Puzzle People (9781613280126) (5 page)

6

Berlin
April 2003

Annie dropped the final jagged slice of a photograph into place. The result was a shattered image—an old black-and-white Polaroid of a young couple sitting across a checkered table from each other in a coffeehouse. Reconstructing photographs was a welcome relief from the monotony of words in the Stasi documents. A photo felt more like a real jigsaw puzzle.

Staring at the finished product, Annie wondered if the man and the woman in the picture could be any of the people she kept encountering in her sack of shredded documents. The woman had close-cropped hair, and Annie couldn’t help but be reminded of Audrey Hepburn, her favorite actress. Her favorite movie:
Roman Holiday.
The man was tall, blond, and handsome, but he looked so rigid sitting there in a suit coat—the complete opposite of the woman.

Annie was pleased with her progress on this day. If she kept this up, she might reconstruct fourteen documents—a new personal best.

“So tell me about this missionary work your parents did,” Kurt suddenly said from his side of the office. “What church?”

Annie took a sip of Pepsi, savoring the carbonation blast. “Baptist. Their outreach was to countries behind the Iron Curtain.”

“Sounds intriguing. What did they do?”

Annie paused, not sure how Kurt would react to her parents’ primary mission. “They smuggled Bibles into Eastern Bloc countries.”

Jaw dropping, Kurt set down the scrap of paper in his right hand. “Really? That’s astonishing. And they were never caught?”

“Never, although they had some close calls in Czechoslovakia.”

“How did they manage it?”

“Usually by hiding the Bibles in secret compartments built into their Volkswagen.”

“Sounds like the same tricks used to smuggle
people
out of East Berlin. My favorite was the man who built an ingenious compartment between the dashboard and the engine—a space big enough to hide a person that could only be discovered by dismantling the vehicle.”

“I heard about that one. Amazing.”

With the photo complete, Annie started sorting through another pile of scraps—another boring report. “What about you? Did your family go to a church?”

“Only when I was very young. It was just too tough in the East. It would’ve made life very difficult for us if we remained in the church, so the Young Pioneers became my religion.”

“Was it required?”

“No, not overtly. But there was a lot of pressure to be a Young Pioneer.”

Annie was well aware of the Young Pioneers, a kind of a socialist scouting organization. Most children in the GDR were Young Pioneers beginning with first grade, and then they entered the Free German Youth by eighth grade.

“I wore the red scarf and the pointy hat,” Kurt said. “In the East, we loved our uniforms. So I was a good communist youth. Too good, I’m afraid.”

Once again, Annie sensed she had stumbled into taboo territory. She sensed sadness in his words, so she quickly switched the subject to lighter things—Karl May and his Westerns. Then the subject moved to the American West once again, and Kurt asked if Annie could bring in some old photos of Arizona.

“We could look at them over lunch,” he suggested. “It would be fun to see you as a child growing up in Arizona.”

“I don’t know about that. I was one chubby tyke. But maybe, instead, I could show you photographs of Arizona when my husband and I lived there and my children were young.”

Annie’s eyes flicked to the framed picture of her two grown children, and as she stared at it, her smile slowly melted way. Then she answered the unspoken question she knew was floating in Kurt’s mind. “My husband died. A car accident. Age forty-two.”

Kurt looked down and began fumbling with his puzzles. “I am so sorry. I had no idea . . .”

There seemed to be no shortage of sensitive subjects, Annie thought. “I can talk about it—now. It’s been five years, although not a single day goes by without me wishing I could talk to him.”

Annie looked back at the photograph, without really seeing it.

“My favorite writer once said that losing a spouse is like an amputation,” she said. “It begins with a searing pain and becomes a phantom ache, a constant reminder of what you’ve lost. Everything you do in life—dressing, walking, bathing—reminds you that you no longer have a second leg.” Annie looked Kurt in the eyes. “I limp along. I get by.”

“It’s . . . it can’t be easy.”

“My children are always there for me, and that helps.”

Annie missed her children back in the States and sometimes wondered if it had been a mistake returning to Germany. It would be for only a year, she had vowed. She needed to get away from Arizona, and Germany was her escape route.

