Berlin Encounter (8 page)

“Hans is alive only because of good luck and two very important factors,” the dark-haired scientist was saying quietly. He had told Jake to call him Rolf. With the journey and fatigue his nervousness had gradually worn away. “First, he resigned the Nazi Party the day after Hitler invaded Russia. He did so quietly, and with relative safety because of the project’s importance. His actions meant he would never rise to a position of running the project as he should. But Hans is one of those people who are so sure of their own importance that they feel little need of receiving status from others.”

They stood at the truck’s tailgate, parked in a rubble-strewn lot. The region had once been a middle-class suburb skirting eastern Berlin’s outer border. The lot was now a gathering place for black marketeers. There were perhaps three dozen trucks, another dozen or so horse-drawn farm wagons, and twenty or thirty people displaying paltry wares on threadbare carpets or wheelbarrows or from boxes attached to bicycles. The atmosphere was very subdued. Jake was parked to one side, slightly removed from the others. His display of pots and pans and boots brought many stares, but few who even bothered to ask the prices. They seemed to simply accept that such things were beyond their reach.

“Hans resigned in protest of what he called a tragic repeat of Napoleon’s mistake,” Rolf went on. “But he did not say this openly. So the Russians were able to view this as an endorsement of their Communist cause. Which of course was nothing more than a means of hiding their true reason for letting him live.”

Jake found it difficult to watch the faces. They looked so tired, so resigned. This was far worse than anything he had seen in the days leading up to his Karlsruhe departure, and that had been a good half-year before. Unlike the constant banging and working and clearing and rebuilding which turned every city in the American sector into a unending din, here there was silence. Everywhere Jake looked, he saw the war’s remnants standing untouched by any sign of reconstruction. The people mirrored this strange vacuum. They did not even bother to meet his eyes. There appeared to be no room for hope, for bargaining, for anything save a tired envy at the wealth he had on display.

He glanced over at Rolf. The neat, nervous scientist was gone, replaced by a hollow-cheeked trader in denim and tattered sweater, his ratty beard flecked with traces of silver. Jake asked, “And what was their real reason?”

“That Hans was truly the brains behind the project’s success,” Rolf answered. “Not the name, you understand. Not the senior man who wore the medals and met with Hitler and was pictured in the press. The brains. Your people are right to want him.”

Despite Jake’s best driving and the newly acquired Soviet pass, they had almost not made it to the contact point on time. Driving in and around eastern Berlin had proved more difficult than Jake had thought possible, with numerous streets still blocked by collapsed buildings and a total lack of road signs. He had finally bribed a teenager with a pair of boots, and the youth had sat on the hood of their truck and directed them with hand signals. They had arrived at the market precisely five minutes before the prearranged contact time elapsed.

There was only a one-hour window each afternoon, a condition of working with local contacts from the British secret service. It had been necessary to go outside normal channels, since all their own men had vanished. The British had refused to give details—names, addresses, descriptions—much to Harry Grisholm’s chagrin. They had simply stated that if Jake were to appear at such and such a time and place, they would try and make contact. Try. No guarantees.

Jake had parked the truck, gone around to the back, and swiftly built a little barrier of bundles while Rolf had stood guard. He had then opened the compartment’s lid, watched as Hans Hechter blinked in the sudden light, and said quietly, “Five minutes. Stretch your legs, but don’t raise yourself up too far. If you hear a knocking, lie flat and pull the lid back down.”

Hechter had not replied, just lain there rubbing his eyes. His face was bloodied and swollen where Jake had hit him. Jake walked around to the side cannisters, poured water over his handkerchief, and then filled a cup. He brought both back, said, “I’m sorry for having hit you. But you were about to call me colonel and drop us all off the deep end.”

Hechter met his eye for the first time since the confrontation. “You are apologizing? To me?”

Jake looked down at the man, found his deflation unsettling. “Five minutes. No more. Then we’ll have to set up shop.”

Now Jake looked into the truck’s shadowy depths and satisfied himself that Hechter was both hidden and silent. “What about you, Rolf?”

