I kept mine pointing in his direction, but shifted a little to the left, staying low and putting myself in a better position to keep an eye on all three colleagues.
“Sachse—did you kill Comrade Ruth Gericke, who used the legend Gisela Bauer, also known as Codename Sanderling?” I asked. My colleagues at Berlin Centre would have gasped to hear such an indiscreet question in a public place, but what did I have to lose? It was something I wanted to know, and I might not get another chance to ask.
“I want the evidence—I see you’ve already taken it.” Sachse used his chin to point at the ladder and the birdbox above.
“I don’t have it. Somebody got here before me,” I said, still trying to cover all three men with one pistol.
“Reim, stop wasting my time—I want what you’ve taken!” This time he used his free hand to gesture at the ladder by my side. “We both know your old friend Holger Fritsch put the material together.” The tone of his voice had changed. Until now, it had been neutral, bordering on jovial, but was turning nasty. “You watched him die, didn’t you? You saw your friend Captain Fritsch shoot his own brains out. I suppose he didn’t have much choice, not after I had a word with him, told him just how much I had on him.”
He was actually enjoying himself, I realised as I digested the news that this man had a hand in the death of Holger Fritsch—the only person in the Firm I’d ever called a friend. Sachse had just made things worse for himself, and looking around at the three men, I vowed there would be a time for a reckoning, a time when it was just me and Sachse, one on one.
“To be honest, I’m surprised it took your friend so long to swallow his gun, thought he was more of a man. Tell me, did he mention me? Any last words? Perhaps he made you promise to seek revenge?”
While Sachse was busy congratulating himself, I continued to scan the orchard. I noticed a slight movement in a window of the Station, behind Prager—there it was again, a slight refraction of darkness within. Not sure of what I’d just seen, I kept looking back. Prager used the opportunity to edge closer and I flicked my Makarov in the goon’s direction, just so he’d know he wasn’t being as subtle as he thought.
As I moved my wrist, the window behind Prager moved too, the reflection in the glass shifting as it was silently opened. Just a centimetre or two, perhaps enough to listen in on our conversation.
I turned back to Sachse, threw another question at him: “You don’t deny killing Sanderling—but what about Source Bruno, did you kill him too?”
“The only thing you can take from a louse is its life.”
“Why? To protect your sources in the Red Army Faction? Is that why you killed them?”
I could see Sachse clearly in the steel light of the morning. He had a smile on his face, big teeth, thin lips. It wasn’t pretty.
Before I could throw more questions at him, we were all distracted by the dull shiver of a window pane breaking, followed by the chiming of glass shattering on icy ground.
Four pairs of eyes stared as the rabbit-ears front-sight of a Kalashnikov was pushed through the hole in the window, just behind Prager. Four pairs of ears heard the order: “Drop your weapons!”
It was a woman’s voice, accent from the coast. One that had become very familiar over the last week.
73
Station der jungen Naturforscher
We all knelt down to deposit our guns on the hard snow.
“Reim, bring the guns to me,” ordered Anna Weber. “Take the long way round!”
Checking the safety catches on each Makarov as I picked it up, I brought them to the window. I hadn’t needed the dancing instructions, I knew enough not to walk in front of the muzzle of a Kaschi, but I still appreciated the sentiment.
“You three, over there!” she shouted towards my colleagues. Lütten and Prager started towards the orchard gate, but Sachse stood his ground.
“You don’t expect us to believe you’ll fire a machine pistol in the direction of a busy road!”
“Feel free to do something stupid if you want to find out.”
I’d reached the window by now, I peered in. Anna Weber was kneeling on the floor, wearing her fancy woollen coat, head wrapped against the cold. She was sighting down the barrel of a kid’s model Kalashnikov made of wood and piping.
Weber’s eyes flickered in my direction, she gave me a wink.
“I hope you didn’t walk through the border with that thing?” I murmured, wondering how sensible it would be to give her one of the Makarovs I’d unexpectedly found in my possession.
