by Nina Berry
“So far,” double-chin said with a fleshy, ominous smile, and they settled in at their table.
Pagan had a hard time swallowing her cake. She played with it, hoping Thomas would reappear so they could leave. At least Beate was happy to jabber on about anything without much encouragement.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen.” The servant in gray who had taken the keys to Thomas’s car had emerged from the house and was speaking in German by the back door. “The General Secretary will now be screening the latest comedy film from the Soviet Union for your enjoyment in the screening room inside.”
The crowd murmured, getting up from their seats. Pagan looked at Beate expectantly. “What did he say?”
“Father’s screening a movie inside, a comedy from the Soviet Union.”
Pagan stood up. “Well, if there’s anyone who knows comedy, it’s the Soviets. Maybe after I see it I can give Bennie Wexler some pointers.”
Beate smiled uncertainly, not quite able to pinpoint the sarcasm. “Come, I’ll show you. Where’s Thomas?”
Pagan managed to shrug nonchalantly, gathering her things. “I’m sure he’ll be right back.”
They were led into a large screening room lined with thick red curtains and filled with hard wooden chairs. According to Pagan’s watch it was nearly ten in the evening as they turned down the lights and the screen lit up with a Russian farce called Each Man for Himself. As the film wore on, the captive audience drank until the room reeked of schnapps.
And Thomas was still missing. She ran the East German officials’ conversation over and over through her mind.
Whatever Honecker’s up to, there’s no one with any power left in Berlin to stop him.
It had something to do with the border. That was why the tanks had been stationed near the Brandenburg Gate. That was why Devin had wanted information on troop movements.
Devin. More than anything she wished he was here. He would know exactly what was going on, and how to get safely away.
And what about Thomas? She craned her neck around the darkened room looking for him. It had been hours now since he’d left her alone. Her skin was crawling with anxiety.
Something was terribly wrong. How the hell had she, Pagan Jones, teenage starlet—alcoholic teenage starlet—gotten here? Somehow she, of all people, was alone in a house with the leaders of East Germany. The relative safety of West Berlin was an hour’s drive away. The armed troops of the most feared security service in the Europe stood in the way.
Unless, of course, Ulbricht’s plan got President Kennedy riled up enough to press the red button and send them all up in a mushroom cloud.
No, no. She couldn’t believe the President would let that happen. And she couldn’t allow that to shadow her thinking. She had to figure out what the hell she was going to do. She was trapped, and for Pagan that meant only one thing. One way or another, she was getting out.
The movie was about half over when Pagan got up and sidled toward a side door. She knew where the nearest ladies’ room was. Now she just had to look as if she’d forgotten while she took a good look around for Thomas. She had the key to the car, which Thomas must have put there. If she could find him, they could damned well get the hell out.
If they could get past the armed Stasi troops.
She didn’t let herself think that far ahead. One thing at a time, like they said in A.A.
The flicker on the screen covered her movements and washed the staring faces of the crowd white with its reflected glow. Pagan put her hand on the doorknob and turned it very slowly, making no sound.
But the knob turned by itself under her fingers. She jumped back as Walter Ulbricht flung open the door and strode through. Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi, was right behind him.
Pagan sat down fast in an empty chair just as the lights went on and the film froze on a frame of a woman screaming in terror as some poor tiger bared its teeth.
“Comrades,” Ulbricht said in German, positioning himself at the front of the screen. The projector was clicked off, and the image behind him vanished. “I have an important announcement to make.”
The room was dead silent. Pagan eyed the door, but Mielke’s broad frame was blocking it. The man in the chair in front of her swayed drunkenly, and his neighbor put a hand on his shoulder to keep him upright.
Ulbricht’s glasses glinted as he took in the room, plump hands clasped in front of him, tight mouth pursed in satisfaction. “In a mere two hours time, the border between East and West Berlin will be closed.”
