The Hidden War

by David Fiddimore

  The lists were Die Vermißten – lists of missing people. People drifting back to Berlin after the war – particularly returning servicemen – had lost touch with their families, and were able to register them as missing with the early versions of the Control Commission. The lists were updated with addresses as people were reunited. In practice that meant by 1948 a lot of people found lost relatives by checking on the searches already carried out by others. By 1948 they were already well organized enough to expand the lists to include other parts of what had once been Germany. I had heard of the lists. In our zones they were now administered by civilian authorities, and there were stories of waiting in line for days and paying for a look at them. Of course, overdoses of money seemed to solve that problem; they usually do.

  ‘You didn’t expect to find them in Berlin anyway. Weren’t they over in the Russian Zone?’

  ‘About as far East as you can get, Charlie, without going into Hungary . . .’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘. . . English word.’

  ‘I will remember that. Geoffrey will be pleased.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’ At least she made me smile.

  The problem was that I’d fallen out with Russian Greg, probably the only man I knew who could help her. I decided not to tell her that.

  She offered me coffee, and when I accepted she made it herself. She was gone about ten minutes – she probably spent most of that time transiting the vast apartment. The coffee she came back with, still barefoot, was real; and American. That was interesting. She had put me in the chair I had found her in. The sun was beginning to set. I was beginning to relax. She sat on the hassock at my feet and said, ‘You will stay for supper of course.’ I didn’t think that it was a question.

  Supper was a plate of beans. I don’t know what kind they were. The plate itself was old and probably very valuable: the beans were old and probably not very valuable. They were the size of butter beans and an odd khaki colour. The taste was not objectionable, just profoundly monotonous. Frieda attacked hers with relish. I wished I had some sort of relish to douse mine with.

  ‘I do not wish to get fat,’ she told me, and placed her hand on her stomach. I thought of putting a hand on her stomach myself, but daren’t take the chance.

  ‘No. I can see that.’

  ‘Will keep you regular.’

  The romance sort of goes out of it after that.

  When I left her it was after dark, and I had nowhere to go that I wanted to go. The Shore Patrol had been replaced by three tough-looking Military Policemen in a three-tonner. I reckoned I’d be OK with them, so I pulled the Merc up close to them, climbed in the back and settled for the night. After a half-hour I was roused by someone tapping on the window. It was the old Troll. She was wearing a Wehrmacht greatcoat over her nightclothes and her hair was tied in bunches with pieces of rag. She didn’t look friendly and gestured fiercely – follow me. As I followed the shuffling mass back to the house I noticed that she was wearing an outsize pair of men’s leather slippers. They would be worth a mark or two.

  Frieda waited at the open door of her apartment.

  ‘I watched for your car to leave. It didn’t. Are you spying on me?’ I already told you; at least she could make me laugh. It wasn’t a loud laugh, or a long one.

  ‘No. I have nowhere to go tonight.’

  She stared at me for a moment, and then made an odd noise which conveyed that she didn’t believe me but couldn’t find another immediate explanation.

  ‘Come in; come in . . .’ That wasn’t as welcoming as it sounds. In fact she sounded cross. She waved the concierge away, and locked the great door shut behind us. She had her hair tied back with a plain cotton band, and had cleaned her face of makeup. Without it I could see, even in the poor light from one bulb suspended in the huge space, that her skin was pale, and that she had a few pale freckles around the sides of her eyes, and on her brow. Her undyed rough silk dressing gown was like a winding sheet. She looked curiously vulnerable.

  ‘Sleep here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Tomorrow you find somewhere else.’

  ‘Fine. Thank you.’

  She moved through the apartment so fast that I had to scurry to keep up with her. As we passed one door she pointed through and said, ‘My room . . .’

  ‘OK.’

