Puzzle People (9781613280126) (9 page)

This perked up Stefan’s father, who sat up straight in his chair. “What did you get, Stefan?”

Stefan started to reach into his pocket, to show them his pack of cigarettes, when his mother fired back, “We don’t care what they threw over the Wall. We don’t need Wessi charity. Were they up on their observation platforms, as always, throwing things over the Wall like people feeding animals at the zoo?”

“But we
do
live in a zoo,” his father muttered before letting his armchair swallow him up again.

By nine o’clock, Stefan’s father was adrift in sleep, and his sister and her boyfriend had left for a Christmas Eve party. Stefan decided to call it an evening and wished he had enough money to get drunk. On his way out, he stepped on a small patch of ice and skidded slightly, but caught his balance in time. He blew warm air into his cupped hands, kicking himself for forgetting to bring gloves. He headed home for a quiet night of reading—a book instead of a bottle.

“Stefan.”

He was only a half block away from his apartment building when he heard a voice call to him from the darkness. A familiar voice.
Katarina’s voice.
But that couldn’t be. He had to be hearing things.

Stopping in his tracks, Stefan turned toward the voice and stared into a patch of deep darkness between two apartment buildings. He thought he must be insane.

“Stefan. It’s me.”

“Katarina?” Stefan stepped off the sidewalk onto the grass. As he did, a familiar perfume reached his senses. Katarina emerged from the shadows and wrapped her arms around him. They kissed. Stefan couldn’t believe this. Had she returned?

“I missed you,” he said, and then he pulled her even closer.

“I miss you too.”

They stood that way, wrapped in each other’s arms, not saying a word, keeping each other warm.

“You returned to me,” he said.

Then Katarina pushed away, gently, and looked him in the eyes. She had been crying, but when her gaze drifted down to the ground, a smile broke through.

“Nice pants,” she said, laughing and wiping away a tear.

Stefan looked down and remembered his ill-fitting slacks. “My father’s pants. Don’t ask.” He moved in for another kiss, but she held him back.

“I haven’t much time. I must get back.”

“Back? Where?”

“To West Berlin.”

“But what . . . how did you get here? How are you getting back?”

“I have forged West German papers. I’ll be fine. But do you want to come west? I need to know. That’s why I’m here. Then I must go.”

Could this be possible? Was Stefan being given a second chance? He hesitated, but for only a breath.

“Yes. I want to go with you.
Now
.”

Stefan took her hand and started to pull her in the direction of the border. But this time it was Katarina who resisted. “Not tonight.”

“But you said—”

“Someone will be in touch. It might be me. It might not. We’ll let you know the day and time.”

“But why not now? Why not this day, this time? Don’t you have forged papers for me?”

“Not yet. That’s why we must wait.”

“Then why have you come to me if you’re not going to help me escape tonight?”

“To find out if you would do this. Are you sure you want to come west?” He could tell by her voice that she didn’t trust him to make a firm decision.

“Yes, but—”

“You’re sure?”

“I said yes, didn’t I?” Stefan immediately regretted his testy tone.

“Don’t be upset with me.” Katarina leaned against him and gave him another touch of her lips.

“I’m sorry. I just—”

“Don’t worry, we will be in touch with you. We’ll find a way.”

Stefan kissed the side of her face and whispered in her ear. “Would you care to come inside?”

“I must get back. Besides, there are too many eyes and ears in apartment buildings.”

That was true. Stefan’s neighbor, Mrs. Wahlburg, had a habit of cracking open her door and peering out into the hall.

Stefan kissed her again, this time on the lips. “I love you, Katarina.”

“I love you too,” she said, but in a hurried, distracted way. “We’ll be in touch. Then we’ll be together.” Then just like that, she was gone, disappearing like a Christmas ghost.

Katarina felt like a spy, someone straight out of James Bond, as she made her way through the Tiergarten, a sprawling park in West Berlin, just west of the Brandenburg Gate.

It had been two weeks since Christmas Eve, when she crossed the border and made initial contact with Stefan. That had been a tense foray into East Berlin because she didn’t think the border guard was going to accept her passport on the way back west. Border guards usually gave three hard looks at a person’s passport picture and face, but this time the guard studied her with added intensity. Five looks. Six. Seven. Always scowling. Katarina hadn’t felt such an adrenaline rush since the night of her escape.