Pagan gulped down a gasp. A disbelieving murmur vibrated through the room and died as Ulbricht continued. “All the ministers here will sign a printed edict that authorizes action by our security forces to place under proper control the still-open border between socialist and capitalist Europe.”
Ulbricht took a moment to assess the silent assembly and continued, “At last, the corrupting influence of the West will be removed. At last the kidnappings and deceptions that have taken so many of our population will stop forever. Comrade Krushchev of the Soviet Union is in agreement, so I know the rest of you cannot fail to see that this is the best course of action.”
Again, that glinting gaze swept the room. “Alle einverstandert?”
All agreed?
Pagan had no doubt of the answer.
“Ja,” muttered the man in front of her. Around the room, people were nodding, forcing smiles. There was no enthusiasm, no sense of victory in the audience to echo Ulbricht’s. But Ulbricht didn’t care. They were agreed.
“Just as I’d hoped,” he said. “Visitors from other countries will be allowed to cross the border back to the West. We will not interfere with them. Our own citizens will be kept within the borders of the fatherland. For your own safety, none of you will leave this place until the operation is well under way. Until then, there is plenty of food and alcohol left for you to enjoy.”
Walter Ulbricht spread his hands, smiling with the upturned corners of his constricted mouth, and walked toward the door through which he’d entered.
As if released from a spell, the men and women in the room began to fidget and cautiously converse. Pagan unclasped her fingers, which had tightened painfully around her purse. Ulbricht had said foreigners could go home, right? So she was trapped here for now, but eventually she could cross back into West Berlin.
Ulbricht stopped in front of Mielke a few feet from Pagan, cocking his head as his security minister said something too low for her to catch.
“Ah, yes,” Ulbricht said. “This is your moment, my friend. Tell them.”
He stepped back and the head of the Stasi took center stage, opening up the door behind him. “Comrades,” Mielke said. “I have one more little surprise for you here tonight.”
Pagan’s jittery stomach plummeted. Mielke was smiling with a ferocity that the trained animals in Each Man For Himself had lacked.
“We know that all of you here are loyal champions of the Party, ready to do what is right here tonight. You will all be rewarded, of course. But traitors…” Mielke paused, his eyes moving over the still, silent crowd. His gaze landed on Pagan, and his sneer widened. “Traitors will be punished.”
He snapped his gaze back through the opened door. “Bring him!”
Heavy booted steps answered. Something dragged along the wooden floor. Pagan’s hand was at her throat. She stood up without thinking, not wanting to see what was coming through the door.
“Traitors like this,” Mielke said, and stepped aside as two Stasi soldiers dragged in the limp body of Thomas Kruger.
A collective inhale of shock flew through the screening room. The soldiers half threw Thomas’s body on the floor. He fell with a horrible, loose-jointed thud. A woman in the back of the room screamed.
Pagan lurched toward Thomas, eyes traveling frantically over his blo
od-smeared head, torn shirt, and jacket, looking for signs of life. Mielke stepped in her way, and, before she could react, put one hand on her collarbone and shoved her. She yelped, stumbling backward into her chair to sit down hard.
She looked up, heat rising up from her heart. Her hands curled into fists. She gathered her feet under her, eyes on Mielke’s throat.
Mielke snapped his fingers, and the two guards who had hauled Thomas’s body were on her. They each took her by an arm and pulled her to her feet. She tugged against them, trying to pull free. “What the…”
One soldier released his grip on her right arm and slapped her across the face.
She heard it before she felt it, like the sound of a stick snapping in two. Stinging pain erupted from her cheek as her head rolled to the side; her left ear rang. Her vision darkened. She would have fallen if the other soldier hadn’t held her up.
She blinked as her eyesight righted and tried to feel her jaw. Her knees were weak with fear, but she focused first on her face. Nothing broken. She still had all her teeth, but she tasted blood.
She looked up into the eyes of the stone-faced soldier who had hit her. “Oh, please,” she said in English. “Lana Turner hits harder than that.”
