The Berlin Crossing (20 page)

And in some way, Ingham appeared to sense all this. He held a hand up to stop Roland.

‘Very well, it was personal. But from now on,
nothing
is personal. Tomorrow morning you’re going into East Berlin and you follow instructions – nothing more, nothing less.’

He was given his
instructions
.

The hotel he would stay in that night – and he was not to leave his room.

The time he should leave in the morning to make his crossing at Checkpoint Charlie – and the route he should take to get there.

The address in Prenzlauer Berg where he should collect a package from Martin Weber and then make his way back to West Berlin.

It seemed more unreal than ever to Roland, listening to these cloak-and-dagger instructions in this unlived-in room in the
city where his father had grown up.

‘Won’t they search me when I’m coming back?’

The package was so tiny, they had no chance of finding it, Ingham said, and anyway, Martin Weber would show him how to conceal
it.

And that’s another thing, Roland said. Suppose this Martin Weber wasn’t there when he arrived at his door in Prenzlauer Berg?

He caught the look that Adams flashed at Ingham.

Weber would be there, Ingham said.

‘But if he’s not, what then?’

‘Then get out, just come back.’

‘And Terry and I can go home?’

Ingham nodded his long head.

It wasn’t much of a guarantee but it was all he could expect.

‘And I don’t need a visa tomorrow?’ he said.

‘I told you,’ a hint of impatience in Ingham’s voice, ‘just buy your ostmarks at Checkpoint Charlie like all the other day
trippers.’

‘We never did get around to finding out what John Carter does,’ said Roland.

He caught a glance exchanged between Ingham and Adams.

‘Time was short.’ Ingham shrugged. ‘John Carter is a post-grad student at Leeds. You’re visiting East Berlin for a day.’

‘What exactly am I studying?’

‘Good manners.’ Adams chuckled mirthlessly.

Ingham said, ‘Romanticism in German and Irish poetry.’

‘What do I know about that?’

‘Make it up as you go along.’

‘Like everything else in this ridiculous set-up.’

Ingham waved Adams back to his place by the door.

‘I’ve told you – John Carter is a registered student at Leeds University.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Registered, all above board if anybody bothers to check.’

‘And who
is
John Carter?’

‘You are,’ Ingham said, ‘you and nobody else.’

Roland looked at him. Maybe it wasn’t a village farce after all. Maybe he could just criss-cross this stupid Wall and then
take Terry home.

Adams produced a blue holdall from under the table and opened it, taking out a navy duffel coat, a jaunty peaked cap, a scarf.

‘It might rain,’ Ingham said. ‘You never know.’

Adams stuffed the cap and scarf back into the holdall and handed him the duffel coat.

‘Good luck.’ Ingham held out his hand.

‘Where do we meet tomorrow night?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Ingham said. ‘We’ll be watching out for you at Charlie.’

Adams led him downstairs and took him to a back door. He didn’t offer to shake hands before he closed the door behind Roland.

Night had fallen and with it an autumnal chill. He put on the navy duffel coat and set out for the hotel, following the directions
he had been given. The lights of the city seemed cold in the night. So did the entrance to the Morgenstern Hotel, a narrow
building inserted between a kebab house and a strip joint opposite Charlottenburg S-bahn station. He registered as John Carter
and paid in advance. The night clerk, fat and wheezy, took a halfhearted look at his passport. The Morgenstern Hotel seemed
to be an establishment without public rooms, just a cramped check-in area and, behind it, a thinly carpeted staircase leading
to the bedrooms. On the landings he could hear the sounds of voices and radios as he made his way up to his room on the fourth
floor but he saw nobody. And nobody, he thought, saw him.

‘He’s on time anyway.’ Fitch-Bellingham had the binoculars to his eyes, watching Roland’s progress at Checkpoint Charlie from
a fourth-floor window on Kochstrasse.

‘So he learned something yesterday,’ Adams said.

‘Let’s hope he’s learned enough to stay alive.’

‘He’s a tough bastard, sir.’

Fitch-Bellingham said nothing. He watched Roland’s slow progress as the line snaked forward past the sandbagged barriers in
Zimmerstrasse, into the killing zone, under the gaze of the observation towers. Armed border guards shepherded the line towards
the passport control huts. Uniformed Stasi, the elite officers of the Ministry for State Security, were in charge of passport
control.

