by Paul Grant
Markus scoffed. ‘That sounds about right. Anyway, it could be worse. We could be over there.’
Markus nodded towards the other side of the hold. Separated from the Germans by floor-to-ceiling iron bars were the rest of the prisoners: political prisoners, common criminals, the so-called thieves. Unlike Klaus and his comrades, any rations were taken by the thieves, leaving the politicals with nothing to eat. They took the best bunks, ruling their area with threats and violence to which the guards were impervious. Last night, Klaus had been forced to watch in horror as a group of thieves raped a female prisoner over and over. It was pitiful, but Klaus and his comrades knew better than to intervene. Survival was hard enough without starting a war with the thieves.
Since their sham trial at the Lubjanka in Moscow, as they’d dragged themselves chained through the snow, they realised they hadn’t been alone. Up to two hundred other German soldiers had been condemned with them for their alleged war crimes. For Klaus, Markus Schram and Arthur Koegel, their crime had been to shoot two Russian prisoners. It was something they hadn’t done, but Marz had fed the diminutive, vengeful Captain Dobrovsky the line to buy his freedom, or so they were led to believe.
Their twenty-five-year sentence was to be served in Kolyma. It was nine months since the trial and they still hadn’t arrived at their intended destination. The train journey from Moscow had taken them the length of Russia; east of the Urals, skirting the Caspian Sea, Tashkent, Irkutsk, Chita, places they’d never heard of. They had reached Vladivostok on the Pacific coast as emaciated skeletons, lice falling from their string-like beards. Soldiers reduced to skin and bone, dreaming of a home they were never likely to see again. Six months there, in the relative warmth, with regular food, their bodies had healed, returning to something like normal health. Klaus and his comrades did wonder for a time if this meant they had been pardoned and would be repatriated after all. It wasn’t the case; they were waiting only for the sea to thaw before continuing their journey by ship.
‘Where the hell is Magadan anyway?’ Koegel asked ponderously, his hands behind his head.
Markus shrugged. ‘Siberia.’
‘That narrows it down then.’
Klaus turned over on his makeshift hammock. ‘We’ve just passed Japan, heading north. It means eastern Siberia.’ In the dim light, he thought for a moment. ‘In fact, it won’t be so far from the American west coast.’
Markus perched himself up on his elbow. His face was almost green. ‘It’s hurting my head thinking about it. How the hell are we going to get away from a place so remote?’
‘I am sure we’ll have plenty of time to work it out when we get there,’ Klaus said, turning over. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to try and get some sleep.’
He was glad they were with him. In those conditions old comrades stuck together. They had to just to survive. Those isolated prisoners, those outsiders, had no one to look out for them, just like the political prisoners the thieves ostracised. Even with close friends, Klaus knew they had no hope of seeing out their sentence in those conditions. He knew they would have to adapt quickly to survive in the beginning. Then, in time, they would have to find a way out, a means of escape. That was the only way, the only chance he had of seeing Maria, or Ulrich, or Eva, again.
CHAPTER 2
MAY 1953, BERLIN
Ulrich Schultz loved to head back to where it had all started. He still felt the giddy somersaults in his stomach. Indeed, he still wore the stupid inane grin that his sister told him was spread across his face when he thought about it. It had been three years since the World Youth Festival. It had been a memorable occasion for Ulrich, but not because of all the pomp and ceremony, and not because of the hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the world who came to Berlin. It was when he’d first met Ursula.
He’d felt obliged to attend the festival, if only to help support friends in all they had planned. Even then, Ulrich had removed himself from all the activities, his mind made up long before. He was so glad that he did decide to go along that summer’s day. It had changed his life for the better, and in many ways had probably kept him in the eastern sector of Berlin.
He made his way to the sector border, crossing at Potsdamer Platz, once bustling with traffic, now only an array of broken buildings: Haus Vaterland, the Esplanade Hotel, and just on the western side of the symbolic white railings, the variety of shacks, plying their trade. He would have normally stopped to peruse the latest magazines from America, but not today; he had other things on his mind.
