by David Young
‘We have, Comrade Minister. Her deputy.’
‘I don’t understand, Jäger. What is the complication?’
‘We intercepted a radio message from Müller and her deputy Tilsner sent to the People’s Police in Bergen, from where they’ve been staking out the cell at Sassnitz harbour. It appears the suspects may be about to make a run for it across the ice. Müller and Tilsner want to follow to try to arrest them, and were asking for backup from uniform.’
‘It’s not a matter for the Vopos, Jäger. We should be dealing with it. Us and the coastal Grenztruppen. A helicopter gunship would sort them out.’
‘The weather’s about to take another turn for the worse, Comrade Minister. My understanding is helicopters and other aircraft have been grounded until further notice. Shouldn’t we give Müller and Tilsner permission to begin the chase at least, until reinforcements arrive?’
‘I’m not interested in this nonsense about arresting the culprits. Tell them to wait for backup for the time being. But if the criminals attempt to flee the Republic, they should be shot on sight.’
‘As you wish, Comrade Minister. All I would say is that a trial might be to our benefit, given that it would expose construction soldiers for what they truly are, and at the same time prove what we’ve always been saying. That Republikflüchtlinge are almost always criminals trying to evade justice in the Republic.’
‘I’m not on the ground, Jäger. You are. You must do as you see fit, but you will face the consequences if anything goes wrong.’
‘Of course, Comrade Minister. That goes without saying.’
‘Thank you, Jäger. You’d better stay on the line to hear the rest of it. Gentlemen, you’ve heard an example of the seriousness of the situation first hand from Oberst Jäger. As a result of the weather emergency we’re facing, the State Council has issued the following decree: a special zone is to be created – a band along the Republic’s northern coastline twenty kilometres in width. No citizens who do not have residence rights within this zone will be permitted to enter. Anyone who defies this and does not have the necessary identity papers will face immediate arrest. Port cities such as Rostock, Stralsund, Warnemünde, Boltenhagen and their ilk will be designated closed cities with roadblocks and checkpoints at all entrances. In addition, the coastal border guards have been given instructions to shoot to kill anyone venturing onto the frozen sea with a view to escaping the Republic. You can take it from me, that instruction also applies to any of your agents in the field. That is all, Comrades. Get to work.’
28
Sellin, Rügen, East Germany
Earlier, evening of 1 January 1979
I get the call from Dieter at about 6 p.m. Things have been a little strained since the business with Frau Richter, so I’m pleased to hear from him. Overall, I think I’ve managed to put the Richter stuff behind me quite well, considering what happened. I was a bit nervous when that policewoman, Frau Müller, turned up. But I think she put my weird mood down to my anger at her mentioning my time in the Jugendwerkhof at the café. No one wants to be reminded of that sort of thing, especially in public. You don’t know who’s listening, you don’t know what they’ll try to use against you.
‘Irma,’ he says. ‘I need you to come over tonight. We’re going on a little walk. You know what you need to bring.’
A little walk.
That’s the agreed code.
Tonight must be the night.
I said I would never attempt anything like this again, and I thought the discovery of the body might blow over, that they might believe it was down to natural causes. I suppose I knew as soon as the policewoman arrived that wasn’t going to be the case. But something must have changed. Something bad.
‘OK,’ I reply. ‘Some of the buses are running again. It shouldn’t be a problem. But it could take me an hour. Perhaps longer.’
‘We’ll wait for you in the usual place. Don’t forget anything.’
*
On the bus, I chew my nails, and glance round furtively. Steiger may have had his men tap into Dieter’s phone call. I shouldn’t think construction soldiers are trusted, and I know – from my ‘interview’ with Steiger and his superior, Jäger – that I’m certainly not. They’ve probably detailed an agent to follow me to the rendezvous with Dieter, Joachim and Holger in the bar. Then they’ll move in and arrest us all. I’ve been expecting that, really, every minute since we knocked on Richter’s door four nights ago.
