Berlin Letters, page 28
I’ve been here six months and there is no end in sight, especially now.
The worst of the interrogations ended quickly. I can’t tell what amount of time it truly took, but it couldn’t have been that long because I wasn’t terribly thin when it ended. I was a little beat up, but I’d lost only enough weight to see my ribs and that hollow spot right below the collarbone. There were all the elements I’d heard about—the bright lights, the wakings, the endless questions, the lack of sleep, food, and water. But then it was over.
I think it ended because there was nothing to tell them. They knew what I’d done and where I’d done it. It took me a long time to work out how they discovered it all, but I finally got there last month. A guard let something slip and it clicked into place.
Peter Sauer.
For all his and Helene’s talk about Frau Hemmel, he was the snitch in our building. Maybe they both were—and still are. Conversations over the years played back like a movie before my eyes, and I couldn’t believe I’d not noticed before.
Our meeting the first day their family moved in. How he sought me out and created a bond over food, work, unspoken dissent. Never agreeing with me but implying, teasing out my opinions, encouraging my confidences. The dinner invitation the night I discovered the bug in my apartment rather than a new heating unit. The movie nights. My first call to Stasi headquarters the day after my trip to the Tränenpalast. The words the interrogator had used. He’d been so prepared, his notes so detailed. How could I have been so stupid not to realize that such preparation had to have been the work of months, not a mere day? Now I suspect Peter took me to the Tränenpalast on purpose because it provided the perfect excuse to bring me in for questioning. I’d never suspect it as everyone who goes to the Friedrichstrasse Station runs that risk. I doubt Peter even has an Aunt Agatha.
Then there was Manfred. Sure, there were other hints, but that conversation alone should have alerted me. And it did—at the time and finally, in its fullness, last month. Over beers Peter asked if Manfred had been the reporter who’d died trying to escape. I shot back yes without thought. I remember, at the time, something discordant striking my mind, but I couldn’t name it, pin it down. Only last month could I see it clearly—I never told Peter about Manfred, and no one but the Stasi or the VoPo could.
I’ve rested in this cell for the past few months berating and consoling myself. The berating is justified—I was an idiot. I let my guard down. I was a fool. But gentle consolation comes with the next thought, and that is real too—it’s only me here. I never gave them any actionable intelligence. I never gave up any of the punks’ names. Heck, I don’t know their real names.
And I’ve never heard from any prisoners coming or going that more arrests surrounding the elections have been made. And I gather they’d know. The elections became the talk of the city, the talk of the country, and even six months later remain top of mind. It seems I’m the election scapegoat, but as long as the others are safe, that’s fine by me. I rest in that fact, even when my trial gets delayed or I get tossed into solitary confinement for no good reason, again.
Then a few days ago, a guard announced I was getting transferred to Naumburg Prison. I’ve heard stories of that place. There are two prisons in Naumburg, one for the men and another for women, and both are equally terrible hellholes. You don’t go there to await trial so much as to disappear without one.
“When will my trial be scheduled? When do I go to court? What’s going on . . . ?” I yelled after the guard, but he never turned, much less answered. The prisoner in the next cell did.
“They’ve canceled all the hearings in East Berlin right now. The riots are growing too fierce. That’s why they’re moving the political prisoners. They’re worried you lot will stir things up further.”
“Who are you? How do you know this?”
“It’s all over the streets. Everyone knows it. You’d be shocked at what’s being talked about these days. Secrets spilling all over the place. Protests. Riots. It’s coming to a boil, I tell you.”
“Riots? Are they about the elections?”
“The elections are long past. They’re about freedom now.”
My legs lost strength and I dropped to my cell’s metal bench, stunned. Freedom? The word has consumed me since that moment.
I glance to the clock as an officer comes to my cell. It’s six fifteen and I haven’t gotten dinner yet. I almost comment, but he’s sporting a twisted smirk that puts me on guard. He hauls me off the bench and cuffs me. “You’ve got some friends about, don’t you, Voekler? Got money too, not that it helped you.”
“Peter Sauer?” I keep saying his name to the guards in hopes it’ll get back to Peter. I want him to know I know. I want him to feel that prick in his conscience if he can.
“No.” The guard sneers. “A pretty young thing. Do you have a daughter?”
I twist to face him, but he holds my hands tight. “Who?”
“A German girl. Blonde. With big blue eyes.”
What is Willow or Tiny up to? They’re the only two blonde punks I can think of, and I hope neither is trying to do something stupid to help me.
