by Iles, Greg
“Humour me,” said Luhr.
Funk sighed. “All tight. Hauer was in the Federal Border Police then. He was a sharpshooter or sniper or whatever you want to call it. The Black September fedayeen were holding the Jew athletes at the Olympic village. They’d demanded a jet to take them to Cairo. They’d also demanded the release of Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, whom we’d just captured that year, plus a couple of hundred Arab political prisoners in Israel. The Israeli government asked us to allow one of their commando teams into Germany to attempt a rescue. And that wet rag Willy Brandt wanted to let them in! He’d offered to release Baader and Meinhof from the very beginning! Thank God the final authority was in the hands of the state government.”
“And Hauer?” Luhr prodded.
“I’m telling you,” Funk said testily. “The fedayeen and their hostages were given buses and allowed to drive out to two helicopters which had been brought to the Olympic village. Some people—Hauer among them—thought that was the best time to try a rescue. But the state government said no. The ambush was to be at Fürstenfeldbrück airport, when the terrorists tried to move from the helicopters to the waiting jet. Almost as soon as the choppers touched down at Fürstenfeldbrück, someone gave the order to fire. Hauer was one of five sharpshooters. The light was terrible, the distance prohibitive, and the shooting reflected the conditions. The whole firefight took about an hour. In the end it took an infantry assault to kill all the Arabs, but not before they had blown up the Jews in the helicopters.”
Luhr nodded. “And Hauer?”
“I just told you.”
“But the shooting—Hauer missed his targets?”
“No,” said Funk with grudging admiration. “As a matter of fact he killed one of the terrorists with his first shot, and wounded another with his second. The fool might even have held on to his job if he’d kept his mouth shut. But of course he didn’t. He had to tell everyone what we had done was wrong, why the rescue was doomed from the beginning. He was screaming for reforms in our counter-terror capability. He wanted us to copy the damned Israelis.”
“So what happened to him?”
Funk chuckled softly. “He paid the bureaucratic price, along with everyone else associated with the massacre. He was transferred to the civil police here, and he’s been a thorn in my ass ever since. I never wanted that bastard in our group! I never trusted him after Munich! He’s carried a chip on his shoulder about those Jews ever since that day.” Funk snorted. “Imagine, losing sleep over a few Jewish wrestlers.” Funk toyed with a shell-casing paperweight on the desk. “The irony is that Bonn created the GSG-9 because of Munich. Hauer wanted to join, of course, but by the time his old friends had lobbied successfully for his acceptance, he was too old to pass the physical tests. You have to be practically an Olympic athlete to get in. He coached their sharpshooters for a while, but that’s it. I think they still use him occasionally in some kind of consulting capacity.”
“Wunderbar! ” Luhr snapped. “And you think we’re going to catch this man with standard tactics? Christ! We’ve got to do something more.”
“What?” Funk asked, almost pleading.
Luhr shook his head angrily. “I don’t know yet. But I know this: you’d better inform Pretoria of what’s happened, and the sooner the better!”
Funk blanched. Gröner heaved himself from his chair and reached for his cap. “I should get back to Kreuzberg.”
“Yes, I suppose so, Otto,” Luhr mocked. “We’ll be sure and tell Phoenix you mentioned him.”
Gröner slammed the door.
Luhr laughed. “What an old woman. How did he ever survive twenty-five years on the force?”
“By doing just what he did then,” Funk replied, lifting the phone, “making judicious exits. Besides, nobody wants Kreuzberg. It’s the shithole of Berlin. Nothing there but filthy Turks and students—is that you, Steuben? You’re still on duty?” Funk cut his eyes at Luhr. “This is the prefect. Get me an international operator again. Same number. Right, Pretoria. I need some advice from an old friend in the NIS. Those fellows down there really know how to handle a problem. Crack a few heads and no more problem. Yes, I’ll wait …”
In the first-floor communications room, Sergeant Josef Steuben reached under his computer desk and activated a small tape recorder. After surveying the main station room through the window behind him he logged Funk’s call into a small notebook he had kept religiously for the past four months. Steuben had no university degree, but Hauer considered him an electronics genius. It had taken him less than a minute to piggyback the signal cable coming from the third-floor office Funk had commandeered. There were no voltage-measuring devices monitoring Abschnitt 53, so he felt reasonably safe. Besides, he thought, if this thing ever gets to court, wild charges by a computer technician and an accused murderer will be worthless. We’ve got to have physical evidence.