“This place is full of junk,” she replied, her cheek pressed against the toy gun’s stock. “But I thought the front end looked convincing enough.”
Deciding it might be wiser to keep hold of the handguns, I distributed three of them around various pockets, keeping my own in my hand.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, pressing my back against the roughcast rendering of the outside wall and watching my colleagues, currently regrouping under a tree about thirty metres away.
“Plan? Who said anything about a plan? You’re the clever Stasi operative—you come up with a plan.” One hand left the toy gun, groping around the floor by her knees, finally appearing again with an oilskin bundle, smaller than I’d expected. She held it up for me to see, but as I gingerly reached in through the broken window to take it, she snatched the package back.
“Is that Seiffert’s cache?”
“Go and find a way for us to get out of here,” she instructed, her attention back on Sachse, Lütten and Prager.
I slipped along the side of the building, Makarov at the ready, and peered around the corner. Nobody there, no fresh prints in the snow, so I went a bit further.
At the next corner, I stopped. The gardens belonging to the Station continued around the back, a couple of other buildings—garages? potting sheds?—were dotted around, the closest at least twenty metres away.
To my right, a couple of mature trees stood between me and a high, rigid-mesh fence lining the edge of the slope down to the container terminal. Another scan of the outbuildings and, detecting no movement, I darted over to the fence, bending low to provide a smaller target to anyone feeling the need to test their marksmanship.
I pulled myself to the top of the fence and took stock of the terrain below: a steep bank, plenty of winter-bare undergrowth poking through the snow. Further down the cutting, two orange gantry cranes were at work, heaving containers off the back of articulated trucks. Directly below my position, several railway sidings merged into the mainline track. Beyond that, a flying junction took a spur first over the S-Bahn tracks, then under the road bridge—presumably leading to the central slaughter yard on the other side of Eldenaer Strasse.
I dropped back into a crouch and turned back to the garden, quartering the rows of saplings, snow-blanketed beds and the outbuildings. Beyond those sheds, only a high fence separated us from an isolated corner of Lichtenberg Park. That was our best way out.
I doubled back to the window where Anna Weber was still attempting to marshal my reluctant colleagues: “Keep your hands high, walk slowly through that gate and down the drive—I can see through the hedge, so don’t even think of making any silly moves!”
“Time to flit,” I whispered, leaning in past the shards of glass that still clung to the window frame. “Across the gardens at the back, into the Stadtpark.”
“I can still see you! Keep going—nice and slow!” she shouted to the troika moving in single file.
“See you at the back door,” I told her, before sidling back around the building.
Feeling overcautious, I dropped to my knees again at the next corner and poked my head out. If I were Sachse, I’d have a couple of men in one of those outbuildings, ready to call on if things didn’t go as planned. But if anyone was there, they hadn’t taken action while I was scoping out the possibilities a minute or two before, even though they must have heard Weber yelling. Shouting is as reliable a sign as any that a plan’s gone wrong, and if they di
dn’t know that already then they were in the wrong job.
So, while it was probably unnecessary, I kept my Wamme in my hand while I waited for Weber to appear, and I kept it pointed in the general direction of the nearest building.
I had enough light to work with, the sun hadn’t yet crested the block of flats to the east, but a rose blush was bleeding along the roofs.
The noise of a door clicking open told me that Weber was coming out, but I kept my eyes on the field. Nothing stirred, and that stillness was our signal to move.
We hadn’t gone five paces before I heard the chafing of a window opening.
I changed direction, grabbing Weber by the elbow, dragging her towards the fence above the railway cutting.
“Halt!” the shout came from the outbuilding I’d been watching, but we didn’t halt, not until we reached the nearest mature tree. Once there, I pushed Weber onwards to the fence and peered from behind the wide trunk, Makarov at the ready.
Would they shoot? Would Sachse and his friends, encouraged by the shout, come to see what was happening?
