Baltic Approach

by Max Hertzberg

  Despite being the district capital, Rostock isn’t that big—it took us less than a quarter of an hour to clear the town and get on a country road heading south.

  I filled up with petrol in Schwaan, yet another decayed town, half-timbered houses leaning on neighbours, who in turn shed plaster onto the pavement below. Heavy wooden beams anchored the derelict church and the bridge over the river was restricted to one vehicle at a time.

  The road passed a railway station and I was tempted to leave Merkur there, to let him take his chances on getting back to Berlin by himself. But I couldn’t do that—I wanted to know whether Merkur had managed to find the key to Bruno’s encrypted message.

  But Merkur was oblivious to both my impatience and the musty odour rising from his drying sock.

  “Did you find it?” I asked after a few more kilometres.

  Merkur nodded, looking rather pleased with himself.

  “Come on then, let’s have a look!”

  He put the road atlas on his lap and retrieved an orange ballpoint pen from his pocket, the type kids buy from the stationers at the start of the school year. It was encrusted with dried green slime and something had been nibbling the clip. Unscrewing the tip, he began to scrape at the inside of the barrel with the point of his penknife. Putty crumbled out, and then, with a twist, he hooked a small piece of paper. Unfolding it, he showed me: tiny letters, seemingly printed at random, the almost-identical twin of the cypher Merkur had shown me earlier.

  “I’d say that was worth the bother, wouldn’t you?” mused Merkur, admiring the one-time pad he’d successfully retrieved.

  But I didn’t share his smugness. Merkur’s rhetorical question, meant as a throw away remark, only aggravated me.

  “Worth the bother? Those goons back there, you know the ones who chased you across the ice? They’ll have written down the registration number of this car—that’s going to put Lütten right in the shit. And what happened to your shoe? You lose it somewhere? Because they’re not going to rest until they find it, and it won’t take them long to work out it’s a Western make. Where did you buy them? Salamander? Deichmann?”

  “My gentleman’s outfitters, actually.”

  “Hand made shoes? From the West? That narrows things down nicely.” I paused, swallowing my anger. “So before long, they’ll be looking for a Westerner in a Shiguli belonging to the Rostock Stasi.”

  That wiped the smirk off his mug. But spelling out the situation hadn’t done anything to help my blood pressure. I could feel a popping in my right temple, and a slow burning somewhere behind my solar plexus.

  “Look, just get me back to East Berlin and I’ll take myself back over the border. This has gone far enough, I’ve put you to enough trouble-”

  “Shut up!” I snarled. “I only want to hear from you when you’re helping with the navigation.”

  Did he think I’d just let him go? My only hope of getting out of this mess was to deliver him to Berlin Centre, along with whatever evidence Bruno had cached—assuming it was worth anything.

  Actually, I didn’t care that much whether I kept hold of Merkur for long enough to hand him over, but until I had Bruno’s encrypted message in my hands, I wouldn’t let Merkur out of my sight.

  “This is the way to the motorway,” I pointed to the sign at the side of the road. “I told you: no motorways.”

  “We go past the motorway junction, it’s the way to the trunk road.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere near any motorway! They may have cops watching the junctions.”

  “It’s OK, we’re just going past-”

  “No.”

  There was silence for a minute or two while Merkur bent over the road atlas. “Do a right here, that’ll take us across country and we’ll pick up the main road north of Güstrow.”

  I shifted down a gear and did a right, then had to step on the brakes as the concrete surface deteriorated into uneven cobbles patched with sheets of ice where stones had sunk or been washed away. The lane stitched together cottages and old farmhouses for a kilometre or so before conditions improved enough for me to put more pressure on the accelerator.

  “Looks like we’re not being tailed,” said Merkur, testing his sock to see if it had dried.

  I glanced in the rear-view mirror. It was true, no-one had followed us onto this lane, but that didn’t mean our shadow wasn’t racing ahead on parallel roads to pick us up at the other end.

