Escapes! (16 page)

Spartacus watched grimly, and he knew that the decision to attack had been snatched out of his hands. On his reluctant command, the rest of his army wheeled around into battle formation, and Spartacus prepared to face Crassus head-on. Leading his men, he rushed straight for the Roman commander. In the brutal struggle that followed, Spartacus was last seen surrounded and outnumbered, defending himself with his raised shield and sword.

In the end, it had taken eight Roman legions — about 44,000 men — and two years to defeat Spartacus and his rebels. Pompey did arrive from Spain and stole the glory for the victory from Crassus by catching the last stragglers of the slave army fleeing the battle. The Romans took a terrible revenge on the slaves who had dared to defy them: 6,000 were executed as a warning to other slaves.

Yet even the Roman and Greek historians of the era, who would have liked to describe Spartacus as a low-life barbarian, were forced to admire his ingenuity and courage. To their shock, 3,000 Roman prisoners of war were found unharmed in Spartacus's camp after the slaves' defeat. And Spartacus had died as they believed a man should, boldly leading his troops in battle. It seemed scarcely believable, but this Thracian slave had behaved almost like — dared they say it — a Roman.

Over the Wall

Pössneck, East Germany, 1978

S
OMETHING STRANGE WAS DEFINITELY GOING ON
. That's the only conclusion 14-year-old Frank Strelzyk could come to. His parents had been going out a lot at night. And they
never
went out. His dad hated how you had to be careful what you said in public. You couldn't complain about your job or criticize the government without worrying that the person next to you would call the police. At least in my own living room I can speak my mind, his dad would say. So his parents usually stayed at home with Frank, watching West German TV. Until recently, that is.

And it wasn't just the nights out that were odd. His dad was spending hours in the garage with their neighbor, Günter Wetzel. Maybe that wasn't so strange — his dad, an electrician, often repaired things at home for extra money. But he usually loved to show Frank how to fix stuff. Now his workshop was off-limits. What were they doing in there?

One day Frank had snuck into the garage and seen the two men standing in front of something weird — it looked like a big airplane propeller. When they saw Frank they nearly jumped out of their skins. A couple of weeks later he passed the open door and had another peek. Inside, a giant roll of fabric leaned against the wall. His dad and Günter exchanged glances. “It's a tent,” his dad said as he closed the door, blocking Frank's view.

Frank had wandered into the kitchen, where his mom was staring out the window, a faraway look in her eyes. She didn't even notice Frank at first.

What's happening? he thought. If something's wrong, why don't they tell me? He could understand if they didn't want to worry his younger brother, Andreas.

But why don't they tell
me?
he wondered helplessly. I'm not a little kid anymore.

Peter Strelzyk didn't like hiding things from his son, but he couldn't afford to take chances. Not now, not when they were so close.

It had started over a year ago, but back then it was just a game. A game that helped him forget the long hours he worked with nothing to show for it. A game that made him feel better when he could no longer read the newspapers without throwing them down in disgust. They were full of official lies about how good life was in Communist Germany. No one dared say anything different — the secret police's spies were everywhere. Troublemakers might be arrested in the middle of the night, and their neighbors would never find out what happened to them.

Sometimes Peter gazed across town toward the West. Not many miles away was another world he couldn't go see — because of the long stretch of barbed wire that snaked along the border between Communist East Germany and the democratic West. He'd never felt so trapped as when he visited Berlin and saw the looming concrete wall, first built in 1961, that sliced the city in half. The Communist government said it would safeguard the socialist way of life, but everyone soon discovered its real purpose — to keep people in, not enemies out.

And so he'd started playing a game in his head. If I wanted to get out, how would I do it? He asked his friend Günter what he thought.

“There's just no way out by land,” Günter said in his usual slow, thoughtful tone. “The fences along the border are crawling with armed guards — in watchtowers and on the ground. They see everything. And even if you were able to get over the barbed wire, there's the death strip.”

Peter nodded. Günter didn't have to explain what he meant: the barren strip of land between the barbed wire fence and the final wall bordering West Germany. It was covered with hidden mines that would explode under the lightest footstep, and trip wires that set off hails of automatic bullets.

“And there's no route by boat,” Günter went on. “So that leaves only one way. Air.”

