by Alex Cugia
She shook her head slightly to clear her thoughts, and noticed someone walking towards her. She looked down and turned away from the phone. She would buy some food, she thought, and as she and the man passed each other she turned right, heading for a small shop two streets away. The thought that she and her colleagues had often stopped there to buy food when they were working late at the office alarmed her but it was the only shop within a kilometre or more of where she was and also took her back somewhat in the direction of the apartment. It was dangerous to wander around the city, she decided, so she would just have to be careful and make sure to be extremely quick in buying what she wanted.
She passed the small clothes shop and a bank and was heading along the well-known street towards the grocery shop when she noticed a tall, blond-haired man walking towards her on the opposite pavement. He seemed familiar and when they were almost opposite she glanced towards him again. Their eyes met only briefly but it was enough for her to recognise that it was Hanno Wornletz. Overjoyed at seeing one of the few colleagues she considered a friend and anxious to warn him of the danger she thought he was in she started to greet him when a strange gut feeling of something not quite right, of some imminent danger, stopped her. Instinctively she dropped her eyes and turned back in her earlier direction.
“Bettina! It’s wonderful to see you.” Hanno was now crossing the street, apparently ready to greet her warmly, now bending a little to look at her closely. "We, I, thought you were still in Dresden. When did you get back?"
"How are you Hanno? It's good to see you." It was impossible now to pretend and she smiled at him, taking the hand he held out to her to shake. She noticed as he did so that he'd retained his old habit of slightly clicking his heels and nodding his head as he did so, a telling rigidity of manner in a young man which had always slightly disturbed her, even when they had been close for a period earlier.
"Dresden?" she said and wondered why she felt this prickle of suspicion, why she felt a need now to hide things. He was in as much danger and she was and surely she needed to warn him. Why, then, these guarded responses, this need she felt to test him? "Oh, only just back. I'd finished things on Friday but I couldn't get hold of Dieter so I thought it could wait till Monday and so I took a day meeting old friends."
"And Thomas? Did he come back with you?" The tone had an edge to it and he spoke each word of his next question distinctly. "Where is he now?"
"A friend of his was visiting Dresden so Thomas spent some time with him and then we drove back together this morning. I dropped him near Friedrichstrasse so I guess he's back in the West. We can both report to Dieter tomorrow." She looked up at his handsome face with its open smile, and as she noted again his differently coloured eyes, one brown and the other a greenish grey, remembered their joint mission some years earlier in Poland and how confused but also drawn to him she'd felt when he made it clear how attractive he found her. "How is Dieter? Have you seen him recently?"
Hanno glanced up and down the street and put a hand on her shoulder, drawing her closer and talking softly.
“You hadn’t heard? Dieter is dead. Someone killed him.”
It took all Bettina's skill to express surprise and horror. “What! God, no! No! When?” She looked at her feet and then at Hanno, wide eyed and with her mouth open and then forced herself to cling to him for a moment. "Oh, dear God! How did that happen?"
“A couple of days ago, at his house. At night. Seems there was a burglary which went wrong. He was shot.”
“A burglary? Armed thieves? Are we turning into the United States?”
“I guess so. I don’t really know the details. Someone in the office told me about it. I hadn’t actually worked for Dieter in quite a while or seen him recently.”
Bettina remembered Hanno's discussions with Dieter on the tapes andd disengaged herself from the embrace. Was Hanno himself involved or he was distancing himself from Dieter as a defence against his murderers? Either way it was now impossible to ask whether his internal investigation around Phoenix had yielded results. Looking at him closely, she saw no trace of nervousness but noted someone fully confident and in control and nothing like a hunted animal trying to shake off predators. Despite herself she shivered, realising she needed to leave immediately but although she did her best to appear normal he clearly sensed that something had changed. He moved closer to her, took her arm and smiled.
“Shall we get some coffee and catch up?”
“I'd love to but not now, thanks, I’m tired and I need to get home once I’ve bought a couple of things. Another time soon, though. Tomorrow, if you're around.”
“Where are you, still living in Prenzlauer?”
“Yes.” she said, surprised, and then remembering she had given him her address at the time.
“Let me give you a lift home then. You do look very tired. Tired, but still very beautiful.”
She smiled back. “Thanks, that’s kind, but I’ve got my car just round the corner.”
“OK, but I’ll come with you, help you carry your shopping and we can chat.”
She nodded. “Sure, thanks.” He was becoming more insistent and she didn’t want him to realise how nervous she had become. "It'll be good to catch up."
The shop was small and there was only a pair of double backed shelves, sparsely filled with tins and some packets, subdividing the rectangular room. To their right as they entered was a small counter with a few small loaves next to a large sausage, half sliced. A plump woman with badly dyed hair stood behind it, idly examining her nails. On the near row of shelves were a pile of tins close to where they stood and some scattered packets elsewhere and on the backing shelves more packets and another pile of tins at the far end. Beyond this central island of shelves and on the row at right angles on the back wall were some bottles of beer and soft drinks. She took a tin from the pile beside her, looked at it, and then turned to Wornletz.
