The Helsinki Pact (13 page)

Stephan thought for a long moment
that Bettina hadn’t heard what he’d said, that the noise of the
restaurant was too much. But then she spoke, quietly and looking
away, so that they all had to strain to hear.

“After a bit the letters stopped.
My mother heard he’d moved in with someone else. I guess that
having to choose between his family and his money he just couldn’t
part with his money, that’s all.” She took a long pull of her
beer.

There was silence. Thomas and
Stephan stared into their beers and Camille reached out a hand and
briefly touched Bettina’s. Despite his continuing fury with her
Thomas remembered Bettina’s reaction at the Ephraim Palais and now
understood it better. He could see better why she was so strongly
contemptuous of that kind of selfish consumption and thirst for
luxury. The Western world placed money and consumption above
everything else, in her view, and it was the lure of this that she
blamed for her father's betrayal of his family.

Perhaps it wasn't quite as simple
as that, thought Thomas, but as he thought of the five year old
Bettina wearying her mother with questions as to her daddy's
return, today?, tomorrow?, soon?, then growing progressively more
puzzled and sad, more silent, until she came to accept that he'd
gone for good, came to understand later that he'd chosen living in
the West against his wife and children, he saw how hurt she'd been
by someone she'd relied on unquestioningly. He was silent as the
mood changed and the others started chattering and ordering more
beers.

Bettina drained her beer and
looked at her watch. “We need to get going − we’ve got to get back
to the car and it will take you at least another fifteen minutes to
get to the closest border crossing from there. And you’ll need to
allow some extra time in case you get a bit lost.”

Stephan called the waitress and
paid for everyone, with both Thomas and Bettina protesting that
they should divide evenly. They fought their way back through the
now even more crowded outer room to the street and, shivering and
pulling their coats tighter round them, set off for the
car.

Bettina pointed across what had
presumably earlier been an apartment block but was now a surrealist
urban garden with small trees growing on tops of ruined walls and
others showing behind shattered window openings, the ground covered
with now dying down rose bay willow herb and other vegetation.
“There, look, that apartment block is where I live, third floor at
the back.”

Even at a hundred metres or so
away it was easy to see that the building looked run down though
not as derelict as some others nearby. At first they’d been walking
abreast, Camille’s arm in Stephan’s and tucked closely to his side,
but as the streets narrowed Stephan dropped back to walk with
Thomas who was slouching along behind them, as Bettina and Camille
went ahead, talking animatedly.

“What’s the matter with you?
You’ve been obnoxious all evening. Bettina is simply fantastic.
Camille and I both think that. She’s intelligent, lively, caring,
beautiful ... we like her a lot. She seems to really like you too
but if you don’t watch out you’ll lose her. I don’t understand why
you were ignoring her so completely." He stopped and looked at him
as Thomas grunted and shrugged. "Have you had a fight or something?
It really wasn’t her that hit you, was it? I can’t believe that.
But you’ve just been blocking her out all evening.”

Thomas sighed. “It’s a long
story, Stephan. Let’s just say there are reasons. And, no, she
didn’t hit me, that was really a car crash, like I said.” He
swallowed. “She had nothing to do with my face.”

He felt guilty. He was going to
betray Stephan to get his liberty back. And he had no idea what
price he ultimately might have to pay. He had a dread that his
involvement with the Stasi could even ruin his best friend’s life.
And now he was forced into close contact with someone he detested
and feared but couldn’t helping wanting as well. Then there was
Kai. The Stasi almost certainly knew of his visits to Kai’s
apartment and perhaps even their meetings elsewhere. Would they
would think it worth checking further on why Thomas and Kai had
become friends, whether there was some hidden secret there that
needed investigating? Perhaps they already knew about Kai’s escape
plans and would just pick him up when they felt like it.

What a fucking mess! He wished he
could just say that he’d had enough, that he wasn’t going ahead
with what he’d agreed, that he'd take what would be coming to him.
But he knew that he simply couldn’t face jail in the East and there
was no way he would avoid that if he refused to cooperate. Let
others be heroes. He lashed out at a stone in his path, connecting
and sending it flying wonderfully, swooping down and narrowly
missing Stephan's car in its trajectory, and felt
better.

Chapter 10

Saturday September 16
through Sunday September 17 1989

“I'M so sick of this place!” said
Kai as they bolted themselves into the basement room on the
Saturday morning. “Nothing but backbreaking digging and humping
damp earth around every night, every weekend. And it’s clammy in
here and stinks. Look, there’s mould on that wall over there. You’d
think old Schwineschwein would notice the smell even in the
corridor but I guess it’s all those fags she smokes, probably can’t
smell much.” He laughed. "Not even herself, obviously, or she’d do
something about that!”

“We’ll be out soon. In the West.
Think of that! Then you can lie around and do nothing all day,
drink, go to clubs, whatever you want, without worrying about
someone snooping all the time.”

“If only! And you’re not the one
she’s chasing for rent, Bernhard. You know I promised to get it to
her Monday evening. I can’t give her the money by then, obviously,
and if I don’t she’ll have the police on to me straight away and
I’ll be turfed out." He laughed again. "But I'd just love to see
their faces when they open the door to check the cellar's
empty!"

“OK. So we’ll just have to finish
it before then and get out of here then, won’t we? We’ve got the
whole weekend, Monday too if we need it. Tell Ulrike to get her
stuff ready and we can go as soon as we break through.”

They dug and shifted earth
steadily throughout the day and by late evening had added just over
a metre to the tunnel length. The next morning, Sunday, they began
early and again made good progress until just after midday during
one of Kai’s shifts. He crawled out of the tunnel, frustrated and
angry.

