Stasi Wolf

by David Young

  Tilsner took her in the Wartburg back to the fire station, even though in the normal course of events it would have been quicker on foot. He drove carefully for once, despite the urgency, and Müller welcomed the fact that she wasn’t being thrown around inside the car. She didn’t think her bruised and battered body would have coped. But the journey did give her foggy mind the chance to slowly clear.

  Once they were in the incident room, Fernbach pointed to the office, while looking in astonishment at the state of Müller, her jacket hanging loose over her hospital gown. Müller almost wished she had her red coat on to at least give her a mental boost, but she’d stopped wearing it in the early stages of pregnancy when it became too tight.

  ‘Eschler’s in there with him,’ said Fernbach.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Stefan Hildebrand.’

  Müller nodded, but saw Tilsner’s frown. ‘He’s a down-and-out.’ Tilsner’s forehead creased in further puzzlement. ‘Yes, I know, Werner. We don’t have homeless people in the Republic. Nevertheless, he is.’

  *

  They found Hildebrand – still looking as dishevelled as ever – stumbling breathlessly over his words as he attempted to explain what he’d seen to Eschler. The police captain held up his hand.

  ‘Hang on. You’re making no sense. Let’s start again. You thought the woman had a doll.’

  ‘Yes. You know, that one that was down in the heating tunnels near the Ypsilon block.’

  ‘We took that away as evidence,’ said Eschler. ‘So where is she – near the “Y” block?’

  ‘No. That’s why I took the risk of coming here. I know I wasn’t supposed to go back to living in the heating –’

  ‘We don’t give a shit about that,’ shouted Tilsner. Müller laid a hand on his arm to try to quieten him, even though she was as desperate to know – more desperate to know – than he was. ‘Where is she?’ said Tilsner, approaching Hildebrand, as though he might hit him.

  ‘In my place.’

  ‘Your place. What on earth do you mean?’ asked Eschler, getting as frustrated as Tilsner now.

  ‘In my house.’

  ‘Your house?’

  ‘He means his den,’ said Müller. ‘That’s it, isn’t it, Stefan?’ The man nodded in nervous, frightened excitement. ‘Your den in the duct by the Donkey Windmill.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Oberleutnant. And it isn’t a doll she’s got. It’s a baby. A living baby.’

  *

  Tilsner was about to go in, all guns blazing, turning the Wartburg’s siren and light on. But Müller stopped him. Whoever this woman with the baby was – and Tilsner still hadn’t filled her in on what he knew – she didn’t want her scared away. Because Müller had some sixth sense, some signal from her abandoned, damaged womb to her brain, that the baby was hers. Her child. The one she’d always longed for.

  The diners and drinkers in the Donkey Windmill looked up in astonishment as the ragtag group of four entered, looking round desperately. Eschler in his People’s Police captain’s uniform, Tilsner in leather-jacketed detective mode, Hildebrand a hairy, smelly down-and-out, and then Müller. She dreaded to think what she looked like. Probably some escapee from a mental institution. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Except finding her babies alive.

  Tilsner shouted to the waitress: ‘Where’s the entrance to the heating duct?’ The girl gestured towards the kitchens.

  As they entered, the smell of food, the heat and steam, almost made Müller keel over and faint. She willed herself to stay upright as Tilsner opened the metal door the kitchen staff pointed to. He jabbed Hildebrand forward into the gloom. The fug of damp heat that immediately hit Müller reminded her of that first search, below the Ypsilon Hochhaus, the one where she’d thought the doll was a real baby. This time she hoped beyond hope that the baby Hildebrand had seen, being cradled by some madwoman in his den, was alive – and was hers.

  Their torch beams bounced along the walls, until up ahead – in the gloom – they saw the collection of cardboard boxes that Hildebrand called his ‘house’. Tilsner went forward, lifted up the cardboard flap which served as a makeshift door, and there – illuminated in the beam, with a tiny baby at her breast – was someone Müller recognised from a few days before at the hospital.

