The Berlin Crossing (21 page)

He knew that Martin Weber’s apartment was the third door along to his right. He clung to the wall of the long corridor as
though it might protect him. He padded on the stone floor past two closed doors. Martin Weber’s was next, number 17.

The door numbered 17 was ajar.

It creaked as Roland pushed it softly. He was in a small entrance hall. A dark anorak, a raincoat and a couple of jackets
dangled from hooks on the wall to his right; below them on the lino floor stood a pair of brown boots and a pair of black
shoes, all carefully polished. An inner glass-panelled door was closed. He stood in the small hallway, peering through the
frosted glass, listening. He could see nothing, hear nothing.

Roland tapped gently on the glass door.

He waited, tapped again.

The door was open, there must be somebody inside
.

‘Herr Weber?’

Nobody answered.

He took a firm grip on the door handle and pressed. The door opened into a living room that oozed brownness. Brown lino, brown
table, brown chairs. The brown curtains were closed, the room drowned in a brown gloom. Roland blinked. He reached for the
light switch, then thought better of it. He blinked again, his eyes growing accustomed to the gloom. Individual objects took
shape: the bookcase in the corner, the sepia photographs arranged on the dark sideboard, the papers on the small table that
obviously served as a desk. The heavy curtain across the opening to the kitchen area was only half-drawn: he could see that
the draining board and sink were clear, uncluttered. The door into what he took to be the bedroom was slightly ajar.

‘Herr Weber?’

His whisper seemed as loud as a tram bell.

He took a step into the living room. The floor creaked. The room seemed to moan.

A high wing-backed armchair stood in the centre of the room.
He reached out a hand to its ancient leather then drew back in horror.

Martin Weber stared back at him from the chair. Eyes wide in the knowledge of his own death. His mouth open in his last, silent
scream. Blood and spittle had dried like scum around his mouth. His Adam’s apple hung loose from the gaping wound that scarred
his neck, almost severing his head from his shoulders. As if someone had pulled a cheese wire through the scrawny neck, Roland
thought. The smell of blood was mixed with the smell of shit, where Martin Weber’s bowels had opened in his death agony.

No flies buzzed. This shit on the carcass of Martin Weber was not ancient shit. And the dark-brown blood on the shoulders
and neck was still drying.

Just get out if you have to
, Ingham had said.

He was too late, too slow.

The bedroom door was flung open.

A small thin man stood in the doorway. He held his right hand extended, as though he might shake hands with Roland. Roland
blinked as he realized that this weedy little fellow in a tight, zipped-up jacket was pointing a gun at him. It seemed absurd:
somebody was pointing a gun at him
.

‘
Unser freund von England,
’ the fellow said. Our friend from England.

A part of him thought, fuck it, I’m from Ireland.

Another part of him thought, I have to get the hell out of here.

The little fellow advanced on Roland, the gun outstretched. He seemed all of a yellow piece: yellow hair plastered across
a balding pate, yellow teeth like a dog’s, yellow eyes to match.

Do something
.

He backed away from the gun. His right hand, behind his
back, searched for something, anything. Fastened on something round, heavy.

He swung his right arm. The yellow eyes seemed shocked, indignant, as the heavy glass ashtray struck him on the left ear.
He howled, reaching for his ear.

Roland moved in on him, kicked upwards with his left foot. His foot connected with the gun. The weapon flew from the yellow
fingers, and catapulted towards the floor.

The gun went off. The explosion filled the small room. For a frozen second, both men stared at each other. Neither was hurt.
There was a fresh hole in the slumped corpse of Martin Weber, the smell of burnt clothing mixed with the stench of blood and
shit.

Roland swung the ashtray once more against the fellow’s wounded ear. He howled, clutched at the ear. The blood oozed through
his clutching fingers. Roland struck him again, watched him sink to the floor beside the chair that held the garrotted remains
of Martin Weber.

Move
.

He kicked the fellow in the head and ran. He was reaching for the apartment door when he saw the key in the inside lock. He
grabbed at it. He had to slow down, turn the key slowly so that he could get it out of the lock. The groaning behind him sounded
like thunder in his ears. The groaning turned to blasphemies.

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! My fucking ear!’

Roland pulled the door shut. The key turned easily, locking the door.

Now fists pounded on the inside of the door.

