by David Laws
The main focus of the crowd was on the endless racks stacked with papers. Red covers containing large, scribbled numbers and labels proclaiming the word Archivakte followed by a single letter and a six-figure number. Corners were scuffed, pages protruded, handwritten notes scrawled without seeming design or order across the covers.
Erika broke stride to pick up one, riffled briefly through sheaves of typewritten reports, laid out rigidly in the prescribed bureaucratic manner she had come to know, reporting on petty misdemeanours and domestic trivialities supplied by the IMs – known officially as the unofficial informants, and less politely as the weasels, the rats and the snitches who spied on their fellow citizens, many close confidants, many brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. An unending stream of garbage used to fuel the Stasi’s policy of psychological warfare against its own citizens. Someone had once warned Erika, “Look out, in every six people you see in the street, in a shop or a bus queue, one of them is a Stasi snout.”
Erika replaced the file. It was obvious that without a working knowledge of the index system the identities of the subjects would remain a mystery. People were responding by scattering the pages, heaving whole files out of the front windows to the waiting crowd below. Paper floated through the air like giant-sized confetti.
Erika hurried on. She wasn’t interested in victim files. Her hope was to find a rogues’ gallery, perhaps group photographs of top Stasis that might provide a clue to her quest, but there seemed no break in the archive. Instead, she ventured down to the basement. Here, her luck changed, locating an open rack of white-covered files – not the spied upon, but the spies themselves. Her gold: the staff list in alphabetical order and unprotected by code names.
She gleefully proceeded to whizz through the names. Finke, Fistelmann, Fitzon… she skimmed through all the ‘F’s without finding the name she sought. Where was he? Damn him! Still missing, still elusive.
Damn the man! Fischer had eluded her again. Changed his name, hidden himself away, posted to the interior… any manner of ruse to engineer his disappearance.
In a nearby office cubicle she spotted a cabinet held shut by an enormous padlock. What could be so precious?
These thoughts were interrupted by the sight of an intriguing figure. A huge man with a bald head and bushy sideburns covering both his ears had come to wreak his vengeance with a twenty-pound long-handled hammer.
“Bastards,” he shouted. “Shame, they’ve all gone. Cowards!”
Erika’s eyes gleamed. Time to recruit the man with the hammer.
She was surprised. It took several hefty swipes from the big man with the biceps to smash the lock. But smash it he did.
She didn’t know exactly what she was expecting. And when she looked inside the smashed cabinet, she found it almost empty. Just one shelf with several folders of many different colours. She reached in for one. It had a red cover and the pages were held together with green cords attached to tiny steel pegs looped through punched holes, the sort she had seen in legal offices. The contents revealed themselves as some sort of list. Names and addresses, lots of them, all German and all in the Federal Republic.
She reached up again and tried another folder. Yellow this time: Atlantic City, Pittsburgh, Washington. Her patience began to ebb; this was not, after all, her treasure, not what she sought.
Almost as an afterthought, she took down a slim blue folder and scanned the first page. Again a list of names, addresses, occupations, dates of birth, but this time all in English. She was fluent in English but couldn’t concentrate sufficiently to make sense of the text, only registering a McIntosh (wasn’t that a raincoat?) and a Rivers. She knew about rivers. There were three of them flowing through the city: the White Elster, Pleisse and Parthe, almost right outside the door.
Her eye caught a phrase: Secretary of State for Defence. She stopped and looked at the preceding words: Christopher Tresham. Erika blew out her cheeks and thought for a moment. Tresham? She’d heard of him. And she liked English things, was good with the language, had an ear for idiom, had an English boyfriend, talked about his culture and his land, liked his sense of humour.
She looked back down again at the name and repeated it to herself, then wondered: what was Secretary of State for Defence Christopher Tresham’s name doing on a Stasi list?