“Hanno, could you get me half a dozen bottles of beer, maybe, and two or three tins, please? Chick peas or maybe beans or both. These ones,” she said, looking at the tin of lentils in her right hand, “are about the only thing I can’t stand. Anything else will do. I’m starving. I’ll get the bread and maybe some fruit here as well.”
"OK!" He headed down the narrow aisle and picked up six half litre bottles of beer from the far wall, holding them against his chest. As he disappeared round the end of the middle shelves in search of the tins she brusquely swept the pile of tins of lentils from the shelf beside her scattering them between the counter and the door as she rushed out into the street to the cries of outrage from the shop assistant.
Although she ran as fast as she could the street was long and as she turned into Schillingstrasse she caught sight of Hanno loping after her, easily keeping her in sight. For a fraction of a second she thought of trying to reach her car, parked in a nearby lane, before remembering she had left the keys in the apartment. She pushed some pedestrians out of the way and darted across the street, narrowly missing being run over by a car bearing down on her at speed. Hanno was now chasing her openly. The charade was over.
She fingered the pistol in her pocket but realised she couldn’t use it - regardless of whether she hit him that would bring the police after her in minutes. As she ran, her heart thudding in her chest, she tried to decide whether to lose him by disappearing somewhere nearby or to run direct to the safety of the apartment and risk Hanno seeing where she was hiding out. After a moment’s indecision, she decided on the apartment and although she feinted and cut through a narrow alleyway and then doubled back she was unable to lose him, despite her speed, and she could hear his footsteps growing louder. She could feel her chest tightening and her legs aching and an acrid taste at the back of her throat but fear helped and for a minute or so she even gained some distance till he in turn began to close on her again. As she ran she felt in her pocket for the keys, selecting the large one for the street door and holding it firmly at the ready as she sprinted the last hundred metres to
the grey building.
As she reached it and inserted the key her hand shook and in her fear she tried to turn it the wrong way before realising and opening the lock, Hanno's footsteps thundering closer as she pushed open the heavy door and slammed it shut against him. Moments later the door shook as he apparently hurled himself against it, shouting at her to open. She stopped to put her key in the lock and then bent it rapidly from side to side until the metal cracked, leaving the end jammed in the lock, sealing it for the moment against use.
Panting, she ran upstairs wondering if there was some other exit, perhaps by a fire escape, through the attics or over the roofs. As she reached the third floor a door below opened and she heard steps dragging to the front door. Looking over the rail she saw the small woman with grey hair and a pronounced limp. It was only a matter of time minutes before Hanno would identify himself and the old woman would try to open the door to him.
Chapter 46
Sunday January 21 1990, evening
“HI, there! I’m back!”
Thomas bounded up the stairs to Kai’s apartment, knocked in their code to warn her and then unlocked the door, flinging it open and rushing in, slamming it behind him. Two days away from Bettina at this stage of their relationship was too long, he'd thought. Now he was eager to see her again, to tell her that it looked as if everything was going to be fine.
On the flight back he’d drifted into a comfortable doze and indulged in a lucid dream where he played and replayed the coming scene, telling her that the BND agents had agreed to all his demands, including to help Paul, and had been deeply grateful for his help. He roamed around different scenarios, including one where the agents had held out against helping Paul and where he overcame their resistance by deploying irrefutable logical arguments and sheer force of will. "You're a force of nature, Mr Schultz," he'd had Bockmann saying, before deciding to tone things down to more plausible levels. Still, a little heightening of the difficulties was surely permissible and he felt he deserved the gratitude that would show in her eyes and the special extra warmth she would bring to her embrace for saving her brother.
But now there was silence. The bedroom door stood open and the room was empty. It was the same with the bathroom. Bettina seemed to have vanished. The balcony was tiny and there was nowhere in the apartment she could hide, no cupboard large enough, no hidden corner. She’d clearly left. His heart sank and for a moment he wondered if she’d changed her mind about collaborating and had gone into hiding elsewhere. Surely she hadn’t risked returning to her own apartment – that would have been madness.
The tape machine was still running, the reel turning slowly and the tapes were neatly piled up. That was reassuring. If someone from the police or the Firm had been there they would certainly have removed what they found of interest. Nor had Frau Schwinewitz been snooping around as there were no signs of disturbance or searching, no signs of any foreign presence, nothing unusual or out of place.
He searched carefully for a note or any clue that Bettina might have left for him but there was nothing. He wondered if she’d found the set of keys to the basement and gone there to explore, perhaps even to hide. Had she explored the tunnel itself and was now in the West? He shook his head. “That’s fanciful!” he decided “She knows nothing of the basement or the tunnel and how could she possibly make her way safely along the tracks?” A moment later he discovered the basement key still in the small jar in the kitchen but saw also that the spare set of keys to the apartment weren’t in their usual place. That suggested she'd gone out for some reason, but why? And why was she not back?
"Dear God, no." he thought, slumping into the easy chair. "She's been seen and caught." Perhaps even at this moment she was being interrogated by Sponden or Roehrberg or by one of the specialists who had no compunction about what they did to extract information. "Perhaps she's already been killed." His euphoria gave way to despair, his eyes welled up and the emotion hit him hard. He sat still, eyes closed, considering the possibilities and what he should now do. He forced himself to think. "Bettina's a survivor if anyone is." he concluded. "She is, really she is."
