“Bob, don’t be a dope,” Drew whispered. “The lieutenant is right there—you’ll get caught!”
“Doing all right, boys?” Their coach suddenly stood at their door.
Bob rolled back into his bunk with a low whistle, ridiculously conspicuous.
“Sigarety?” The voice came from below.
Sighing, the coach walked to the window and shut it. “Jones, I need you for the shot put. How about you just behave tonight—or do you need to bunk with me?”
“Oh, no, sir.” Bob shook his head. “Sorry, sir.”
“Twinkies!” Thump. “Hey, give it back!” Thump-thump- thump.
The muffled sounds of a food squabble from next door interrupted the coach. Clearly only half believing Bob, he left to quiet the boys in the adjacent cabin.
“Saved by the Twinkie!” Charlie joked. He pulled out his pack of cards. “Ready, fellas?”
“You’re on,” Drew answered. He happened to be very good at blackjack.
Twenty hands of blackjack later, the train finally began to move. Drew had won fourteen of the rounds so far, three times by splitting matching cards into two hands and once after daring to take five hits and still coming up under twenty-one. He’d already racked up fifty-two pennies from bets—enough for ten bottles of Coke.
As the train’s wheels squealed and an acrid smell of sulfur drifted through the compartments from the cheaper-grade coal the East Germans used, Drew leaned back and put his hands behind his head. With calculated smugness and an arched eyebrow, he announced, “I’ll stick.” He had two cards, a queen on top, faceup.
“Man, he’s got to have twenty-one,” Steve whined, throwing down his cards.
One after another, the other boys tossed their cards at Charlie, who was dealing.
Only Bob held on and eyed Drew. “You bluffing, Mac?”
“Drew.”
Bob laughed. “You bluffing . . . Drew?”
He shrugged, smiling.
“Okay, okay.” Bob nodded. “I respect your moxie.” He thought for a minute, then asked for a hit. “What the heck.”
Charlie snapped down a ten. Busted. Bob turned over his cards, showing that he’d had nineteen before. The chance of Bob getting a two or an ace—the only cards that would have kept him in the game—had been ridiculously low.
Drew flipped over his hidden card. A three!
“What?!” Bob exploded. “You only had thirteen?” He stood up. Drew braced himself for some kind of insult or cockfight, but Bob saluted him. “Great bluff. I’m taking you with me, McMahon, when I have to stand post on a wall and stare down the enemy eye-to-eye.”
As Drew pocketed his coins, Bob brushed something off his knee. “What the heck?” he muttered. He swatted at his shoulder, like a hornet was after him. Then he touched his cheek and wiped away a massive spitball.
Charlie got hit next. Then Gary, Larry, and Steve, who started punching each other, thinking one of them was the culprit.
Hearing faint snickers, Drew leaned over his middle bunk, scanning the wall beneath it, where the sound had come from. Thwack! He got hit in the forehead with a gooey spitball.
“Guys, guys!” He kept his voice low and pointed to the wall. What he saw had taken a lot of doing. Somehow, the boys next door had removed their light switch, which had left the one in Drew’s cabin dangling. There were plenty of gaps around the wiring for straws to poke through, mini rocket launchers of spittle.
As he stared, four small reeds poked through—thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.
The straws withdrew.
“Let’s get ’em!” Steve, Larry, and Gary were about to dash out the door to pummel their neighbors, but Bob and Charlie blocked them.
“We need a plan first!” Charlie whispered, laughing.
“Yeah, yeah.” Bob scanned their jammed compartment and spotted a few liters of German sparkling lemonade. “Sorry, boys, I’m commandeering these.” He grabbed them and loosened the tops. “Molotov cocktails of pop.” His grin was devilish. “Stiiiiii-cky!”
Drew dropped down from his bunk. “Hang on,” he whispered. “Wait for the next shot.”
Within seconds, out popped two straws.
“Follow my lead!” Drew took a deep breath and put his lips around a straw, blowing hard.
Arrrrgggggg!
