“There is The Wire,” said Ritter, nodding ahead along the railway line. The Wire did not look particularly imposing at first sight, merely a fence five feet high or a little more, composed of strands of rusty barbed-wire, red in the sunshine. The strands were close together, eight or ten inches apart, the posts supporting them were closer together than is usual with a wire fence and the strands were taut between them. All the same, the barrier was not impassable; if a coat were thrown over the top of it an active man would get over easily enough. Provided, of course, that the Vopos did not see him——
“You are right,” said Hambledon. “A man would notice that fence if he came up against it.”
“Shall we go on?” said Ritter, and took Hambledon for a brisk walk by the ways he himself used on patrol, from one vantage point to another, down narrow tracks like a double-row hedge, across strips of open meadow. For part of the time they were close to a country lane which ran parallel with the frontier; every time a cart or a car or a bicycle came along the road, up went Ritter’s glasses as soon as it was in sight and every time he identified the vehicle. “That is the butcher on his rounds. That is the manager of the paper factory at Eckertal. That is the postman.”
At one point they came to a road bridge with a red and white pole across it. Beyond the pole on the Eastern side, there were posts driven into the road and behind them again a pit dug across the road and the gravel from the pit piled up into a bank to stop escaping cars from crashing the barricade.
“This was an official crossing place at one time,” said Ritter. “Before this frontier was tightened up, there were several such places, now there is only one, at Helmstedt.” He jerked his head towards the north. “It is where the main road and the rail go through from Brunswick to Berlin.”
“How long since they closed——”
“About four years.” Ritter looked round sharply as a motorcycle with two young men on it came tearing down the road from Eckertal. They turned on to the bridge, saw the red and white pole, and skidded to an abrupt stop with a scatter of gravel.
“Are you in a hurry to get to Moscow?” asked Ritter pleasantly, but they did not smile.
“We—we took the wrong turning somewhere,” they said. They turned their machine round in the road and went back the way they had come as though the devil were after them.
“Some people never see notices,” said Ritter, and put up his binoculars again.
“That town across there,” began Hambledon.
“Stapelburg. You see The Wire in front of us here with the branches stuck in it? This bridge is a favourite place for people to come and stare across and the Vopos got tired of being stared at, so they made a sort of screen there. There are always Vopos about here.”
“I don’t see any now.”
“Where are the Herr’s eyes? There is a man leaning against that tree not twenty metres away.”
“It is their brown uniforms,” said Hambledon, annoyed with himself. “The protective colouration is almost perfect.”
Ritter nodded. “It is also a matter of practice.” Up went the glasses again, again the slow sweep round. The country towards Stapelburg was open farm land and people were working in the fields. There was a cluster of small houses within a stone’s throw and children were playing round them.
“It all looks so entirely peaceful.”
“It does, but they will not speak.”
“Who won’t? The Vopos?”
“Neither the Vopos nor the people living across there. Sometimes, when we pass each other at points where there is only The Wire between us, I call across ‘Good morning’ or ‘Nice weather,’ but they never answer. And it is not as though they were Russians—they are all Germans like us—but they never answer.”
“Do you ever see Russians along here?”
“No. Very seldom. Sometimes a couple of Russian officers. The troops are kept further back, but they are there if wanted.”
“If wanted?”
“I have my wife and family in Eckertal—a man wants some home life—but sometimes I wonder whether it is right to keep them here so near the Russians.” The binoculars went up again and Hambledon did not know what to say.
A little later on, Ritter said that he thought Schultz would probably be at home by now if the Herr still wished to see him. Hambledon said that he would. It was just to ask about that day upon which Micklejohn disappeared. Ritter nodded and they walked up the road towards Eckertal. At this point Hambledon did his best to induce Ritter to accept five marks for all the extra trouble he had taken, but the man refused, politely but quite firmly.
“At least,” said Hambledon, “come and have a drink with me.”
“The Herr is most kind, indeed, but I do not drink on duty,” said Ritter. “Thank you, indeed.”
“But when you come off duty, a round with your friends,” urged Hambledon.
But it was all of no use and he had to give it up.
Presently three motorcycles together came down the road and stopped to speak to Ritter, who introduced Hambledon. These men wore black uniforms and their appearance and bearing were very smart indeed.
“These are of the Mobile Police,” explained Ritter. “They do not have to wear out their legs walking all day like the poor wretched Green Police. No, they ride about like gentlemen all day on expensive motorcycles.”
The Mobiles laughed and said that Ritter had only a pair of binoculars to service and maintain. He was not expected to be a motor mechanic as well as a policeman.
Hambledon realised at once that these men might be very useful and that he would almost certainly meet them, or some of them, again. He showed them his passport and permit and explained briefly why he was there.
Ritter said that the Herr had wanted to know about conditions there, so he himself had been showing the Herr round his area.
The sergeant in charge of the Mobile patrol said that perhaps Hambledon would like a little ride with them; it might be bumpy but at least one covered the ground.