Today she had another assignment for the Kappel Group. She had agreed to meet Peter Hermann in the Tiergarten. The western side of the Wall had its share of spies, so she had taken the usual precautions. On the walk to the park, she made a series of random changes in direction and a couple of U-turns, crossing streets on a whim. She remained conscious of the people around her, trying to determine if anyone was matching her unusual walking pattern. She kept an eye on reflections in store windows to look for suspicious characters on her tail. She hopped on a random bus twice before finally winding up in the park. She wondered whether her sunglasses were laying on the spy look too thickly, especially since it was a slightly overcast day.

Katarina had just begun a fresh slate of courses at Free University, and already her grades were suffering terribly, but that was what happened when you missed almost half of your classes. She had thrown herself into the Kappel Group, which continued to bring students across the border; but if she didn’t buckle down, she might find herself thrown out of school.

Up ahead was Peter, sitting on a park bench, bundled in a long overcoat and reading a book, with his back to Katarina. She approached from behind, testing whether she could slip up undetected.

“Guten Tag.”

Peter jumped at her voice, as if a mild shock had jolted him into a more upright position. He shot a look over his shoulder and worked up an awkward smile.

“Oh. Hallo, Frau Siemens.”

Katarina slid onto the bench and stared out at the pond in front of them. She looked around, eyes still concealed behind dark sunglasses. No sign of life in this part of the park—not on a nippy January day. She pulled off her sunglasses and took a peek at the cover of Peter’s book.

“A Farewell to Arms,”
she said. “I see you took my advice on Hemingway.”

“You were right about
The Old Man and the Sea.
It was wonderful. This book, not so much, but I’m sticking with it.”

“Yes, that’s not one of my favorites either.” Katarina noticed him cast a glance at her jeans, which were not highly regarded by East German men. But she wasn’t about to wear a dress on a cold day like this. She smiled. “I have good news, Peter. I talked with my contacts. We’re going to send in a runner to approach Elsa.”

Peter set aside his book. “You think you can get her out?”

“We’ve had a good success rate.”

“How do you see it happening?”

“Through the sewer.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to use forged passports?”

“That’s no longer possible. Just in the past week, authorities have caught on to us, and they’ve even made it tougher on West Germans with legitimate papers. But sewers—that’s our subway. The GDR may have cut off all roads and train tracks with their Wall, but the city is still connected in other ways—electricity, water . . . sewers.”

“I guess there’s no subterranean wall—not yet at least,” Peter said.

They looked back out across the water, sitting in silence for a few moments.

“Is there anything I can do at this point?” he asked.

“Just wait. You’ve already given us enough information about Elsa. We know how to contact her.”

“Thank you.”

“Happy to help.”

Truth be told, Katarina was not just doing this for the students in the East. She was doing this for herself. She thrived on this. She lived for this. She sometimes wondered if she was normal. Her friends Alexander and Maria said she was redirecting her anger toward her mother at the East German authorities, and maybe that was true. After her father died, her mother became more devoted to her bottles than to her children. Her mother deserved her wrath. A ten-year-old girl shouldn’t have to put her drunken mother to bed. Shouldn’t have to clean the vomit from her dress.

“We’ll be in contact,” Katarina said, rising to her feet.

“Will there be much risk? For Elsa?”

“There’s always risk.” Katarina made a move to turn and leave, and then remembered something. “By the way, the Manado Brothers are playing live in Berlin a couple of weeks from now. A group of us are going. Care to join us?”

Peter looked over his shoulder at Katarina, a stunned expression on his face. She smiled at his discomfort, taking pleasure in his awkwardness.

“Come on, Peter. You’ve never seen a concert until you’ve seen these guys perform.”

Katarina had a hunch that Peter had probably never seen a rock-and-roll concert. Period. Handel was probably about as wild as his musical tastes got. It was time she loosened him up.

“Yes. I’d be happy to go. Are you sure your friends wouldn’t mind?”

“I’m sure. I’ll call—fill you in on the details later.”

Before Peter could say another word, Katarina turned and slipped away.

