Sektion 20

by Paul Dowswell

  They both looked at each other. ‘We have to tell Lili!’ said Geli. ‘We have to get to Munich.’

  That evening, over the family supper, they begged their parents to let them travel there.

  ‘Vati, the last few times I saw her she was like a different person,’ said Alex. ‘So angry and always looking for a fight. And she looks so manly these days. I’m sure those pills are doing terrible things to her.’

  ‘Sour grapes,’ said Frank. ‘It’s because our system is so much better than theirs at training athletes.’

  They always noticed how he still said ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ about the East and the West; ‘Us’ was definitely the East.

  ‘Please let us go to Munich, Vati,’ pleaded Alex. He felt like his nine-year-old self asking Frank for another ten minutes out in the park when it was bedtime. ‘We can go to the Games and see if we can meet up with Lili there. Go and watch her swim, maybe talk to her at the poolside?’

  Frank thought hard for a minute.

  ‘Alex, you know she’ll be surrounded by security people. What if the Stasi see you and recognise you as someone who has just escaped. What if they try to kidnap you?’

  ‘Come on, Vati,’ scoffed Alex. ‘This isn’t James Bond . . . Look, we really need to talk to her – tell her about these drugs she’s taking. She thinks they’re vitamins. I think they’re doing her terrible harm.’

  ‘Let them go, Frank,’ said Gretchen softly, as she put her arms around his shoulders. He had been an awful strain to live with since they had arrived in the West. Perhaps being away from the children, just being with her in the apartment, even for a couple of days, would make him more relaxed.

  Frank relented. ‘You go with Geli. I’ll give you the fare for a trip to Munich. You’ll have to sleep on the train – I don’t think we have the money to put you up in a hotel. Besides, the hotels in Munich will be full of tourists.’

  On the day before Lili’s race, Alex and Geli left Zoo Station in the early evening to catch a connection to Hannover. They were loaded down with bread, cheese and sausages, and two flasks of coffee. In the gathering dusk after their train had left West Berlin, they watched the East German countryside flash by as the train headed towards the West German border. Everything outside the carriage window was dull and flat and dirty. They passed scrappy towns and villages that were almost deserted.

  Although they were excited to be heading towards West Germany, both felt uneasy and began to wonder if it was wise to have gone on this trip. If the train was stopped and the border guards came to check passes, what would prevent them arresting Alex and Geli as escapers? They had their new West German passports now, but would that be enough to protect them?

  The train did not stop. And when they reached the West German border, everything changed. There was a full moon and in its silvery glow they could see the countryside looked better cared for. Bright lights burned in the well-maintained towns and villages. After changing trains at Hannover they slept as they thundered south.

  Around the same time Alex and Geli’s train left Berlin, Frank was leaving work. Every Thursday evening, on the way home from the Siemens office, he stopped off at a café in Turmstrasse. The meeting was short – barely more than a couple of words and a brisk exchange of envelopes. His contact was usually a shifty young man he knew as Ulrich, who took his offering without comment. This Thursday a familiar face was waiting for him. It was Erich Kohl, the agent who had questioned him at Normannenstrasse.

  ‘We shall take a stroll, Herr Ostermann,’ he instructed.

  They walked from Turmstrasse to Birkenstrasse, the next U-Bahn stop along, and Kohl spoke to him quietly but firmly. ‘We are growing weary of your lack of progress. The information you are sending us is of no use whatsoever. We need to see some cutting edge results.’

  ‘Herr Kohl, I am doing everything I can. It is a closely monitored office and the latest technology is not something that is available to everyone.’

  ‘Take them to the Café Amsel, buy them a beer, see if you can get their tongues to wag,’ said Kohl. ‘We are starting to lose patience. I will give you another month. Ulrich has gone. You now have me to answer to.’