Hambledon, assuming correctly that this suggestion was not meant to be taken seriously, said that, much as he would enjoy it, he had to go and see a man named Schultz at the moment and then he must catch the autobus back to Goslar. They parted with mutual courtesies and the Mobile Police swirled away.
At the entrance to Eckertal a small boy, aged about four, ran out of one of the scattered cottages and rushed at Ritter.
“My son,” explained the policeman. “What hast thou been doing today?”
But the child looked at the stranger and turned shy. There was a wooden shanty at the side of the road where a one-armed man sold cigarettes, chocolate, beer, and lemonade; Hambledon went in and bought the biggest slab of chocolate in the place as a present for the boy, who proceeded at once to tear off the wrapping.
“Oh, no,” said Ritter, “not all at once. Thou wilt only make thyself sick. Thank the Herr for his kindness. Thou shalt have a piece every night and so thou wilt remember the Herr for at least ten days. Here is Schultz’s house, next beyond mine. Ernst! Are you there?”
Ernst came to the door, a giant of a man with a limp and three fingers missing from his left hand. Ritter introduced Hambledon, took his leave, and went away.
Hambledon once more explained his mission and showed the Chief of Police’s authorisation. “I understand that you were on patrol the day the young man disappeared,” he said. “Four days ago, last Tuesday.”
“That is so,” said Schultz in a slow deep voice. “I have been asked about this young man; English, was he not? Yes. I saw him get off the midday autobus at the station here and he walked along the road towards the frontier. Then he turned off by a path through the woods. I went on by the road and presently I saw him again on the road which runs south along the frontier. He was walking along it away from me. Then a car came along—they were strangers here, they stopped to ask me one or two things—and when I looked round again the young man had disappeared. That is all I know, mein Herr.”
“Yes, I see. You have no idea which way he went?”
“I assumed he had turned off to the right, back into our woods here. If he had turned left he would have come to the frontier and there is no passage that way, as the Herr knows. I did not see the young man again though I walked on down the road the way he had gone. If he had gone to the frontier he would have had to come back again and I should have seen him. The Herr understands? He must have turned back into our woods.”
“I understand perfectly. Tell me, did anything at all unusual happen that day?”
Schultz considered.
“Nothing, no.”
“You did not hear anything?”
The policeman looked straight at Hambledon.
“The Herr means shots fired? No, I heard nothing and I should have heard if there had been. One is always looking and listening, the Herr knows.”
“Yes,” said Hambledon, “yes. It is so quiet here, one would say that even the trees were watching and listening.”
“May it remain quiet,” said Schultz, and at that moment there came from the cottage behind him the sound of a baby crying.
“Then there was nothing at all out of the ordinary?”
“No, mein Herr, I am sorry I cannot help you. If anything had happened, particularly on that day, we should have known it.”
A woman’s voice inside the cottage said something in a soothing tone and the baby left off crying.
“Why ‘particularly on that day'?” asked Hambledon.
“Because they had a stretch of the wire down that day, replacing the posts. The Herr has seen the posts? They are only rough lumber, they do not last so long. There was a gang of men working on it, taking the wire down, replacing the posts and putting the wire back. They had Vopo guards standing over them all the time, they always do.”
“To keep them at it?”
Schultz smiled slowly. “I do not suppose they would kill themselves with overwork, those labourers; they are not well paid nor well fed. Yes, the Vopos watch them for that and also to see that they do not slip across to us. Wages and conditions are better this side—everyone knows that—and if there is a gap in The Wire it is too easy, if the Vopos are not watching all the time.”
“I see,” said Hambledon. “How much of the wire would they take down at a time?”
“Not very much. Not more than they can finish in a day. They take the wire down and roll it up, for it must be used again. Then they pull out the old posts, put in new ones, unroll the wire again—has the Herr ever tried to unroll rusty barbed-wire?—and strain it back on to the new posts. No, not a great length.”
“I suppose not.”
“I see what the Herr is thinking, but there were no shots that day. Not in this area at least. Besides, I remember that afternoon for another thing, the Russians had soldiers close up all along this frontier. We do not often see Russian soldiers, mein Herr—they keep them further back—but that day I suppose there was an exercise on. We see a Russian officer or two now and again but that is all as a rule. That day there were troops everywhere that side and the Vopos swarming like flies. But there were no shots fired so the Herr can assure himself that no one went across The Wire.”
Hambledon thanked Schultz and walked back to Eckertal Station to catch the bus to Goslar. He was a little early; he stood and strolled about in the brilliant sunshine on the station forecourt with the weeds brushing his legs. It was very hot and there was nothing to sit down on, but Hambledon found himself preferring it to the platform side of the station, where the tall grass waved over the rusty lines and young bushes grew up between the points. Why such a big station in such a tiny place, with the town of Stapelburg only a couple of kilometres away? He could not imagine and there was no one to ask.
There were the deserted yard, the empty sheds, the road, and, beyond the road, the pine trees stretching for miles; it was very quiet but, instead of an air of peace, there hung over the whole scene a deep sense of brooding unease. He was glad when a distant rumble announced the arrival of his bus. It turned into the yard and stopped.