A faint line of puzzlement between the soldier’s eyebrows was the only answer.
It was a bad idea, pushing down her terror to be her smart-aleck self. She’d just spent hours reinforcing her reputation as a featherbrain. Such a person would be no threat to anyone here, and more likely to fly under the radar. Better to seem helpless and overwhelmed, which was close enough to the reality, than act tough. This wasn’t reform school.
As the soldier gripped her arm again, she allowed herself to cry. It wasn’t hard to do as she stared at Thomas’s body. He was lying on his side, clothes dirtied, blood-spattered, and torn. At least she didn’t see any devastating wounds. Was that his back expanding and falling with breath? Her own body was shaking too hard to tell.
Two more soldiers entered and moved in on either side of Mielke, awaiting orders. Mielke kicked Thomas’s leg and watched Pagan closely as she winced.
“Your escort is still alive,” Mielke said to her in English, and smirked as she sagged in relief. “We could have killed him outright, but we had a few questions, as you can see. We caught him in the act of espionage, going through papers in the Comrade Secretary’s private office.”
More whispers from the crowd. Pagan popped her own eyebrows up and blinked in fake astonishment. She couldn’t look as if she’d suspected Thomas was up to something.
So Thomas was a spy. Working with Devin Black, and against Ulbricht and Mielke. That had to mean Devin was working for the West and not the Communists.
Mielke was a smug malevolent little jerk, but he was right. Her date was a spy, and he’d used her popularity with Beate Ulbricht to get here.
Mielke stepped one leg over Thomas so that he stood astride his body and slapped the boy in the face three times, hard. “Wake up, Thomas.”
Thomas didn’t stir. Mielke held out a hand to the solider to his right. The man put a vial in Mielke’s hand, and Mielke snapped the top off under Thomas’s nose. “I said, wake up!”
Smelling salts. Pagan had seen them only in movies. The sharp odor of ammonia stabbed at her sinuses. Thomas’s eyelids fluttered, his head arching back.
Mielke’s voice boomed through the room in German again. “This man we know as actor Thomas Kruger is a collaborator with the West. He will pay the ultimate price, as will any coconspirators.”
Thomas rolled over, and Pagan could see his injuries more clearly. Someone had dabbed most of the blood off his face, but a swatch of it was still smeared under his nose, trickling out one ear, and oozing from a cut on his forehead. The flesh around his left eye was swollen and purplish black. He kept both hands close to his chest, but she could see that the fingers on his left hand had been taped together, and the skin under them was puffy and red, as if someone had broken them.
Another surge of rage swept through her. She closed her eyes to contain it. She must keep her head clear if they were going to survive.
Thomas clutched his side as he sat up, eyes blearily searching the space around him. Mielke stooped over and thrust his face close, jowls shaking. Thomas flinched back.
“Your mother and sister will be taken in for questioning, Comrade Spy,” said Mielke in German. “We will find out how far they have been compromised.”
Tears leaked out of Thomas’s eyes, but he didn’t pull away. “It is you who have been compromised. My father fought fascism only to die as it found another form in the country he loved.”
Mielke stood up, puffing out his chest, his face reddening. “You know nothing about the evil we fought. The Party saved Germany and will keep it safe. Everything we do is to keep oppression from returning to the fatherland.”
“Oppression doesn’t know which party you belong to,” Thomas said. “All it requires is blind certainty and fear.”
Ulbricht walked up to stand beside Mielke. “Don’t argue with a child. Take him back to my office. We have more questions for him.”
As the other two soldiers closed in on him, Thomas caught sight of Pagan standing between her two captors. His swollen eyes flared open. He shook his head back and forth, blood flying from his lips. “No, no, she doesn’t know anything about this. I told you. I just used her to get here, I promise you…”
Mielke punched him casually in the jaw. He didn’t put much force behind it, but the ease with which he did it told Pagan he knew how to use his fists. Thomas fell to one elbow with a grunt, but didn’t lose consciousness. His green eyes, cloudy with pain, sought Pagan’s face almost blindly. It took every fiber of her self-control not to get down on the floor and wrap her arms around him.
