The Escape Page 19

What have you to tell us?

  It’s all set up, you know. The journalism is just a front. I am part of his cover. So that’s the truth, okay? I’m here as cover for my drug-dealing boyfriend so he can turn the whole of the GDR into cocaine guzzling monkeys the moment the Wall comes down. Okay? That what you want to hear?

  I am still shouting when the telephone on the desk rings. I yell – what, I barely know – ranting like a lunatic. I see the Stasi officer mouth a response into the receiver, hang up the telephone, frown at me.

  I am screaming, rising to my feet, pointing at the bruise on my temple, calling out how ironic it is that ‘You Stasi idiots actually treat me better than the man who said he loved me!’

  I see the captain lift a hand and bang it down, flat on the desk. The telephone jingle-jolts. I shut up then. ‘The guilty ones merely cry and repeat their stock phrases,’ he says. ‘Only the innocent get angry. And we have just received corroboration of your ridiculous story.’ He smiles then, looking like someone’s kind uncle. ‘For you, it’s over. You are free to go, Fräulein.’

  Chapter 27

  January 1945, Liberated Germany

  Tom

  Sunlight exploded onto his face as he emerged from the darkness of the cellar. To his right, behind the lines of trees, the military traffic growled along the main street. Above the remains of the village wispy trails of black smoke curled up into the empty blue sky. The cold air bit his bare cheeks and his feet slithered on the icy path as he walked alongside the Russian major, past the church, with the chunk taken out of the transept.

  ‘Field HQ,’ the major said, gesturing at the manse.

  ‘Your HQ?’ How soon everything had changed. Only yesterday he’d been hiding from the Nazis there, now it was a Russian headquarters.

  ‘For today, only. Tomorrow, maybe Breslau.’ Tom glanced sideways and caught the major’s smile. The Red Army were proud of the rate of their advance into Nazi Germany. There was no stopping them now.

  ‘And Berlin?’ Tom said. ‘How soon until you take Berlin?’

  ‘Soon.’ The major’s smile slipped, and a look of determination froze his angular features. ‘Very soon.’

  As they approached the manse, Tom noticed the old beech tree in front of it was blackened, cauterized, still smouldering. His nostrils filled with the acrid smell of it. The major ushered him ahead, and they went inside.

  Already the place was irrevocably changed: windows blown in, shattered glass on the lino, the faint stench of excrement. A single brown leather boot lay discarded at the foot of the stairwell, halfway up a few items of male underwear hung draped from the bannisters in a dreary striptease. Pictures had been ripped from the wall and smashed. The vase of dried roses in the hallway was gone.

  Perhaps the Russian major saw the shock on Tom’s face. In any case, he seemed to feel the need to explain. ‘The men, they have nothing. The soldiers’ pay is not good. When we win, they take.’ He shrugged, as if forgiving naughty children who’d had their hands in the biscuit tin.

  ‘They are allowed to take everything?’ Tom said.

  ‘They are poor. They have nothing, so they take.’ The major made grabbing motions with his hands, and shrugged again.

  Tom thought of Detta then. These conquering Red Army infantiers were free to take with impunity. And would the ‘taking’ include the taking of women, the fleeting thrill of violent pleasure? Of course it would.

  He told himself to calm down. Detta was hidden in the cellar with Gordon. She’d be fine, wouldn’t she?

  Detta

  He held her hand as he said it, and lifted it to his lips, not in the flirtatious way he usually did, but with sad tenderness: ‘Je suis désolé.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. They’re coming for me. They’ll be here any moment. You must be mistaken, Jean-Paul.’

  ‘No, no, we saw them. It was definitely them, wasn’t it, Henri?’ His friend nodded. Two skinny women stood behind them in the doorway, wide-eyed and shivering. Jean-Paul explained that he and Henri had taken advantage in the lull in the fighting as the front line passed through the village to make a dash back from the farmstead with their Polish girlfriends. Like Detta, they’d had to dive for cover when the German plane flew over, spraying bullets. They were coming across the football field. He said the ambulance was in the back lane, at the junction with the main road, beside the old stable block, its engine running. A priest and a woman in a green coat got out. ‘It looked as if they were about to run across the road to the barracks when the plane came. They dropped to the ground. But afterwards, they didn’t get up. We passed close by the bodies. It was definitely them.’

