The Hidden War

by David Fiddimore

  I’d said, ‘You appear to be managing very well here, Fergal: your people in Liverpool must be proud of you.’

  ‘They don’t know all that much. I don’t tell them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’d only interfere and bugger things up. I prefer to be left alone to manage in my own way. I suspect that my methods are a bit rough and ready for the dear old Church.’

  ‘Is that where I come in?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want you to fly a planeload of children back to Blighty. The Church will take them on once you get them back.’

  ‘Why? Your kids seem to be fine to me. They’re the happiest kids I’ve seen in Berlin for months.’

  ‘That’s the point, Charlie. I need to take in more, and haven’t the capacity. Those kids you saw at the door will wait out there day and night until I take them in, or they die there. How many of them were there this morning?’

  ‘About a dozen.’

  ‘One less than before, anyway: a boy froze to death on the steps yesterday. He can’t have made a sound – we didn’t hear a thing. I phoned you when we found his body because I had to do something. I need you to empty the place, so I can move more in. Do you want to see his body?’

  ‘Don’t be daft!’ We were pacing around the cloister now. His kids were at lessons. There was just the girl with the pram. She was sitting on a stone bench, rocking the pram and crooning a childish lullaby. ‘There must be a snag?’

  ‘The government won’t want you to do it. England’s up to its ears in DP children already. They won’t want any more. It would also send a message to the Reds that they’re winning. I’m afraid that if you tell anyone, some bugger will try to stop you.’

  I found I was talking as if I’d already made up my mind. ‘Will you tell your lot?’

  ‘Only when you’re in the air. They won’t have any choice then – the papers would eat them alive.’

  ‘What about the kids at the door?’

  ‘If you say you’ll do it, I’ll get them in right away. I’ll fill the place to bursting with the little sods.’ I could hear that not all of his training had taken yet. I thought about it and grinned.

  ‘You’d better get them in then, hadn’t you?’

  Sometimes God simply doesn’t give you a choice. He wanted me to see the boy who had died. When we went to find Frieda she was in a small cold room off their chapel washing down the small body with the sister who had taken her away. The child’s skin was a sallow yellowish colour. His ribs and breastbone stuck out like those of the creatures I had seen in a small and hardly noticed concentration camp in 1945. He had lifted his chin as if in defiance as he died, and it had remained that way. He would have been about the same age as Dieter.

  I didn’t share the thought I had with Fergal before I drove away. I was in the jeep. So was Frieda. She was powdering her cheeks to cover up the tear streaks; that was interesting. I held my hand out to Fergal, but he clasped me wrist to wrist the way men sometimes do when there are things that are too important to say. Then he stood on the steps and watched us leave. I could see him getting smaller and smaller in the round wing mirror. His new gang had disappeared: they were already inside. The thought I had was that old thing again; two birds and one stone – it was as if the notion fell fully formed into my lap.

  ‘I asked you if you wanted to go the Leihhaus, and get a lot of hassle . . . or would you prefer me to drop you off at the flat?’

  ‘I heard you.’ That was Frieda. ‘I think I’ll be hassled at the Leihhaus. It will save putting the stove on until later.’ She was actually starting to sound like a bit of a Hausfrau, but I dared not tell her that. I parked the jeep alongside Red Greg’s big GAZ thing, reckoning that it might scare off the scavengers. I needn’t have bothered. There was a fully paid up member of the Lootwaffe on the door: white helmet, nightstick and all. He nodded to me and said, ‘Sir,’ as we walked past him. I almost expect him to say ‘Evening all’ like PC 49.

  Greg was playing cards with Tommo and the REME corporal – he was beginning to look like a fixture. He stood for Frieda, and found her a chair. She made up a fourth and started to deal – with a suspiciously fluid motion.

  ‘Are we being raided?’ I asked them.

  ‘Naw,’ Tommo said. ‘He’s the new doorman. We got a patrol o’ them workin’ overlappin’ shifts. Very good rate.’

  ‘What are you playing?’