‘He’s there,’ Fitch-Bellingham said, as Roland was ushered, out of sight, into one of the control cabins. There was no reason
why the boy should not get through without mishap; all the same, you could never quite get rid of that lurching feeling in
your stomach.

‘There he is.’ Adams’ voice had a triumphant edge to it. ‘Look.’ He fingered the blind, eyes narrowed.

Fitch-Bellingham could see him now. Tall, over six feet, duffel coat swinging open as he sauntered into East Berlin. As if
he were a carefree postgrad on a day excursion into an interesting city.
Young Roland Feldmann, Fitch-Bellingham told himself (not for the first time), was a serendipitous discovery. The young fellow
had style, no doubt about it. He felt an odd pang of regret as Roland passed out of sight, swallowed up by the crowd on the
pavements of Friedrichstrasse.

Fitch-Bellingham lowered the binoculars and gazed down, unseeing now, on the wide thoroughfare of Kochstrasse.

‘I hope’, he said, ‘that he gets back just as easily tonight.’

The tall buildings on Friedrichstrasse had a washed-out elegance, like a ball gown that had been to the laundry too many times.
You could see the outline of the shape, the design, but the style was gone. There was no style in the shop windows. A milliner’s
window was crowded with ladies’ hats but the display contained only two colours and two designs. Next door, a ladies’ outfitters
displayed a range of faded squares of cloth. Only the bakery had customers, a line of women and old men waiting silently for
their turn.

The bookshops surprised him, stopped him in his tracks as he strolled along the western side of the street. The windows contained
a dazzling range of books, mostly hardback, politics and poetry, fiction and fable, in both German and Russian. But he was
too uneasy to linger in the quiet, gloomy interior and he had Ingham’s timetable to observe.

At the junction with Unter den Linden, he could see, away to his left, the half-destroyed grandeur of the Brandenburg Gate.
And he could see the trucks and the tanks and the soldiers in the wide, sweeping space that faced the Wall. He swung away
from it. He had a package to collect in Prenzlauer Berg. Unscheduled interviews with soldiers and border guards were the last
thing he needed.

Unter den Linden took him east, over the river, to the open
space of Alexanderplatz. More tourists, more empty shops. A fellow in a raincoat bumped into him and asked him, in English,
if he had dollars to sell, he’d pay top rate in marks. He shook the fellow’s hand off, kept going.
Trust nobody
. One of Ingham’s maxims.
And what would I do with a bundle of East German marks anyway? Buy souvenirs for my father
–
from Brighton?

At Hackescher Market, he paid a few of the marks he’d been obliged to buy at Checkpoint Charlie for a coffee and a frankfurter.
Two other day trippers sat at a table in the small cafe beside the station, their map and camera on the table beside their
cheese rolls and coffees. They smiled at him, a young couple in bright anoraks, and he nodded in reply, but he walked past
them with his coffee and frankfurter and sat with his back to them, facing the window, watching the street. Trams came and
went, bells signalling their approach. A bus passed, a few box-like cars spewing black smoke. He heard the roar of motorbikes,
watched as two outriders flagged a couple of cyclists aside to allow a large black saloon car with darkened windows to cruise
by.

He finished quickly and left the cafe. The tram stop was just where Adams had said it would be. Adams and his fucking maps
and timetables. On the other side of the Wall now, in another world. He got on the tram, paid the driver through the hatch,
and took a seat at the back of the carriage. Two old women in black coats and a schoolboy with a bandage around his head shared
the carriage with him. The women’s murmuring voices drifted back to him, indistinct. The boy had a schoolbook open on his
lap. The tram clanged its way along the middle of the broad thoroughfare of Prenzlauer Allee. There were no tourists on board.
The journey seemed dreamy, otherworldly; the tram bell seemed a soundtrack to a travelogue. In another life, he thought, I’d
like to come back here with Terry, maybe even with my parents. The houses on either side of the wide street seemed peaceful;
behind their silent facades lived folk who led quiet, uneventful lives which did not include passports in false names and
bargains with Herr Inghams.