When I get to the bar by the quayside, I’m surprised to see Dieter sitting alone. Joachim and Holger are nowhere to be seen.
‘Ah, Irma,’ says Dieter, getting up to hug me. ‘I thought from what you were saying about the buses you might be later.’
‘I don’t know how long they’ll keep running. Heavy snowfall is imminent again, apparently.’ I worry for a moment how I will get back to Sellin. Then I remember. I’m not going back to Sellin. A small shiver of fear courses through me. Dieter sees it, I think, and hugs me tighter.
Dieter doesn’t know that I’ve done this sort of thing before. Well, not over the ice. That will be even worse. But I’ve made an escape attempt before – and I know how strong, how determined, how bloody-minded you have to be to make it work. And you have to plan, meticulously. That’s what I fear is missing here. The evidence is that first aborted attempt under the remains of the pier at Sellin.
It was madness.
This is madness.
Yet, still I’m going through with it. Last time, it was desperation. This time, it’s for love. I don’t want Dieter to go without me.
‘Where are Holger and Joachim?’
‘They’ve gone on ahead. Getting things ready for the party.’
The party. Another of Dieter’s favourite code words. God, how I wish we were going to a party. I think Dieter, Joachim, and Holger are in for a horribly rude awakening.
29
Sassnitz harbour, Rügen, East Germany
Later, night of 1 January 1979
‘What did they say?’ asked Tilsner.
Müller had removed the headphones after using Tilsner’s portable radio set. She knew they were far enough away from the lighthouse that Irma, Dieter and their friends wouldn’t have heard her making contact. The noise of the wind howling in across the frozen Ostsee would have made sure of that. Back in the mountains of Thuringia, a winter wind was often a warmer one – a harbinger of a thaw. Here, snow was falling again – although from the angle it was being blown into their faces, perhaps falling wasn’t accurate.
‘Berlin have told the police in Bergen that ideally they want us to wait for backup, as I suspected. A detachment of border troops should be on their way.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re armed. Two of us against four of them? Even if we’re professionals and three of them are construction soldiers – rather than the real thing – they don’t want us to chance it. And that’s my view too, Werner.’
She watched Tilsner blow out his cheeks and kick a mound of icy snow in his frustration. He took the radio and headphones from her and repacked them in his rucksack. ‘What happens if they do make a move? Do Berlin’s orders cover all eventualities?’
Müller wiped the objective lenses of her field glasses with her gloved fingers, then raised the eyepieces to her face. Through the smeary picture, shrouded in a darkness regularly pierced by the rotating lighthouse beam, she could just about make out the entrance to the bottom of the structure. She wasn’t going to tell Tilsner at this stage about the relayed message from Mielke. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any sign of them setting off yet, if indeed that’s what they’re going to do. Perhaps they’re preparing.’
‘I still say we ignore Berlin and go in and arrest them now. We’ve seen them loading their guns. Let’s act now, before there’s a bloodbath. Before they escape, if that’s their aim.’
As the snow drove in at almost ninety degrees, Müller wiped the binoculars again, then took another look.
‘Scheisse!�
�� she screamed. ‘They’re setting off.’
‘What are we waiting for? Let’s go!’
Müller moved to try to hold her deputy back, but he was already clambering up the uncleared part of the sea wall path; stumbling, crouching but moving quickly.
She didn’t have time to weigh up whether it might still be safer to wait for backup.
For good or bad, she and Tilsner were a team on this operation.
She shoved the binoculars away and started to follow.
*
Immediately they were out on the iced-over sea, Müller was filled with a sense of panic and dread. What from a distance had looked relatively flat and solid, now seemed like a death trap. As the rotating beam highlighted the figures they were trying to follow – some two hundred metres ahead – it also revealed huge distortions in the ice. Jagged blocks left to refreeze by previous futile attempts to send in the icebreakers. Crests and curves where waves appeared to have frozen as the surf broke. And all the time she was thinking, Why? Why had they come out here without proper supplies, without backup and – most importantly for her – without contacting her loved ones back in Berlin? She’d sworn she would never again put Jannika, Johannes and Helga in danger. Yet she was the breadwinner – being out here was putting everything at risk.