  A tractor came the other way, pulling a wagon of silage that was steaming in the frigid air. I pulled into the side of the lane to let it past and used the opportunity to try to rub some feeling back into my face. Merkur was pulling his sock on, and since we’d stopped anyway, I decided to take a break: a cigarette, some coffee and a look at the map, try to work out how I was going to get us both safely back to Berlin.

  “Pour me a coffee,” I told Merkur before opening the door and getting out.

  Wherever we were, it felt like the back of the moon. Endless fields covered in snow, a row of bald trees rimmed the flat horizon. Not exactly Brandenburg levels of interminable blankness, but still pretty lonely.

  I rolled my shoulders and kicked at the rime-coated rushes that lined the ditch alongside the road, then, defeated by the punishing cold, got back in the car. Merkur had the cup from the thermos flask in his hand, holding it out for me to take. It was only just half-full, and only just on the right side of lukewarm, but it was still coffee.

  I took a sip and placed it carefully on the dashboard while I got a nail going.

  “Right, let’s have a look at that map.” Merkur handed over the road atlas, his finger pointing to our location. “We’ll go down past Plau, then head east until we pick up the F96,” I decided after checking various routes.

  I reached for the coffee again, and that was when I noticed the radio hanging under the dashboard, the microphone on a hook next to it. Stress makes you stupid, that’s why the brass back at Berlin Centre are always droning on about cool heads. The whole time I’d been in this company car, frustration and anger bubbling through my veins, worries about possible pursuit clouding my thoughts, and we’d had a radio on board.

  Of course, if the Firm in Rostock had kept their proverbially cool heads, they’d also realise we had a radio, so any colleagues involved in the pursuit would be avoiding the usual frequencies.

  And if they’d enlisted the help of the cops, then there was the problem of the Sprechtafel, a table of common phrases indicated by numbered co-ordinates that changed every day. Most of the time, cops were too lazy to use the table and just said what they had to say instead of reading off the numbers that codified whatever phrases they needed—this lack of radio discipline meant it may still be worth listening to the radio.

  I twisted the volume knob until the radio clicked on, then scanned the frequencies, trying to find the clearest signal.

  “Check the road map, see if we’re still in District Schwerin,” I told Merkur. He stared at the page as if it would tell him what I wanted to know, so I reached over and flipped to the front where the district borders were shown on the overview map. “Still in District Schwerin,” I confirmed to myself and returned to the frequency settings on the radio.

  I got a good signal on channel 207, control talking to a cop: sounded like he was on traffic duty. Both were using the call-sign Schwalbe for District Schwerin—I had the right frequency.

  “I’ve got another job for you, as well as map reading, you’re going to listen to every conversation and announcement on the radio. Every time any town gets a mention, find it on the map, and if we’ve been near it, or are going anywhere near it, you tell me what they’ve just said. Got that?”

  I started up the car, put it in gear and carried on down the lane, the radio squawking every few minutes as messages were passed back and forth over the airwaves.

  It took another ten minutes to get back to a proper road, and soon after that we entered Güstrow. A couple of military trucks came the other way, but no signs of cops
, nothing to worry about. Through an industrial area, past a sugar refinery, the bitter stench clogging our lungs before we left the town behind us.

  The roads were fairly clear of ice and snow, traffic was light and I was gradually beginning to feel more optimistic about getting back to Berlin. Merkur seemed to be enjoying the view—dark forests irregularly punctuated by bodies of water: ponds and meres completely frozen over, small and large lakes still liquid, often with ice drifting across wind-flecked surfaces.

  And the whole while the radio talked to itself, but without any mention of place names. It sounded like the dispatcher was keeping track of the location of each unit.

  Another lake, more pine forest. Berlin might have bad air, congested roads and too many people, but at least there’s some variety, not this endless big nature, long skies and blinding snow.