She wanted to ask Kurt if he had ever married, ever had children. But she realized that one touchy topic was enough for one afternoon. So she rattled on about her two children—the son who wanted to become a detective and the daughter who worked as a vet in Arizona. A horse expert. Talk of horses brought the focus back to the West, and then they both worked in silence until Kurt left early for a dentist’s appointment.

Annie got up and stretched. She was beginning to feel a little drowsy, so she strolled to the break room, where she stored her stash of Pepsi in the refrigerator. Europe was overrun by Coca-Cola, but Annie had discovered a small store that stocked Pepsi, so she regularly loaded up. Maybe another can would wake her up. Her drowsiness made her think about the report on Juliet that she had recently reconstructed—the one detailing Juliet’s incessant interrogations and sleep deprivation. The Stasi were convinced that Juliet knew about Romeo’s escape and had distributed subversive leaflets, but they also saw her as somebody who could be easily manipulated.

Back at her desk, Annie finished off another routine report on an old woman code-named Medusa, and then she began to piece together a document that was surprisingly current compared to the others on which she had been working. It was dated November 14, 1989.

November 1989. Annie couldn’t miss the significance of that month and that year. The Berlin borders opened on November 9, 1989, and the Wall came down soon after, so this must have been one of the last documents placed in this person’s Stasi file before East Germany collapsed. Shuffling through a pile of scraps, she worked quickly and efficiently. The document had obviously been ripped by hand because it had jagged edges, not the smooth slice of a shredder. Annie matched edges and split words, even stains on the paper.

As the paragraphs came together, a familiar name rose from the paper:
Stefan Hansel.
Evidently, Stefan had become active in the church protests taking place in Leipzig. The famous Monday prayer meetings in Leipzig had transformed into massive but peaceful demonstrations in 1989, and it appears that Stefan became a part of the movement. But he had been an informer, according to other documents, and Annie wondered if he had been sent to Leipzig to infiltrate the church.

What took her breath away, however, was one particular paragraph. She read it three times. The words were so matter-of-fact, but the subject was anything but ordinary.

5:15 p.m.—Made contact with 5839392. Discussed concerns about Hansel. Decided extreme measures would be necessary. Discussed methods.

7

East Berlin
November 9, 1989

Stefan Hansel was drawn toward the checkpoint. Like hundreds of others, thousands maybe, he moved toward the border in disbelief.

“Is it true?” he asked an older man just to make sure he had heard the news correctly.

“It’s true,” said the man, taking a big bite of black bread as he strolled down the middle of the street. East Berlin streets were notoriously quiet at night—but not this Thursday night. It was as if people just picked up in the middle of what they were doing and started for the border. Stefan even saw a couple of people in their pajamas, with jackets thrown over their nightclothes because, after all, this was November in Berlin.

Something big was happening.

Stefan lived in Leipzig, but he had come to Berlin two days ago to lend a hand in the protests coming out of Gethsemane Church. He had no idea what he was walking into. As he moved closer to the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint, the crowd grew thicker, the tension more palpable. He got up on tiptoes and tried to get a better look.

“Aren’t they letting people through?” he asked a young woman.

“I don’t think so. This is ridiculous.”

But he was sure he had heard correctly. Like so many people, he had been watching the regular news conference held by East German leaders and televised every evening at six o’clock. People had been glued to the news as stories spread that East Germany was going bankrupt, collapsing under the weight of its massive debt. It had been forty years since the GDR was born and twenty-eight years since the Wall had gone up, and the country was in chaos; all of Eastern Europe was in turmoil, with politicians bickering and blaming each other, demonstrators filling the streets, and people demanding the freedom to travel wherever they wanted. Then this evening, the unthinkable happened. Günter Schabowski, a communist bureaucrat, had announced out of the blue to a room packed with international journalists that travel restrictions for East Germans would be lifted.

For a moment, the journalists were stunned. Then an Italian journalist started firing questions, not even waiting to be recognized. “Would travel from East to West require a passport?”