Britain Dateline 2019
Chapter 2
Saturday 2nd March 2019; 27 days to the deadline, the day Britain formally quits the European Union
Harry Topp was exhilarated and worried all at the same time. Buoyed by the thought of all those wonderful pictures he’d taken of the broken bridge and the full spectacular nature of the river in flood. Worried because he’d left it late returning and the light was fading.
He fiddled with the compass setting, shrugged, then looked over the side of the open cockpit. The Tiger Moth waggle, they called it, flicking your head from side to side because you couldn’t see ahead past the big nose of the aircraft. What he was looking for was Swaffham, a small Norfolk town set alone in a great green carpet of darkening countryside, a visual landmark two thousand feet below that should have told him – if he could find it – that he was on course for home.
Off to starboard, he thought he spotted a black cloud.
The day had started well, bright and sunny with the forecast set fair for the east coast over The Wash and Lincolnshire, the windsock hanging flaccid and limp at the top of its pole, just as the flyers liked it. “Good on you, Aunt Agatha,” Harry murmured, thinking of the legacy that bought him a tenth share in this old warbird, but his words were snatched away by the whipping shriek of the wind. As a novice pilot, he’d expected flying to be a graceful sweep across a silent sky. He chuckled at his naivety. The continuous and overwhelming racket of the Gipsy Major motor was one thing, the thunderous retching of the wind another. But he liked it. Hiding away under a Perspex canopy – or even worse, sitting in the pressurised cabin of an airliner – was a cheat, an unreality. He grinned and the wind smacked his face, buffeted his teeth. This was flying. Real flying. No computer, no artificial help, man against the elements. It made him feel alive. Just hand on stick, finger on throttle, the sensations all visceral.
However, the day was not all about pleasure. He recalled the sharp tones that morning from Meekins, the picture-desk man at The Globe. “Big story up there, chaotic floods – we need aerial shots pretty smartish, can you do it? By four o’clock, latest?”
Harry never said no. What freelancer did? And his pictures were good, he knew that. He’d flown one-handed round and round, snapping away. He had visions of a Page Three special, or perhaps an inside spread, with the consequential but very necessary payday to follow. All he needed now was to get back and send the photos across. He dragged his attention back to flying and noticed the black cloud once again. Much closer now.
He looked at the compass, then at his chart where he’d scribbled some lines and times, just as they’d taught him in pilot training. He snorted and dropped the chart to the floor. He was a strictly visual flyer. On the way out he’d enjoyed rising high enough to see both sides of The Wash, recognising its pattern of rivers and drainage dykes. There was nothing better than a clear blue sky and good visibility of the landscape below. But now dusk and the weather were closing in. He studied the cloud. Rain, it was definitely raining, and he couldn’t fly around it because that would take him into controlled airspace over Marham. Military stuff, keep well clear. Harry sighed. Textbook advice, he knew, went something like this: don’t fly into a rainstorm, instead turn back and find an alternative place to land. He shook his head. Put down on some isolated and deserted airstrip? A locked-up flight hut with no power socket and nowhere to plug in his laptop? No way! He was going back to base to get those pictures across. He grimaced. It was only a squall, he’d soon be through it.
A small internal voice of doubt asked why he put ambition ahead of safety. Like his e
x-girlfriend, who’d once demanded, “Why the heck are you so damned manic, Harry?” That had been rich, coming from her – but all the same, the answer had a lot to do with his need to succeed. To make his mark at something, he acknowledged. And ‘something’ turned out to be journalism.
The rain began to pelt the wings and fuselage. A machine-gun cacophony of tiny pings, getting stronger by the minute. Then it blasted into the cockpit, streaking down his helmet and flying jacket and fogging his goggles. Body heat misted the inside of the eyepieces and he tried pawing away the droplets. All he managed to achieve were dirty marks and yet more raindrops. His fingers were wet and cold on the stick and he tried shrugging his shoulders to free himself of the persistent watery battering. He could hear a puddle slopping about at the bottom of the cockpit before the water ran out of the drain holes. By now he’d lost sight of the dials, such was the impenetrable haze, and he couldn’t check his height, direction or speed. Just hold the stick firm for straight and level flight, he told himself. Was such punishment worth it for a few flood pictures?