“No daughter.” I return to the guard’s question, hoping the girls are long gone. “I don’t have a daughter and no one would help me, so leave it alone.”
“That’s what I thought. Told them it was too late anyway.”
“Too late?”
“We’re moving you tonight. Get going.”
With that, he pushes me so hard I stumble out of the cell toward the building’s loading dock.
Chapter 28
Luisa Voekler
Thursday, November 9, 1989
“Who is Peter Sauer?”
I slump back against the wall and try to untangle what was real, what was imagined, and how I might have messed it all up. “He and his wife said you sent them a note that the guard wouldn’t be on duty until tonight. Then he was there, at 6:00 p.m., and I paid him. For nothing.”
I open my eyes and clutch Panzer’s arm so tight, I feel the stiff skin on my palm split open. “What if it was a trick? What if the right guard really was there this morning, but I walked away? I just handed five thousand dollars to a fraud.”
I stop. Why not all seventeen thousand? If Peter and Helene were in it for the money, they could have taken all of it. And who told them about Panzer? How did they know? My mind reels off into the ether until Panzer brings me back with a snap so close to my nose I feel it.
“Focus. We’ll figure this out later, but now . . .” He taps the back of his head against the bathroom’s tile. “We’ve got to get you out of here. Your safety matters most now.”
His care brings tears to my eyes. I swipe them away. “How do you live like this? I’ve only been here a day.”
He chuckles. “Maybe it’s worse here. I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere else, but doesn’t one find conformity, complacency, and even persecution of the outsider everywhere? Rats and snitches too?”
His questions surprise me. I was asking about police, regulations, and authoritarianism. He’s examining human nature.
“I suppose.”
“It’s humanity at our most basic level. You go along until they come for you. Then you find out what you’re made of.”
“You and Willow and all of you”—I wave my hand toward the bathroom door, then swipe it across my damp face—“are made of good steely stuff. I’m not sure anymore about Peter and Helene Sauer.”
“You don’t know they weren’t being honest. That could have been your real contact.”
“But how?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea, but you’d be surprised at how small this city is and how much everyone, if you just scratch the surface, knows about each other.”
He smiles, trying to fill me with encouragement, and again I am struck by how young he is beneath all his black leather and makeup, beneath his wisdom too.
“I’m done here, Panzer. I missed my chance. I need to go back so Willow can come home.” I reach down the neck of my sweater and pull Daniel’s scrap of paper from my bra. “Do you have a telephone?”
Panzer holds up a “wait here” finger and, using the toilet for leverage, pushes himself up. He steps over me and whacks me with the bathroom door as he leaves. He’s back in under a minute carrying a black rotary dial telephone, dragging the long cord behind him. “I’ll keep them talking in the other room, but keep your voice down in here.”
I nod and take the heavy phone from him.
I dial the number and am surprised when Daniel answers on the second ring. I was almost expecting everything to have fallen apart, on both sides of the Wall. “Luisa? Where have you been? I expected to hear from you hours ago.”
“He’s gone. The guard wasn’t on duty this morning like he was supposed to be, or so I was told, so I had to wait. But I met a guard tonight and paid him, and he’s gone. My father was already transferred out of the city.”
“They’re moving political prisoners because of the riots. Have you heard the news?”
“I’ve been walking across this entire city, Daniel.” I stop. That’s not true. I was asleep. The oddness of that strikes me again, but I push it away. “I’ve heard nothing. What’s going on?”
“Wait there. Stay at that phone. You’ll get a call. This is a little out of my hands now.”
“You can’t call me back. I don’t know this num—” I lift the phone. The plastic holder for the number card is empty. But it doesn’t matter; the line is already dead.
It rings seconds later. I pick it up, too shocked for pleasantries. “How’d you do that? And what do you mean it’s out of your hands?”
“Good evening, Luisa.”
“Andrew?” I choke on my boss’s name.
“Listen carefully and don’t interrupt.”
I glance around the bathroom as if my boss is somehow here, looking over my shoulder. “How do you—?”
“Luisa,” he barks. “What time does Panzer’s watch say?”
He’s right. I do interrupt. “It says 6:41.”
“You have only an hour and the streets are going to start filling. The news won’t air until the 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. broadcasts, but it’s seeping in regardless. You need to move fast. Do you understand me? You need to run. Don’t take the S-Bahn as I’m not sure what they’ll do to those lines and the VoPo monitor them well. You’re best on foot. Running. Let nothing stop you. Your father’s train leaves at 7:48 from the Friedrichstrasse Station. Not up where the S-Bahn trains travel aboveground, but below. Platform 6. Repeat that last part.”
