by David Young
If this incident wasn’t so serious, and if Tilsner didn’t feel himself to be a target too, he might have laughed. A Stasi officer nearly killed by one of his own methods, and possibly by one of his own staff.
‘So what can we do?’ asked Tilsner, aware of the quiver in his voice.
Jäger sighed and then sucked his teeth before answering. ‘I thought that keeping it quiet, letting it all blow over, might be enough. I’ve changed my mind. Someone, possibly more than one person, is out to get us.’
‘For revenge over what happened?’
‘Perhaps. But there is another possibility.’
Tilsner held his breath. He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask the question. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.
‘I think someone is trying to get rid of the witnesses. The people who knew what went on. In a sense, that is more dangerous for us. We weren’t at the centre of things, really, although I accept that we share some guilt by association.’
‘But we helped some of them.’
‘One of them, Werner. We helped one of them. That’s all. One out of more than a thousand.’
22
9 April 1945
Mieste, near Gardelegen, Nazi Germany
At some point, the train has turned east. We can tell by the sunrise. A main line, running west to east. If I hazarded a guess, I would say that they are trying to take us to Berlin. Perhaps they hope we will help in the last defence of their capital.
Then we stop.
Each time we stop, new fears enter my head. I worry that this is the new labour camp, that the full extent of Marcellin’s injury will be discovered, and that he will be despatched to some sort of sanatorium from which he’ll never return. Last night I took a look at the wound. It’s not healing properly, despite my treatment with the iodine before we set off. The redness – set against his deathly pale skin – is extending further up and down his arm. The wound itself is angry and weeping. I don’t know what to do. If I alert the guards, they will probably take him away and shoot him.
All of a sudden, there are a series of shouts in German. From what little I can understand, it seems the rail tracks a few kilometres ahead have been destroyed in an air raid. We can’t go any further. So this wasn’t meant to be our final destination, but it seems to be by default. It’s another sign that the endgame is here. If the Germans had the resources and the will, there is no doubt that this main rail line would be repaired. It doesn’t seem as though they have. They’re a defeated nation. Perhaps they will now set us free? Hope springs in my heart. Then I hear the shouts of ‘Raus, Raus’; guards urging prisoners to get out of the wagons. The crack of gunshots reverberates and brings me to my senses. They may be defeated, but in defeat they will be at their most dangerous.
Marcellin is half-slumped against another prisoner who doesn’t seem to be moving or breathing. I’m not sure if my brother is unconscious or asleep.
‘You need to try to pull yourself together,’ I whisper urgently in his ear. ‘The train’s stopped and cannot go any further. Some of the prisoners are being taken out and shot.’ It will be the weakest, I know. Those unable to carry on on foot. I have to make sure Marcellin is not judged to be one of them. ‘We need to look strong. Stand straight. No matter how you are feeling.’
His eyes stare straight into mine. I can still see my brother in there. The strong pirate of the Celestine, riding the waves. But he is fading fast.
The side of our wagon is opened, and a gun-toting guard is now ordering us out. Behind him, I see other prisoners in their zebra uniforms already sitting on the embankment by the trackside, huddling together for warmth. Earlier in this nightmare journey an incident like this would have led to escape attempts – but now it looks as though no one has the energy left to make a run for it.
Everyone helps each other down from the wagon. I get another prisoner to help me with Marcellin, hoping the guard isn’t paying too much attention to the shrivelled, injured man who cannot help himself.
We shuffle over to the embankment and sit with the others. Sitting down helps, but the nausea from extreme hunger and dehydration pulses from deep within me.
I see some of the men grabbing handfuls of grass from the embankment and stuffing it into their mouths. This is what we are reduced to.
*
The locomotive has been detached from our train, and steams off in the opposite direction: further evidence that this is our last stop. But our captors seem uncertain about what they are supposed to do next.
I doze off for a few minutes, and the next thing I know another prisoner is urgently tugging my arm. Marcellin and some others have managed to drag themselves to a ditch at the side of the track. I see him scooping up handfuls of ditchwater with his good hand, feverishly slapping it into his parched mouth. I want to go over and tell him not to, but instead thirst drives me to copy him.