“Ignition and fuel, those are my specialties,” he replied quietly, his eyes also scanning the crowd. “Important, but not crucial. I am the equivalent of a five years’ advantage, if you see what I mean. Hans, though, he represents a
lifetime.
A full generation’s difference in rocket technology to whoever controls that remarkable brain.”

Jake looked out over the crowd, glanced at his watch, resigned himself to a night in the open and another day of waiting and hoping. “So why didn’t he stay?”

“Resigning the party does not erase the reason for his having joined in the first place,” Rolf answered. “The Communists who were put in control of our project need him, but they loathe him as well. Given half a chance, they would execute him on the spot. To make matters worse, we were told in no uncertain terms that we were soon to be relocated to the wilds of Siberia.”

Their conversation was cut short as a pair of heavy, bearded men lumbered over. Jake straightened from his slouch and stepped one pace from the truck. Granting himself a little extra room in case the swinging started. Their presence shouted danger.

The taller of the two had one eye turned milky. He had allowed his beard to grow up and cover most of that cheek in a vague attempt to hide a ferocious scar. He reached forward and picked up one of the pans. “Nice wares. From the West?”

“Let’s see your money,” Jake said, “and I’ll tell you all the stories you’ve got time to hear.”

“No, stranger, let’s see
yours,
” the man said, hefting the pan like a weapon while his shorter companion, a barrel-chested man with the battered face of a barroom brawler, took a step toward Rolf. “There’s a charge for displaying your wares here. We’re the collection committee.”

Jake stood his ground and replied in German, “You can try to make me pay. But it’ll probably cost you your other eye.”

The tension crackling between the two men was enough to push the crowd of would-be shoppers far away. All eyes were suddenly elsewhere, all attention focused on something safe. The taller man glanced about, then cast the pan back on the tailgate and said quietly, “You do that well for a Yank. Maybe you should consider a different profession.”

Jake had difficulty shifting from one danger to the other. “What?”

“Hand me some bills. There are eyes on us. Did you know you were being observed?”

Jake fumbled in his pocket, came up with a handful, passed it over unseen. “No.”

“The Soviet minions are paid to check everything new. Yet it appears you two are attracting more than your share of attention.” He stuffed the bills in his pocket, pointed with his head. “There is something else. Another stranger. This one’s clearly from the West. Been hovering around the outskirts of the market for almost an hour, stopped twice by the police, checked, then let go. Red passport, probably Swiss. You expecting anybody?”

“Not that I was told,” Jake said, totally confused by too much too fast.

The big man put a casual hand the size of a bear paw on Jake’s shoulder, turned him about. “Let’s take a little stroll, I’ll just be showing the new man around, pointing out where he’s going to be setting up tomorrow.” Together they walked down the lot, the crowd parting in fearful waves before them. The man pointed into an empty space between two other metal traders. Jake responded with a single nod. Then as they turned back, the man directed his eyes with pressure on his shoulder, said softly, “There. Beside the curb with the two coppers eying her. In the scarf and macintosh.”

Jake felt a blow so strong it whooshed the breath from his lungs. He stumbled as the hand continued to turn him around, managed to whisper, “That’s my
wife.
”

———

By the time they had returned to the truck the big man had recovered sufficiently to say, “Something is wrong.”

“I’ll say.” Jake still found it difficult to believe what his eyes had shown him. “How—”

“No time,” the man said, and signaled for his companion to join him with a jerk of his head. “I cannot be seen to talk more with you than normal, not until I know what is happening. Traders camp here at night until their wares are sold. Join them. At the far end is the corner of a destroyed building. Back up close and you will be protected from whatever the night brings. Perhaps. There is a working faucet and public facilities two blocks north.”

Jake felt as though all the world could see through his subterfuge. “Can we still make it work?”

“We must, though I know not how. The situation has become critical.” The big man gave a casual glance over his territory, stretched and said without moving his lips, “My other contacts have vanished, and I have information. Something vital. You must carry it out. How we can accomplish this, with security and spies tightening the net around this place, I do not know. But we must try.” He turned, signaled his companion, and stomped away.

Jake stood immersed in confusion and the sense that his carefully constructed world was unraveling. Sally. Here. Part of him wanted to rush to her side. The other part shrieked danger.

