Stasi Winter

by David Young

  ‘The criminals have – as we suspected – made a break for it over the ice.’

  ‘So I’d heard, Jäger. Why didn’t your people stop them? You realise the seriousness of this, don’t you? It has the potential to become an international incident if the BRD or anyone else in the West gets to hear about it.’

  ‘They won’t get away with it, Comrade Minister. There is a unit of armed border guards in pursuit, with a number of our agents amongst them.’

  ‘What about those Kriminalpolizei buffoons?’

  ‘They are tracking them, too, Comrade Minister.’

  Mielke banged his schnapps glass down on the table. ‘If they get in the way of justice being done, Jäger, mark my words, it will be you who pays the price.’

  ‘I understand that, Comrade Minister.’

  ‘Meanwhile I’ve got some news for you. Our Soviet friends may be able to come to our rescue, although I’m not sure allowing them to is such a good idea. We’d never hear the end of it.’

  ‘Come to our rescue in what way, Comrade Minister?’

  ‘There’s a Soviet icebreaker fighting its way through the Ostsee at the moment. It went back to Shipyard 189 in Leningrad for repairs – but now it’s on its way back to the Arctic. The Soviets had already agreed to make a small diversion to reopen the channel to Rostock to free some of our shipping. As you can imagine, Soviet icebreakers are much more powerful than ours. You may have heard of this vessel, the Arktika.’

  ‘That’s one of the new nuclear-powered icebreakers, isn’t it?’

  ‘Precisely, Jäger. It can smash through ice up to five metres thick which it regularly encounters in Arctic waters. Although the Ostsee ice may look thick to you, it’s nothing like that. It might be a metre at most in its thickest parts, so the scientists tell me. We’ve persuaded our Soviet friends to make another slight detour before they reach Rostock. They’ll be visiting Rügen, somewhere we like to go in the good weather – not so much now, eh, Jäger?’

  ‘No, Comrade Minister.’

  ‘The border guards will give the Soviet captain the necessary co-ordinates for this diversion. But as you can imagine, it’s not some tourist jolly. The Arktika will smash everything in its path. Including our little band of criminal Republikflüchtlinge. And, with a bit of luck, our Kriminalpolizei friends too.’

  32

  The frozen Ostsee

  Early hours of 2 January 1979

  Tilsner seemed to need no encouragement to continue the chase. He might have put on weight, but he seemed to have regained his zest for the job, and Müller was thankful for that. She’d been impressed, too, by the way he’d backed her in the confrontation with Jäger. It didn’t alter the fact that she’d never be able to completely forgive him for his role in those events in the Nazi period, but more than ever now, she was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. In an environment like this – where at any moment an ice fissure could open up and claim them, or they could be the victim of a stray border guard bullet – she needed him on her side.

  She struggled to catch him up, feeling like a manic duck as her attempt to run in her snowshoes resembled more of a waddle. But after a couple of minutes of exertion, with sweat breaking out on her face despite the bitter cold, she drew level with him.

  ‘You shouldn’t do that, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Try to run on the ice. Just keep up a steady pace, otherwise you start to perspire.’

  She wiped a mixture of sweat and snow away from her forehead. ‘And what’s the problem with that?’

  ‘It’s the worst thing possible if you want to avoid frostbite. If you sweat into your gloves or boots, in extreme cold the sweat then freezes. Then your fingers and toes fall off.’

  *

  The snow had cleared slightly. Sassnitz lighthouse was behind them, but they knew they were going in the right direction because they could occasionally see a bright light – the searchlight on the border guards’ sled – and it was getting nearer. Travelling with less equipment than the troops, they were managing to catch them up. As long as the Grenztruppen were on the right trail, they were too.

  ‘I can still feel myself sweating!’ shouted Müller.

  ‘We’re going to catch up with the border guard detachment soon,’ panted Tilsner. ‘The advice about perspiration and frostbite was stuff I read about Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. It’s fucking cold here – but it must be ten times worse at the North and South Poles.’