  Looking scared and confused as the baby – unconcerned – slept on in her arms, was the nursing auxiliary who’d been looking at Müller’s files that first day in the hospital. Müller felt overwhelmed as a huge range of emotions surged through her. Delight and happiness that one of her babies was well; rage towards the madwoman who was holding her child; fear about where her other twin was, and its welfare. But she knew she had to control herself. Her legs felt as though they would collapse from under her at any moment, her breathing was rapid, each intake a stab into her lungs. But she had to stay in control. For the sake of her children’s welfare, but also for the sake of the investigation in which she’d invested so much.

  ‘Franziska Traugott?’ shouted Tilsner.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the woman, in a shaky voice.

  ‘Don’t move. You’re under arrest. Pass the baby to me.’

  The woman pulled the bundle back, away from Tilsner’s outstretched arms. ‘But she’s mine now.’ Then she stared Müller straight in the face. ‘You didn’t want her.’

  Müller held on to Eschler, feeling once again as though she would collapse. She. It was her daughter. The first sight of her daughter. She just wanted her child in her arms. The child that had been stolen from her womb along with her twin brother. ‘W-w-what do you mean?’ stuttered Müller, struggling to form the words, as her chest heaved like bellows.

  The woman continued to cling tightly to the bundle. ‘Hansi said you didn’t want her. You were on the list.’

  Tilsner by now had moved right up to the woman, and had his hands round the wrapped-up baby which still slept on.

  ‘What do you mean, Hansi said I was on the list?’

  ‘Hansi. My husband. He’s very important. Works for the Ministry.’ As the woman talked, Tilsner had finally managed to prise the baby away. It woke and began screaming, but the woman seemed to not notice now. She was in another world. Her world. ‘You know, the Ministry for State Security. I don’t think they call him Hansi there, though, they call him –’

  Before the woman said the words, they were in Müller’s head. Echoing round and around. Traugott. Her surname just uttered by Tilsner. That was the trigger. She found herself slumping against Eschler, no strength in her body. She saw her daughter safe in Tilsner’s arms. She felt a huge surge of love for the child, wanted to hold her, but didn’t trust herself, and that surname echoed around her brain. With sudden realisation, she knew who had her son. It wasn’t Hansi. Not to her. It was Johannes. Johannes Traugott. Gangly Johannes. Bullied, bespectacled Johannes. The childhood best friend she’d allowed to be taken away.

  57

  Müller found herself biting down hard every few seconds on the inside of her cheek. Willing herself to stay alert, to concentrate, to overcome the pain that still pulsed through her body from the Caesarean wound. As Eschler took Franziska Traugott back to the temporary police HQ to question her, Tilsner took Müller to the hospital.

  Emil seemed frozen, unable to decide what to do. Müller handed him their baby daughter, not wanting to let her out of her arms, but knowing she had to – in order to locate and save the baby girl’s twin brother.

  ‘Look after her,’ she warned. ‘Every minute of every hour. Don’t let her out of your sight.’

  He looked alarmed. He’d obviously assumed her return to the hospital meant that she would be readmitted to receive proper aftercare. To have the surgery on her abdomen and womb checked – they knew now it had been an amateur job, although in the brief questioning of Franziska Traugott that Tilsner had managed so far, the woman had claimed that her husband – Hansi, Johannes – had originally trained as a surgeon. Müller doubted it, but hoped it was true.

  ‘Where are you going, Ka
rin? You can’t put your health at risk like this.’

  ‘I have to. I have to find my other child. My son.’

  Because that was what Traugott had also admitted. After an argument between the pair, Johannes had disappeared with the newly born, stolen baby boy. But she had no idea where, and neither did Tilsner or Müller.

  *

  A radio message to the incident room, as Müller sat clutching her dressings – not really knowing what they could do – was the first indication of where Johannes was heading with the baby. A People’s Police patrol had spotted his Lada at Straussfurt, heading south towards Erfurt.

  Eschler took the message. ‘They tried chasing him, but he took off down a side road and gave them the slip. They’ve heightened the alert in Bezirke Erfurt, Gera and Suhl.’

  ‘Did they say where he was heading?’ asked Tilsner.

  ‘Other than south? No.’

  ‘I know where he’s going,’ said Müller.

  Tilsner stared at her in astonishment. ‘How do you know? And where?’

  She didn’t know for certain. It was a hunch. But where did desperate people flee to when they had no options left? ‘He’s going back to his home village. My home village. To Oberhof.’