I glanced to my right, Weber was already over the fence, letting herself down the other side. It was my turn to move, so move I did.
Across the snow, jump at the fence, fingers clawing the bars, feet scrabbling for purchase. The bullet hit me as I swung one leg over the top. Before I even heard the shot, I felt it—a great clout, whipping me round, kicking me over the fence and into darkness.
74
Container Station Frankfurter Allee
I dropped into the shrubbery at the top of the embankment, the dry canes and brambles snagging me, saving me from the worst of the fall. I lay there for a moment—I must have hit my head, I was dazed, unable to see anything, holding my breath and waiting for the pain.
Hearing returned first—they were coming for me, the sawing scrape of movement through the undergrowth, getting closer—here they were, one of them pulling me by the arm. I screamed—the pain had arrived. Sharp, burning spreading through my upper arm, dull throbs in my shoulder and hand.
They pulled me again, this time by the uninjured arm, dragging me through the scrub.
“Come on, Reim—on your feet!” A whisper in my ear, the voice warm, familiar. “You can do it!”
And I could. With Weber’s support I struggled to my knees, the darkness lifting. Then a crouch, stumbling through the dry canes and fallen branches, down the bank to the tracks.
As I tumbled, fell and glissaded down the slope, Weber kept me upright. She must have picked up my Wamme because she paused, pointing the pistol up the slope and loosing off a shot, then another, the pistol cracking brittle morning air.
As I watched her, I concentrated on ignoring the pain in my arm.
“Don’t wait, keep moving!” she pulled at me again.
We reached the bottom of the slope, our feet hitting the hard but shifting stone ballast.
“Get over that, I’ll see you on the other side!” she pointed at a formation of containers on flats, pulled by a crawling Ludmilla locomotive. The driver must have seen us, he let off an angry toot, barely audible above the drumming exhaust and the clicking of wheels over points.
I hauled myself onto the flatbed—steadying myself with only one hand—was on my knees, shuffling to the far side, rocked by the movement of the train, when the container beside me boomed, sparks flashing as a bullet glanced off the metal, centimetres from my head. Diving, rolling across the bed of the wagon, pushing my feet over the far end and dropping onto the tracks, more or less deliberately falling onto my good shoulder.
I levered myself onto my knees, Weber was there again, had me by the shoulders, was pulling me.
“Where now, clever Stasi man?”
Staggering to my feet, stumbling over sleepers and rails. My arm dull, yet somehow still sending needles of pain into my shoulder.
“The flyover,” I tried to point, but she had hold of my good arm, was already dragging me in that direction.
I looked behind us, at the long train which still provided some cover from whatever idiot up there had a gun.
“Keep moving, Reim. Your legs are fine, so shift yourself.” She turned back and jogged alongside the train, adjusting her pace to stay by the gap between two containers. Raising her arm, she fired into the undergrowth on the bank. She stood still until the next gap came along, aimed and fired again.
I stopped gawping and did as she’d told me, limping towards the ramp up to the flyover.
“More of them that way.” Weber had caught up with me again, was gesturing towards a string of blue uniforms advancing along the tracks from the platforms of Frankfurter Allee S-Bahn station, still four or five hundred metres away.
Weber helped me up the low bank and onto the spur leading to the bridge, an S-Bahn rattled and groaned along the tracks beneath, the cold air buffeting us as it passed. Behind us, the container train had rattled and clanked to a stop, blocking the points on the mainline tracks, the containers still giving us cover from our pursuers.
“Come on Reim, run, won’t you!” And I did, pushing the pain back to where it came, freeing up enough energy to break into a jog, loping from one decaying wooden sleeper to the next, up the slope until it levelled off beneath the road bridge, then up again and to a sudden halt at a high gate with a red stop sign.
A works security guard, perhaps drawn by the commotion, stood on the other side, watching our approach with suspicion. Weber pulled me around so we faced each other, then unzipped my jacket and reached in to take my Ministry ID card.
