Tunnel 29

by Helena Merriman

  Since the Wall was built one year ago, Renate had become depressed. She’d always struggled with life in the East, hated having to wear two faces – saying one thing but believing another. At one point she’d had dreams of becoming a special needs teacher, but she couldn’t see herself standing at the front of a class teaching her pupils things she didn’t believe in. And now, with the Wall between them, Renate wanted only one thing: to escape.

  Wolfdieter had asked around at his university in West Berlin: was there anyone who knew how to help people escape from the East? And that’s when he’d heard about the Girrmann Group. A week ago, Detlef Girrmann had come to see Wolfdieter. ‘I have an opportunity for you,’ he’d said. ‘There’s a tunnel and we can bring Renate through it. But in return you have to do something.’

  Detlef Girrmann told Wolfdieter he would have to be part of the escape operation, crossing the border into East Berlin, going door to door to tell the escapees when the tunnel was ready and the details of the plan.

  Wolfdieter didn’t need long to decide. He knew this was the only way to get Renate out.

  A week later, Wolfdieter had crossed the border into East Berlin for his first job as messenger. It had been easy, walking round to various addresses, telling people the date and time of the planned escape. But then the date had changed and he’d had to return to East Berlin. Then it changed again. Each time, Wolfdieter had to cross the border to East Berlin and tell everyone. And each time, Wolfdieter became more nervous, worrying that the VoPos would get suspicious. Given how long it took to cross the border, people didn’t usually go to East Berlin as often as this.

  Then there was the problem of the escape list. At first there were just forty people on it, but the Girrmann Group kept adding more until there were over sixty. Sixty people who would have to travel to that house on a quiet street near the border in East Berlin, on the same afternoon, and sneak down into a cellar without arousing suspicion.

  And so the plan had become more complicated: the Girrmann Group had split the list into groups, drawing up a schedule so that sixty people wouldn’t all arrive at the house at the same time. Some would walk, others would use the S-Bahn, and some would arrive in trucks. They had two already; now they needed one more: would Wolfdieter help find it?

  In most cities, getting hold of a truck would be simple; you’d just hire one. In East Germany, with every company owned by the state, Stasi spies in most, it was too risky to walk into a car hire company and ask for a truck. Instead, through friends of Renate’s, they’d found a lorry driver who agreed to lend his truck – as long as he and his brother could escape through the tunnel too.

  The escape plan was getting ever more complicated, spinning out of control, but Wolfdieter knew it was too late to back out. And now, tonight, Wolfdieter looks around Renate’s bedroom, hoping it will be the last time he sees it. For in just three days, at 4 p.m. on Tuesday 7 August, if everything goes well, Renate will crawl into West Berlin.

  42

  The Day Before

  Monday 6 August – East Berlin

  IT’S THE AFTERNOON. Renate leaves Ostkreuz station in East Berlin and walks towards number nine Puderstrasse, the house with an escape tunnel underneath. With her is the lorry driver. They’re doing a final recce, making sure they know exactly where the house is, whether the gates are wide enough for his lorry to drive through.

  Walking over the bridge, the River Spree stretched out beneath her, shimmering in the August sun, Renate looks across the city – her half of it. If all goes to plan, the next day she will be just a few streets away, looking back on her old life in the East from over the Wall.

  Arriving at Puderstrasse, Renate’s breath quickens. Coming here the day before the escape is risky: because it’s so close to the Wall, there are border guards patrolling, and if any get suspicious and stop them, the operation will be blown. Walking down Puderstrasse, they count the numbers until they see it: number nine.

  It’s a small house, set back from the road. There’s a lumberyard next to it, some railroad sidings, then the border and its death zone are just a few metres away. In front of the house, there is a large set of gates through which the lorry can easily pass.

  Relief washes over her; now all Renate has to do is go home and wait for Wolfdieter. Tonight he is supposed to come to East Berlin so she can pass on this final information about the lorry and the gates.