The three brothers – now just two – once the princes of the sea, riding bravely over the waves in our little fishing boat are now reduced to eking out our lives drinking from a filthy ditch.
*
Hunger doesn’t gnaw at us, it tears at us. At one point, a German housewife from the village leans across the fence with a sheet filled with raw potatoes and freshly baked rolls. Marcellin isn’t quick or strong enough to get there before the woman is chased off by the guards. Some of the others managed to grab a roll, all I manage to get is a couple of potatoes.
I hand one to Marcellin. First, he looks at it in disgust. Then something clicks in his addled brain, and he starts to frantically gnaw at it. I do the same. The bitter taste with a slight hint of sweetness isn’t too unpleasant. It’s no worse than the awful tin of meat paste that I finished – along with the bread – days ago. The prisoners who failed to get any food eye us murderously. I suddenly feel guilty. With about a quarter of it eaten, I offer it to the prisoner next to me – a Hungarian, I think – who takes a few bites and in turn passes it along the line.
We do nothing but sit all day, shivering in our damp blankets. It’s not particularly cold, but we have no flesh left on our bones. I find myself half hallucinating about spring days on the island, lying in the sun with Marie-Ange in the cornfields, our bicycles resting on the ground alongside us. Then reaching over and caressing her face. A clear vision of it appears in front of me now – more clearly than she’s appeared for days. I reach out with my arm to touch her face.
Marcellin shrugs my arm away, and looks at me pityingly.
*
Later in the day, word gets round that one of the buildings is a grain store. A group of us set off under the cover of darkness to see if we can break in. It’s a desperate plan, but we are desperate.
There are about fifteen of us, with the ringleaders at the front. I am weaker, slower than the others, and I find myself lagging behind.
I’m just about to try to climb into the compound after the others when I hear the shots and shouts of the German guards. We’ve been discovered.
I stop and back away, my whole body trembling, gasping for air as I start to hyperventilate, trying desperately to control my breathing so I’m not found.
Later, I learn that eight prisoners – those at the front of the group – were shot dead in cold blood by a group of Luftwaffe soldiers. That could have been me. Perhaps it should have been me.
I was stupid, reckless, to join in. It was a betrayal of Marcellin. Without me, he has no chance of survival. With me, he may have no chance of survival either. But at least we would be together in death.
*
Although hunger and thirst tear at our insides, outside of the wagon we can sleep more easily. The night, however, is punctuated by the distant rumble of artillery fire and a firework show from the tracer bullets of anti-aircraft guns – the last futile attempts by the Germans to repel the advance. From what little we can glean from whispered conversations between the guards, it’s the Americans who are nearest. They will be our saviours, if anyone. Part of me wishes we can be liberated by my o
wn side, the French. But any freedom will do. But then I chastise myself. We still have to survive to become free, and that is getting more difficult by the day.
*
The next morning, I see bodies being dragged off by the guards; prisoners who’ve died during the night, from hunger, thirst, illness or all three. In a panic, I shake Marcellin, fearing he is dead. He wakes, but there is a look of almost hatred in his eyes as though he wanted to sleep on into oblivion.
‘Leave me alone, Philippe. I just want to sleep and never wake up.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I hiss. ‘Violette is waiting for you back home. It’s nearly over. We’ll soon be free. But you don’t want to be taken for one of the dead. They will drag you away, they will shoot you.’
I shake him awake despite his protests. ‘Don’t lie to me, Philippe,’ he says. ‘I don’t want any hopes. I don’t want any dreams. We were on the point of breaking up anyway. Now she’s probably been fucking one of these German pigs – even now, she’s probably giving birth to one of their bastard Boche babies.’
*
At some point, later in the day, a murmur of excitement echoes around us. The rumour passes down the line that a meal is being cooked for us in the cement factory that lies to one side of the marshalling yard. As the smells waft over, I start to salivate – despite knowing that will waste more precious water from my body. And I know the food will be shit, and it won’t be enough. I dream of my mother’s marsh mutton casserole that she used to make for us as boys if the Celestine had found a particularly rich shoal, and my parents had the money to put a decent meal on the table. Or a bouillabaisse or soupe de poissons with fresh sea herbs picked from the marshes that very day. Or dressing in our finest suits for weddings or funerals even, special occasions when the best meats and recipes were prepared.