‘Open the door, you English fuck! Open the door!’

Roland ran. His shoes pounded on the stone floor of the corridor. The shouting stopped.

Then another gunshot: a loud, explosive noise mixed with the smashing of glass.
Yellow-eyes was out: what now?

The last door on the corridor opened cautiously. The man in the doorway was white-haired, dressed in a grey suit that hung
loosely on his spare frame.

The fellow held a hand up. Roland drew to a panting halt. Maybe, after all, this was the end of the line.

The man put a finger to his lips and stood with his head cocked, listening. Roland listened too.

The sound of an engine starting, then wheels rumbling over cobblestones. The van, he thought, there was somebody in it.

Grey-suit looked at him, his finger still to his lips. A white dog collar gleamed beneath his chin. A priest, Roland thought,
a vicar.

The engine stopped. A car door opened and slammed. Voices raised in the courtyard.

‘You check there, I’ll take this side!’ Yellow-eyes, his voice shrill.

‘Quick!’ The priest took him by the sleeve and pulled him inside. From behind the closed door of the apartment, they could
hear the pounding on doors, the shouting.

‘Engländer! Come out, you fucker!’

‘You are English?’ The priest spoke in a whisper.

‘I’m from Ireland.’ And he was shocked to realize they were speaking in English.

‘Quickly now!’

The fists on the doors were coming closer.

‘In here,’ the priest said, leading him into a bedroom.

A yellow candle was burning on the bedside locker, beside a small crucifix. The flame flickered in the gloom, shadows danced
on the old woman in the bed. Her gnarled hands were joined
on the threadbare bedspread as though in prayer. Her eyes were closed.

‘She died before the hullabaloo started,’ the priest whispered. ‘Thank God for that anyway.’

‘Open up! State Security!’ The hammering seemed to be next door.

Roland looked at the old woman in the bed, at the white-haired priest.

‘Here, cover yourself.’ The priest was drawing back the blankets on the bed. The old woman’s short body was covered in a pink
nightshirt that reached below her feet. ‘Marta won’t mind.’ Something like a smile lit his features. ‘Give me your coat and
your bag.’

Roland handed over the holdall, tore off the duffel coat. He watched as the priest hung the coat in the wardrobe and covered
it with an old dressing gown. He moved shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe, threw them on top of the bag, let a couple of
old cardigans fall alongside them.

‘What are you waiting for?’

Roland lay down beside the dead woman in the bed.

‘Get down in the bed, I have to cover you.’

He burrowed deeper, flinched as the dead body seemed to grip him. The blankets covered him like a shroud. The sickly sweet
odour of death overwhelmed him in the darkness. He wanted to sneeze.

‘Open up!’ Yellow-eyes shouting at the door. ‘State Security!’ Fists pounding on the door. ‘Open up! Now!’

‘Don’t move, don’t even breathe.’ The priest’s whisper muffled by the blankets.

Roland stifled his sneeze, moulded his frame as tightly as he could against the corpse’s thighs.

The priest’s footsteps receding.

More pounding on the door.

‘
Schnell! Schnell!
’ Yellow-eyes’ voice angrier.

The door opened.

‘Out of my way!’ Footsteps hurrying towards him, into the living room. And then the bedroom door slamming against the wall.

‘What is this?’ The voice at the foot of the bed.

‘Please, officer, please. This lady has just passed away. I was praying with her—’

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘I am Pastor Bruck, officer. May I please ask you to show a little respect in the presence of the dead.’

‘Shut the fuck up or you’ll be dead! ID!
Schnell!
’

He could feel a hand on the bed, near his feet.

Then footsteps, the wardrobe door flung open, then slammed shut. The sound of glass splintering.

‘Here, officer, my ID.’

‘You are from Bad Saarow! What the fuck are you doing in Berlin?’

‘She is an old friend, there was nobody else, her sister wrote to me from Cottbus. It’s only by the grace of God that I was
with her—’

‘Priest, you are hurting my ears, so shut the fuck up. You have seen no Engländer here?’

‘I have been helping this old lady to die.’

‘I’ll help
you
to die if you don’t stop preaching your shit at me.’

‘I’m sorry, officer—’

The sound of the slap sounded to him like a gunshot. Under the blankets he bit his lip.

‘I warned you, priest!’

Footsteps again, hurrying away now.

