The Berlin Crossing (27 page)

He stayed at his desk, wondered why he was not summoned to the colonel’s office. He played with the papers, toyed with the
phone. He nursed his anger, his venom. It was almost midnight when he fell, half clothed, into the daybed on the top floor.

And now here he was, a day later –
a day lost –
waiting for this fat fuck to come to the phone.

The painkillers spilled into his hand by the frightened doctor seemed to be working.

So did his brain.
And his nose
.

He could
smell
his prey. Could smell the foreignness of him at close quarters in the charnel room where Herr Weber sat with unseeing eyes
and gutted throat. And he could smell him in the hundreds of checkpoint reports that were spread across his desk in Normannenstrasse.

Fuchs himself had checked every report from every roadblock in the city, carefully fingering his way through every line of
every foolscap sheet. Every vehicle that had moved in the city was listed here under specific headings: TIME. REGISTRATION.
DRIVER. NUMBER OF PASSENGERS. REASON FOR JOURNEY. The top of each report sheet carried the location of the particular roadblock.

What the hell was keeping Baumeister? Why didn’t the fat sod answer the phone?

Fuchs had first directed his attention to the reports of vehicles moving towards the city centre, towards the border crossing
point which the Americans had christened Checkpoint Charlie. Even to his trained eye, there seemed little suspicious in the
lengthy records. Major Fuchs’s nose twitched at nothing on the grubby pages that had made their way to his desk. And the trains,
trams and buses had been physically searched: no fugitive Engländer there either.

What the hell was keeping Baumeister?
Another minute of this waiting and
his
job might have to be reviewed.

It was when he turned to examine reports of vehicles exiting the city that Fuchs felt the familiar twitch in his nostrils.
A single entry was incomplete: it was its very incompleteness that intrigued Fuchs. He’d tracked down the patrolman who had
recorded only the time that the car, a green Trabant, had passed through his checkpoint. The policeman’s nervousness had been
evident on the phone, which was how Fuchs liked to keep it. A military convoy had been coming through, the patrolman explained,
his voice edged with fear; it had been necessary to clear the way for the convoy, there hadn’t been time to record all the
details of the vehicle.
Hadn’t been time? Couldn’t the car have been pulled over? Was the officer a mongoloid idiot?
Panic in the patrolman’s voice then, profuse apologies to the Herr Major but he
could
remember the occupants of the car . . .
So spit it out, man, spit it out
. A clergyman was driving the Trabi, he could remember the dog collar, from Bad Saarow, the fellow said, and there was a young
girl in the passenger seat, Herr Major, he was certain of that too . . .

The coincidence was too great for Major Fuchs’s twitching nostrils. Clergymen had never been so omnipresent: there was
that one in the apartment at Prenzlauer Berg, mouthing off so much that Fuchs had had to slap him around a bit – and now this
other fellow in an incompletely checked car leaving the city. And Bad Saarow mentioned
twice
. The same fellow surely, Fuchs thought.

He decided against phoning the local police station. The usual clown on a bike wouldn’t know much. Besides, Bad Saarow housed
the Soviet sanatorium
and
the Institute of Cartography: a little fancy footwork never went amiss in the presence of brass and the Party’s upper echelons.

So he’d called Baumeister.

And what the fuck was keeping the man?

‘Herr Major, Baumeister here. How can I help you?’

‘It’s a matter of some urgency, Herr Baumeister, and I have been holding for quite some time.’

‘Apologies, Herr Major. You will appreciate that our work here is also quite important.’
And don’t you forget it, you yellow-eyed bastard
.

Fuchs took a moment before answering. Often it was the silence, the nothingness, that intimidated bureaucratic bastards like
Baumeister.

‘This is a matter of state security, personally authorized by the Minister.’ The invocation of Erich Mielke, Minister for
State Security, always worked wonders.

As it did now with Baumeister.

‘I repeat, Herr Major, you have my apologies for the delay. Please, how can I help you?’

‘A clergyman in Bad Saarow, tall fellow, skinny. What can you tell me about him?’