  Müller wasn’t so sure. The conditions were Arctic – that was where this weather front had come from apparently – blown in from the Arctic Soviet wastes – and now settled over the north of the Republic and the Ostsee, with no sign of it breaking.

  What she found more interesting was Tilsner’s admission to reading serious books – and books about polar expeditions. Nothing like the erotic novel she remembered him hiding under the covers of his hospital bed, when he’d been recovering after the shooting in the Harz during the graveyard girl case. That incident seemed like a lifetime ago. Yet it was less than four years earlier, and at one time he’d been teetering on the edge of death.

  *

  When they finally caught up with the border guards, Müller was surprised how pleased she was to see them again. Perhaps it was the false reassurance of the inflatable boat on their sled. The small generator powering the searchlight, with its bus engine-like diesel rattle, also gave a hint of a better-prepared operation. Or perhaps it was the thought of safety in numbers, even though all of them were just – what? – tens, scores, at best perhaps a hundred centimetres above an icy grave.

  ‘My understanding, Comrade Major,’ said the captain, not stopping to welcome them, ‘was that you had gone back to shore with Oberst Jäger. If anything goes wrong, we’ve already told you, there won’t be enough space on our dinghy.’

  Müller shrugged as she kept pace with him. Despite his words, the captain’s craggy face – brought into sharp relief as one of his troops sliced the searchlight through the never-ending blackness – had a confident air. ‘We’d better make sure nothing does go wrong, then, Comrade Hauptmann,’ she replied. ‘Have you seen the criminals?’

  ‘Now it’s stopped snowing again, we’ve found their tracks – even though they seem to be trying to disguise them by dragging a blanket over them. Visual contact is more difficult. They’re obviously camouflaged – they blend into the ice.’ He clapped his gloved hands together. It looked like he was applauding the ingenuity of Irma, Dieter and their colleagues. Müller knew, however, he was trying to keep the blood circulating in his extremities. ‘We think they’re wearing white bed sheets or something like that,’ he continued. ‘Before we set off, we were warned it was a trick they might use. Criminals used similar sort of things in attempted escapes documented in 1962/63 – the last time the Ostsee froze over so completely.’

  ‘It could be a long chase. Won’t you have to stop to camp at some stage?’ asked Tilsner, sounding out of breath. In the gloom, Müller could see him looking hopefully at the supplies on the back of one of the sleds, no doubt trying to work out if there was a tent.

  ‘Perhaps. Although my best guess is that the criminals will try to get as far as possible at night. They’ll know that, with the snow clearing, once daylight comes there’ll be helicopters and spotter planes out looking for them. So while we think they’re still on the move, we need to be too.’

  Müller saw that the officer was holding a compass in one hand, and studying it with a torch held in the other. ‘Where does it look like they’re heading?’

  ‘I’m not certain they’ve thought it through. If they wanted to reach the West, Sassnitz wasn’t the best place to start. Strike out at ninety degrees from the coast here, and you end up back in the Republic, or at best in western Poland. Clearly they’re not doing that. They’ve already turned in a more northerly direction.’

  ‘So, the Swedish mainland?’ asked Tilsner.

  ‘Perhaps. Or there’s Bornholm – an isla
nd in the middle that belongs to Denmark, even though it’s nearer Sweden. But to reach either of them you’re talking a walk of at least a hundred kilometres. Maybe more like a hundred and fifty. They’re not going to do that in a single night – not across this stuff. You’re talking more like three or four days.’

  Müller’s geography wasn’t a lot better than Tilsner’s. But she knew the captain was right. Irma, Dieter and friends would have been better off if they had staged their escape attempt from the coast near Rostock. There, they would have faced a trek of some fifty kilometres, perhaps less. That might have been doable in one exhausting twelve-hour night, although Müller doubted it was possible across this ice. Further west in the Republic, there would be routes across the ice to the BRD which would just be a few kilometres. No wonder this part of the coast seemed to be more lightly patrolled.

  ‘Which means they’ll have to stop to rest at some point,’ said Müller.

