1989, page 16
A couple of weeks ago, she’d turned up at one of their meetings at the university. Fredi had spotted her in the audience because she didn’t fit. She was older than most of the kids in the room. And Genevieve’s idea of dressing down was still far too smart and stylish for the student followers of the Greens. To Fredi’s practised eye, she stood out. And it didn’t hurt that she was really rather lovely. She decided she’d make a point of speaking to her after the meeting.
It hadn’t turned out that way. Rather, it had been Genevieve who had sought her out. She’d walked up to Fredi with absolute self-assurance and said in immaculate German, ‘My name’s Genevieve Lockhart. I run Pythagoras Press, the academic publisher. We’re thinking about launching a journal covering environmental science and I was told you would be someone worth speaking to.’
Delighted, Fredi turned on her best smile and said, ‘Whoever you spoke to knows what they’re talking about. Come and have a drink and we’ll talk.’
On the way to the bar, they’d scooped up Hans and Berndt. This, Fredi thought, could finally be the connection they’d been craving. And who knew? Maybe Genevieve Lockhart would be a good fit in more ways than one.
Tegel was surprisingly quiet in the early evening. Allie emerged with her carry-on bag into the main concourse, which she’d thought resembled a doughnut the first time she’d visited the city. She saw no reason to change her opinion. Whichever direction she headed in, it seemed impossible to end up near the taxi rank. Eventually she found it and gave the driver an address on Giesebrechtstrasse in Charlottenburg. They’d stayed in this hotel when Rona had been despatched by GQ to write the words for a photo essay on Berlin’s punk scene. It was quiet, comfortable, clean and central; all the things Allie loved in a hotel, especially when she was working.
The other plus point in the small hotel’s favour was its proximity to Haus der 100 Biere, a short walk away at Mommsen-Eck. They’d stumbled on it and fallen in love with its traditional interior. Not to mention the challenge of a menu of the promised hundred beers from round the world and more than a dozen on tap. Allie had discovered the joys of Rauchbier, a smoked beer that reminded her of the bouquet of Islay malt whisky; Rona had preferred the local Berliner Weisse. After only a couple of days, they’d begun to feel like locals.
So Allie had arranged to meet Colin Corcoran at the bar at seven. She was there in good time and secured a small corner table where she reckoned they wouldn’t be overheard. She ordered a Rauchbier, slightly anxious that it wouldn’t taste as good as she remembered. Thankfully, she’d had no reason to worry. She was a third of the way down the glass when a tall man with a slight stoop and a prominent Adam’s apple edged his way across the pub towards her. He pushed his oversized glasses up his nose as he approached, his hand continuing to his thin mouse-brown hair. ‘Allie Burns?’ he said hesitantly.
‘Dr Corcoran, I presume.’ She stood up, smiled, and held out her hand. He took it in a surprisingly assured grip.
‘Colin, please.’ His smile seemed pained.
‘Have a seat, Colin.’ She waved at the waitress. ‘Thanks for coming, I really appreciate it. What would you like to drink?’
He glanced up at the waitress and said something in fluent German. All Allie recognised was ‘Radler’, the German equivalent of a lager shandy. Either he wasn’t much of a drinker or he was being cautious.
‘I don’t usually do this kind of thing,’ he muttered.
‘What? Drink with strange women?’
He gave her a quick glance, clearly uncertain where flippancy fitted in the conversation. ‘Talk about my work with journalists. I’ve seen enough to know you don’t always get things right. Sometimes deliberately.’
‘And yet you’re here.’ Allie smiled. ‘Did Jess vouching for me make a difference?’
‘A bit. But mostly I realised there’s a deal to be made here. I have something you want, and you can help me with something I want.’
‘If it’s payment—’
‘I don’t want money,’ he blurted out.
‘OK,’ Allie said, conciliatory. She paused while the waitress delivered his drink in a hefty glass tankard. ‘I’m listening.’