  ‘Well, if you’re right, he’s got a head start of an hour or two. We’ll never catch him,’ said Tilsner.

  ‘We might,’ said Eschler. ‘Oberst Frenzel – as soon as he heard they’d done a flit from their apartment in Residential Complex Eight – has had a People’s Police helicopter on standby. It’s in the Südpark – ready to go as soon as needed.’

  *

  The Russian KA-26 – in the white and olive-green livery of the People’s Police – had its rotor blades already spinning by the time Eschler screeched to a halt at the park’s entrance in the Wartburg. Müller held her jacket lapels together to protect her abdomen from the fierce blast of the blades, ducking under them and staggering towards the helicopter. At the door hatch, once Eschler had jumped in, Tilsner lifted Müller and then Eschler hauled her inside as gently as possible. As soon as Tilsner had grabbed the helicopter floor, the pilot took off, angling south, with Tilsner’s legs dangling in the air until Eschler finally pulled him fully inside.

  ‘I hope you’re right about this, Karin.’

  Müller felt the blood pounding where her womb had been cut open. She looked down, could see red seeping through. She had to ignore it, she had to. For the sake of her child. ‘I know I’m right. I have to be.’

  *

  The helicopter headed south, the pilot angling the rotors – aiming for the last-known sighting of Johannes Traugott’s Lada. Meanwhile Eschler, headphones on and microphone in hand, kept in touch with police radio control on the ground.

  He turned back towards Müller and Tilsner in the seats behind.

  ‘They’ve had another sighting,’ he shouted above the roar of the helicopter’s engines.

  ‘What’s that?’ Müller shouted back.

  Eschler leaned backwards and moved his mouth close to her ear, then repeated what he’d said.

  ‘Where?’ shouted Müller.

  ‘Gamstädt,’ yelled Eschler. ‘Looks like he’s deliberately trying to avoid Erfurt. Where do you think it’s best for the pilot to head for?’

  Müller didn’t have to look at a map, she could picture the towns and villages en route.

  She lifted the right-hand headphone away from Eschler’s ear and brought her mouth close. ‘Head for Crawinkel. South-west of Arnstadt. He must be going the back way. We need to cut him off before he reaches the Thuringian forest. If he gets there before us, we’ll never find him.’

  Eschler relayed the instructions to the pilot, and an anxious conversation ensued.

  ‘He’s not sure we’ll catch him anyway,’ shouted the police captain. ‘Even at maximum speed, it’s still an hour or so’s flying time. He’s probably less than an hour’s drive away now.’

  ‘Not if he’s going the back way.’ She pointed down through the glass bubble of the cockpit. ‘And look – there’s snow lying on the ground even here. By the time we get to the Thuringian forest he might need chains.’

  Müller hoped, prayed, that her hunch was right. Because that’s all it was. She’d insisted that Eschler radio Oberst Frenzel to make sure patrols on the ground didn’t start chasing the Lada. She couldn’t bear the thought of the son she’d not yet seen being killed in a road accident before she’d had a chance to hold him. Müller had no real way of knowing where Johannes was going, where he was taking her baby. But the image burned on her mind was the one of Farmer Bonz’s field, back in 1952. The day she had been pretending to be the luge champion of the glorious republic of workers and peasants. The day the soldiers had come to take Johannes away. She felt sure he would be going back there to the field above the village. That, or the Pension Edelweiss, his family’s old guest house, which had now been converted into a youth hostel for the sons and daughters of loyal Party workers. Back to his home village for some last act of defiance.

  During the flight, Tilsner filled her in on the parts of the case that he’d pieced together thanks to the information in the 1950s road traffic reports and the raid on the Traugotts’ apartment in Complex Eight. The baby photos on the mantelpiece. Franziska Traugott pictured holding baby Tanja. Baby Maddelena. The unidentified baby from the 1960s who Tilsner suspected was one of the two Anderegg twins. And the final photo – from the late 1950s – of the young Franziska and Johannes Traugott, at the start of their married lives, with their two natural baby children – the ones who would be tragically killed by a drunk driver, but had been denied justice thanks to the account of the accident being doctored by the Republic’s authorities.