  West Berlin

  A few streets away, over the Wall, Wolfdieter is in his flat, ready to go to East Berlin. Just those last details to get from Renate, to check everything is okay with the third lorry. He calls Detlef Girrmann on the phone, says he’s ready to go, and that’s when it happens: the first crack.

  ‘You can’t go,’ Detlef says. ‘You’ve been in the East too many times and it’s too risky now. We need to save you for tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’ll find someone else.’

  3 p.m., House of the Future

  Siegfried walks into the House of the Future. Bodo Köhler has asked him here for an urgent meeting. Siegfried is surprised: he knows Bodo is suspicious of him; maybe Joan Glenn had talked Bodo round. Siegfried and Joan had been meeting up a lot recently; he’d been paying Joan special attention and she was warming to him, he could tell. ‘It’s hard to describe how I noticed it,’ Siegfried told his handler; ‘it’s something you just notice when you have a feeling for it. Joan seemed emotionally cold to me before and now that’s changed.’

  For the last week, the House of the Future had been buzzing with talk about an escape operation. Siegfried had even been asked to go into East Berlin at one point and look for a parking space for a lorry. He didn’t know what it was for, what the big plan was, but he would wait, be patient. Twice he’d tried to get inside an escape operation; twice he’d ended up empty-handed. He didn’t want to mess up again this time.

  Now, Siegfried heads straight to Bodo’s office, that room he’d first met him in five months ago. It’s small, the handful of people there filling it, Bodo standing in front of them. ‘It’s happening tomorrow,’ he says. ‘The operation with the lorry. The—’

  There’s a loud ringing from the phone on his desk. Picking it up, Bodo listens a moment, then turns to Siegfried: ‘Can you go to East Berlin right now?’

  Siegfried’s heart jumps. ‘Of course!’

  ‘I have someone for you,’ says Bodo to the person on the phone. ‘I’m sending him now.’

  Bodo puts the phone down and gives Siegfried an address, a house on Mörchinger Strasse, just ten minutes’ drive away.

  ‘There’s someone in that house,’ says Bodo. ‘He’ll tell you what you need to do when you get to East Berlin.’

  Siegfried leaves, jumps in a taxi (taking a receipt so he can claim expenses from the Stasi later), and rings the buzzer on the door of the address he’s been given. A man answers. In Siegfried’s notes from the meeting he describes him as around twenty-three years old, 1.78 metres tall, slim sporty figure, narrow face, short blond hair – ‘probably a student’.

  It is a good description of Wolfdieter Sternheimer. Wolfdieter has been told to give Siegfried the address of a flat in East Berlin where Renate will be that evening until 9 p.m. Since Wolfdieter can’t go to East Berlin, Siegfried must go instead.

  ‘Give her my best regards, then ask her about the lorry driver: where will he pick people up? And find out if we can get any more people on the lorry.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Siegfried and he leaves.

  6.15 p.m.

  Siegfried is now right in the middle of the operation. He crosses the border into East Berlin, but before he goes to the house to meet Renate, there is something he must do. He takes a taxi to Wilhelm-Pieck Strasse and buzzes at a tall, brown door. Inside, he walks swiftly through a corridor, into a small courtyard, then into another building where he runs up the stairs into a flat. This is ‘Orient’, a Stasi safe house, and there, sitting at a small table, is his handler, Puschmann.

  Siegfried tells Puschmann everything, says that
something big is happening tomorrow, something with lorries, realising, as he talks, that there are a lot of details he still doesn’t know. Still, it is enough for Puschmann to make a phone call, put the Stasi on alert.

  Leaving the flat, Siegfried makes his way to the address Wolfdieter gave him. He rings the doorbell. No answer. Renate had left already and now he has no idea how to find her.

  Crossing back over the border into West Berlin, Siegfried goes home to his flat and to bed. He is close, but still not quite close enough.