The silent clarion grew more strident as he spotted her drifting along with the crowd, allowing herself to be brought along with no sense of her own volition. At each stall she hesitated, picked up an item, set it down, then allowed the shoppers to herd her along. Jake inspected her face, still hardly able to believe it was her. She looked tired. And drawn. Taut to the point that her face held masklike tension. He realized he was staring, felt unseen eyes watching, did the only thing he could, although it tore at his heart to do so.

He turned away.

Jake busied himself with his wares, restacking the pans, pulling bundles about, feeling her draw closer. Then she was there. Standing beside him, close enough that he could smell her scent, feel her presence, and the aching fear and confusion threatened to engulf him.

Sally picked up a pan, inspected it with unseeing eyes. Jake opened a sack, felt inside as though the search occupied all his attention, realized she was holding the pan clenched so tightly her knuckles were white. With the faintest tremor she set the pan back down, and in doing so allowed a slip of paper to fall between the one she held and the one beneath.

She turned away, never having looked in his direction, and as she did so there came a whisper so soft it was almost lost among the crowd’s murmuring and the shuffled steps and the gentle evening wind.

“Oh, my Jake.”

Firelight sent lingering fingers of light and shadow over their meager campsite. The ruins which formed three sides of their shelter came to life, weaving a silent warning against the debacle of war. Jake sat surrounded by his worries, the note from Sally dangling from his numb fingers, the words read so often that they danced and flickered in his mind.

The scrap of paper looked as though it had been hastily scrawled as she walked. It read simply, “Bären Sand Pits, end of Bärenstr, two km west, 9:00 tom am. Urgent.”

Sally. She was here. Everything else paled before the confusion caused by this fact. Was their cover blown? Was that why the nameless one-eyed giant had said there were unwelcome eyes? Jake watched the fire’s sparks rise to form glowing copies of the stars and decided that they were probably safe for the night. If the Soviets had wanted to pick them up, they would have done so already. So what to do?

He glanced at his two companions. Hechter had crawled down from the truck, eaten dinner, and now sat staring at the fire without saying a word. They were utterly sealed from the other traders, the truck pulled in close to form the roofless building’s fourth wall. Rolf Grunner lay silent and still in his bedroll alongside the truck.

Hechter stirred and rose and slid another rotten plank onto the fire. “I was thinking about the Depression,” he said quietly. “No, that is not entirely true. I was thinking of who I am, what I have done, and how the Depression helped to form me.”

Jake watched the scientist sit back down. All he had to do was look in the man’s direction to feel the hostility well back up. He disliked Hechter on a level far below thought. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you apologized,” Hechter replied. His voice was as subdued as his eyes. “I have been thinking about that too, Colonel. I have been forced to realize things that I do not like to see, have not wanted to accept. Such as the fact that, for me, power and authority has always meant the right to do whatever I deemed correct. Apologies were not a part of this. I am sure this must seem a minor thing to you. But to me it represents the changes my world is undergoing. And I find myself being confronted with something I have always hated, change.”

“So.” Despite his hostile feelings, Jake found the conversation a welcome shift from the questions whirling about in his head. “You were saying about the Depression?”

“Nothing you Americans experienced could compare with what happened to Germany in the twenties and early thirties. I know you think I am exaggerating, but I promise you it is not so. Let me tell you just one story, Colonel. My father was a professor of physics at the University of Leipzig, one of the finest schools in the country. I used to go and meet him on Friday afternoons. He would receive his pay, and we would stop by a little cafe where I would have an ice cream and he would sit and drink a real coffee and smoke his pipe. That pipe and his one coffee each week were his only indulgences. We would always take a table far from the windows, so that we did not have to watch the beggars parade back and forth on the street outside. There were beggars everywhere. The women and children were by far the worst, pleading for pennies and clutching at your clothes and screaming obscenities if you did not pay.”

He sighed and leaned back against the wall alongside Jake, more than the flickering fire streaking his face with shadows. “For you to understand what I am saying, I must tell you that at the end of the First World War, Germany signed a treaty which forced us to pay money to the victorious nations, especially France. I am not going to argue right and wrong with you, Colonel. All I will tell you is that we were forced to pay money which we did not have. The result was not only a depression like you Americans knew in the thirties, but depression and inflation at the same time. Such inflation as you cannot fathom. So what I describe to you was not happening just in Leipzig, but all over Germany. And it was growing worse on a monthly basis, even weekly.”