“7:48. Platform 6. Friedrichstrasse Station. But why will the streets fill? Is there another protest?”
“There’s no time for that. First you need to get your father. The rest—it’ll become clear. Pay attention.” He pauses as if giving me time to prepare myself not to interrupt.
I nod. Then I realize he can’t see me. “Yes.”
“There is a door as you enter the station from the southwest stairwell. You have to go up to go down. It’s marked Employees Only and it’s the most watched door in East Berlin. It’s a regular party at that door. All the agencies on both sides watch it as it’s the VoPo and Stasi entrance to the trains below. It’s how they move people, officers, and prisoners. I can’t say that tonight will be any different. You need to go through that door and don’t let anyone stop you.”
“Yes.”
“Below there will be two guards. You talk to one named Beck. If you have to ask his name, ask. There’s no time to be subtle. Call the number after you get your father and we’ll go from there.”
“We? I thought the CIA couldn’t help me.”
“Of course they can’t and we never had this conversation, but considering Daniel’s involved, I’m sure he’ll think of something.”
“Thank—”
“Thank me later, Luisa, when I don’t fire you. Run.”
Again, the line goes dead.
I put the receiver back in the cradle and open the bathroom door. “Panzer,” I bark just as an “older sister” might.
He comes striding down the hallway.
“Friedrichstrasse Station? I have to go on foot.”
He pushes me back into the bathroom and stands against the wall beside me rather than in front of me. I’m about to interrupt him when he starts moving his hands to the left and right. I see he’s working out directions as if walking the route himself.
He points ahead of us, as if he can almost see the parks and building I will pass. “You go straight through Alexanderplatz. Straight. Because on the other side, you’ll start getting street signs. You’re only a few blocks from the station at that point and every corner is marked with an arrow. It’s not the fastest way, but it’s not that much slower and you can’t mess it up.”
“I need the fastest.” I look at his watch. “I only have an hour.”
“It’s over six kilometers. You can’t make it.”
“I have to make it.” I undo his watch and shove it into his hands.
He pushes it back. “You need it.”
I shake my head. I can’t take anything more from him, and certainly not a treasured family heirloom. Besides, I don’t need it. I either run my fastest and I make it or I don’t. Pausing to count down the minutes isn’t going to help. I kiss Panzer’s stubbled cheek in thanks and race out the door and down the building’s stairs. This time I do not go to the basement and walk two buildings away. I crash through the lobby and start to run, just as Andrew told me to.
I run to Karl-Marx-Allee, turn right, and run the couple miles straight to Alexanderplatz. I try to continue across the plaza, as instructed, but it’s packed tonight. People fill it with more pouring in every second. They’re not organized. I don’t see any signs signaling a protest. Instead I get this odd feeling that no one knows what’s going on but they need to be out and about to be a part of whatever it might become. The size of the protests all across Germany that Andrew recounted in our meeting at Langley was staggering, and Daniel’s update eclipsed those numbers. Perhaps tonight will be the granddaddy of them all.
The deep chime of a bell reverberates off the buildings. I look up, bumping into a broad man as I do, and notice a large clock atop a red building to my left. Seven o’clock. I stumble around him, catch myself, wave an apology, and race on, seeing nothing until a firm grip on my arm lifts me off my feet. My body spins midair and lands facing the green uniform of the Volkspolizei.
“Papers.”
I have no papers and I have no time.
“He just started screaming.”
I remember hearing that line as part of a story Splinter was telling on the bus. He was describing how a friend evaded forty-eight hours of Stasi questioning by simply screaming his head off in public. Embarrassed by the commotion, the officer simply let him go. Stasi Schmidt didn’t laugh at the story, but all the other band members did. Even in my pretend comatose state, I smiled at his friend’s creativity.
I twist, trying to break free of the policeman’s grasp, and start yelling at the top of my lungs in German. “I’ve done nothing wrong. He’s hurting me. Help me. Help me.”
People turn toward us. The crowd presses close and everyone’s attention focuses on us. No one says or does anything, but they don’t have to. The policeman lets go at my first yell, and I push through the throng and sprint away.