  ‘Yes it was. I’m sorry,’ Henri said.

  ‘But it can’t be true.’

  ‘We both saw. I’m so sorry.’ Jean-Paul let go of her hand. The two women shuffled silently down the steps beside her and on down into the darkness, and the men followed on behind.

  ‘Detta, please come back,’ Gordon called from the cellar below. But the door was still ajar. Detta stepped out into the cold and slammed it shut behind her. The sun was fully up and her eyes squinted in the sudden glare. She turned right, almost blinded by the flash of sunlight on snow, keeping her right hand on the cellar wall to guide her: round the corner, behind the line of trees, parallel to the main road. She paused in the bright, brittle air, taking it in. As her eyes adjusted, she saw. The village, as she knew it, was gone. Houses and shops bore the scars of last night, their walls pock-marked and crumbling, windows and doors blown in. Some, like the bakery, were just reduced to rubble. Others, like the Muller Farm, had collapsed, rooftops smouldering. Through the treeline, along the main road, she saw two columns of tanks with red stars painted on their sides, ragged-looking infantry soldiers jogging alongside. Choking exhaust fumes rose to meet the icy-clear skies.

  She heard the cellar door bang open, and Gordon’s voice calling her, but she ignored him and carried on walking the line between the side of the barrack block and the beech trees.

  Jean-Paul said the ambulance had stopped up the street, beyond the barracks. Perhaps it was still there? But the road was filled with the clatter and stink of the military traffic and it was impossible to see clearly past the stable block to the junction with the estate road.

  She paused, scanning along the moving mass of men and machines, looking for a glimpse of a red cross on the side of a vehicle, or the dark green of her mother’s coat. One of the soldiers spotted her, and ran over, yelling something incomprehensible. His grimy face was flushed, sweat beaded his black brows. Detta shrugged and shook her head to show she didn’t understand what he was asking. But he yelled again, jabbing a finger at his left forearm, as if wanting to know the time. Detta pushed back her coat sleeve to reveal her wrist watch. The glass glinted as she angled the face towards him so he could read it. But he just grabbed her wrist, put a finger under the watch’s gold band and ripped it off, laughing as he stuffed it in his pocket and ran back to join his comrades.

  Stunned, Detta just stood still, seeing him go. The watch had been a gift from her mother following her first communion. At the thought she jolted back into herself: Mother. She had to find out if what Jean-Paul said was true.

  She turned left and along the tree-lined verge until she reached the old stable block. She was just lifting her leg to step over what she assumed was a fallen tree branch, when she looked down, and saw a face.

  She leant over. There, looking up from the mud beside a storm ditch, was the face of a boy. He had wide grey eyes, staring up at the sky with a surprised expression. He had a tip-tilted nose, and on his cheeks, the livid pink speckle of adolescent acne. From the waist down, his body no longer existed, mangled into mush beneath tank tracks. His Wehrmacht helmet had slipped to one side a little. Out of respect, Detta bent down to straighten it up. As she touched it, it slid off, rolling away to reveal a red-grey slimy mass. The boy’s face was intact, but the rest of his skull had been blown clean away.

  She withdrew her trembling
fingers, straightened up, gulping down choking bile. Then she stepped over the corpse, as if it really had been nothing more than a fallen branch in her way. To allow the Red Army infantiers to see her weeping over the body of a Wehrmacht soldier would have been inviting a bullet.

  She staggered a few steps forward and leant against the edge of the mounting block next to the old stables, telling herself to breathe and calm down. If the Frenchmen were right, then she’d be able to see the bodies soon. Perhaps they were mistaken, and it wasn’t Mother and Father Richter at all. Or if it were, they might still be alive, able to be saved. The tanks still rumbled relentlessly onwards. As she paused, she noticed a Russian soldier, urinating against one of the trees a few paces along. She turned away, but not before he’d seen her looking at him.