  The remark about the Café Amsel really shook Frank. Was someone trailing him or did they have another insider at the office? Maybe both? What frightened Frank the most was that if they were following him at work, perhaps they would try to follow him home too. He would have to be careful. He was beginning to realise, too late, that whatever was good about the East had been completely eclipsed by the sinister men who controlled it.

  When Geli and Alex woke, it was light outside and the train was only an hour away from Munich. Over a breakfast roll and coffee they formulated a plan. Geli would buy a ‘Good Luck’ card and address it to Lili. They would put a note in telling her their address and telephone number so she could get in touch with them and also several newspaper cuttings they had brought with them, all about the dangers of taking steroids. Now, if they could not get to speak to Lili, they would just give her the envelope. It would be an innocent enough gesture – fans giving her a good luck card. She would recognise her friends and know to keep the card from them.

  The Olympics had been billed as ‘The Happy Games’ and the authorities were making every effort to ensure there could be no comparison with the 1936 Berlin Olympics hosted by the Nazis. The city was bursting with colourfully dressed tourists and the excitement of the day was contagious. The contrast with the grey dour streets of East Berlin was overwhelming. Everywhere they looked, among the brash advertising, was the bright blue solar logo of the Games, and images of the Olympic mascot – Waldi the multicoloured dachshund.

  ‘Isn’t it great to see all these adverts and these Olympic signs, and not one picture of Karl Marx and Erich Honecker!’ said Alex.

  ‘And no square-jawed socialist supermen!’ said Geli. They liked the look of Waldi. There was absolutely nothing about him that suggested the burning urgency of increasing the grain harvest or cement quota or the need to emancipate yourself from the false consciousness of bourgeois consumerism.

  On the way to the stadium they bought a paper. The steroid story was in the news again. One of the East German women’s swimming team coaches had been questioned about why his girls looked so masculine and why some of them had such deep voices. Was this because they were taking steroids?

  He was evasive. ‘My girls have come to Munich to swim, not sing,’ he said.

  When they got to the pool, there were hundreds of people milling around outside, and touts selling tickets at four times the asking price. The day’s events were sold out.

  ‘We couldn’t afford it anyway,’ said Geli. ‘Maybe this was not our brightest idea.’

  ‘Then let’s look for the athletes’ entrance,’ said Alex. ‘There’s got to be one somewhere. We can pretend we’re after an autograph.’

  The pool complex was a magnificent edifice of glass and steel. They wandered all around it and eventually found the right entrance. Here, they waited all day, taking refuge from the bright sunlight in the shadows close to the walls. Inside, they could hear the PA announcing each event and the crowd cheering the races and their victors.

  They were hungry, so Geli went to buy sausages and drinks from the street vendors who ringed the stadium. They could never get over how expensive these things were in West Berlin and Geli was even more outraged by the prices in Munich. She bought one sausage roll and a can of coke for them both to share.

  ‘Capitalism,’ she fumed when she got back to Alex. ‘There should be a law against this. It is pure exploitation.’

  Alex laughed. ‘The days of the five-Pfennig roll are over. Not everything Vati hates about the West is unreasonable.’

  They spent the afternoon listening to a variety of national anthems and even heard Lili’s name announced before a race. They were disappointed to hear she was not among the medal winners.

  Late in the afternoon the East German team came out of the athletes’ entran
ce to board a minibus back to their accommodation at the Olympic Village. They spotted Lili at once in her blue Olympic tracksuit, there in the middle of them all, surrounded by security people.

  The team were mobbed by autograph hunters and Alex knew this was the one chance he was going to get. He pushed past the burly coaches and security men, who he was certain were Stasi, and barged up to Lili. ‘Good luck card for you,’ he shouted, and gave her the envelope. He looked her in the eye to make sure she had seen it was him and winked. Before she could say anything, he vanished into the crowd.

  Alex and Geli hurried to the station without looking back. Although they had scoffed at Frank, they had half expected the East German security men to come after them.

