’s stuffed rucksack through. Well, if it came to it they might have to abandon it, maybe empty it and repack it on the other side if there was time. He worried whether Frau Schwinewitz might have come back to consciousness early, that even now the police were about to storm down the stairs. Exhausted, he wormed his way back to the basement room to change places with Bernhard. Ulrike was standing there, her rucksack on the floor, pacing around in the small area of floor free of the mounds of soil, desperate to move out of the limbo where they found themselves. She smiled wanly as Kai emerged, dripping with sweat and caked with streaks of red clay.
“It’s going well. We’re nearly through. Bernhard will finish it.” They embraced silently, clinging to and resting on each other.
At ten to ten Bernhard emerged from the tunnel, coughing and staggering as he came.
“We’re almost there. A couple more bricks. I was going to finish it but I started getting dizzy and nauseous.”
Before Kai could move Ulrike had ducked into the tunnel.
“I’ll do it. I can’t stand around here any more. I need to do this. I have to help.”
Some minutes after ten they heard a whistle from Ulrike and they set off to join her, Kai dragging Ulrike’s rucksack and his own awkwardly behind him. They left the rucksacks in the half way chamber and crowded together by the wall. Ulrike was crouching there, hot and dirty but flushed with the success of knocking out the last bricks. There was a single row left at floor level and above it a gaping, jagged hole seven bricks deep. Kai shone the torch into the darkness, the beam picking out a flat, gravel-strewn surface immediately below and beyond it the glint of rails and a tiled wall.
“It looks a bit over three metres. I’ll go first to check there’s no problems
down there. Push the rucksacks through after I’m down and I’ll catch them. You come next Kai, copy what I do and then we’ll catch Ulrike when she drops. Ulrike, shine the light down below me.”
As Kai returned with the rucksacks Bernhard turned his back to the hole, pushed his legs through and wriggled till he was hanging down, his hands gripping the row of bricks. Glancing down he judged his landing spot and dropped, falling lightly on bending knees. Kai pushed the three rucksacks through and followed, landing safely. Grinning at each other they high-fived and turned to help Ulrike. Dropping the torch into Bernhard’s hands she turned and wriggled through feet first, dangling awkwardly half through the hole, resting on one elbow, her other hand scrabbling for the row of bricks. Her legs suddenly waved wildly.
“Oh God! I’m stuck! Something’s caught! I can’t move. Oh God! Help me.”
The legs waved wildly again but fell closer so that Kai could now just touch them with stretched arms and guide them. Ulrike was clinging on with both hands to the row of bricks when one suddenly gave way and with a rip of cloth from her shirt she fell awkwardly sending Kai staggering away from her as he broke her fall. She lay there, winded and they heard a sharp intake of breath as Kai got to his feet. She saw him wince as he stood.
“What's wrong?”
“Ankle. Twisted I think, I hope, rather than broken. Hurts like hell though.” He winced again as he put weight on left foot. “C’mon guys, let’s move. It’s nearly half past ten. They could have found Schwinehexe by now and be after us any minute.”
They were nearly opposite the far end of a platform and behind them they could hear the rumbling of a train, the wheels singing on the rails and the lights approaching from round the bend, lighting up the brickwork of the tunnel. They moved into an alcove and watched as the train ran slowly through the gloom of the closed station, watching the faces of the strangers sitting there incuriously, minding their own business. Kai noticed a couple peering out at the eerie beauty, relic of an earlier era.