He stopped the machine and dropped the newer tapes into his rucksack. He didn’t know when, or even if, Köpp would permit him to listen to the material so it was better if he took the tapes now. He set the machine recording again, a fresh tape in place. He slipped the basement key into his pocket, made some coffee and sat on the sofa bed to think things through.
If Bettina had been caught by the Firm it had to be today, and almost certainly not long ago, as otherwise the apartment would have been ransacked and a guard posted. Actually, they'd have posted a guard anyway, he decided, so this place must be still secret. “Well, at least if they haven't traced her here or tortured it out of her.” he thought and winced at the memory of his own ordeal in the Stasi cells and the beating he’d been given on Dieter’s orders when it was discovered he'd been lying. If Bettina had been caught then remaining in the apartment was dangerous. But so was returning to his flat in West Berlin, where they’d probably be watching and waiting for him. Yet where else could he go?
He looked round the room, saw his gun beside the TV and put it into his jacket pocket, feeling a little reassured at its weight and ready accessibility. He wondered about Bettina’s gun but much as he searched it was nowhere to be found. The thought that she was at least armed comforted him.
He drank his coffee and cursed Bockmann. If only that man hadn’t insisted that his full confession be taped before he returned to Berlin they wouldn’t be in this mess. Thomas had argued he needed to get back urgently but Bockmann had been adamant. The deal had to be done according to the rules and he, Bockmann, was the one making them. That’s just how it was. If Thomas preferred time in a West German jail that was an alternative that could be arranged instead. Now Bockmann’s rules looked as if they might have killed their chances of surviving.
He checked through his rucksack. The West German passport the BND had prepared for Bettina was there, together with the hair dye preparation and the coloured contact lenses. The striking blonde would become a brunette who attracted no interest. It had all looked so simple when they'd discussed matters in the BND’s office. Thomas would leave the tapes in the apartment and agents would go pick them up later, using the copy of Thomas’ keys they'd made while he was in Frankfurt. He was ready to leave but there was no sign of Bettina.
Suddenly there was the violent slam of the street door and loud, confused shouting and noise. He ran to the door, opened it quietly and looked down into the hallway where he saw someone was locking the door, twisting the key around in agitation. There was hard banging on the door outside and a man was shouting furiously. He could see little of the figure except the coat, part of a dress, and a headscarf and in a moment it was hurrying upstairs.
"Bettina!" he thought. "That's her! That's how she moves." Then the figure stopped briefly on the floor below to peer over the rail and in a wave of disappointment he thought he must be mistaken but then it started up the last flight to the apartment, taking the steps two at a time. Certain it was Bettina but now confused and knowing that a mistake might cost him his life he moved back out of sight and waited, gun at the ready, until the figure reached the top.
As he moved forward Bettina from the shadows Bettina instinctively brought out her own gun but then recognised him and hurled herself into his arms, kissed him and almost at once disengaged herself.
“We have to get out somehow. I had to go out but I was seen. Hanno! He's with them now. I’ve jammed the door but he’ll break through any time. The roof? Can we escape there?”
“Not possible. But there's another way.Anything you need from here?” She shook her head. Let’s go!” He grabbed the rucksack, closed and fully locked the apartment door and hurried her down the stairs, two or three steps at a time, guns ready. At the first floor they could hear the furious commotion below. Hanno was hammering on the door, kicking it wildly and shouting.
“
The lock is jammed. I can’t open it.” Frau Schwinewitz shouted back, trying to assert her position as the building’s custodian and long time Stasi monitor. “You must find a locksmith to come here and open it. Then if you show me your documents and can confirm your status and authority, I will let you in.”
For a moment there was silence and then the door shook from a further assault and the man standing outside roared with a fury than made Frau Schwinewitz shrink back. There was further silence and then the voice spoke quietly but with clear authority and menace.
“Listen to me carefully, old woman. The girl is dangerous and must not be permitted to leave. If she does, you will answer for it, believe me. Be sure of that, whatever your age or previous party service. I will find some way of getting in but until I do make sure that no one, no one, absolutely no one, leaves. Remember, you will answer personally if they do.”
“Wait there by the door while I go to my apartment, just here, to get a weapon. There is no other way out of the building. She can't escape. When I return and guard the door in turn you can find a locksmith.”
As Frau Schwinewitz turned from the door Thomas and Bettina heard a muttered “Fuck the locksmith!” and the door shuddered as Hanno threw his weight against it. They looked cautiously out from the shadows on the half landing, listening to the dragging footsteps as the old woman made her slow way back to her apartment and disappeared inside.
“Now!” Thomas hissed and they moved rapidly down the last half flight, crossed the hall and opened the door to the basement, jamming it behind them with the wedge of wood used sometimes to keep it open.
Outside in the street Hanno was pacing up and down, waiting for Frau Schwinewitz to return, relieving his impatience and frustration by periodically kicking hard and charging the door and shouting for her. At least he now had Bettina cornered. He knew these apartment blocks well enough to know that the only way in and out was through the door he was guarding. She was his. That much was certain.
