Stealing the Future (16 page)

He didn’t reply, just jotted down a few notes on his notepad, then looked up as my phone rang. I was already on my way to the toilet so I asked him to answer it for me.

“Who was it?” I asked when I got back.

“No-one there,” he shrugged. “Bad line. Look, I’ve got to go to my old workplace, get some employment records stamped for the tax office. Why don’t you come with me—it doesn’t look like you’re going to get much done here.”

Erika and Laura had taken the Trabant, but a police patrol car was parked next to a colourful sign advertising a neighbourhood meeting. I admired the vehicle’s green and white two-tone paint job, blue lights and loudspeakers on the roof. Klaus jangled the keys before unlocking the doors.

“How did you get hold of this?”

“You know the Wartburg we have?”

“The one that never works?”

“The only one we have, yes. Well, the cops came down here last week, when you were tootling around in Silesia. They just wanted to drop off some paperwork or something. They drove straight into the back of it. Laura gave them a right talking to, so they towed the Wartburg away and a police mechanic is going to sort it out. Meanwhile, we get to use this mean, green machine,” Klaus grinned.

We got in, and headed off towards Schöneweide. If I’d been in better condition I would have been tempted to play around with the lights and the sirens, but as it was we just sat there in silence while Klaus filled the car with cigar fumes.

We drove down the Wilhelminenhofstrasse. On the left the usual soot stained brown-grey buildings—flats, and some shops on the ground floor. On the right were tracks, a diesel locomotive, stationary, engine hammering out greasy, black smoke. Attached to it, a train, a long line of empty flat-bed wagons.

“Transformer works,” said Klaus, nodding towards the factory beyond the goods train. It too was stained and sooty, but behind all the dirt were yellow bricks, and an elaborate industrial gothic design. It must have been beautiful once.

“Just a bit further down—that’s the cable works, KWO. Designed by the same architect for Emil Rathenau last century. And that, on the corner at the end is the TV factory, where I ended up working in ’89.”

I nodded, concentrating on the road ahead of us, tyres rumbling over the broken concrete flags lining the tram tracks we were following.

“There’s the main gate, over there. Can you see somewhere safe to park?”

I looked round for a parking spot. On the left the road broadened out as a side road entered, making a triangle with a pedestrian island in it. As we slowed down to park I saw someone come out of the factory gates opposite. He turned to go to the tram stop, and as he came closer I realised who it was.

“Stop! That’s him! Fremdiswalde!”

Klaus looked over to where I was pointing, at the same time braking to a sharp stop, and before I’d a chance to get out he’d already gone, leaving the door swinging open. I ran after him. Fremdiswalde had already headed back into the cable factory. Klaus was at the factory gates before I was even halfway across the railway tracks, but someone jumped out from the gatehouse, tackling him round the legs. He crunched into the side of the gatepost, tangled up with a security guard. I took a short detour, avoiding the pedestrian gate, hurdling the slack chain hanging across the vehicle entrance.

“Left!” shouted Klaus from behind me, and I headed round that way, leaving behind the string of curses Klaus was raining down on the guard who’d grabbed him. Ahead of me I could see in the lee of the factory wall dozens and dozens of cable drums, some just over a meter in diameter, others more like two metres wide. Next to the drums, covered in chalk, and dusted in soot, men were winding up a cable as thick as my forearm. To my right there was a three storey building, built in the same yellow brick as the transformer works down the road. A door led into this building, and I was about to go in when I noticed that the men in chalk and soot were looking further down the way, towards another block perpendicular to this one. I ran down to the corner of the long high building. A door at the foot of a staircase slammed shut. In through the door, I saw another to my right heading onto the ground floor, and a staircase snaking upwards. Brown art deco tiles covered the walls to elbow height, climbing up with the stairs. They were greasy, threads of soot lining the grain. The steps were concrete, with steel runners, and although not steep, they were high. I ran up, following the echoing footsteps. Sometime around the third or fourth landing I lost track of how many levels I’d gone up, just concentrating on the pounding steps echoing from somewhere above me. My heart ready to pop, my head banging, I’d already tripped over once, catching my right knee on a steel edge. Why am I doing this to myself? I’m not a cop—I can’t even arrest this guy if I catch up with him! Some part of my brain kept feeding me reasons to stop, but still I continued up this nightmare of a staircase.