They could hear coughing through the wall. Drew had blasted the spitball right back into the assailant’s mouth.
Charlie puckered around the other straw and blew. More coughing and laughing through the wall.
“ATTAAAACK!” Bob shouted. He and his minions charged out their door and into the next cabin.
Thump-b-sssssss. Thump-b-sssssss. Howls of laughter.
The lemon soda missiles exploded against the window and showered the compartment.
“Awwww, man! You guys are in for it!”
Bob, Larry, Gary, and Steve burst back into their compartment. Slamming the door shut behind them, they held it closed as the boys next door pounded and kicked, still guffawing.
“HEY!”
Sudden silence in the hall.
Bob waved everyone back into their bunks, retreat on the double.
The MP sergeant pulled their door open. He planted his feet and tapped his billy club against his hand. Behind him hovered the East German conductor, cursing about spoiled, ill-mannered Americans. Bringing up the rear were the lieutenant and their coach, both red-faced.
The MP sergeant didn’t wait for orders from the lieutenant. “Know how we cool down men who get too rowdy in some of Berlin’s finest establishments?” he asked.
“No, sergeant,” Drew, Charlie, Bob, Gary, Larry, and Steve answered simultaneously.
“A few hours in the clink.” The sergeant yanked their door closed again and locked it from the outside.
“Man, I gotta pee,” Gary whimpered. “Anyone got an empty pop bottle?”
Precisely an hour later, the sergeant unlocked the door, telling them to go to the can and then bunk down for the night. “Quietly,” he warned.
It was close to one a.m. Looking exhausted and sheepish, probably having been officially reprimanded by someone, their coach monitored the team as they brushed their teeth three at a time in the car’s one bathroom. “For pity’s sake, go to sleep now,” he said as the boys climbed into their berths and he switched off the light.
Drew pulled up his scratchy army blanket and rolled over to face the wall. Lulled by the sway and clack-clack, clack-clack of the train on the track, he fell asleep pretty quickly.
“What the hell?” Bob’s voice jarred Drew awake. Outside, searchlights swept along the shade. Bob was sitting up on the opposite bunk, lifting the curtain enough to peer out.
“What is it?” Drew whispered, not wanting to wake everyone else. He checked his wristwatch: 3:10. Close, but too soon for the East-West border. He knew the duty train made absolutely no station stops where Americans might mix and talk with citizens in the communist zone. It was a straight shot from Potsdam to Marienborn. There, the train manifest would be checked and approved again by the Russians to make sure they accounted for every American who’d boarded at the start of the trip, as if each one was a dangerous drop of poison that needed to be contained. At that point, the East German engine would detach, and a West German locomotive would latch on and pull them over the line into the free zone and on to Frankfurt.
“Looks like we’re moving to a side rail.”
“They do that, right? ” Drew rubbed his eyes sleepily. “To let East German trains pass? I think they only have a single rail.”
“Yeah, but that’s a lot of activity out there,” Bob answered.
Their train jerked to a stop.
Sitting up, Drew looked out the window himself. Bob was right—there were a lot of Soviet soldiers milling around for a side rail and small station. But maybe it wasn’t that unusual
. After all, the Russians maintained a huge occupation force of four hundred thousand men in East Germany. With that many soldiers on hand, they were sure to be distributed in big, purposefully intimidating clusters.
The oncoming eastbound train swooshed by noisily, rattling theirs and briefly lighting up the station’s one sign. Magdeburg. Drew yawned and lay back down. “Another hour, and we’ll be at the Soviet checkpoint,” he mumbled, already starting to drift back off.
Bob remained on watch at the window.
Drew forced himself to stay awake long enough that he’d feel their train lurch forward, moving West again, moving toward American safety.
Five minutes. Ten. Nothing.
He sat back up and peeped around the shade, counting. One, two, three . . . fourteen Russian soldiers huddled together, keeping watch over their train.
Shouts and train whistles. A long, long exhaling hisssssssssss, and the train’s engine went silent. Totally dead. Bob and Drew could see their East German conductor and engineer walking across the track, waving at the soldiers in friendly greeting, before disappearing into the small station.
