Edge of Eternity (18 page)

Rebecca saw what was coming, and she was filled with despair.

Hans said triumphantly: ‘You would never see your family again.’

*  *  *

Rebecca was crushed. She left the building and stood at the bus stop. Whichever way she looked at it, she was forced either to lose her family or lose her freedom.

Despondent, she took the bus to the school where she used to work. She was unprepared for the nostalgia that struck her like a blow when she walked in: the sound of young people’s chatter, the smell of chalk dust and cleaning fluid, the noticeboards and football boots and signs saying: ‘No running.’ She realized how happy she had been as a teacher. It was vitally important work, and she was good at it. She could not bear the thought of giving it up.

Bernd was in the head teacher’s office, wearing a black corduroy suit. The cloth was worn but the colour flattered him. He beamed happily when she opened the door. ‘Have they made you head?’ she asked, although she could guess the answer.

‘That will never happen,’ he replied. ‘But I’m doing the job anyway, and loving it. Meanwhile, our old boss, Anselm, is head of a big school in Hamburg – and making double the salary. How about you? Take a seat.’

She sat down and told him about her job interviews. ‘It’s Hans’s revenge,’ she said. ‘I never should have thrown his damn matchstick model out of the window.’

‘It may not be that,’ Bernd said. ‘I’ve seen this before. A man hates the person he has wronged, paradoxically. I think it’s because the victim is a perpetual reminder that he behaved shamefully.’

Bernd was very smart. She missed him. ‘I’m afraid Hans may hate you, too,’ she said. ‘He told me you’re being investigated for ideological unreliability, because you wrote me a reference.’

‘Oh, hell.’ He rubbed the scar on his forehead, always a sign that he was worried. Involvement with the Stasi never had a happy ending.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’m glad I wrote that reference. I’d do it again. Someone has to tell the truth in this damn country.’

‘Hans also figured out, somehow, that you were . . . attracted to me.’

‘And he’s jealous?’

‘Hard to imagine, isn’t it?’

‘Not in the least. Even a spy couldn’t fail to fall for you.’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘Is that why you came?’ Bernd said. ‘To warn me?’

‘And to say . . .’ She had to be discreet, even with Bernd. ‘To say that I probably won’t see you for some time.’

‘Ah.’ He nodded understanding.

People rarely said they were going to the West. You could be arrested just for planning it. And someone who found out that you were intending to go was committing a crime if he failed to inform the police. So no one but your immediate family wanted the guilty knowledge.

Rebecca stood up. ‘So, thank you for your friendship.’

He came around the desk and took both her hands. ‘No, thank
you
. And good luck.’

‘To you, too.’

She realized that in her unconscious mind she had already made the decision to go West; and she was thinking of that, with surprise and anxiety, when, unexpectedly, Bernd bent his head and kissed her.

She was not expecting this. It was a gentle kiss. He let his lips linger on hers, but did not open his mouth. She closed her eyes. After a year of fake marriage it was good to know that someone genuinely found her desirable, even lovable. She felt an urge to throw her arms around him, but suppressed it. It would be madness now to start a doomed relationship. After a few moments she broke away.

She felt herself near to tears. She did not want Bernd to see her cry. She managed to say: ‘Goodbye.’ Then she turned away and quickly left the room.

*  *  *

She decided she would leave two days later, early on Sunday morning.

Everyone got up to see her off.

She could not eat any breakfast. She was too upset. ‘I’ll probably go to Hamburg,’ she said, faking good spirits. ‘Anselm Weber is head of a school there now, and I’m sure he’ll hire me.’

Her grandmother Maud, in a purple silk robe, said: ‘You could get a job anywhere in West Germany.’

‘But it will be nice to know at least one person in the city,’ Rebecca said forlornly.

Walli chipped in: ‘There’s supposed to be a great music scene in Hamburg. I’m going to join you as soon as I can leave school.’

‘If you leave school, you’ll have to work,’ their father said to Walli in a sarcastic tone. ‘That will be a new experience for you.’

‘No quarrelling this morning,’ said Rebecca.

