The Berlin Crossing (28 page)

‘Our personal garden of Eden,’ he whispered.

‘It could be worse,’ she told him.

Their hands met, their fingers interlocked. Their eyes sought the distant lights, a few of them, pale and dim on some faraway
hill.

‘Maybe we can get out together.’

His words seemed to hang above both them and the distant lights. Their fingers tightened; she leaned her head on his shoulder
and he tried to draw her closer.

‘Maybe,’ she whispered.

She told him that she’d cycled to Pastor Bruck’s cottage, that she’d spoken to his young son, Thomas. The pastor wasn’t back
from Berlin. She’d left no message, just that she’d called.

‘I’m afraid to ask the pastor,’ she said.

‘Because he might refuse?’

‘Because he
wouldn’t
refuse.’

‘But if we could both get out together?’

‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘If there were some way he could get both of us across the border, they’d trace it back to him,
they know everything, and if they caught him . . .’ He felt her tremble in his arms.

‘Maybe we can find a way without him, Petra. If we had a map . . .’

She laughed. ‘That’s all we make in my section, nothing but maps. But they’re useless, just fakes, nobody dares to say it
out loud but I’ve heard the rumours – that they’re for “disinformation”, fakes that are leaked out somehow across the border.’

‘But why would anybody do that?’

‘Who knows what governments do or why they do it?’ She
smiled at him. ‘Now
you’re
making
me
think of things I never thought of before.’

The lights on the distant hill blinked once and died. Maybe it was bedtime over there.

‘I should be going,’ she said. The other girls in the flat would be in bed by now. It wouldn’t be a good idea to raise questions
by going in very late.

But she didn’t get up. She leaned closer to him on the plank.

‘Tell me again about your home,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘But I told you last night.’

‘I know.’ She kissed him quickly. ‘So tell me again – I want to know everything.’

He’d never talked so much about home. It was just the place you lived, where you slept, where meals appeared on the table.
It was the place where your father showed his disappointment in you. Where Terry was forever trying to find his inhaler. Where
your kid sisters were a pair of schoolgirl nuisances but you put up with them because, well, because they idolized you and
didn’t try to hide it.

Home was more than that when he began to tell her about it. The dark rooms and narrow staircase seemed somehow sprinkled with
Stardust, bathed in a soft glow and, as he whispered to her, it took him a while to figure out why. It was obvious, really:
she
was in those rooms now, he could hear her laughter in the kitchen at the end of the hallway, he could see her seated on the
old leather sofa under the bay window in the sitting room, that blond head, dreaming on one of his mother’s lacy antimacassars.

‘You could play your violin all day,’ he said, ‘and I’d sit there with my eyes closed, like I was in heaven.’

‘Liar!’ She punched him in the ribs and they both laughed, but nervously: his words had painted a possibility.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I mean it.’

‘I know.’

She added that now was the first time she’d ever thought of leaving Germany.

‘So many want to leave. They try to hide it from us but we see the news on West German television, we see the shootings and
the killings at the Wall in Berlin.’ She shook her head. ‘It was never for me. I just wanted to get out of the orphanage and
get the chance to study the violin. I thought maybe I’d be good enough to play with an orchestra in one of the smaller cities,
nothing like Berlin or Leipzig.’ She shook her head again. ‘Leaving was never part of it. Why would I want to go away? I didn’t
know anybody anywhere else. And now . . .’

‘And now,’ Roland said, ‘you’ve been fortunate enough to meet yours truly.’

‘Don’t laugh about it.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
I’m scared I’ll lose you and I don’t want to scare you by saying it
.

She said, ‘I’m scared.’

He held her close for a while and their hearts seemed to beat together in the darkness.

He stood up. ‘You
must
go, Petra.’

‘I’ll try to come tomorrow, maybe the pastor will have news.’

‘And a map,’ Roland whispered. ‘We should make our own plans.’

‘Yes, I’ll get one somehow.’ She turned to the bicycle. ‘I’m a
poor hausfrau
– I brought you a bottle of tea and some sandwiches and forgot to give them to you. I hope you like cold tea.’

‘I love cold tea,’ he said, putting the big glass bottle and the small brown-papered package on the plank.