He took a long swallow of his drink then burped delicately behind his hand. ‘Before I tell you that, I’ll give you an outline of what I’ve got to offer. Zabre are roadtesting an anti-retroviral drug that they hope will slow down the development of HIV into full-blown AIDS. Do you understand what I’m saying here?’
Allie nodded. ‘Jess explained it to me.’
‘Now AIDS is springing up in Africa and elsewhere, this is potentially a massive global market. We moved the trials here because it gives us much more control over the information that comes out of the trial. Nobody in the GDR leaks to the press.’ A cynical twist of the lips. ‘But I can give you the inside information and if you play ball with me, it will be backed up with documentary support.’ His chin jutted upwards.
‘OK, that’s clear enough.’
‘Before we go any further, I need to ask you. What happens to people like me?’
‘You mean, whistleblowers? People who act out of principle?’
‘Whatever you want to call us that makes you feel comfortable. What happens to people who betray their employers when the circus leaves town?’ Another long pull of his drink. His long thin fingers were beating a silent tattoo on his glass.
‘There’s no template. In a very small number of cases, they face a police investigation of their own, if they’ve broken the law. Some of them move to another company in the sector – it’s a way of advertising how clean you are, if you hire somebody who’s already demonstrated their integrity. Some write a book.’ She shrugged. ‘And some of them just slip out of the picture altogether. Make a new life somewhere else, doing something completely different.’
‘They’re not a target for vengeance?’
Allie smiled. ‘Only in films. Once you’ve talked, there’s no point in that. You’ve already spilled the beans. There’s no benefit in trying to shut you up.’
He turned his head and looked out of the sliver of window visible from their table. Then he turned back to face her. He seemed somehow bigger, as if courage had inflated him like a hot-air balloon. ‘OK then, let’s deal. Here’s what I need from you.’
It was the last thing Allie expected.
27
‘Tell me you’re not going to do it,’ Rona said, her voice crackling over the international phone line.
‘It’ll be an adventure.’ Allie leaned back on the pillows.
‘I’m not going to wait twenty years for you to get out of a Soviet jail,’ Rona said.
‘How quickly it fades. There’s you, promising to love me forever, but at the first hurdle, down you go.’
‘Don’t joke about it.’
‘It’ll be fine. I can’t back out now, the poor sod has got everything lined up. My visa, my letters of accreditation.’
‘I wish you’d told me this last night and not waited till the last minute.’
‘I tried to call you but you were out. And your mum didn’t know when you’d be back. “I don’t know where she’s away to and I don’t know when she’ll be back. Can I take a message?”’ Allie chuckled. ‘It took me back to my teens, parents gatekeeping their wayward lassie.’
‘I’m not wayward. I was at the theatre. Watching a dire tragedy with more dead bodies than Hamlet. My mum didn’t give me the message till this morning, that’s why I didn’t call you back last night. Maybe just as well. I wouldn’t have slept if I’d known what you’re planning. I’m scared for you, Allie. I can’t imagine having to be without you.’
‘Don’t worry. Well, don’t worry today. This is just a dry run, checking out the logistics. Nothing bad is going to happen.’
‘How can you say that? Everybody knows the East German regime is riddled with informants. The Stasi control everything, and you know as well as I do that their show trials are a travesty of justice.’
‘I know all that, but believe me, this is watertight.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re doing this.’
A long pause while Allie tried to find the words. ‘I need to show the world I’ve still got the investigative chops. That I’ve not been ruined by writing for the gutter. I need a big story to remind everybody who I am.’
‘So find another one.’ Rona’s voice held a note of pleading Allie was unfamiliar with. Still she wouldn’t budge.
‘They’re not that easy to stumble across, Rona. If I’m not in the frame for someone to put me on a story, it could be months before I find something this promising. And I can’t afford to spend months not earning.’
‘Money’s not the issue now, Allie. Not with what I’m bringing in.’
Another pause. ‘I’m not living off you, Ro.’