Crossing quickly over Lennestrasse, and heading into the Tiergarten, that smile inadvertently extended over his face. Ursula was waiting for him, flicking back her blonde hair in the spring sunshine. She rested against the memorial to the classical composers, Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart; it was where they liked to meet. Directly behind the monument was the massive Tiergarten where they could walk together, and talk, and do other things that perhaps their parents’ generation might not necessarily approve of, at least if Ulrich had his way.
She’d not seen him approaching, apparently lost in her thoughts. Ulrich used a large tree trunk as cover and crept around the back of the monument. He watched her for a moment as she smoothed over her skirt; she always looked immaculate.
‘Fräulein Lehmann, you look wonderful today.’
She put her hand to her chest in shock, then the secondary tension evaporated into a warm smile. She got up to embrace him.
‘You shouldn’t go creeping around like that,’ she chided him softly.
‘I couldn’t resist it. You were miles away.’
He noticed her face slip slightly; worry, angst.
‘What’s wrong?’
She shook her head. ‘Come on, let’s walk. I feel a chill.’
He quickly slid out of his jacket, placing it around her shoulders.
‘Smooth as ever, Ulrich Schultz.’ Her smile was warm and welcoming.
‘Not for every girl.’
They ambled along the main path on into the sprouting trees of the park; the first leaves of spring were showing, even though the trees were still sparse.
‘So what’s bothering you, my sweet?’
‘Ah, I’m just worried about Ilse.’
Her sister had a rare form of cancer. Ulrich had watched Ilse seemingly wasting away in a frighteningly short space of time.
‘What did the doctors say?’
‘Not much. They don’t seem to understand her illness. It makes my mother sick and Father just gets angry. Sometimes I feel so helpless, Uli.’
He squeezed her hand. He was amazed at her resilience, just another thing he adored about her.
‘You handle it all so well. It’s difficult to imagine how hard it must be.’
She sighed. ‘Let’s hope the new medication can do something for her.’
‘I am sure she’s in good hands.’ Ulrich didn’t feel like he was convincing himself.
‘We all have our crosses to bear,’ she sighed.
Ursula turned to him and pushed back his fringe. She put her head to his chest and he pulled her in tight and held her.
As soon as the fleeting moment of sadness was there, it was gone. Ursula lifted her head and her eyes widened. ‘My dad will be out tomorrow night.’
Ulrich smiled, feeling a longing, one that was familiar when Ursula was around. He let out an inadvertent groan and pushed himself against her, reaching down to run his hand over her perfect behind.
She tapped his chest playfully. ‘Tomorrow, Uli.’
He smiled mischievously. ‘You have to admit, it’d be fun out here in the open air.’
‘If you call chilblains on your backside fun, then yeah.’
She turned away and pulled him on by the hand. They ambled along the Grosser Weg, seemingly content in each other’s company.
‘How’s your mother?’ Ursula asked.
‘She’s okay; you know Mum. She’s still asking awkward questions about prisoners of war to anybody in power who wil
l listen.’
Ursula smiled. ‘She’s a strong woman.’
Ulrich flashed her a knowing look, but she was staring into the trees. Ursula and his mother hadn’t always seen eye to eye. It was probably because they were similar characters: resilient, headstrong, known to be stubborn. Sometimes Ulrich had wondered why his mother hadn’t moved on in life, as much as it pained him to think it. It had been ten years since Stalingrad, since his father had been taken prisoner by the Russians. In that intervening time there’d been one letter, around the time Ulrich had met Ursula, but nothing since.
He felt a tug on his sleeve. ‘A penny for them?’
‘I was just thinking about my cross.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Mother, Father; one and the same.’
Ulrich watched a veteran limp past them on crutches, one leg missing below the knee.
Ursula was on the same thought. ‘The war seems so long ago now, yet the effects never seem to go away.’
‘I still see him, hanging off that train at Anhalter, heading back to the front…’ Ulrich sighed.
