The Serbian Dane (7 page)

Nonetheless: ‘Cash or credit?’ she asked.

‘Cash,’ Vuk said and lit a cigarette while the girl was entering his passport and driving licence details on the rental form. Being Polish she had no trouble reading the Cyrillic script, and she probably remembered a fair bit of Russian from compulsory lessons at school but would never speak it. Vuk could well understand her. He said that, yes, he would pay for insurance. And he would want the car for two days. In true Russian fashion he pulled a roll of
hundred-dollar
bills from his pocket and counted out the appropriate amount. He was given the keys to a Ford Fiesta and within a matter of minutes he was on the road, heading south-west towards Wroclaw. Mr Ericson had arrived in Poland and then vanished into thin air. Mr Jenikov had hired a car, although no passport authority had registered his entry into the Polish Republic. Although this was actually less unusual than one might think. There was a lot of toing and froing of Russians and Ukrainians across the Polish-Ukrainian border. And the formalities were not always observed in the new, galloping market economy that had taken over from the planned economy to the east of the old Iron Curtain.

Vuk stopped at a supermarket in a small town. He bought bread, sausage, cheese, some apples and two large bottles of mineral water before continuing westwards along a good highway as twilight descended on the flat Polish countryside. He bought a couple of bottles of cola when he stopped for petrol. He paid cash. In the middle of the night he stopped at a lay-by, ate his bread and sausage and drank one of the bottles of mineral water. He locked the car doors and slept for four hours. He was woken twice by the hiss of hydraulic brakes as a couple of big Polish trucks pulled in.

It was another beautiful morning. The light shifted from rosy to pale blue, and dew sparkled on the meadows. There was no sign of movement in the two trucks. The drivers were obviously sleeping. Vuk brushed his teeth with mineral water, ate the last of the bread and cheese. He was dying for a cup of coffee. He brushed most of the black powder out of his hair, leaving it more of a mousy-brown colour. He was stiff all over, so he did some stretching exercises and twenty press-ups.

Before driving on he changed into his black jeans and swapped the
pale-grey
Reeboks for a pair of plain black sneakers. But he kept on the red checked shirt. He didn’t want to show up in a border town dressed all in black. He stopped at a modern-looking fast-food joint, had a coffee and a cheese roll. He gave his order in German and used a foul-smelling, antiquated toilet, where he managed to brush some more of the black dye out of his hair and washed his face. His eyes were a bit bloodshot, and he had a faint headache, but otherwise he was feeling pretty good. He was running on adrenalin. Traffic was light. Mostly old Polish cars and the occasional farm vehicle. The fields had been harvested and in a few places ploughing had already begun. He saw horses pulling a plough and one or twice he overtook a flat-bottomed cart drawn by a single sturdy horse. The day was warm with a light scattering of cloud. In a small town not far from Wroclaw he called in at the local post office and obtained the number for a hotel booking service in Berlin. He called the number and was given the names of several small family hotels in the centre of the city. The first two were fully booked, but the third could fit him in. He said that he was calling from Denmark and would like to book a room for two, or possibly three, nights in the name of Per Larsen. He spoke English to the receptionist.

He munched apples as he drove, and listened to a Polish channel playing pop music. By the time it was really dark the first German FM stations were coming through loud and clear on the car radio. He listened to the news. It was the usual stuff: isolated skirmishes in Bosnia, negotiations, political infighting in Germany, hold-ups on the motorway. There were more and more juggernauts driving in both directions. It wouldn’t be too long before he hit the start of the long queue of trucks waiting to enter the EU at Görlitz, so he turned off and drove into the centre of the Polish border town, Zgorzelec, and parked in a small square. It was a dusty, run-down place, but there were signs here and there that the work of rebuilding and renovating the old houses had begun.

He made sure the car was securely locked. It would have to sit here for at least a couple of days, if it didn’t get stolen that very night. But that wasn’t his problem. He shouldered his rucksack and walked off. He noticed groups of gaudily dressed gypsies or Romanians hanging around one corner of the square. A Polish patrol car cruised past them, and they huddled together like a flock of startled chickens.