  Alex felt elated. His plan had succeeded. A train for Hannover and Berlin was leaving in ten minutes. Their carriage was not crowded. After they had wolfed down the bread and sausages they bought at the station, and had drunk their bottles of beer, they managed to stretch out on the seats and sleep. Alex drifted off, feeling he had done a good deed. Perhaps in the grand scheme of his life he had redeemed himself for telling Sophie they were going and allowing her to betray them. Now Lili knew about her ‘vitamin pills’, she would surely refuse to continue taking them.

  Back in Munich one of the Stasi officers delegated to watch the team and ensure there were no defectors used a paper knife to open the envelope Alex had taken so much trouble to deliver. He had removed it from Lili Weber’s hands almost as soon as Alex had given it to her. She had been trouble all along, that one. And she was on a final warning. Any further insolence and lack of cooperation and she would be on a plane straight back to Berlin. A sealed envelope from a fan outside the stadium was exactly the sort of unofficial access the Stasi men were trained to prevent.

  At first he thought the envelope might contain instructions from outside accomplices on how to escape. Then Lili Weber would really be for it. Four or five years in a Jugendwerkhof.

  But it didn’t. Lili was off the hook. Still, the contents were very interesting. The officer read the newspaper cuttings, which he dismissed as capitalist disinformation, and took a careful note of the West Berlin contacts who had given it to her. The Stasi knew Lili Weber had never been out of the Eastern Bloc in her life, so these people would have to have been friends of hers from East Berlin. They must be border violators.

  Chapter 30

  Colonel Theissen received another memo from Kohl the next afternoon.

  LATCH is now operational for Central Reconnaissance Administration Science and Technology Sector. Operative 122 in the Western Sector successfully complied with order to enable placement at Siemens facility in West Berlin before redeployment. LATCH’s knowledge of electronics makes him especially suitable. (He has been compelled to sign declaration of obligations prior to insertion.) So far, information arriving is of limited use. Further coercive pressure may be necessary and I have now taken on this responsibility.

  Further consideration should also be given to whether BOLT and LOCK could be utilised as agents capable of infiltrating and reporting on Federal Republic youth groups. Previous asocial and negative-decadent tendencies suggest coercive means would be necessary to ensure cooperation. Request permission to proceed in this matter.

  Kohl was really getting into his stride on this operation, thought Theissen. If all went well, there was the prospect of a promotion for both of them. He reached for another report just arrived on his desk and began drafting a response:

  Request approved. Your successful execution of this operation, so far, has been noted.

  Sektion XII has now obtained details of LATCH domestic residence:

  Bellermannstrasse 90

  Wedding

  Telephone

  Wedding 885 53

  As BOLT and LOCK and KEY are security to ensure cooperation of LATCH in infiltration of Siemens, suggest immediate non-violent conspirative opening for placement of listening devices.

  Chapter 31

  Alex started his new school just as the Munich Games took a nightmare turn. Palestinian gunmen, calling themselves the Black September Organisation, broke into the Olympic village and took Israeli athletes hostage. The talk in the school canteen was of nothing else. When the siege ended in a massacre, the country was shocked and sickened. They all watched the terrible news footage of the hushed stadium and the burned-out helicopters.

  Alex had some sympathy with the Palestinians. The East German government always portrayed them as victims of the Israelis. He tried to talk to his fellow students about it, but it made him unpopular.

  Alex didn’t help himself. One lunchbreak he joined some classmates who were playing Monopoly. They explained it to him in condescending tones. ‘So you have to buy up as much property as possible and then fleece all the other players for rent?’ he exclaimed. Alex thought the game should be called ‘Grasping capitalist landlord’. It seemed bizarre to celebrate this particularly ugly aspect of Western life in a board game. He told Geli about it that evening. ‘They’ll be inventing a game where you pretend to be a drug dealer or a pimp next,’ she said. ‘It’s revelling in the worst human instincts.’

