Sektion 20 (17 page)

Eventually, when the beer bottles were empty, he could bear it no longer.

‘Sophie, I’m going to tell you something you must promise never to repeat to anyone else.’

She looked at him with trepidation.

‘I’m going to escape. Tomorrow night. We’re all going.’

‘All,’ she said, her eyes widening with shocked surprise. ‘You mean me as well?’

‘No – I mean the family.’

‘Alex, how could you do this without telling me about it?’ She had raised her voice in anger. ‘You know I want to go. Why have you done this behind my back?’

‘It’s something my parents have organised. Yes, I’m as surprised as you are about it. Of course I asked if you could come too, but they said there was only room for the four of us.’

He looked at her angry face and wished he’d had the good sense to keep his mouth shut.

‘They made me promise not to tell a soul,’ he pleaded. ‘Look, you can imagine how difficult it’s been.’

‘
Verdammt
, Alex, you
Arschloch
,’ she said, and slapped him hard across the face.

Before he could gather his thoughts she had got up and was storming off home. He called out but people were already staring at them. Alex got up to chase after her. But she was walking so quickly and so determinedly he knew he was wasting his time.

Chapter 24

For Alex, the final hours passed slower than a day in his cell at Hohenschönhausen. In its own strange way, he imagined it would be like the last day before your execution. Almost everything he knew would be gone for ever. The only thing the Ostermanns would be keeping from their previous life was their grandma. Alex didn’t know what she would think about them escaping. Perhaps she’d feel they had abandoned her and fret about not having them close by in case she got ill and needed help. But once they’d settled there, she could come out and join them.

Alex sat in his room, filled with a sadness he did not really understand. Perhaps life would have been easier if he’d just kept his head down and gone along with it all? Sorting through his things he found a small box with all his enamel Young Pioneer badges, glistening gold and red, and thought how proud he’d been to receive them.

In her bedroom next door Geli was looking at her
Jugendweihe
collection – the youth coming of age ceremony she had been through when she was fourteen. She had no scruples about leaving any of it behind. She told herself the most precious thing she had was her talent. Over there, in the West, it would be allowed to flourish.

As the shadows deepened and the bright light of the day began to fade, Gretchen cooked them a final meal of roast pork and dumplings.

‘Why make all that washing-up?’ Frank demanded.

‘Why do we need to do the washing-up?’ she replied.

They were all shocked by that. In all his sixteen years, Alex had never seen their mother leave the dishes after a meal.

In the end Gretchen couldn’t bear to leave the kitchen looking so untidy. ‘It’s not fair to whoever comes to live here next,’ she said. Geli and Alex helped her wash and dry the dishes. It helped to take their mind off what was coming.

Then they gathered up whatever they could carry in their coats and small bags.

‘Have you remembered the money?’ Alex said, almost as a joke.

Frank never had much of a sense of humour at the best of times. ‘I have paid them already.’

Walking out of their home for the last time felt like a strange dream. Frank locked the door behind them and they began to walk down the stairs. Then he went back to unlock the door and leave the keys on the kitchen table. He did not want the authorities to have to break into the apartment. A damaged door would be a needless expense.

The tram stop out to their rendezvous point – Waldes Bar on the corner of Baumschulenstrasse and Kiefholzstrasse and close to the crossing point at Sonnenallee – was a five minute walk from the apartment.

As they waited silently for their tram, Alex thought about a lesson they’d had in school about escapers to the West and what life was like there. It was an act of political and moral depravity, his teacher had said.

Bollocks to that
, he thought defiantly. But he had never felt such a mixture of emotions in his life. Sadness that he and Sophie had parted so badly, fear for the ordeal they now faced, excitement for the future, but also a strange nostalgia for the life he was just about to leave behind. It was all he had ever known and now he might never see these streets again.

The Waldes Bar was as seedy as expected, with a few desultory customers and dim light bulbs. Everyone turned to look at them when they walked in. But none of the customers looked especially threatening.

A waitress came to the table and took their order – two small beers and two orange juices.

‘Now we wait for them to come to us,’ said Frank.

They sat down in glum silence and Alex wondered if they ought to be talking. Why would a family of four be sitting in this bar at ten o’clock at night, just waiting? It all looked too suspicious. They should pretend they had just been to see a film or a play or a concert – anything like that. They should be talking in an animated way rather than sitting there like they were just about to have a tooth out at the dentist.

Five minutes after they’d ordered drinks a stocky middle-aged man in a sheepskin driving coat came into the bar and approached them.

‘Ah, Frank,’ he said. ‘I understand you want to buy my refrigerator.’

Frank answered as agreed. ‘Yes, you need a refrigerator at this time of year.’

‘Come along then, I’ll show it to you.’

They got up as casually as possible, and followed him out, leaving their drinks unfinished. As Geli squeezed past a narrow gap between tables she dropped the photo file she was carrying inside her coat and its contents spilled out over the floor.

‘Leave them,’ snapped Frank and everyone in the bar looked over. The expression on Geli’s face told them she was about to lash out at him in her anger.

‘Here, I’ll help you,’ said Gretchen, and they quickly gathered up the negatives and prints. As they left, one or two of the customers were still eyeing them warily.

‘You took your time,’ said the man waiting outside. The wait had unnerved him. ‘You need to get a move on. Go quickly to 35 Frauenlobstrasse, it’s two blocks away on the left. Knock on the door. They are expecting you. I will be there in a few minutes.’ He hurried off in the opposite direction.

Frank tried to rally his frightened family. ‘In an hour’s time,’ he said with an enthusiasm he didn’t feel, ‘this will all be over!’