A crash of a heavy steel door falling into the frame: Fremdiswalde had exited the stairwell. It didn’t sound too close, so I passed the next floor and carried on upwards. A large number 6 was painted on the wall where the staircase ended. The steel doors were to the right. I aimed for these, trying to shoulder them open, pulling down the handle as I hit the brown metal. A dull impact, a sharp pain. Ignoring shoulder and knee, I tried it the other way, pulling the door open, using my weight leveraged against my heels. Behind the door the light was dim, the air filled with desultory dripping. What light there was came from skylights, but they were cracked, broken, and hadn’t been cleaned for years. Shadows danced in the corners. As I stood there letting my eyes adjust, some of the shadows materialised into workbenches, bits of machinery, and, at the other end of a long room, a human shape. It was turned towards me, as far as I could see, and swaying around. I stood there, trying to work it out, my eyes struggling with the grey light. As my surroundings come into focus, I realised that the workshop was a lot longer than I thought: the figure wasn’t swaying, but running down the length of the floor, jumping across gaps in the floorboards, and dodging drips from above. I didn’t fancy following him, and while I dithered, the door behind me slammed. This was nearly too much for me, my knee and shoulder were killing me, my lungs felt like they were about to rip. I swivelled around to see Klaus, face red, panting. I pointed towards the fleeing figure, now nearly at the far end, and Klaus nodded, setting off, jumping from one safe looking part of the floor to another. Meanwhile, I tried to use my head. I could go down a level, see if I could head Fremdiswalde off at the next staircase along. I turn back to the door, headed down to the floor below, and went in, turning left onto a corridor that looked about twice as long as the workshop above. I passed office doors and frosted glass panels. A scream reverberated down the corridor, but there was no-one in sight, no sign of who made this sound, and nothing to suggest that anyone else was in the building: nobody came to their door to look out into the corridor. I stopped, and over my own gasps I could hear a whimpering, a ticking sound, and Klaus swearing. He didn’t sound hurt, so it must have been Fremdiswalde that screamed.

I picked up the pace again, and skidded on the polished lino as I turned into a wider part of the corridor. Our fugitive was on the floor, holding his leg, face contorted in agony. Klaus stood above him, looking down, obviously unsure what to do.

“What happened?”

Klaus gestured towards the wall, where a paternoster lift clicked its way past an opening, a loop of chain running from the top floor to the basement and back again, from which boxes hang. You get in a box on one floor, and jump out when you’ve reached the floor you want. The lift doesn’t stop, just goes round in an endless, slow loop.

“He ran down the stairs and jumped to get on the lift. He tripped, missed it—trapped his leg. I had to pull him out,” he shrugged. “But it looks like you’ve got your man after all.”

I nodded, bent double, trying to get my breath back. After a while I straightened up to see Klaus examining Fremdiswalde’s left leg.

“You’ll be all right, Sonny Jim, no blood. You’ll probably just have a big bruise in the morning.”

Fremdiswalde didn’t seem impressed, he was still on the floor groaning.

“Why don’t you find a phone and call the cops, I’ll stay here with him. Make sure he doesn’t leg it again,” grinned Klaus, taking a cigar out of his pocket.

17:06

It took quite a while for the bulls to show up and take Fremdiswalde into custody. I considered going with him, make sure he’d be treated right, but guessed that I probably wouldn’t be of much use. Besides, I had a mysterious appointment with Dmitri, Woltersdorf Lock he’d said. I knew it was somewhere on the eastern edge of Berlin, but wasn’t quite sure where, so I’d looked it up. Strange place. Get the S‑Bahn to Rahnsdorf, a station in the middle of the forests around Berlin-Köpenick, then change to a tram that went through the woods until it got to a little village just outside the city limits. I was lucky, Klaus gave me a lift to the nearest S‑Bahn station and the tram was waiting when I got off the train, so I climbed aboard, pushing my ticket into the stamping machine and pressing on the handle on the top to punch a hole. I sat down at the back, thinking about the tram ride with Annette last night.