  ‘Strip poker?’ Tommo asked hopefully, and eyed Frieda. She smiled back. I’ve already told you; Alice smiled like that.

  ‘If you do,’ I told him, ‘she’ll have all the clothes off your back before she’s even shed a glove. I thought you were away?’

  ‘I wuz. Now I’m back.’

  ‘Bought any new countries lately?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Charlie?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Maybe I’m falling out of love with Berlin; it’s getting too much like hard work. I came to see your partner. Can I drag him away while Frieda strips the rest of you?’

  ‘What will you bet me that I have duds off her ’fore she gets any of mine?’

  ‘Twenty-five dollars?’

  ‘Done,’ he told me. ‘I’ll take it.’ He stuffed one of his horrible cigars in his mouth. That reminded me to fill and fire up my pipe. I watched them start off, and told Tommo, ‘The cigar doesn’t count as clothes,’ before I wandered away with Red Greg to a small table in a corner. I looked back as we did so. Tommo scowled at me. A hungry-looking civilian with his hair in rats’ tails moved from another table and joined us. He was wearing a cheap blue suit that might once have fitted, but was now two sizes too large for him. It had greasy cuffs.

  ‘Charlie, this is Judge Horst Molly.’ Red Greg did the introductions.

  ‘Hello, Horst.’ Horst had a soft handshake that didn’t go with his hard hands.

  ‘Hello, Charlie.’

  ‘He’s your judge,’ Red Greg said. ‘I found him yesterday.’

  ‘I’m not really a judge,’ Molly said. ‘I’m a cobbler.’ Ich bin . . . ein Schuster.

  ‘Not any more,’ Greg said. ‘You’re a judge in the People’s Court; you’ve no idea what privilege awaits you.’

  ‘I was a cobbler yesterday,’ Molly explained, ‘when this officer stopped his car. I was delivering a pair of repaired boots. He told me to get in, and then told me I was a judge.’

  ‘The simplest ways are best.’ That was Greg again. ‘Last year I found a mayor in exactly the same place. It was better for him than being a park keeper. His park was full of large holes.’ Then he asked Molly, ‘Are you sure that you know what to do?’

  ‘I find for the Englishman, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Good. You find for the Englishman.’

  ‘Hang on a mo.’ I dropped back into English because the nearest German phrase I knew sounded like a fire alarm. ‘What’s it got to do with me? I thought I was just a witness?’

  ‘Witness yes; complainant also. Communist courts are very democratic before they execute people: we need a complaint first.’

  ‘Is anyone going to get killed, Greg?’

  He thought for a min before replying, and swung his little legs happily. ‘Possibly not.’

  When I asked if we could speak in private he sent the cobbler back to his corner. I asked, ‘Is he really a judge?’

  ‘He is now; I signed the papers this morning. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Everything about you worries me, Greg.’

  ‘Good. Keep you alert.’

  ‘Is there a Russian word for that?’

  ‘Yes, but you wouldn’t like it. Ask me another.’ That was a catch phrase from a British quiz show that was doing the rounds. It had spread into every European language like smallpox.

  ‘What have you got me into, Greg?’

  ‘Nothing. Nozzinc. Don’ worry about it. Ask me anuzzer.’ He laughed. He thought that it was funny.

  ‘Do you want to know how we’
re going to get your people out of Germany?’

  The transformation was alarming. That guy Holland could do the same when he wanted to. They were all policemen when it came down to it, and all coppers are bastards – or so the old song goes.

  ‘Is difficult.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You plan to smuggle your people into your Berlin, across the line into my zone, and then on to one of my aircraft at Gatow. Right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But we know that smuggling anything into Eastern Berlin from your side is very dangerous. Look at all the fuss you went to over a kilo of liquorice. It could have cost you everything. How are you going to hide a family of four? Remember that your side of Berlin is surrounded by a ring of steel not under your control. If any of your family is stopped they’ll round up the bloody lot of you. Firing squad next stop?’

  ‘Maybe better than where they are now.’ His face had taken on that dark, sentimental moody look that I’d seen before.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ I told him.