He looked round and there was Ritter, standing back on the perimeter of the station yard. A few people got out. Hambledon walked forward and looked round to give Ritter a farewell wave, but he had disappeared.
“I don’t like this place at all,” said Hambledon to himself. He entered the bus and sat down. A few minutes later three or four men arrived from nowhere in particular and also got into the bus and sat down. He wondered where they had come from and then mentally shook himself. Out of the station, of course, probably from the refreshment room; it was only that he had not seen them come out. It was completely ridiculous to picture this area as a sort of fourth-dimension country where people turned aside and were immediately not there. It was, certainly, the sort of place which might get on one’s nerves, but one ought not to let it.
The bus turned in the yard and set off on the return journey to Bad Harzburg and Goslar. There were two more stops within the Eckertal boundaries—at a group of cottages and at a minor crossroads—and the bus began to fill up. People leaving work at the paper mill and the furniture factory and going home to sleep further away from The Wire.
After the first stop Hambledon noticed a man in the green uniform of the Frontier Police but could not see his face; at the second stop this man got out and Tommy saw to his surprise that it was Ritter. Hambledon lifted a hand in greeting and Ritter responded in friendly fashion, but he did look faintly sheepish. He might very well have had some errand at the crossroads, or was he merely making quite sure that Hambledon really had left the district, official police authorisation notwithstanding? A good fellow, Ritter, and they had become friends in the course of the long hot afternoon, but if it were his duty to see inquisitive strangers off his manor he would do it, and quite right too. The bus rolled on and Goslar, when they reached it, seemed like home.
4: The Prisoner
George Micklejohn was a healthy but studious youth who, having passed with credit all the previous trials with which the University of Oxford afflicts its young, was grimly determined to get a First in his finals. This involved, among other things, reading Roman law and this was not easy in a home which contained an hospitable mother, four cheerful sisters, and a generous allowance of the party spirit. George therefore departed for Goslar, in company with a congenial soul who also wished to work in peace. For a week they tramped long distances on walkers’ trails, ate hugely, and read industriously until the friend slipped down a steep bank along with an angular boulder and broke his ankle. George bound up the ankle with their handkerchiefs, his scarf, and what he remembered of a course of first-aid lectures, hoisted the friend on his shoulders, and carried him as far as a road. Here they sat on a bank until a car came along and gave them a lift to Goslar and a surgeon. The friend left Hanover for England by air with his ankle in plaster and young Micklejohn carried on alone.
On the Tuesday before Hambledon came to Goslar, Micklejohn took the autobus from Goslar to Eckertal, since apparently the railway was not in operation now that there is a zonal boundary between East and West Germany. Micklejohn took no interest in politics, domestic or foreign, he heard too much of them at home. He alighted at Eckertal, armed only with a strong walking stick and a packet of sandwiches. He struck eastward along forest trails, for this country is heavily wooded, half expecting when he came to the zonal boundary to find a wire fence with notices hung upon it at intervals saying, in Gothic lettering, Durchgäng Verboten.
He did not find barbed-wire or any other sort of fence. He walked sturdily on, enjoying the air, the theatrical effect of sunlight striking down through gaps in the foliage upon the red-brown trunks of pines, and the presence of twittering flocks of gold-crested wrens. He crossed a road and came to the bank of a mountain stream of the type which is either angrily in spate and quite impassable or else a string of clear brown pools joined together by rippling shallows, easily to be passed by anyone agile enough to hop from a boulder to a bank of
flat water-worn pebbles and from there to a half-submerged shelf of rock. Micklejohn hopped across and sat down on a mossy bank to eat his sandwiches and commune with nature to the music of running water. Idyllic.
He got up and strolled on. The path he had been following had petered out and he was among bushes and undergrowth. However, there were pinewoods ahead and he made his way towards them, taking a childish pleasure in walking quietly without breaking branches or cracking sticks on the ground. Somewhere to his left he heard men’s voices and circled round to avoid them; he was enjoying being alone and did not feel like talking to strangers.
A few minutes later he came upon a sort of track, as though someone had ploughed a narrow strip; it came from his left and wound away to his right. He thought it a little odd but it conveyed no warning to his mind; the few Germans he had talked to had not discussed the frontier—it is not a popular subject in those parts—and it had never occurred to Micklejohn to ask about it. He looked carefully at the ploughed strip but no sort of crop appeared to be coming up in it so he walked across and entered more pinewoods. It was a perfectly beautiful day and the air was invigorating; he lengthened his stride and went on.
* * *
The working party replacing posts on The Wire consisted of three elderly labouring men and a guard of two young Volkspolizei. The Vopos were new to The Wire, having but just finished their training, and they were exceedingly conscientious. They had been told to watch the three labourers closely and the result was a practically unwinking Vopo stare, a thing which has to be seen to be believed and reminds the observer of stuffed owls. The labourers, who were old enough, given an early start, to be the Vopos’ grandfathers, responded by ignoring them completely, but they did keep on working.
At about the time when George Micklejohn sat down on the riverbank to eat his sandwiches the senior workman glanced up at the sun, having no watch, threw down his pick, and turned away; the other workmen did the same.
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