She flashed my clapperboard at the guard, and gave him a look I’d have been proud of—he couldn’t unchain the gate fast enough.
“Contact the Volkspolizei, tell them hostile agents are on the railway! Lock this gate behind us and don’t let anyone through, no matter what they say—come on, get that gate closed, dalli dalli!”
We passed through, leaving the guard to lock up behind us, Anna Weber almost laughing from the relief of getting ahead of my colleagues.
“Call an ambulance, you can see he’s been injured,” she called after the security guard who was running for a nearby building to phone the bulls.
She flashed my clapperboard again as we went through the gatehouse and onto the street, looking around continuously. But the road was empty—kids had traipsed into school, shift workers had clocked on and it was too cold for casual pedestrians.
Weber took my hand and pulled me into the road. I didn’t know where she was taking me, but I limped along in her wake, finding it harder to ignore the pain now the shock and adrenaline were wearing off. Weber took me down a side street, stopping in front of a grimy, cream-coloured Polski. She propped me against the side as she opened the door, then guided me into the tiny car.
“That was you last night? Following me when I came off the motorway?”
“Shut up, we’ve no time to chat!”
75
Berlin Friedrichshain
Weber released the brakes and used the slope of the hill to get the little car rolling before starting the engine.
“Here, use that,” she said, tapping the rear-view mirror.
“Nobody there,” I said, adjusting the mirror to better see what was coming up behind, then gasping in pain as my left arm hit the side of the seat as Weber turned a sharp corner without indicating.
She didn’t apologise or slow down, but continued zig-zagging her way across Friedrichshain in an effort to flush out any pursuit.
After we’d headed west for a while, then south across Frankfurter Allee and into the cobbled side streets beyond, she pulled in at the side of the road.
“Take your jacket off.” She reached over to pull a first aid kit out of the glove box.
I couldn’t, not in the small car. But I did manage to get out under my own steam, and once on the pavement, Weber peeled off my jacket, easing my clothes away from the wound.
“Wiggle your fingers—good. Nothing serious, just a nick,” she reassured me as she cut awa
y the sleeve of my shirt and pullover. I yelped as she poured iodine on, but held steady as she wrapped a bandage around.
“Let’s have a look at that head of yours—nasty bang, but you’ve got a thick skull. Right, back in the car!”
The first aid had taken less than two minutes, then we were on the road again, heading towards Boxhagener Strasse.
They picked us up a couple of blocks later: “Sand coloured Wartburg on our tail,” I announced as we came up to a crossroads, bracing myself for another sharp turn. The Wartburg was coming up fast behind us, having decided on an aggressive approach.
But instead of the sharp turn I’d been expecting, Weber carried straight on over the junction, twisting the steering wheel when we were half-way across and pulling hard on the handbrake. The back wheels skittered, found purchase for a moment before sliding out again as we hit steel tram tracks. The tyres bit again, and we slithered back onto the side street we’d just come from, passing the Wartburg coming the other way.
Sixty metres later, Weber switched her foot to the brake, and the rear of the car swung out over the slick roadway. The Wartburg had managed to turn around, was on our tail again, but that didn’t bother my driver. She hauled the steering wheel around, put her foot down and mounted the curb, a jolt and a scrape as granite stone hit the bottom of the car, then the front wheels were up over the edge and between the trees that lined the road, aiming for a pedestrian passageway that tunnelled beneath a house to join the street on the other side of the block.
There was no time to argue, Weber didn’t look like she was in the mood to listen, so I watched the mirrors, preferring what was behind to the wall we were heading for. The Wartburg slid to a stop, four men in it, all eyes on us as we scraped into the alley. I saw the driver’s shoulder lurch as he shoved the car into gear again, and they moved off, unwilling to try the same manoeuvre in their wider vehicle.
“Wartburg’s gone,” I reported.
Baltic Approach Page 22