‘I would have loved to have met him.’
‘Ach, listen to me,’ Ulrich said, trying to lighten the mood. ‘So, what does the delightful Fräulein Lehmann have planned this evening?’
‘Nothing exciting. I’ll be helping Mother with the kids, listening to Father complaining about Ulbricht. What about you?’
‘Heading to the Wild Boar.’
Ursula rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘A night with the boys?’
Ulrich shook his head, his face serious. ‘A meeting, dear. A meeting.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘A meeting with five glasses of Pilsner?’
‘Not this time. Hauser will be there.’
She stopped and turned to him. ‘You have to be careful, Uli.’
‘Ah, don’t worry. Nobody knows. It’s a private meeting in one of the back rooms…’
‘…which you know about, I know about and everybody else who will attend and their dogs know about.’ She glanced over her shoulder before continuing. ‘I keep telling you somebody will find out about it. Uli, you know more than anybody they arrest people without a reason, let alone for something like this.’
‘I promise you, I’ll be careful.’
He tried to soothe her by putting his hand to her cheek, but she pushed it away.
‘Like I said, it might not matter how careful you are.’
They carried on in silence, Ursula’s warning ringing in his ears. She was right, of course. She nearly always was, but it was too late for Ulrich now; he couldn’t change the way he thought; too much had happened. He was in it, further than he dare to admit to himself, or to Ursula.
She took hold of his hand again.
‘You know how I feel about it all, Uli. Most people feel the same, at least those without the jobs and the privileges. I just wonder if it’s all worth the risk. Nothing will change in the end.’
His instinct was to disagree with her, tell her that if they didn’t do something then nothing would change, but it wasn’t the time or the place. That time would come, quite soon, he felt.
CHAPTER 3
MAY 1953, BERLIN
So numerous had been the examples of his disenchantment with the regime in East Berlin, it required a concentrated effort for Ulrich to recall where it had actually all started. Making his way to the Wild Boar, he smiled to himself when he finally did remember. Of course, it was his first teenage crush, Gisella Trenkner. Everything about Gisella: her looks, her spirit, her smell; to a rampant teenager there were few like her. The days after the end of the war, the days of the Lichtenberg Youth anti-fascist group, were fond memories to Ulrich.
The group moved mountains in that summer of 1945, quite literally. They cleared streets of rubble, they set up food kitchens, and by the end of the year they even had an orphanage, for which sadly, there was a dire need at the time. To Ulrich, and he wasn’t alone, it felt spontaneous, unbidden. Perhaps it was a fightback against everything that had happened, a reaction against the past where nobody, especially their parents, wanted to delve.
There was nothing that couldn’t be achieved by the group with Gisella at the head of it all. She wasn’t exactly in charge, but to Ulrich she was. She was two years older than him, pretty and intelligent; where she went he followed, and Ulrich wasn’t the only one. Then one day, she vanished. Nobody knew where she’d gone, or why.
It took Ulrich a while to get over her disappearance. In the end, he learned to live with the realities of loss, just like that of his father. The group wasn’t much fun after that. It became serious, political, influenced by older people; the Free German Youth. Ulrich recalled looking around the bored faces at one of those meetings early the following year. The youth leaders who’d directed them in the summer of 1945 had gone. None of them were there, not one. Even Manfred Klich (whom Ulrich despised, mainly because Gisella adored him, much like he did her) wasn’t present. Back then, in that draughty, cracked-pillared, rear room of Lichtenberg Town Hall, the penny had finally dropped in his skittish adolescent mind.
The public bar in the Wild Boar was quiet. No more than a handful of regulars were scattered, individually, reading newspapers and staring into their Pilsners. Sauer, the barman, was filling a glass, tilted below the tap, a stained towel over his shoulder. He nodded to the double door to his left. ‘He said you’re to go straight up. They’ve started without you.’