  Another report came through on the ground: the Lada had almost been trapped at a roadblock near Holzhausen, just to the west of Arnstadt, a few kilometres north of the Thuringian forest. But Johannes had evaded capture by heading down a farm track.

  Müller held her abdomen as the pilot swooped down, weaving less than a hundred metres above ground level. Pain flared up from her wound. She risked a look and then wished she hadn’t. Blood had soaked through the dressings.

  Tilsner, sitting next to her in the cramped cockpit behind Eschler and the pilot, squeezed her hand. ‘Hold on. We’ll get him, don’t worry.’

  And then they spotted the Lada, a red dot in a sea of white snow, approaching the edge of the forest. Müller could see the pilot forcing a lever to its fullest extent, the helicopter shaking as he pushed the rotors to their maximum velocity, the maximum thrust. They’d nearly caught him. And then they were hovering above the vehicle. The downdraft of the blades was churning the snow into eddies around the car.

  All of a sudden, Müller felt as though her womb was being pulled out through the bottom of her body as the pilot banked and climbed. A wall of green spruce trees filled all their vision in front of the cockpit. It looked like they had to crash into the forest. Müller, knuckles white, gripped Tilsner’s hand. Then clear sky, and snow-topped trees. They were above the forest canopy, the pilot shouting urgently in Eschler’s ear.

  The Hauptmann turned to Müller to convey the message. ‘Sorry, Karin. He got to the forest before us. The pilot had to pull up – couldn’t risk colliding with the trees. Where to now? Oberhof?’

  As her pulsing heartbeat started to settle, Müller nodded grimly.

  *

  Müller had no real idea what madness was churning around in Johannes Traugott’s head. But the image she clung to was the image of them as children, playing on the slope in the farmer’s field above the Republic’s prestige winter sports resort. If it was burned into Müller’s brain – as that day when the soldiers came certainly was – then surely it would have had an even greater effect on Johannes. He had been banished, his family had been banished, their business confiscated, their dreams stolen.

  As they approached Oberhof, swooping low over the forest canopy, Müller picked out the landmarks. The ski-jump hills and grandstands where
ultimately her courage had failed her, to the dismay of the hopeful members of the Republic’s Winter Olympics committee. The winding route of the bobsleigh and luge track, the place she and Johannes had imagined winning their medals. And the jagged shards of the ultra-modern, incongruous Interhotel Panorama, where the great and good of the Republic liked to spend their winter holidays.

  Eschler turned towards her with a quizzical look. Müller pointed to an area of sloping meadow overlooking the village with a plateau at its summit. As they flew towards it, Müller peered down at the village – concentrating on the former Pension Edelweiss. There was no sign of Johannes’s Lada – or her baby son. She looked to the left and saw her adoptive family’s guest house, the Hanneli, its blood-red walls a stark contrast to the pristine white of the surrounding snow. And then – as clouds of powdery snow were churned up by the rotor blades – they were slowly descending. Hovering, then gently landing, on the very top of Farmer Bonz’s field. The place where – some quarter of a century ago – Johannes Traugott had seen his family’s dreams ripped from their hands.

  As the whine of the rotors quietened and the spinning blades slowed, Eschler, Tilsner and the pilot all looked at Müller – the dishevelled, damaged People’s Police Oberleutnant, with her detective’s leather jacket failing to fully cover her hospital gown. No one said anything. But Müller knew what they were thinking. The same as she was thinking. He isn’t here, so what the hell do we do next?

  58

  Eschler had his headphones unplugged, and with the helicopter’s engine just idling, all four of them heard the radio message through the crackle and interference.

  ‘Incident at Interhotel Panorama. Armed man. All units attend. Urgent. Urgent.’

  The pain throbbing from the wound in her abdomen suddenly disappeared for Müller as adrenalin kicked in again. Eschler put the headphones back on, and Müller felt a lightness in her chest. She breathed in deeply as the pilot immediately increased the rotor speed – the whine of the engines and the chop-chop-chop noise of the blades speeding into a whir. Time seemed to slow. She didn’t understand why they weren’t moving. She pulled one of the cans off Escher’s head. ‘Why aren’t we taking off immediately?’ she screamed.