  60

  District Schwerin

  We rolled into the next village, a string of ramshackle cottages on one side of the road, a dozen or so railway sidings on the other, the oversized station building looming beyond a couple of low platforms. A heavy, Soviet-built Taigatrommel locomotive was pushing out plenty of black smoke as it gathered speed, pulling a rake of flatbeds, each carrying a T-55 tank. I could see Merkur beginning to count them, but then the grey uniforms massing on the platform distracted him.

  “Relax, they’re not for us, there’s an army barracks just up the road.”

  “You sure?”

  I didn’t bother answering. The radio was crackling into life again, the signal distorted by the trees:

  Schwalbe 127, come in

  Schwalbe receiving

  Schwalbe 127, table begin 1-5-7-5-3-2 table end, over

  Schwalbe copy, out

  Another encoded message, leaving us without a clue what had just been reported. Given enough time and material, I’d be able to crack the table—it was just a question of fitting standard phrases to the right numbers. But by the time I’d worked it all out, it would be midnight and they’d change the co-ordinates.

  But then, as we left the village and were at a crossroads, another message came in, this time in clear text:

  Schwalbe 131, location F103 north of Plau, traffic control established, out

  I yanked the steering wheel round to take the left turn, leaving tire tracks in the snow at the side of the road where I’d understeered. Check the mirrors: a delivery truck, a Trabant and a lonely VW Polo. None of them suddenly changing their mind about which way they wanted to go, none stopping to take a closer look at the crazy blue Shiguli that had suddenly turned off without indicating.

  “Watch them—see anyone talking into a radio handset?”

  Merkur twisted in his seat, checking the following cars, but most of the vehicles that had been near the crossroads when I turned off had already disappeared from sight.

  “Nothing,” Merkur said. “What was that all about?”

  “Weren’t you listening? Your job was to glue your ears to that radio! Some idiot out there didn’t use the code table—he was talking about a road block straight ahead of us.”

  Merkur was still looking out of the windows, hoping to catch a driver taking too much interest in us, maybe one that was radioing in to base—anything he could distract me with.

  “Listen, I need you to do just three things,” I snapped. “One: up ahead, this road splits, we can take it to Waren or Röbel—work out a new route for us. Two: we’re about to cross into District Neubrandenburg, retune the radio, see if you can pick up a call sign that begins with N: Nachtigall, Nerz, Nutria—some animal name, anything beginning with N.” I glanced over to the Westerner, he was focussing intently on the road ahead. “Finally: listen to the damned radio, and listen carefully! I don’t want another slip up like that. Have you got all of that, or is it all too complicated for you?”

  “I’m not a recruit, I know how to do my job!” The road had lost its appeal now, he was staring at me, looking as angry as I felt.

  “You’re not a recruit, but you’ve been behind a desk for too long—you’ve grown soft! Well, Herr Polizeirat Doctor Portz, time to toughen up because so far you’ve done nothing but drag me into the dreck, and I won’t let you pull me in any deeper!”

  I turned back to the road and Merkur started fiddling with the radio.

  “I’ve got a dispatcher, call sign Nander 12, on channel 215?” he said after a few minutes of listening.

  The cops on 215 were disciplined, pretty much all of them using the code table and only speaking in plain language when there was something not covered by the usual stock phrases. That didn’t worry me—I was more concerned about the sheer volume of contact on that channel. The dispatcher was checking in with units, one after the other, pretty much non-stop. I’d already counted seven since we’d tuned in.

  Merkur had his nose in the map book, flipping pages back and forth to find us a new route. “Main roads only?”

  Good question. Sticking to main roads would take twice as long compared to heading straight down the motorway to Berlin. If we wanted to be really careful, we would use minor routes, threading our way through villages and forests—but even then a policeman doing his rounds might think to call in the sighting, curious about the car with Rostock plates being so far from home. “Main roads for the time being, we can use back roads when we get closer to Berlin.” A compromise, but hopefully one that would work.