Ulrich made his way quickly to the dark-panelled doors. He was intrigued by Hauser’s invitation. He’d known the man long enough; during Ulrich’s apprenticeship, Hauser was one of the first to take him under his wing on the sites, but that didn’t explain why he would be invited to a meeting such as this.
Once through the doors, he took the narrow staircase which brought him to a dimly lit corridor. As his footsteps echoed down it, a door at the end opened. A large round-shouldered man filled the door frame.
‘A young kid, Paul,’ the man called over his shoulder.
Ulrich stopped in front of him as the man barring his access eyed him suspiciously, until he recognised Hauser’s gravelly voice from within. ‘It’ll be Schultz. He’s okay.’
The heavy-set man grunted then stepped aside grudgingly, allowing Ulrich to pass. There were a dozen men seated at the table. The cramped room smelled of beer and working men. Hauser was leaning forward listening intently to Baumer, one of the welders from Block North of the Stalinallee building project.
‘I know somebody who works at a well-known newspaper…’ Ulrich could only assume he meant the Neues Deutschland, the regime mouthpiece and the only legal newspaper in the eastern sectors. ‘…Herrnstadt and Zaisser are pushing for reform.’
Hauser noticed Ulrich and nodded to the only empty chair, directly opposite him.
There was a scoff and a flurry of pipe smoke emanating from Grund. ‘Zaisser? He’s no bloody reformer. How many of our comrades have been picked up by his mob recently?’
Hauser held up his hand in a placatory manner. ‘All right, Grund, let’s hear Baumer out.’
‘…as I was saying, there’s a push for reform within the Politburo and the pressure is coming directly from Moscow. Since Stalin’s death, there’s support for some leniency.’
‘I just don’t see it.’ It was Grund again, his pipe in the air reinforcing his point. ‘Farms have been forcibly collectivised, private businesses shut down, production quotas have been increased; I don’t call that going soft, quite the opposite.’
Heads nodded around the table. Ulrich could only think he hadn’t seen a potato since last year.
Hauser took the point, nodding slightly, scanning around the room. Ulrich estimated he was in his late thirties. A few streaks of grey dashed an otherwise unblemished head of dark hair. Ursula would have called it distinguished. He was now one of the head engineers on the Stalinallee project.
‘The production norm increase is why I called us here. I wanted to get your thoughts on it. How
are the men?’
‘Pissed off,’ Grund quipped.
There was laughter.
‘Concise as ever, Jürgen. Thank you,’ Hauser said. ‘Schultz, what about Block South?’
The laughter died and all eyes turned to Ulrich. The youngest around the table by at least fifteen years, he had to wonder why he was there. The men there were all known and highly respected on the building sites of Berlin; some of the men there even remembered his father’s days on the sites. He wondered what he could say that this gathering would be interested in. Everybody was aware of the food shortages and the squeeze on wages, which in effect is what the increase in the norms was, but were too scared to talk about it openly. Grund was right, and so was Ursula; even minor complaints led to a spell in prison, or even a work camp.
His mouth was dry through nerves. He decided to tell it as it was.
‘In the twelve months we’ve been working on Block South, I’ve never known the labour shortage to be so bad.’
Ulrich paused. Hauser nodded, encouraging him to continue.
‘Last week, two of the bricklayers in my team didn’t return to work. One went west, the other… who knows?’
Grund nodded, his earlier point seemingly vindicated.
‘They were eventually replaced by four volunteers; nice people, don’t get me wrong, but none of them knew one end of a trowel from the other. I had to take down and rebuild the walling they did. We missed our work norm.’ Ulrich shrugged. ‘Our foreman was happy because he filled his volunteer work hours quota, but the other men not so as we had less money.’
Hauser smiled knowingly. ‘Thank you, Schultz.’
‘Just one more thing.’ Ulrich looked around the table, his confidence rising. ‘One of the bricklayers happened to mention to another that Goatee had no idea how to run a country. The foreman, Lange, was standing right behind him when he said it. I don’t need to tell you that the man who said those words was one of the men who didn’t come into work on Monday morning.’