Father gave her an envelope of money. ‘As soon as you’re on the other side, get a taxi,’ he said. ‘Go straight to Marienfelde.’ There was a refugee centre at Marienfelde, in the south of the city near Tempelhof airport. ‘Start the process of emigration. I’m sure you’ll have to wait in line for hours, maybe days. As soon as you have everything in order, come to the factory. I’ll set you up with a West German bank account, and so on.’

Her mother was in tears. ‘We
will
see you,’ she said. ‘You can fly to West Berlin any time you want, and we can just walk across the border and meet you. We’ll have picnics on the beach at the Wannsee.’

Rebecca was trying not to cry. She put the money in a small shoulder bag that was all she was taking. Anything more in the way of luggage might get her arrested by the Vopos at the border. She wanted to linger, but she was afraid she might lose her nerve altogether. She kissed and hugged each of them: Grandmother Maud; her adoptive father, Werner; her adoptive brother and sister, Lili and Walli; and last of all Carla, the woman who had saved her life, the mother who was not her mother, and was for that reason even more precious.

Then, her eyes full of tears, she left the house.

It was a bright summer morning, the sky blue and cloudless. She tried to feel optimistic: she was beginning a new life, away from the grim repression of a Communist regime. And she would see her family again, one way or another.

She walked briskly, threading through the streets of the old city centre. She passed the sprawling campus of the Charité Hospital and turned on to Invaliden Strasse. To her left was the Sandkrug Bridge, which carried traffic over the Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal to West Berlin.

Except that today it did not.

At first Rebecca was not sure what she was looking at. There was a line of cars that stopped short of the bridge. Beyond the cars, a crowd of people stood looking at something. Perhaps there had been a crash on the bridge. But to her right, in the Platz vor dem Neuen Tor, twenty or thirty East German soldiers stood around doing nothing. Behind them were two Soviet tanks.

It was puzzling and frightening.

She pushed through the crowd. Now she could see the problem. A crude barbed-wire fence had been erected across the near end of the bridge. A small gap in the fence was manned by police who seemed to be refusing to let anyone through.

Rebecca was tempted to ask what was going on, but she did not want to draw attention to herself. She was not far from Friedrich Strasse Station: from there she could go by subway directly to Marienfelde.

She turned south, walking faster now, and took a zigzag course around a series of university buildings to the station.

There was something wrong here, too.

Several dozen people were crowded around the entrance. Rebecca fought her way to the front and read a notice pasted to the wall that said only what was obvious: the station was closed. At the top of the steps, a line of police with guns formed a barrier. No one was being admitted to the platforms.

Rebecca began to be fearful. Perhaps it was a coincidence that the first two crossing places she had chosen were blocked. And perhaps not.

There were eighty-one places where people could cross from East to West Berlin. The next nearest was the Brandenburg Gate, where the broad Unter den Linden passed through the monumental arch into the Tiergarten. She walked south on Friedrich Strasse.

As soon as she turned west on Unter den Linden she knew she was in trouble. Here again there were tanks and soldiers. Hundreds of people were gathered in front of the famous gateway. When she got to the front of the crowd, Rebecca saw another barbed-wire fence. It was strung across wooden sawhorses and guarded by East German police.

Young men who looked like Walli – leather jackets, narrow trousers, Elvis hairstyles – were shouting insults from a safe distance. On the West Berlin side, similar types were yelling angrily, and occasionally throwing stones at the police.

Looking more closely, Rebecca saw that the various policemen – Vopos, border police, and factory militia – were making holes in the road, planting tall concrete posts, and stringing barbed wire from post to post in a more permanent arrangement.

Permanent, she thought, and her spirits sank into an abyss.

She spoke to a man next to her. ‘Is it everywhere?’ she said. ‘This fence?’

‘Everywhere,’ he said. ‘The bastards.’

The East German regime had done what everyone said could not be done: they had built a wall across the middle of Berlin.

And Rebecca was on the wrong side.

Part Two

BUG

1961–1962

11

George felt wary when he went to lunch with Larry Mawhinney at the Electric Diner. George was not sure why Larry had suggested this, but he agreed out of curiosity. He and Larry were the same age and had similar jobs: Larry was an aide in the office of Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay. But their bosses were at loggerheads: the Kennedy brothers mistrusted the military.