“Well . . . yes,” Schabowski said, a little confused.

The questions kept coming.

“Would the Berlin crossings be included?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“When does it come into effect?”

Schabowski shuffled through his stack of papers, the perfect picture of bureaucratic bafflement. He was a large, fleshy man with heavy circles under his eyes and the beginnings of a double chin, and he wore a rumpled suit coat, with his tie askew.

“Well, as far as I can see . . .” More shuffling of papers. Then he spoke two words, which detonated in the room like a bomb: “Sofort. Unverzüglich.” Immediately. Without delay.

The border between East and West Berlin would open after being closed for twenty-eight years? It would open immediately?

People kept coming, moving toward the border crossing, mostly on foot. Stefan was on foot because, like most East Germans, he didn’t own a car. He had been on the waiting list for a Trabant 601 for seven years now, but most people had to wait more than ten years for one of these machines. He still had a long way to go.

Stefan passed a boxy white car, where a middle-aged East Berlin officer—a member of the Volkspolizei—sat in the passenger seat with the door open and his leg sticking out, as if he was afraid to completely emerge and face the People. A crowd stood by, staring, impassive. His car’s microphone crackled and popped.

“This is an announcement about the possibility of travel to West Berlin and West Germany,” the Vopo in a pea green coat announced in a voice depersonalized by the cheap electronics. He adjusted his large square-rimmed glasses. “Dear citizens, I ask you in the name of order and safety to leave the checkpoint.”

Stefan looked at the faces surrounding him. Not one of the “dear citizens” budged in response to the policeman’s plea. But the officer continued to operate under the assumption that he would be able to send the People home with a few choice words. He paused for a blast of feedback. Even the electronics were not obeying his authority on this night. “It is not possible to grant you permission to travel here and now!” he shouted.

Still, no one budged. The People just stared back at the People’s Policeman as if he was speaking another language. Stefan moved through the crowd, which was hemmed in by a shoulder-height fence that funneled everyone toward the narrow opening; however, border guards were not letting anyone through. He fought his way closer to the front, where tensions were higher and the crowd was louder. It was a hornet’s nest of angry young men.

“The border guards say it’s not true,” a bearded middle-aged man said. “They’re not letting anyone across the border.”

“But the government announced it on TV!” Stefan insisted.

“The border guards claim they know nothing about that.”

Was the announcement of the opening of the border all a mistake? If it was, it seemed oddly fitting that bureaucratic bumbling would trigger what was happening this night.

“They’re jerking us around! Same as always!” shouted a man in a blue denim coat. “I could have stayed home and slept! This is total bull!”

Other young men chimed in, a chorus of pent-up frustration.

“This is a joke!”

“All we want is to have a walk for two hours and then come back!” declared another, taking a long drag on his cigarette.

All
they wanted was a walk in West Berlin for two hours? This was no small wish, Stefan thought. For almost three decades, East Germans had been dreaming about the freedom to do just that. But they had been prevented from doing so by a wall that weaved its way through the city like a petrified serpent.

The fortifications along this surreal structure were insurmountable. At some points, Stefan could not even see the Wall, for it was the last in a long line of defenses. There were actually two walls—an inner wall or fence on the eastern side and the Berlin Wall on the western side. Caught between the two walls was a death strip, flooded with light and rigged with all sorts of hazards, from trip alarms to a carpet of metal spikes—“Stalin’s lawn,” they called it. Next came an anti-vehicle trench and then a stretch of sand so escapers would leave a trail of footprints. If some miracle of God took you this far without being shot, you might encounter a dog run, and if you got past the German shepherds, you still had to confront the Wall, rising almost twelve feet from the ground in places and topped with rounded piping that gave you nothing to grip.

Escapes still happened occasionally, but not like in the first couple of years after the Wall went up and before the death strip was fully developed. Stefan knew this firsthand, for he would never forget one particular escape twenty-eight years ago. His girlfriend, Katarina, had done it—without him. If the border to West Berlin really did open this night, Stefan wondered if he would have the nerve to locate Katarina, assuming she was even alive and living in Germany. What would she think of him? Would she turn her back on him for the things he had done? Or would she understand? Would she realize that no one really had any choices on this side of the Wall?