  Alex’s classmates seemed to think he was too gauche, too enthusiastic about things. He wasn’t ‘cool’. In the East he had been the class rebel. Now he was that awkward kid in the ill-fitting jeans, from the other side of the Wall.

  But even if he didn’t feel comfortable with his peers, Alex enjoyed his lessons and time in the school library. He hoovered up new knowledge at every opportunity. He especially liked history, now it wasn’t taught as an exercise in Marxist-Leninist propaganda.

  Music had always been Alex’s great love, and it did not let him down. A few weeks into term he found himself alone, as usual, in a school lunchbreak. At these awkward times he had taken to visiting the school music rooms. Here he would pick up a guitar or tootle around on a piano. That lunchtime a couple of lads wandered over to listen and made some appreciative noises about his guitar playing. One of them asked, ‘Can you do “Starman”?’

  Alex had seen David Bowie playing it on West German TV that summer, and he sketched out an approximation of the song. Bowie’s appearance, with his band The Spiders from Mars, had provoked equal parts outrage and admiration. Frank had almost choked on his beer when he saw the make-up and the costumes and the platform boots, and swore horribly. That made Alex like Bowie even more.

  The other lad showed Alex the two strange chords that started the song. That was nice, he thought. Learning something new. As they chatted away, they agreed that Bowie and his band may look weird, but they really liked their music. Geli had got hold of a copy of ‘Ziggy Stardust’. Alex thought it was a pretty daft title, but he loved the songs – especially the one called ‘Moonage Daydream’, which had a guitar solo at the end that seemed to somersault off into space.

  The boys introduced themselves as Andreas and Kurt. They told Alex about all the other bands they had seen at the Deutschlandhalle – Pink Floyd, The Who, Jimi Hendrix a few years back, and Led Zeppelin.

  ‘They came two years ago,’ said Kurt. ‘Mein Gott, it was loud. I’m surprised you didn’t hear it on the other side of the Wall.’

  Alex should go with them, they said, when the next good band came along.

  Then Andreas said he and Kurt played in a group and they had room for another guitar player. When Alex told them he had left his gear behind in the East, they said he could borrow some of theirs, and he should come over to their rehearsal space at the weekend.

  Alex walked back to Bellermannstrasse full of hope. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so much of an outsider if he was in a band. Gretchen was delighted to see him come home with a spring in his step. He had been so glum returning from school in the first few weeks. She wished she could see Frank walk in through the front door with a smile on his face. Hadn’t he said his work was interesting and everyone treated him very well? She couldn’t understand why he was so unhappy.

  At that moment Frank was walkin
g between U-Bahn stops and talking to Herr Kohl. They were very disappointed with the quality of intelligence he was providing from Siemens. This time Kohl’s threats were more explicit.

  ‘I have several colleagues who would like to see your son and daughter extracted. In their absence they have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their desertion of the DDR. We can pick them up easily enough and have them back in the East in less than an hour. If they cause any trouble, I don’t like to think what will happen to them.’

  Frank stopped dead in his tracks. ‘If you do anything to my children, I shall strangle you with my bare hands,’ he said, trying to keep his voice down. But Kohl had already disappeared into the milling crowd of early evening commuters.

  When Kohl returned to Normannenstrasse, he drafted a memo to Theissen seeking authorisation from the highest level to have Alex and Geli returned to East Berlin. It might not be necessary, but Frank Ostermann was proving to be less cooperative than they had hoped. It was good practice to be prepared for the next stage of coercive action.

  Chapter 32

  Now he felt more settled at school, being in West Berlin filled Alex with an energy he didn’t know he had. It was like having an extra battery in your system. He managed to hold down his jobs and still get his school work done. He enjoyed being able to ask whatever questions he liked in school, without wondering whether he would be criticised for ‘false opinions’.

  Geli had started college in early October. The other students looked on her like a poor relation. There was always an uncomfortable silence when she joined her year group in the college canteen. Then one of them would ask whether they had fruit or television over in the East.

  She shrugged it off and told her family it would pass.