Furiously, she tried to speed up to catch Tilsner. To tell him they ought to turn back. But he was too far ahead, pressing on towards the escapees. This is madness, she thought. I have to put a stop to it right now.
‘Irma Behrendt, Dieter Schwarz and you others!’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘This is the police! Put your hands above your heads and stay completely still!’
She wasn’t sure they could hear her – perhaps they were already too far away. Through the driving snow, it was getting more difficult to see. Tilsner, twenty metres or so ahead, must have heard but seemed to be pressing on.
As she continued to run, she fumbled inside her camouflage jacket to get the Makarov from her shoulder holster. She held the gun in her left hand, while she tried to pull her right-hand glove off with her teeth. Even in the gloves, the ends of her fingers were so cold she could hardly feel them. Now her right hand was exposed to the cold and snow, she felt it shaking. She came to a halt, passed the Makarov from one hand to the other, then raised it as she fought to control her shivering.
‘This is your final warning! Stop and wait for arrest, otherwise I’ll fire!’
Tilsner was starting to disappear from sight. She no longer had any visual contact with Irma and Dieter’s group.
Aiming in the direction of their last position, but making sure she fired into the air, she squeezed the trigger. Once, then again.
The two shots rang out in quick succession.
Tilsner had stopped in his tracks, but she wasn’t sure about the suspects.
Then – from behind them – the sound of a loudspeaker boomed across the frozen sea, echoing harshly against the ice, repeating virtually word for word her own warning for Irma and Dieter’s gang.
‘Stop immediately! Raise your hands above your heads! You are violating the borders of the Republic and are under arrest!’
Even as Müller struggled to obey, first dropping the Makarov into the snow, she heard the telltale tack-tack-tack-tack-tack of automatic fire. ‘We’re police, don’t shoot!’ she yelled, as she thrust her arms upwards. In the bright searchlight that fought for dominance over the intermittent beam of the lighthouse, she saw Tilsner adopt the same surrender position.
She waited for thud of a bullet in her back.
Hoping, praying, that they were firing warning shots into the snow clouds above.
*
‘Where are they?’ demanded Jäger, once he’d convinced the border guard captain not to arrest Müller and Tilsner.
Müller pointed in the direction she’d last seen them. She could have predicted that the Stasi colonel wouldn’t be far behind.
Dressed in the same snow camouflage suit as the two detectives and the border guards, Jäger ordered the searchlight to be shone in the direction Müller’s finger pointed. He raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
He shook his head. ‘This is a complete mess. You were ordered by Berlin to wait for backup, unless the criminals attempted to escape. In which case, the orders were to shoot them on sight. You defied those orders.’
Müller shrugged and stamped her boots to try to keep her blood circulating, but said nothing.
It was left to Tilsner to defend their action. ‘Major Müller did indeed order me to wait for reinforcements. But I saw the criminals trying to escape the Republic. I felt it was my duty to try to stop them. The major did not defy your orders – she tried to stop me.’
She could see Tilsner staring Jäger down. Jäger’s boyhood friend might, officially, only be a captain in the police but he wasn’t prepared to cede ground to the Stasi colonel. The closely held secret that bound the two of them – their past history in the Hitler Youth at Gardelegen, and what they had done there in the war – was something neither of them wanted to be made public.
As Jäger dropped his eyes momentarily, Müller could tell her deputy’s gambit had worked.
The Stasi colonel turned instead to the captain of the border guard detachment. ‘What do you think, Comrade Hauptmann? Is it safe to try to follow them?’
Slinging his recently fired Kalashnikov over his shoulder, the man stamped on the ice. The action caused Müller to think once more about what she’d left behind in Berlin, and how much better off she’d have been continuing with the teaching job application. The layer of ice beneath was all that stood between them and an almost certain death – although she noted one of the guards’ sleds was carrying an inflatable boat, the others had the searchlight and what looked like boxes of supplies.