Only one other person got on, a middle aged man in a long brown coat and a trilby. He sat down in the front seat without looking around, content to stare out of the window, watching the people at the S‑Bahn station.

With a jerk the tram moved off. It was a rattly old thing. After a few metres it left the road and swerved into the trees, grumbling over track joints, jolting and shaking the whole while. I wanted to have a think, try to process the day so far. There was so much to think about, but the lurching tram made it hard to do anything but look out of the window. After about a kilometre of trees the tram banged over some points, the track making a small loop next to an abandoned hut. The man sitting near the front seemed to take this as a cue, knocking at the driver’s window—a knock like a policeman’s, a hard triple-rap. The driver clicked open the door, and the man leant in, saying a few words. The tram was rattling too much for me to make out any of the short conversation, but the man seemed happy. With large, confident strides he came down the carriage, pulling open the rear door.

“You, this is your stop. Out, now!” The tram had slowed a bit, it was going about walking pace. “Quick, out here, go down that path and you’ll be met there!”

He spoke with a Slavic accent, and I think it was this combined with his confidence that made me follow his orders. I jumped down, my right knee almost giving way as I landed on the forest floor, the tram door slamming shut behind me as it hastened off, leaving the forest and disappearing round a bend.

I looked around me. Nothing but the tram rails, the hut about fifty metres behind me and a track going off into the gloom. I followed the path, back the way I’d come, past the abandoned hut.

“Grobe!”

I looked around. No-one to be seen.

“Grobe!”

A closer look, the voice had come from the other side of the rails. I stepped over them, and found myself face to face with a Russian NCO. She didn’t say anything else, just beckoned me to follow. At this point I wasn’t seeing many alternatives, so I followed her for a few hundred metres. We headed directly into the forest, until, on a wider track we came upon a Soviet Army UAZ jeep, well disguised in its olive drab. Beside the passenger door stood a man wearing fatigues. And an eye patch. The KGB officer who had been watching me the other day at the Karlshorst HQ. A military haircut—short and greying, skin like parchment, shiny and without any wrinkles—somehow it gave him a youthful look, even though he was about my age. Without smiling he held out his hand for me to shake.

“Dmitri Alexandrovich.”

I took his hand, but didn’t say anything.

“You must forgive me for these little games, but you were being followed. Here, take these, put them on. We don’t have much time.”

He handed me a Soviet Army greatcoat and cap, and held the back door of the UAZ open for me. I shrugged into the coat, put the forage cap on, and climbed in. My guide got into the driver’s seat, and Dmitri climbed in beside her. The jeep made easy work of the rough logging track, and the three of us sat in silence as we sped through the woods. Anyone we passed would only have seen a Soviet vehicle with three Soviet Army soldiers in it—with the cap and coat I would be unrecognisable.

We must have been on the go for about twenty minutes before we stopped. At first we had stuck to forest tracks, but then we crossed a railway line and sped through the centre of the small town of Erkner. Out the other end we headed east. After that I lost track, but now we’d stopped in a clearing. The NCO ran round the front of the jeep, holding Dmitri’s door open for him. I managed to get out under my own steam, by which time Dmitri was already heading down a narrow path. I followed, noticing that the NCO had got back behind the wheel, and was sitting there, eyes straight ahead, not looking towards me or her officer.

I caught up with Dmitri, who had stopped and was waiting for me.

“Once again, apologies, my friend, for all the silly games. But I have to be careful.” His one good eye assessed me: “And so do you, it seems.”

“Why was I being followed? Is it because of you?”

“Maybe. But I think it is fair to assume that you grew a tail some time ago, and not just today.” He’d started walking again, and I fell into step beside him. “After all, you are looking into the Maier affair. Think back. You know how this is done: remember! Think!”

Dmitri was right. I hadn’t noticed, maybe I hadn’t wanted to notice, but there had been clues. The Trabant that started up and drove off when Nik and I came out of my house on the way to the bar on Sunday. The couple kissing in a doorway, too many people on the quiet, residential streets near the squat last night, all heading the same way as us.

“You may be right,” I admitted.

“Yes. You must think, observe. They will not just be following where you go, but also following what you do. The Maier case is very interesting to a lot of people.”