‘A misguided idiot, like the rest of them. The Party is far too lenient—’

‘Herr Deputy Director—’

‘I think you are referring to a fellow called Bruck,’ Baumeister cut in quickly. ‘He is allowed the use of an old church not
far from here and lives in a little cottage behind the church.’

‘And he is in Berlin occasionally?’

‘I have little knowledge of the pastor’s activities but, yes, it so happens that I know he was in the city yesterday.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘I understand that he gave a lift back from the city to a junior member of our staff here.’

In his excitement, Fuchs banged the telephone against his good ear. Baumeister could hear his exclamation of pain.

‘Herr Major?’

‘This member of staff – what’s his name?’

‘Herr Major, may I ask what this is about?’

‘You may not.’
Too abrupt
, Fuchs reminded himself. Baumeister was not only the deputy head of the Institute, he was also leader of the Works Party
Committee. ‘Not at the moment, Herr Baumeister,’ he added, more gently, ‘but I will fill you in later. Now, this worker who
travelled with this priest?’

‘A young woman, Herr Major, name of Petra Ritter.’

Fuchs repeated the name, wrote it on the page before him, underlined it roughly with broad strokes.

‘What can you tell me about this Ritter woman?’

‘An unremarkable young trainee. She came here a few months ago, from Karl-Marx-Stadt, I seem to remember.’

‘And politically?’

‘In what way?’

‘In the
only
way, Herr Baumeister.’ Fuchs’s voice was harsh. ‘Is she a member of the Party?’

‘No, Herr Major.’

‘I’m surprised that you entrust such important work to non-Party members.’
Although, personally, I don’t give a fuck who does
your work but it’s a pleasure to make your fat arse feel a little uncomfortable
.

‘Fräulein Ritter,’ Baumeister said, ‘is merely a trainee and as such is entrusted only with the most basic work.’

‘Has she displayed any reactionary tendencies? Made any anti-Party remarks?’

‘Herr Major, I can assure you that, if she had, she would no longer be a member of my staff.’

‘Thank you for your help, Herr Baumeister.’

‘It’s always a pleasure to be of assistance to a member of the State Security Service.’

Fuchs said goodbye and hung up. He turned slowly in his chair, still gentle with his throbbing head, and looked out through
the plastic blinds at the neighbouring block in the Normannenstrasse complex. The entire complex belonged to the Ministry
of State Security: more than a dozen grey buildings housing hundreds of tiny offices like his own, staffed by hundreds, even
thousands, of operatives like himself. All of them, like himself, devoted to their cause. They were, as the Ministry itself
proclaimed, ‘the sword and shield of the Party’. And no Engländer, Fuchs told himself, would trifle with impunity with the
bearers of that sword and shield. His nostrils were twitching like a water diviner’s fork.
We’re coming for you, Engländer. We’re coming
.

In his office in Bad Saarow, Deputy Director Baumeister was also considering the implications of the intriguing phone call.
Petra Ritter was in some kind of trouble, that was obvious. What concerned Baumeister was how to turn this trouble, whatever
it was, to his personal advantage. In the end, of course, the girl would succumb; in the end, they all did. But a little caution
was also advisable: Baumeister had no wish to be tainted in any way by association with anyone who, in Fuchs’s words, had
‘reactionary
tendencies’. Caution must be his companion here, Baumeister told himself, but still, those young thighs had looked deliciously
fresh and inviting . . .

Nobody knows anything
, Petra Ritter told herself as she collected her coat and rucksack. And yet she couldn’t quell the rising mix of fear and
excitement inside her. Surely her colleagues, exchanging the usual muted farewells at the end of another silent working day,
could read the nervousness in her face.
The guilt
. And yet there was just the usual softly spoken medley:
Auf wiedersehen. Bis Morgen
. Until tomorrow.

She couldn’t think that far ahead. She thought of him in the tiny cellar, wondered how long the night must have seemed, starless,
in an unknown land. He’d be longing to hear a voice, as she longed to hear his.

The voice of the Deputy Director’s secretary would not be quiet in her head.
The Ministry of State Security, Major Fuchs
. Whoever he was.