I finally reach the end of the square—which I decide is more of a rectangle—and my lungs are on fire. A horrible cramp has seized my left side and I can’t pull in air. I dig my fist into the soft space above my hip bone and start running again. Panzer’s advice was good. I have no sense of direction and barely a coherent thought in my brain, but each street corner is marked with a sign for Friedrichstrasse Station, both in Russian Cyrillic and in German. I simply need to follow the signs.
Within several minutes I catch my first glimpse of the massive train station. I stop, grab my side again, and close my eyes, trying to envision a map of East Berlin in the hopes I can discern what corner I’m approaching. Starting up again, I pass the closest stairwell and run under the tracks, suspecting the southwest corner is on the other side. I pray I’m right as I climb the stairs. My legs are jelly so I grab the rail and half pull myself up the double flight.
At the platform I gulp in air and relief. A door marked Nur für Mitarbeiter, Employees Only, sits exactly where Andrew said it would be. I spot a few men loitering nearby but don’t give them time to approach. I yank open the door and descend a dim stairwell that’s at least twice as far down as I climbed up moments before.
The door at the bottom opens to an underground station. Not for city commuter trains, but larger ones that travel greater distances. The platforms aren’t as full as those above, but plenty of people are milling about. I search for signs and find the placard for Number 6 is one platform away.
The train sits ready to depart, and with each step I expect it to pull away. It doesn’t. I round the back of it and head toward the boarding crowds, afraid I’ve once more missed my father. My heart pounds so loudly it feels like my whole body pulses with its beat, especially my ears.
Across from the train’s open doors and the people lining up to enter them, I see a row of men sitting on a bench. It’s their greyness that captures my attention. Everything about them is the same color. Grey shoes. Grey clothes. Grey hair. Grey faces. Grey expressions.
Two Stasi guards, dressed in a sharper iteration of grey, stand beyond them. I walk toward the guards, unable to pull my eyes from the line of men. Every instinct tells me one is my father.
The train’s whistle blows and the sound pierces the air around us. Nevertheless I hear, as if spoken to my heart rather than to my ears, “Mäuschen?”
Little Mouse.
It’s soft. It’s a question. I pause and find that the second-to-last man in the row has his eyes fixed upon mine.
One look and I know he’s my father. We have the same eyes.
Chapter 29
Thursday, November 9, 1989, 7:36 p.m.
The worst of the interrogations ended quickly. I can’t tell what amount of time it truly took, but it couldn’t have been that long because I wasn’t terribly thin when it ended. I was a little beat up, but I’d lost only enough weight to see my ribs and that hollow spot right below the collarbone. There were all the elements I’d heard about—the bright lights, the wakings, the endless questions, the lack of sleep, food, and water. But then it was over.
I think it ended because there was nothing to tell them. They knew what I’d done and where I’d done it. It took me a long time to work out how they discovered it all, but I finally got there last month. A guard let something slip and it clicked into place.
Peter Sauer.
For all his and Helene’s talk about Frau Hemmel, he was the snitch in our building. Maybe they both were—and still are. Conversations over the years played back like a movie before my eyes, and I couldn’t believe I’d not noticed before.
Our meeting the first day their family moved in. How he sought me out and created a bond over food, work, unspoken dissent. Never agreeing with me but implying, teasing out my opinions, encouraging my confidences. The dinner invitation the night I discovered the bug in my apartment rather than a new heating unit. The movie nights. My first call to Stasi headquarters the day after my trip to the Tränenpalast. The words the interrogator had used. He’d been so prepared, his notes so detailed. How could I have been so stupid not to realize that such preparation had to have been the work of months, not a mere day? Now I suspect Peter took me to the Tränenpalast on purpose because it provided the perfect excuse to bring me in for questioning. I’d never suspect it as everyone who goes to the Friedrichstrasse Station runs that risk. I doubt Peter even has an Aunt Agatha.
Then there was Manfred. Sure, there were other hints, but that conversation alone should have alerted me. And it did—at the time and finally, in its fullness, last month. Over beers Peter asked if Manfred had been the reporter who’d died trying to escape. I shot back yes without thought. I remember, at the time, something discordant striking my mind, but I couldn’t name it, pin it down. Only last month could I see it clearly—I never told Peter about Manfred, and no one but the Stasi or the VoPo could.
I’ve rested in this cell for the past few months berating and consoling myself. The berating is justified—I was an idiot. I let my guard down. I was a fool. But gentle consolation comes with the next thought, and that is real too—it’s only me here. I never gave them any actionable intelligence. I never gave up any of the punks’ names. Heck, I don’t know their real names.