It will be nothing like that, I know. But the thought of any food almost has me breaking down in tears. I glance at Marcellin. He’s half-dozing again. The whiteness of his pallor has now turned grey. As though he’s rotting from the inside out. I must rouse him and make him eat, even if I have to force it down his throat.
*
We stand in line, patiently at first. I prop up Marcellin with the help of another prisoner. If you are too weak to stand and wait, you will not get fed. And if you don’t get fed, you will die. It is a simple equation, one that in his befuddled, fevered state, Marcellin doesn’t seem to understand.
As we move nearer the front of the line, fighting starts to break out amongst us desperate prisoners. The one who was helping me prop up Marcellin leaves to join the throng. I fear we will not get anything.
I see the German guards to the side, laughing at our desperation. Laughing at the state they’ve brought us to, that we will fight each other for what scraps we can get. Somehow, I manage to get us to the front of the line. Those serving look dubiously at Marcellin, as though it’s not worth wasting their precious food on him.
One of the servers, a woman, shows some pity, and while I hold Marcellin, she fills two tin bowls with a weak broth that smells of meat and potato but appears to have little of either in it. She scoops to the bottom of the tureen to get more solid matter – a last act of kindness before we’re hurried along the line. The sight of the food seems to suddenly rouse Marcellin and he finds new strength from somewhere. He holds his own tin bowl as we shuffle along, allowing me to balance mine and collect two mugs of coffee for us at the same time. This is our first meal in more than a week, other than that loaf of bread and tin of disgusting meat paste we were given before the train set off from Niedersachswerfen.
We know that we are walking skeletons. We wouldn’t recognise ourselves if we looked in a mirror. I only recognise Marcellin because I see him every hour of every day, growing weaker and weaker.
We make our way to the embankment and sit down to eat and drink. Occasional fights are still breaking out – the stronger stealing food from the weaker. Men reduced to the morals of dogs by a race that has morals lower than dogs. A race I will always detest until my dying day.
I just hope that day does not come too soon.
The only way of staving that off is to eat. Marcellin seems to understand that too. Perhaps we are both pretending this disgusting, overcooked mush is really a sumptuous shellfish casserole, that the watery coffee is a glass of the finest Burgundy.
The meal – such as it was – is soon over.
The salivary glands kick in again.
‘I’m still hungry, Philippe,’ Marcellin cries, almost with a note of pain in his voice. ‘So very, very hungry.’ It’s a desperate plea, but I try to take it as a good sign.
A will to eat is a will to live. Perhaps we will survive after all.
23
August 1977
Alexanderplatz, East Berlin
The fine summer weather continued, and Müller decided the best place for her lunch meeting with Schmidt was sitting outside at one of the temporary cafés in Alexanderplatz, a short stroll from the Keibelstrasse People’s Police offices. She asked Schmidt to bring with him the details of the voice analysis, and the reference book from which he’d identified the town hall.
Müller ordered a quarter broiler and fries for each of them, with sauerkraut as a side dish, and then went to the bar and collected two beers, before sitting down on one of the beer barrel seats as she waited for her forensic scientist. School-aged children thronged around, boys teasing girls and vice versa, a hubbub of noise and summer jollity. The depressing murder cases in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Leinefelde and Gardelegen which she’d just been removed from seemed a world away from this.
She watched Schmidt as he approached across the Platz to their prearranged meeting place. The Kriminaltechniker hadn’t bothered, or had forgotten, to remove his trademark white lab coat, and with his portly appearance he looked as though he might be on the way to start his shift on a fast food stall – if it wasn’t for the briefcase he carried under his arm. Fast food probably was on his mind, thought Müller – but the eating of it, not the serving of it.