Nobody knows anything
, she told herself again, as she left the drawing office and made her way to the exit. Old Herr Vos waved to her from behind
his janitor’s desk. She smiled in return. Not so old, just withered from the cancer that was killing him.
Why would I stay at home?
he’d said to her. His wife was dead, he was childless.
I
might as well go to work while I can, Petra
. He’d taken a shine to her from the beginning: sometimes she went to his apartment, in the neighbouring block, to practise.
It felt good to give pleasure with her playing; most of the time the girls she shared with objected to the ‘noise’.

Johannes Vos waved to her again, a small guarded wave. You never knew who might be watching.

‘Are you coming over to practise tonight, Petra?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll see.’

She could see the disappointment in the faded eyes, in the faded features.

‘I’ll see,’ she said again.

‘You’re always welcome, you know that.’

The exchange took only a few seconds, was spoken in little more than a whisper. You never knew who might be listening either.

She smiled at him and stepped out into the gathering dusk. The car park was almost empty. The rooks were noisy in the wood
across the road, bedding down for another night. At least they could fly unhindered to another land, another resting place.
Enough
, she told herself. Get your bicycle and cycle home like anybody else at the end of a day’s work.
Nobody knows anything
.

Minutes later, although she didn’t know it, Franz Baumeister followed her cycling progress from behind the blinds of his office
window. The Deputy Director used his binoculars to focus better on the pumping progress of her thighs, as she pedalled her
way along the darkening road. He smiled to himself, adjusting the focus on the binoculars.
What goes around, comes around
.

And yet, for all their longing, they circled each other warily in the windowless shed. Like coltish creatures, wanting to
play, to frolic, but restrained by self-consciousness, by a kind of delicacy – perhaps even by the frightening depth of their
mutual longing.

He’d been waiting for her all the day, watching the deserted garden world through the cracks in the planking. In the darkness,
his heart seemed to heave when he saw her, wheeling the old-fashioned bike along the overgrown path. The dark woollen coat
was buttoned up to the neck; the navy beret was jaunty over the cropped hair. He pushed the door open and she stepped inside
quickly, lifting the bike so that it made no noise. He took it from her, rested it carefully against the wooden wall. She
didn’t quite close the door: they looked at each other in the sliver of light.

And the shyness seemed to catch at their hands, root them to the earthen floor. Their bodies bent towards each other, like
saplings in a wind. His mouth brushed her cheek and they drew back from each other as though that wind had stirred again.

She took off the beret and her fingers teased at her short blond hair. For a second, her hair gleamed like pale gold in the
thin shaft of light and Roland swallowed, breathless.

‘Roland?’

‘I was afraid you might not come.’

Outside the wind rose and a tree shook noisily. A rook cawed, hoarse, lonesome.

‘Should we go down below?’ Her voice was anxious like the unseen birds.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘let’s wait up here a little.’

His voice told her enough: the long day watching and listening, the minutes creeping by, the walls closing in on him.

‘It must have been awful, stuck inside all night and all day.’

‘It could be worse, Petra.’ Her risk was as great as his – and needless.

‘Is that what you say in Ireland – that it could be worse?’

‘I never thought much about it.’ His hands stroked her hair. ‘But yes, I suppose that’s what we say and think.’

‘Here I think we feel the opposite.’ Her voice was wistful. ‘That it could be better.’

‘I suppose we’re both right.’ Roland laughed. ‘You’re making me think about stuff I never thought about before.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know.’

She came to him then, release in her laugh, and his arms went round her.
Apples
, he thought. She smells of apples and flowers and if moonlight has a scent, then this is what it smells like.

‘You smell like the moon,’ he whispered. ‘And you taste like the golden apples of the sun.’

She leaned back in his arms and swatted him gently with her beret.

‘My Irish poet.’

‘My German goddess.’

Her body seemed to fold itself to his and they clung to each other with a fierceness that neither had ever known.

When they parted, he fixed a plank on top of a pair of old oil
drums and he brushed it with his hands. They sat together looking out through the chink in the door at the abandoned gardens,
the dilapidated sheds.