Harry immediately banished the doubt. He was a journo first, a pilot second. Of course it was worth it. The motor coughed and missed, and Harry was stricken by a sudden panic. His old instructor’s voice came to mind: something about a sudden drop in temperature creating the danger of ice in the carburettor. Ice which led to the motor stopping. Ice which led to a heart-stopping glide and search for a forced landing. No! Harry got a grip of himself. It couldn’t happen to the Moth. She had an automatic warm-air flap. She was built to withstand such extremes.
He held his breath and the drumbeat of the Gipsy carried on, and suddenly, as quickly as he was in it, he was out again, clear of the murk and searching once more for a landmark.
Harry was frequent flyer. He knew his Suffolk and he knew the shapes it offered from the air. The bend of the river, the straight line of the main road, the odd patterns of the forests. The Moth was a visual flying machine. Landmarks were everything. A few minutes’ frantic scanning and, despite the gloom, he’d fixed the little town of Diss. Relief!
He glanced at his watch. Still time. He started to plan out his first actions when he got back to the ground: feeding his pictures from camera to laptop, winging them by email across to The Globe with captions, comments and five hundred words of copy. And he’d make it well before conference. Like all former Fleet-Streeters, he knew the power of the five o’clock conference back in London. That was when the editor made all the big decisions of the day. He prayed no rival freelancer had beaten him to the draw with pictures from a drone or a helicopter.
Sixteen minutes later, the twin smoky towers of the sugar beet factory at Bury St Edmunds told him he’d made it back to base. Normally the radio burbled with activity, staccato voices calling in call signs, wind speeds, requests for engine starts, directions for taxi and take-off. Tonight there was barely a murmur.
Harry pushed the button. “Whisky Delta Foxtrot calling Rougham. Request landing and airfield details, over.”
“This is Rougham. Do a circuit, Whisky Delta, we have Charlie Lema coming in now from the south-west. Wind one-one-zero degrees, nine knots.”
“Whisky Delta, will do.”
“And when you’re down, you won’t like it.”
“Why’s that, Rougham?”
“A nasty surprise. Someone waiting for you. In uniform.”
Harry circled the town, lower and lower over the little houses, seeming almost to be dropping into the back gardens. What uniform, for God’s sake? What had he done? He ground his teeth and glanced at the bright-orange windsock as he approached the end of the grass strip. It was billowing out. Situation going from bad to worse. A strong crosswind. Tricky, even without all the anxiety. Had he unwittingly broken some aviation rule? What other transgression could be waiting to confront him on the ground? He checked the windsock again. A tail-up landing was required. A rapid Tiger Moth waggle, looking from one side to the other, judging distance, speed, height… and still thinking about that uniform. Then he bounced once, twice, thought about going round again, decided against it and put down.
Harry lumbered fast and uncomfortably across the grass toward the flight hut, his mind racing in a confused mixture of priorities. He wanted to get out of his wet gear. He wanted to send his pictures and copy across. He wanted to know about the nasty surprise.
The last came first. Harry’s heart sank as soon as he pushed open the door and saw the unmistakable bulk of his least-favourite person, Sergeant Rudd of the Suffolk Constabulary, the man he crossed swords with on a daily basis at the Bury nick.
“Might have known it would be you!” said Rudd.
Harry said, “What’s all this?”
Control chipped in. “Crackdown. New regulations.” Control was a weasel, a failed airport flight controller now glorying in the possibilities for revenge. “Should put a stop to your casual wanderings.”
Harry ignored him and looked around. More glum faces. He recognised fellow pilots who’d arrived for evening flights in their Cessnas and Pipers, and the usual chippy chatter was noticeably absent. Even Charlie Lema, a talkative East Ender who flew a yellow Beechcraft, was silent. Instead they exuded an air of foreboding.