‘The ice seems solid, Comrade Oberst. There’s no sign of a thaw. But it’s a risk.’ Müller saw him glance towards the inflatable. ‘My orders were to follow the criminals, arrest them if we can, but not hesitate to shoot if we must. The boat offers us some protection if we encounter a break in the ice – although we won’t all fit in it. We’re going to carry on – at least while it seems safe underfoot.’
As he said the words, he started waving his men onwards. There were twelve guards in total – four per sled – pulling them along with harnesses like Arctic expedition dogs.
Müller glanced at Jäger. ‘What about us?’ she asked.
‘Suit yourselves,’ said Jäger. ‘I need to get back to shore to brief Berlin. Both of you have messed up enough already. The only way you’re going to save face is if you arrest or kill them.’ The lighthouse beam suddenly illuminated his face, split by a cynical smile. ‘But if you do decide to press on, you may end up killing yourselves.’
30
The frozen Ostsee
Night of 1 January 1979
At first, as the adrenalin courses through me, it seems exciting, exhilarating – and the bitter cold has little effect. Out here on the ice with the man I love – escaping to a new life of hope in the West. As I trudge behind the sled, watching it periodically highlighted by the lighthouse beam, I allow myself to fantasise for a few seconds. A fantasy seems appropriate given the ghostly look of the others – like me, covered in white bed sheets, a procession of ghouls.
Where will we live? Will we prefer to stay on the Ostsee coast, but on the western side? Or would one of the big BRD cities make a more suitable home? The lights and nightlife of Hamburg and the Reeperbahn had looked so inviting on that short, illegal visit four and a half years ago. Perhaps this time we really will get to Sweden? Each faltering step across this frozen winter wasteland is a step nearer to the Swedish coast. That’s where I’d been aiming for, after all, with that last escape by boat.
My hopes are shattered when I hear the female police officer’s shout.
‘What should we do?’ I hiss to Dieter. The cold cuts through my outer layers and I find myself trembling.
‘We carry on,’ he says, soun
ding unflustered. He points out a jagged mound of ice that’s been pushed up by the sea, and urges us to head behind that.
Here, we’re in shadow. We can tell because the lighthouse beam no longer illuminates us.
We follow that narrow band of shadow, further into the iced-up sea.
Then more shouts from the woman police officer.
We keep walking.
Two shots ring out.
Dieter falls again to my side, to check I’m OK.
He pulls the bed sheet back so he can whisper in my ear. ‘Ignore it. They can’t see us. We’re protected by that mound of ice. By the time we’re out of its shadow, they’ll have lost us.’
He pulls something from his pocket and offers it to me.
‘Eat,’ he orders. ‘We need to keep up our energy.’
I look at it suspiciously, but it is a sandwich.
I take a bite. It’s like someone’s forgotten the filling and put in too much margarine instead.
Dieter holds my other hand, pulling me along, trying to hurry me up.
‘It’s disgusting. Who made it?’
‘I did,’ he laughs. ‘Margarine sandwiches. A construction soldier speciality. Fat is the best energy source when you’re in an environment like this. Butter would be even better, of course, but . . . ’
His sentence trails off. Then I jump nearly out of my skin.
The ack-ack-ack of automatic fire echoes across the ice.
Scheisse! The seriousness of the situation we’re in sinks in.
I may not get to taste that butter after all.
I stuff the rest of the margarine sandwich into my mouth and gulp it down, even though – without a drink – I’m struggling to swallow it.
I try to savour it, like the last meal of the condemned.
31
Stasi HQ, Normannenstraße, East Berlin
Early hours of 2 January 1979
‘What is it, Jäger?’
‘There’s been a further development, Comrade Minister.’
‘Go on, I’m listening, although really I want to get some sleep. You realise what time it is?’