When she raised her arm to beckon him over, he failed to smile, as if something were troubling him. Normally Schmidt was enthusiastic, jolly even, although he had a propensity, as Tilsner regularly pointed out, of using three or four words when one would do, so that conversations – and especially forensic explanations – could get a little wearying. The troubled look on his face was one she’d seen more of the previous year when his son had gone missing – caught up in the big murder investigation involving a rogue scientist near the Polish border.
‘Over here, Jonas,’ she yelled. Schmidt scurried along, his eyes trained on the ground.
‘Sorry I’m a little late, Comrade Major. Comrade Hauptmann Tilsner has been working on another matter.’ Müller briefly wondered what that was, but then banished the thought. She was supposed to be on holiday. She was making an exception for the matter she was meeting the forensic scientist about – but she didn’t want to get dragged into other work issues until her leave ended. In any case, this wasn’t really work any more, now that they’d been removed from the case. It was simply a question of satisfying her curiosity.
‘Did you bring the things I wanted to look at, Jonas?’
‘Yes, of course, Comrade Major. Although I must say I’m a little baffled as to why you want to go through it all again. The conclusions are straightforward.’
‘Quite. I’m sure they are, Jonas. It’s just something I saw the other day which has been preying on my mind. Could you show me the reference book first, please?’
Müller noticed that Schmidt’s face, florid at the best of times, seemed even more flushed than usual. He reached into his briefcase, and pulled out a single piece of paper.
‘I thought I asked you to bring the book itself, Jonas?’
‘I . . . I . . . I’m sorry, Comrade Major—’
‘Please stop all that, Jonas. Karin is fine. I’ve told you this before. And I’m on holiday at the moment. I really don’t want to
be called Comrade Major this and that when we’re just having a friendly drink and lunch in the sun. By the way, I got you a quarter broiler and a beer. I trust that’s OK, even though you’re strictly speaking on duty?’
‘I . . . I . . . I’m sure I can have one, Com . . . , sorry, Karin. I’m sure I can have one, Karin.’
Müller took the proffered piece of paper and examined it. The photograph showed the exact same town hall she’d seen in the photograph in the Höflers’ farmhouse – and the same one she’d seen with her own eyes. In the central square in Gardelegen. Yet here it was in the centre of a piece of text which, she had to acknowledge, spoke about Quedlinburg, a town more than a hundred kilometres further south.
She gave a long sigh, then stared hard at Schmidt. ‘Could there be two town halls in the Republic, of exactly the same historic design?’ As she said this, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her notebook and pen, and wrote down the name of the reference book this photocopy had been taken from. A History of German Architecture from the Middle Ages to the Modern Day.
‘I . . . I . . . I . . . doubt it, but I suppose it’s possible, Karin. I’m not really an expert in historic architecture.’ Schmidt took a large bite of his grilled chicken, and then washed it down with a mouthful of beer from the throwaway plastic beaker.
Müller tapped her pen on her notebook. ‘What about these voice analyses? You’re certain about the results?’
‘Y . . . y . . . y . . . yes, Com . . . um, Karin. As I said on the telephone, the principal regional characteristic related to the towns and cities in which the two subjects now live, or rather lived, until . . .’
‘Hmm. But you said there were other underlying characteristics?’
Schmidt reached into his briefcase again, and this time brought out a number of pieces of paper. Each one had graphicised voice waveforms depicted on them. The waveforms had been highlighted at particular points with coloured pen markings.
‘This is an analysis of Herr Ronnebach’s voice,’ said Schmidt, pointing to the sheaf of papers on the left. ‘And this is Herr Höfler’s.’ He tapped the pile of graphs on the right-hand side. Then he took one sheet from each, and placed them alongside each other. ‘We can look for certain words which occur in both men’s speeches. “Comrades”, “the Republic”, “Honecker”. There are three for example.’ Schmidt pointed out various peaks and troughs on the graphs – and with his thumb and forefinger measured the gap between each. ‘We can examine the length of each vowel, the stresses within the words, that sort of thing. Anyway, that’s what we did at some length.’ Schmidt delved into his briefcase to retrieve more voice graphs. ‘And then we compared them to control samples from various regions, which are shown here. We can look at the same words. It’s a long-winded process, but reasonably accurate.’