  ‘Exactly,’ replied the captain. ‘My plan, therefore, is to keep going as long as we can unless we lose their trail. My guess is they will push themselves to the limit, and then perhaps dig in, make an igloo out of the snow, disguise it and try to get some sleep.’

  ‘Unless,’ suggested Tilsner, ‘their plan isn’t to reach the West at all – but to hitch a ride on a Western boat.’

  Tilsner was correct, of course. Whichever route was chosen, Müller knew Irma and her fellow escapers would face an insurmountable problem: crossing the shipping lane. Even if the weather meant that – by now – the Republic’s and Western icebreakers hadn’t managed to keep it ice-free, the frozen surface would be much thinner, more treacherous. But as Tilsner had intimated, their plan might be to reach the shipping lane, rather than cross it. Hoping that some ships – Western ships – would be managing to fight their way through. On their way to, or from, northern Sweden or Finland.

  The border guard captain and his troops continued their relentless pace, even though Müller was tiring. ‘That’s a likely scenario, Hauptmann,’ he said to Tilsner. ‘I doubt they would manage to get that far in one night. The main shipping lane is almost exactly halfway between here and Bornholm. But there’s another reason they might not get that far.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Müller.

  ‘We got a message from Berlin. The Soviets may be coming to our rescue.’

  33

  When I feel my leg collapse, for an instant I think I’m being sucked into the icy sea like at Sassnitz. I tumble into the snow, my snowshoe trapped by something. Dieter comes to my aid, and starts to help me up.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I should have looked where I was going.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s dark – it’s difficult. Here.’ He offers his shoulder for me to lean on. ‘Test your weight. Is it OK?’

  I feel shooting pains from my ankle up my leg. It isn’t OK, but I’m not going to admit that. I’ll have to keep up with them; I can’t risk falling behind or slowing them down. ‘It’s fine.’ I smile reassuringly at Dieter. ‘How much further?’ Already it feels like we must have walked far enough to reach Sweden, though I know from that book Herr Müller lent me at the Jugendwerkhof that can’t be the case.

  Dieter returns my smile. ‘While it’s still dark, we need to keep going.’ I see him glance backwards. From time to time, we see the beam of the searchlight of whoever is following us. Border troops, we assume. The lighthouse beam disappeared hours ago. ‘And we don’t want them to catch us. I’ve been trying to disguise the trail.’ He holds up his bed sheet. The rest of us are still wearing ours, but he’s been trailing his, hoping that by smoothing out our tracks as we go, we might confuse our followers and – eventually – lose them.

  We resume our steady walk. I’ve been excused sled-pulling duties – the others share it between themselves, with two pulling at any one time, the others resting. If trudging at a fast walking pace across the frozen surface of the sea can be described as resting. I try to disguise the fact that I’m limping. Try not to show the pain on my face, even though no one would see it in this near-blackness, just the occasional star breaking through the snow clouds giving us a weak illumination.

  ‘Once dawn breaks,’ says Dieter, ‘if we still haven’t made it by then, we can rest a little if we think they’ve stopped following us. We might manage to get some sleep.’

  ‘Where is it we’re heading for?’ I ask.

  He hesitates before he answers. I have a sudden horrible thought it’s because he doesn’t know – that this escape attempt might be as badly planned as mine from the Jugendwerkhof, even though – against the odds – that actually succeeded. ‘It depends on the conditions we encounter,’ he says. ‘Whether we can get across the shipping lanes or not.’

  My foot slips slightly and I feel another jab of pain from my ankle. ‘And if we can’t?’ I ask.

  ‘Let’s wait and see,’ he says. ‘If we’re lucky, we might reach there before dawn.’

  The others have moved ahead. I grit my teeth, try to ignore the pain knifing with each stride from my ankle, and increase my pace so we can catch them up.

  Each stride is a step nearer to freedom.

  Each bolt of pain is something I’m willing to endure for the goal at the end.

  The dream of living a life in the West with Dieter, wherever that may be.