  She pushed her sleeves up, showing her empty wrists, proving she had nothing for him. He left his fly undone and swaggered over to where she stood, saying something in Russian. He was short and stocky, with ammunition draped over his shoulders and a bayonet slung at his waist. She made a move to cross the road but he yelled ‘Stoy!’ and lifted his weapon. As he came closer she could see that his uniform was bedraggled and filthy, one flap missing from his fur cap. He said something else in Russian and made a gesture with the gun, shoving his face in close. He had high cheekbones and sinkhole eyes. His breath reeked of alcohol. She didn’t need to understand Russian to know that he wanted her to go into the stables with him.

  ‘Nyet,’ she said. No. Just about the only Russian word she knew. But he took no notice and prodded her in the ribs with the gun. She winced and repeated ‘Nyet,’ casting her eyes round for someone to help her. But there was just the endless thunder of the passing tanks, the swirl of choking exhaust fumes, the onward thrust towards the next battle. Nobody took any notice of the local girl saying ‘no’ as the drunken soldier lifted his gun.

  ‘Je suis française!’ she yelled in desperation, shaking her head. If he thought she was French he might not attack her. It was the Germans they hated, wasn’t it? ‘Je suis—’

  The gun hit her hard and swift in the solar plexus. She fell back, winded, landing awkwardly against the mounting block, legs splayed, unable to breathe, unable to move.

  The soldier had just dropped his gun on the ground and was reaching towards her when one of the tanks veered up onto the verge beside them, glancing off a tree trunk. The turret hatch flew open and the commander’s head appeared. The soldier paused, turned to look. The commander took off the helmet and goggles and a shock of fair hair tumbled out from underneath. There was the sound of a woman shouting in Russian.

  She roared at the soldier, pointed at the discarded weapon and his undone fly, gestured up the Breslau road. He didn’t move, at first, until the tank turret swivelled round, until the gun barrel pointed directly at his head. The commander barked and gesticulated some more until the soldier did up his fly and picked up his weapon.

  Before he left, he spat in the snow, a thick green-grey clot, right at Detta’s feet. Then he went, away up the road with the others, lost in the machinery of war.

  The commander put her helmet and goggles back on, nodded at Detta, withdrew into the T-34, slammed the turret shut, and swivelled back onto the road to join the rest of the column.

  ‘. . . française,’ Detta said, having breath now to finish her sentence. She stood up, pushed her skirt back down.

  ‘Je suis française,’ she repeated, pulling her German ID documents from her pockets and tearing them into tiny pieces. She let the torn strips flutter down into the place where the Russian soldier had spat, stamping them underfoot, so they mixed in with the dirty slush and his phlegm.

  All that was left in her pocket now was a torn postcard, with an address in England written in pencil. She folded her arms to stop herself from shaking, her mind empty of all thought. ‘Je suis française.’ She repeated it to herself under her breath, as she carried on walking, past the stable block, to the junction where the estate road joined the main road to Breslau. ‘Je m’appelle Odette, et je suis française.’

  Tom

  ‘So, what do you need from me?’ Tom said.

  ‘First, we drink.’ The major indicated the open door of the priest’s old study. The books were still there, although they’d been pulled off the shelves and were strewn on the floor. The picture of the Virgin Mary had been wrenched from the wall and lay near the desk, glass smashed, a footprint across her impassive face. ‘Here, to your freedom!’ Tom realized the major was handing him a hip flask. He took a swig. Fire ran down his throat and ignited his insides. It was the strongest vodka he’d ever had. He made a face. The major laughed, took the flask from him and gulped down some himself, smacking his lips and wiping his moustache on his sleeve. Then he raised the flask in the air. ‘To Stalin!’ he said, taking another gulp and passing the flask back to Tom.

  ‘Stalin!’ Tom echoed, and took another swig.

  After that, the major had him fill in a form with his name, rank and number, and Gordon’s too.

  ‘Two British prisoners only?’ he said, checking the details.

  ‘Two,’ Tom nodded, thinking of Detta. If only there had been time to marry her, and claim her as British. If only there were a way to keep her safe. ‘We can go home – to England – now?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Allies go home. Today. Transport is coming.’

  ‘Can I go back now? My colleague will be wondering where I am.’ (What about Detta, how the hell was he going to keep her safe if he was being sent home?)

  ‘Yes, yes, ma-jor-i. I come with you. I need – how you say – head count. How many French workers.’

