The Helsinki Pact (14 page)

“Get your things.” he said,
panting hard. “Now! We’ve got to leave. Immediately.”

“But ... I thought … Have you
broken through?" Her face lit up, then fell. "Or is there something
wrong? What’s happened?”

“Don’t worry. We're through. It’s
fine, but there’s no time to waste. Please, Ulrike, get your
things. Now!”

Kai’s voice had an edge she had
never heard before and frightened by his tone she obeyed silently,
hurrying into the bedroom to look for the few scattered objects she
wanted to take.

Kai kept glancing at his watch.
At least he’d bought some time by agreeing to deliver his rent on
the Monday evening but there was no knowing how long it would take
to break through the last bit to make a hole large enough to get
through. Worse, Frau Schwinewitz was clearly suspicious and nosing
around the basement corridor. Oh, well, she’d just have to make of
it what she would and they’d have to hope she didn’t call the
police to break into the room.

There was no real choice. They
had to go now. They had to risk it. Actually, he thought, they had
to do it, they had to succeed now or it really was the finish of
them all.

“By tomorrow I’ll be in West
Berlin!” he thought. “Or I’ll be dead and won’t care.”

He traced for a few moments with
his fingers the intricate leather patterning of the cowboy boots
which had cost him a fortune, stroked and sniffed deeply the supple
tan leather, remembering how he’d felt when he’d first worn them
only a few months ago and how Ulrike, enchanted by his style, had
struck up a conversation with him and they’d got together. He
blinked, shook his head and returned to the present, grabbed his
Swiss Army knife, a gift from Thomas, and moved on, filling his
small rucksack rapidly.

As they moved carefully down the
stairs Kai’s mind raced, trying to cover all the angles, wondering
if he’d overlooked anything important. They were particularly
careful approaching the ground floor. He listened and the faint
sound of a radio from Frau Schwinewitz’s apartment, the door firmly
closed, reassured him. They opened the door carefully then filed
softly down the basement stairs without putting the lights on,
hearts pounding.

In the darkness they felt their
way along the familiar corridor and as Kai turned the key gently in
the lock and began to ease the door open the corridor light snapped
on, flooding the corners and blinding him for an instant. Frau
Schwinewitz stepped out from the side corridor a few metres away,
her gun pointing steadily at Kai.

“Well, well. Look what we have
here!” she said, a slight tremor in her high pitched voice “Were
you planning to go somewhere? I’d been wondering why the basement
corridor kept getting dirty even though I cleaned it regularly. So
I thought I’d wait for you.” she said, smug at outwitting them. Her
voice harshened. “Face the door, both of you.”

Her voice echoed down the empty
corridor. Kai turned to face the blank wall and Ulrike moved next
to him in front of the door and felt for his hand.

“Now open the door. I want to see
what you’ve been up to, before I call the police.” She gestured
with the gun to Ulrike.

Ulrike gave the door a light
push.

The room was dark but the smell
of damp earth reached to where they stood. Frau Schwinewitz
squinted, stepping forward, peering into the darkness, sniffing the
air, her gun carefully ready.

“Wider. Open it fully. And turn
the light on.”

Kai laughed. “Why would we use
lights?” he jeered. “Knowing how you creep around, spying on
everyone, looking for lights under doors, we’d as well have told
you everything.”

“You have a torch, then. Use
that.”

“It’s in my rucksack.”

“Get it out. Don’t try anything
or I’ll shoot you, then her.”

Kai slowly eased the rucksack off
his back to the floor in front of him. Holding Frau Schwinewitz’s
gaze he squatted down, eased up the flap, pulled the drawstring and
felt around with both hands, digging deep, then pulled the torch
out and switched it on with his left hand, his right now hidden in
his pocket, his thumbnail easing open the blade of his Swiss Army
knife.

“Show me the room. Move it
around. I want to see what you’ve been up to.”