A pair of Volkspolizei, Vopos, were standing at the next stop. They said something to the driver when they got on and the
tram stood there, its doors open. They were older than Roland, maybe thirty, jaws hard and clean-shaven under their peaked
caps. He watched as the women handed over their ID cards. The Vopos nodded, handed them back. They said something to the schoolboy.
He pointed to his bandage, told them he was on his way home from the hospital. The policemen smiled, came on towards Roland
at the back of the carriage.

‘
Pass, bitte.
’

He handed them John Carter’s passport.

The smaller Vopo thumbed it, looked from the photograph to Roland.

‘What are you doing here, Herr Carter, in Prenzlauer Berg?’

‘I like to get off the beaten track.’ He smiled. ‘I like to see ordinary things – normal things.’

‘Normal?’

‘Like this.’ He forced himself to remain calm, pointed out of the window. ‘Normal life, normal streets. Not touristy stuff.’

‘We’re glad you find us normal, Herr Carter.’

‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean – my German—’

‘You speak our language very well, Herr Carter.’

The schoolboy had turned round, the two women were silent.

‘I’m a student,’ he said quickly.

‘And you are studying?’

‘Poetry,’ he said. ‘German poetry.’

The Vopo handed Roland the passport.

His colleague, taller, thinner, cleared his throat.

‘Where are you going on this tram?’

‘Just sightseeing. I’ll get off somewhere to have a look around and then take the tram back.’

He felt the policeman’s eyes measuring him, memorizing him.

‘Enjoy your sightseeing, Herr Carter.’

They called out to the driver and stepped out on to the platform. The tram doors closed. The women glanced back at him before
resuming their talk, in even quieter tones. The schoolboy stared at him from under his bandage.

Think
. He almost missed his stop trying to.
Be calm. A pair of policemen have had a good look at you but you’ve done nothing illegal. Just get on with it
.

He felt conspicuous in the nearly deserted street when he got off the tram. A blue Trabi snorted by, labouring against the
gradient. On the other side of the road, a woman freewheeled downhill on a bicycle. He crossed to the west side of the street,
felt himself observed from behind sleepy shop windows. He took the peaked cap from his shoulder bag and put it on, pulling
it low on his forehead. He turned left off the main drag of Prenzlauer Allee:
see, Corporal Adams, how I follow your oft-repeated instructions, to the boring letter
. He headed north in the grid of streets, away from his objective, then looped back around a couple of blocks to Martin Weber’s
apartment.

The apartment was on the ground floor of a large four-sided block built around a cobbled courtyard. Striding by without pause
on the opposite pavement, he could see through a wide archway in the middle of the building into the open courtyard. The courtyard
was deserted. Weeds sprouted between the cobbles. At the further end of the courtyard, he could see a matching archway and,
beyond, a line of low sheds that might be garages.

The street seemed deserted.

Roland crossed the street and walked into a narrow alley that ran along one side of the apartment block. Like the courtyard,
the alley was rich with weeds. Halfway along the alley, his way was blocked by a high wooden fence but, as he had been told,
the wicket gate in the middle of the fence opened when he pushed against it. Beyond the fence, the alley seemed a dumping
ground. He picked his way carefully among the rubbish. A shadow moved behind an uncovered window and he wondered how many
eyes were watching him from behind blinds and curtains. He rounded the corner and found himself in an open space between the
apartment block and the row of flat-roofed, shed-like garages.

There was an eeriness about the silence that enveloped the apartment block. Neither the hum of radio music nor the sound of
voices. No dog barked, no bird cawed. No tram rumbled in the street. He drew back against the wall of the building, reminding
himself that he was about someone else’s business behind the Iron Curtain.

The black doors of the garages were closed, their cars or other contents protected by various types of heavy metal locks.
Outside the furthest garage a small blue van was drawn up with its rear to the garage door. Roland waited, watching, but nobody
approached the empty van.

He moved quickly then, following the instructions that Ingham and Adams had repeated ad nauseam. Under the back archway, into
the cobbled courtyard. Left then, past two closed doors, push in the door in the corner.

He stood at the meeting point of two long unlit corridors. The dark stone floors gave off a faint blue glow in the gloom.
He held his breath, listening, pressed against the peeling wall, but the entire building seemed to draw deeper into its own
silence.