  About a fortnight later we reached another. She said, ‘Your room. You sleep here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Here was a big bedroom decorated not unlike the one I had awoken in at Greg’s place. Second Empire stuff. The double bed was so far above the floor I’d need a parachute. What surprised me was the contrast with her own. The glimpse I’d had as we’d skated past her room showed it to be as small and plain as a nun’s cell: light grey walls, and no paintings that I noticed. A single bed with coarse brown blankets was lit by a single candle on a night stand. She saw me running the comparison, and smiled. For a moment I thought she might kiss me, but instead she kissed her right index finger and touched it lightly to the centre of my forehead.

  ‘Good night, Mr Bassett.’

  ‘How would I find you again in this place if I wanted you?’ She frowned. I wasn’t supposed to find her, or even want to. Then she grinned. ‘You can always whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Charlie? . . . You just . . .’ She was making fun of me . . .

  ‘Yes; I’ve seen that film too. I know how to whistle.’ She said goodnight as she was walking away: head down. Her winding sheet trailed on the polished boards, making a gentle swishing sound. Her feet made no sound at all.

  Ten minutes later I was warm, and on my back in the largest bed I’d ever slept in. I whistled experimentally a couple of times, but the noise was lost in the space around me, and came back as a reedy, quavering echo. I touched my own finger to my forehead – the spot she’d touched – and brought it down to my lips. There was a faint taste which I couldn’t identify. Raw alcohol maybe. I went to sleep thinking of Bogie and Bacall: they kept our hearts beating when the world was falling to pieces. I wonder if they ever knew that.

  Breakfast was hard black bread and harder black coffee. Whatever Frieda used to snare her men with wasn’t her cooking. There was no butter. She dipped pieces of the bread in the coffee, and sucked it dry before eating it. I looked at her. She had put on a light lipstick, but the rest of the warpaint was still in its boxes.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘You think I am pretty?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re a liar, Charlie Bassett. All men think me pretty: even those old enough to know better.’

  ‘I think that you’re beautiful . . .’

  She’d won a point, and smiled. Her nose was slightly snubbed; it turned up at the end. I couldn’t tell her age properly, even to the nearest ten years.

  ‘. . . But you do not like me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to.’

  ‘I can understand that. I do not wish to like you either.’ It suddenly occurred to me that we were speaking English. I almost hadn’t noticed. ‘More coffee?’

  ‘Yes please. Would you like me to bring you some the next time I come to Berlin?’

  It was her turn:

  ‘Yes please . . . but don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘OK. What next?’

  She sighed, and pulled her gown close around her.

  ‘Do you know anyone who could check the lists on the other side?’

  ‘I know a couple of people. So maybe. Do you want to know that your people are still alive, or where they are, or to make actual contact with them?’

  ‘The last.’

  ‘I can’t guarantee that.’

  ‘Can you guarantee anything?’

  ‘No.’ That last question actually cheered me up: I was dealing with a realist. ‘Thank you for my breakfast.’

  ‘You hated i
t.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  At the door to the room I paused, half-turned and looked back at her. It is really odd to look at someone and not know if they are smiling or not, but that is what happened.

  She said, ‘Thank you for being honest.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be.’

  This time she did smile.

  I closed the door behind me, took half a dozen steps but then went back.

  ‘I forgot to ask you something.’

  Her face said that she didn’t quite believe me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why did you hope to find your people listed in Berlin in the first place?’

  She did believe me.

  ‘When Germans in the East fled in front of the Russians they were driven towards Berlin. I think that was part of the Russian plan – to flood Berlin with refugees.’ I nodded, but didn’t butt in. ‘Besides, there were uncles and aunts here in Berlin who would have taken them in.’

  ‘You’ve checked up on the uncles and aunts?’

  She shook her head. ‘No record: not on the list.’

  I found that I’d been holding my breath. I let it loose with a bit of a sigh.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I really am going now.’

  She nodded, but she still hadn’t moved when I pulled the door closed behind me.

  I found Bozey in a tiny cubbyhole of an office at Gatow. Everyone seemed to know him already, so he was easy to find. ‘What’s this place?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ours for the time being. I won it in a card game last night.’ We had two rickety wooden chairs either side of a small desk. The room was probably a store cupboard in the time of the Greater Reich.