‘I wish I could bring you some hot food.’

He put his finger on her lips. ‘Go – that’s an order.’

‘You sound like Herr Baumeister.’ She shivered. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned him.’

‘But—’

‘No.’ It was her turn to put a finger on his mouth. ‘Kiss me and send me away.’

It was a gentle kiss.

He watched from the door of the shed as she tiptoed along the path, wheeling the old Diamant bike. A cloud hid the moon and,
when it had passed, she was gone.

After midnight. The complex of apartment blocks silent, shut down for another night, although lights still burned in a window
here and there. Fuchs eyed these few scattered lights with professional interest. Insomniacs, he thought, night creatures
like himself. Or maybe those whose troubled consciences kept them awake.

In the block outside which he had parked the unmarked blue Trabant, only a single window was illuminated – one of the guest
apartments, reserved for visiting dignitaries to the Cartography Institute or, occasionally, to the Soviet sanatorium. He’d
checked before leaving Normannenstrasse: no guests were expected this week in Bad Saarow. So: it had to be Baumeister. Like
all the other keepers-of-the-keys to these guest apartments throughout the state, he probably used the place as his private
knocking shop. With any luck, Fuchs told himself, he might occasion a case of coitus interruptus.

He closed the car door quietly and had a quick look around for any twitching blinds or curtains. For a moment he stood, head
cocked, listening to the night. From the road, the coughing noise of a motorbike engine; from behind the ring of apartment
blocks, the wheeze of trees in the light wind. He padded quietly towards the entrance, stopping beside the white Wartburg,
parked at the
front door. The registration plate was the one he’d checked at the office.
Arrogant shit: the fat frog didn’t even bother to conduct his nocturnal activities with a little discretion
. Discretion perhaps was not necessary when your spouse was a cowed dumpling like Frau Baumeister. She’d been in a pale dressing
gown, her greying hair tied up in some kind of net, when she’d opened the door to Fuchs, who hadn’t even bothered to say who
he was or to present his ID. Her husband wasn’t home, she said, and, no, she didn’t know where he was.

Fuchs wondered if it might be worthwhile letting the old lady know where the Herr Deputy Director was. Probably not. If he
were married to the old cow, he wouldn’t give a flying fuck either.

He took a ring of keys from his pocket, careful not to let them jangle, and set about opening the hall door. It didn’t take
long. He eased the door shut behind him and stood a moment in the dark, letting the entrance hall materialize out of the gloom.
A corridor to left and right. A glass case on the wall: Rules and Regulations of Apartment House A, signed by somebody-or-other.
Even in the gloom, the tiled floors shone, polished by somebody-or-other.

In front of him, the polished staircase also shone.

The apartment was on the first floor, its brown door facing the top of the staircase.

Fuchs tiptoed to the door and stood there listening. A pale crack of light escaped from under the door but Fuchs could hear
nothing. Sometimes you kicked a door in but, on occasions like this, you tapped. And tapped again, just a little louder.

‘Who’s there?’ The voice irritated.

‘
Staatssicherheitsdienst.
’ State Security:
give them something to be properly irritated about
.

A bolt drawn, a chain unloosed.

Baumeister stood there, squinting into the darkness.

‘Major Fuchs?’

Fuchs stepped past him, into a spacious living room. Institutional furniture, brown sofa, brown wood, a silent television
set in the corner. From the opposite corner, the room’s only light, a small standard lamp that seemed only to lend the room
a kind of semi-darkness. The door to the bedroom was closed.

‘Are you alone, Baumeister?’

‘Yes, I’m alone.’ There was a sheen of sweat on the fellow’s forehead, above the bulging eyes. ‘Why? What’s going on?’

Fuchs didn’t answer. He swept the room again with his yellow eyes, saw the armchair drawn up beside the big window with the
Venetian blinds, and understood.

‘Herr Deputy Director,’ he said, ‘you are spying on someone. Someone in the apartments opposite us.’
And I know who, I found that out also before I left the office: your trainee who shares a flat in Block H
.

Baumeister blinked, wiped his forehead with a large white handkerchief.
What was this all about?