‘We’re a partnership. It doesn’t matter which of us brings it in, it’s our money.’
You say that now. Too often Allie had seen the corrosive impact of economic inequality. Not to mention the shame she’d feel. ‘It’s not going to come to that. I’m going to land this story and re-establish myself as somebody who gets to the bottom of stuff people want to keep buried.’
‘But Allie—’
‘If I don’t go through with this, Colin Corcoran won’t let me in on what’s really going on. I’ll have shelled out for this trip and I’ll be coming home empty-handed. And that’s not my style.’ She forced a little laugh. ‘I’ll be careful. I promise. Now away you go and put the fear of God into some poor feature writer.’
Allie could hear the frustration in Rona’s smile from a thousand miles away. ‘I love you, Allie Burns.’
‘And I love you, Rona Dunsyre.’ Allie gently replaced the phone and sat up.
In spite of her performance for Rona, Allie could feel the uncertainty in her gut. When Colin had hit her with, ‘I want you to help me get my girlfriend out of East Berlin,’ she’d almost laughed out loud at the preposterous nature of his demand. He’d seen her struggle and immediately gone on the front foot.
‘This isn’t a joke. This is the rest of our lives. You can do this. I’ve worked it all out. It’s risk-free for you.’
‘What? Breaking the law in a Soviet bloc country? Risk-free?’ She scoffed. ‘And the moon’s made of green cheese.’
He clenched his hands, looked down at his fists and moved them under the tabletop. ‘I had no intention of talking to you until I saw this.’ A sudden movement and he palmed a tightly folded wad of newsprint on to the table. He nodded at it. ‘Go on, look.’
She unfolded the front page of the Little Weed story. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘The picture of you. It was like the last twist of a Rubik’s cube.’
‘You’re not making much sense, Colin.’
He took a deep breath. ‘You look kind of like my girlfriend. Enough for her to pass for you at a security checkpoint with your passport.’
‘Are you serious? You’re considering taking your girlfriend through Checkpoint Charlie on my passport?’
‘It’d work. There’s enough of a resemblance, if Wiebke takes off her glasses. It’d be best if you wore a hat, which is totally normal this time of year in Berlin. I have a rabbit fur one with earflaps.’ Seeing the look on Allie’s face, he hastily said, ‘Or a woolly one? Maybe with a pompom?’
‘I haven’t worn a woolly hat since I spent a weekend at Greenham Common protesting against American Cruise missiles. Neither was an experience I want to repeat. This is a crazy idea, Colin. How am I supposed to get back to the West if you’ve waltzed off with my passport?’
‘I’ve given that some thought. And I know just how we can do it.’
And in spite of her attempts to shut him up, he told her.
Allie sat in the passenger seat of Colin Corcoran’s clapped-out VW Golf, trying very hard not to panic. ‘We’re not going to do anything risky today,’ he said for at least the fifth time. She wanted to slap some sense into him, but it was so long since she’d hit anyone she doubted it would have the desired result.
In normal circumstances, Allie was alert to her surroundings, often mentally describing them to herself partly as an aide-memoire and partly as a first step to framing her story. But she’d have been hard-pressed to create any kind of word picture of the approach down Friedrichstrasse to Checkpoint Charlie. At first, all she could see was the ridiculously vulnerable-looking white wooden huts surmounted by the Allied Checkpoint sign. It was absurd to think of this as the last bastion against Soviet invasion. On the surface, it appeared a troop of Boy Scouts – or Girl Guides, come to that – could have overrun it in a matter of minutes.
But she knew that was deceptive. That at the first sign of trouble, the soldiers on guard duty would take up their stations behind the sandbags and return fire. She’d read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. She trusted John Le Carré to tell her the truth.
As they approached, she read the other sign, the one in English, Russian, French and curiously, bottom of the list and in the smallest type, German, advising travellers, ‘You are now leaving the American Sector.’ Presumably, the authorities thought the locals didn’t need telling. Colin pulled up by the first hut and handed over their passports, their visas and the paperwork that identified them as employees of Zabre Pharma liaising with their East German counterparts.