And I’ve never heard from any prisoners coming or going that more arrests surrounding the elections have been made. And I gather they’d know. The elections became the talk of the city, the talk of the country, and even six months later remain top of mind. It seems I’m the election scapegoat, but as long as the others are safe, that’s fine by me. I rest in that fact, even when my trial gets delayed or I get tossed into solitary confinement for no good reason, again.
Then a few days ago, a guard announced I was getting transferred to Naumburg Prison. I’ve heard stories of that place. There are two prisons in Naumburg, one for the men and another for women, and both are equally terrible hellholes. You don’t go there to await trial so much as to disappear without one.
“When will my trial be scheduled? When do I go to court? What’s going on . . . ?” I yelled after the guard, but he never turned, much less answered. The prisoner in the next cell did.
“They’ve canceled all the hearings in East Berlin right now. The riots are growing too fierce. That’s why they’re moving the political prisoners. They’re worried you lot will stir things up further.”
“Who are you? How do you know this?”
“It’s all over the streets. Everyone knows it. You’d be shocked at what’s being talked about these days. Secrets spilling all over the place. Protests. Riots. It’s coming to a boil, I tell you.”
“Riots? Are they about the elections?”
“The elections are long past. They’re about freedom now.”
My legs lost strength and I dropped to my cell’s metal bench, stunned. Freedom? The word has consumed me since that moment.
I glance to the clock as an officer comes to my cell. It’s six fifteen and I haven’t gotten dinner yet. I almost comment, but he’s sporting a twisted smirk that puts me on guard. He hauls me off the bench and cuffs me. “You’ve got some friends about, don’t you, Voekler? Got money too, not that it helped you.”
“Peter Sauer?” I keep saying his name to the guards in hopes it’ll get back to Peter. I want him to know I know. I want him to feel that prick in his conscience if he can.
“No.” The guard sneers. “A pretty young thing. Do you have a daughter?”
I twist to face him, but he holds my hands tight. “Who?”
“A German girl. Blonde. With big blue eyes.”
What is Willow or Tiny up to? They’re the only two blonde punks I can think of, and I hope neither is trying to do something stupid to help me.
“No daughter.” I return to the guard’s question, hoping the girls are long gone. “I don’t have a daughter and no one would help me, so leave it alone.”
“That’s what I thought. Told them it was too late anyway.”
“Too late?”
“We’re moving you tonight. Get going.”
With that, he pushes me so hard I stumble out of the cell toward the building’s loading dock.
Chapter 28
Luisa Voekler
Thursday, November 9, 1989
“Who is Peter Sauer?”
I slump back against the wall and try to untangle what was real, what was imagined, and how I might have messed it all up. “He and his wife said you sent them a note that the guard wouldn’t be on duty until tonight. Then he was there, at 6:00 p.m., and I paid him. For nothing.”
I open my eyes and clutch Panzer’s arm so tight, I feel the stiff skin on my palm split open. “What if it was a trick? What if the right guard really was there this morning, but I walked away? I just handed five thousand dollars to a fraud.”
I stop. Why not all seventeen thousand? If Peter and Helene were in it for the money, they could have taken all of it. And who told them about Panzer? How did they know? My mind reels off into the ether until Panzer brings me back with a snap so close to my nose I feel it.
“Focus. We’ll figure this out later, but now . . .” He taps the back of his head against the bathroom’s tile. “We’ve got to get you out of here. Your safety matters most now.”
His care brings tears to my eyes. I swipe them away. “How do you live like this? I’ve only been here a day.”
He chuckles. “Maybe it’s worse here. I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere else, but doesn’t one find conformity, complacency, and even persecution of the outsider everywhere? Rats and snitches too?”
His questions surprise me. I was asking about police, regulations, and authoritarianism. He’s examining human nature.
“I suppose.”
“It’s humanity at our most basic level. You go along until they come for you. Then you find out what you’re made of.”
“You and Willow and all of you”—I wave my hand toward the bathroom door, then swipe it across my damp face—“are made of good steely stuff. I’m not sure anymore about Peter and Helene Sauer.”
“You don’t know they weren’t being honest. That could have been your real contact.”
“But how?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea, but you’d be surprised at how small this city is and how much everyone, if you just scratch the surface, knows about each other.”
He smiles, trying to fill me with encouragement, and again I am struck by how young he is beneath all his black leather and makeup, beneath his wisdom too.