  ‘You’re repatriating the forced workers, too?’

  ‘Repeat please.’

  ‘The French workers – you are sending them home?’

  ‘Yes, yes, they go in truck with you.’

  So he and Gordon were to be sent east on transport with the French. Tom’s mind began to work.

  They left the manse and went out into the aching-bright sunshine together, back up the path past the wounded church, towards the French barracks. As they got closer he could see that Gordon stood in the cellar doorway, his cardboard Union Jack dangling from one hand, the other shading his brow as he looked out across the ruined village.

  He seemed to be looking for something. As if something – or someone – was lost.

  Chapter 28

  November 1989, Frankfurt an der Oder, East Germany

  Miranda

  Somewhere a bell chimes. I adjust the rucksack on my back. It is lighter than it was. The Stasi have kept my Leica and film as ‘evidence’. I would be angrier if I had the energy but I’m just relieved the ordeal is over. At least they left the Rolleiflex, perhaps thinking that it is just a bit of antique junk. I can feel the bulge of the old camera prodding the base of my spine through the fabric. I take a breath, the air a cold catch in my throat.

  I’m free to go, they said, shoving me out of the metal doors. But free to go where? I look at my surroundings. Beyond the scrubby park and the wide street a hypodermic church spire pricks the dark underbelly of the clouds. It’s twilight already. Streetlights droop like snowdrops.

  I try to force my wrung-out brain to make a plan, but it is all I can do to make my legs move forward along a path between trees like upturned witches’ brooms. A woman in orange trousers and a black fur coat sits on one of the park benches smoking a cigarette. As I get closer I see her coiffed poodle sniffing at a metal litter bin and cocking his leg.

  I ask the woman if there are any hotels or guesthouses nearby, thinking only of the need for food and sleep. She gestures with her cigarette: the Stadt Hotel is just down Karl-Marx Strasse, she says, past the Oderturm, see it? She points at a rectangular tower, head and shoulders above the other city blocks. It’s on the far side of Brunnenplatz, past the fountains, you can’t miss it, she says. I thank her and walk on, remembering the last time I stayed in a hotel.

  Not long after we met, Quill took me for a weekend at
the Salcombe Hotel, on the South Devon coast. He had part ownership of a yacht with a friend of his, who was due to be bringing it into port after a transatlantic trip (now I realize how naive I was, not to have made the link between Quill’s five-star lifestyle and the fact his yacht regularly criss-crossed the Atlantic between South America and Europe). That weekend we had candle-lit suppers, long afternoons in bed, stroking skin and hair, dozing when we felt like it, waking up with kisses, murmuring endearments, making impractical plans about our future. I even remember discussing what we’d call our children.

  My throat tightens but I hold back the tears. What’s the point?

  I’ve reached the edge of the park now, and turn right along Karl-Marx Strasse. A tram skids to a halt beside me. The automatic doors disgorge a squat man with a brown belted PVC jacket, carrying an empty string bag. The doors snap shut and the tram careers away, clanging along rails embedded in the cobbles. As the man brushes past me, I see his pale, sagged cheeks and the bruised shadows beneath his eyes. My face probably looks like that too: ground down and exhausted. I walk on towards the junction. On the opposite side of the street, a pale blue chimney pokes up from behind featureless grey buildings. Smoke plumes upwards, and I’m reminded of Gran’s slender pastel-coloured cocktail cigarettes.

  At the junction with Logenstrasse a white-gloved traffic cop twirls his baton like a conductor, the orchestra his traffic: the stuttering two-stroke Trabants, bass notes of Wartburgs, roaring motorbikes, rattle of trams, screech of brakes. I think of Berlin, the gridlocked lines of cars either side of the newly opened checkpoints. You’d have thought all the vehicles in East Germany were being sucked West through the plughole of the Berlin Wall. But there seem to be plenty left here in Frankfurt an der Oder. It feels like a rush hour. My sleep-deprived mind grasps for handholds of information. If it is rush hour, then it must be a weekday. So I must have lost a whole weekend, maybe more, locked up in the Stasi HQ. When he released me the captain said that somebody had corroborated my story, which was why I was free to leave. So somebody knows I am here. Who?