They walked along, their footsteps echoing about the deserted street. Alex’s eyes darted around. Anyone they saw out here now might be coming to arrest them. Although the street was empty, that did not stop him wondering who might be watching them from the dark corners and doorways.

Chapter 25

As they approached the house in Frauenlobstrasse, Alex could see the glow of a cigarette in the dark recess of the doorway. A man emerged as they approached. No words of introduction were spoken. He merely said, ‘Follow me,’ and took them to a warehouse just around the corner, where they were hurried in through a small door at the rear. In the dim light they could see hundreds of boxes of Meissen porcelain, all waiting to be packed. There was no one about.

Their means of escape stood before them – a big Mercedes four-wheeler with a separate driver’s compartment and a large cargo container with rear-opening doors. The workmen were away having a short coffee break, before they began to load the lorry.

‘You’re late,’ their driver fretted. ‘We need to hurry.’

Alex had one final thought before he boarded the lorry. Holger had once told him people paid huge sums of money to professional escape assistants to get them out – like 10,000 Marks or more. Frank had told his family these people were taking them for 1,000. This wasn’t right. It was a fraction of what it usually cost. Alex keep that thought to himself. It was too late now. He felt strangely detached from everything that was happening, almost like he was watching himself in a dream and had no control over what he was going to do next.

There was a little compartment right at the front of the container – like a false bottom on a suitcase, only upright and stretching from the floor to the ceiling.

‘Good thing none of you are fat,’ said the driver brusquely. There was just enough space for the four of them, if they put their little bags between their feet and squashed up shoulder to shoulder.

The compartment door clicked into place and they were left in darkness.

‘I hope we can breathe OK here,’ said Gretchen.

‘No talking,’ said the driver from the other side of the door.

Now the Ostermanns lived in a world of sound. Alex could feel his heart beating hard in his chest. He tried to breathe deeply to control his mounting apprehension. Then he worried if he would be using up too much air. Surely there would be a vent built into the compartment?

A couple of minutes later they heard loud voices and the lorry rocked a little on its chassis. They could hear boots thumping and scraping on the floor of the cargo compartment. There were scuffling and knocking sounds right next to the false wall as the men loaded the boxes of cargo into the lorry. Alex reached over to Geli and squeezed her hand. He tried to suppress a tingling in his nose that was making him want to sneeze.

The banging and scuffling went on for about ten minutes, gradually receding as the lorry filled from front to back. Alex was desperate to pinch his nose, or blow it – something to stop the sneeze he could feel building up. But the space they were in was so confined he couldn’t move his hands up to his face.

He started to breathe deeply to try to make it go away, but all of a sudden it exploded out of him. A voice at the back of the lorry shouted, ‘Stop your loading. Wait a minute.’

There were footsteps around the lorry and a banging on the passenger door. ‘I heard someone sneeze inside the lorry,’ said the voice. Alex sensed fear run between the four of them like an electric current.

Someone in the driver’s cab – it sounded like the man who had met them in the bar – said, ‘You did. It was me.’

‘No,’ said the man. He sounded angry. ‘It was inside the lorry.’

Another voice inside the cab said, ‘It was Heinz.’ He laughed in a good-natured way. ‘I was sitting right next to him.’

There was a long silence. Then the loading continued.

The rear doors slammed shut.

‘Now we’re going,’ whispered Frank.

But they didn’t. They waited for an age. ‘Do you think the one who heard me has gone to get someone?’ whispered Alex. A couple of short knocks came from the driver’s cab to tell them to shut up.

The engine spluttered into life and the whole vehicle began to vibrate and tremble. ‘Off you go,’ someone shouted and they were buffeted to and fro as the vehicle turned into the street. It was disconcerting, feeling motion that you could not see. Alex began to feel a little nauseous – and prayed he would not be sick.

The journey to the checkpoint at Sonnenallee was mercifully brief. There was very little traffic at that time of night. Within five minutes the lorry engine stopped again. The driver and border guards exchanged pleasantries. Their voices were so close Alex felt as if he was standing next to them. In the silence he worried that even their breathing would give them away. Every exhalation, every sniff, seemed dangerously loud. Looking at the ceiling Alex could see the odd cracks of light through the joints in the frame of the container and realised they must be under intensely bright lighting. Seeing these little dots and beams gave him some comfort. If light could get in, so could air.

The engine burst into life again, sending a tremor through the whole vehicle. Alex had to bite his lip to stop himself cheering. They were on their way. He tried to picture the scene outside. The lorry moving between the flat open ground of the checkpoint and on towards the Western barrier under heavy arc lamps that cast stark black shadows. In a few seconds they would be there on the other side.

Someone was shouting. What was being said over the noise of the engine was impossible to hear. A sudden rattle of machine-gun fire made them all flinch and try to make their bodies smaller – but there was no space to crouch. Alex heard Gretchen stifle a terrified scream. They stood stiff and upright in their little space, feeling intensely vulnerable. The next few seconds would decide their fate.

The lorry stopped with a squeal of brakes and rattle of crockery. There was more shouting. A cabin door creaked open and slammed. The driver yelled at the border guards in an angry, panicky voice.

Then there were more shots. A man screamed in pain. The lorry shook a little as the other driver got out and there was the sound of running. A further burst of machine-gun fire followed and a shattering of porcelain as a stray bullet penetrated the cargo hold close to where they stood. Alex was so frightened it took a supreme effort of will not to wet himself.

There was silence, then, again, the sound of running boots on tarmac.