Kai lit up the centre of the far
wall then moved the beam of light slowly down and to the right.
Frau Schwinewitz moved closer. Her gun drooped, now pointing just
beyond Ulrike’s feet. She was almost in reach and Kai could hear
her breathing quickening as he watched closely out of the corner of
his eye. He ran the circle of light closer to the hole, picking out
the edge and then flicked it back and up to the ceiling.

“Back! Bring it back down. What
was that? Show me that again.”

Kai moved the light slowly down
until it shone into the hole in the floor of the room. The soil was
piled high beside and around it and the supporting struts stretched
faintly into the blackness like an early mine shaft. She moved
closer to look. He tensed his foot and sprang awkwardly sideways,
striking at Frau Schwinewitz and feeling the blade miss her arm and
enter under one of her lower ribs as she staggered and fell away
from him. The sharp crack of a shot shattered the relative silence
in the corridor as the echoes bounced around the hard walls and the
bullet passed through the door no more than a centimetre from where
Ulrike was standing.

Frau Schwinewitz was lying on the
floor, her left hand pressing the bleeding wound in her side the
right firmly holding the pistol now pointing again straight at him
as he stood by Ulrike.

“You bastard! You bloody,
devious, bloody bastard! Escaping’s bad enough. But attempted
murder – they’ll never let you out now.”

Hampered by holding the gun
trained on Kai she moved to a kneeling position then struggled to
her feet and shuffled back a few steps, kicking the Swiss army
knife well out of Kai’s reach as she did so.

“You there, bitch, lock the door.
Then throw me the keys.”

Ulrike turned and locked the
basement door, weighed the keys in her hand and threw them clumsily
so that they landed short of Frau Schwinewitz and close to the far
wall. Furious, Schwinewitz let off a warning shot which smacked
into the wall between them, jolting them back in fright and making
Ulrike fear she’d gone too far.

Frau Schwinewitz glared at them,
raised her pistol and pointed it direct at Kai’s chest. Ulrike
could see the index finger tensing on the trigger and despite
herself closed her eyes in terror and waited for the shot and the
sound of Kai falling. When she looked up Frau SchwineAuschwitz had
edged forward and, supported by the wall, was beginning to crouch
and feel for the keys, her gun still trained on Kai’s chest. At the
edge of her vision Ulrike glimpsed a slight movement.

Just as Frau Schwinewitz’s hand
grasped the bunch Bernhard jumped on her from behind, bouncing her
head from the wall on to the concrete floor with a sharp crack
echoing her involuntary shot a microsecond earlier, the bullet
tugging at Kai’s jacket but leaving him unharmed. She lay
motionless on the floor, a trickle of blood now staining the
concrete. After a few moments when it was clear that she was no
danger to them Bernhard stepped forward, pocketed the gun and the
keys, felt her wrist and lifted her head from the floor.

“She’s alive but the skull seems
cracked. And there’s a narrow cut, but deep. I guess she fell hard
on a key or something.”

“We can’t just leave her to die
here.” Ulrike was almost in tears.

“Tough shit!” said Kai. “We’ve
got to get out straight away. If anyone's heard the shots the
police will be here any moment.”

“We’re four or five metres
underground” said Bernhard “and these walls are really solid. You
said she was the only person living on the ground floor. No one
will have heard anything.”

“But we just can’t leave her
here. If she dies that’s murder! They’ll know what’s happened. It’s
murder! The GDR will ask for us back and the West won’t just ignore
that, not for murder." Ulrike was becoming hysterical, tears
streaming down her face, and Kai put his arms round her and stroked
her hair. "I hated her but I didn’t want to kill her. Damn! Damn!
Damn! We’ve got to take her to hospital.”

“No, Ulrike” he said. “We can’t.
They’ll want to know what happened, probably get the police in to
question us, maybe even hold us until she wakes up and can give her
version. We can’t do that. We don’t have the time." He held her
tightly for a moment then looked at her at forearm's length. "We
don’t have a choice. It’s her or us. All we can do is maybe drag
her to the stairs and leave her there. Someone will find her. We've
got to go.”

Chapter 11

Sunday September 17
1989

“DO you have an alarm clock?”
Bernhard asked suddenly, staring at the inert figure lying on the
cellar floor.