He heard the door being closed. More shouting outside, fainter.

The blankets were drawn back and he looked up into the priest’s face. The white skin still burned red where Yellow-eyes had
struck him.

‘Why?’ Roland asked. ‘Why are you helping me?’

‘You needed help.’ The priest shrugged. ‘And I could give it.’

It seemed a lifetime since anybody had offered him help.

‘
Vielen Dank.
’ In German now. ‘But why? I might be a criminal.’

‘Are you?’

‘No.’ Roland studied his rescuer, wondering how much to say. ‘I’m not a spy either but I was sent here by some sort of British
spy outfit to collect a message from a man who lives here – I mean,
lived
here – he’s dead—’

‘Dead?’

‘In his apartment. He was sitting there with his throat cut when I went in. I don’t know what to do now.’

‘What you do now,’ Pastor Bruck said, ‘is save yourself.’

From outside came the noise of shouting, the voice of Yellow-eyes, calling to his partner:
the fucking Engländer is gone, let’s get out of here
. Running footsteps, car doors slamming, the engine snorting, a vehicle rattling over the cobbles.

‘I saw the van this morning,’ the priest said. ‘I didn’t see the men but you get a nose for these things.’ A wintry smile
lit the pale features. ‘I just knew it was Stasi.’

Roland stooped in the open door of the wardrobe and retrieved his bag and coat.

‘What now?’ Pastor Bruck asked.

‘I have to get back to West Berlin.’

‘You think you can just walk back over the border? Did the policeman get a look at you?’

He nodded. Yellow-eyes had got a
very
good look at him.

‘I struck him,’ he said. ‘With an ashtray. His ear was bleeding. I think I kicked him too. I was scared,’ he finished lamely.

‘You are a dangerous young man, Herr . . .’

‘Feldmann,’ he said. It slipped out – but it was too late now. ‘It’s not what’s on my passport but my real name is Roland
Feldmann, from Ireland.’ From Galway, he wanted to say, but something choked in his throat. Feldmann, Watchmakers and Jewellers,
was not even on the same planet as this dark bedroom in East Berlin.

‘You’ve done more than enough for me,’ he said to the priest. ‘I’d better go or I’ll be landing you in even deeper trouble.’

‘Wait.’ Pastor Bruck looked at Roland, then at the round white face of the old woman in the bed. ‘We need to think. You can’t
just step out of here and then walk back across the border. The Stasi will be back – and not just a pair of them. They’ll
come in force and they’ll scour every corner of this building. Believe me, I know they will.’

‘Maybe . . .’ Roland hesitated. ‘Maybe if I just told them the truth? It
is
the truth. Maybe they’d believe me and just let me go?’

‘Oh yes, they’d let you go – after ten or fifteen years, swapped on a bridge at midnight for some spy of their own, and your
brain so full of drugs that you wouldn’t even recognize your own mother.’

Roland swallowed. ‘What else can I do?’

‘First, we have to get you out of here. The Stasi got a good look at you?’

‘Up close – as close as you and me. And a couple of policemen questioned me on the tram on my way here.’

‘Marta will help us.’ Pastor Bruck’s eyebrows went up as he inclined his head towards the corpse in the bed. ‘You and your
late husband both, Marta.’ He laid his own bony hand briefly on the grey knuckles on the bedcover. ‘Forgive me, Marta, for
my distractions on the day of your leaving.’

He turned to the wardrobe. Wire hangers rattled as his bony hands worked their way through the clothes.

‘Take this.’ He pulled a man’s grey tweed overcoat from the wardrobe and handed it to Roland. ‘Marta gave me most of her husband’s
clothes when he died but she told me she was keeping this to put on top of her bed on winter nights. What are you waiting
for, young man? Hurry, put it on!’ He turned again to the wardrobe. ‘And this.’ A navy corduroy cap, peaked, like a bus conductor’s.

He looked at Roland, eyebrows raised again. ‘It’s not much of a disguise for a spy,’ he smiled, ‘but at least you don’t look
exactly like the fellow who struck a Stasi officer on the head.’

‘And what now? I don’t want to get you into trouble . . .’

‘Marta will protect us.’ The bleak smile of a frozen winter’s morning. ‘Even now, she is having her first private audience
with our Maker. I’m sure she’ll put in a word for us.’