Katarina was probably a contented middle-aged woman by now. When they were in love, he was only twenty-one years old, and she was twenty. She was dark-haired, wild, and daring. He was cautious, so no wonder she never told him of her plans to escape. She didn’t trust him, and she probably had good reason. When Stefan thought back to the things he had done, he felt sick. But he had found redemption, hadn’t he? Sometimes he had a hard time believing it.

He looked around. The people kept coming, an exodus with an invisible Moses, driven by the excitement of news spread by word of mouth. The border guards were totally unprepared for what was happening. In some countries, the crowd would have started running by now, trampling the guards and storming across the bridge on the other side of the border crossing. But this was Germany. People waited for permission.

“Come back tomorrow,” a grandfatherly border guard commanded with little authority, his green Vopo coat stretched tightly across his portly body, buttons straining. His order was met with stares, and the people just kept coming and coming, like water pushing on a dike. Something had to give. The dam was about to burst. Then the chants began: “Open the gate! Open the gate! Open the gate! We will come back! We will come back! We will come back!”

The guards finally started letting people through, but only one at a time. It was like trying to release the pressure on a levee by letting out the water, one single drop at a time. This checkpoint was not a place for anyone with claustrophobia. There were no gaps between bodies as the crowd surged forward with nowhere to go. People began to spill out of the containment, filling up the area where cars were idling in line. The cars stretched beyond sight, but East Berliners were used to lines. If they could wait in line for hours for bananas, which were available only once or twice a year, they could wait in line for a taste of freedom.

A man next to Stefan ripped up his passport and shouted, “Freedom doesn’t need papers! Freedom doesn’t need papers!” In no time, the area for cars was overrun with people, although there remained a narrow channel for the vehicles to come through. Stefan let the current of humanity carry him into this spillway, where the only border barrier was a knee-high candy-striped bar. On the other side of the bar were a handful of befuddled guards, unsure of how to handle the swelling masses. A man reached out and clapped one of the guards on the shoulder—a friendly gesture.

The chanting picked up again. “
OPEN
!
OPEN
!
OPEN
!” Whistling. Waving. Two-finger peace signs rose up from the crowd. The vast majority of people at the front were men, with a scattering of women; and the roar became deafening, explosive, and Stefan began to wonder if he could be trampled or crushed. It happened at football games. Why not here?

“We will come back! We will come back! We will come back!” Thousands of voices filled the night air. Suddenly, one of the border guards shoved a curly-haired young man, pushing him backward with two hands on the chest. The man shoved back, then retreated a few steps, and the confrontation sizzled out.

“This is insanity! Let us out! We will come back!” the curly-haired man shouted, gesturing with his right hand.

Another burst of chanting arose from the crowd. “We will come back! We will come back! We will come back!”

Stefan wondered if that was true. If the borders opened wide, would the East Berliners really come back? That was why the powers that be put up the Wall in the first place—to keep East Germans from fleeing to the West and never coming back. The Wall was a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Stefan was only ten feet from the border barriers, and he was packed in tightly, elbows hitting him in the side, people rising on their tiptoes to keep their head above water. For a moment, he felt the crush of the crowd, and he wondered if this orderly throng was about to lose control.

Then just like that, the guards gave up. Someone must have finally decided it was ridiculous trying to check passports, one at a time, when tens of thousands of people were shoving their way forward. So the Vopos pushed aside the barriers and let the people go without bothering with the formalities of inspecting passports. They broke the levee, and Stefan was swept along by the surge of citizens pouring through the gap. An enormous roar went up from the crowd as they flooded westward across the border and into West Berlin, people pumping their arms in the air, people jumping for joy, people clapping, people whistling. Border guards stood off to the side, arms behind their backs, watching with confused and forlorn looks on their faces. The guards’ world had split apart, but Stefan’s world had just opened up. He started running, dodging people on all sides, screaming for joy.

“Ole, ole, ole!” sang a group of men, waving a German flag. “Ole Germany!”