“What the fuck has that got to do
with anything?” Kai shouted. “Let’s get out of here and stop
pissing around.”

Bernhard ignored him. Ulrike
pulled out a small, old clock from her rucksack.

“We’ll carry her to her apartment
and make it seem that she fell and cracked her head there. It’s
just gone nine now. We’ll leave the door ajar and set the alarm for
ten. Someone should hear that, find the door open and rush her to
hospital. Kai, scatter some dirt on the blood on the floor and move
it around. We don’t want anyone getting curious about things if
they come down here.”

They carried Frau Schwinewitz up
the stairs, Ulrike pressing a cloth to the head wound to minimise
the blood flow and scuffing with her shoe at odd drops which
escaped. As they neared the hallway Ulrike listened at the street
door then crossed quickly to the apartment, opening the door with
keys taken from Frau Schwinewitz’s pocket and urging them over
quickly. Despite Frau Schwinewitz's slight frame the inert body was
heavy and Bernhard and Kai were bathed in sweat as they laid her
down, arranging her in mimicry of her earlier fall, placing her
bloodied keys by her head wound, rucking up the thin carpet and
positioning it so that it looked as if her outstretched right foot
had caught it and brought her down.

“Where’s the carpet fitter when
you need him?” remarked Kai and the three burst into stifled
giggles, clutching each other for a moment in relief, while Ulrike
cautiously slid open the door and left it ajar.

The alarm clock, fully wound and
set for 10pm, sat on the small table. No one was around and they
darted back across the hall. Moments later they were again in the
basement room.

Kai crawled to the end of the
tunnel and started attacking the wall with all his strength,
hammering in a stone chisel and sometimes trying to fracture bricks
where there were apparent faults. He was sweating profusely but
fear gave him impetus and new strength. The muscles of his arms
ached but he pushed himself past the pain. The mortar was old but
still hard and often difficult to break. Occasionally it crumbled
and he was able to push chunks out and into the void beyond and on
those occasions his hopes and his mood lurched in response. By now
he’d removed a section of six bricks and he could see clearly into
the tunnel. The sight of the pale green tiles lit up by the torch
beam delighted him and spurred him on. There was a cool and
welcoming draught coming from the hole, refreshing him.

It was now approaching nine
thirty and as the hole was enlarged it began to get easier. He’d
now removed nine bricks in three rows. It was wide enough to
squeeze through, he thought, but it really needed to be at least
another three or four rows, more if they had time. He worried about
pushing Ulrike’s stuffed rucksack through. Well, if it came to it
they might have to abandon it, maybe empty it and repack it on the
other side if there was time. He worried whether Frau Schwinewitz
might have come back to consciousness early, that even now the
police were about to storm down the stairs. Exhausted, he wormed
his way back to the basement room to change places with Bernhard.
Ulrike was standing there, her rucksack on the floor, pacing around
in the small area of floor free of the mounds of soil, desperate to
move out of the limbo where they found themselves. She smiled wanly
as Kai emerged, dripping with sweat and caked with streaks of red
clay.

“It’s going well. We’re nearly
through. Bernhard will finish it.” They embraced silently, clinging
to and resting on each other.

At ten to ten Bernhard emerged
from the tunnel, coughing and staggering as he came.

“We’re almost there. A couple
more bricks. I was going to finish it but I started getting dizzy
and nauseous.”

Before Kai could move Ulrike had
ducked into the tunnel.

“I’ll do it. I can’t stand around
here any more. I need to do this. I have to help.”

Some minutes after ten they heard
a whistle from Ulrike and they set off to join her, Kai dragging
Ulrike’s rucksack and his own awkwardly behind him. They left the
rucksacks in the half way chamber and crowded together by the wall.
Ulrike was crouching there, hot and dirty but flushed with the
success of knocking out the last bricks. There was a single row
left at floor level and above it a gaping, jagged hole seven bricks
deep. Kai shone the torch into the darkness, the beam picking out a
flat, gravel-strewn surface immediately below and beyond it the
glint of rails and a tiled wall.