“What are they doing?” Bob muttered.
Fifteen more minutes.
The railway men didn’t reemerge. The Soviet soldiers didn’t disperse. In fact, a few more joined them.
Bob and Drew eyed one another nervously. “Wish your cousin were here.”
“Why?” Drew asked, surprised.
“He talked Russkie at the jazz club. Maybe he could find out from these guys what’s going on.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Drew frowned a little, wondering if he would be able to trust Matthias’s translation in a situation like this. Then he shook his head to dispel the question. He was way too paranoid, and he was being a jerk. Matthias had saved their butts at that club.
“Come on,” Bob said, tipping his head toward the door. They dropped to the floor and slid the door open quietly, poking their heads out to look down the hall. All the compartments had at least one person doing the same.
“Anyone know what’s happening?” Bob asked, to shrugs and head-shaking.
The exit leading to the next car slid open. The sergeant hustled down the corridor, followed by younger MPs holding rifles and the lieutenant, who kept repeating, “Everyone back into your cabins, please,” as he passed.
“Holy hell,” muttered Bob.
Darting back inside, Drew and Bob glued themselves to their window. The MPs stepped off the train, positioning themselves in front of the three sleeping cars’ doors while the lieutenant and his translator talked with a Russian officer. This conversation was not cordial, not at all. The Soviet even seemed to laugh sneeringly as he walked away, leaving the lieutenant steaming.
It took the young officer several moments to collect himself before he climbed back onto the train, planting himself rigidly at the end of Drew’s car. By this point, pretty much everyone was awake and crowding the cabin doors.
“In honor of their May Day celebrations,” the lieutenant announced, “the Russians are stopping rail travel until the conclusion of the parades this morning so that all their workers can attend.”
“What?” was the collective reaction.
“What about our track meet?”
“What about our flight out of Frankfurt?”
“What about my niece’s wedding?” came shouts from the handful of other military family passengers on board.
The lieutenant held up his hand. “I plan to radio Berlin Command and ask that they intercede. I’ll keep you informed. Right now, please go back to bed.” He marched through the car, back to the radio operator, the sergeant pausing at each cabin door until its passengers retreated inside. No one argued with him.
Remarkably, Larry, Steve, and Gary were still snoring. Only Charlie hopped out of his bunk to join Drew and Bob at the window. Now that there were three of them, the boys crowded together on the floor so they could pull the shade up just a little to watch. Only their eyes and noses showed.
A few of the Russian soldiers paced closer and closer to the train—maybe hoping for American cigarette trades.
“Your cousin going to march in these bull-hockey May Day parades today?” Bob asked.
“Yeeaaah,” Drew answered cautiously. “It’s not like he has a choice. My mom told me that a refugee boy she was helping at Marienfelde was booted from his academic school for not being enthusiastic enough at a parade, and Mathias told me—” Drew stopped himself, realizing he might open Matthias up to trouble if he told Bob about the tribunal his cousin had been hauled in front of.
“Told you what?” Bob turned away from the window to face Drew.
“Nothing,” he mumbled.
Bob studied Drew. “Why does Matthias stay in East Berlin?”
“Beats me.” Drew knew all the reasons from his mom, but sharing them with Bob just didn’t feel right.
Bob continued to stare at him.
Jeez, he’d be a good interrogator, Drew thought, squirming a bit under Bob’s silent gaze. He tried joking. “Learn that glare from your dad?”
Bob blanched. “No. Learned other things—not that.” He nodded to himself and to Drew. “You know.” He didn’t break his gaze, but Drew saw the unspoken gratitude in it. After a pause, Bob began again, “Drew, there’s . . . there’s something I should tell you.”
“What?”
Taking a deep breath, Bob whispered, “That van outside your apartment . . .”
“So you did know about that.”
“Drew,” Charlie interrupted gently, “everyone knew about that van full of MPs and why they were probably there—either to protect you from something, or investigating your dad for CIC.”