  He took some convincing. I wasn’t a professional smuggler after all. After I explained the deal we went back to the card players. Tommo was squinting at his cards through an overcast of old tobacco smoke. Frieda was smoking one of his cigars as well: she’d probably won it. Tommo had one of Frieda’s stockings draped around his neck. Other than that, and a pair of startlingly purple boxers, he was stark naked. He was beginning to grow a gut. The REME man had disappeared, but as far as I could see all of his clothes were neatly folded, and in a stack alongside Frieda’s chair. It looked to me if the stocking was the sum of her losses.

  ‘Told you,’ I said to Tommo.

  ‘You owe me twenny-five bucks, kiddo.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I got the stocking first. You lost.’ Seeing the state of him it was almost worth it, but I didn’t tell him that.

  Back in the jeep I told her to put her stocking back on.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to watch you do it.’

  She did it by feel, not taking her eyes from my face. She didn’t smile but there was something there. The back of the jeep was full of men’s clothes – she had refused to let Tommo buy his clobber back.

  ‘What do you want to do with these?’ I asked her. ‘Raffle them?’

  ‘Let’s give them to that clothes relief centre for the DPs.’

  ‘Tommo will get pretty mad when he sees someone walking around in his hundred-dollar tailored uniform.’

  ‘Teach him a lesson then, won’t it? Just like I taught you.’

  ‘How did you teach me?’

  ‘You don’t think I needed to lose a nylon do you? Cost you twenny-five dollars.’

  ‘He gave it back to you.’

  ‘He’s a gentleman; it always shows.’

  ‘It was worth the money to see you put it back on.’

  She smiled this time, and gave a soft little laugh. There was definitely something for me in there.

  ‘Then maybe you taught me a lesson as well, Charlie.’

  ‘I want to sleep with you.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘I mean now. I want to drive you home, and sleep with you.’

  We’d have to stop doing this.

  We went through the new checkpoint into East Berlin at four o’clock in the morning. A soldier in an odd gaudy uniform was driving Russian Greg’s big jeep. I think he was a bandsman. He looked very impressive; or like the cornet player in a colliery silver band – suit yourself. A GAZ jeep was like the sumo equivalent of the original thing – for which, by the way, I still have a soft spot.

  The Soviet checkpoint guard put his head into the jeep, scanned the passengers and started to shout and bawl. When the guard started to turn out, fumbling with rifles, bayonets and submachine guns, I was sure that we’d got as far as we were going to get, and were bound for the pokey. But I needn’t have worried. They sorted themselves into the best kind of line you’re capable of at four in the morning, and Russian Greg got out to inspect them. They were all six-footers, which kind of put him at a disadvantage.

  Finally someone was dispatched to come running with a chair for him to stand on, and from it he harangued them for ten minutes. There were smiles all round when he finished.

  As we drove into the Soviet sector he said, ‘You the first Westerner passed through that checkpoint in six months who didn’t have to wait for twelve hours, Charlie: maybe they’ll name it after you, if I tell them to.’

  ‘What about me?’ Frieda was muffled in coats and blankets, and her voice came out in a squeak and a steamy plume.

  ‘Nah, honey,’ the Georgian told her. ‘Checkpoint Frieda? It don’ scan.’

  I’ll bet that’s something you didn’t know until today.

  ‘What did you tell them from that chair?’ I asked him.

  ‘That if they stuck by me they’d have their back pay next week. I’d kick arse in Moscow and get it here for them.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘Don’t see why not. It’s been in my safe for two months already.’

  He took us to his apartment, and put Frieda and me in the room I’d occupied before. She delighted in the subtropical temperature of the place, and the fact that heating didn’t seem to be a consideration. The form her delight took was walking around our room without any clothes on. It took my mind off other things.