‘After your phone call, Major, I thought it might be a good idea to keep an eye on Fräulein Ritter, the trainee I mentioned
to you. I have no idea what this is about, of course, but I’m always happy to lend my support to the security services so
I’ve been keeping an eye on her comings and goings tonight. You never know, Major Fuchs, you never know.’

But I think we know you’re interested in fucking this particular trainee, Baumeister
. Aloud Fuchs said, ‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘What
are
her comings and goings tonight?’

‘She went out earlier, with her bicycle.’

‘
When
earlier?’

‘About eight thirty.’

‘Eight thirty?’

‘About—’

‘But that’s four hours ago.’

‘Yes—’

‘Is she sleeping with anybody around here?’

‘Not that I know of, Major.’

Fuchs glared at him. ‘She lives in that block opposite us, yes?’

‘Yes.’ Baumeister wiped his forehead again. He sank into the armchair under the window and looked up at Fuchs. ‘I watched
her wheel the bicycle out of that door across from us about eight thirty and I’ve been watching for her return.’

Fuchs shook his head.
Where do they grow these morons?

‘Baumeister,’ he said very slowly, ‘does Block H have a back door?’

‘Yes, Major, but she went out of the front door.’

‘Herr Deputy Director,’ Fuchs said, ‘you are a fucking idiot.’

Fuchs was on his way out of the apartment before Baumeister could answer. He could hear Baumeister wheezing in his wake as
he hurried down the darkened stairs and out of the apartment block. Not a frog, he thought, an elephant lumbering noisily
behind as he crossed the car park to Block H. He could tell the fat fuck to wait outside but Fuchs himself didn’t know what
this Ritter woman looked like.

‘Quiet!’ Fuchs was trying his keys in the front door of Block H. ‘D’you want to tell the world our business?’

The keys slipped from his fingers and jangled on the stone step. As he bent to retrieve them, Fuchs fancied he heard an answering
metallic echo from within. He put his hand protectively to his wounded ear.
So now you’re hearing things
.

Some gentle manipulation with the next key did the trick. The entrance hall in Block H was less spacious than the one they
had left: a narrower entry, an absence of marble, as befitted the
lower-grade workers who shared these apartments. In the gloom, past the staircase, Fuchs could see a line of bicycles in the
passageway that led to the back door.

Baumeister was reaching for the light switch when Fuchs caught his wrist.

‘No lights, Baumeister. Which apartment is the girl’s?’

‘Number eleven, on the third floor.’

The third floor was at the top of the block. The door to number 11 was the same nondescript brown as the other three doors
on the dark corridor.

‘Leave the talking to me, Baumeister. Your job is just to point out this Ritter person.’
Except she’s not here to point out so we’ll just sit and wait until she gets back and tells us where she’s been
. . .

Once more he busied himself with his all-purpose keys, more gently this time. The lock yielded first time.

Another long, gloomy hallway. A broom leaning against the wall, beside it an old-fashioned mop in a metal bucket. The lingering
smell of cabbage and fried potatoes mixed with the scent of cheap perfume. The kitchen at the end of the corridor was doorless:
lidded saucepans rested on top of the cooker; a couple of unwashed plates, the remains of a meal still visible, stood on the
worktop beside the cooker.

The bathroom door was open. Fuchs glanced at Baumeister, saw how his bulging eyes lingered on the line of panties and bras
drying above the bath. Fuchs turned away, not bothering to hide his disgust.

The apartment seemed to exhale its own silence, a kind of whispered breathing. They’re awake, Fuchs thought, behind these
closed bedroom doors, afraid to stir, thinking they’ve got an intruder on the premises.

He pushed the nearest door, reached immediately for the light switch. A fat girl in a flimsy nightdress was sitting up in
the
bed, staring at him, her fingers twisted in a knuckle-white grip around the thin blanket.

‘Don’t scream,’ Fuchs said. He flashed his security ID and looked at Baumeister.

‘She works in the printing area,’ Baumeister said, shaking his head.

Fuchs was already pushing in the next bedroom door. The light was on here, the middle-aged woman wrapped in a threadbare dressing
gown and sitting on the bed as if nocturnal visits were part of her routine. Her features were Slav.

She spoke her name without waiting to be asked.