  43

  7 August

  East Berlin, dawn

  IN THE SHADOW of the Wall, East Berlin sleeps. VoPos awaiting the start of their shift sleep, mothers who will soon leave for factories sleep, fathers who will soon rise to tend their crops sleep. But in the leafy district of Wilhelmshagen, Evi is awake, packing and repacking to make sure that the one bag she can take through the tunnel has what she needs: ID cards, nappies, photos, clothes. Hasso’s sister, Anita, is doing the same, as are dozens of other people – students, vets, doctors, librarians, children, grandparents – over sixty of them, all hoping that tonight they will crawl through a tunnel and sleep in West Berlin.

  As the sun rises, Renate sits in her bathroom, wrapping her hands in bandages, the white cloth covering angry red streaks of eczema. It’s never been so bad. She knows it’s stress; she’s barely slept the last few nights, keeps thinking about the tunnel – imagining it collapsing while she crawls, or the Stasi finding her. And then there’s the lorry she’s organised. Will it find the right parking spot? Will the escapees remember the codewords?

  So many questions, so many things that could go wrong. She must stay focused and think of tonight, what it will feel like to be on the other side of the Wall with Wolfdieter. No more weekend love.

  Full-time love from now on.

  West Berlin, 12 p.m.

  At the House of the Future, Bodo Köhler sits in his office, briefing volunteers on the final details for today. The escape will begin at 4 p.m., he tells them. Only four hours to go. He looks around the room, sees Siegfried Uhse standing there. Bodo had had his suspicions about Siegfried, but now, finally, he’s beginning to trust him. Joan has put in a good word for Siegfried and now Bodo needs him. With his West German passport, Siegfried is one of the few people who can go in and out of West Berlin. Bodo talks through the plan for the operation and Siegfried listens intently, committing everything to memory.

  West Berlin, 1 p.m.

  Siegfried’s head is full, so full he’s scared he might forget some of it, so he spills out the information to Puschmann as soon as he’s through the door of the safe house.

  The escape will begin in three hours, he says, at 4 p.m. Three lorries, all with white strips in their windscreen, will drive to three separate spots in East Berlin, where they’ll wait for people to arrive. There’ll be volunteers from West Berlin dotted around the streets, ready to give out coded signals in case of problems. Combing hair means all clear, blowing their nose means come back in ten minutes, tying shoelaces means leave now, there’s danger. When the escapees get to the lorry, they’ll ask for a street that doesn’t exist. The driver will say, ‘the street must be near here’, and people will get on. The lorries are for the elderly and children, he says, and the children will be given sleeping pills.

  The lorries will then drive to number nine Puderstrasse and park through the gates, where everyone will walk into the house and escape into West Berlin.

  ‘How?’ asks Puschmann.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Siegfried. He knows a lot about the operation. But not everything: he doesn’t know about the tunnel. And there’s something else he doesn’t know – the pick-up point for the third lorry, the lorry that Renate has organised.

  Puschmann asks Siegfried how many people are expected.

  ‘Around a hundred,’ he says.

  Puschmann writes it down quickly. One hundred people. This is the most ambitious escape from East Berlin that they’ve ever heard about, and they know almost everything about it: start time, the lorries, the location. His protégé has done well. Puschmann finishes his report. He needs to get it to the Stasi headquarters as soon as he can.

  Time to set the trap.

  Schützenpanzerwagen SPW MfS HA 113256

  BStU

  [Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic]

  000105

  Main division VII

  MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR

  1st border brigade (B)

  5th border section

  Report on the situation in the section of the 5th border section on 07.08.62 15.20 hrs to 08.08.1962

  On 07.08.1962 at 15.20 hrs, the following orders were issued by the commander of the 1st border brigade (B), Colonel Tschitschke for the 5th section based on information from comrade Captain Stuhr from the Ministry for State Security (MfS):

  – Reserve company from the 5th border section, one water cannon and one armoured personnel carrier must immediately move from the property to base III and wait under cover for further commands.