“This is a warning to you all,” announced Rudd. “As from today, as from this very moment, permission to fly will be subject to strict regulation.”
“Why’s this?”
Rudd’s hands were on his hips. “Dover and all the other ports are in gridlock and the result is an avalanche of private pilots trying to smuggle immigrants by air.”
This was met by a chorus of protesting voices. “Shouldn’t the aviation authorities be telling us this?” Harry asked.
“No time for normal procedure. Emergency action required. Immediate implementation.” Rudd was tolerating no contradiction. “So now, you will all be fingerprinted and registered and will carry your passports and identity documents at all times. All future flights must be cleared with a flight plan and subject to Customs and Border Force approval—”
“But that’s only for international flights,” someone objected.
“Not any more.”
“I suppose,” said a weary voice at the back of the crowd, “this is all because of Brexit.”
Rudd pointed to the desk. “Names on the list, thumbs on the ink, then press hard on my pad over here.”
Some while later, Harry strode out of the flight hut to the yard where earlier in the day he’d chained his Triumph Bonneville to a concrete bollard. He heaved the bike off the stand, fired her up and rode back to town at a steady, unhurried pace as he reflected on the work of the last half-hour.
Despite the sergeant’s unwelcome announcement, Harry had retreated to a corner of the hut to shed his flying overalls, gloves and helmet, leaving an untidy puddle on the floor. Then he blotted out all the protests from the pilots and the arguments about Brexit, concentrated on his copy and pressed a series of ‘send’s to The Globe.
The money should be good, he reflected; useful for chipping in with his contribution to the hangar fees. Harry was part of a group that owned and operated the Moth.
The bike phutted gently through the streets. He was in no hurry. His was a relaxed frame of mind, having conquered his problems, trying to decide between a Camembert cheeseboard in his kitchen and a sandwich and a beer at the brewery inn. Harry was a cheese devotee, and collected samples, like his latest Italia speciality, the Pecorino Sardegna.
He ignored the new aerodrome road and entered the town through Eastgate, past the King Edward Grammar School of 1550, the Greyhound pub, a row of converted Tudor cottages and the Fox pub advertising Sunday roasts. The trees here had suffered a severe pruning, standing up stark like headless giraffe necks. There was a horse trough full of flowers and on the other side of the street, where Eastgate met Mustow Street, a massive old wall protected the Abbey Gardens.
His
thoughts were interrupted by something lying in the gutter. He pulled up, flipping the bike quickly on to its stand. This town, this Bury, this paradise of tidiness and flowers, had been soiled by two empty burger packets, jettisoned by some inconsiderate fast-food eater. Another of Harry’s passions: he hated litter and railed against the clutterbugs. There was a plastic bag for such trash in one of his panniers. In the other was a spike for pronging detritus from the rose beds in the Abbey Gardens.
Order restored, he continued down Mustow, the bike rumbling over the cobbles, past the high brick wall enclosing the highly prized gardens and the vast open space with the war memorial, then into his quiet quarter of the town. His life was still in a good place.
But as soon as he put the key in the door of his flat in Cannon Street, Harry knew something was wrong. Very wrong indeed.
Chapter 3
London; 27 days to go
A fire crackled and spat in the grate, the kindling not quite dry. A recumbent shape snoozed silently two sofas away, and a tiny portable TV placed discreetly on the mantelpiece flickered and flashed while set to mute.
“Can’t bear to listen to that bloody man,” said the figure in a waistcoat and blue pinstripes swirling an amber liquid around in a cut-glass tumbler. “A buffoon who’ll do anything for a line in the paper, a cheap headline, a vote…”
The two by the fire were perhaps the only conscious members of the club, and they were staring at the screen which displayed a plump man with a massive mop of blond hair being transported in the bucket of a mobile crane high up to a platform a hundred feet above a factory roof.