“Dieter will love this,” he said aloud. “Catch the buggers in the act!”
A voice like cracking ice froze Steuben in his chair. “Are you the only man on duty in here?” it asked.
Steuben whirled. Lieutenant Jürgen Luhr stood in the doorway of the communications room, his right hand resting on the butt of his Walther. “Stand back from the console,” he ordered.
11:06 Pm. Prinzenstrasse: West Berlin
Blindness, Hans thought. This must be what blindness is like. He felt as if he were staring backward into his own skull. He couldn’t see his father’s face, although he knew it was only centimetres from his own. Cramped and disoriented, he reached out.
“Be still!” Hauer grunted.
“Sorry.” Somehow, he and Hauer had stuffed themselves into the boot of Benjamin OCAS’s Jaguar. OCAS had thrown an old blanket on top of them, and luckily they had gone in head first, so that what little heat passed through the rear seat by convection kept their heads reasonably warm. Now they sped across the city, the nattily dressed old couple staring sternly ahead whenever they passed a green police vehicle.
In the lightless boot, Hans struggled to keep his limbs awake. One leg was completely numb already, and his left shoulder felt as though it might actually be dislocated. “Captain?” he said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About Stasi officers working for reunification. It just doesn’t make sense to me. If the Wall came down, wouldn’t the Stasi be dismantled? Even prosecuted for criminal actions?”
“Yes. And that should tell you something. Someone in the West must be guaranteeing them some kind of immunity in exchange for their assistance. Don’t ask me who, because I don’t know.”
Hans digested this in the rumbling blackness. “Do you really think it could happen?” he asked at length. “Reunification, I mean.”
“It’s inevitable,” Hauer said. “It’s just a question of when and how. Mayor Diepgen himself said as much this year: ‘this year with the 750th anniversary we begin with the idea of Berlin as the capital of all Germany.’ No one outside Germany took any notice, of course. But they will, Hans. You’re young. People on the other side of the Wall seem different to you. And they are in some ways. Big things separate us. The Wall, our educational system, ideologies. But little things join us. What we eat … our old songs. The mothers in the East tell their children the same fairy tales your mother told you at night. The fathers tell the same stories of heroism from the same wars. Little things, maybe. But in my experience, the little things outlast the big things.” Hauer shifted position. “We Germans are a tribe, Hans. That’s the best and the worst thing about us.”
Hans nodded slowly in the darkness. “Where are we crossing?” he asked. “Staaken?”
“No. That’s what everyone will expect. They’ll assume that if we run, we’ll run west. That’s where the heaviest security should be.”
“So where are we crossing?”
“Heinrich-Heine Strasse. We’re going right into the heart of East Berlin, then swinging south around the city. That old Jew has balls, I’ll tell you.”
“How are
we getting out, exactly?” Hans asked above the drone of the Jaguar’s engine. “You don’t think they’re going to let this car through without checking the boot?”
Hauer chuckled softly in the dark. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t ask. The truth is, I’m glad the old man demanded to come. Now we’ve got three things going for us: glasnost, the weather, and the reluctance of the border guards to bother two old Jews travelling to a funeral.”
“Funeral? What are you talking about? Whose funeral?”
Before Hauer could answer, Benjamin OCAS leaned back and struck the rear seat with his balled fist. Two muted thuds sounded in the boot. “That’s it,” Hauer whispered. “We’re there.” Two more thuds reverberated through the closed space. “Damn, ” Hauer muttered. “Extra security. Don’t say a word, Hans. And pray the Vopos are lazy tonight.”
Benjamin OCAS stared through his spotless windshield at the gauntlet ahead. Thirty metres away, red-and-white steel barriers blocked the road at both checkpoints. On the East German side, a steel-helmeted Vopo stood at the window of a white Volkswagen, checking the driver’s papers. The West Berlin border guards had gone into their booth to escape the biting wind. The border guards weren’t the problem. Ten metres in front of OCAS’s Jaguar, a black minivan marked Polizei had been parked diagonally across the road, partially blocking it. Beside the van, two great-coated police officers were questioning four men in a black Mercedes that sat idling just ahead of OCAS’s Jaguar. As casually as he could, Benjamin OCAS rolled down his window.