“I’m done here, Panzer. I missed my chance. I need to go back so Willow can come home.” I reach down the neck of my sweater and pull Daniel’s scrap of paper from my bra. “Do you have a telephone?”
Panzer holds up a “wait here” finger and, using the toilet for leverage, pushes himself up. He steps over me and whacks me with the bathroom door as he leaves. He’s back in under a minute carrying a black rotary dial telephone, dragging the long cord behind him. “I’ll keep them talking in the other room, but keep your voice down in here.”
I nod and take the heavy phone from him.
I dial the number and am surprised when Daniel answers on the second ring. I was almost expecting everything to have fallen apart, on both sides of the Wall. “Luisa? Where have you been? I expected to hear from you hours ago.”
“He’s gone. The guard wasn’t on duty this morning like he was supposed to be, or so I was told, so I had to wait. But I met a guard tonight and paid him, and he’s gone. My father was already transferred out of the city.”
“They’re moving political prisoners because of the riots. Have you heard the news?”
“I’ve been walking across this entire city, Daniel.” I stop. That’s not true. I was asleep. The oddness of that strikes me again, but I push it away. “I’ve heard nothing. What’s going on?”
“Wait there. Stay at that phone. You’ll get a call. This is a little out of my hands now.”
“You can’t call me back. I don’t know this num—” I lift the phone. The plastic holder for the number card is empty. But it doesn’t matter; the line is already dead.
It rings seconds later. I pick it up, too shocked for pleasantries. “How’d you do that? And what do you mean it’s out of your hands?”
“Good evening, Luisa.”
“Andrew?” I choke on my boss’s name.
“Listen carefully and don’t interrupt.”
I glance around the bathroom as if my boss is somehow here, looking over my shoulder. “How do you—?”
“Luisa,” he barks. “What time does Panzer’s watch say?”
He’s right. I do interrupt. “It says 6:41.”
“You have only an hour and the streets are going to start filling. The news won’t air until the 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. broadcasts, but it’s seeping in regardless. You need to move fast. Do you understand me? You need to run. Don’t take the S-Bahn as I’m not sure what they’ll do to those lines and the VoPo monitor them well. You’re best on foot. Running. Let nothing stop you. Your father’s train leaves at 7:48 from the Friedrichstrasse Station. Not up where the S-Bahn trains travel aboveground, but below. Platform 6. Repeat that last part.”
“7:48. Platform 6. Friedrichstrasse Station. But why will the streets fill? Is there another protest?”
“There’s no time for that. First you need to get your father. The rest—it’ll become clear. Pay attention.” He pauses as if giving me time to prepare myself not to interrupt.
I nod. Then I realize he can’t see me. “Yes.”
“There is a door as you enter the station from the southwest stairwell. You have to go up to go down. It’s marked Employees Only and it’s the most watched door in East Berlin. It’s a regular party at that door. All the agencies on both sides watch it as it’s the VoPo and Stasi entrance to the trains below. It’s how they move people, officers, and prisoners. I can’t say that tonight will be any different. You need to go through that door and don’t let anyone stop you.”
“Yes.”
“Below there will be two guards. You talk to one named Beck. If you have to ask his name, ask. There’s no time to be subtle. Call the number after you get your father and we’ll go from there.”
“We? I thought the CIA couldn’t help me.”
“Of course they can’t and we never had this conversation, but considering Daniel’s involved, I’m sure he’ll think of something.”
“Thank—”
“Thank me later, Luisa, when I don’t fire you. Run.”
Again, the line goes dead.
I put the receiver back in the cradle and open the bathroom door. “Panzer,” I bark just as an “older sister” might.
He comes striding down the hallway.
“Friedrichstrasse Station? I have to go on foot.”
He pushes me back into the bathroom and stands against the wall beside me rather than in front of me. I’m about to interrupt him when he starts moving his hands to the left and right. I see he’s working out directions as if walking the route himself.
He points ahead of us, as if he can almost see the parks and building I will pass. “You go straight through Alexanderplatz. Straight. Because on the other side, you’ll start getting street signs. You’re only a few blocks from the station at that point and every corner is marked with an arrow. It’s not the fastest way, but it’s not that much slower and you can’t mess it up.”
“I need the fastest.” I look at his watch. “I only have an hour.”
“It’s over six kilometers. You can’t make it.”
“I have to make it.” I undo his watch and shove it into his hands.