Instead she steadied her voice for him. He needed her to be strong. “I’m here, Thomas,” she said. “I’m okay.”
Mielke stepped back, speaking to his soldiers in German. “Do as Comrade Secretary told you and take him back to his office.”
The soldiers hauled Thomas to his feet. He reeled, shoes scraping at the floor till they had him fully upright. “I’m so sorry, Pagan,” he said.
“Stay strong,” she said, almost choking on her next words. “Don’t worry about me.”
They led Thomas out the door, one unsteady step at a time. Pagan wanted to scream at Mielke, to cajole, to plead, but some instinct told her that would only entertain him. She pressed her lips together to keep them shut.
“And you, Fraulein Jones,” Mielke said, in a tone that made all the blood drain from her heart. “I think first we will speak with you.” He gestured to the soldiers. “Nimm sie in mein Büro.”
Take her to my office.
Mielke was still speaking to Pagan in English, then switching to German for everyone else, which meant he and everyone else truly believed she didn’t understand his language. She didn’t know how that might be helpful, but she decided to let him keep thinking that. She needed any leverage she could get.
Her life might depend upon it.
She couldn’t think that way. If she did, she might curl up into a ball of fear and never come out of it. She was an inconvenienced Hollywood star, a privileged dingbat, and if she believed that, these dangerous men might keep on believing it, too.
The two soldiers took her through the door, both hands on her upper arms gripping hard. She pictured kicking them, or stomping on their insteps. She thought about faking a faint. Instead she walked quickly with them to see if she could catch a glimpse of where Thomas was being taken.
She got lucky. The hallway was long, all gleaming dark wood and mounted swords and boars’ heads. She got there in time to see Thomas being led through a door at the end on the right.
Not that she could do anything about it with two soldiers on either side of her. But it c
almed her, knowing where he was.
The soldiers took her down the same hall to a room two doors from Thomas. Mielke unlocked the heavy wooden door himself, and the guards marched her over to sit in a red leather wingback chair. Ulbricht followed them in.
“Leave us,” Mielke said to the guards in German. She was alone with the leader of East Germany and the commander of the Stasi.
Bone-deep trembling threatened to take over her body. Anxiety was making her light-headed, pushing at the edges of her control. A nice frosty martini would blanket it with a comforting fog. Never in her life had she wanted a drink more.
Never had her sobriety been so important.
She forced herself to look around, to keep thinking, assessing, planning. Mielke’s office was spacious, with high ceilings and the same long windows she’d noted earlier. It would have been cozy if he hadn’t decorated it exclusively with large East German flags, more dead animals, and photos of soccer players. Beate had said Mielke had a “football team,” which meant soccer to an American like Pagan. If the number of pictures of him standing next to a bunch of buff young men in uniform or holding up trophies was any indication, soccer was his obsession. Soccer and spying.
Mielke positioned himself behind a heavy dark wood desk and rolled a soccer ball off a wooden pedestal to bounce it in his hands. Ulbricht came to stand in front of Pagan, hands clasped behind him.
She crossed her ankles and clasped her shaking gloved hands in her lap. This was a scene in the movie of her life. How would Violet Houlihan feel about being here? She’d be scared, sure. These ugly old men were being unnecessarily mean. But they were interfering with her life. It was late. She needed her beauty sleep.
“Your friend has been found to be a spy,” Ulbricht said to her in English. “What do you have to say about that?”
“Um—wow?” Pagan shrugged. “I’m flabbergasted. Are you sure it isn’t a mistake? Because as nice as Thomas is, he doesn’t strike me as all that brainy, if you know what I mean. He doesn’t have the jets for that kind of thing.”