  ‘Who did you win it from?’

  ‘A sanitation engineer. It smelt a bit niffy until I washed it and threw most of his old clothes out. I kept a pair of overalls.’

  ‘Well done anyway. Thank you.’

  There were a couple of hooks on the back of the door for our jackets. Bozey had already pinned up a couple of large sheets of paper on the wall that even I could interpret – our schedules for the next ten days.

  ‘Think nothing of it. We get a phone in later in the day with our own extension – but that’s it. You can kiss goodbye to any promises made earlier. The RAF’s grabbed everything it had left for an operation on the lakes: they’re going to fly Sunderlands on to them.’ Sunderlands were those enormous flying boats I’ve already told you about – the four-poster beds of the seaplane world. They had bunks and kitchens, and somewhere to powder your nose.

  ‘What are they going to do with them?’

  ‘Salt. The city needs tons of salt for cooking and preserving. Salt reacts adversely with aeroplane aluminium: aircraft start falling to pieces.’

  ‘. . . So?’

  ‘Seaplanes are made from anodized metal to resist corrosion from seawater, so the Sunderlands can bring in all the salt we need. The Russians almost had us there.’

  I turned with difficulty to examine his flight schedule. He had prepared it very neatly. ‘What happens today?’

  ‘In a couple of hours Hardisty is bringing one of the Lancs in: flour and medicines. I’ve chalked him in for a day off, so I’ll take it back to Wunstorf myself once we turn it round. Tomorrow I’ll relieve George Turton . . . Until you’ve got a regular slot for me, I’ll work my way around the circuit giving our boys a day off at a time.’

  ‘You seem to have it all worked out.’

  ‘Thank you, boss. I thought so too . . . only I won’t be ferrying any of our kites back to Blighty if you don’t mind.’

  I’d forgotten his little problem with the Customs. I grinned.

  ‘OK, Bozey. Thank you again. You’ve done a grand job.’

  ‘That’s because I’m a grand person. Everyone thinks so, except the police and the Customs.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll come round in the end.’

  He smiled happily and said, ‘There’s a galley just down the corridor. Fancy a cuppa?’

  I found that I was whistling as I followed him to the tiny kitchen. That made me think of Frieda. That must have been why I was smiling as I caught sight of myself in a mirror.

  An RAF corporal with a technical flash fitted the telephone an hour later in fact, and ran the line down the corridor and out of sight. I was doubtful that it would work, but it rang about five minutes later. Bozey scooped up the receiver and smoothly said, ‘Halton Air . . .’ before I had a chance. Then he handed it to me.

  Russian Greg’s voice said, ‘You have some things of mine, Charlie. Don’ play games with me.’

  ‘You had some things of mine for three days. I was getting ready to write the condolence letters. This is not a game, Greg.’

  ‘Who said it was? Maybe you wouldn’t have got yours back without me. Did you consider that?’

  ‘I might have done, but the liquorice persuaded me otherwise.’

  Greg didn’t say anything for a ten-beat, and then he sighed and asked, ‘Why nobody trust me?’

  ‘It’s your job: you don’t even trust yourself.’

  ‘We gonna fight or dance, Charlie?’

  ‘I’m not that good at dancing.’

  ‘I teach you.’

  ‘When I come back, maybe. Tomorrow.’

  I thought that he had gone, but then he said, ‘My sister . . . are we still talking about her?’ His voice definitely changed every time he spoke of her. My turn to think before my tongue rattled.

  ‘I gave you my word, Greg. I won’t go back on it . . .’

  ‘You didn’t come through with my liquorice . . .’

  ‘You never gave me enough time.’

  Another pause. I could hear him breathing. He said, ‘I hate the English, you know that, Charlie?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it Greg; so does everyone else.’