The call of a night bird brought Jake to his feet. He quietly stalked their perimeter, climbed over the truck, peered out into the shadows and listened carefully. Satisfied, he returned to his place by the fire. “Go ahead.”

“Is this hard for you, Colonel?”

“Is what hard?”

“Does it trouble you to hear that the enemy might have had a reason for its actions?”

“There are no excuses for what you people did,” Jake said, his voice grating. “None.”

There was a long moment’s silence, then he sighed, “No, despite my desire to argue and battle, I agree. There was no excuse.”

There was a stirring from the bedroll across the fire. A dark tousled head rose to enquire, “Do my ears deceive me?”

“I have always prided myself on my intellect,” Hechter replied. “I cannot continue to do so and yet ignore what lies all around me.”

Rolf looked from Jake to Hechter and back again. “Wonder of wonders.”

“The war was wrong,” Hechter went on, his eyes hidden within shadows of two caves carved from years of banked-up exhaustion. “The camps . . . have you seen a camp, Colonel?”

“Survivors,” Jake replied, remembering faces behind the wires of the Allied internment camp at Badenburg. “I never want to see any more.”

“No, nor I. I have received a letter from a colleague, a man who was employed by the research division of a Bavarian company. He worked in a village called Dachau. He wrote to say that when the Americans arrived, they forced the entire village to walk through the concentration camp outside town. He told me that he did not think he would ever sleep well again. Not ever.”

“You mean he didn’t have any idea what was going on before?” Jake snorted his disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Of course he knew,” Hechter replied impatiently. “We all knew. We all had heard stories of places where in wintertime the sky would rain a white ash that would lay inches thick in the roads. But we all chose to turn away. Not to see. Not to believe that our beloved Fatherland had truly sunk to this level. Such things were unthinkable. They could not be. They could not. They . . .”

The man could not go on. He turned and stared out over the ruined building, the wall’s jagged edge pointing like wounded fingers toward a star-studded sky. He searched the heavens in silent appeal. Then he lowered his face and sighed at the ground, shaking his head slowly, his eyes showing haunted depths.

Jake glanced across the fire to where Rolf now sat and took in the scene with silent caution. Jake found himself agreeing with the man’s calculating watchfulness. This change in Hans Hechter was too startling to easily believe. But Jake did not want to let the moment pass. Not yet. “You were going to tell me a story.”

Hechter started, as though drawn from a nightmare, and turned his way. “You truly want to hear this?”

Jake nodded, his eyes watchful, unable to commit himself more than that.

“Very well,” Hechter said, and straightened his shoulders with visible effort. “I agree that the war was wrong. But it is hard to see where the first step of a new turning will take you. All we knew when the Nazis swept into power was that a firm hand was finally restoring us to a semblance of order. After ten years of growing chaos, this was a tremendous achievement. And remember, Colonel, I am speaking to you as one of the privileged classes. I cannot myself imagine how it must have been for those whose families were worse off.”

“Horrible,” Rolf said quietly. “My father was an electrician. There were weeks, months even, when we honestly did not know if we would survive. All I remember of two entire years is a constant, raging hunger. And anger.”

“The whole nation was angry,” Hechter said quietly. “Even to a child that mood was clear. We had been beaten to our knees, and then beaten again. I myself had not fought in the Great War, and neither had my father. Why was I being forced to pay and pay and pay? I hated all those who had done this to me. Americans and Frenchmen and Russians and all the others, they were just names to me, but names to hate.”

“It was easy to hate then,” Rolf admitted. “The Communists were the first to use that hatred. The Nazis came later and mixed fury with patriotism, a mixture which proved too heady for some.” Rolf stopped, as though waiting for an explosion from his companion. When none came, he raised questioning eyebrows at Jake, but said only, “The Communists were specialists at weaving spells with the magic of rage. That is why I did not join them. I was tempted by their ideals, there was much that they said which I agreed with. But I was frightened by how everything was woven together, not with brotherhood as they said, but with hatred.”