  And was I being too careful anyway? It was right to assume my colleagues would be covering the motorway—one message to the tower at Wittstock junction and that route would be covered—but mobilising a search on the main roads through three or four districts? That’s a lot of work, a lot of manpower and a lot of responsibility for the duty officer to shoulder.

  “I might have overreacted back there,” I said to Merkur, warming up to half an apology.

  He flipped a few pages back in the map book, still tracing possible routes into Berlin. I didn’t think he was going to answer, but then:

  “Not surprising after what happened in Rostock. You can’t help but think they were expecting us …”

  I didn’t disagree, it was strange. How did they know we were on that island? Could have been a random check, a couple of colleagues from Rostock District, happened to pass and recognised the car, wondered what it was doing parked up next to the river lock? Or a couple of police detectives, too nosy for their own good, as usual?

  “And then that roadblock we heard about on the radio …” Merkur was thinking aloud.

  “There for the troop movements—you saw them at the station, going on an exercise. Standard procedure,” I was trying for reassuring, but it’s not something I have much practice at.

  “But those troops, they could have been ordered to search for-”

  “Stop being such a Hausfrau and concentrate on the radio!”

  Despite Merkur’s fretting, perhaps because of it, I was coming to the conclusion that I had overreacted. We could still take the motorway, be back in Berlin in a couple of hours, looking for Bruno’s cache of evidence. After all, I reasoned, there was an explanation for everything that had happened.

  But Merkur was stuck in his rut: “Have you noticed the amount of traffic on this radio channel? Seems to be a lot of radio cars for such a rural area.”

  61

  District Neubrandenburg

  “Reim?”

  “I see them.” I’d been checking my mirrors, knew about the two police cars on our tail.

  Merkur twisted around in his seat to see the cops just a few hundred metres behind, and gaining fast. No blues and twos, which I was hoping might be a good sign.

  I took the pressure off the accelerator as we entered a village—not a good idea to smash the speed limit when you’ve got the Volkspolizei hugging your rear bumper.

  As the road widened a little, the first one pulled out to overtake. This was it, they were about to flag us over—one car skewed across the road in front, the other staying behind to make sure we didn’t try any fancy U-turns.
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  I lifted my foot off the accelerator, moving it to the brake pedal, ready to push down hard if it looked like the cop in front might do something daft. The first Wartburg pulled ahead, and as he cleared us, the second followed. Four seconds later, they were far ahead of us, barrelling down the road and round the next bend.

  I breathed out and moved my foot back to the accelerator.

  “Too many coincidences,” muttered Merkur from the passenger seat.

  I let him have that. Once someone has decided to be paranoid, you can’t stop them, no matter how many rational and reasonable arguments you have up your sleeve—particularly if you’re not convinced by your own rational and reasonable arguments.

  “Reim?” he said again, as if nothing had just happened. “I need shoes.”

  He was right, he couldn’t cross the border back into West Berlin wearing only one shoe, it would be an invitation to hold him for questioning. But since I wasn’t planning on letting him leave anyway, I hadn’t been thinking about what to put on his feet.

  Still, sorting him out with a new pair might help him relax a little, make him think I was going to let him go home at the end of the day.

  The sun set as we came down the hill into Malchow, I could tell because the ashen skies were deepening into blackness.

  “Hospital over there, should have parking,” Merkur pointed out helpfully, but I ignored him, carrying on down the hill, looking for a quiet back street, somewhere the car wouldn’t be an easy find for anyone who was looking.

  I turned right just after a cinema, a good landmark in case I got lost later, and the large, barn-like buildings that had dominated the main road gave way to small houses built by merchants hundreds of years before. An unpaved lane opened between two of these buildings, and I took the Shiguli that way, parking in a coal yard. Its stocks had long since been exhausted and were unlikely to be filled again before summer.

  “What size are you?” I asked, turning to Merkur.