With his dark hair, cap, jeans and leather jacket, Vuk looked like a Polish farm labourer on his way into town, like so many others, to have a beer or two. And maybe a chat about all the weird, raggle-taggle foreigners who were streaming into their town in the hope of finding a way over the border into the EU’s land of milk and honey. He dropped the car keys through a grating and strolled back out of the town. On the outskirts he drew a small compass from his pocket and took his bearings: south-west. It should be just under five miles to the border and the Oder-Niesse line – the narrow shallow river course which separated the affluent west from the poor, newly liberated part of Europe. It wasn’t the ideal evening: a three-quarters full moon lit up the flat terrain from time to time, but he noted with satisfaction that heavy black clouds occasionally blocked out its pale light and plunged the stubble-fields into darkness. In any case, he had no choice. And he did not expect to be the only one out there that night. He ripped up his Russian passport and driving licence and let the fragments fly out behind him like confetti. A light west wind caught the fragments and swept them off across the fields. The route he had chosen had been a long and tortuous one, but Vuk had learned that all tracks had to be
thoroughly erased, in an age when anyone travelling across the continent invariably left an electronic trail behind them, in the form of passports and credit cards, automatic ticket registration and online booking systems.

He smelled the river before he saw it. He cut across the field and into a little copse. Then he heard voices. Talking in whispers. These people didn’t realize how far a whisper could carry at night. He also spotted the red glow of a cigarette. It was a good way off, but he shut his eyes anyway to preserve his night vision. They were Romanian voices. He heard a loud shushing sound, and when he opened one eye a peek the glow from the cigarette was gone. A child’s voice said something, then whimpered. As an adult hand clenched round a childish arm, no doubt. Vuk drew back a little from the Romanians, although still staying close enough to keep track of them. They were too inexperienced and too scared to keep perfectly quiet.

He hunkered down, gently eased off his leather jacket and folded it. He pulled on the black polo-neck and packed his jacket into his rucksack. In the dark he smeared his face and hands with camouflage paint. He could do it with his eyes shut. This had been one of the main principles of the Commandant’s special training programme: any action that could be carried out in daylight ought also to be performed as surely and swiftly in total darkness. And in this case the darkness wasn’t even total. Now and again the moon cast a faint glow over the few solitary trees and the flat meadows. The scent of the water was in his nostrils. Before too long the Germans on the other side would be erecting fences topped by barbed wire. It was only a matter of time. A new wall would go up. It would have moved further east and would no longer be there to keep people in, but to keep them out. A new Welfare Wall, Vuk thought to himself. The world was still divided into the haves and the have-nots. And if you wanted something, you just had to grab it.

He settled down to wait. Emptied his mind of all thoughts and concentrated on listening, smelling and accustoming his eyes to the darkness. A bird flitted soundlessly down, landed only three feet away from him then took off again with a tiny mouse in its grip. The grass was damp with dew, and the air was cool but not really cold.

Around midnight, after a ninety-minute wait during which he had seen yet another owl bag its prey, he heard the Romanians. He counted ten
shadows: seven adults and three half-grown children. They were led by a burly man in black who chivvied them along in a hushed voice. This was their guide, to whom they had paid a lot of money, all they had left, and who had promised them that he knew the German border guards’ patrolling routine. The group passed only ten yards from Vuk, but they did not see him. They were not worried about the authorities on the Polish side: they were too few and underpaid, and it was no longer illegal to leave the Free Republic of Poland. The men all carried suitcases; each of the three women held a child by the hand and had a rolled-up bundle under her other arm.

Vuk allowed the bunch of terrified refugees to pass. Then started after them. Even though the Romanians’ minds were on what lay ahead, Vuk trod warily, bringing down the soles of his feet first, to feel for loose stones or dried twigs. Suddenly the shallow river hove into view fifty yards ahead of them. He saw the guide point to it, and to the moon that had broken free of the clouds once more. Then he pointed to the ground. The band of refugees crouched down. The guide turned and headed back towards Vuk, who stepped slowly but smoothly first one, then two, then three steps to the left, glided down onto his haunches and from there onto his stomach. It is the quick movements that are noticeable in the dark. The guide stopped short, as if he had seen something. Or heard something. Then the owl swooped low over the meadow again, pounced and flew up and away. The mouse gave a little squeak, a faint sound, but one which carried clearly through the night. The guide shook his head and marched on. Vuk let him pass then raised himself back onto his haunches. He could hear the Romanians arguing among themselves.