“It was going fine and then I hit
what I thought was another big rock. It’s not a rock but I don’t
know what it is and how big and what we can do about it. At the
start it was just on the floor and so I thought I could get over it
but it seems to be getting higher and higher as I dig. Have a look.
Come and see what you think. Fuck! Just what we need!” He kicked
one of the lowest bags of soil hard, dislodging a couple stacked on
top which fell and tipped earth over the floor. "Shit!"

Bernhard crawled to the end of
the tunnel, followed by Kai, and probed and scraped at the object
in their way, digging experimentally in different directions. He
motioned Kai back and shortly both of them sat on the floor, legs
dangling into the hole in the floor.

“That’s concrete, not rock. Did
you see how it continued out on each side of our tunnel and how it
seems to curve up in front. We’ve hit the tunnel roof . We’ve made
it! We’re almost there!” He beamed at Kai and they
embraced.

“But, and it’s a big one.”
Bernhard continued. “Looks like we’ve hit the tunnel at the wrong
position. We’re too high up. That’s the curved roof. We can check
this but I remember from looking at the plans that the walls were
brick, rendered in the tunnels and faced with tiles in the
stations, and that the roof was reinforced concrete, thick concrete
at that. I can’t remember if it was just curved rebar or steel mesh
but either way we can’t get through that, not in the time we have
anyway and using these hand tools. And even if we could we’d be
something like four and a half, five metres above the ground and
without a rope and something to tie it to one of us is going to
break a leg dropping down.”

“Shit! So what do we
do?”

“We’ll have to backtrack a bit
and down to find where this curve ends and then goes straight down,
that's the brick wall. We can break through that. It really depends
on where we’ve hit the roof as to how far back and down we’ll need
to go. I think the wall was maybe three metres, three metres
something anyway, when the roof started so maybe it’s not far back.
Let’s go and see what we can find out.”

They crawled back into the tunnel
and Bernhard began poking experimentally with the pickaxe in the
floor of the tunnel. Initially there was resistance as he
investigated every ten centimetres or so, the point going in deeper
each time. Just short of a metre from where the slope of the roof
emerged from the tunnel floor the pointed blade went in up to its
shaft without meeting anything.

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s the
end of it or maybe it’s just lower than I can reach now. Anyway,
it’s got to be back to at least here so let’s dig a bit and find
out. I’ll do that, Kai, you fill the bags and move
them.”

For nearly an hour, twice the
length of an ordinary shift, Bernhard shovelled and probed with the
pickaxe, caught up in fury at the misjudgement and working as if
the tunnel were a malign force intentionally checking them and he
fighting to defeat it. Kai didn’t dare speak, filling and carrying
bags silently and standing around unsure of what he could do to
help. He returned to find Bernhard standing in an excavated sump
about a metre and a half from the blocked end of the tunnel,
beckoning him and waving the torch, shining it towards his own
feet.

“This is the point. Look. Here’s
the end of the roof and the top row of bricks. I reckon we’ll need
to go down another metre and that should do it, expose enough of
the wall to make a big enough entrance. We’ll need to cut the hole
back a bit too to give working room. The earth here isn’t bad,
hardly any stones, so it’s doable quite soon I think. Your turn,
Kai!”

He grinned and in a complicated
dance in the now slightly enlarged space they changed places. It
was two thirty in the afternoon and by shortly after six in the
evening a panel of brick wall, a metre high by half a metre wide,
was exposed.

Bernhard crawled out and handed
Kai the hand drill he’d filched unnoticed from his employer’s
construction site. Kai took a last long breath of fresh air and
crawled down the tunnel.

Working in the now dim light of
the lantern torch and exploring the surface of the wall with his
fingers Kai found a gap in the mortar between the bricks, held the
drill firmly against it with the chest pad, and started turning the
handle. After a few attempts when the bit skittered off it made a
dent and started digging in solidly. He pushed further, hoping the
wall wasn’t too thick, that there was only a single layer of
bricks. Suddenly, while still chewing out mortar, the resistance
vanished and the drill pushed forward into a void. Kai poked and
prodded at the mortar round the hole but couldn’t get the brick to
budge. He set about feverishly making another hole in the mortar
above the same brick so that he could look through one and flash
the light into the space beyond through the other.

His head was thumping with pain
and he felt weak and dizzy with the reduction of oxygen, reminding
him of his near earlier fainting. He was dripping with sweat and
felt as if he was breathing in a furnace. He put the breathing tube
to his mouth and sucked hard. He had to get out of there. He drew
the smaller torch from his pocket and placed it over the wider
opening, then put his eye to the one above. Nothing! There was not
even a trace of light. His heart sank as the sweat poured down his
face. He tried again, this time moving the torch to the hole where
his eye had been. This time he thought he could vaguely see
something. As his eyes got accustomed to the dimness, it looked
more and more like dark tiles on a wall. He scraped away and
widened the hole further. He stared at a patch of slanting black on
pale green, unable to make any sense of what he could see, until he
suddenly released he was looking at the end of the letter A. That
it was in the old script had confused him but yes, there was no
doubt − they had made it! As he crawled back, elated, he could hear
Bernhard hissing his name, urging him back. They met halfway along
the track in the chamber where there was just room to
stand.

“There’s something going on out
there but I don’t know what it is. The door creaked and the handle
turned again so I guess it’s old Schwineschwanzlutscher rooting
around again. She’s getting suspicious."

They listened at the door but
there was silence. They opened it cautiously but there was nothing
and no sign of anyone hanging around.

"I don't like this." Bernhard
said. "You should tell Ulrike to get ready and both come back down
here. Damn! I forgot my rucksack so I'll need to go back for that.
I'll be as quick as I can. See you back here in a few
minutes.”

Kai raced up the stairs and burst
into the flat. Ulrike was standing by the mirror, admiring her nose
from different angles. She glanced at him, startled by the look on
his face as he stood recovering his breath.