  – The commander of the 5th border section, Captain Gürnth, must take all measures to prevent border breaches in cooperation with comrade Captain Stuhr.

  1.15 p.m., Schönhauser Allee

  After crossing the border into East Berlin, Wolfdieter stands at the meeting point on Schönhauser Allee. He watches as Siegfried hurries towards him, the man who came to his flat last night. Wolfdieter has been told to meet him here so that Siegfried can pass on everything from the meeting at the House of the Future that morning.

  Siegfried arrives and tells Wolfdieter the plan – the timings, the coded signals. Wolfdieter is just about to race off to pass these details on to the escapees on his list, when Siegfried calls him back.

  ‘There’s just one thing I need to know,’ he says: ‘the address for your third lorry. Where will it pick people up?’ Siegfried says he wants to get his mother and girlfriend onto it.

  Wolfdieter pauses, unsure whether he should pass this information on, but he has no reason to be suspicious of Siegfried Uhse; after all, here’s Siegfried telling him the details about the operation, so he gives Siegfried the address and the codeword. Then the two men say goodbye, Wolfdieter hurrying to the first house on his list, Siegfried rushing to give Puschmann this final piece of information.

  3 p.m.

  Joachim looks into the black hole in front of him. The tunnel stretches so far, all he can see is darkness. Hasso and Uli crouch beside him, the three of them having volunteered to carry out the most dangerous part of the operation: crawling to the front of the tunnel and smashing through the ceiling into a house they know nothing about, owned by people they know nothing about.

  Rifling through a bag, Joachim checks they have everything: an axe, a saw, some hammers, a drill and a couple of walkie-talkies to keep them in contact with the rest of the team. There’s quite a gathering of people, assembled just a few streets behind the tunnel: Wolf, Gigi, some of the other diggers, a few students from West Berlin’s escape network and a couple of West Berlin policemen with machine-guns. Then, in an abandoned building a few streets away, there’s Piers Anderton and the two NBC cameramen, filming from the top-floor-window. Finally, there’s an ambulance. Just in case.

  Next, Joachim goes through his second bag. It’s heavy and there’s a clank of metal and brass as he checks what’s inside: two pistols, an old Second World War machine-gun and a sawn-off shotgun. Since they heard about the digger shot by the Stasi a few weeks ago, they’d decided they’d arm themselves. They’ve heard what Stasi interrogations and prisons are like. If they’re caught, they’re not going alive.

  The weapons change the possibilities of the operation. This is the first escape operation to involve so many different people: the Stasi, West German police, tunnellers, messengers, escapees and American journalists. Even the US military in Berlin know about the operation, after the diggers went to the CIA safe house
a few weeks earlier. If anything goes wrong and shots are fired, things could spiral out of control.

  Joachim tries to steady his hands. After months of digging, the moment is here. It doesn’t feel right: a shoddy tunnel, no idea about the house they’re digging up into, and a huge list of escapees to bring through. But somehow, the series of decisions he’s made, from his own escape to this one, has brought him here, to this moment, and like a Greek hero following his destiny, he follows the path. No looking back.

  Looking at each other, Joachim, Hasso and Uli nod. Time to go. They begin crawling. Eighty metres to the other end.

  As he crawls, Joachim can hear his breathing, the sound of his shoes hitting the clay. The sides of the tunnel are only inches away from his shoulders and when he brushes against them a dusting of clay falls down, coating his shoulders in soil. Getting into a rhythm, the three of them pick up speed, each crawl taking them closer and closer to the house.

  Just before the other end, there’s a bend in the tunnel. They crawl round it, then stop. They’ve made it. Nowhere to go now except up.

  Picking up their saws and hammers, they begin.

  4 p.m.

  It’s just a few minutes before the escapees are due to arrive and the house is surrounded by Stasi agents. Spiders waiting for flies. Spread along the streets, the Stasi agents hold newspapers and talk in small groups, trying to look inconspicuous.