  The only court I had been in before that was a coroner’s court in Gloucestershire. It was like a parish council meeting in a village community hall. This place was different. It looked just like the courts you see at the pictures . . . except there were three nervous-looking judges up on the bench, and no jury. Horst Molly sat in the centre, slightly elevated from those on either side of him. He looked more comfortable with his role than the others – maybe they’d just been pulled off the street that morning. They’d separated me from Frieda as we had walked up the steps into the building. It was a bit banged about on the outside, but OK where it counted. Story of my life I suppose. Frieda had walked off escorted by two pretty-looking German boys with cow’s-lick blond hair styles . . . I wasn’t sure I liked that, because she glanced at me over her shoulder as she moved away. Her face was wearing the I’m all right, son expression of the platoon card sharp, and I heard her laugh at something one of them said.

  Russian Greg walked me into the court and down to a long table at the front, with his arm through mine. If one of us had been wearing a skirt we could have been going to a ball. He told me, ‘Each of the accused will be represented by a spokesman.’

  ‘Will I be represented?’

  ‘No. The prosecutor will speak for you. He will ask you seven questions to which you will answer only with the word Yes. Do you understand?’

  ‘In what language?’

  ‘Russian of course: Adam is the master now. You know that story?’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘English revolutionaries three hundred years ago: When Adam toiled, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? You should know your own history better than you do, Englishman. No room for gentlemen this side of the line any more.’

  ‘OK. He asks me seven questions in Russian, to which I answer Da. Does anyone else ask me anything?’

  ‘The defenders also ask you seven questions each, and you reply No: Nyet. Can you do that?’

  ‘Of course I can, Greg, but I feel very uncomfortable. My Russian is shite: I won’t understand what’s going on.’

  ‘Don’ worry.’ He waved his hand as if he was waving a troublesome fly away. ‘Neither can the judges. They do as they’re told.’

  The prosecutor was an oily, thin colonel who seemed scared of Greg. His hands trembled as he shook ours and seated us. The two public defenders were wearing very new lieutenants’ uniforms. The defendants wore badly fitting civilian clothes: one was a scared young boy, and the other an elderly man. They sat with their team at the other end of our table. Their fa
ces bore the signatures of their interrogators’ fists and boots, and expressions of resignation.

  The proceedings were conducted in Russian.

  There were about ten rows of public benches like church pews – and they were full; that was probably something to do with how warm the courtroom was. From the muted buzz of conversation behind me I gained the impression that the audience was wholly German. They probably hadn’t much Russian between them either. They applauded wildly each of the questions the prosecutor apologetically asked me . . . and then applauded my answers. They hooted and howled at each of the questions the defenders asked me, but then applauded my responses. I was finished in a half-hour. I whispered to Greg, ‘Who’s next? The next witness?’

  ‘None. Just you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The prosecutor made a speech in Russian. It took him nearly two hours. He perspired heavily as he spoke and stopped from time to time to mop his brow and his thinning hairline with a brilliantly white handkerchief. The audience applauded enthusiastically for fifteen minutes afterwards. They didn’t stop until Molly motioned them to. Then Greg stood up on his chair and told everyone to go to lunch. It was nearly the first German I’d heard spoken aloud in the room all morning.

  We had lunch with the judges and the prosecutor. Nobody mentioned the war – which was a line I’d remember later in my life – and no one mentioned the Airlift. Molly had begun to grow into the role of chief judge, which meant that he dominated the legal team’s conversation, and we talked about shoes most of the time. He favoured high insteps and double stitching.

  ‘What you think?’ Greg whispered to me. I felt like one of the Guy Fawkes conspirators.

  ‘Alice in fucking wonderland,’ I told him.

  His face suddenly embraced an expression of unexpected and wild delight.

  ‘You understan’!’ he said. ‘You understan’ the modern Soviet state. You are a Soviet in your heart, Charlie.’

  I replied completely by instinct, without thinking, ‘No, Greg. No heart. Not me. I don’t have one.’

  Greg went grave on me. I’d told him the truth without meaning to. He turned his words back on me. ‘So you do understan’, Charlie. You truly understan’ modern Russia. I am sorry for you, English.’ Then he turned away to give Molly his last briefing.