“But where would we — I mean, someone — get an airplane, or a helicopter?”

Günter shrugged. They both knew it was impossible, unless you were very rich.

Peter couldn't remember who thought of it first. But one day at lunch, one of the friends nudged the other.

“I've got it — a balloon!”

“What?”

“Why don't we build ourselves a balloon?”

Both men grinned. So it wasn't just a game anymore! They were hooked on the idea from the start. Peter was known for solving problems on the assembly line at work. And there wasn't a car engine or machine that Günter couldn't fix. This would be the challenge of their lives!

But how
would
they build it? Neither of them had any firsthand knowledge of balloons.

“Hot air rises,” Peter reasoned. “So we heat the cold air inside a big balloon with some kind of flame. But the flame has to be strong. We need enough heat to push the balloon, the basket, and all of us into the air.”

That was about all they knew.

The next morning they stopped off at the People's Library to look for a book that could help them. In the sparse collection they found only two helpful items. And one was an entry in an encyclopedia about the first balloon flight in history — 200 years ago!

Peter wasn't discouraged. “If they could do it then,” he whispered to Günter, “we should be able to do it today!”

Peter sat at the kitchen table, scrawling calculations on a pad. The balloon would need to carry four adults — Peter and his wife, Doris; Günter and his wife, Petra. Plus four kids — Frank, Andreas, and the Wetzels' two children. Then there was the weight of the basket, the heating system and the balloon itself. All in all, about 1,700 pounds!

Peter's pencil scratched until he arrived at the size of balloon they would need to lift it all. He stared at his results. Their balloon would have to hold as much air as a house — a big one! They'd need a huge amount of fabric.

Where would they buy all it all? Not in Pössneck, that was for sure. Stores were so badly stocked, Doris sometimes lined up for hours for groceries, only to find they were sold out when her turn came.

Peter and Günter drove from city to city. At last they found a roll of brown cotton in a department store.

“How much do you need?” asked the salesperson.

Peter glanced around to see if anyone was listening. He paused, then blurted out, “Eight hundred and eighty yards.”

The salesperson's jaw dropped. “We run a camping club,” he added hastily. “We need to line our tents.”

Peter quickly paid cash with his savings and the two men lugged the rolls of fabric back to the car, shoving them into the trunk and back seat. After dark they drove to Günter's house and carried them up to the Wetzels' bedroom in the attic. They couldn't be too careful — a nosy neighbor might report any odd behavior to the police.

Over the next two days they cut the material into huge triangles and long, narrow rectangles. Günter hunched over Petra's forty-year-old sewing machine, pumping the foot pedal to sew the strips together, while Peter fed him the long pieces of fabric.

Outside the bedroom, Petra blocked the door with a ladder. “We're renovating,” she told visitors. Günter put a second doorbell in the attic to warn them if someone came to call. After two weeks of labor, Günter's eyes were bleary and his ankles swollen, but they had their balloon — 50 feet wide and 66 feet long.

Next the men drew the curtains in Günter's workshop on the second floor and set to work on the basket and burner. Peter's welding torch sparked for hours as he pieced together the passenger basket from steel posts and wooden boards. He strung a clothesline between the posts for a guardrail.

The gas burner was trickier. It would have to be powerful. Peter rigged two propane bottles to a stovepipe, and prayed they would work.

The two men worked fiendishly, and within a few weeks it was time for a test. Peter and Günter drove around, looking for a place to try out the balloon in secret. Outside town they found a clearing in a wood of tall pine trees. Perfect!

Just before midnight, Peter and Günter stuffed the rolled-up balloon and equipment into the trunk and back seat of the car. Peter could hardly contain his excitement as they drove to the test site and quickly set up.

The burner shot out a flame, but the balloon stayed flat as a pancake. The fabric wasn't airtight! Peter groaned — they'd have to start over.

But they didn't dare buy so much material all at once again — it was too risky. The two men and their wives spread out to hunt for bits and pieces of fabric, driving to different towns and stores to buy airtight taffeta scrap by scrap.

On a cool May evening, little more than a month after the first test, the two couples spread their multicolored balloon across the clearing, and Peter started up the blower. The roar was deafening, even with the muffler Peter had added. Günter cringed at the noise.