12

Berlin
May 2003

Annie and Kurt strolled across the Palace Bridge, past a line of brilliant white statues of Athena, and onto Museum Island, where the city displayed its palatial past. With so much of the city leveled in World War II, a lot of the old buildings were gone. But not here. Five museums, all of them regal buildings, were clustered together like temples. The day was beautiful—clear, with a soft spring breeze and the scent of flowers. Since the reunification, so much color had returned to the eastern half of Berlin.

“What would you say if I told you I ordered up this weather especially for you?” Kurt asked as Berliner Dom, a magnificent church, came into view.

“I’d say you’re well connected.”

The sky was a rich blue, and the springtime grass of the Lustgarten in front of the church was so green that Annie thought she was in Ireland.
Lustgarten
meant “pleasure garden” in German, but she always thought of the English meaning of
lust
every time she heard the word. Most Americans probably did.

She and Kurt came to a stop on the grassy square and looked up at the neo-Baroque structure.

“I’m always struck by the contrast,” Annie said, as her eyes flashed from the ornate massive church to the glass box just across the street—the Palace of the Republic, built by the East Germans on the very spot where the old royal palace of German emperors once stood.

Today the magnificent church stood on one side of the street, with its towers and turrets and massive copper dome and stained glass and statues; every aspect of the building told a story. On the other side of the street was a massive rectangular box, stripped of every frill. The harsh geometric sides of the GDR’s Palace of the Republic were made up almost entirely of bronze-mirrored windows.

“The nicest thing about that monstrosity is the reflection of the church in the bronze mirrors,” Kurt said. “I don’t think the East Germans planned to build a church’s reflection into their sanctuary for bureaucrats.”

Annie was a little shocked at the bitterness in Kurt’s words. He must have noticed his severe tone as well.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This is supposed to be a pleasant afternoon. You don’t want to hear my spiels.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Annie said. “They show your passion.”

“The site of the Palace of the Republic has a knack for stirring passions, even now, and it’s been over ten years since the end of the GDR.”

“They’re talking about tearing it down and rebuilding the royal palace in some form, aren’t they?”

Kurt turned his back on the Palace of the Republic and tried to crack the somberness with a smile. “Yes, but this is a beautiful day, and those decisions are not up to us.”

“Thank God,” Annie said. Then she spun around and pointed up at the TV Tower, the tallest structure in Berlin, which the East Germans had built just east of the church. The TV Tower was a long, narrow needle topped with a textured silver ball and a candy-striped antenna. “Speaking of reflections, did you also know about the cross? A friend told me about it once.”

Kurt shaded his eyes and stared up at the silver ball. On bright days like this, the sun created a blazing white cross of reflected light directly in the center of the silver ball of the TV Tower.

“I guess it’s God’s way of planting a cross on a communist landmark,” he said.

“He does have a sense of humor,” Annie pointed out as they crossed the Lustgarten, passing by a large fountain. They spent the remainder of the afternoon in the Pergamon Museum, which housed an array of ancient artifacts. Earlier in the day, Kurt had been oddly nervous, almost at a loss for words—unusual after all the weeks of them talking easily across the office. But by the time they reached the museum’s reconstruction of ancient Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, adorned with blue-glazed tile and golden bas-relief lions, he was bubbling over in tour guide mode.

Come evening, they ended their day at an outdoor restaurant next to an ornate old train station. The restaurant was lit up by rows of round orange lights, which hung down from canopies like planets, and two men played guitar—classic American pop music. The music of Simon & Garfunkel.

“It’s nice to sit across from you with wine between us, rather than puzzle pieces,” Kurt said. “No work pressures tonight.” As Kurt spoke, it was obvious that he was feeling a different kind of pressure. She could tell he really wanted to impress her. She smiled warmly.

“Actually, I find the puzzles at work relaxing,” she said. “Our family, for as long as I can remember, would make puzzles a holiday tradition. We did one together every Christmas, with lots of eggnog to keep us going.”

“Sounds like a Frank Capra movie.”

“It was, in a way. My father was even tall and lanky like Jimmy Stewart. And my mother insisted there was no peeking at the puzzle picture on the box cover.”

“No peeking at the picture? No wonder you became so good.”

“There’s just something about watching the puzzle pieces fall into place, the picture slowly coming into view a little at a time. It’s like a good mystery.”

Kurt smiled, and then an awkward silence followed. He picked up his glass of wine and sipped slowly; Annie knew he was just buying time to think of something to say. At the museum, he could keep the conversation going with his tour guide talk. But here in the restaurant, his conversation had dried up.