“Step out of the car, Herr Gritzbach,” said a large, surly police sergeant to the driver of the black Mercedes. “And shut off the engine.”
“Certainly, Officer.”
KGB Captain Dmitri Rykov smiled and turned the ignition key. The Mercedes’ engine sputtered into silence. Rykov climbed slowly out of the car, moving as if he had all night to stand in the cold and chat with his West German comrades. His three passengers soon joined him. “Why do you travel at this late hour?” the policeman asked sharply.
Rykov smiled. “Our employer wants us back at a construction site in the East. Apparently there’s some sort of emergency”What was your business in West Berlin?” Rykov pointed to his papers. “It’s all there on the second page. We’re architects for the firm of Huber and Rohl. We’re building a civic hall near the Muggelsee. We came to West Berlin to consult with some architects here, and also to study the Philharmonie building. Magnificent.”
“Yes, quite,” added Corporal Andrei Ivanov, whose East German passport identified him as one Gunther Burkhalter.
The policeman grunted. He knew about these men. He had seen the black Mercedes with their drivers who spoke not-quite-perfect German too many times before. He also knew that their cover stories would check out. When operating in West Berlin, the KGB carried authentic East German ID documents supplied by the Stasi. Still, the sergeant was in no mood for a silky-voiced Russian who acted as if he expected the West Berlin police to kowtow to him.
“Open the boot, Herr Gritzbach,” he said.
Rykov smiled again and reached into the car for the keys. Andrei and the others tensed, but their worries were for nothing. Hidden in the cramped compartment beneath the rear seat of the Mercedes, Harry Richardson remained unconscious. His hands and feet were bound so tightly with duct tape that they received almost no blood at all. Even if he had regained consciousness, he couldn’t have moved. Crammed into every inch of space unoccupied by his body were the oiled weapons of the KGB team.
“You see?” said Rykov, gesturing into the Mercedes’ trunk. “Nothing but suit bags. Disappointed, Sergeant?”
The burly policeman slammed down the lid and moved back to the side of the car. He had no legal reason to detain these men, however badly he might want to. Brusquely he handed the passport and other papers back to Rykov. “Pass,” he said.
Grinning, Rykov slid halfway into the Mercedes and started the engine. While he waited for his comrades to climb in, he stared at the policeman through the open door and laughed. I love this, he thought. The idiot knows, yet he can do noth… “Aaarrrgh!” he shrieked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Herr Gritzbach! I didn’t realize!”
The police sergeant had slammed the heavy Mercedes door on Rykov’s exposed leg. “Are you all right, Herr Gritzbach? Should I call a doctor?”
Rykov’s ashen face quivered with rage. “No!” he snarled, rubbing his leg furiously.
“But your leg might be broken.”
Rykov lifted his throbbing leg into the car and slammed the door.
“Very well, then,” the policeman said gleefully. “I hope your stay in West Berlin has been a memorable one.”
“I’ll remember you,” Rykov vowed, his face twisted in pain. “Depend on that.”
The Mercedes screeched away. It stopped perfunctorily at the western checkpoint, then shot beneath the raised barrier on the East German side, accelerating all the way.
“Just as I thought,” the sergeant muttered. “Pre-cleared.” He turned and signalled the next car forward.
Benjamin OCAS swallowed his fear, placed a reassuring hand on his wife’s arm and eased the Jaguar toward the roadblock. The sergeant turned his back to the bowling wind and lit a cigarette; then he walked back to the police van. A younger officer stepped up to OCAS’s window.
“Guten Abend, Officer,” OCAS said, handing over his passport. “Is there some emergency?”
“I’m afraid so, Herr … OCAS. We’re looking for two fugitives. I must ask you a few questions. What is the purpose of your visit to East Berlin?” “Family emergency. My nephew has been killed. We’re on our way to Braunschweig.”