The army’s Criminal Investigation Command. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Drew’s mind reeled. So his family had basically been on probation with the entire post. “Okay, so?” he asked defensively. “What about it?”
“Look,” Bob started again, “I . . . I owe you, Drew. And . . . and I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I kinda like that commie cousin of yours. I . . . I know that a suspicious envelope was left on your dad’s windshield . . . and . . . I bet you think Matthias was involved somehow.”
Drew just scowled, holding his breath.
“He wasn’t. It was me.”
“What?” Drew exploded.
Larry, Gary, and Steve stirred, rolled over, and mercifully snorted back to sleep.
“I . . . I didn’t leave the thing,” Bob hurried to explain. “But . . . but I told my dad that Matthias was spending a lot of time at your apartment . . . and . . . I think Dad got one of the intelligence office’s assets to follow you and leave the note . . . to see . . .” Bob sucked in another deep breath. “To see what your dad might do.”
“Son of a—!” Drew grabbed Bob’s shirt to shake him.
“Yeah, he is,” Bob murmured, not fighting back.
“Have you got any idea how—we were—” Drew spluttered. “My dad—your dad could have ruined him!”
“Your dad didn’t take the bait. So in the long run—”
Drew shook Bob even harder. “Of course he didn’t! But this is probably in his file now—that test of his loyalty!” He pulled his fist back to punch Bob, not caring that Bob flinched.
“Drew, stop!” Charlie blocked the blow. He held Drew’s fist and pulled him off Bob. “Guys, you need to see something.” He pointed out the window. “Look! There’s a kid out there. I think he’s going to try to climb up under our train—to defect.”
Still too furious at Bob to listen to anything else, Drew fought to shrug Charlie off. “Let go of me!”
“Drew, seriously, look!” Charlie urged, holding fast. “Look!” He pushed Drew toward the window so he couldn’t help but see.
Bob followed.
In the shadows of the station was a teenager watching the pack
of Russians. As the soldiers joked and laughed, the youth darted to hide behind a coal bin closer to the tracks.
“Yeah, yeah, I see him,” said Bob. “Come on, kid,” he whispered.
“Oh god, they’ve seen him.” Charlie pressed his face against the pane. Two guards who’d been chatting nearer the bin were starting to stalk the German teen, who was focusing so hard on the train that he didn’t notice he was being tracked from behind. “Dammit,” Charlie breathed. “They’re going to get him.”
“No way,” Bob muttered. “Not on my watch.” He yanked up the shade and threw open the window. “Hey!” he bellowed. “Who wants some American cigarettes? Trade for your red star.” He reached under his pillow to grab his pack of cigarettes and clambered up onto his bunk to hang halfway out the window.
“Bob! Don’t!” Drew and Charlie gasped.
“Amerikanskiye sigarety?”
“Da! Good!” Bob glanced over to where they’d spotted the German youth, then back at Charlie and Drew, holding their gaze for a long beat before taking a deep breath and leaning way too far out of the window, his feet flailing off the bunk.
“Bob!” Drew and Charlie lunged to grab his legs, but Bob fell out of the train headfirst, onto a Russian soldier.
All the soldier’s comrades rushed toward him to help nab the AWOL American.
The German teenager got away.
Bob was hauled into the station in his bare feet and pajamas, the lieutenant and MP sergeant running to catch up.
Chapter Eleven
June
1961
A month later, Drew and his friends were still talking about the night Bob dove out the train window into the Russian zone—and the fallout from it.
“Will Bob make it to the end-of-year picnic next week?” Shirley asked as she, Drew, and Charlie walked home from school.
Drew shook his head. “His family’s been transferred stateside. Just like they always told us would happen to our dads if we did something stupid and got in trouble here. Mrs. Jones told Mom they’re shipping out tonight, in fact. The transport van pulled up this morning as I left.”
“The whole thing must have been so traumatizing for Bob,” she murmured. “You sure the Soviets didn’t hurt him?”
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