Larry wore the uniform of an air force lieutenant. He was all soldier: clean-shaven, with buzz-cut fair hair, his tie knotted tightly, his shoes shiny. ‘The Pentagon hates segregation,’ he said.

George raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? I thought the army was traditionally reluctant to trust Negroes with guns.’

Mawhinney lifted a placatory hand. ‘I know what you mean. But, one, that attitude was always overtaken by necessity: Negroes have fought in every conflict since the War of Independence. And two, it’s history. The Pentagon today needs men of colour in the military. And we don’t want the expense and inefficiency of segregation: two sets of bathrooms, two sets of barracks, prejudice and hatred between men who are supposed to be fighting side by side.’

‘Okay, I buy that,’ said George.

Larry cut into his grilled-cheese sandwich and George took a forkful of chili con carne. Larry said: ‘So, Khrushchev got what he wanted in Berlin.’

George sensed that this was the real subject of the lunch. ‘Thank God we don’t have to go to war with the Soviets,’ he said.

‘Kennedy chickened out,’ Larry said. ‘The East German regime was close to collapse. There might have been a counter-revolution, if the President had taken a tougher line. But the Wall has stopped the flood of refugees to the West, and now the Soviets can do anything they like in East Berlin. Our West German allies are mad as hell about it.’

George bristled. ‘The President avoided World War Three!’

‘At the cost of letting the Soviets tighten their grip. It’s not exactly a triumph.’

‘Is that the Pentagon’s view?’

‘Pretty much.’

Of course it was, George thought irritably. He now understood: Mawhinney was here to argue the Pentagon’s line, in the hope of winning George as a supporter. I should be flattered, he told himself: it shows that people now see me as part of Bobby’s inner circle.

But he was not going to listen to an attack on President Kennedy without hitting back. ‘I suppose I should expect nothing less of General LeMay. Don’t they call him “Bombs Away” LeMay?’

Mawhinney frowned. If he found his boss’s nickname funny, he was not going to show it.

George thought the overbearing, cigar-chewing LeMay deserved mockery. ‘I believe he once said that if there’s a nuclear war, and at the end of it there are two Americans and one Russian left, then we’ve won.’

‘I never heard him say anything like that.’

‘Apparently President Kennedy told him: “You better hope the Americans are a man and a woman.” ’

‘We have to be strong!’ Mawhinney said, beginning to get riled. ‘We’ve lost Cuba and Laos and East Berlin, and we’re in danger of losing Vietnam.’

‘What do you imagine we can do about Vietnam?’

‘Send in the army,’ Larry said promptly.

‘Don’t we already have thousands of military advisors there?’

‘It’s not enough. The Pentagon has asked the President again and again to send in ground-combat troops. It seems he doesn’t have the guts.’

This annoyed George because it was so unfair. ‘President Kennedy does not lack courage,’ he snapped.

‘Then why won’t he attack the Communists in Vietnam?’

‘He doesn’t believe we can win.’

‘He should listen to experienced and knowledgeable generals.’

‘Should he? They told him to back the stupid Bay of Pigs invasion. If the Joint Chiefs are experienced and knowledgeable, how come they didn’t tell the President that an invasion by Cuban exiles was bound to fail?’

‘We
told
him to send air cover—’

‘Excuse me, Larry, but the whole idea was to avoid involving Americans. Yet as soon as it went wrong, the Pentagon wanted to send in the Marines. The Kennedy brothers suspect you people of a sucker punch. You led him into a doomed invasion by exiles because you wanted to force him to send in US troops.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Maybe, but he thinks that now you’re trying to lure him into Vietnam by the same method. And he’s determined not to be fooled a second time.’

‘Okay, so he’s got a grudge against us because of the Bay of Pigs. Seriously, George, is that a good enough reason to let Vietnam go Communist?’

‘We’ll have to agree to disagree.’

Mawhinney put down his knife and fork. ‘Do you want dessert?’ He had realized he was wasting his time: George was never going to be a Pentagon ally.

‘No dessert, thanks,’ George said. He was in Bobby’s office to fight for justice, so that his children could grow up as American citizens with equal rights. Someone else would have to fight Communism in Asia.