The inspection was leisurely; while the soldiers went through the motions, Allie stared straight ahead at the forbidding white monolith of the East German pillbox with its shallow slit for shooting anyone foolhardy enough to make a run for it. It couldn’t have been more threatening if they’d erected a neon sign saying, Don’t fuck with us. For a wild moment, she considered jumping out of the car and running back to safety. It wasn’t too late to call the whole thing off.
The barrier rose and they drove the few yards to its partner on the East German side of the crossing. ‘That went well,’ Colin said. ‘They’re used to me now. I’m back and forward three or four times a week. The Ossies won’t be quite so pally.’
They came to a halt and the car was surrounded by guards, all making sure Allie and Colin could see their guns. Their faces showed no emotion. Even the youngest of the quartet, who looked no more than eighteen, had the hard stare of a veteran who had seen more than he’d ever care to talk about. Colin handed over the paperwork. One guard looked through it, then walked around the car to Allie’s side. Her stomach turned over as he gestured to her to lower her window. She obeyed immediately. Facing Little Weed was one thing; staring down the barrel of a gun was in a different league. One she wasn’t certain she wanted to play in. She felt bile in her throat and wished she’d skipped the coffee earlier. But his glance was cursory and he walked away, back straight, shoulders squared. Colin had warned her that they’d take the papers over to the guardroom. ‘I’ve no idea what they check them against, but they love their bureaucracy. Plus they need to get our Stasi tail in place before they let us through,’ he’d said. ‘Just sit tight and look straight ahead.’
She did as he’d instructed her. Time crawled past, then the guard returned and handed over their papers. Colin passed them to Allie, who noticed they were now adorned with new stamps.
Now she could look around her and take in more details. There was little sign of the supposed benefits of being a Soviet satellite. The buildings were drab, the paint peeling and dirty. Even the structures that were obviously more modern – residential blocks, a school, a clinic – seemed already in terminal decline. They stopped at a junction and Allie noticed a line of graffiti, scored into the plaster about a foot above the pavement, scuffed but still legible. Keine Gewalt! Glasnost in Staat und Kirche. The pedestrians walked with their heads lowered against the weather, dressed in clothes that Allie couldn’t imagine anyone actively choosing to own. She recalled photographs in the Burns family albums of her parents and their friends around the time of the Second World War, their clothes threadbare and badly tailored. Even they had managed to scrape together a bit of stylishness. Not the citizens of East Berlin. At least, not the ones out on the streets.
‘It’s not far,’ Colin said, turning into a wide thoroughfare. They turned left almost immediately and he negotiated a maze of narrow streets before arriving at a pair of tall wooden gates in a high wall. Colin got out and pressed a bell next to the gate, then looked up at a boxy grey security camera. Slowly, the gates opened. ‘They recognise me now,’ Colin said, climbing back into the car and driving across a wide courtyard. Parking places were marked out, but most were empty. ‘I told you there was nothing to worry about.’ He got out and led the way towards the entrance.
‘That was the easy bit,’ Allie said, conscious that her palms were sweating in spite of the cold. She followed him inside, where more security guards flanked a reception desk occupied by a middle-aged woman whose expression was a mixture of boredom and scepticism. More bureaucracy, which Colin negotiated on her behalf. ‘Just keep smiling,’ he’d said.
‘Better they think I’m an imbecile than an undercover journalist.’
The cover story was that she had been sent by Zabre’s head office to write a glowing report of what an amazing resource the scientific facilities of the GDR were proving for researchers in the pharmaceutical world. Judging by the smiles that reciprocated hers, it was credible. The receptionist filled out a pass, stamped it and handed it over. Colin already had a pass, but it had to be stamped. Allie wondered how anyone could read it, so many stamps overlaid each other.