“But there were many who did join,” Hechter said. “Many. And the anarchists were gathering together many others who hated even more than the Communists, who hated so much that they could not believe in any government. By my tenth year, I had learned never to walk along a main boulevard after school by myself, because several times a week they would be overrun by marches, and the marches always ended up in running street battles. Always.”

“The Weimar government was a sham,” Rolf offered from his place across the fire. “They had no response to any of the people’s demands except the barrel of a gun. The streets of almost every city in the nation ran red with the blood of people who called themselves patriots and whom the government banned as dissidents or criminals or traitors. It was an evil time.”

“Especially for a child,” Hechter agreed. “I remember one Friday, I believe I was twelve by then. My father came out of the university office, and he was carrying two great sacks, one in each hand. I ran up to him and asked what he had. ‘My salary,’ he said, handing me one. ‘Come, we must hurry.’

“The sack was not heavy, but it was very bulky. Inside were stacks and stacks of bills. I wanted to ask him about this, but he was rushing ahead. My father seldom hurried anywhere. To see him run like this troubled me more than the sacks of money.

“Soon I saw why we were hurrying. I stopped to pull up my socks and saw that behind us was a crowd of other people, all carrying sacks, and all running in the same direction as us. I raced to catch up with my father, truly frightened now.

“Just then we crossed the first main thoroughfare leading to the center of the city, and there was a riot. Policemen and soldiers were shooting at a great mob of people carrying banners for bread. I remember reading that one word, bread. My father always avoided these scenes, especially when I was there. That time he simply cried, ‘Not this too! Why do they have to riot on Fridays?’

“He gripped my shoulder, and together we skirted the worst of the fighting, then ran across the street. Only then did I realize we were headed for the market district. I glanced behind me and saw that all the others were racing along behind us. One man, somebody I knew vaguely because he worked in the same department as my father, was caught by a policeman’s truncheon and went down hard. All the others, people he had worked with for years and years, simply raced over and around him.

“My father stopped in front of the butcher’s, reached inside my sack, and transferred two great handfuls of notes to his own bag. Then he turned me around and shouted, ‘Go to the baker. Buy all the bread you can with that. Don’t come outside. Wait for me there. Now run!’ I ran.

“There was already a line when I arrived, but not long. Beggars were working the lines as they always did, and I hugged the sack with both arms, ready to kick anyone who came close. But today their plea was different. I came to hear it a lot in the coming days, but this was the first time, and it gave me nightmares. ‘A crust, a crust for my babies,’ they cried. ‘Remember me when you come out.’ They did not want my money. They wanted
bread.

“When it came to be my turn, I did not need to say anything. There was a sign above the counter, with a number bigger than I had ever seen, and just as I was to be served someone came rushing in the door. I was shoved to one side as the sweating baker and his helper started handing one great sack after another over the counter. I was very worried that perhaps they would run out of bread with such an order, but then I realized it was only money. The man shouted something to the baker, who took a thick pencil and added another zero to the giant number on the placard. I realized then it was the price of bread, and it had gone up by another
ten times
just while I was standing in line.

“I bought my bread. It almost filled the sack the money had been in. Then I stood at the far corner and waited for my father to arrive. People were carrying their money in almost everything—knapsacks, bulging briefcases, even a couple of wheelbarrows. Every few minutes the runner would come back, collect the money, and another zero or two would be added to the price of bread.”

“Hyperinflation,” Rolf said quietly. “It is one thing to hear the word and another thing entirely to try and survive it. Toward the end, when inflation was running at over a hundred percent an hour, my father would insist on being paid before he started a job. My mother would collect the money each morning and race to the shops because by evening his pay was worth half what it had been that morning.”

“So you see, Colonel,” Hechter said tiredly, “when Hitler arrived and began establishing order, there were many sane and intelligent people who thought the Nazis were saviors, not villains. I was one of them.”

Jake stared at the scientist, wondering at all he had heard. Wondering also why his own heart remained so hardened. “And now?”

“Now. Yes, now.” Hechter’s body had gradually collapsed in upon itself. “How hard it is to admit that my entire life has been built around a lie. Does that give you satisfaction, Colonel, to hear me admit that I was wrong, that I have been wrong for fifteen years, that my entire life has been wasted propping up an evil lie?”