Frau OCAS gave a little sob, then turned away as if she were crying. The young policeman leaned over and peered in at her, then scrutinized her husband’s papers. OCAS patted his wife’s shoulder. “Now, now, Bernice. We’ll be there soon.”
Inside the dark boot, Hans could hear every word distinctly. “Captain,” he whispered. “What do we do if—”
“Shut up,” Hauer breathed. “It’s all up to the old man now.”
“But if they open the boot … do we fight? Do you still have your gun?”
“If they open the boot we do nothing. If I pulled out a gun this close to the Wall, they’d be hosing us off the street in the morning. The old couple, too. Just be quiet and don’t move.”
Though every muscle twitched in pain, Hans struggled to remain still. He tried to ignore the voices outside, but it was impossible.
“He died in an auto accident early this evening,” OCAS was saying. “My brother called me. A horrible thing. Four car pileup.”
“Why do you exit here?” asked the young officer sharply. “Braunschweig lies due west.” OCAS tried to think of what Hauer had told him to say, but he hesitated a second too long.
“Open the trunk, please,” the policeman ordered. “You may remain in the car if you have an automatic release.” With his heart in his throat, OCAS slowly reached for the button.
“Why is this taking so long?” Frau OCAS cried suddenly.
“He’s only doing his job, Bernice,” OCAS said, his heart pounding.
“The men we’re after murdered two policemen,” the young man answered stiffly. “They must be brought to justice.” He looked over at the van and motioned toward the Jaguar’s boot. The surly sergeant who had smashed Rykov’s leg walked to the rear of the Jaguar. He drummed his fingers on the boot lid, waiting for OCAS to release the catch.
Inside, Hans tensed like a coiled spring. Hauer shoved his Walther deep into the spare tire receptacle, praying it wouldn’t be spotted until they were safely away from the vehicle. Just as he got the pistol covered, the catch popped open. The lid rose a little, then the sergeant flipped it all the way up. Seeing the old blanket, he took hold of a corner and jerked it aside. Blinding glare from the checkpoint spotlights struck Hans and Hauer full in the face, illuminating their twisted bodies.
The big policeman froze. This tiny compartment
was the last place he had expected to find the fugitives. He groped clumsily for his gun. Squinting into the light, Hauer discerned the outlines of the policeman’s face. “Steiger!” he hissed through gritted teeth.
The policeman gaped in surprise, then leaned low over the trunk. “Dieter!” he whispered. “What the hell are you doing?”
Hauer shook his head violently. Sergeant Steiger glanced around the boot lid at his companion, who was still questioning OCAS. Then he leaned lower and looked into Hauer’s eyes. “Dieter, was it you?” he whispered. “Did you kill Weiss?”
Hauer shook his head still more violently. “Funk, ” he spat. “That bastard ordered it.”
Steiger straightened up and glanced over the trunk lid, past his partner, to the American checkpoint, and then farther on to where the East German Vopos waited. He made a hard decision very fast. Leaning back over the boot, he shoved down hard on the car frame with his thighs and hands, giving the impression of checking for a false bottom. Then he stood up, glanced once at Hauer, and slammed the lid. “Nothing here,” he called to his partner. “Suitcases.” Steiger sauntered to the police van and picked up his cigarette. His partner was still questioning OCAS.
“This is highly irregular,” the young man said officiously.
What’s happening? OCAS thought wildly. Why didn’t that policeman jerk them out of the boot? “My wife is very upset, Officer,” he stammered. “There’s an old synagogue in East Berlin—in the Kollwitzstrasse, not far from here. She was practically raised in that synagogue. Before the war, of course.”
“You are Jewish?” the policeman asked sharply.
OCAS heard blood roaring in his ears. Memories of his youth flooded into his mind. Midnight knocks at his door—screams for help ignored— “Yes,” he answered quietly. “We are Jewish.”
The young man smiled and handed back OCAS’s papers. “There is also a very beautiful synagogue in Braunschweig,” he said. “You must see it. I spent my summers there as a boy. That’s why I asked.”
OCAS swallowed the lump in his throat. “Thank you. Yes, we’ve seen it many times.” With a shaking hand he shifted into first gear.