  After I put the phone down Borland looked at me. His face wore a question, but he didn’t ask it. I liked him for that. I told him, ‘I’m coming with you: I feel safer up in the air.’ That was a first. Had Greg known the number allocated to us, or had he just called Gatow and asked for Halton?

  Now: a Lancastrian is a Lancaster bomber converted for transport duties. I’ve already told you that too. Some of them had a passenger cabin, and were used to fly a dozen passengers at a time across the Atlantic or to the Middle East. They might even have used them on the Australia run. Our two had had their guts removed, and were filled with a cargo space over an unnaturally bulging belly – to my eye, that is. At the RAF’s insistence we used ours for food and perishable cargoes, and packages that dare not speak their names for the military. Whisky and Pink Pig had been relegated to mostly hauling sacks of coal. I thought that almost redeemed them.

  We were flying each of our fleet with a pilot, engineer, loadmaster and radio officer when we had one. Some of the privateers actually used navs as well, but if our pilots couldn’t find their way about Europe on their own by now I didn’t want them anyway. Elaine had been responsible for swelling our ranks to accommodate the new numbers we required. Most of them were ex-RAF like me, so therefore as dependable as a perished condom.

  Bozey and I trudged out to the Tin Man with a tall thin engineer and a small thin loadmaster: Meredith and Drew. They were such an improbable coupling of names that everyone conspired to keep them together: they both had heavy, sinister Victorian moustaches and looked like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. They were what we described then as men of few words. In fact they hardly spoke at all. They went up the ladder in front of us, and as they did I told Bozey, ‘On the ground I might be the boss, but up there,’ I gestured, ‘I’m just the radio operator, OK?’

  He nodded. ‘What’s the matter, boss. All the responsibility getting on top of you?’ Funny man.

  The Tin Man was going to Wunstorf to kiss and tell with Dorothy. She was coming out from Croydon full of potatoes, tinned whale meat left over from the war and sacks of powdered egg. Most of it would be transferred to Tin Man, which would haul it back to Gatow.
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br />   We flew empty out of Gatow in the early afternoon, and just like the unladen bomber she was originally intended to be, Tin Man flew like a dream. She was like a greyhound pulling at the leash. If Borland hadn’t had to stay inside the corridor he could have had a lot of fun. Meredith grumbled about the hydraulic pressures. That was OK: engineers always find something to grumble about. We were about halfway along the corridor when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I had been monitoring the Soviet bandwidths. I thought that I could pick out a word or two, but Red Greg had been right: my Russian was shite. I clicked and said, ‘Charlie, Skipper.’

  Click. ‘Yes, Charlie.’

  ‘They’re talking about us.’

  ‘Say again.’

  ‘They’re talking about us.’

  ‘Do you speak Russian?’

  ‘Almost none, Skip, but I still know they’re talking about us. Believe me.’

  After a five-second delay Bozey clicked and came back, ‘I do, Charlie, I do . . . I’m just trying to work out if I can do anything about it: always hated gossips you see.’

  I could see his point. The northern free air corridor was getting crowded in both directions. If Bozey tried any sort of evasive action to mess the Reds about we would fly across the stream and cause chaos: someone would get hurt. I leaned back in my seat, and looked forward.

  I could see Meredith’s back, and the back of Bozey’s head and right shoulder. Meredith must have had one of those built-in radar systems which tell you when someone’s looking at you: he turned and looked back. Then he smiled, showed me an O with the first finger and thumb of his right hand, and then a simple thumbs-up. Whatever it was, he thought it was under control. What; me worry? It was only a moment, but it unsettled me.

  Bozey didn’t change our heading or altitude, and not much more than an hour later we popped safely out of the eastern end of the corridor like a rabbit out of a conjuror’s hat. The belts of conifers looked up at us starkly black, in a screen of fine late light that cast long shadows of trees into the firebreaks and across the occasional road. Bozey was a bit heavy-handed putting Tin Man on the ground at Wunstorf, but I’m an old RAF hand, and subscribe to the A landing you can walk away from is a good landing school of flying . . . so I didn’t say anything.