He pushes it back. “You need it.”
I shake my head. I can’t take anything more from him, and certainly not a treasured family heirloom. Besides, I don’t need it. I either run my fastest and I make it or I don’t. Pausing to count down the minutes isn’t going to help. I kiss Panzer’s stubbled cheek in thanks and race out the door and down the building’s stairs. This time I do not go to the basement and walk two buildings away. I crash through the lobby and start to run, just as Andrew told me to.
I run to Karl-Marx-Allee, turn right, and run the couple miles straight to Alexanderplatz. I try to continue across the plaza, as instructed, but it’s packed tonight. People fill it with more pouring in every second. They’re not organized. I don’t see any signs signaling a protest. Instead I get this odd feeling that no one knows what’s going on but they need to be out and about to be a part of whatever it might become. The size of the protests all across Germany that Andrew recounted in our meeting at Langley was staggering, and Daniel’s update eclipsed those numbers. Perhaps tonight will be the granddaddy of them all.
The deep chime of a bell reverberates off the buildings. I look up, bumping into a broad man as I do, and notice a large clock atop a red building to my left. Seven o’clock. I stumble around him, catch myself, wave an apology, and race on, seeing nothing until a firm grip on my arm lifts me off my feet. My body spins midair and lands facing the green uniform of the Volkspolizei.
“Papers.”
I have no papers and I have no time.
“He just started screaming.”
I remember hearing that line as part of a story Splinter was telling on the bus. He was describing how a friend evaded forty-eight hours of Stasi questioning by simply screaming his head off in public. Embarrassed by the commotion, the officer simply let him go. Stasi Schmidt didn’t laugh at the story, but all the other band members did. Even in my pretend comatose state, I smiled at his friend’s creativity.
I twist, trying to break free of the policeman’s grasp, and start yelling at the top of my lungs in German. “I’ve done nothing wrong. He’s hurting me. Help me. Help me.”
People turn toward us. The crowd presses close and everyone’s attention focuses on us. No one says or does anything, but they don’t have to. The policeman lets go at my first yell, and I push through the throng and sprint away.
I finally reach the end of the square—which I decide is more of a rectangle—and my lungs are on fire. A horrible cramp has seized my left side and I can’t pull in air. I dig my fist into the soft space above my hip bone and start running again. Panzer’s advice was good. I have no sense of direction and barely a coherent thought in my brain, but each street corner is marked with a sign for Friedrichstrasse Station, both in Russian Cyrillic and in German. I simply need to follow the signs.
Within several minutes I catch my first glimpse of the massive train station. I stop, grab my side again, and close my eyes, trying to envision a map of East Berlin in the hopes I can discern what corner I’m approaching. Starting up again, I pass the closest stairwell and run under the tracks, suspecting the southwest corner is on the other side. I pray I’m right as I climb the stairs. My legs are jelly so I grab the rail and half pull myself up the double flight.
At the platform I gulp in air and relief. A door marked Nur für Mitarbeiter, Employees Only, sits exactly where Andrew said it would be. I spot a few men loitering nearby but don’t give them time to approach. I yank open the door and descend a dim stairwell that’s at least twice as far down as I climbed up moments before.
The door at the bottom opens to an underground station. Not for city commuter trains, but larger ones that travel greater distances. The platforms aren’t as full as those above, but plenty of people are milling about. I search for signs and find the placard for Number 6 is one platform away.
The train sits ready to depart, and with each step I expect it to pull away. It doesn’t. I round the back of it and head toward the boarding crowds, afraid I’ve once more missed my father. My heart pounds so loudly it feels like my whole body pulses with its beat, especially my ears.
Across from the train’s open doors and the people lining up to enter them, I see a row of men sitting on a bench. It’s their greyness that captures my attention. Everything about them is the same color. Grey shoes. Grey clothes. Grey hair. Grey faces. Grey expressions.
Two Stasi guards, dressed in a sharper iteration of grey, stand beyond them. I walk toward the guards, unable to pull my eyes from the line of men. Every instinct tells me one is my father.
The train’s whistle blows and the sound pierces the air around us. Nevertheless I hear, as if spoken to my heart rather than to my ears, “Mäuschen?”
Little Mouse.
It’s soft. It’s a question. I pause and find that the second-to-last man in the row has his eyes fixed upon mine.
One look and I know he’s my father. We have the same eyes.
Chapter 29
Thursday, November 9, 1989, 7:36 p.m.