  *

  It’s the lights we see first, in the distance. Initially, I think it’s a town, that perhaps we’ve reached Sweden already. My heartbeat hammers in my ears in excitement, I start walking more quickly towards the lights, the renewed rush of adrenalin masking my ankle pain. It’s almost as though my leg feels as good as new again.

  Next, it’s the noise. A low hum getting gradually louder.

  Finally, I realise what – in my heart – I already knew. It’s not the lights of a port or town – it’s a ship. Heading straight towards us, slicing through the ice.

  I feel elated. We must have reached the shipping lane. This might be a Western ship – we could flag it down and get it to take us to the West.

  But it looms ever larger, bearing directly down on us.

  Then we hear the thunder of ice cracking, as this massive vessel powers towards us.

  It’s almost as though the ice is moving beneath our feet.

  Then I realise it is.

  At the same time, I see the illuminated blood-red bridge of the ship.

  The Cyrillic lettering. The hammer and sickle. From my Russian lessons, I dimly remember how to transliterate the ship’s name – А Р К Т И К А – Arktika, I think it says.

  Dieter is grabbing me.

  ‘Quick, Irma, quick!’

  We’re running now – away to the side, the ice cracking under our feet as the blood-red monster charges forward.

  Running back towards the Republic. Back towards the border guards. Back to where we’ve just escaped from.

  Back to try to save our lives.

  34

  When Müller saw the lights in the distance, she immediately asked the border guard captain – who’d finally introduced himself as Hauptmann Heinrich Hartmann – what they were. Or rather where it was. She, too, at first believed it to be a building on a coastline.

  ‘I said that Berlin had arranged for some help from our Soviet friends. This is it, I think. I provided them with the co-ordinates.’

  As the lights grew closer, Müller could make out it was a ship. It had a searchlight sweeping over the frozen sea in front of it as it powered through the ice.

  ‘It’s one of their icebreakers,’ said Hartmann. ‘Normally it operates in Arctic waters. Luckily for us, it had finished being repaired in Leningrad and was on its way back through the Ostsee. It’s taking a diversion.’

  Hartmann appeared unruffled, but Müller found herself tensing as she watched the ship smash through the ice as though it wasn’t there. She could hear a thunderous crashing as the frozen surface was broken into huge blocks which were swept aside in a relentless forward motion. Then – in the glare of the vessel�
��s searchlight – she spotted silhouettes on the ice, running away from it.

  ‘There they are!’ she shouted.

  Hartmann raised his binoculars. Then shook his head. ‘I can’t see them.’

  Müller, too, realised they’d been plunged back in darkness and she could no longer make out the group. ‘They were definitely there. At least, there were figures running away from the icebreaker.’

  ‘That makes sense!’ shouted Hartmann, above the crashing of ice and the roar of the ship’s engines as it came ever closer. ‘The aim was to smash a channel through the ice around them to cut them off.’

  As he said this, Müller noticed Tilsner had started to run in the direction she’d seen Irma and Dieter’s group running. She started to follow, then felt the ice begin to shake under her feet as though it was going to break off.

  She glanced round.

  Hartmann was yelling at her as the guards ran in the opposite direction.

  Then she realised why.

  The giant craft was bearing down on her, and the ice was cracking and giving way.

  She began to run in panic, towards Tilsner, her loyalty to her deputy winning out over Hartmann’s frantic beckoning.

  Huge blocks of ice were rearing up in front of her.

  The giant red bow of the ship was nearly upon her.

  She knew she must get out of the way. Thoughts raced through her head of Jannika, Johannes, Helga – how she’d let them all down.

  Selfishly putting herself in danger again.

  As the red metal of the ship was nearly upon her, she threw herself to the side. A block of ice smashed into her back, slamming the air from her lungs. She fought for breath, for a foothold, felt icy water shower over her and almost immediately freeze in the air.

  Then it was over.

  She clawed her way up the ice block, and managed to get to her feet. She ran again. Trying to get as far away from the red monster as possible, as its giant hull slid by, almost – it seemed – as though it was within touching distance, although she knew that was an optical illusion.