“Speaking of mysteries, how are your puzzle people coming along?” he suddenly asked. “What’s happening with the murder mystery you stumbled across?”

Annie was taken aback. This was the first time Kurt actively solicited information about the files on which she was working. He must really be nervous, fishing for something to talk about, to bring up the content of her documents. But she wasn’t complaining. She had been dying to talk to him about it.

“Some of these papers are riveting,” she said. “I have found that several of the people in my files are connected to the murder victim.”

“Really?”

“One of them, described in the files as ‘K,’ was the girlfriend of the murdered man. She escaped to West Berlin and began working for the Kappel Group, helping students escape.”

“Kappel? I heard about them. But do you know who might have murdered the man? Or why? Would his girlfriend have a motive?”

“Maybe. The murdered man informed for the Stasi.”

Kurt’s eyebrows went up. “An informer? Then there could be hundreds of people who wanted him dead. Did he inform on his girlfriend, ‘K’?”

Annie nodded.

“There you have it. A solid motive.”

They paused as the waiter swooped in to refill their water glasses.

“The documents say that ‘K’ was a ‘runner,’” Annie said when the waiter had left. “Any idea what that means?”

“Runners went across the border into East Berlin to make contact with those who wanted to escape, and ‘tours’ were what they called escapes.”

“You think the murder victim could have been a victim of blackmail?” Annie asked. “Isn’t that how the Stasi turned many people into informers—through blackmail?”

“Not everybody was pressured into informing. Many were happy to do the dirty work in exchange for something—plum jobs or promotions or just the freedom to travel outside of East Germany. I don’t think there were any excuses for informing.”

Kurt’s tone turned abruptly harsh again, and the conversation became darker, too dark for Annie. So she looked for the first opportunity to change the subject, and they soon found themselves talking about their own travels.

“Have you ever traveled beyond Europe, to America?” she asked.

Kurt smiled, and Annie felt the fresh breeze of a new topic. “Karl May wrote his Wild West novels without ever visiting America, and I’m afraid I too have yet to go there. But I will one day. Perhaps to your Arizona.”

“I’d like that very much,” Annie said, not realizing that her response made it sound as if she might be joining him there. Not until Kurt blushed did Annie understand the meaning behind her words.

Kurt felt like a schoolboy again, unsure whether to take Annie by the hand as they took a final stroll past Berliner Dom. He couldn’t tell what she thought of this day. Did she see it as just a time on the town with a coworker and friend, or something more? Surely, she must have gotten the idea that he saw this as more than a platonic outing.

He realized he probably shouldn’t have asked her so many questions about the documents she was reconstructing, but his mind had gone blank in the restaurant. In the office, he was never at a loss for words. He wondered if this day had been a mistake. Would it spoil their easy friendship? He kicked himself for talking so harshly about informers and the GDR.

They ended the night discussing books and films on the train back to Annie’s neighborhood, and he continued to be amazed at what they had in common. They both loved the writings of C. S. Lewis, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the
Lonesome Dove
books, and Alfred Hitchcock movies. The common bonds took some of the pressure off him, and he was happy the date ended on a note of normalcy—if this even could be classified as a date.

It was almost midnight when they reached Annie’s apartment building, and suddenly the pressure returned in full force. Saying good-bye at the door was awkward at any age.

“This is it,” said Annie as they approached the building. Her apartment was two flights up. She stopped at the black wroughtiron security gate that led into a courtyard.

“Have you been living here long?” Kurt asked.

“Since February. It’s small, but cozy.”

She fumbled in her purse, finally extracting her keys. Kurt stared at her, unsure of how to end their evening.

“I really enjoyed myself,” she said. “Thanks for a wonderful day.”

“See you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is Sunday.”

Kurt laughed uncomfortably. “Yes, I mean, on Monday. See you at work?”

“Bright and early.”

Just as she reached out for a formal handshake, he leaned in for a kiss. They laughed and fumbled with their body positions, Kurt switching to a handshake while Annie pulled her hand back in the expectation of a kiss after all. Kurt settled for a compromise—a peck on the forehead.

After a final good night, Kurt strolled away, one very confused man. He had always had trouble picking up signals, and tonight was no exception.