The moon disappeared behind a cloud. It wasn’t big enough, but one of the Romanian men got to his feet anyway and waded out into the shallow river, which was no wider than the average road. The other men followed him and the women brought up the rear, holding the children by the hand. They balanced the suitcases and bundles on their heads. In midstream the adults were almost waist-high in the water, and the children had to crane their necks as the water crept up over their chests. Oddly enough they did not cry. Vuk stole after them. He slipped off his rucksack and crouched down again only yards from the riverbank. Near him was a small bush; he crept behind it. He heard a dog bark and shut his eyes when he saw the dancing beams of light and heard the
swish of boots on damp grass. He slid all the way down onto his stomach and lay there with his eyes closed. He could hear what was going on.

The four German border guards waited patiently until all of the refugees were back on dry land. They were carrying blankets, which they wrapped around the soaked, fearful and bedraggled Romanians. The dog sat quietly. The Romanians blinked in the glare of the powerful torches. One of the border guards pointed and the group set off across the field. Even in the dark Vuk was conscious of the German border guard’s torch beam sweeping across the Polish bank. He heard a radio crackle and an indistinct German voice receiving a message and reporting back that a group of refugees had been caught. The beam of light swept across the pitch-black riverbank yet again.

‘No more here, Hans,’ the German voice said. ‘That’s it for tonight. Come on! We’ve got to get this lot sent back tomorrow.’

Vuk heard the sound of footsteps receding. He waited only a moment before getting up and hastening down to the riverbank. Rumour had it that the German border authorities had installed sensors. If that were true, the Romanians and the German guards would confuse them. The water was cold when he waded out with his rucksack on his head, like an African woman going to fetch water. Once over on the German side he slung his rucksack onto his back and set off at a quick march into the German Federal Republic.

He was not much over a hundred miles from Berlin. He walked across the fields for an hour, until he came to a main road. Next to it sat a service station. It looked new and modern. Things were moving fast in the former GDR, Vuk thought to himself. Every time he came back he found more changes. The service station was lit up, and there were four or five private cars and a lot of trucks in the forecourt. Vuk had wiped off most of the camouflage paint with a handkerchief, but he couldn’t be sure he’d got rid of it all. On the other hand, you get a lot of funny-looking people wandering about in the early hours of the morning. Vuk found a toilet at the side of the service building, splashed his face with water and pressed his moustache back into place. It was the best he could do, and it wasn’t bad. He hung about beside a truck with Polish plates. The driver emerged from the shop: a short, stocky man with a five o’clock shadow.

Vuk stepped into the light with his rucksack in his hand. He gave the driver a big smile and said in German: ‘Any chance of a lift?’

The driver stopped in his tracks. He saw a young man, unshaven, but with a nice friendly smile. It was three in the morning, the driver was tired and he still had a good few hours’ driving ahead of him.

‘I’m headed for Berlin,’ he said with a heavy accent.

‘Me too.’

‘My boss wouldn’t like it.’

‘Your boss doesn’t need to know.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘I could pay something towards the petrol,’ Vuk said, holding out a
fifty-deutschmark
note.

‘Aw, hop in,’ the driver said. ‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. The name’s Karol.’

‘Werner,’ said Vuk.

They chatted about football as they bowled along. Listened to German pop music and, later, traffic reports on the morning rush hour in Berlin. Queues were building up on a number of roads. Berlin appeared out of the morning haze. There were construction cranes everywhere, towering over the grey suburbs of old East Berlin. Karol was carrying a load of textiles from Kraków. He dropped Vuk not far from Alexanderplatz. Vuk found a cafeteria where three middle-aged men appeared to be tending their hangovers with coffee and schnapps. Vuk paid for a coffee, then visited the gents. When he reappeared he was wearing the beige chinos, a clean striped shirt and a
pale-blue
tie. The moustache was gone and his hair slicked back. On his feet were a pair of brown loafers. If the three men noticed anything, then they gave no sign of it: it seemed that in this part of town people minded their own business. Vuk drank his coffee and left.